Two Down

It was a valiant effort, but it wasn't enough. So the Sens go back to Ottawa down two games. It is gut check time

Go look up a picture of the Penguins' Tyler Kennedy. I won't put a picture up here, that would be wrong. But just do it.

Who does he remind you of?

The debate rages here

Some say he looks like Manbearpig,

Some say a bat,

Some say he's the spitting image of Paperboy


At one point, a compromise is suggested: Paperbatpig



Anyway, I say he’s the illegitimate son of Chief Clancy Wiggum! Nya!

Did You Drove or Did You Flew?

The Olympic flame was in San Francisco



Things did not go well



***

The playoffs have started.

Ottawa played their first game against the Penguins.

Again, things did not go well.

Ask Wade Redden, who played a bit of pokey-chest with Sid the Kid



Also Volchekov took a puck to the face, just as a bonus.

The good news is that Gerber came to play tonight.

The bad news is nobody else on the team did.

Harry Knowles

a.k.a. the big red dude
a.k.a. Headgeek

has diabetes.

the founder of AICN drops that tidbid on his loyal readers rather abruptly in this review of the new flick The Ruins. After his review, I think I just have to see this film… you see, I too was at Palenque, and I can recall that the jungle did indeed loom threateningly…

The big surprise is the outpouring of geek love and support in the talkbacks. In the past, some people have been absolutely vile with Harry, mocking his obesity along with his idiosyncratic writing style and his self-regard. This time, there is concern and good wishes.

He’s rather ludicrous -- by his own admission -- almost a cartoonish figure, is our Mr. Knowles, with his gigantic ginger head fringed with a chinstrap beard and long hair “like an irish setter” as he has described it. To me, he looks like a cross between late Jerry Garcia and Slimer from Ghostbusters, or rather, Slimer’s unseen red cousin.




Harry and Slimer: kindred spirits







And I loathe his ridiculous politics, as do many denizens of AICN, who regularly implore him to stick to movies, and not spew his leftwing nonsense in his reviews. Take for example, the poster who wrote the following nasty diatribe after Harry commented on the film Day Zero in his inimitable style: Imagine that John McCain wins the next election (this isn’t the premise – but merely how we could get to the premise in our reality) and decides to truly create a 100 year presence in Iraq.

Harry, you're a fucking moron slave
by expert_40
Feb 26th, 2008
07:35:22 AM

"Let's say if John McCain gets elected."

I despise ideologues, Harry. I despise them on both sides, because they truly don't know how stupid they sound when they let ridiculous statements like that escape their mouths. They don't understand how much of a slave they are, listening to others to know what to believe in. Sheep.

First of all, there's a reason why the military in this country is the best it's been since WWII. IT'S ALL VOLUNTARY. There's a saying we have in the Marine Corps: U Signed the Mother-fucking Contract.

The draft will never be reinstated, and for people to even insinuate it would be is ideological bullshit. Especially if they insinuate John McCain would do so. ESPECIALLY if they say "if he gets elected" like that gives him the power to do so without consent of Congress.

Harry, for the love of God, for someone who claims to love things like individuality and open-mindedness, you're a sheep who's only open-minded to his own beliefs.

Open your fucking eyes, stop inundating every word you write with your ideology and free your mind from slavery. Politics should be about voting your consciences, voting for the best person, no matter what party they are, or what color or gender they are. That's the way Jefferson wanted it. Man, I thank God I'm not a devoted slave like you or Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken or Ann Coulter.

"Imagine if John McCain got elected," well, Harry, I know that freezes your heart, but I can think of scarier things than 4 years of a moderate who doesn't walk in lockstep with his party, who gets along with the Democrats and doesn't mind working TOGETHER for real change, instead of you know, just talking about this abstract thing, "change," like one of the other candidates. That being said, I haven't yet made up my mind (isn't it great to actually be able to use your mind instead of it being enslaved to the left or the right? I think it is) yet, but when I do, my conscience, not ideology will guide me. No political party tells me what to believe in or who to vote for.

We know you're a fucking slave, Harry. So, for the love of God, stop reminding us with every post you write.

But nevertheless, there is no denying the man loves movies in a way few other people do... and I have to admit that his joy and wonder is infectious: He has gotten me pretty jazzed up about a movie through his sheer enthusiasm more than once.

