The Legion of Decency

The Crabby Old Man

2012-01-27T15:53:00.002-05:00

There is a poem floating –- more correctly –- flying around the internet these days. It was first shared between caregivers in nursing homes and geriatric wards.

But now its readership is growing among those of the “sandwich generation”, people in middle age caring for both their children and their aging parents.

It was found following the death of an elderly man in North Platte, Nebraska. He had died penniless and alone, a ward of the state with no relatives or close friends anyone could find.

He owned nothing of value, but in disposing of his few belongings, a nurse found a hand-written piece of paper. She was so overwhelmed by what she read, she copied it for everyone else on the ward. From there it spread.

And now it’s available to you to share…

“The Crabby Old Man”

What do you see nurses? What do you see?
What are you thinking when you're looking at me?
A crabby old man, not very wise,
Uncertain of habit with faraway eyes?
Who dribbles his food and makes no reply,
When you say in a loud voice 'I do wish you'd try!'

Who seems not to notice the things that you do.
And forever is losing a sock or a shoe?
Who, resisting or not lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding the long day to fill?
Is that what you're thinking? Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, you're not looking at me.

I'll tell you who I am . As I sit here so still,
As I do all your bidding, as I eat at your will.

I'm a small child of ten with a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters who love one another.

A young boy of sixteen with wings on his feet
Dreaming that soon now a lover he'll meet.

A groom soon at twenty my heart gives a leap
Remembering, the vows that I promised to keep.

At twenty-five, now I have young of my own.
Who need me to guide and a secure happy home.

A man of thirty my young now grown fast,
Bound to each other with ties that should last.

At forty, my young sons have grown and are gone,
But my woman's beside me to see I don't mourn.

At fifty, once more, babies play 'round my knee,
Again, we know children my loved one and me.

Dark days are upon me my wife is now dead,
I look at the future and shudder with dread.

For my young are all rearing young of their own.
And I think of the years and the love that I've known.

I'm now an old man and nature is cruel. It’s jest to make old age look like a fool.
The body, it crumbles grace and vigor depart.
There is now a stone where I once had a heart.
But inside this old carcass a young guy still dwells,
And now and again my battered heart swells.

I remember the joys. I remember the pain.
And I'm loving and living life over again.
I think of the years, all too few gone too fast.
And accept the stark fact that nothing can last.

So open your eyes people, open and see.
Not a crabby old man. Look closer, see ME!!

Lazy Sunday #204: Scoring

2012-01-22T00:09:00.001-05:00

Those who have been paying attention know Matt Catingub as a Polynesian composer whose music has appeared in “A Beautiful Mind”, “My Best Friend’s Girl” and “Good Night And Good Luck”.

Others might know him as the conductor of the Honolulu Symphony or the musical director and arranger who toured for many years with “easy listening” artists like Rosemary Clooney.

He’s widely recognized as an expert in an era of popular music that featured the likes of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.

It’s a genre he comes to honestly as the son of Jazz vocalist Mavis Rivers, the first female artist Sinatra signed to his renowned Reprise label.

Catingub grew up around Reprise studios and the “Rat Pack” and now keeps that music alive by taking local symphony orchestras and transforming them for an evening into the orchestras made famous by Nelson Riddle, Billy May and Count Basie.

For those who work in television, those evenings are a mix of nostalgia and musical forensics.

Because at the time Sinatra’s Rat Pack were dominating the showbiz scene and hip culture, the band leaders who composed and arranged their music were the creators or primary influence of most of the music on television.

Riddle began scoring TV series in 1962 with “Sam Benedict” and went on to “The Naked City”, “The Untouchables”, “Route 66”, “Tarzan” and many others.

May was best known for “Batman” and “The Green Hornet” as well as seasons of “The Mod Squad”, CHiPs” and “Emergency”.

They were of a time when series television was scored like movies, an entire orchestra coming into the studio and playing to projected sequences of edited film every week.

Later the process evolved to synthesizers and sampling and the same cues being recycled from episode to episode to cut down on costs.

These days it often seems like the concept of creating music to reflect and enhance the emotional intent of TV scenes has been tossed aside in favor of previously released music the audience already knows.

“Oh, there’s Nora Jones! And here comes Radiohead! Everybody cry on cue now!”

Attending one of Matt Cutingub’s concerts reminds you of the power of original orchestral music played by artists contributing their own interpretation of what the writer, director and others have put on screen.

It’s not yet a lost art, as the following clip of music from a pretty good but not much attended film exemplifies. Perhaps a reminder of how much a great score can enhance the audience experience.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

White Out / Black Out

2012-01-18T19:01:00.001-05:00

As I write this, storms blanket the American Pacific Northwest and Western Canada. It’s a virtual white out across the Left side of the continent and the people who live there have a “snow day”.

I love snow days. When I was a kid it was a day off school where you could head out to toboggan or build snow men. Or you could just hole up in front of the TV or catch up on comic books.

Snow days were our best chance to be left to our own devices and our own creativity.

As an adult, they’ve become the days when I know meetings will be cancelled, I’m less likely to be interrupted and I can maybe spend a little more time researching online to enhance a current project.

But I can’t do the latter very easily today because most of the websites which might assist my creative research aren’t available.

Google, Reddit, Wikipedia, WordPress and several hundred other branded sites are on strike today as they participate in an internet blackout to protest SOPA and PIPA, two American bills designed to place control of the internet in the hands of large (mostly American) media conglomerates.

PIPA (the Protect IP Act) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are legislation that will criminalize many of those using the internet with laws written by politicians trying to please deep-pocketed copyright holders.

And if these bills are passed, your inability to find the information you need online today will become the way it is everyday -- along with seeing people being fined and jailed for doing nothing more than telling you where you can find some of what you’re looking for.

This is not about stopping online piracy or protecting jobs. It’s about forcing you to give Hollywood more of your money and making some creative endeavours against the law. Laws which reverse our current “innocent until proven guilty” way of justice.

SOPA and PIPA are designed to protect broken business models and discourage innovation. They are the Hollywood studios best hope of remaining the controlling gate-keepers of our culture.

But they are something even more troubling. They are a way for how Hollywood does business to subvert the way our governments do business.

Much has been written about the concept of “Hollywood Accounting”, the way it screws honest, hard-working people and even operates counter to laws designed to guarantee equality of employment.

In just the last year, a group of Hollywood studios were forced to admit to Ageism, that they had actively prevented screenwriters over the age of 40 from being contracted to write scripts.

The first class-action suit against the practice earned WGA writers over 40 a $90 Million settlement. Two more suits totalling $120 Million in settlement payments are in process.

Other class actions are forming to penalize the same studios for discriminatory hiring practices against women and minorities.

Are these really the kind of people politicians want to admit to befriending the next time they have to get re-elected?

And if they are, maybe those same politicians need to understand just how friendship operates at the studio level in Hollywood.

Last year, Harvey Weinstein, recognized as Hollywood’s new “God” at Sunday’s Golden Globes, attempted to purchase his old company, Miramax, back from the Disney Corporation.

He still owned a share of many of the Miramax titles he’d produced with Disney and Disney was looking to offload the imprimatur.

But in doing his due diligence, Weinstein discovered discrepancies in the earnings reports of several of those titles. Disney eventually rejected his bid. But they ended up paying him more than $75 Million in previously unreported income.

These guys can’t even be honest with one of their own.

That’s something every politician accepting not only their donations but their arguments for how or why a law should be written need to seriously consider.

For more on why SOPA and PIPA need to be stopped, please take 15 minutes to listen to one of the most internet savvy people in the world – Clay Shirky…

UPDATE: Here…

Warming Winter

2012-01-16T02:48:00.001-05:00

There’s a theory that much of what passes for Canadian artistic exceptionalism can be credited to Winter.

Yeah, the season’s a nice change when it starts. You want a white Christmas and a crisp, fresh day to start the New Year. But after that…

It’s cold. It’s dark. It’s messy. Sometimes even accomplishing the smallest errands or tasks can take forever. The Canadian Winter becomes an endurance test and experiment in isolation that forces you to hunker down and do the work – because there is no escape.

And for me, that January “We’re not even half way done” feeling hits about now. We’ve felt the lash of the first real cold snap and our options seem to narrow to Havana or hermit.

The trapped feeling usually peaks on a Monday morning like this with me staring out my window and realizing I cannot will the weather away. Time to zip into the cocoon of creativity for the duration.

Yet, those creative fires need to be stoked and what better way than with some warming music.

Harry Manx is a Toronto Blues man most of the world has never experienced. And that’s odd because he travelled the world searching for a way to match the music he loved with the music he felt inside.

He found it in India in the form of a 20 stringed instrument called the Mohan Veena which sparked an inspired musical journey, transforming not only his love of the Blues but his flat top guitar and banjo into East/West and frigid/balmy bridges.

If you’ve never heard Harry Manx, you’re in for a treat. Lay out your creative tools for the day and prepare to be swept away by a muse that will inspire and enrich your efforts.

No matter the temperature, you’re about to feel a whole lot warmer.

Lazy Sunday # 203: Shake On It

2012-01-15T02:08:00.001-05:00

The 49ers beat the Saints with 9 seconds to go after the lead changes four times in the last four minutes.

The Patriots crush a team half the country was rooting for.

And there will be more of the same today.

Monday is gonna be rough on a lot of guys.

Enjoy Your Sunday…

Tim Tebow’s Fire

2012-01-14T14:47:00.001-05:00

There’s probably nothing more American than jumping on a bandwagon.

America loves winners. Loves rubbing shoulders with them. Loves being identified as a winner by association.

It explains a lot about their politics, their celebrities and the culture.

And it feeds the need of a consumer society to keep innovating change to keep people buying something new thus keeping the money circulating.

Two months ago, barely anybody outside of football had heard of Tim Tebow. The name might’ve rung a bell from when he and his mom did a Pro-Life TV commercial. Or he was that pro-athlete who publically admitted being a virgin.

To most Americans, he was just some fringe doofus.

And then he started to win football games. Win them in the final seconds. Win doing things most people in football were certain he wasn’t capable of doing.

But instead of spouting the game theorems and cliché phrases appreciated by the Jockaucracy, Tebow didn’t talk much in the “Me” realm and credited his achievements to his spirituality, something considered wildly out-of-fashion by most in the mainstream media.

His detractors scoffed, sometimes too harshly it felt, given he was just a guy playing on a fringe football team barely hoping to make the playoffs. Who was he going to influence? What difference would he make in the grand scheme of things?

And when Tebow lost a game, there was a sudden burst of celebration from the bellwethers of the culture. A kind of sneering Edward G. Robinson, “Where’s your Messiah now, Moses?” glee.

I wondered why it was so important to marginalize this guy and even turn him into the Sarah Palin of the gridiron.

Yet Tebow kept pulling victories out of the fire, just sticking to what meagre talents he had.

And his fan base heat continued to grow, far from being fanned by a supportive media, most of whom considered him a “flash in the pan”.

Yet numbers released this week revealed that Tebow jerseys are the top seller in the league and the company whose underwear he endorses has seen its sales increase by 2000%.

When Tim Tebow won his first playoff game last Sunday -– again in a spectacular overtime sudden death display, the ratings indicated it had been seen by 25% of the country, achieving numbers only previously reached by the Super Bowl.

Suddenly the American media seemed to realize it had been ignoring a winner and better get on the bandwagon.

Those still dumping on Tim Tebow were chastised. His marketing power was touted. Presidential candidates sought his endorsement.

Others whispered that the 316 passing yards gained in his playoff win matched the number of the Bible verse the NFL forced him to remove from his eye black. Could it mean there really is a God?

If you want an answer to that question, look no further than the photo leaked this week of Tim’s girlfriend. In spiritual terms, this is what’s known as “Proof Positive, Brother!”

Unfortunately, Tim Tebow’s winning streak will likely end tonight. He’s up against a powerful team the Vegas money insists will triumph by a couple of touchdowns.

If the Denver Broncos do manage to win, expect Caesar’s Palace to add a Sistine Chapel replica to hedge its bets.

And a Denver loss will also probably cause the MSM to hop off the Tebow bandwagon and get on with doing what it appears to do best –- remain out of touch with the people who make up their audience.

But in losing, Tim Tebow will have reminded those who truly understand spirituality, the warrior’s spirit or any true faith that their belief does not provide access to some kind of magical vending machine that dispenses exactly what you want.

It’s just a way of living a life based not on wins or losses but on how well you live it and how well you treat those around you. In those terms, guys like Tim Tebow are never defeated.

The Epiphany

2012-01-09T03:51:00.001-05:00

If there’s one word every writer dreads and every story executive demands, it is “Epiphany”. That moment when the penny drops for the lead character and he realizes what the point of his cinematic journey has been, understands how to overcome the obstacles placed in his path, discovers what will bring about a successful resolution.

Without that moment the development exec knows the story probably won’t work. For cinema (and TV) is about transformation – facing a fear and finding a way to overcome it and go on to a better life.

But for the writer, scripting that scene is a bitch.

The audience can’t see it coming, but have to have all the information to know it when they see it. It’s gotta be a surprise, a revelation, a moment of blinding awe and inspiration.

Writers beat their heads against the Epiphany for hours, days, weeks even years. It demands they look at their story and their characters from every conceivable position plus a few that didn’t even make it into the Kama Sutra.

It’s hard work. The kind that makes writing painful and scary for many, causes more than a few to avoid the task at all costs and probably accounts for most cases of writer’s block.

