LAZY SUNDAY # 70: THIS ONE'S FOR THE GIRLS

It's Mother's Day.

You know where you should be instead of here.

Enjoy your Sunday.

POOL UPDATE: BRING ON THE BIG KINDLE

 

How long is it going to take for the people who make newspapers to realize you can’t read them on a plane anymore?

They offer stacks of them for free when you park your car, check in at the airline and go through the gate. Which is all well and good if you’ve got a couple of hours to kill before your flight. But once you’re in the air -- forget it.

Airline seats are now so crammed together, it’s almost impossible not to be in a sexually compromising position with the people sitting next to you, let alone open and/or even try to fold back the normal sized broadsheet.

Put two people in adjoining seats with the Globe and Mail or the National Post and there’s more elbow work than you get from Chris Pronger.

I mean, do I really need an 8x10 front page color glossy of Manny Ramirez like I got this morning? The man’s just another juiced baseball doofus. Why does he need to be on the front page, let alone that big? Or have the steroids made an 8x10 the smallest photo you can take of him?

And speaking of this morning’s Globe and Post – is it too much to ask for the score from a game that ended 8 hours before I got to the airport? I know you guys pride yourself on being more “in-depth” than other media. But hey, there’s no “in-depth” when you don’t have the story in the first place.

What’s the point of being big, wide, unwieldy – AND – empty?

You could shrink your paper, save a few trees, save some ink, save gas on the delivery trucks, and still have room for all those car ads with print too small to read in even the VistaVision version.

I’m also thinking these newspaper guys have picked up the studio script fetish for white space.

Today’s Globe column by Dave Shoalts (who, credit due, said the Coyotes were going bankrupt months ago) is six columns wide, including one column of white space featuring a two line internet poll on who’ll win that battle, Jim Balsillie  or Gary Bettman.

How can any sane editor type person read the comment thread of any Globe article and then decide it’s imperative to print how those dough heads voted in a poll!!??!!

So, big newspapers – thanks for the free copies this morning. But I’ll get my news in a more timely and convenient manner from here on.

And the first airline to supply their passengers with a Kindle gets my business for life.

Anyway – back to the important white space – the ice.

We’re halfway through the Marathon. the games this week have been nothing short of breathtaking in all four series.

This week’s standings in the pool:

1 Brian Stockton 106

1 Michael Foster 106
3 Barry Keifl 102

4 Moviequill 101

4 Will Pascoe 101

6 John Callaghan 97

7 Peter Mitchell 96

8 Wil Zmak 94

9 Mark Wilson 91

10 Larry Raskin 88

11 Scotty William 86
12 Allan Eastman 85
13 David Kinahan 84
14 Jim Henshaw 78

15 Will Dixon 72
16 Denis McGrath 67

16 Daryl Davis 67

18 Jeff Martel 66

Don’t forget to check your early week update from Willis. We might have a couple of victors by then, but something tells me all of the 2nd round series are going the distance.

MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU

Uh…it’s a play on words causa the date and…anyways…

But that title also parallels the good wishes I want to offer my old hero, Jim Shaw, for the dramatic little industry game changer he pulled off at the end of last week.

                                                                        

Our non-fiction Al Swearengen played a little poker with CTV’s Ivan Fecan on Thursday night, called the net exec’s “the conventional television model is broken” bluff and came away with not only three local licences, (stations, transmitters, equipment and staff all rolled in) but a whole lot more than Fecan and all the high paid and bonused execs at CTVBellGlobeMediaEtc may even now be realizing they have lost.

Actually, a lot of us in the industry were picking up the obvious “tells” as Fecan appeared before the CRTC in Ottawa and turned up for highly unusual interviews on CTV News, BNN and even CBC Radio’s “The Hour”. “Methinks the fellow doth protest too much” quickly devolved to “He’s got nothin’…”. I was all set to truck up to Agincourt with a couple of Toonies myself, but gentlemen elites such as Jor-el do not sit down at cards with the likes of me.

But Jim Shaw can cadge a chair at the high-rollers’ table and anted in his $3 for Brandon, Wheatley (Windsor) and Wingham. Even knowing full well that Fecan was playing with his own deck didn’t matter. Because an old poker player like Jim already knew that his opponent’s cards would never be turned over. Fecan couldn’t let the Canadian public really see what he was holding and would therefore have to fold.

Fecan’s bluff had been confirmed by another player earlier in the day when CRTC Commissioner Leonard Katz asked CTV exactly which of their licenses were not going to be renewed. The previously named three were placed on the sacrificial block and then, in detailing why each station was being cut free, Fecan let it be known that if the Local programming support fund already in the pipeline arrived sooner than expected, at least one of those stations might be welcomed back into the CTV fold.

Both Katz and I (and apparently Jim Shaw as well) experienced a profound “WTF?” moment. Was he saying that the funding already in place made any lack of Carriage Fees moot? And if the Wheatley station was that close to being okay, just how exaggerated were the broadcasters’ other claims of poverty???

Fecan’s argument had already been hard to swallow on a number of levels. In trying to appear as the fair haired champion of all things local, he’d argued that if the Cable companies had room for Porn, there should be room for stations like Timmins – neglecting to mention that the Sympatico satellite division of his own conglomerate would laugh him out of their cubicle down the hall for suggesting that the money rolling in for “Debbie Does Don Mills” should be used to shore up some Northern Ontario backwater.

Their argument would parallel Fecan’s own that the money rolling in from his Specialty channels could not be spent to support another division of the same company. Even though CBC had made clear earlier in the hearings that those Specialties still needed the Free to Air net’s much wider audience in order to initiate programming.

Katz’s pulling back of the corporate veil at CTV was followed up by the next Commissioner to question their arguments. Peter Menzies asked for a simple assurance that the network had done all it could to lower costs. If he was going to make a ruling that dipped further into the public pocket, he just wanted to know that Canadian TV viewers weren’t sustaining somebody else’s lifestyle at the expense of their own.

The CTV group assured him they had cut their expenses “to the bone” – somehow missing the obvious optics that Fecan had opened the festivities by introducing the eleven (count ‘em – Eleven) senior network executives who flanked him – all of whom apparently had the day free from their now crushing workload of new multiple responsibilities in order to be in Gatineau.

Also telling amid this series of “tells” was that despite ample opportunities offered by Commission Chair Konrad von Finckenstein for input on how the broken conventional model of television could be fixed, Fecan offered nothing but “give us more money”.

Seemingly unable to articulate how that money could be spent, be it on local news or maybe even drama, to bring back both audience and advertisers, he raised the same question a lot of people have been asking about auto industry bailouts -- “If nobody’s buying the product, how does keeping the company afloat a while longer solve that problem?”

Even when von Finckenstein mentioned that it’s been a downhill slope for “ten years”, Fecan couldn’t come up with one idea on what might change things.