His is a deep abiding love that has seen him through some major trials, including the death of his mother, his near paralysis, and 20 years of state and federal Bush regimes –Eagle Scout Knowles is a Texan, but he’s no red-state cowboy… he’s one of those exotic lefties from the Democrat enclave of Austin.

At any rate, diabetes is a disease that demands a serious commitment to healthy living, and Mr. Knowles has not been known for that type of thing during his decade-plus in the public eye… but I’m a believer in “second acts”, and as someone who has struggled to stay trim for almost his entire life –and who recently ran his first 10k run in nearly 2 years, I wish him well as he embarks upon this significant lifestyle change.

Bonne Chance, Headgeek.

Part 1 in a 37 Part Series: The Wit and Wisdom of Gisele Bundchen

Gisele on Acting:

“It was not like I was taking myself seriously and being like, OK, now I'm going to be an actress and I'm going to do a Shakespeare movie.”

“I think it's better when you're natural, when you just do whatever you want, instead of doing classes where I see all these other people holding back because they've been trained with certain skills or techniques. I'm like, whatever.”

“I'm not an actress, you know. I don't know what's going on. And I'm supposed to be the villain.”

“There always are these nightmare people around. Ugh. Anyway, they're always bugging. And they did get some pictures of me. They're so stupid.”

Gisele and Lebron Leibowitz cover sets back race relations 70 years; Obama yet to comment

***

I have to admit, Hillary made me laugh

Her husband, however, is starting to get scary: As we feared, Bill is going f-ing mental!

***

Go Sens Go

(At this point, what else can you do but cheer them on and hope for the best?)

Three Games To Midnight


Wayne Scanlan plays Cassandra :

Beware, Sens Army !


Three games to avoid infamy

Wayne Scanlan

The Ottawa Citizen
Tuesday, April 01, 2008

The shock is not that a bunch of teams are scrambling for a playoff berth in the final days of the NHL schedule.

That's just hockey business as usual.

The shock is to find, on April 1, the mighty Ottawa Senators among those teams.

Securing an 11th-hour playoff spot? That was always the patter from below, the noise of mice and their scurrying little feet trying to make a meal out of year-end table scraps.

Hockey's aristocracy -- and the Senators have been among them for the past four seasons -- were more concerned with the loftier business of resting their stars and aligning their talent for playoff detail.

Fine tuning a big machine for the bigger days head.

Let the middle class of the league fight to the death in the dying days of an 82-game schedule.

Well, welcome to the middle class, Ottawa. See how the other half lives.

It comes down to this for the Senators -- finish strong in the final three games, beginning with tonight's vital game against the physically battered Montreal Canadiens at Scotiabank Place -- or risk being associated with one of the biggest collapses in NHL history.

"It's not anything we're thinking about," says defenceman Chris Phillips, of the possibility of Ottawa missing the playoffs for the first time since 1996.

They would be thinking about it if it were to happen -- because no one would let them forget it.

The Senators would go down with baseball's 1964 Philadelphia Phillies and other infamous meltdowns late in the season.

For the first three months of the season, the Senators were the best team in the East, if not the best in the entire NHL.

When the Senators defeated the Detroit Red Wings in a January game, there were those who claimed the Senators were the class of the league.

By then, their mortality was already showing. Defensive mistakes were leading to big goals. The goaltending was an issue, whether Martin Gerber or Ray Emery was in net.

(They were both tardy -- Emery getting to practice; Gerber getting back into position after a save).

The captain, Daniel Alfredsson, got hurt, and he continues to play hurt. As the losses piled up, the team's confidence slipped away.

Ancient history, says Senators general manager and head coach Bryan Murray, using every ounce of his guile and experience to hold this thing together, to hold his own cool while the media pile on.

"This week," Murray says, "is all I can concern myself with."

It's concern enough for the entire team. For all of the so-called Sens Army that supports them in the stands and on the street.

It comes down to this: three games, all against divisional rivals (Montreal, Toronto, Boston). If Ottawa can win two of three, it has nothing to worry about until the first round of the playoffs begins. But if the Senators lose two of three games in regulation, they may have to worry about Washington or Carolina squeezing them out.

As Murray reminds us, this microscopic examination of a frightening scenario is hardly Ottawa's alone. Other teams currently just below, and even just above, Ottawa in the standings are also living dangerously.