Sometimes it wears down the development executives and the producers as well. The clock is ticking. The set needs pages. Why not just go with this. It’s worked before.

Such decisions let everyone get on with their lives – and ensure that actors like Steven Seagal maintain a career.

Safe mode is only a keystroke away.

But the reality of writing is that when you sit down to write you are taking a journey. It’s going to be long and hard. You may know exactly where you want to go. But the journey will be the one who determines what awaits you at the end.

So many elements of any journey are beyond our control. The weather changes. Planes get delayed. While you’re in the air there’s an earthquake at your destination or the economy collapses.

What we think we’re looking for is not always what we find.

But when you look back on the journeys you’ve taken – aren’t the ones with the unplanned for, unexpected twists and turns those you remember the most?

It’s the same for an audience.

I’m betting that in the last few days, a lot of writers reading this made a commitment to write something really good in 2012. To finally start or finish that story they’ve always wanted to write.

Now it’s a week into the new year. The house has never been cleaner. Everything on the “Honey-Do” list has been crossed off. You’ve even sorted all your socks and tax receipts.

But that story is still tapping its foot inside your subconscious –- waiting to hit the road.

Because the road is hard and it wears you down. And there’s always that one big hill you know you won’t be able to avoid.

Maybe you need to look at the other definition of Epiphany. The original meaning in ancient Greek -- “A Vision of God”.

In the Christian Calendar Epiphany was this weekend, January 6th – 12 days after Christmas and symbolizing the Magi (on their journey) discovering God in human form.

Whether you believe in that stuff or not is up to you. The point is, in a movie about the three wise men that discovery is their moment of…

They didn’t see it coming. It changed them completely and it made all they’d been through and still had to face worthwhile.

That’s how you have to approach your writing. Accept and try to enjoy the trials and tribulations of the journey. When you arrive at an unexpected place, don’t give up and go back and try to find the Interstate.

Let the journey take you where it wants to go.

Because when you arrive at that dreaded “E” moment, it will be so much better than what you thought you were seeking. It’ll be a surprise to you and perhaps a revelation. Which means it’s gonna awe the shit out of your audience and development exec.

The journey’s joys always outweigh the pain.

Lazy Sunday # 202: Riusuke Fukahori

2012-01-08T01:44:00.001-05:00

Good screenwriters work in layers. You don’t ever reveal a character all at once.

I mean, you can. But in an odd way, that defeats the purpose. Because knowing all there is to know about somebody from the get go turns them from a three dimensional character into one that seems flat and uninteresting.

If there’s nothing left to look for, what’s the point of watching what they do next.

So you give them a little here and a little there. The spine of the character one place and the shading in another. And as the layers overlap, the audience forms the three dimensional character you laid out for them in deft strokes of action and dialogue.

Riusuke Fukahori does much the same thing. Only he does it with paint, constructing three dimensional drawings from layer upon layer of what seem like unrelated brushstrokes.

It’s just that easy -- and that hard. Enjoy Your Sunday.

And here’s the technique…

Natural Born Filler

2012-01-07T03:43:00.001-05:00

The arrival of television's "Second Season" this month also marks the return of the overblown hyperbole machine known as Network PR.

As new series debut, the same people who mere months ago insisted "The Playboy Club", "Pan Am" and "Prime Suspect" would forever alter the television landscape are back declaring that every member of the new crop will have an even greater impact on the popular culture.

It always amazes me that those watching Entertainment News and Gossip never get tired of hearing that everybody the latest flavor of the month star or celebrity is working with is "brilliant" and a "genius". Nor do they seem to catch on to the continual disconnect between the sizzle and what's passed off as steak when it's finally delivered.

What's more, nobody every gets rude and says, "Why should I even listen to you idiots anymore after the lemon you sold me last time?"

I guess at some level we all really do want to believe we're not being toyed with and that our search for thoroughly satisfying entertainment will at last be rewarded.

And I suppose newspapers who can't afford stories written by actual journalists anymore can still attract advertising by filling up pages with unedited press releases.

But still…

Among the filler pieces I came across this week was an interview with best-selling author John Grisham hyping the upcoming premiere of the series version of his 1991 novel "The Firm" which spawned the successful 1994 film version starring Tom Cruise and Gene Hackman.

Of course, Cruise and Hackman are not in the TV sequel, nor is its plot the one that fans of Grisham's book or the resulting Robert Towne scripted film may recall.

In this version, brilliant Harvard lawyer Mitch McDeere emerges from a decade in witness protection after exposing his mob-connected law firm and suddenly finds himself partnered with another firm who ("Oh no, it's happening again!) are apparently also up to no good.

I guess Harvard Law doesn't offer a course in conducting "Due Diligence".

And you'd figure a guy who's really smart might realize that the Witness Protection Program is there because there really are people who don't forgive and forget.

A few years ago, I wrote a pilot that had me hop-scotching the USA to interview real people in real Witness Protection. They weren't the nicest folks I've ever met. And none of them liked the places to which the Federal Marshals had dispatched them for their own safety. But not one was dumb enough to think bygones would one day be bygones.

Now, I have no idea whether "The Firm" is or is not good television. It might well be the kind I hate and a whole lot of other people really like -- or vice versa. I'm led to believe its "Canadian" although few of the creative 'above the line' appear to be legitimate frostbacks.

But in a world where "The Tudors" and "The Borgias" are "Canadian" with even fewer bodies on staff who might have once attended a hockey game or bobbed their heads to "Nickleback", I guess that's possible.

No. My beef is with the bullshit.

Despite a number of reviews which can best be described as tepid at best, John Grisham insists "The Firm" will (unlike his last TV foray "The Client") be a hit, also stating that he's a big fan of all the other lawyers turned writers or producers staffing the show and has been having great fun watching the characters come to life on set.

But you gotta wonder if that's what he really feels in his heart. Or at least the heart we've been led to believe he wears on his sleeve.

Those who know Grisham's history might recall that he once took on an Oliver Stone movie called "Natural Born Killers" after a pair of copy-cat teens brutally murdered one of his close friends claiming they'd been inspired by the movie's mayhem.

Grisham wrote a scathing essay in a magazine he published demanding a First Amendment (Freedom of Speech) exception be made so that those involved in the film could be called to account.

"The notion of holding filmmakers and studios legally responsible for their products has always been met with guffaws from the industry. But the laughing will soon stop. It will take only one large verdict against the likes of Oliver Stone, and his production company, and the screenwriter, and the studio itself, and then the party will be over! Once a precedent is set, the litigation will become contagious, and the money will become enormous. Hollywood will suddenly discover a desire to rein itself in. The landscape of American jurisprudence is littered with the remains of large, powerful corporations which once thought themselves bulletproof and immune from responsibility for their actions. Sadly, Hollywood will have to be forced to shed some of its own blood before it learns to police itself".

Grisham's displeasure with those in any way associated with "Natural Born Killers" was so great that he personally stopped the studio filming his next novel "A Time To Kill" from hiring "Killers" star Woody Harrelson.

And yet, he now seems positively tickled to death that Harrelson's co-star, Juliette Lewis, is part of the cast of "The Firm".

Odd when you consider that for several years, the death of his friend had caused Grisham to forbid his publisher from selling the film rights for any of his books to a Hollywood Studio.

Or maybe time heals all wounds. Eventually we all realize we need to forgive and forget. At least that sentiment might explain the inexplicable "The mob's probably over it by now" premise of the series.

And perhaps, like a lot of writers, Grisham's characters are based on his own self. Maybe like Mitch McDeere, he sometimes just goes along to get along.

If not, he might've noticed that Executive Producer John Morayniss sat for many, many years atop the Writers Guild of Canada's "Unfair Engagers" list.

Now, I don't know what producorial faux pas or Guild misdemeanor Mr. Morayniss committed to earn this ignominy. But it meant Canadian screenwriters were forbidden from being contracted by him for a very long time and it became somewhat of an industry joke that the thing never seemed to get settled.

You really wondered what the poor bastard could've done, given that other Guild Grievances were being dropped without serious penalty (literally by the hundreds).

But around the time The Firm's production company (Entertainment One) came along, he finally disappeared from the list. I asked my Guild rep what had happened, but never got an answer.

Maybe at the heart of Grisham's gushing over "The Firm" there's a lawyer's implicit understanding that we all deserve the chance to one day freely return to society. Maybe he's just happy he dodged his own bullet because no parent blew away their kid's rapist and claimed they were inspired by "A Time To Kill".

Or -- he's just another guy with a 275-Million-copies-sold gift for fiction moving some product. Which -- kinda flies in the face of the image constantly painted of a man with a passion for truth and justice.

And that leaves me feeling "The Firm" might not be what it's being cracked up to be. Meaning in a few short months the hyperbole machine will be back, once more promising me something else it likely won't deliver.

New Year / New Music

2012-01-02T12:53:00.001-05:00

Nobody told me this was a Stat Holiday…

I’m thinking it’s some kind of plot to make people feel they don’t really have to get started on their New Year’s resolutions. Some automatic cheat day or 24 hour grace period.

As for me, I stuck with the program. Got up earlier than the dog for a change. Hustled her butt through the park. Turned up showered, shaved and wearing a crisply starched shirt. Only to discover nobody else was ready to play.

So now I’ve got time on my hands – always a dangerous state for yours truly. That “Idle hands are the devil’s tools” thing was coined with me in mind.

So the idle hands plugged in one of the new albums I bought over the holidays and then I figured why not tempt others away from what they thought they’d accomplish today.

I’m Satan. Plain and simple.

And as we all know, I’m a fan of Country Music.

But there are some interesting new breezes blowing across that landscape. Some of the bands I’m introducing you to today have been around a while. But they’ll probably be new to most of you.

So think of this as “Out with the Old – In with the New” for your 2012 listening habits.

First up, The Avett Brothers, Country Music Television’s “New Artist of 2011”. They’re followed by “Mumford & Sons” and “Old Crow Medicine Show”. I know you’ll like ‘em. I hope you’ll want to hear more of what they do.

The Avett Brothers

Mumford & Sons

Old Crow Medicine Show

Lazy Sunday #201: Starting 2012 With A Bang!

2012-01-01T00:06:00.001-05:00

Yes, what better way to welcome in a new year than with the first fireworks extravaganza of 2012 from Sydney Australia’s inner harbor where it’s already January 2nd…

Toggle full screen and turn up the speakers if you’re able.

And if that’s a little bit dangerous today, knock back some ASA and Gatorade and try to – Enjoy Your Sunday.

Regular blogging at The Legion resumes on Tuesday. Hope you had a great holiday –- and my best wishes for 2012. May it make all your dreams come true.

And what’s more…

Merry Christmas, Everybody!

2011-12-24T21:52:00.001-05:00

It’s been a tough year for a lot of people on a lot of levels. But it’s also been a year when our better natures came to the fore.

There is Peace this night in places that have not known it for years and millions tasting freedom for the first time in their lives.

I don’t know if the good guys are winning, but we’re certainly holding our own. And a season born out of hope for the future feels more hopeful than it has in a while.

I hope this Christmas makes all your wishes and dreams come true and its spirit carries you through the year to come.

Thanks so much for continuing to drop by The Legion. I hope I can continue to give you a reason to do that.

As the duo in tonight’s carol symbolizes, it’s all a matter of setting your sights on perfection while not forgetting where you come from.

Merry Christmas!

In The Spirit Of The Season…

2011-12-22T13:34:00.001-05:00

Every year, there seems to be an escalation of what’s been called “The War On Christmas”. Somehow a season that’s all about peace, goodwill and generosity gets construed by some as being an “offensive” concept to somebody else.

Yet for all the “Holiday Trees” and “Best of the Season” cards, I can’t recall ever meeting anybody of any race, creed or religion who got even a little sideways over me or anybody else celebrating Christmas.

And if you want proof that the entire premise of the anti-Christmas argument is bogus, you need look no further than this note posted in the window of a New York Chinese restaurant, directed to its Jewish clientele…

Merry Christmas! 和平 And Shalom…

The 2011 Legion Christmas Concert

2011-12-21T14:17:00.001-05:00

On Christmas seasons past I’ve waxed poetic about the school concerts I was part of as a kid, posted reader favorites and taken you on a cross country winter tour.

This year, I wanted a Concert with a definite Canadian theme.

Maybe just because that wasn’t reflected in any of the seasonal specials offered by our nation’s broadcasters via Russell Peters, Justin Bieber or even the folks at CBC tasked at keeping the home fires burning.

Kevin O’Leary as “Scrooge”! Srsly? Is that merely a lame joke or just more pointless cross-and-self-promotion?

Thing is, Canadians feel a certain ownership of Christmas. We’ve got the snow and the trees and both official North Poles (geographic and magnetic). Our immigrant population has embedded the Christmas traditions of every single country of the world.

Both the White House and Buckingham Palace officially import our chocolates and candy for the season. We send New York’s Rockefeller Centre its tree. And without ex-pat Canadian writers most Christmas parties would roll away the shrimp tray at sunset in LA.

We began celebrating Christmas 200 years before there was a Charles Dickens to codify the traditions and 300 before Coke rebranded Santa.

In 1643, Jesuit Missionary Jean de Brebeuf penned one of the first Christmas carols and the first written in the language of the Huron/Wendet people he was trying to convert.