Anybody remember what happened ten years ago? 1999? The year the nets won a reprieve from doing expensive dramas in favor of cheaper to produce and mostly unwatchable pap?

And throwing more money at this guy, just like the CRTC did back then, is going to make it all better. Uh-huh.

So Jim Shaw made what he knew was a winning bet, and immediately further pissed on Fecan’s parade by stating that his Kenora station (another small market outfit) had managed to end up $200,000 in the black last year.

Huh?

You mean local TV can make money?

How come the CTV affiliated Globe & Mail never mentioned that? Is there some odd reason Canwest’s National and Financial Posts both missed it as well? Whatever could cause such a journalistic lapse?

                                                                              

Jim says $200,000 isn’t a lot of money. Maybe not to him. But it’s more than GM or Chrysler made last year. And suddenly a lot of people who pay Cable bills or work at the CRTC have begun wondering just how well those other stations could be doing if they weren’t saddled with a schedule of lame celebrity magazine shows and derivative reality offerings their viewers can already get elsewhere.

In addition to immediately shifting the Public and regulatory mindset by undermining Fecan’s claims of poverty, Shaw has a couple of other immediate gains in winning the argument that he shouldn’t have to pay and/or pass on Carriage Fees.

First, he’s now got several local markets that can tell the Commission that carriage fees will be detrimental to their audience.

Moreover, he’s now in line for those local programming funds, carving the allotment for three stations that CTV now has to subtract from their windfall total.

And with the offer to buy even more stations from Canwest, Shaw’s making it clear that he thinks there’s gold in local markets – and if somebody says they don’t need public money to do what the locals do, the CRTC is going to be hard-pressed to justify a Carriage Fee.

But there’s more here. Last year, Shaw dumped a number of local CTV and Global affiliates off the Shaw Cable dial in Western Canada because he could prove his audience was adequately served from other venues.

Now he’s in a position to drop even more – further eroding CTV and Global’s reach, audience numbers and all important ad rates.

Moreover, his own reach is spreading close to the point where he can link all of his new and potentially soon to arrive stations into another national network. And where will that leave CTV and Global?

A year ago, Shaw was scathing in his condemnation of what our private networks offered his subscribers, demanding they do more Prime Time programming that was unique and Canadian.

"You repeatedly hear that CTV has a better US line-up than Global. They never talk about Canadian shows being part of a competitive slate."

By pooling the local programming support he’ll get for 4 stations, he’s now in a position to create something competitive of his own.

                                                                            

Nobody really knows how Jim Shaw’s mind works or what he’s got planned for this little gift he’s been given. But instead of winning his argument that there’s “too much competition” for conventional Canadian television, Ivan Fecan has just succeeded in creating even more of it.

And if Jim Shaw lives up to his demand from one year ago that "We need more opportunities for creative people in Canada to be creative", we just might be at the dawn of something very special.

May the Force be with you, Cable Cowboy! I think I hear a couple of Death Stars beginning to implode.

LAZY SUNDAY #69: THE NEW JOURNALISTS

A couple of weeks ago, a movie written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, Tony Gilroy and Billy Ray based on the TV series written by Paul Abbott called "State of Play" opened. It's a political thriller featuring a journalist investigating the connection of a Washington D.C. murder to a much larger crime.


Virtually all the reviews I read (whether positive, negative or indifferent) reiterated the sentiments expressed by New York based critic Maitland McDonagh (Miss Flick Chick)...

"When the newspaper thriller's obituary is written, 'State of Play' may well be cited as the genre's last gasp. (It) acknowledges the grim state of traditional print journalism while remaining firm in its faith that ink-stained wretches are steadfast foot soldiers in the war against political corruption, institutional malfeasance, spin control and all forms of business as usual."

It struck me as interesting that while all of those newspaper reviewers were more than aware of the decline of their industry, none of them twigged to one of the main reasons people no longer rely on newspapers -- most have simply stopped being "steadfast foot soldiers in the war against political corruption, institutional malfeasance, spin control and all forms of business as usual".

My own sense of the reason the crusading reporter isn't doing his job anymore is that the people he works for are usually part of one of those confusing media conglomerates that includes everything from oil companies to political think tanks and aren't sure who they can afford to piss off.

As truth was always the first casualty in times of war, now it's often sidelined or has its veracity questioned because more and more of us are aware of the corporate links that allowed it to reach our front steps in the first place.

I'm a big fan of the critical faculties of the Globe & Mail's TV critic John Doyle. And I'm sure nobody messes too much with his opinions. But in the last weeks, as Mr. Doyle has repeatedly voiced support for television Carriage fees in this country, no thinking person can help wondering if the fact that his paper belongs to a conglomerate desperately seeking those fees has played a part.

I always used to wonder why despots of one form or another always went after writers, poets and playwrights. The first I was really personally aware of was Chilean theatre director, poet and songwriter, Victor Jara.


Jara was rounded up with other "dissidents" during the 1973 Coup and tortured with many others in a soccer stadium that had become an open air prison. His captors mocked him, urging him to play his guitar with broken hands. Instead, he sang one of his songs of freedom before he was executed.

Today the stadium where he was murdered bears his name.

Over time, I've come to realize that all writers, whether of a journalistic or artistic bent, have a desire to get at and get out the truth. And that can be a real threat to those who'd rather their own view of the world were believed instead.

You can see another example in Ottawa right now, where the Writers Guild of Canada has been denied the right to voice their (our) views to the CRTC during what might be the most important television regulation hearing of the last decade.

One wonders what the Commission fears might be revealed...

EDIT:

Hey, Good News -- the Writers Guild has been invited to speak with the Parliamentary Committee on Canadian Heritage May 6th and the CRTC on May 7th! Tune in to CPAC for the fireworks!

Despite what the corporate owned (and controlled?) newspapers might have you believe, journalists with ethics still ply their trade. They just do it on that other platform newspapers despise -- the internet.

And like the journalists who inspired most of the current crop to get into the business in the first place, these "new" or "citizen" or "anonymous" journalists are risking their very lives to speak the truth.

A double feature about two groups of these people is my offering for your Sunday viewing. The first on the massive blog movement in Iran, and the last, a trailer for a feature documentary that opens later this month on Video journalists in Burma.

Political repression, Corporate repression -- what's the difference? The truth really will set you free. Some of you guys working for newspapers should try it. Enjoy your Sunday.

Iran: A nation of bloggers from Mr.Aaron on Vimeo.

POOL REPORT: BEETLE BOMB

When I was a kid, I found this old collection of 78s my dad had which included a bunch of records by Spike Jones (not the director guy). I almost played the grooves off them because they made me laugh my ass off and my favorite was one called “Beetle Bomb”.

It’s an orchestral/sound effects rendition of a horse race with a horse named “Beetle Bomb” perennially bringing up the rear until the finish line – where the winner is “Beetle Bomb”.