Those teams, though, didn't start out with a 15-2 record to start the season. Those teams weren't 25-8-4 two days after Christmas.

Still, it's too early to fully dwell on how far the Senators have fallen because there remain three games to break the fall. Three games to get it right after so much went wrong.

After 79 games, the defending Stanley Cup finalists have given up an astounding 240 goals against -- more than any team in the East except Atlanta, Tampa Bay and Toronto. Not exactly the kind of company a team wants to keep.

The Senators haven't given up this many goals in a season since the post-expansion season of 1995-96, when a four-year-old Ottawa franchise surrendered 291 goals while finishing last overall in the NHL with 18 victories and 59 defeats.

"We're trying to stay positive," Phillips says.

Thanks for the reminder. Let's not dwell on how miserably things have gone when there are three precious games left to create a do-over in the postseason.

There is hope, and it comes draped in bleu, blanc et rouge.

The Canadiens, still trying to nail down first place in the Northeast Division, have had a hard time with the Senators this season. Already losers of five of the seven meetings, Montreal has been ravaged with injuries lately.

Captain Saku Koivu and top defenceman Michael Komisarek are out. So is defenceman Francis Bouillon.

Everything is there for the Senators to take a giant step toward a playoff spot, with a single win against a rival it owns on home ice.

"There's no sense getting in the playoffs if you can't win some games to get in the playoffs," Murray says.

"So, let's do it."

Last season at this time, the Senators had a "magic" about their play, says the coach.

Minus the magic, the Senators hope some old fashioned hard work might be the answer.

It's how the working classes deal with their problems.

Subscribers can read previous columns by Wayne Scanlan at ottawacitizen.com . He can be reached at wscanlan@thecitizen.canwest.com.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2008

Montreal Delenda Est !

All Out of Bubblegum

If you recognize that cryptic title as the tail end of a movie line, then like me, you probably had your mind blown by a John Carpenter 1980s classic.

I watched They Live again recently, and it is every bit as awesome as the A.V. Club would have us believe it is it is.

It features perhaps the craziest most balls-out street fight I've ever seen. Keith David and Hot Rod go at it like a couple of rabid dogs over their differing perspectives on eyewear:



If there was any justice in this world Roderick Toombs would be a genre superstar on par with Kurt Russell.

***

Other odds and Sods

I was on the fence over whether Obama deserved plaudits for "the speech"

Then I read Hitchens:

But is it "inflammatory" to say that AIDS and drugs are wrecking the black community because the white power structure wishes it? No. Nor is it "controversial." It is wicked and stupid and false to say such a thing. And it not unimportantly negates everything that Obama says he stands for by way of advocating dignity and responsibility over the sick cults of paranoia and victimhood.

As usual, he is right. Sorry, Barry. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

***

Guaranteed to give Cherniak an aneurism:

Lionel Chetwyn's History of the Trudeau Era

Yes, Virginia, There Are Commies

So says Zombie of San-Francisco-based Zombietime:

The communists are still here, and they're just as dangerous as they ever were, and have not relinquished their goal of overthrowing the United States and bringing an end to the capitalist system. And the reason I'm aware of this fact perhaps more than the typical person is that I often attend anti-war rallies, which is where communists really come out of the woodwork. In fact, not only are many of the people at these rallies up-front communists, but the rally organizers -- groups like ANSWER and World Can't Wait -- are themselves communist organizations. I'd even go so far as to venture that the entire anti-war protest movement has been completely taken over by communists.

Not pseudo-communists. Not people whom I'm insulting by casting an outdated epithet at them. Not people who in all innocence have some overlap with communist philosophy. Not mere left-wingers. Communists. And I'm tired of being afraid to lay it on the line and call it as I see it. I know history very well, and communism is a failed ideology that has only brought misery and oppression wherever it has triumphed. There. I've said it.

So, since when is it forbidden to mock one's ideological opponents? If the Rethuglicans can poke fun at the Demoncrats and vice-versa, why can't I taunt the communists by calling them by their least favorite word, commies? Who exactly could I be offending here -- except for the communists themselves? And if they're imaginary, then I'm not offending anyone, right?