The monk was martyred a short time later by the Iriquois, but his carol lived on to be translated into English in 1926. Now sung in many languages in many churches it reflects both Christian and Aboriginal spirituality…

“Twas in the moon of wintertime when all the birds had fled
That mighty Gitchi Manitou sent angel choirs instead;
Before their light the stars grew dim and wondering hunters heard the hymn, Jesus your King is born, Jesus is born, in excelsis gloria”

The best selling Christmas album this season is by Canadian Michael Buble, arranged and produced by fellow Canadian David Foster. Among its tunes is “It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas” by Broadway Composer Meredith Willson.

“There’s a tree in the Grand Hotel and one in the park as well…”

And a lot of people claim Willson wrote those words while vacationing in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia where he stayed at the Grand Hotel which had a tree in the lobby and where his room overlooked another decorated tree in Frost Park across the street.

Further proof of our special connection to Christmas.

And to close, a brand new Christmas song by Sarah McLachlan and the students of her Vancouver Music School. I have a feeling this will be a seasonal tradition by next year.

Christmas in Canada. The Giving never stops.

The Ripple Effect

2011-12-20T17:38:00.001-05:00

Situated amid my social media hubs are two distinct groups of filmmakers.

One makes a living working in the production industry while the second group is either breaking into the business or pinning their career hopes on the future of new media platforms.

Both are intelligent and media savvy, updating regularly on the industry while spinning this news in whichever direction they hope the zeitgeist will respond –- responses that will impact the futures in which they are personally invested.

One such topic arose last week when Comedian Louis CK produced and released his own stand-up special online. At $5/purchase, CK gave buyers multiple downloads and streams of his show and rang up $200,000 in profits virtually overnight.

His venture eliminated all the media middlemen from development executives to distributors, all of whom take a cut of the work of most artists.

What’s more, no one had interfered with, attempted to enhance, censored or appended any other agenda to his artistic vision.

Louis CK had, in this single bold move, end run the gatekeepers and turned a quick dollar – the double Holy Grail for most media artists.

As CK described the process, “I paid for the production and posting of this video with my own money. I would like to be able to post more material to the fans in this way, which makes it cheaper for the buyer and more pleasant for me”.

The initial reaction among the non-mainstream set was that this was a “Game-Changer” finally opening the floodgates of internet media sales for all.

Meanwhile, the established applauded Louis CK’s success while pointing out he was an established artist who had garnered fame (and therefore the ability to exploit it) via mainstream television.

I tend to think they’re both right.

And they’re both wrong.

That’s because while our attention is always drawn to the big splash a rock makes when it lands in a pond, it is the ripples of the impact that change the surrounding environment.

What’s become clear over the last months is that both producers and consumers are realizing what threatens the current way shows are delivered while undermining piracy is price point and accessibility.

We’ve become an “On Demand” culture in which exposure drives audiences to seek content it has missed, can’t afford at the studio/network dictated price or doesn’t have access to because its geo-blocked or just unavailable.

It’s true that Louis CK has a high level of brand awareness because of his previous Stand-up specials, talk show appearances and the FX network series “Louie”. But his public profile is not as pervasive as some might think.

For all his appeal to a hip comedy crowd, “Louie” rarely attracts more than 700,000 weekly viewers and averages about 2/3 that audience in repeats.

Indeed, the show only found a place on FX because CK traded total creative autonomy (no network notes) in exchange for making his series at a MUCH lower budget than their other programming.

CK also told NPR this week that he has never made any money beyond his upfront fees for ANY of his previous specials.

So – Big Time TV Star? No.

And while this success at marketing his exceptional talent may finally earn him a decent pay check, it could mean much more for other comics while spelling trouble to HBO, Showtime and other Pay and Specialty networks who depend on comedy specials to draw an audience.

If Louis CK can sell 100,000 downloads in 4 days, what numbers might Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, Russell Peters or even Russell Brand rack up?

And where do the networks depending on these stars turn if they are no longer available to them while competing online for the same audience?

Does it mean previously under-exposed comedians will now get shows or do networks break the bank to hang onto the big stars and their audiences?

And will audiences continue paying or even pay more to keep the current gatekeepers in business?

Dan Harmon, showrunner of NBC’s “Community” has suggested that he could deliver a 13 episode, uncensored “direct to viewers” version of his show for $50/subscriber.

But does that make sense to an audience who can already access the broadcast version, purchase a 20 episode NBC season for less than that via iTunes or wait for a DVD box-set season marketed for even less?

And what if Louis CK uses his newfound audience database to market his own slate of favorite, unknown or under-appreciated comics? Where do the networks turn then?

New Media advocates would suggest they will turn to them and that Louis CK’s marketing coup will convince investors that their product can be similarly marketed. But can it?

Louis CK’s show was developed over months of concert engagements, honed by an experienced master of Stand-up. The production itself was budgeted at $170,000 and filmed over two nights at New York’s Beacon Theatre, a venue that could draw exactly the right live-audience demographic.

The finished show is as polished as any HBO Special, for CK understood one thing many championing New Media do not.

Audiences know the difference between professional and crap.

And what they will endure for a few minutes of YouTube video or webisode is not what they will reach into their pockets to pay for.

CK then further invested $32,000 in a website that could correctly service the product while spending more to allow credit card and Paypal sales.

Therefore, anybody following the same model needs to come up with almost a quarter of a million dollars just to get into the game. For most of the new wave that’s not anywhere near a number that can be confidently crowd funded.

Yet this and other trends in online marketing may convince risk friendly investors to begin kicking their tires.

Last year, Lee Goldberg, an American author unable to sell any of his 15 novels to a publisher, dumped them all on Amazon’s Kindle site and 12 months later had earned $300,000 after fees and expenses.

Meanwhile, previously published British Psychologist Richard Wiseman discovered he couldn’t find a US publisher for his new book “Paranormality” unless he reversed its central premise that ghosts and psychics were bogus. He went the kindle route as well – and suddenly had a mainstream best seller on his hands.

And then there’s “Lamb”, a barely known electronica duo from England who’d broken up in 2005. No record company would even advance them enough to cover the meagre studio costs of a comeback album. So, they announced they were back and took pre-orders online, tripling all of their past sales before they’d even stepped into a studio.

So the money is there.

Provided you have a product someone wants.

Provided you offer it a price that will both turn consumers from Corporate product and dissuade them from piracy.

And perhaps most important, provided you make it available in a format that does not restrict either your customer’s usage of the product or their ability to share it with their friends.

Ultimately, I don’t think “Louis CK Live At The Beacon” is a game changer. But if you follow where its ripple effect leads, you may begin to see major changes taking place.

And I think that means the New media crowd must start approaching the future much more pragmatically, while those already established need to consider that the system that’s always worked for them may soon begin to crumble.

Here’s an outtake from Louis CK’s Special. You can order your own copy of the full show here. Trust me, it’s well worth your time and money.

“You Gotta Believe. Every Day.”

2011-12-18T16:52:00.001-05:00

I’ve never been a fan of the Denver Broncos. No reason really. The Philadelphia Eagles just got to me first.

But then the Eagles hired a quarterback named Michael Vick and I signed off for reasons I’ve related previously.

Since then I’ve bounced around the League like a CFL wide receiver trying to make the practice squad, spending time rooting for New Orleans, Green Bay, Oakland and Buffalo.

Then along came a guy named Tim Tebow.

Tim was a star at the University of Florida where he won the coveted Heisman trophy in his sophomore year. On graduation, he was drafted by the Broncos. But nobody seriously considered he’d have a noteworthy NFL career.

Without going into details that would put anybody but football-geeks to sleep, Tebow’s skillset is better suited to the wide open game of the CFL than the way the NFL plays.

But he came to national attention after admitting to be a virgin in a televised post-game interview and then agreeing to do a Pro-Life commercial with his mother that ran during the Super Bowl.

Now, Tim had a particular and personal reason for being Pro-Life. His parents were Baptist missionaries in the Philippines when he was conceived and during her pregnancy, his mother experienced complications that threatened her life. The doctors recommended an abortion. She refused.

Between that and his homeschool upbringing, Tebow developed a strong set of Christian values – values that don’t fit the current template for sports heroes and celebrities.

That’s led to a lot of mocking the man and a gang of pundits piling on with expert opinions on his lack of technique and/or football smarts.

Through all of it, Tebow has continued to profess his faith, openly pray on the sidelines and – win football games.

He began the 2011 season as the Broncos’ backup quarterback, moving to start after Denver had lost five of their first six.

Since then, he’s quarterbacked them to a division leading 8-5 record, virtually all of those wins coming after being down by several points in the final quarter.

Yet, somehow, all of that success had made him an even bigger target for those who don’t much care for what people like Tim Tebow stand for.

And it has led to a lot of discussion about whether religion has any place in professional sport and how anyone could believe a Supreme Being has any interest in the outcome of a football game.

All of which completely misses the point.

Now, I’m a Christian, albeit not a very good one. And maybe for those reasons or a lot of others, I don’t hold with some of what Tim Tebow stands for either.

But that doesn’t stop me from admiring what he does.

At its core, football, and just about every other professional endeavor, is about character and believing you can overcome whatever adversities you face.

As Tim Tebow has often said, “If you believe, unbelievable things become possible”.

Whether you believe your fate is in your own hands or those of an invisible friend, the process is the same – you just never stop believing.

That flies in the face of the multitudes who would prefer you fail, for their own selfish reasons or just because unexplained success or achievement that hasn’t been pre-approved only makes their failings and inadequacies appear even larger.

But the rule still holds. You get nowhere without believing completely in something.

The following is Tim Tebow in a hopeless situation last Sunday. He’ll be in an even more impossible today against the New England Patriots and Tom Brady (who’s generally accepted as the embodiment of Satan in places like Buffalo).

Oh, ye of little faith – pay attention! This guy is onto something.

Lazy Sunday #200: The Bloody Olive

2011-12-18T01:02:00.001-05:00

I’m thinking that 2011 was the year that couldn’t decide what it wanted to be.

One of those, “The ‘War on Terror’ 2000s are over with Bin Ladin dead and troops out of Iraq and the 2010s haven’t decided what their theme is yet –- so… we’re just marking time…?”.

Think about it –- Newt Gingrich is running for President and Prince is on tour. Does that make it 1995 all over again?

The most anticipated film of the year is a silent movie. Are the 1920’s about to come roaring back?

Wait. Unemployment is skyrocketing, everybody’s in debt and the banks are collapsing. So it’s like the 1930’s, right?

Time Magazine names “The Protestor” their Person Of The Year. Then it’s the 60’s that are on the horizon?

Man, I hope so. I can still fit into that fringe jacket in the closet and I look bitchin’ in it too!

In searching around for something that symbolized this confusion, I found a wonderful little film by Belgian filmmaker Vincent Bal.

It was filmed in 1996, in B&W and as an homage to film noirs of the 1940’s and 50’s, so it fits our schizophrenic present to a T.

And it takes place at Christmas, so that works too!

Please don’t try to figure it out until the end –- because, trust me, you won’t.

It’s very 2011. But a great way to –- Enjoy Your Sunday!

Saving The Rain (Coast) Deer

2011-12-13T21:26:00.001-05:00

No matter where you live in Canada, there are usually wild critters nearby.

A few years ago, I bought a farm about 40 minutes from downtown Toronto, soon realizing it was also home to rabbits, raccoons, foxes, coyotes, herds of deer and the occasional Lynx or Bobcat.

Bears regularly rooted through the garbage in nearby towns, much like the one discovered yesterday in a Vancouver dumpster usually home to junkies and disowned NHL Goalies.

The bear was quickly tranquillized and transported to the relative safety of the Squamish Valley.

From the reactions of the crowd in the above video, you can tell that many Canadians have a warm spot for the animals that surround us.

Like all those who live in proximity to wildlife, we tend not to anthropomorphize them. But we also seem more aware that they’re sentient creatures as unsure of us as we are of them, but with similar needs and frailties.

Which brings me to a story that occurred a little further up the rainy West coast.

Fisherman Tom Satre, of Sitka, Alaska, was out with a charter group when the four black-tailed deer pictured at the top of this post swam to his boat and began circling it.

Satre realized they were tired and cold and likely had been in the frigid water for some time. He and his charter group immediately hauled them aboard.

The deer collapsed on the deck as Satre turned his boat for shore.

According to Satre, “Once we reached the dock, the first
buck we pulled from the water hopped onto the dock, looked back as if to say 'thank you' and disappeared into the forest.”

With a little help, the others followed, leaving everyone aboard with the impression that animals normally terrified of people had realized people were their only hope for survival when they got into trouble.

It’s an impression more of us should work at fostering.

Trilogy Updates

2011-12-13T14:47:00.001-05:00

PART ONE

In which we attempted to discern the likeliest Summer Blockbuster flop of 2012…

There were a lot of votes for “John Carter” since nobody can quite figure out to whom or on the basis of what Disney is marketing it.

Watching the latest trailer makes you realize how much of this franchise has already been “borrowed” by previous Blockbusters. And using the Led Zeppelin inspired theme for previous flop “Godzilla” doesn’t help.

Others suggested nobody needed a superhero reboot barely 10 years after it was last done. And since Marvel won’t veer much from comic gospel, what audiences have not already seen of “The Amazing Spiderman”, they’ve experienced in video games.

But the consensus pick was “Total Recall”.

Personally, I never got the popularity of the original. And veering closer to Philip K. Dick’s original story, “I Can Remember It For You Wholesale” may sound laudable, but...

Banking on the “which memories are real and which aren’t” might work in the internal world of print but that scenario might be a little inside when you need more than 100 million people to buy tickets just to break even.