                                                                                

I only bring this up because this year’s pool is a very tight horse race of its own and, in wrapping up Round One, Uncle Willis pointed out that he and I resided in last place.

However, in the same way that Willis often buries the details, he didn’t point out that I also happen to be the only Poolie who got his ENTIRE ROSTER through the first round!

So, while some of you geniuses are going the rest of the way with a handful of snipers, I got all my guys in the action. Including, I would point out, three picks who scored the winning goals that sealed their respective first round series (Burrows, Franzen and Staal) and one coming off an injury (Sundin) who still holds the Leafs record for most game and overtime winners.

Oh, and look at this –- anybody else score 6 points last night in the one game played in Round Two? Anybody else move up three whole slots overnight? Anybody…? Anybody…? …Beuller?

Remember “Beetle Bomb” people! I’m charging through the backfield! Oh yes, this is why they call me, “Mr. Excitement”!

The Pool Standings as of this morning:

1 Michael Foster 75

2 Brian Stockton 74
2 Barry Keifl 74
4 Peter Mitchell 73
5 Moviequill 72
6 Will Pascoe 68
6 John Callaghan 68
8 Wil Zmak 67
9 Mark Wilson 66
9 Larry Raskin 66
11 Scotty William 61
11 Denis McGrath 61
13 Allan Eastman 58
13 David Kinahan 58
15 Jim Henshaw 55

16 Daryl Davis 54
17 Jeff Martel 50
18 Will Dixon 49

AT THE RISK OF BEING PREMATURE...

I drove over to pick up a package today and the guy on my satellite radio's Fox News feed was reeling off the monumental casualty list from the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918, angry at his government for not completely sealing the border to Mexico, something I've heard him rant about in other contexts many times in the past.

It was the current state of American journalism at its finest. Sensationalism mixed with dubious research and a slice of political bias on the side.

There always seems to be a way for people blinkered by their preconceptions to mutate the day's events into a convenient diatribe. I'm sure by tonight, Geraldo Rivera will have traced the virus to a Mexican Druglord swineherd sympathetic to the Taliban.

The Fox guy then began interviewing a "confirmed victim" of the Swine Flu, ignoring the man's chipper insistance that he was actually feeling a lot better, to ask if his neighbors were afraid to come near him.

I punched the CBC News button and got a doctor involved in monitoring the current status of the outbreak calmly offering a list of what you could do to lessen your chances of infection.

It was a nice example of how our two countries are different.

I parked and walked into the parcel place, discovering that the girl at the counter was already wearing a surgical mask. Actually, it wasn't a surgical mask, it was one of those dollar store jobs you buy when you're clearing out the basement or garage. I gave her the slip for my package and asked if she thought it was doing any good. She said something, but I couldn't make it out because of the mask.

When she brought my package, the cloud of pollen I'd walked through to get into the place finally got to me and I sneezed. She reacted as if I'd pulled a gun on her. So I got her down off the ceiling fan by telling her a joke I remember from the last time Swine Flu came around in 1976....

The symptoms of the disease are fever, aches and a tendency to roll around in mud.

Because of the mask, I'm not sure if she laughed or even smiled. The guy next to me said he didn't think the joke was very funny.

I told him it wasn't -- but at least it wasn't making things worse.

Look, I don't know if this is the end of the world or just a sign that the End Times have arrived. But beyond washing my hands more often and not taking a tour of the agricultural outskirts of Cancun, there's not a lot I can do.

But please stop asking me to be afraid, because that doesn't do any good at all -- and it also makes me go looking for pictures like this...


Laughter really is the best medicine. If you find something, send it along and I'll stick it up. It may not help. But it sure won't hurt.

LAZY SUNDAY # 68: LIFE = RISK = LIFE

The first time I was in a hit show, the playwright walked in one day with a newspaper review panning a play opening across the street. He was thrilled, uttering a Broadway adage I was hearing for the first time -- "Nothing makes success sweeter than the failure of a friend." I know he was only repeating a much repeated phrase, but I lost all respect for him that night.

I've never understood celebrating the failure of somebody else. But then I've never understood the value in shorting stocks or betting against your home team either. I know those practices have made some people rich or famous. To me, they're just inadmirable weasels.

Great success usually means you took a chance on something. So does failure. And win or lose, taking a risk adds value to your life that is not only special in the moment, it's special forever after, no matter what the outcome.

Because in the end, Life always fails. Nobody gets out of here alive. But those who took chances have less to regret in the final moments.


Last week I had the honor of accompanying my father to an Air Force reunion. There wasn't a man there under the age of 85, guys who had been Spitfire pilots in the Battle of Britain, once young men who had flown Hurricanes over the Jungles of Burma, boys who had taken Lancasters deep into the Heart of Darkness.

They arrived walking with difficulty, wheeled in chairs or moving slowly because of old war wounds or growing frailties. But the moment they entered the Mess Hall that was their meeting room, they transformed, becoming 18 and 19 again, full of purpose, defiant of authority, laughing and drinking and telling bawdy stories and exaggerated tales of combat.

Several had been shot down. Some more than once. Several had been wounded. Some more than once. One had spent so long in a Japanese prison camp he still can't buy anything made in that country. All had lost a few friends back then, and all but a few of them by now.

But they had never admitted defeat, which is the only time you truly are defeated. How often you fall doesn't matter as long as you get up just one time more.

I tried not to look shocked as they described their growing frailties to one another. A kidney removed. A heart re-circuited. Eyes that had winked out. Ears now fitted with hearing aids. As the Bartender pulled pints, one turned to me and said, "The Brits used to put Saltpeter in our beer to reduce our libidos." He smiled. "Unfortunately, it's starting to work."

I started to wonder how I might feel if I reach their age. What will keep me able to laugh at my infirmities, the loss of strength or perception or dignity? And then I realized the answer was all around me.

At some point or another, all of them had dealt with horrific failures. But they'd had the courage or simple forethought to believe their path was the right one, to pick themselves up and refuse to be broken by what had happened.

The courage to take a risk had rewarded them with the courage to go on. When you don't quit, give up, give in or knuckle under, there are no regrets. Then, there is only success.

Enjoy your Sunday.

POOL UPDATE: HOW SWEEP IT IS!

I honestly can't remember the last time so many teams were swept in the first round of the playoffs. And it could just as easily have been an even higher number. You get the feeling some true powerhouses are in the running this year. And all of them will inevitably have to go head to head in the coming rounds. Does it get much better than that?

I had the good fortune to be in Vancouver the night the Canucks swept St. Louis, in one of the most exciting games I'd seen all season. The euphoria in the city was palpable. But you can't take anything away from the Blues. They fought hard, definitely sending the message they'll be back next year.

Columbus also deserved better than having to face the worst team they could possibly draw in their first taste of playoff action. I got a feeling they'll be back too.