What follows is a disturbing little photo essay, featuring the bottom-feeders from A.N.S.W.E.R and other assorted radical leftist malcontents, and at the end, Zombie concludes:

Now, to be frank, I don't think that these up-front kind of communist groups have any real chance of success at actually overthrowing the American system by force. They're almost buffoonish in their obviousness. But who I really do worry about are the "stealth communists," who introduce Marxist thought and collectivist philosophy into academia and mainstream entertainment without announcing what they're doing. These much more clever communist ideologues follow (knowingly or not) the writings of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian communist theorist who proposed infiltrating the schools and the media so as to subtly indoctrinate generations of youngsters, eventually paving the way for a "soft revolution" once a tipping point is reached in society. Already, Marxist thought patterns have become so standard in American mainstream cultural discourse that most people don't even know they're mimicking communist slogans.

But that's a different essay altogether.

There are legions of well-meaning principled anti-war protesters who believe in democracy, the rule of law, and the values that form the foundation of our society... I just think some of them should seriously consider whom they are making common cause with when they choose to participate in marches organized or sponsored by anti-democratic/revolutionary groups.

Something to ponder the next time you consider strapping on the ol' paper-mache head and joining the costumed capering performance artists prancing around an anti-war march.

Iraq Five Years On:

I just watched No End In Sight, the Academy Award nominated documentary about the Iraq war. It's a remarkable film, and will no doubt bolster the already robust case that the people that sent American troops into Iraq really had no plan (or at the very least, a severely flawed plan) and no clue of what to do once they had won the war.

My guts were in knots watching the anguish on the face of the former Colonel and CPA official talk about how his Iraqi counterparts greeted Jerry Bremer's de-Ba'athification order and the disbanding of the Iraqi army with chagrin and disbelief. No wonder. The movie point to those two measures, among others, as catalysts for the Iraqi insurgency and while this is probably an oversimplification, it is obvious in hindsight that no good could come from firing a million able-bodied Iraqis from their jobs and setting them loose on the streets with weapons within reach.

The movie has its flaws, of course, and it must be viewed with a critical eye --nary a mention is made of the animals that came to call themselves Al-Qaeda in Iraq, for example, and the Iranian infiltration is also glossed over. The eye-rolling and smugness of Obama's now shitcanned policy advisor Samantha Power becomes tiresome, particulary when during an interview she smirks annoyingly as she offers an anecdote about a Lebanese diplomat referring "bullets in the eyes" of American representatives -- botching it, according to my wife, who knows the actual expression in Arabic.

It is particularly tragic to think that some of the logical measures advocated in those early days and weeks are only now, five years on, being implemented in that tortured land with almost startling success, those ideologues who opposed them (Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld) having been consigned to ignominy, and the dustbin of history.

For what it is worth, I think this gets the Iraq narrative right, even though the tinfoil hat brigade will still squeal “it's all about oil!"

If that is the case, my only question is

What the HELL happened?


***

9-2?

Way to run up the score, jerks!

Did Probert feed some poor bombardier his jersey too?

I'm kidding. Classy move by some NHL greats to play road-hockey with the boys.

Muy Blanco


I don’t like Anne Coulter most of the time, but every once in a while, she writes something like this piece about Elliot Spitzer, and I can't help but chuckle.

One shudders to imagine the sepulchral gloom pervading the Spitzer home this week. At least Hillary would liven the place up with some lamp-throwing.

***

I was recently directed to this site, which offers a helpful anthropological primer designed to assist “ethnic” people in their dealings with Caucasians, ostensibly by offering insights into the habits, beliefs cultural practices and customs of the caucasoids with whom they must share the planet.

I decided to peruse this site thoroughly and see how many of these articles apply to me in order to discover how white I actually am, relative to other crackers.

Turns out I am moderately white.

How did I figure this out? I deployed all my grade 12 math skill to come up with a mathematical formula I call the Whiteness Quotient. How does it work?

Step one: Get over yourself, honky.

Step two: Read each of the entries in this blog, and as you go, make note of how many apply to you, how many could apply to you somewhat, or in some circumstances, and how many are completely foreign to your experience.

Step three: Deal with your reality – You are a hopeless cliche

Step four: Divide number of positive responses by number of total items (currently 90 or so, but they are constantly adding new articles), giving half marks for an equivocal or noncommittal response. That will give you your whiteness quotient.