Add a director with dreck like “Underworld: Evolution” and “Live Free or Die Hard” on his resume and you begin to sense a disaster of biblical proportions. They don’t even let this guy helm the franchise he INVENTED anymore!

No trailer available for “Total Recall” yet. So I guess we gotta go with this…

PART TWO

This post questioned some of the high end Christmas gifts being advertised this year and wondered if somebody could top the Million Dollar Porsche Advent Calendar or the completely pointless Neiman Marcus 20 sq. ft. edible gingerbread house.

I got lots of other items from the Neiman-Marcus catalogue – my fave being the celebrity designer hosted tequila party for 75.

But other items reflected a mean-spirited and even flat out hatred for Christmas like the Martha Stewart Animated Snake Wreath.

However, when it comes Christmas cruelty, I don’t think you can top this – the puzzle locked toilet paper dispenser.

Srsly people! The season is supposed to be about caring…

PART THREE

Finally, I directed you to two worthy Christmas Charity initiatives backed by members of the Canadian Showbiz community.

In return, I got a couple of official looking reminders that Justin Bieber has a Christmas Special on CTV December 22nd, with all proceeds going to his BELIEVE foundation.

Actor Tom Jackson continues his Christmas tradition of criss-crossing the country performing in support of local food banks and community services. You can find out when he’ll be near you here.

But my favorite link came via the band Canada supposedly loves to hate –- “Nickleback”.

Seems Chilliwack rockers “Pardon My Striptease” recently released a single to help the BC Children’s Hospital, where lead singer Andrew Putt’s one year old daughter Lilee-Jean had undergone lifesaving treatment.

Their song “Pray (For LJ)” had begun selling when the band challenged another local band, “Nickleback”, to match the money it raised.

“Nickleback” accepted the challenge and now “Pray (For LJ)” has passed their own new hit “When We Stand Together” as the top selling Canadian song on iTunes.

So far, Nickleback has donated $50,000 to the BC Children’s Hospital.

Now that’s making a difference! And you can make it a bigger one by purchasing the song for only 99 cents on iTunes.

Lazy Sunday # 199: The Water Commercial

2011-12-11T00:11:00.001-05:00

On one level, I understand the popularity of bottled water. Convenient, portable, available, etc.

But on a lot of levels, I don’t. It’s water. It’s as close to free as you can get at home. You can put it in a bottle yourself and save looking for a store and lining up behind all those people buying lottery tickets.

Where the concept completely loses me is when I’m standing in front of the cooler staring at an array of twenty different brands and bottle shapes.

What’s the difference? It’s water.

That said, if I’m ever in France, I will be looking for one brand in particular.

Why?

Because their commercials always make me smile. Enjoy Your Sunday.

These Things Come In Threes: Part Three

2011-12-10T21:20:00.001-05:00

A few years ago, I asked a showbiz friend of mine what he’d like for Christmas. He said, “How about a couple hours of your time?”.

A week or so later, just before Christmas and on one of the coldest nights of the year, he called and told me he needed those hours and he wasn’t taking a rain check.

I turned up at his place to discover about a dozen other people he hung around with, all of us wondering what the heck was going on.

We soon learned that he and his wife had gone out and bought a few dozen pairs of mitts, toques and blankets which his kids had carefully wrapped around an inner core of dried fruit, candies, toiletries and a booklet of free hamburger meals.

We each got an armful and were instructed to hit the streets until we found people who could make use of the gift.

We froze our asses off, wandering parts of town most people don’t frequent at night until all of our bundles were delivered.

Every single one of us volunteered to help the next year.

We all try to do something for those in need during the Christmas season. But every now and then somebody steps up and does something special. Something you wish you’d thought of. Something you know will make a big difference in the life of somebody you don’t even know.

Sometimes people in this business do things unrelated to it that make you very proud.

If you listen to Diane Wild’s “TV-Eh?” podcasts or visit the website of the same name, you’ll be aware that she has been gathering items from others in the Canadian TV game for an auction to benefit Kids Help Phone, an organization that offers anonymous and confidential phone and online counselling for kids with a problem and nobody to talk to about it.

That auction launches Monday. Please check Diane’s website then and bid on something.

Meanwhile, Lifestyle director extraordinaire, Catherine Swing, is hoping you’ll contribute to Walls of Hope Canada’s new initiative, “The Dream Room”.

Walls of Hope is an organization that renovates and customizes homes for people in need and “The Dream Room” will help children facing a terminal or life challenging illness, providing them a special place of their own within their family home.

I spent a great part of my own childhood in hospital or sick at home and I know from personal experience how much of a difference it makes to have a space that reflects your dreams and aspirations rather than the reality you’re facing.

If you live in the Greater Toronto Area, Walls of Hope is hosting their second annual “Hard Hats & Halos” Gala in March. Tickets would make a great Christmas present to anybody you know – and especially those who love renovation and makeover shows.

If you know somebody in Canadian Showbiz doing something special to help those less fortunate this Holiday season, email, tweet or comment here at the Legion and we’ll pass the information along.

I’ve been looking for third suggestions on today’s posts. But in this case we’ll add all the links submitted to an update that will publish Monday.

These Things Come In Threes: Part Two

2011-12-10T15:36:00.001-05:00

The Rich are different from the rest of us. Always have been.

A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of producing and directing a TV pilot partially shot at Vieux le Vicomte, the magnificent French castle pictured above at Christmas.

The place was overwhelming in its opulence, with expansive gardens, fountains and statuary. More overwhelming when you learned that it had been built for a family of three.

Vieux le Vicomte was the blueprint for the Palace of Versailles that stands just a few clicks down the road, with mansions of similar stature dotting the landscape as you travel between one and the other.

Each of these places required thousands of docile peasants to finance, maintain and service, people who lived lives of poverty and desperation.

Well, nobody says life is fair. But being amid those stately homes sure made it easy to understand how the French Revolution finally came along.

These days, we pride ourselves on being more thoughtful, empathetic and aware.

But we’re not.

With millions losing their jobs and homes or living under crushing austerity measures imposed to protect banks and financial institutions who either manufactured or were too dumb to predict the economic crisis, Porsche has designed a unique gift for those who still have a little cash left to spend on bling.

For only $1 Million, the automaker will supply you with a 6 foot tall aluminum “Advent Calendar” which, unlike the dollar store ones which dispense a single chocolate each day before Christmas, has something else inside its little windows.

Stuff like a Porsche Stopwatch, a full Porsche Kitchen and motor launch with a 525 HP Mercury engine.

Pity the Porsche designers didn’t consider that anybody who’d spring for one of these likely isn’t much of an Advent observing Christian.

Meanwhile, all those Canadian politicians either screaming about or claiming they’d done all they should for the slowly freezing to death and sewage drinking people of Attawapiskat this week will all be bellying up to the sumptuous seasonal cocktail buffets in the days to come, as they enjoy the hospitality of various government departments and foreign embassies.

I’m told the spread laid out by the Freedom of Speech, Votes for Women and Gay rights supporting nation of Saudi Arabia is one no MP misses –- none.

And hey, maybe they’re just hoping to change some minds, maybe convince somebody to spring for a gift for our hungry and homeless.

Maybe they could kill those two birds with one stone and purchase the Neiman Marcus Edible Gingerbread House – only $15,000.

Said house measures over 20 square feet with a six foot ceiling and is constructed of 381 lbs. of gourmet gingerbread and 517 lbs. of royal icing, not to mention giant cookies, lollipops, mints, gumdrops and the like.

No word on whether Gingerbread improves the taste of raw sewage.

I’m not saying people shouldn’t enjoy Christmas or spend their money in the way they want. But sometimes the wilful blindness to the what’s going on in the rest of the world just beggars belief.

Let me know your own “Most Inappropriate Christmas Gift”. Email, Tweet or add a comment. It will be added to an update of this post on Monday.

These Things Come In Threes: Part One

2011-12-10T03:17:00.001-05:00

I’m looking for some feedback on a few topics.

So, I’m posting three different questions today offering two-thirds of a trilogy and letting you fill in the final piece.

Two Summer Blockbuster trailers were released this week and if they are any indication, 2012 could finally be the Summer when Hollywood reverses the tent pole feature concept that started way back in 1973 with “Jaws”.

First trailer up was, “The Three Stooges” by the eminently talented Peter and Bobby Farrelly, who have given us such brilliant comedies as “There’s Something About Mary”, “Dumb and Dumber” and the highly underrated “Kingpin”.

The Farrellys have been working on this project, a personal homage and labor of love, for 15 years, waiting for just the right combination of elements to ensure its success.

At one stage in its development, press leaks indicated the cast included Jim Carey as “Curly” and Sean Penn as “Larry”. That smacked of brilliance to me and I was really looking forward to what promised to be a very special film.

So I was surprised when first Penn and then Carey departed. I wondered if the financing had gotten shaky or somebody at the studio wanted the film to resonate with a younger, maybe edgier comedy audience.

And then I saw the trailer…

Instead of a movie about “The Three Stooges” what the Farrellys have constructed is their own version of the comic shorts they loved as kids.

Nuns in Bikinis? The cast of Jersey Shore? Srsly…?

I’m predicting major tankage.

But I’m not sure “The Three Stooges” will do as badly as “Battleship” which released an updated (and presumably more polished) trailer this week.

If you recall the once last summer concentrated on the films characters and relationships revealing that it actually had neither.

It was also clear that the studio had paid Millions to Hasbro for the rights to a game that had nothing whatsoever to do with the finished film.

Something similar happened with the 1996 Demi Moore movie “Striptease” based on Carl Hiaasen best seller. When Hiaasen saw the rough cut, he offered to give the studio back what they’d paid him so he could sell the book to somebody who might shoot the story he’d actually written.

But maybe Hasbro handed over more than the title to a far from engrossing or dramatic board game. From the looks of things, the film includes a few of the Transformers toys they haven’t yet managed to place in that franchise.

Not to mention the chance to reuse all the CGI wireframes from any number of mayhem riddled films of summers past.

I’m sure there’s also a Liam Neeson action figure in the works to enhance the marketing.

Judge for yourself.

So – if these things come in threes – as disasters often seem to – let me know what you think the third big budget stinker of Summer 2012 will be. Email, tweet or register a comment. I’ll post the consensus choice in a Monday update.

Just when you thought it was finally safe to get out of the water and go see a movie…

How Does That Go Again…?

2011-12-09T15:00:00.001-05:00

‘Tis the season when people gather for Christmas parties, office holiday get-togethers and roam the malls dressed in Charles Dickens hand-me-downs, all singing the traditional songs of the season.

And there’s not much worse than launching into one of your favorites and realizing you’re belting out Mariah Carey’s version while everybody else knows the real words.

Therefore, please click the link below to find your own downloadable and printable (PDF format) song book of Christmas classics.

No more “Jeff’s nuts roasting on an open fire” or “Get dressed you married gentlemen”. Now you’ll be doing the lines as written.

And isn’t that what a lot of screenwriters wish for at Christmas?

h/t The Sagacious Iconoclast

Not So Little Drummer Boy

2011-12-08T23:45:00.001-05:00

Winnipeg and Manitoba have a long and storied history of spawning some of Canada’s greatest musicians.

From Chad Allen & The Expressions (aka “The Guess Who”) to the legendary Lenny Breau, through “Bachman Turner Overdrive” and “Red Rider” to the “Crash Test Dummies”, Chantal Kreviazuk and Susan Aglukark – it’s been one mid-country hit after another.

Am I the only guy who still remembers “Gettysbyrg Address”?

Well, the music hasn’t stopped.

Get into the Christmas spirit with Winnipeg’s new “Golden Boy” Sean Quigley, a high school kid with a monster Christmas hit on his hands – hands which are somewhat magical when it comes to drumming.

Bing and Ziggy never sounded this good…

You can download a copy of Sean’s updated Christmas carol here.

The Return

2011-12-07T14:31:00.001-05:00

Honolulu -- December 7, 1941. 2,403 Americans were killed during the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, including 58 aboard the USS Utah.

Honolulu – December 7, 2011. 70 years later, a sailor holds an urn with the ashes of Pearl Harbor survivor Lee Soucy.

Soucy, who died last year at the age of 90, wanted his ashes interred with his lost shipmates inside the USS Utah.

Who Says You Can’t Ski In The City?

2011-12-06T23:28:00.001-05:00

There are people who live to ski. And this time of year can be rough on a lot of them.

Winter’s here. But it’s not. There’s snow. In some places. Fresh powder way up in the mountains. Grey slush in the city where you are.

What’s a guy to do?

Ski the city…?

You can’t ski a city.

Can you…?

Last year, Canadian ski movie filmmaker Dave Mossop (Green Cap) and buddies JP Auclair (visor), Rory Bushfield and Andrew Hardingham decided to see if that concept would fly.

Using the streets of Nelson, Trail and Rossland, BC, they put together one of the most spectacular ski sequences you’ll ever see.

Has the age of “urban skiing” arrived?

You tell me.

JP Auclair Street Segment (from All.I.Can.) from Sherpas Cinema on Vimeo.

Lazy Sunday # 198: Tuba Christmas

2011-12-04T03:19:00.001-05:00

There are basically three kinds of Christmas traditions.

There are those everybody is familiar with, Midnight Mass, Santa Claus, the tree and the gifts, turkey and stuffing.

There are those that evolve within families, recreating the moments everybody treasures from Christmases past.