Montreal? I know there'll be an official story. But the writer side of me definitely senses a massive untold and even better one behind that debacle. I wonder if it'll ever come out? I wonder if the Canadiens will ever be the same if it does?

Next year for Montreal? I guess miracles can happen...

By this time next week, we'll either be debuting Round two or down to one final series that has gone the distance. Either way, the pool standings are likely going to undergo a seismic shift by the time former basement dweller, Uncle Willis, updates on Monday.

The Standings as of this morning, while most of us can still look relatively prescient are:

1 Will Pascoe 61
2 Michael Foster 60
3 Moviequill 58
4 Mark Wilson 57
4 Peter Mitchell 57
6 Larry Raskin 54
7 Barry Keifl 53
7 John Callaghan 53
7 Denis McGrath 53
10 Brian Stockton 52
11 Scotty William 48
12 David Kinahan 47
13 Allan Eastman 46
14 Daryl Davis 38
14 Will Dixon 38
16 Jim Henshaw 36
16 Wil Zmak 36
18 Jeff Martel 32

LAZY SUNDAY #67: THE COMMENT THREAD

The thing that sets the inner tubes apart from virtually all other forms of media, maybe except for talk radio, is its ability to be interactive. Oh, you could always write a letter to the editor, that might or might not get printed, maybe or maybe not in an unedited form, sometime sooner or later – and often well after your point or the issue that prompted it had dropped from the Public consciousness and even your own list of things you actually gave a shit about.

The internet is different. You can be getting your two cents out there before whoever posted their own opinion has had a chance to get up from the computer, stretch and take a pee.

And not only do you get to comment on the original writer’s opinion, you get to comment on the other comments as well as the commenters, their friends, their family, their life style choices and whether or not they should have access to what’s obviously you and the planet Earth’s personal private stash of Oxygen.

It’s been often said that “Opinions are like a**-holes, everybody’s got one.” and when you start writing a blog one of the first things you notice is how many a**-holes there really are in the world.

Not you guys reading this, of course! You people are just about the smartest, kindest, most personable and apparently good-looking audience a guy like me has any right to deserve. Among fellow bloggers, I regularly refer to you as “All that Heaven will allow”.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  Differences of opinion (and just about everything else) are a fine thing. They make life interesting and/or challenging. And hearing somebody else’s take on a position you’ve taken can be enlightening or humbling in a lot of wonderful ways. The more we honestly intermingle, the sooner we’ll reach a consensus that probably works mostly well for most of us on anything.

Last week, I had a couple of guys respond in the comments thread to a video I posted on a fairly high-minded topic. And then they responded to each other in a way that was entertaining and enlightening not only to anybody reading their thoughts, but to the writers themselves. And that was very cool.

And I’m sure that’s the way the guys who invented the inner tubes thought it would all go.

But make the mistake of clicking on the comment threads of any newspaper story on even something as mundane as pet ordinances and before you’ve gone down half a page, you discover it’s all connected to and/or the fault of the middle east, homosexuals or The Obama. Empowered by anonymity and untethered from any need to be civil, people are capable of creating bile the stomach of a Vulture couldn’t secrete.

It’s a situation that could cause you to lose your faith in humanity, or what remained of it after you’d spent the day moderating the hate speech out of what gets submitted to your own blog comment threads.

A couple of days ago, the dependably sophomoric guys at College Humor released one of the most brilliant insights into our inability to use this amazing interactive tool to actually interact.

I hope it restores your faith in humanity’s ability to at least laugh at itself as much as it did mine.

Feel free to comment. And enjoy your Sunday.

POOL STANDINGS: GAME ON

Okay, so there's only been one game in each series and the numbers don't mean much yet. But it's Friday report time and who knows if Dixon will be in any shape to post anything Monday after his big weekend in the big smoke.

Fittingly, the first guy who entered the pool is leading. I'm not sure if that means Michael Foster really handicapped this thing and couldn't wait to get started or simply has a better flutter kick than the rest of us. But he's currently the man to beat.

McGrath's frankly bizarre picks have him solidly in second place and guys like me, Martel and Zmak are quietly waiting in the weeds, sipping our morning coffee and knowing our time will come.

I got a very nice letter from David Kinahan to let me know how much fun he's having. Apparently, we've got him hopping out of bed first thing in the morning to check on his picks. So if I've finally done something to wake up a member of the Writers Guild staff my work on this blog may be done.

Have a great weekend watching what already looks like some of the best hockey of the year. Uncle Willis will update you in a few days and I'll probably be reporting the first to fall back here this time next week.

The Current Standings:

1 Michael Foster 15
2 Brian Stockton 14
2 Peter Mitchell 14
2 Denis McGrath 14
2 Barry Keifl 14
6 Mark Wilson 13
6 Moviequill 13
6 Will Pascoe 13
6 Larry Raskin 13
10 David Kinahan 12
10 John Callaghan 12
12 Allan Eastman 11
12 Daryl Davis 11
14 Will Dixon 8
15 Wil Zmak 7
15 Jim Henshaw 7
15 Jeff Martel 7

TIME TO PUT GENIE BACK IN THE BOTTLE

For the most part, I’m still a shit-kicker from the poorest area of Saskatchewan. A red-neck. A Hillbilly from a land without hills. “Hill William” as we would re-coin the term at the University of Saskatchewan since we were now “edumacated”. Life, luck and perhaps some talent led me to work in the Canadian Arts, travel the world to hone my skills and receive validation at my craft through success in America.

Also for the most part, and I don’t see recent indigenous successes like “Corner Gas” and “Trailer Park Boys” causing a sea change in how Canadian audiences assess Canadian Artists. We just still aren’t considered truly successful in our own country until we’ve been Validated by Americans. Those of us who’ve “been there” know that American studios and networks don’t care (or mostly even know) what credits you’ve accrued up here. That body of achievement means nothing to them. Prove yourself to their audience and it’s a different story.

And when that happens, the Canadian media is all over you. “Ohmigod, Rachel Macadam is in a movie with Russell Crowe”, “Elton John married a Canadian guy”, “The Office mentioned Winnipeg in an episode.” Suddenly, because one of us has been Validated and accepted, all of us have been Validated and accepted just a little bit as well.

“They like us! They really like us! We must be worthwhile!”

                                                                   

Last week, a fellow Hillbilly named Billy Bob Thornton was in town with his recently formed Country band.

Billy Bob has achieved more success and Validation in America than pretty much any Canadian actor, screenwriter or director has on either the Hollywood or celebrity scales of Validation. Certainly, he has achieved far more than any Canadian triple-threat combination of those talents. But last week, he appeared on our national broadcaster, the CBC, in a widely discussed interview in which he was cranky, rude and insulting to the host. And in describing Canadian audiences as “unresponsive” and “All mashed potatoes and no gravy” he did the one thing we don’t allow Americans to do…

Billy Bob IN-VALIDATED us.