I have created the following scale of whiteness:

0.0-0.9 low risk of blancmange
0.1-0.29 somewhat prone to caucasianisms
0.3-0.49 Moderate WASPishness
0.5-0.69 Significant hipster contamination
0.7-0.99 Full blown whitey douchebaggery


My Whiteness quotient is: 0.297 ... I have been found to have trace elements of Donnie Osmond:



***

I don't know what the creepiest website out there is, but I know photoshop disasters sure creep me out! How about you?

Alistair Cooke

Most people know Alastair Cooke as the host of Masterpiece Theatre, but I'll always think of him as the author of the book that first kindled my interest in American History, the companion tome to his famous 1970s miniseries of the same name: Alistair Cooke's America.

Cooke was a journalist who spent his years chronicling life in the U.S. with his American Letters. He lived through and reported on the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam and Watergate, and was only yards away from RFK when he was assassinated in 1968.

When he first arrived in the US in the 1930s, Alistair Cooke met the famous jurist and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Holmes, who was a young Union officer during the Civil War, had once met Abraham Lincoln (he called the President a fool for standing up in battle).

So until he died at age 95 in 2004, when Alastair Cooke met a young person he was fond of saying "You have just shaken the hand of a man who shook the hand of a man who shook hands with Lincoln."

Cooke had a long and distinguished career as a media personality, but perhaps the ulitmate tribute to this cultural giant is that one of the best recurring parodies that Sesame Street did was based on his show:



Oh yeah, and his bones were stolen after his death by criminals involved in the illegal body-part trade. Yuck!

***

An Irish Blessing for Saint Paddy's Day:

May your shillelaigh be all knotted with boils

OK, you got me...It's from the Aristocrats.

Chuck Norris For President

...OF IRAQ

"Truthfully, I didn't know who he was. I asked the Americans, and they said he was a great fighter, and that's why they named me after him. They showed me a video, and it's true, he's a great fighter" said police trainer Mohammed Rasheed.

***

The Ottawa Citizen on Campus Totalitarians:

If you want to see totalitarianism in action, you don't have to travel overseas to some impoverished, politically backward society. Just head over to York University in Toronto.The face of totalitarianism is one Kelly Holloway, president of York's graduate students' association. It was she who pushed for the cancellation of a public debate on abortion. The event had been booked and the fliers printed, but it never happened. "This debate, over whether or not women should be able to have an abortion, is not acceptable in the student centre," said Ms. Holloway. Not acceptable in the student centre? Abortion is among the most controversial issues anywhere. Theologians, ethicists and doctors - not to mention ordinary people - have been wrestling with abortion for many years. Even though abortion is widely available, there is still no philosophical consensus on the morality of killing a fetus.

But Kelly hath decreed that the matter endeth here! Surely this closes the discussion?

Er, no. I'm afraid it ain't over, Kelly

It's good that York University started acting like a university again!

The People - and by "People", I Mean Celebrities - Have Spoken!



Jessica Alba: I would like to see, um, uh cleaner earth for... my child, that I'm bringing into the world very soon.

Done! Obama has already promised that all commercially available potting soil will be required by legislation to contain at least one quarter loam, one quarter leaf mold, and no more than one part per hundred bacterial contaminants, excluding pig and cow excrement!

Ryan Philippe: I think it's time for change... I want a better future for my children.

Yes! Obama will push congress to legislate more change... up to 10 million additional quarters and 5 million additional dimes will be produced by the United States Department of the Treasury every year during an Obama presidency!

Some attractive black woman: I would like our environment to be safe

No problem! Obama has already arranged funding for Al Gore's next movie: An Inconvenient Truth II: Electric Boogaloo

Some attractive hispanic woman: Esto es nuestro America, mi America, tu America

Por supuesto! Viva Obama, el commandante en jefe! viva el socialismo!

Guy who got punched: Someone to actually make a difference in my generation

Obama: People try to put us d-down (Talkin' 'bout my generation!)

Hip guy in interracial couple: I would like to see us in a world without fear

Indubitably! Obama will ask congress to introduce legislation outlawing boogey-men, as well as their more rare variant, bogey-men.

Attractive hispanic woman again: Basically, ooommm, I want the war to end

Obama: War is oooover, if yooou want it

Jessica Alba again: I would like the world to think highly of our amazing country

You got it! Obama has pledged to pursue aggressive diplomatic and/or military action against anyone who does not think highly of the U.S.