And then there’s the third kind. The kind that don’t make a lot of sense – but still keep coming back year after year.

William Bell was born on Christmas Day, 1902 and went on to become the premier player and teacher of the tuba for most of the twentieth century.

He began his career with John Philip Sousa and went on to play with the New York Philharmonic and help found the NBC Symphony orchestra.

Among Bell’s protégés was Alec Wilder, a mostly self-taught composer who wrote eleven operas and composed Jazz pieces for odd combinations of instruments.

Wilder also loved Christmas and published the first arrangements of Christmas carols for – of all things – the tuba. In an odd twist, he died on Christmas Eve.

Among Wilder’s protégés was Harvey Philips, who thought it would be a great idea to have as many tuba players as he could find play Wilder’s arrangements to honor Bell on his birthday.

The first Tuba Christmas was held on the ice rink in New York’s Rockefeller Center in 1974. More than 300 players gathered to play various instruments of the tuba family, including sousaphones and the euphonium. One or two brought along the rarest members, the helicon and the serpent.

The concert was a smash hit and has been repeated every year since. It also spawned Tuba Christmas concerts in thousands of cities all around the world.

In every case, the organizers try to find as many players as they can ranging in age from school kids no bigger than their instrument to octogenarians who have played it all their lives. The sizes of the orchestras range from the official minimum of 4 to several hundred.

A lot of people don’t find the sound of the tuba all that pleasant. But I’m here to tell you that in a bunch they are something to behold.

It’s likely there’s a Tuba Christmas concert happening near you this Holiday Season. I have a feeling that if you attend once, Tuba Christmas will become one of your own seasonal traditions.

Someday, it might just become one of those that everybody associates with Christmas.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

Tuba Christmas from Christopher Polydoroff on Vimeo.

The Christmas Parking Trick

2011-12-03T21:14:00.001-05:00

All you people running a top-notch Canadian productivity website need to pick up this post, because I just discovered a way to save about two hours on every Christmas shopping trip.

You know what it’s like out there this time of year. The stores and malls are jammed and the parking lots and parkades are even worse.

A guy can drive around for an eternity trying to find an empty space. In the process, you deal with people who won’t let you into traffic, block your path as they wait for a spot to open up in some special territory they’ve staked out – or worse – whip into the space you’re signalling to enter and then claiming they didn’t see you.

By the time you finally park, the stores are about to close and you’ve lost whatever Christmas spirit you might have had.

This afternoon, I headed out to start my Christmas shopping, fully prepared to spend about half the time I’d allotted to making circuits of the parking lot.

My first stop was a parkade, one already so jammed the machine wouldn’t let you take a ticket until the traffic arm at the pay booth raised to let somebody else exit.

When I got in, I joined the long line of cars making the trek to the roof, not finding any spaces along the way, slowing to trail anybody carrying packages and generally eating up the day.

Turned out the roof was full. So we all played follow-the-leader back down, hoping to find an open space before the guys coming the other way.

And then I saw him.

He was an older man, obviously confused, clicking his key flob around the top floor. He was trying to find his car.

I rolled down my window and confirmed he couldn’t remember exactly where he’d parked.

“Get in!” I said, “We’ll find it together.”

He seemed relieved, happy for the help. I admitted that my motives were not pure. When we found his car, I got the spot.

Five minutes later we found it. And two minutes after that I was in the elevator while everybody else kept circling.

By the time I hit the mall, I’d perfected my technique. I just drove up to the entrance and waited for somebody loaded down with shopping.

“Hey!” I called. “Need a ride to your car?”. The guy I’d targeted appeared caught off guard by the offer. But the woman behind him was no slouch.

“Are you serious?”. I assured her I was. Five minutes later, she was on her way and I was parked and heading for the store.

Now, I realize this could quickly become a viable MO for rapists and muggers, but I’m counting on the spirit of the season to trump all that.

Both the people I helped (and who helped me) remarked that a stranger lending a hand made them feel like Christmas was just around the corner.

I could say the same thing. Now if I could just find somebody dying to string lights…

The Test

2011-12-02T23:23:00.001-05:00

It was a busy day in Heaven with a long line waiting outside the pearly gates.

Toward the back, a man waited nervously, watching St. Peter as he spoke privately with each new arrival, gesturing some through the gates and some the other way.

The man wondered what he’d be asked, certain he’d lived a good life, but now in this final moment worried that he’d done something that might bar him from paradise for eternity.

No. His life had not just been good. It had been exemplary.

He’d never said a bad word about anyone. He’d obeyed all the rules. Whenever he’d come across trouble or strife he’d turned the other cheek, walked away, kept his own council and never once caused anyone a problem.

And he sensed St. Peter already knew all that when it was his turn at the front of the line. The elderly gatekeeper regarded him with warmth and a tangible feeling of love, saying nothing.

The man returned the saint’s smile. “I’m not sure what to say.” he said, “I’m pretty sure I did everything the good book says I should. I followed all the rules.”

“Well, there are a lot of good books.” St. Peter said, “And a lot of rules made by a lot of people with good intentions. Up here, there’s just one question. One test.”

“What’s that?” asked the man.

“Let me see your scars.”

The man was suddenly filled with excitement, certain he’d soon be in paradise. “I don’t have any scars!” he said, “Not a single one.”

St. Peter’s eyes darkened, now full of sadness, as he stared at the man with immense disappointment.

“Really? Could you not find one thing worth fighting for?”.

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

2011-12-01T23:50:00.001-05:00

Given all that’s going on in the world, you can be forgiven for missing things.

Given how many causes are crying out for your attention, you should feel no guilt over the ones that skipped past without your noticing.

But sadly, much of what fills us with anger, sadness or regret, goes on because those we elect or otherwise charge with addressing them, don’t do the job we thought they were doing.

Millions lose their homes, their jobs and their life savings because those overseeing the integrity of the financial markets didn’t.

Aboriginal Canadians suffer third world living conditions because generations of politicians have opted for expediency over simple decency.

And so it goes, through all aspects of human endeavor, when “doing the right thing” is set aside for not doing anything or hoping nobody notices the wrong that was done instead.

One week ago, US President Obama pardoned a couple of turkeys in a traditional Thanksgiving show of compassion before the annual national decimation of the species.

It’s a cute ceremony, enjoyed by all, that reminds us that we may be carnivores, but we’ve still got some compassion for our fellow creatures.

What slipped under the radar is that just prior to the quaint White House ceremony, the President signed a bill lifting a six year ban on the slaughter of horses, a ban he himself had pledged to make permanent.

Why? Probably for the same reason the practice goes on in Canada. Farmers and ranchers are strapped, caught in the economic squeeze and have no choice but to sell once valuable thoroughbreds,rodeo stock or pets to the slaughterhouse.

The alternative is even less palatable. Every year, thousands of horses are released into the wild where they starve or are torn apart by predators.

Both Canada and the US are nations with a long history of dependence on the horse. The animals have just as long been symbols of our heritage, our sense of compassion and even our love of freedom.

Most are now brought into the world to entertain us. They race. They rodeo. They’re ridden for recreation. And they deserve a better fate.

There are charities that rehabilitate thoroughbreds at the end of their racing careers, such as The Exceller Fund, named for a stallion who beat two triple crown winners during his storied career – and then was butchered when he couldn’t run anymore.

There are also dozens of charities working tirelessly to find homes for horses whose owners can no longer care for them.

But, as in so many other parts of our society, more could be done.

But it seems that if it’s something that can slide under the radar or make somebody in charge a larger dollar, doing the right thing, the decent thing, gets ignored.

Leading the fight to have the President repeal the recent pro-slaughter bill and replace it with the one banning the practice are a couple of young ladies known as “The Barbi Twins”.

Shane and Sia Barbi made their names as Playboy centerfolds. But in real life, they’re horse trainers who have long advocated for both the rights of animals and an end to turning horses into commercial meat.

They’ve already released an award winning documentary entitled “Saving America’s Horses” and are behind a petition demanding the new law be repealed.

Given that 70% of the American public is opposed to the slaughter of horses and it’s an election year, I’d say doing the right thing might stand a chance this time.

But as in everything else, the guys in charge only move when they’re pushed.

Please take a moment to advocate for creatures who can’t speak for themselves. Nobody will thank you. But then, that’s not what it’s supposed to be about – is it?

The Elephant In The Room

2011-11-29T14:53:00.001-05:00

We just lost a great one far too soon…

Lazy Sunday # 197: Over Time

2011-11-27T03:03:00.001-05:00

There's a lot being made this week about the Muppets being back onscreen after a twelve year absence -- "...and they haven't aged one bit!".

What's not much mentioned is that their creator, Jim Henson, died in the Spring of 1990 and his puppeteer partner Frank Oz, the genius behind Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear, refused to have anything to do with the new film because he didn't like the way the Muppet characters were portrayed.

I don't know what that says about the film one way or another. And it's far from the first time that characters have outlived their creators or been rebooted for a new generation or a new round of sequels.

But there's something about the relationship between puppets and a puppeteer that's -- different.

If you've ever watched puppeteers rehearsing, there's a great deal of intimate interplay between the artist and the inanimate object being brought to life. It's almost like watching people with their kids.

There are tales aplenty about ventriloquists who treat their dummies like real people. And who among us has not interacted with a puppet as if it were a completely separate entity from the guy with his hand up its butt?

Somewhere, there's an element in our humanity that simply accepts that our teddy bears, dolls and other beloved toys have some kind of life of their own.

Which means that "they" must be aware that the person who brought them to life is no longer around.

Here's a beautiful French film that uses that premise. It's one of the most moving shorts I've found in a while.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Overtime from ouryatlan on Vimeo.

Drawing On Your Creativity

2011-11-26T11:19:00.001-05:00

It’s raining where I am today. In fact it’s raining really hard.

So hard the dog took one look at all the wet, turned around on the porch and backed up just enough to tinkle without getting more than her butt soaked.

Then she shuffled back inside, content to sit out the rest of the day – but not be happy about it.

When I was a kid and pissed off because it was raining too hard to go outside, my mom would plop my ass down at the kitchen table with a big newsprint drawing pad and instructions to “amuse” myself.

So I did. And, in the process, discovered how much I could amuse both myself and others.

Sometimes I think that’s all creativity really is, finding a way to make yourself and others happy in the face of realities attempting to prevent you from doing that.

Can’t get a network to listen to your pitch? Can’t find financing? Can’t get anyone to help you realize your vision?

There’s always a way. Perhaps one that doesn’t depend on attracting star talent, having money or even much skill.

You just have to be a little more creative.

Creative in the face of rejection by all the powers that be.

Creativity that will get you through, no matter how long the rejection and the rain go on. Because sometimes, the longer you’re rejected and the longer it rains, the more creative you become.

Being On the Right Side Of History

2011-11-25T20:27:00.001-05:00

2011 has been rough on a lot of people. Some more than others…

Be thankful for what you have.

Got Anything Planned For Tonight?

2011-11-23T13:40:00.001-05:00

Say around 10:00 pm Eastern or 7:00 Pacific – 02:00 for those on Greenwich Mean Time…

Uh, lemme see. Wednesday. Let’s check the book…

Cops knocked down the Occupy tent, so I don’t have to do that anymore…

There’s the News or “Coronation Street” on the CBC – neither of which will have much Canadian content…

Everybody else has celebrity gossip or reality shows. Again, not much that’s recognizably Canadian…

Whoa, are there ever a lot of reality shows on Wednesdays…

No hockey games…

Okay, might I suggest you flip open the laptop, surf here and listen to the LIVE “Dyscultured” podcast.

60 minutes of 100% Canadian cultural news and opinion delivered as entertainingly as possible.

I’ve posted my affection for “Dyscultured” before and I continue to be a die-hard fan.

Name me one other forum for cultural discussion that broadcasts live while offering listeners the opportunity to join in the discussion via a chatroom every step of the way.

What’s more, you can go on Twitter, hashtag tonight’s episode #dys161 and get a sense of what they’ll be discussing. You can also toss in your own suggestions. Chances are good it will get picked up.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – “Dyscultured” is essential for anyone in Canadian show business trying to find their way through all the tech, politics and fragmented media landscapes we deal with daily.

These guys may be as lost as we are. In fact, you can count on it. But they’re having fun and firing off flares that help to light the way.

Here’s a taste of last week’s podcast…

If you can’t enjoy “Dyscultured” live, archived episodes are available for free at the show website and iTunes.

And The Change From A Dollar On 95 Cents Is...?

2011-11-22T14:21:00.001-05:00

It's fashionable, especially in Canada, to voice your disdain for “Nickleback”.

Much of this comes from the knowledge that we have given the world far more worthy musical icons like Celine Dion, Justin Beiber and Raffi.

And although as we would like everyone beyond our borders to think we only listen to “The Tragically Hip”, “Arcade Fire” or Leonard Cohen and all own an original vinyl of “After The Gold Rush” protectively wrapped in a room temperature beaver pelt -- we know that's not true, don't we?

Pour a few fingers of Crown Royal down any Canadian and you'll discover that we all know the lyrics to "Burn It To The Ground" -- and can sing them even louder after each subsequent shot.

Not long ago, the venerable British publication, The New Music Express, (who once predicted “Darkness” would surpass the popularity of “The Beatles”) voted “Nickleback” the worst band in the world.