And immediately the media was full of outrage and the censorious nature commonly ascribed to “red-neck” Western Canadians was now on show from the audience at Toronto’s prestigious Massey Hall, amid the trendy bars on Queen Street West and within the hallowed halls of the CBC.

Bud the Spud wanted revenge.

In less than 15 minutes of bad behavior, the guy our Art House crowd had taken to their bosom with “Sling Blade” was now decried as just another “Ugly American”, a spoiled Hollywood brat and an ignorant, insensitive a--hole. He was the new Greg Gutfeld of Fox News (That other American who Invalidated us a few weeks ago). It was front page news here a few days later when Billy Bob chose to end his Canadian tour and “High tail it for the border” as one paper chose to describe the departure.

What Billy Bob had failed to understand in his interview was that CBC host Jian Gomeshi had been trying to help him over one of our major cultural hurdles.

By explaining to his radio audience that while Billy Bob had not yet been Validated as a musician by the American media, he still retained his Validation as an actor, writer and director, Gomeshi was assuring those listening that the man should still be afforded a few minutes of consideration. What Billy Bob also didn’t understand is that until he receives his musical Validation by the American media, those Canadian audiences will continue to sit on their hands at his shows.

But he didn’t and it was the sharper side of the double-edged Validation sword that cut us so deeply.

The fact that we’re a reserved bunch in public is no surprise to any Canadian who’s ever been to a hockey game in Boston or New York or Philadelphia finding a seething mass of drunken, partisan excitement that wouldn’t be allowed out of the parking lot in Toronto.

My first Dodgers game at Chavez Ravine included an all out beer fight between two sections in the stands, one white the other predominately Mexican. Nothing more lethal than a 32 oz. tub of beer or popcorn was ever launched at the other side and everybody had fun including the laughing, soaking wet cops who ultimately came between us.

On the other hand, I’ve seen guys escorted from Blue Jays games for suggesting the Umpire was a “bum” and a scene like the one in LA would inevitably lead to cancelling the ballgame and page long editorials on public intoxication and the need for racial harmony in our press.

Yet we see little wrong in clubbing baby seals, like having a Quebec kid hold aloft the Ultimate Fighting belt and live for a bench clearing brawl.

We are an odd bunch.

                                                                                           

About 30 years ago, I was part of a group of Canadians who tried to hijack the traditional American Validation process. There were maybe 25 or 30 of us at the beginning, all little “Energizer Bunnies” in the Canadian film business, fed up with the staid, boring, unwatchable and mostly pointless “Canadian Film Awards” and convinced that Canadians would begin to embrace their own artists and go to see Canadian films if they were Validated in a meaningful way by their own kind.

It took us about a year to wrest the Etrog statuette away from the original owners and mount our own event, but we did and it was a huge success. Thousands of members of the film community kicked in a few bucks for a membership card that allowed them to see all of the eligible films, nominate the members of their own craft and cast a final vote for those who would be honored. The first Genies were presented in 1980 with all the Klieg lights, limos, red carpets and glamor made mandatory by the Academy Awards.

Millions watched the television broadcast on the full network of the CBC (Yes, I used the multiple ‘M’ word in describing a Canadian TV audience) and the winners’ faces graced the front pages of newspapers from coast-to-coast, their acceptance speeches and beseeching the audience to give Canadian films a chance made it onto real newscasts and not just the hokie gossip shows.

A few days later, that original clump of now bedraggled upstarts gathered in a room over the old New Yorker Theatre on Yonge Street to crack one last bottle of Champagne and congratulate ourselves. We had done it. Canadians were now Validating themselves. There was even a baseball cap that read “Fuck LA! This is how we do it in Canada”.

But a Leopard can’t change its spots and a Beaver NEVER swaps its pelt.

And although the US Immigration Department scored Canadians who’d won or even been nominated for a Genie with more points on any work permit applications, winning that trophy didn’t put the recipient in greater demand up here or increase ticket sales at the box office.

Validation from America was still a requirement.

                                                                    

A week before Billy Bob suggested that Canadian audiences suck, that was the theme of the 29th Genie Awards in Ottawa.

The running joke of the show was that NOBODY had seen the films. Only one of the nominated features had received a National release and the Host of the evening admitted he’d screened DVDs of the work he was there to celebrate in his hotel room – after arriving on the red-eye from his real showbiz job in LA – the self same Validation which qualified him to act as Host in the first place.

The buzz was so insignificant the swag bag presented to the nominees and presenters included a We-Vibe vibrator, perhaps in the hope it might arouse someone – anyone - to appear at least a little excited. The television audience totalled 113,000, which when you subtract the casts and crews of the films, their families and friends and the staffs of all of their multi-level funding agencies that backed them, amounts to – what? Maybe 4 – 5 real film goers? Tops?

And even though the network no longer broadcasts this home grown celebration of Canadian film and most of the films nominated for the evening will never even play on the CBC, further financial support for the public broadcaster was the political sub-theme of the evening. Artist after artist slammed the government for not giving the CBC more money and chanted the mantra that putting money into the Arts invariably creates jobs.

That must’ve been news to 70 former employees of the Art Gallery of Ontario who had just been laid off despite a government investment of $300 Million into their just opened new facility.

Look, maybe it’s time we start being honest with ourselves.

The reason Canadian audiences are “reserved” is because we haven’t been good enough at entertaining them. And the reason they look Southward for the Validation is because our own Validation process has often been an outright lie.

The whole point of the Genie Awards was to pack Canadian audiences into Canadian theatres to see Canadian films and that has been an abject failure.

Why?

Because way too often the Canadian Academy has marched in lock step with the Institutional funders who bankroll the industry. If they put money in something that was dull as dishwater, boring as an early morning piss and mostly made to serve some regional or social agenda, it still had to be celebrated, Validated and foisted on the public.

And when the membership of the Academy (also audience members themselves) wouldn’t co-operate with that process, their franchise right was replaced with the compliant Juries that had so undermined the original credibility of the Canadian Film Awards. The “right people” were once again telling you who mattered and who didn’t.

Most film people knew that to reach an audience you needed to create something that those folks might spend real money to see. But that wasn’t the agenda of the Gala attending, film festival circuit crowd the funding bureaucrats were a part of -- and on whom the Academy of Canadian Cinema also depended for support. The audience took a back seat to the private party.

Therefore, in those ensuing decades, millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the Genie Awards themselves. Perhaps that money could have been better spent on making actual films, or in making sure the films we did make had adequate marketing budgets or could even hire a decent publicist.

But instead, the money went on another lavish party that 99.99% of the country wasn’t invited to attend.

And they weren’t there because, like most film and television and Arts endeavors in this country, it ultimately wasn’t about them or their need to be entertained and enriched.