Another attractive black woman: I think the thing that inspires me most about Obama is he really is going to be the President of the United States, you know, he's not going to be the president of the top ten percent, or the president of the most powerful corporations, or the president of the most powerful lobbyists, he's going to be our President, he's going to speak for us, cuz we put him there

Obama refuses to be president of the top ten percent, the lobbyists, and the corporations. Immediately following his inauguration, he will have those three groups expelled from the country. Unfortunately, numerous entertainers and hollywood types will need to relocate, since they fall into that first category.

John Leguizamo: That's what Obama is about... unity to this country, and changing America's face to the world

Russia: America, have you had some work done?
America: You noticed!
China: America, you look just fabulous! Who's your surgeon?
America: Dr. Birnbaum... he's in Beverly Hills

George Lopez: Obama es el cambio, que representa esperanza

Obama: Dos cervezas por favor

Will.I.am: This is my America, your America, our America

It's Obama's America, we only live there

Woman of colour: And he stands for... not just black people, but all people... uh, he's almost like a revivalist...

Obama: Hallelujah!

Woman of whiteness: I believe in Barack Obama, because he believes in us

Actually, Obama believes in you because you have the good judgment to believe in him!

***

My favourite two comments on the videocracy site:

if this wasn't made by private citizens, it would legitimately qualify as propaganda, right?

and

...those least affected by any particular administration (the wealthy) are demanding change. How inspiring.

The nature of censorship

Steve Paikin has a great show. Here he discusses Bill C-10 and the limits of censorship with Len Rudner, Rebecca Shechter, Jon Kay, and Charles McVety.

I find one part very revealing: about halfway through where Rebecca responds to Charles about his opinion on what is in bad taste and offensive (and his right not to have to pay taxes for this type of stuff) "YOU have a problem, Canadians don't have a problem" to which Steve Paikin says "Rebecca, you think he is the only guy in the whole country who has a problem with this?"

Rebecca's freudian slip speaks to the reaction that some otherwise very nice and reasonable people have when confronted with a guy like Charles McVety, who tends to speak in language very alien to progressives, using terms like judgment, decency and morality when making his points. They marginalize him because his point-of-view sometimes appears to be bizarre, reactionary, and completely outside the "mainstream", hence her attitude: of course a bible-thumper like McVety is going to object to an entirely reasonable proposition.

And yet, notwithstanding the alien "morality" rhetoric, his point is solid: McVety is simply saying that as a general rule, the government should not be empowered to decide what movies get made, but that it is the arbiter of taste when it comes to deciding which movies get funded; a proposition you may not agree with, but an entirely legitimate viewpoint.

Jon Kay, the journalist who speaks the language of "the mainstream", makes a valid point too: As a free-speech advocate, he doesn't like the idea of government mandarins making decisions of any kind relating to censorship, whether it is deciding what movies get funded, or what he can and can't say. As an opponent of Human Rights Commissions as they are currently run, he also thinks that people need to "toughen up and lighten up" when it comes to getting offended and seeking redress through quasi-judicial bodies.

Len Rudner disagrees with him on technical grounds, i.e. the HRCs do a good job of screening out the vast majority of "nuissance complaints", so therefore they are not a problem... although I don't see how this supposed bureaucratic efficiency justifies their existence if it is the principle they are functioning under that is being questioned.

I'm increasingly coming around to the Jon Kay/Ezra Levant/Mark Steyn point-of-view of free speech absolutism, not because I am in favour of unfettered free speech (and incidentally, I am not in league with neo-nazis, notwithstanding what someone like Warren Kinsella might contend), but because I believe our society is already on a slippery slope when the state starts going completely in the opposite direction, "sanctioning" and approving public debate. This type of state control is something I think will end up being far worse than "too much freedom" in the long run.

Rebecca Schecter has a funny viewpoint: she is in favour of censoring hate speech, but not "smut", because she has a vested interest in preserving that particular freedom (the freedom to promote filth, or whatever you want to call it). In other words, she is holding two contradictory viewpoints, and attempting to rationalize her positions with some dubious logic. At least, I wasn't convinced... you can watch the video and judge for yourself.