Yet another reason we need to rethink the Monarchy thing if you ask me…

Hard on the heels of this, an online petition in Detroit demanded that the Detroit Lions football team rescind their invitation to the band to perform at halftime of their Thanksgiving Day game, the complainants insisting that the booking was a slap in the face to Detroit's musical legacy.

I'm sure the Lions were shaken by this. After all, it was an online petition.

But I'm also sure they had already checked to see if the surviving members of "The Temptations" could get out of their retirement home for the day and that there was a construction crane available to haul Aretha Franklin to the 50 yard line.

If there's a couple of things I've learned about the music business and the media over the years it's that the critics and the Rock intelligentsia mostly love bands who will never make it and the mainstream media only loves those who are mostly over the hill.

How else do you explain year end Top Ten lists including nine bands you'll never hear from again and shows like CBC's "Cover Me"?

This week, “Nickleback” took time out from the tour schedule that earned them over $100 Million last year alone as well as promoting their already multi-platinum just-released album to respond to Detroit with a cute video over at "Funny or Die".

Of much more importance, they'll be back home in Vancouver on Sunday to perform the halftime duties at "The Grey Cup Game" -- where fully 1/4 of the country will be tuned in and, dare I admit it, singing along.

Here's a snippet if you need to practice.

Lazy Sunday #196: The Lame Street Media

2011-11-20T15:48:00.001-05:00

Often, while watching television, I get the feeling broadcasters think I'm stupid. A guy without any critical faculties, connection to the real world or ability at rational thought. And that's not just when they program a Sunday long "According to Jim" marathon.

Mostly it happens when I'm watching the news.

And maybe broadcasters don't think I'm any of those things. Maybe I'm just overly sensitive or overly suspicious -- or both.

In a lot of ways I can't help that. In my first career as an actor, I was taught that the skills to hone involved observation and interpretation. Watch and listen. Notice the way someone walks or their emphasis in a turn of phrase and work backward to what created that gait or motivated the choice of those particular words.

That process is enhanced in writing as well as producing. A television writer, in particular, needs to know the ways of quickly establishing character, making a point and efficiently moving the story. A producer eliminates the unnecessary and focuses the essential to better serve his budget, schedule and most of all the target audience.

So forgive me for coming to the conclusion that a lot of what I see on TV News these days makes me wonder if anybody is giving me the facts instead of what they want me to believe is true.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Living in the rose colored world of showbiz has kept me incredibly naive. But I can't help that either.

Last Friday on his SUN-TV program "The Source", host Ezra Levant broadcast a segment in which he snuck onto the "Occupy Toronto" site at 4:00 a.m. with infrared cameras, revealing that "99% of the tents were unoccupied". To further make his point, Levant managed to inspect a couple of those tents before being set upon by either Occupy security or thugs depending on your point of view.

Finding the story full of that "All The President's Men" Chutzpah that Hollywood has taught me to imbue in journalists, I shared it with a few friends. One in England got back to me with the news that Ezra's "exposé" was not original and perhaps not even accurate.

He supplied me with a link to a British newspaper, wherein I learned that several UK tabloids had conducted an identical experiment in September with the same results. Only those results were now being dismissed by experts in infrared imaging who stated that insulated tents or sleeping bags would erase the heat signature of an occupant, making you believe the tent was empty when it was not.

Now keep in mind that the newspapers who conducted the experiment tend to advocate for the Right and those who dismissed it lean in the other direction.

Still unaware of who was giving me the unvarnished truth, I decided to go directly to "The Source", asking Levant if he'd been aware of the British study going in and wondering if this was one of those "poke the bear" moments he gets up to every now and then. Levant's response was quick, courteous and -- evasive.

To wit, "Hey Jim. Did the UK newspaper also refute what I saw when I opened up the tents and looked inside?"

Well. Er. No. But the SUN-TV story seems to indicate that Levant only inspected a couple of tents before he was accosted. Enough to determine that 99% were empty?

I'm still not certain if I'm getting the real story or I'm being played. But that's not all Ezra Levant's fault. I was feeling quite uncomfortable with news coverage in this country long before Friday night.

The photograph at the top of this post appeared last week on the CBC News website and later the same day on that of the Toronto Globe and Mail. It depicts a demonstration by farmers unhappy with the Canadian Government decision to eliminate a law requiring all sales of Canadian wheat to go through the Canadian Wheat Board.

Unlike other marketing groups like those that control the sale of poultry or milk, the CWB is not run by the farmers who produce the marketed commodity. It's an arm of the government.

Last summer, an uncle in Saskatchewan in his 80s who still farms told me how he's allowed to sell canola, soybeans, lentils, almost anything he grows to anybody he wants. But if his wheat doesn't go through the wheat board he can be sent to jail. He recalled a tough winter when ranchers across the border in Montana were begging for grain to save their cattle. Any farmers who tried to help had their trucks seized and were fined tens of thousands of dollars. Some even went to prison.

That's what the government is trying to address. But over at the CBC News Network you see endless debates in which we hear that the vast majority of farmers are outraged and the Feds are once again trying to destroy "Canada as we know it!".

Okay. Maybe they are. But here's a photograph of that same demonstration that didn't get distributed by either the CBC or the Globe and Mail.

Does that look like a "vast majority" of any kind to you?

Does it make you wonder why the CBC and their constant defenders at the G&M chose not to let you see the entire picture?

But not supplying the entire picture or the whole story seems to be the realm in which CBC News operates these days.

A couple of weeks ago, I awoke to learn from CBC that this was the day the Harper Government would choose which two of our three major shipyards would be granted huge government shipbuilding contracts. It was a decision the network predicted would set off a "political firestorm" as diverse regions of the country were pitted against one another.

All day long, pundits insisted Harper had better not exclude his political base in the West, must not ignore the economic woes of the East coast and could not slap Quebec down for mostly voting for opposition parties. He was in a no-win situation that could spell the beginning of the end for his government.

In the end, two yards were chosen and there was no firestorm. Not even a brushfire.

But not until after the decision did CBC report that the shipyard left out was-- uh -- er -- in bankruptcy protection and had acknowledged it might not have been able to fulfill the contract if they'd gotten it.

Kind of an important point to ignore, don't cha think?

Unless you're maybe looking for ways to slag the guys who might be about to reduce your budget.

But CBC News has too much class to do something like that, don't they?

I mean, they keep running a commercial where one of their hosts states every politician they've encountered calls them "Tough but Fair". Y'know like Fox News assures you, with complete sincerity, that they are "Fair and Balanced".

Can I be forgiven for thinking that news organizations only want me seeing the part of the story that fits their own world view? And since the Web provides any number of places will give me a different angle on any story, does that mean I am the one being naive -- or is it they?

Thursday the host of CBC News Network's "Connect", Mark Kelley, did his show from New York to cover the "Shut Down Wall Street" demonstration by the Occupy Movement. For weeks, Kelley and others had been wondering if this was North America's version of "The Arab Spring". And since I'd watched him broadcast live from Tahrir Square in Cairo, I figured who better to compare the two.

As we know, the demonstration didn't halt a single financial transaction, unless you were maybe a stranded commuter trying to find an ATM.

But Kelley's show concentrated not on its failure but its icons, like a Marine famous for chastising cops in a viral video and an 84 year old activist who'd been pepper sprayed, as it reiterated how influential the movement had become.

There was, however, no mention of its dark side or what that part of the movement might mean.

No interviews with the dozens of women who'd been sexually assaulted in the encampments.

Nothing about the murders or deaths from drug overdoses among occupiers.

No mention of the participant in LA arrested for masturbating in front of a group of children.

Nary a word on the participants in Oakland who had pelted street vendors in Oakland with urine for not giving them free food.

No discussion at all about the moment of solidarity held in Washington for the Occupy participant arrested attempting to assassinate Barack Obama.

Nope. In the world of CBC News, "Occupy Wall Street" was intelligent people power, where if the downtrodden and broken 99% could be given voice, they would almost certainly agree with blowing away the President of the United States.

Thursday night, "The Daily Show" gave us a glimpse of the Occupy Movement that struck me as being somewhat more honest. (Click for full screen to work around any visible format error in your browser).

Have we really reached a point where we can only find unbiased insight into the news from a comedy show?

Maybe it's time to turn off all of these guys until they promise to give us the whole story.

As for me, I'm sticking to sportscasts for a while, where you know it's all bullshit and stuff that doesn't really matter anyway. But at least it's entertaining.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

Lazy Sunday # 195: The Future of Television

2011-11-13T04:06:00.001-05:00

There's an old screenwriter's trick, when you're bereft of ideas, to open a newspaper and link 2 or 3 random articles to devise a story premise.

I'm told some hedge fund managers similarly link a handful of current events to concoct the argument that their clients should buy or sell a certain stock.

This week a few unrelated events caught my own attention which, when combined, might just reveal the future of television.

The first actually began about three months ago, when a crew of university students rented the house across the street.

Like a lot of students, they're either too broke or too disinterested to buy curtains. Unfortunately for me, there are no side benefits in that since they're all guys. On the other hand, being guys, the first piece of furniture they moved in was a massive HD television they hung on the wall facing the front window.

So every night when I walk the dog, it's not hard to notice what they're watching. But what I've come to realize is -- I've never seen them watching a TV show.

The set gets used for a lot of video games, facebook updates and twitter messages. One night I thought they were watching a movie, when the screen suddenly went black and returned them to the familiar "Recently Added" Netflix screen, where they clicked another selection.

Now, I'm not sure how pervasive their habits might be, but it shed some light on a business article I read last week about how there are something like 3 HD television sets in Canada for every HD cable box that can actually supply them with the proper signal.

This was spun as a huge revenue opportunity for cable providers as they sold boxes to all those people who hadn't realized they needed one to fully enjoy their new flat screen.

Except…

I think what's happening out in the real world is exactly the opposite.

First, I'd wager that more and more people are mostly using their smart TVs to watch DVDs, play games and stream online content.

What's more, about 3 years ago, I bought a HD antenna that allowed me to get several local channels in better quality than my cable provider without having to pay a monthly fee for the privilege. At the time, the dealer told me about 1000 people a month in Canada were making the same decision I had.

While that number may have leveled off, I would seriously doubt it's in decline.

I think the reality is that more and more of us have become our own content programmers, having had enough of the multi-channel universe of programming that just seems to repeat shows we've already seen from one specialty channel or tier to another.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, news came out that the once mighty and unchallenged "Number One" American television network, NBC, the home of "Appointment TV", has lost 18% of its audience this year and is regularly eclipsed by the Spanish language Univision network.

Like the cable box article, this news was spun as "an opportunity" since a single hit might -- I repeat "might" -- get their numbers up. At least for one night of the week.

But what if the night that potential new hit was to debut was Tuesday, when last Tuesday 6.5 Million Americans and Canadians stood in line to purchase the new version of "Call of Duty"?

Don't you think there's a good chance that Tuesday night there were upwards of 6.5 Million North Americans not in the least interesting in watching whatever NBC or anybody else put on TV because they were trying out their new game?

"Call of Duty" earned $400 Million worldwide on Tuesday. And between now and Christmas there are a half dozen similarly popular gaming titles issuing new versions and anticipating equally rabid fans -- and rich paydays.

Maybe Gamers don't watch that much regular television to begin with. But you get the feeling their ranks are growing much faster than those who are just happy to plop down on the couch and let whatever is being served wash over them.

Final observation…

Wednesday night, I was watching a hockey game while surfing my Twitter feed and on the latter heard about the riot at Penn State University. I jumped over to CNN, only to find Piers Morgan interviewing somebody nearing the end of their personal 15 minutes of fame.

I dropped down a channel to Headline News to see if they had coverage, finding Dr. Drew kibitzing with somebody just beginning their celebrity 15. Over to CBC who were running a documentary repeat. Way down the dial to SUN TV where somebody in a bad suit was really annoyed about -- something.

Thirty seconds later, I found the live coverage I wanted -- on my laptop.

In this era of 24 hour news cycles, the guys who seem least aware of that fact are those broadcasting the news.

They remain locked into the decades old model of news at noon, six and eleven -- or ten at CBC -- or nine if you want to see the exact same version of "The National" on the CBC News Network.

I came to the conclusion that all of this is happening because, while you and I are embracing all the new technologies on offer, our television networks and cable companies are locked into business models that support their own internal needs but fail to service the audience.

This week, the usual suspects will troop up to Gatineau for CRTC hearings on OTT (Over the Top) services. Nothing will likely evolve from these meetings beyond arguments for regulation to shore up or sustain the collapsing business models that we have. There will then be another round of hearings in May.

And in the meantime, more and more people will either discover the new entertainment options they have or discover how easy it is to devise workarounds to watch what they desire.

More of us will become our own program directors and program schedulers. And we'll have less and less interest in a system that says you need four separate sports channels to watch your home team, or you need your news filtered and interpreted before its presented for your consumption.

More of us will find that "Call of Duty" is more engaging than "Republic of Doyle" or yet another singing competition.

In short, more of us will realize we can make our own choices.

And those people won't be interested in handing that freedom back to somebody else.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

The Evil That Walks By Night

2011-11-09T02:10:00.001-05:00

I did a few hours of Community Service last week. Not the court imposed kind. My life's not that exciting. This was the type where somebody phones you up and you kinda feel obligated to assist.

In the middle of carving the pumpkin on Halloween I got a call from my local church. They have one of the oldest graveyards in the country and last Halloween somebody pretty seriously vandalized it.

This year they called the cops in advance to see if somebody could keep an eye on the place and were told that the night was one of the local constabulary's busiest, so we were on our own. The only option was finding a few brave souls who wouldn't mind spending the night among the tombstones.