Any politicians along the way, be they Prime Ministers, Ministers of Culture and/or Heritage or whatever, who also chose not to attend were derided as uncaring “Philistines” who didn’t ‘get’ the value of the Arts – or perhaps more accurately, the self-importance of its IN Crowd.

This private party syndrome spread from the Genie Awards to film and television awards in all parts of the country. Some of those are tied to local film festivals. Many are just there to imply that the Region or city hosting them has a flourishing Arts community. But in all cases, few but those attending the party have any awareness of the work being celebrated.

A few years ago, I was asked to go back to Saskatchewan and present an Award at one of their local events. The ballroom was filled with representatives of all kinds of Arts organizations named SaskFilm and SaskMedia and other similarly “Sask” branded outfits. None of them thought it was funny when I suggested they should amalgamate into one big bunch they could call “Saskwatch”. Nor were any of them dismayed that the film I was presenting an award to had only ever been seen by the five person jury who had decided to honor it. I hope it’s had wider distribution since, but I have a feeling its audience never encompassed many beyond those who were in that ballroom.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think a certain amount of celebrating our own is important and I know the Arts aren’t the only Canadian industries receiving boatloads of taxpayer support. Yet I never see Award ceremonies for “Best Roughneck” in the Oil Patch or “Most Valuable Riveter” at Bombardier. Maybe they have them and I’m just out of that social loop.

But when so many exist within the film and TV industries recognizing so little the public actually sees or even has access to, it widens the gap between us. And it also begins to feel like they’re little more than a photo op for politicians and funding bureaucrats who could just as easily be turning up at the local Mission to serve soup to the homeless. Somehow the process continues to make them appear noble, caring and in-charge while reminding everyone that we’re actually doing quite well living on Welfare.

You also wonder if any money would be there at all if the Government class weren’t the honored guests at these soirees.

                                                                

A few weeks from now, the Governor General will host another party in Ottawa and hand out medals to Canadian artists considered to have greatly contributed to our culture. Among them will be playwright George F. Walker and film actor/director/writer Paul Gross. For better or worse, they will likely be the two honorees most familiar to Canadian audiences. Gross wrote, directed and starred in this year’s Best Film Genie Winner “Passchendaele” and Walker writes and produces TMN’s “The Line”.

But “Passchendaele” was received as a mediocre film at best, earning only $4 Million at the Canadian box office (meaning fewer than half a million Canadians went to see it). Meanwhile, “The Line” isn’t exactly setting the television world ablaze or even a-flicker as far as “Must-See-TV” goes. And yet these two men will receive the official government stamp of approval as valued Cultural icons.

Although both are being honored for their body of work, would it surprise anyone if the average audience member sees this, recalls their supreme lack of enjoyment of those last offerings from both and shakes their head at what gets recognized as Canadian culture? Does the fact that they then look elsewhere for Validation of what’s worth spending their money on not start to make some sense?

Could it be that the very fact that we appear so cozy with and doted on by our elites be what keeps our audience wary of what we’re selling?

In the interest of full disclosure, I need to say that I appeared in about a dozen of the first productions of George Walker’s plays, consider him a friend and wish him nothing but success. But I find “The Line” about as derivative, pointless and boring as anything on television. The series is based on a group of plays collectively known as the “Suburban Motel” cycle George has created over the last decade, all set in the same seedy motel room and all pretty great evenings – on stage.

I’ve always felt George was Canada’s greatest playwright (living or dead) and have found it profoundly odd that the plays which made him internationally known and once packed Canadian theatres, plays like “Bagdad Saloon”, “Beyond Mozambique”, “Theatre of the Film Noir” and “Zastrozzi” still haven’t been translated to film. While the Suburban motel cycle became both the hideously failed feature “Niagara Motel” and “The Line”. My own theory is that Canadian producers see those one-set, small cast, mostly nihilistic pieces and say “Hey, cheap and depressing! I can sell that to Telefilm!”

It’s odder still that after two generations of Canadian audiences making it clear that “Cheap and Depressing” aren’t what they want to see at the movies, the recent slate of Genie nominees indicates that’s still what the powers-that-be consistently fund and feed them. I keep hoping I’m wrong in assuming this is because it keeps the parties private.

George, please do us all a favor, check out of that motel and have a new idea. Let’s be honest here, your earlier funny stuff was – well, earlier (as in ahead of its time) and funny.

Let me finish by telling a couple of stories I probably shouldn’t tell about our apparently culturally important CBC. Because for me they exemplify why that particular corporate culture may not serve either the audience or artists of this country well and why the people we all say we want to reach continue to look elsewhere for their seals of approval.

                                                                        

I’ve written and produced multiple pilots and a couple of resulting series for all of the major American networks. I’ve also developed two pilots at CBC that never went to camera.

Maybe that’s because they ultimately weren’t very good or what the network decided their audience wanted in the final analysis. Maybe they felt my American influences had poisoned me as a purveyor of Canadian content. That all goes with the territory and is a reality you have to accept. Sometimes, it’s just your turn in the barrel.

But part of me thinks there might be something else at work as well.

My first failed attempt at a CBC show followed hard on the heels of the final episode of “Top Cops”. CBC wanted a gritty cop show and I had just run one for 4 years. An established CBC producer approached me with a development deal and I jumped at it.

Following the “Top Cops” research approach, I spent a few months embedded with the Toronto Homicide Squad, learning what made them tick, how they differed from American cops and finding what I felt would endear characters like them to a Canadian audience. My producing partner and I hammered out a detailed concept to present to the people who would ultimately decide the show’s fate.

Now, one of the first revelations I’d gotten working on a US series was how few people actually worked for the networks there. The executive offices of CBS in Television City were half the size of any single floor at the CBC’s Toronto tower (gaping Rotunda hole in the middle and all). It was clear that 30 or 40 people managed the entire television operation. An operation that programmed more original content in a couple of nights than the CBC did in a week.

The supervising CBS executive on “Top Cops” also ran “Northern Exposure”, “Evening Shade” and “Designing Women”. Two dramas and two comedies. One executive. I had two very precisely scheduled note sessions, Wednesday morning at ten (7:00 am in LA) and Sunday nights at eight (5:00 pm in LA). The phone would ring. The notes would be direct and curt and then he’d sign off with “Gotta go. Northern Exposure’s waiting.”

This same guy handled network scheduling, took one full day a week to listen to pitches and was familiar with every line item in your budget.

I’ve never understood the behemoth proportions of CBC staff that seem necessary to keep that operation afloat and when Bill Brioux pointed out that their recent layoff of 800 did not include any of the corporation’s 553 Senior managers, I remember wondering if CBC even had 553 separate shows in need of management on all of their multiple platforms put together or why some of those many managers, all apparently deserving of hefty annual bonuses, couldn’t handle 2 or 3 shows on their own so maybe there could be fewer Senior managers and more series, episodes and people who worked on them.