Ms. Schecter is far from the only person to display this kind of paradoxical logic. A couple of days ago, Jon Kay wrote an article about Kelly Holloway, a detestable functionary in the student government at York with a bright future as a censorship commissar:

I've been writing a lot lately about free speech. My view on the subject is pretty basic: You have to tolerate the speech you hate in order to guarantee protection for the speech you love. Once you go down the road of ideologically motivated censorship, it never stops: Government hate-speech laws that are designed to shut up neo-Nazis eventually get used to harass legitimate commentators like Mark Steyn.

Of course, censorious activists and lawmakers never actually concede they are engaged in "censorship." Invariably, they try to argue that the speech they are targeting is so offensive as to not even constitute legitimate expression. Consider, for instance, what has been going on at York University, in Toronto. Here's a snippet from a March 5 news item in The Excalibur, a York University newspaper:

"A planned debate on abortion rights at York University’s Student Centre was canceled less than three hours before it was scheduled to begin. At an emergency meeting on Feb. 28,members of the Student Centre Board of Directors ... voted unanimously to cancel the debate that was to be held later that day ... Student Centre vice-chair Kelly Holloway said the debate was cancelled because it was an equal rights issue. 'The reason is that it’s an equity concern for the Student Centre. Having a debate over whether or not women should be able to choose what to do with their own bodies is tantamount to having a debate about whether or not a man should be able to beat his wife,' Holloway said. 'The issue is violence against women, and women in this country have a right to choose what they do with their bodies. They have a right to have an abortion, and we don’t want to validate a debate that wants to threaten that right.'"

According to Holloway, in other words, the millions of pro-life Canadians who would presume to voice their objection to abortion do not have "valid" viewpoints. They deserve to be shut up because all they're doing is expressing de-facto threats against women, akin to urging spousal violence.

What's interesting is that, on another issue dear to her left-wing heart, Halloway is quite capable of sounding like a free-speech purist. Just two weeks ago, Holloway signed her name to a Feb. 21, 2008 letter complaining that the university's decision to ban anti-Zionist "Israeli Apartheid" activities on campus is "a blatant violations of democratic freedoms of speech and dissent." The letter also goes on about the "democratic context of the public university" and asserts that "universities are places where discussions and debates about difficult geo-political questions should be promoted, not stifled."

So what is the confused Ms. Holloway — a censor or a free-speech champion? Both and neither. Rather, she is a symbol of the basic human instinct to permit speech we agree with while shutting up one's opponents — and then finding some tortured logical argument to reconcile the two. The only thing unusual about Holloway is her public hypocrisy. She is a perfect example of why vesting the power to censor in politically correct mandarins — be they from Ottawa or a student government — is always a bad idea.

The Schecter and Holloway cases are merely anecdotes, to be certain, but they are important signposts: In essence, what we are seeing is the gradual de-normalization and deligitimization of fairly mainstream Christian viewpoints in the public domain, under various banners. I say: free speech for all.

***
Update:

Wow, link from Steynonline.com... I guess I better do a better job proofreading my rantings if I'm going to be getting visitors of that calibre.

Explain this please:



Seriously, what the Christ is this? The annoying little macarena-style dance and jingle in the ads from a few years back were bad enough. They tended to put me in a bad mood when they came on TV. But now this latest batch of ads takes it one step further, with strange auditions featuring abrasive dorks of various ethnicities who can't even get the jingle right. How is this supposed to sell the product?

And don't even get me started on this guy:



The feelings this particular commercial bring up in my are, in order:
Surprise, bewilderment, contempt, and finally, shock and anger right at the end when he yells.

Now my stomach feels all upset. I think I'll go take some Tums or Rolaids.

Never Count the Clintons Out

Hey, wouldn't it be something if it turned out Obama lost Ohio because some political hack from north of the border blabbed to the media about a supposed conversation between campaign officials and Canadian diplomats concerning NAFTA?

And just think, some conspiracy types say the Yanks are the ones always messing with our elections!

***

Chris Hitchens says: Oratory? They are just a bunch of cliches, people!

El Cid Campeador

When I was young --like maybe 10 or 12 -- I remember watching a movie about some cool knight named Rodrigo who went around Spain getting into fights with everyone. He fought a bunch of Moors (Muslims living in Spain), but refused to hang them after he beat them. This led to him getting mad respect from them and getting called "Cid" which meant "Lord". He fought his girlfriend's dad and killed him, which kind of put a damper on their relationship, as you can imagine. He fought fellow spaniards, he fought African invaders... he even fought the law, but the law won, if you can believe that.