Now that's the sort of invitation you can't turn down.

So, as Midnight drew close, I packed the sheepdog in the car and headed over. Along the way, I passed the elementary school. They had cars backed against all the entrances and a foursome with flashlights patrolling the perimeter. Apparently, the police didn't have the staff to look after them either.

I later learned that the year previous, schools and churches in my small corner of the world had sustained tens of thousands of dollars of damage on Halloween. I don't know why those two institutional groups were singled out. For that matter, I don't see what's achieved by tagging the walls of a gym or busting up 200 year old headstones under any circumstances.

But then I also don't understand how people who set out to challenge crooked financial practices end up throwing bottles of urine at street vendors or maintenance workers and still think they're somehow "stickin' it to the man".

The church's Priest and the guy I call the Pre-Priest (he doesn't get ordained for a couple of weeks) were on duty when I arrived. They'd already put in a long night, after putting in a long day doing all the things Priests do. Which in this day and age, when most of those with a degree in theology also hold one in psychology or sociology, is a lot.

The deal was, we'd mostly hang in the church and about every 20 minutes, a couple of us would make a sweep of the graveyard. What we'd do if we actually found anybody up to something, we didn't discuss. Hopefully, anybody casing the place would see the flashlight beams and go elsewhere. And more hopefully, if they didn't, the sight of a dumpy guy holding back a sleepy sheepdog would surely be enough to make them scamper.

The graveyard was suitably spooky in the pitch darkness. Now and then, our flashlight beams would catch a rabbit or a deer foraging between the graves. But after the first few, even they didn't make the dog anxious to make another circuit. She was quite happy to curl up between the pews and snooze.

It looked like we were in for an uneventful evening. We checked our watches. The bars were long closed. We hadn't heard a car go by in at least an hour. Maybe we could call an end to the vigil.

Then the dog suddenly lifted from her spot between the pews, her head cocked. I listened too. Nothing. Then…

The chained rear doors of the church shook, yanked hard from the outside.

We weren't alone.

We grabbed our flashlights and bolted for the nearest door, running around to the back of the building. By the time we got there, who or whatever had shaken the doors was gone. The night was perfectly quiet. The dog sat down and yawned. The Pre-Priest and I shared a look. Maybe we'd imagined it.

Then I played my light across the steps of the rear door. The imprints of a pair of heavy work boots were clearly visible in the dew.

The next day, I wondered who our visitor might have been. What would he have done if the doors hadn't been chained or we weren't there? What kind of a person takes satisfaction in pointless and wanton destruction?

I was interrupted by a call from another friend asking if I could help out with the annual Legion Poppy drive. The Canadian Legion, not the faux outfit I run around here.

Like most Canadian Legion Posts, the vets are getting on and standing around a shopping mall for an afternoon isn't as easy as it once was. So I said, "Sure", put on a suit and headed out.

99% of the people you meet when you're holding a tray of Poppies and a donation box greet you with a smile. They know what that little paper flower symbolizes and that the money goes for a good cause. They even exude a certain pride when they pin it on. It's one of those things that says, "I'm thoughtful. I care. I appreciate the sacrifice".

But after about an hour of smiles, this guy strode up looking a little belligerent. "I'm not buying a Poppy! You know why?" I shook my head. "Because I don't believe in war!"

"Neither do we," I said.

Big mistake.

He glared at me. "Bullshit! You're selling those for the military."

I glanced down at the floor, wondering what was the best way to handle this and noticed...

He was wearing big, heavy work boots.

I looked back at him. The possibility that this was the same guy was beyond remote. But what if it was…?

"First of all, we're not selling anything," I said. "People donate what they want. Hell, we even give them away free if somebody asks."

I held out a Poppy. He slapped my hand away.

I met his eyes. "All the money goes to veterans and their families. Every penny."

The muscles around his jaw tightened. By now I'd decided this was the kind of asshole who trashes church yards. And I almost hoped he'd try something. Even though there was no trusty sheepdog nearby with its dopey tongue hanging out or an almost Priest to provide me with absolution if I went into "Defender of the Faith" mode.

A guy bigger than both of us interrupted. "Why don't you piss off!" he said to the guy with the boots as he dropped some change in my box and fished a poppy from the tray. Boot boy looked up at him and slunk away. The big guy smiled and I realized he was wearing a uniform.

He pinned the poppy next to one he already had on his chest. "Good to have a spare." And he was gone.

There was a point back in the 1930's when Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party and Mussolini's Fascists were indistinguishable from street thugs. Saddam Hussein, Gadaffi, the serial rapists of The Lord's Army, the Sudanese Pirates and any number of tribal warlords were and are, when you come right down to it, no different from petty criminals.

There is an evil that walks by night, stalking a nurse just off the night shift, stomping a gay guy, snapping the crucifix from a headstone.

Unchecked and unchallenged, it becomes bolder, enjoying the ability to strike fear or cause pain or create suffering. Sometimes it finds like-minded companions and begins to feel safe in the daylight and to contemplate even larger evils.

When that happens, there have always been those willing to force the evil back into the night. Some of those brave men and women don't come home, leaving families in need of help. Some return from the battles with scars it takes time to heal.

That's where the money raised by Poppies goes. And wearing one designates you as one who understands that sometimes sacrifice is required and you respect those who chose to pay the price.

But it also marks you as one who knows that there is evil in the world and that you stand against it.

Greenlight “Cover Me Finland” Immediately!

2011-11-07T12:26:00.001-05:00

Somehow I missed the first 6 or 7 episodes of “Cover Me Canada”, the CBC’s latest effort to discover talent it doesn’t actually employ anywhere on its network.

But last night, I gave them a shot.

Can somebody tell me why CBC gets a Billion+ ever year and can’t come up with something even fractionally as entertaining as what follows…

Yeah, that’s how you do a cover song! Finland’s “Porkka Playboys”. Somebody give them a show!

Lazy Sunday # 194: Happy Trails

2011-11-06T11:50:00.001-05:00

Fifteen or twenty years ago, for reasons I can’t recall, I found myself in Victorville, California, home of the Roy Rogers Museum. I had a couple of hours to kill so I decided to look around.

Roy had been a huge Western star for a couple of decades before I discovered him in my childhood. By then he was well known as “The King of the Cowboys” with a weekly TV show starring himself, his wife, his horse and his dog.

Though not an actual monarch, Rogers was as wealthy as one, listed among Hollywood’s box office leaders from 1943 – 1952.

But Roy’s empire wasn’t restricted to the movies.

Born into poverty in a Cincinnati tenement, he’d had to seek factory work as a child to support his family. He never finished high school, quitting after he was chastised for falling asleep in class – after a night shift making shoes.

His family travelled West during the depression, with Roy learning to play the guitar and sing in the transient and worker camps later made famous in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”.

He broke into show business in the 1930’s as a country singer, forming a group called “The Sons of the Pioneers” and meeting his wife Dale Evans (later “The Queen of the West”) at an Oklahoma radio station where she gave him with a lemon pie to coerce him into playing a song she’d requested.

The Sons had several hits that eventually landed them spots in a few Westerns, including a Gene Autry movie that the star exited on the first day in a contract dispute. Stuck for a star, the producers noticed the handsome young man with the guitar, handed him a white Stetson and the rest – as they say – is history.

But Rogers not only copied Autry’s singing cowboy character, he improved on it. In a 1940 contract negotiation he gave back some of the money the studio was offering to acquire the rights to his likeness, voice and name.

Within a couple of years, he’d parlayed that into his own production company, radio serials, comic books, adventure novels, public appearances, records, action figures, western clothing and toy six guns of all description.

Only Walt Disney had more merchandise bearing his name.

Already a cottage industry, one that soon expanded to include Dale, trusty mount Trigger and dog bullet, Rogers took over creative control of his films, shooting them in color when everybody else was still making their low budget oaters in B&W.

The West of Roy Rogers films had nothing to do with the Real West and he knew that. But he understood that most people dealt with enough reality in their own lives and wanted something else when they bought a ticket to one of his films.

I thought the museum was kind of tacky. It was weird looking at the taxidermied Trigger, Dale’s horse “Buttermilk” and Bullet posed around the corral set from Roy’s Ranch I’d remembered from childhood.

The racks of rhinestone and silver saddles, handmade Technicolor boots and shirts all seemed phoney and dated.

And after watching film clips of shows I’d loved that now came across as awkwardly concocted and badly produced, I wondered why so many people had bought into the Roy Rogers myth.

I got my answer yesterday as the media marked the 100th anniversary of Roy Rogers’ birth.

In an interview with Rogers’ son, who still makes a good living touring with his own son performing a show featuring the music and stories of his father, there was this insight…

"He came at a time when World War II was coming on pretty heavy and a lot of people, their dad didn't come back or they came from broken homes, so Dad, was a father figure to a lot of kids."

"And so they looked up to him and they knew they could hang their hat on what he would ask them to do. To go to church on Sundays and to keep yourself neat and clean and take care of your animals and obey your mom and dad, and just basic, common sense things."

The museum in Victorville closed a few years ago and its artefacts were sold for millions. Trigger alone went for more than six figures.

Roy Rogers may have been a cowboy caricature and a walking merchandising campaign, but he spent much of the fortune he earned realizing the values he espoused, advocating for adopted children, kids with polio and research into Downs Syndrome.

He also did much for environmental causes, animal rights and ensuring that the history of the west, the “Real” West was preserved.

He closed every episode of his TV series singing one of his biggest hits, “Happy Trails”. You always felt he really meant the sentiment and maybe that’s the part of the man we should most remember.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

Get Over It!

2011-11-03T23:45:00.001-04:00

"You wave it like a flag, you wear it like a crown
Got your mind in the gutter, bringin' everybody down
Complain about the present and blame it on the past
I'd like to find your inner child and kick its little ass."

-- Glenn Frey/Don Henley

Sometimes I feel like I've become the local Internet Go-To Guy for an opposing opinion.

At least five times in the last week, I've had people asking me to blog about Rob Ford and the CBC, the Occupy Movement and other issues the Left and Right like to take sides on in order to pontificate on what morons the other bunch are.

And I'll admit I have opinions on all those issues. But since everybody and their dog is already filling up Column inches, Op-Ed pages and as much blog, podcast and TV panel space as they can on those topics, I ultimately came to the conclusion that nothing I add will be all that and a bag of chips.

Yes, I'm capable of throwing a pretty good fit from time to time on topics where I figure I have some inside perspective. But that's off the top of my head stuff. I really don't have the time or inclination for subject matter that doesn't concern me personally.

Tackling such issues also makes me think too much and being a Libra that ultimately means I'm gonna see the other side of the argument as well and end up either confused or catatonic or both. And we don't want that. At least, I don't.

But that still doesn't stop people, even weeks after some "outrage", from needling me on Twitter with "new information" or some "inside scuttlebutt" even the Press doesn't know. As if most in that profession actually look for much more than how to wind somebody up enough to tuck some change into the "Pay Here" slot.

My particular favorite is when somebody refers to some politician who has miffed them and asks "So what do you have to say about 'Your Guy' now? " as if I'm that idiot's mom or personally responsible for their current Gazebo building binge or whatever.

Other than making a mental note of who to call should I ever need a Gazebo, my honest response is, "All politicians are junkyard dogs! You can't even trust the ones you vote for!" I mean, we all live in hope -- but seriously…

For instance, while I know Jack Layton has now been beatified, there's still news footage of him screaming at police to arrest peaceful demonstrators outside an abortion clinic and threatening to have any cop who doesn't fired.

Put those same words in the mouth of somebody demanding an Occupy encampment be removed and those who admire Jack would be equally horrified.

Where did we move from a common sense of decency and maybe skepticism as well as acknowledging we don't own the moral high ground to needing to take up an immediate implacable stand?

"They point their crooked little fingers at everybody else
Spend all their time feelin' sorry for themselves
Victim of this, victim of that
Your momma's too thin; your daddy's too fat."

Do I think the CBC crossed the line with Rob Ford? Yeah. Do I think Ford over-reacted? Yeah.

Do I think the man is a Buffoon? Sometimes. Is he going anywhere else for the next three years? No.

But what's amazed me the most is how little so many people who work in my own film industry are aware of how video can be tweaked, sound bites clipped and additional perspectives omitted (by all sides) to skew the final impression. We do that every hour of every day in our own work but ignore the possibility that others might do the same for their own reasons.

So while the Left has used the incident to make Ford come across like more of a doofus than he already is, the Right has used it to successfully eviscerate the CBC.

I don't like to put anybody through the agony of tuning in to SUN-TV with its bad 1970's Game Show sets and caricature personalities. But they went to the trouble of simply removing the fake laugh track from the CBC broadcast, revealing the cause célèbre as little more than a blown joke that somebody whose creative skills outranked their ideology would have binned and replaced.

I'm just saying that anytime you can make Ezra Levant come across as the voice of reason, you have completely failed as artist or activist or both.

But it seems we've become a society where it's okay when our side does something wrong and a capitol offense when somebody else does it.

Even more than that, we seem to have become a people more intent on shouting down opposing views than considering they might actual have a kernel of merit.

A couple of days ago, I chatted with a good friend who has the unenviable task of getting Dwaine Lingenfelter elected Premier of Saskatchewan. He was wrestling with the fact that he couldn't get anybody from the local media to write about how Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party was using subliminal images in their attack ads -- in direct contravention of the Elections Act.