I mean, isn’t what CBC produces more important to the country than how many people have comfortable jobs there?

Anyway, the day arrived when we were to pitch our cop show to Senior management. Well versed in the rigors of an American network pitch, I’d spent days rehearsing, covering all the possible questions and concerns the people who could green-light it might have. If there’s one thing I will toot my own horn about it’s that when I’m in the room, you get the heat, the curve, the slider and the knuckleball. I can fuckin’ pitch!

We walked in to meet three very lovely people, all happy to see my CBC producer and meet his new “find”. They didn’t have much time as they had to leave for the airport, Amsterdam and some TV conference or sales market. I got out my notes. They asked if I’d ever been to Amsterdam. I had. Could I recommend any restaurants. I could not. Oh, well. I laid out the 25 words or less concept of the show. They nodded. Somebody looked at a watch. They had to go and gave us a “Go” as well.

I was dumbfounded. It had never been this easy. Then I realized they were all shaking my producing partner’s hand. He was one of them. Of course it was okay.

A script got written and made the approval rounds. Then I got a call from my agent. My producing partner needed to adjust our agreement. Instead of being a 50-50 deal, the CBC needed him to have final say on all creative matters. They knew him. They needed “Their guy” in charge. I pointed out that “Their guy” didn’t know the first thing about running a series and had openly admitted as much. That didn’t matter. I said, “No.” The show died.

A while later, I sat in another CBC office with a writer and two terrific network development execs who had shepherded a piece we all had high hopes for to what we also hoped was the last hurdle we had to clear. The CBC Exec we were meeting had some minor reservations and then stunned us by saying, “You need seven good actresses to pull this off and I don’t think you can find seven good actresses in Canada.”

We were speechless.

If that Exec had said the material just didn’t make their ass tingle like Harry Cohn said it should, we all would’ve understood. But this was so far beyond ignorant, so far above arrogant that it was almost unbelievable. No arguments could dissuade. We were done.

Now, to the best of my knowledge, none of the 800 people who will be walking the plank at the CBC in the coming weeks were included in those anecdotes. They still have their jobs and will continue to decide what is presented to the Canadian public as the shows they really should be watching.

And one wonders if such superb Canadian actresses as Wendy Crewson and Sarah Polley and others who regularly speak with heartfelt eloquence and passion on the importance and necessity of the CBC know how they (and other capable artists) are sometimes regarded within that air-tight building they’re defending.

None of this is to say that there’s an over–arching conspiracy to keep good work from appearing on the CBC. The network has any number of exceptional people who do exceptional work. But there is a bureaucracy and attitude present in their midst whose apparent embrace of culture is so tight it actually strangles some of it.

It’s an attitude born of attending those parties and galas and private screenings. One that doesn’t even consider the needs of the wider audience because it’s so aware of what those at the private party want. 

And perhaps even those executives (who I’m certain some feel I’ve maligned here) were all trying very hard to do the best job they could.

But when only 1 in 12 Canadians now invites the CBC into their lives each day, I think it’s safe to say their best isn’t good enough.

                                                         

Which brings us back to Billy Bob. For whatever you may think of the man, he’s doing something most of the Artists in this country aren’t. He’s stepping outside the safe confines of what others have decided is his “box”, risking ridicule, lost income and the occasional flying long neck bottle of Lone Star to reach an audience with something he personally believes in.

With 10 minutes of research, one of the (however many) Senior managers supervising “Q” could have learned that Billy Bob Thornton is attempting to revive a musical fusion that can be traced back to Buck Owens and The Beatles. A fusion of styles which became so profound that following Ringo’s rendition of Buck’s signature tune “Act Naturally”, the country star had to take out ads in the Nashville trades assuring everyone he wasn’t abandoning Country music. That research would have also pointed out that Billy Bob was playing in bands long before he was a movie star, including one that ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons called “The best damn cover band in Texas”.

Maybe they did and things just got derailed before the train got that far. And there are no legitimate excuses for Billy Bob’s petulant behavior. Perhaps all we can find that’s positive in this sad affair is the consummate professionalism of Jian Gomeshi. There are moments in that video where you can see him straining to be civil, perhaps, as a musician himself, aware of that old country lyric requesting that we always show extra kindness because everybody’s strugglin’ with somethin’.

Or maybe he was just aware of his own struggle to reach an audience, knowing this meltdown was just going to make it harder. As I’ve said before about Ghomeshi, “Q” and the CBC “…it'll take better brains than the ones who appear to be running the place at the moment to find him the audience he deserves”.

But overall, we need to finally start admitting that if our audiences are quiet, when they even bother to turn up at all, that’s OUR fault. And it’s mostly the fault of those Canadian Artists who don’t hold those who “approve” their work to an appropriate standard or demand that the shrimp trays and open bars be put away until we have an industry in which the people we’re trying to reach decide they want to throw a party for us.

Until then, we’ll constantly be catering to a different crowd, the one that continues to ride on our backs and decides through meeting their own needs what our audience will be and what they will be served.

Like it or not, Billy Bob spoke a difficult to accept truth. This Hillbilly’s just trying to help you to understand how we got that way, hopefully in a less rude manner. You need to forgive us country boys sometimes. We don’t always remember to take our boots off when we get up to the Big House and our manners ain’t as proper as the folks who know which one’s the fish fork.

Seriously. It’s time to put our Genies back in the bottle until we do work that truly earns them.

ALMOST READY TO GO, BOYS

Just hours until the first puck drops to start this season's Stanley Cup Playoffs and still plenty of time to get your picks in for the "3rd Annual Infamous Writers Hockey Pool". Details down the page. Just scroll down until you see a hockey player...
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A male hockey player...

CLASS WARFARE ANYBODY?

There must be something in the water in Kansas City.

I long ago learned that if I wanted an intelligent take on any major issue in the sports world, my first stop was Jason Whitlock, the Kansas City Star sports columnist who writes with more grace and integrity than almost anyone else in that genre.

When it comes to television and thoughtful insight into the TV trade, one of the most reliable sources is Aaron Barnhart, author of the Kansas City based blog “TV Barn”.

And for the truth about the economy, there are few with more credibility and courage than William K. Black, professor of Law and Economics at the KC campus of the University of Missouri and America’s senior bank regulator during the Savings and Loan scandals of the 1980’s.

Black literally wrote the book on financial fraud. It’s called “The Best Way To Rob A Bank Is To Own One”. And he is now utterly convinced that many of America’s most esteemed and important financial players need to go right to jail for what they’ve done to the world economy. He also believes they are getting away with their crimes with the help of politicians from all parts of the political spectrum.

Last week, he sat down with PBS’s Bill Moyers for 29 of the most shocking minutes I’ve ever seen on television. It’s impossible to come away from the interview without the grim realization that what’s now bad is going to get impossibly worse and that those who profess to have our best interests at heart have a completely different agenda.