He pointed me to a Youtube video where Lingenfelter's image had been photoshopped to make him look somewhat demonic and then surrounded by further Tarantino-esque imagery to brand him as a mud-slinger instead of the one on whom mud was figuratively being slung.

With Wall polling somewhere around 186% of the popular vote, it seemed such contravention of election rules raised no interest among media types. Was that because nobody wanted to alienate future government ad dollars or because it wouldn't alter the outcome of the election, or -- wasn't there enough controversy since Lingenfelter's people had been caught doing something similar not so long ago?

It's weird how we jump at the chance to make a Federal case out of the slightest things but appear to have no interest when an actual Federal case can be made.

"The more I think about it, Old Billy was right
Let's kill all the lawyers, kill 'em tonight
You don't want to work, you want to live like a king
But the big, bad world doesn't owe you a thing."

All this got me thinking about a couple of comedians I admire. Bill Maher, who continuously inflames the Right. And Dennis Miller, now firmly entrenched as a conservative radio host.

I still think Miller is the best "Weekend Update" anchor SNL ever had and I'm enthralled by the intelligent wordplay that permeates his material. But mention Miller to those leaning Left and he's almost universally dismissed as "no longer funny".

When I lived in LA, I made it to as many tapings of Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect" as I could, enjoying his visceral outbursts. But now, not a week goes by that some aspect of his new series "Real Time" angers those on the Right to the point of demanding he be silenced.

Have we fallen so far that we not only can't laugh at our own sacred cows being skewered, but we can't even acknowledge that somebody with talent might not think exactly the way we do?

And why do we feel it imperative to insist they change their minds and think just like we do?

Aren't those the kind of people who go around knocking the dongs off statues or burn books or crucify those who make them feel uncomfortable?

Aren't those the kind of people that form in pods if we should fall asleep?

If a joke's funny, it's funny. If it's not, maybe you shouldn't try to wrap it up as something else in order to make your point. And if you don't like the joke -- maybe you should consider that it's just a joke.

"It's like going to confession every time I hear you speak
You're makin' the most of your losin' streak
Some call it sick, but I call it weak.

All this bitchin' and moanin' and pitchin' a fit
Get over it, get over it!"

There was a time, less than 10 years ago, when Maher and Miller could be on the same stage and enjoy each other even though they disagreed.

This clip was recorded a few months after Maher was unceremoniously turfed from ABC for remarks he made about the 9-11 attacks. Instead of celebrating his newfound status as only "politically incorrect" comic remaining on TV, Miller put his own career on the line by bringing Maher on as his guest.

Their discussion on the importance of free speech and making room for dissenting voices has as much power a decade later as it did at the time.

And here's that Eagles song some of may need to listen to a little more closely…

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T19:26:00.001-04:00

When I was a kid, Halloween was just for us kids. A chance to dress up as somebody else, score some free candy and play a few tricks on people. Even if you went so far as to egg somebody's front door or tip over their outhouse, nobody got too upset.

But all that's changed. Everywhere I went today, there were people in costume and somebody else who thought their dressing up wasn't appropriate.

And I'm not talking about schools where the holiday has been dubbed "Black & Orange" day (whatever that means) or have requested that kids turn up dressed as a character who symbolizes compassion and caring.

That always reminds me of the Halloween I wrapped my school Vice-Principal's house in toilet paper while dressed as an Angel (complete with tinfoil halo). The concept that one night a year of childish debauchery might permanently warp a person's character or turn them down some dark pathway just doesn't make any sense to me.

Yet, I passed a zombie stocking shelves at the grocery store only to encounter a manager taking heat from an elderly couple who felt his outfit was too offensive for a place of business.

Over at Starbucks, the guys at the window bar were ogling a 20-something walking by dressed as a "sexy nurse". One of them later admitted that this actually made him quite uncomfortable since his 8 year old was trick or treating in the same get-up. That remark was met by troubled glances among his colleagues.

Like I said, some people take this stuff a lot more seriously than it warrants.

My day was made, however, by a burly guy outside the hardware store, dressed in the black and orange of the BC Lions football team and a dead ringer for their head coach.

"Hey, it's Wally Buono!" I chirped.

He smiled back. "Thank God somebody gets it," he said. "The last three people I met said I looked like a fucking pumpkin!"

As for me, I will join tonight's festivities dressed as I always dress, as the inimitable "Sexy Screenwriter".

And that's far from inappropriate -- even if only we screenwriters know it's not a fantasy.

Have a fun Halloween!

Lazy Sunday # 193: Best Episode Ever

2011-10-30T03:42:00.001-04:00

Somewhere around 2004, the Internet spawned a new form of media known as the podcast.

It's unofficially defined as a digital audio or video file that is episodic; downloadable; program-driven, and has a host or theme or both.

For almost as long as most people have been using the Internet, there have been streamed webcasts, radio or TV broadcasts and digital files you could download. But this was something different, the evolution of a community, one that didn't yet know it was a community, in fact was mostly individuals in cubicles or basement offices, converging audio, the web and portable media players so the world might listen to what they had to say for a change.

In Communication terms, podcasting is what's known as a disruptive technology, meaning that it circumvents or end runs the established media outlets to distribute content to an audience it assumes has enough similar interest to find and value it. In a way, it's a medium where the producers are the consumers who are also the distributors and contributors to the conversation.

Basically, podcasts are conversations held without chaperones or gatekeepers, shared to spread the conversation.

In 2005, iTunes began offering podcasts as part of its download services. There are now more than 150,000 separate titles available, some numbering hundreds of episodes updated monthly, weekly, or daily. Add the number of podcasts hosted by other sites and their pervasiveness increases exponentially.

To a great extent, the people podcasting have never been part of a recognized media outlet. And yet their ability to inform, entertain and offer intelligent opinion often surpasses those who are well paid to do the same by the mainstream media.

All those who say they'd be lost without CBC Radio, NPR, Fox News or Pajamas Media just haven't looked very hard at what's available to them for free in the form of podcasts.

In the same way that the audience has fragmented, the business of providing us with our cultural touchstones has forever fractured as well.

And if you ask me, that's a good thing.

Those of us who work in Canadian Television are doubtless aware of Anthony Marco, co-host of Diane Wild's essential and perhaps definitive weekly round-up of Canadian TV news, "TV-Eh?". Anthony does several other podcasts, all accessible from his eponymous website.

Among them is "Best Episode Ever" a look back at television series which had a popular impact on the culture that is now in its third season.

I got to help Anthony kick off that third season by joining him to talk about "Route 66", one of the series that sub-or-unconsciously got my creative juices flowing before I'd even reached puberty. You can find that podcast here as well as episode two which features MacLean's Entertainment blogger Jaimie Weinman.

Our industry has always been driven by the arrival of new voices and new ideas. And in a media world that seems to be endlessly polarizing into Fox vs MSNBC and CBC vs SUNTv in a perpetual "He Said, She Said", perspectives that inhabit other points of the compass can be more than a little refreshing.

In the same way that I hope what I had to say about "Route 66" informs the way you look at television, I hope you'll search for what some of the voices of podcasters have to offer.

Like the incredibly infectious theme of "Route 66" it might help you -- Enjoy Your Sunday.

The episode of "Route 66" that Anthony and I discussed is also available on Youtube in its entirety. You can find it here.

Is It Safe?

2011-10-29T00:25:00.001-04:00

Szell: Is it safe?

Babe: Yes, it's safe, it's very safe, it's so safe you wouldn't believe it.

Szell: Is it safe?

Babe: No. It's not safe, it's... very dangerous, be careful.

There’s been a lot of talk over the last few weeks (driven mostly by the dismal Fall ratings at the CBC) about when might be the better (or best) time to release Canadian content.

Some believe these series should have debuted in late October or November to avoid the massive marketing campaigns that accompany the launch of new American series.

Others predict they’d do better if they were held until the dead of winter, when the thrill of the other new had worn off, or maybe in the Summer, or on the nights major networks program repeats, perhaps even in non-Prime-Time hours, or maybe…

Oh…Stop it! Just stop!

You’re all starting to sound like Dr. Christian Szell, the Nazi war criminal in William Goldman’s “The Marathon Man”, trying to figure out if he can safely retrieve his stolen cache of diamonds.

I’ll be publishing several posts next week with my take on why Canadian show numbers are so anaemic this season. But I wanted to make one point first.

No time slot on television is safe. They’re not supposed to be. That’s the whole point.

The entire system was built to support the needs of the advertisers and the audience. The audience wants to be inspired, entertained or shown something they’ve never seen before. The advertiser pays producers to do that in order to reach the largest possible audience.

No islands of safety were embedded to serve the mediocre, the less entertaining or those who just feel they deserve a shot.

It’s a system that does not guarantee that the “Best” shows succeed. But it is one that makes sure that the audience always has a choice.

Maybe that’s not “Fair” to those who struggle to make TV shows and maybe it goes against our Canadian penchant for treating everyone with equanimity. But that’s just the way it is.

And it’s only going to get LESS fair.

The wide open Summer season of repeats has been closing for a decade. Upstart cable channels kick off new series every month of the year, maybe every week.

Netflix now has more than one million Canadian subscribers and will DOUBLE the smorgasbord of content it offers before Spring.

Others (like the Google Megalith) are about to launch their own viewing alternatives that will further fragment the audience.

And then, late Friday, Youtube announced a massive increase in their streaming channels, literally offering something for everyone.

Just what kind of channels? Here’s a partial list:

Alchemy Networks
Alli Sports
Bedrocket Media Ventures, Official Comedy
Bedrocket Media Ventures and Full Picture Productions, Look TV
Bedrocket Media Ventures & Wasserman Media Group, Network A
BermanBraun, theLOGE
BermanBraun & Rodale Inc., Vigor
BermanBraun & Rodale Inc., Taste
Big Frame, BAM
Bleacher Report
Numberphile
CafeMom
Chopra Media/Generate, The Chopra Well
Clevver Media, ClevverStyle
Clevver Media, ClevverNews
Clevver Media, ClevverTeVe
The Comedy Shaq Network
Cooking Up a Story, Food Farmer Earth
DanceOn
DECA, KinCommunity
Demand Media, eHow Home
Demand Media, LIVESTRONG
Demand Media, eHow Pets & Animals
Digital Broadcasting Group (DBG), Spaces
East of Center Productions LLC, YOMYOMF
Electus, Pop Culture Channel
Electus NuevOn, Latin Channel
Electus, Food Channel
Emil Rensing International, Auto Channel
EQAL, u look haute!
Everyday Health TV
EYEBOOGIE, POP SPOT
FAWN by Michelle Phan
Fine Brothers Productions, MyMusic
Frederator Networks, Channel Frederator’s Cartoon Hangover
FremantleMedia Channel, Pets & Animal
Hearst Magazines, Fashion & Beauty Channel
Hearst Magazines, Car and Driver Television
Iconic, Life and Times
IconicTV, 123UnoDosTres
IconicTV, myISH
IGN Entertainment / Shine Group, START
Intelligent Television
Jon M. Chu, Dance Channel
Katalyst, Thrash Lab
Knights of Good Productions, Geek & Sundry (with Felicia Day)
Lionsgate, Lionsgate Fitness Channel
Machinima
Magical Elves and InStyle magazine, Little Black Dress
Maker Studios, The Maker Music Network
Maker Studios, The Moms’ View
Maker Studios, Tutele
Meredith Corporation and Meredith Video Studios, Digs
ModernMom Channel
Mondo Media, New Animators
monotransistor, werevertumorro
My Damn Channel: Live
New Nation Networks
Pharrell Williams, i am OTHER
Philip Defranco, Sourcefed
Pitchfork TV
PMC Entertainment News
Radical Media, Education Channel
Red Bull Media House North America
Roadside Entertainment/BAC, The NOC
SB Nation
Seedwell, American Hipster
Slate News Channel
Smart Girls at the Party
Smosh/Alloy Digital, Smosh Animation
Soccer United Marketing & Bedrocket, KickTV
SoulPancake Productions, SoulPancake
Source Interlink Media, Motor Trend
Steve Spangler Science, The Spangler Effect
TakePart™ TV
TED Conferences, TEDEducation
The Bowery Presents
The Nerdist Channel
The Onion, Onion Broadcasting Company
The Wall Street Journal
The Young Turks, Town Square
Thomson Reuters, Reuters.com
Tony Hawk’s production company, 900 Films, Inc., RIDE Channel
Uncommon Content Partners, The Conversation Channel
Uncommon Content Partners, Taste & Access
Varsity Pictures, Awesomeness
VICE, VICE
VICE, Noisey
Vlogbrothers, CrashCourse
Vlogbrothers, SciShow
Vuguru & POW! Entertainment, Stan Lee’s World of Heroes
Walter Latham’s “Kings of Comedy”
WWE Fan Nation
Young Hollywood, Young Hollywood Network

If you’ve purchased a HD television in the last year, it likely came with “Smart” technology, meaning it can pick up anything streaming over the Internet, be it Netflix, MLB.com or Youtube, so you can watch it right on the big screen from your usual spot on the couch.

If your TV isn’t so smart, you can increase its IQ for $99 by purchasing one of these at any place that sells television sets.

Television producers never had any business making programming that was just designed to be filler or made in the hope it would find some oasis of safety, where it didn’t have to compete on its merits with whatever was programmed against it.

Now, there is absolutely no place to hide.

And that’s a good thing. A very good thing!