No matter what end of the political bench you call home, this is chilling stuff that will give a whole new meaning to who you consider “us” or “them”. And Black’s message is all the darker because he fits nobody’s tidy definition of a wing-nut and unlike the so-called financial journalists of the Main Stream Media, he knows of what he speaks and isn’t afraid to name names or call out somebody you thought was perfectly respectable for what they really are.

This video needs to be seen by and shared with everyone you know. If it resonates with you the way it did with me, please pass it on to every journalist, union member, recently unemployed friend and politician that you know. Pass it on to those who are afraid of losing their pensions and homes, or who have already lost their investment nest eggs.

These are far from issues “too complicated” for the average person to understand or that can be dismissed as “unforeseen” cases of individual greed and corruption. As Black makes clear in the opening moments, “Bernie Madoff was a piker. He doesn’t even get into the front ranks of the Ponzi schemes”.

As Black also makes indelibly obvious, all this talk of bailouts, belt-tightening and credit crunches is just so much BS to keep us distracted from what’s really going on. Keep those torches, pitchforks and tumbrels handy. We might need them after all.

                                                                   

Does anybody remember a little riff that went something like, “No Taxation Without Representation”? If there’s another American Revolution, I’ve got a feeling it might get its start in Kansas City. And given the quality of some of the people who seem to live there, that might be a good thing for all of us.

THE 3RD ANNUAL INFAMOUS WRITERS POOL

THEEEEY'RE HEEEE-RE!!!

The Stanley Cup Playoffs, the greatest spectacle and the toughest trophy to win in all of professional sport!

This is where we separate the men from the boys, the wheat from the chaff, the real heroes from the wannabes and poseurs. This is where those with hockey smarts and the courage of their convictions can also shine. Because next to getting stitched up on the bench and playing with a broken leg, the most venerable tradition in the quest for the Stanley Cup is the "Hockey Pool"!

AND NOW YOU CAN BE A PART OF IT!!!


Will Dixon and I have been in hockey pools at least as long as we've known each other. No matter where we are or what we're doing, we have honored our on-ice warriors season after season by picking who we feel are the best among them and putting a little money on their sweaty asses.

I remember the two of us ending up in LA one season with the Leafs (our beloved team) making a run for the Cup. Hockey wasn't on TV down there back then (and seldom if ever even now) and the playoff games could only be had with access to an ANIK-B satellite. We drove all over LA until we found a bar called "Yankee Doodle's" in Santa Monica that could rotate its rooftop dish to access that particular Deathstar.

But the owner didn't want to upset his regulars, who came in to watch pansy sports like basketball and golf while sipping their light beers and wine coolers, so we made him a deal. In return for NHL access on the big screen in a basement back room, we'd drag in all the ex-pat hockey fans we could find and not only eat him out of chicken wings, but empty every case of Molson's and Moosehead he had languishing in the fridge.

By the time we were done, we had up to 40 rabid hockey fans there every night cheering so loud, the guys on the Golf Channel were having to speak in a normal voice to be heard.

Two seasons back, being thousands of miles apart and with most of the people with whom we regularly communicate passing through our blogs, we cooked up this little plan to hold our hockey pool online. It was an astonishing success! Year two was awesome. And this year it's going to be even bigger and better.

HERE'S HOW IT WORKS

You join "The Infamous Writer's Hockey Pool" by sending me an email at seraphic@sympatico.ca with "POOL PICKS" in the subject line between 8:00 AM EST Monday (today)and 6:00 PM EST Wednesday night (April 15/09). The Playoffs begin an hour or so later.

In your email, list the 10 skaters and 2 Goalies who make up your team. They can be members of any of the 16 teams competing in the opening round. The scoring is as follows:

For every goal or assist scored by your skater you earn 1 point. Every time your goalie wins you also earn a point and seven points each time he earns a shutout. Shutouts in Stanley Cup play are rare and skaters will always earn more points than a Goalie, but this is a way of evening things up.

The 12 players you choose are yours for the entire tournament. As the teams your players represent fall by the wayside, they cease earning you points, but their totals remain a part of your total. In the end, the poolie with the most points wins.

I'll post your team online. From then on, you can check your progress by going HERE. All players will be provided with a password so they can check their progress throughout the playoffs.

Once you're inside the pool site, you'll see all the information on the poolies and their teams. You'll also receive a twice weekly update of the pool standings, which either Will or I will post for all the world to see on our blogs.

See -- easy and fun! The only thing missing is the chance to share the beer and wings and make fun of each other's choices. Anybody who wants to open a Facebook group to handle the trash talk or Twitters their opponents has our blessing.

Now, playing in a hockey pool is very simple but a certain amount of strategy is involved. I've seen poolies pick players from teams that exited early still win because those players racked up so many points in the early going. I've also seen poolies with terrible picks come out on top because they had a hot goalie in their pool.

Like everything else in the game, it's ultimately up to the hockey gods.

If you're new to pools or the game, you can learn more on who you should pick by visiting TSN or Sportsnet.

But let me give you a few tried and true pointers of my own.

1. You absolutely don't want the guys who are scoring leaders in the regular season. Especially if they're from Russia, Sweden or the Czech Republic. Remember -- it's a Canadian game! The regular season is full of games nobody really cares about and games against terrible teams where those wussy European scoring leaders rack up most of their points. You want guys whose stats indicate they've barely scored at all. This means they're DUE.

2. Look for guys who are injury prone, particularly players who've suffered head injuries. There's an old hockey adage that guys who win are playing like they're "unconscious". Pick skaters who have had recent concussions.

3. Also look for a stat called PIM, that stands for "Penalties In Minutes" and it denotes the roughest, toughest customers in the league. The Stanley Cup is won by the team with the most grit. This means lots of fights for a team wanting to stay in it for the long haul. Fighters are the guys who rack up the biggest PIM numbers. Grab them first!

4. Never pick a first string Goalie! These guys have played 82 games of the regular season and they're tired. You want the back up Goalies, particularly the guys who play "third string". They're fresh! And they've had the most time to practice the art often repeated in the old adage "to win the Goalie has to stand on his head".

Just to make things even more fair, I promise not to take ANY of those guys, to give you a better chance at winning.

And what do you win?

Well, since gambling is technically illegal, and the entrants are going to come from a lot of disparate currencies, we've decided that your entrance fee must be something either related to your career or a sports souvenir you've gathered along the way.

Once the winner is decided, all entrants must ship he or she a DVD of a film they made, an autographed script, their Bobby Orr lunchbox or even that old Honus Wagner baseball card that's just gathering dust in grandpa's desk.

There will also be very special pieces of honest to god NHL memorabilia for the poolies finishing 2nd or 3rd.

There are no other restrictions to participating. Just join up, pick your players and set aside your victory swag.

Looking forward to playing with with you! Game on!!!!