This was of course Anthony Mann's EL CID, starring my main man Chuck Heston in the title role, and the lovely Sophia Loren as Chimene, the love of his life.



Well, when I found out that they were releasing this bad boy on DVD, I just had to get myself a copy. I watched it again this week for the first time in twenty years.

Is the movie as good as I remember it being as a twelve year old? I'm happy to write that it is.

Not only did I find it hugely entertaining, I would actually say it stands head and shoulders above some of the other gargantuan historical epics from that era (the Fall of the Roman Empire, Cleopatra), and it compares favourably with the best of them, including Spartacus and Ben-Hur, two of my favourite films.

The tone is set at the very beginning of this film, when we are introduced to the main baddie played by Herbert Lom: the Fanatical Ben Yusuf, poster boy for the Jihad (11th century edition). Here he is going to town on the Emirs of Al-Andalus:

The Prophet has commanded us to rule the world. Where in all your land of Spain is the glory of Allah? When men speak of you they speak of poets, musicmakers, doctors, scientists.... Where are your warriors? You dare call yourselves sons of the Prophet? You have become--women! Burn your books! Make warriors of your poets! Let your doctors invent new poisons for our arrows--let your scientists invent new war machines! And then--Kill! Burn! Infidels live on your frontiers--encourage them to kill each other. And when they are weak and torn--I will sweep up from Africa--and the empire of the One God--the True God, Allah--will spread, first across Spain, then across Europe, then--the whole World!

How odd... how unfamiliar... Can you imagine any movie including that kind of character speaking dialogue like that nowadays? What a grotesque unrealistic caricature!

Uh, maybe not, actually. Although fictionalized, the character is based on Yusuf ibn Tashfin, a Berber Almoravid who invaded Spain in the 11th century seeking to conquer new territories for the Umma and bring orthodoxy and a puritanical version of islam to the muslims already inhabiting the peninsula, who had up to that point been busy doing silly stuff like creating a civilization, and preserving culture and knowledge.

Come to think about it that does seem familiar!

Of course, Ben Yussuf represents one side of the Islamic coin, and the presence of many honourable and noble Moorish characters in this movie, including Al Kadir and Moutamin, who were allies of the Cid and vassals of the Spanish King, reflects the reality of the time, just as the existence of moderate muslims is a reality today, notwithstanding the bad press the entire religion tends to get as a whole. Largely thanks to the Ben Yusuf types.

But lets be honest, here, you aren't going to watch this movie because you want a history lesson or treatise on relations between the religions in 11th century Spain, you are going to watch it because you want an old fashioned epic full of pomp and spectacle, romance and adventure.. and this flick delivers on all those counts. In fact, the climax of the movie is one of the most memorable bits of filmaking I have ever seen. It is the one scene in the movie that has stayed indelibly etched in my memory for the past 20 years.

Behold, the climax:


Tell me you don't get a shiver down your spine when the Cid rides through the gate and the organ begins to play!

A Unified Theory of Tarantino



Pretty entertaining short, but is this anything new? As a big fan of the video store clerk from Tennessee who influenced a generation, I appreciate that somebody actually went to the trouble of outlining and organizing every observation, stray thought and half-formulated theory that me, my friends and a legion of other drunken guys of my generation came up with in our rec rooms over a few beers.

Tarantino movies have been dissected to death by every movie geek who came of age in the nineties, so none of this is new. Tarantino is the fountainhead for post-eighties cinema, and will probably be remembered as a towering figure in the history of filmaking. That being said, however, I'm beginning to see that the law of diminishing returns applies even in the case of the guy who wrote and directed possibly the coolest film ever committed to celluloid.

I just saw Grindhouse and, it pains me to write this, Deathproof got tedious.

Not the whole thing, of course. QT is still too dynamic and imaginative to ever descend to hack-like levels of mediocrity, but it still feels lazy.

We know the formula by now... Cast one iconic, slightly-past-his-best-before-date genre actor as a lead character: Keitel, Travolta, Carradine, and in this case, Snake Plissken himself, Kurt Russell; surround with compelling, quirky supporting cast, preferably including at least one or two hot women (this flick has several babes-du-jour); be really self-referrential by casting people who have appeared in other Tarantino/Rodriguez movies as similar yet-not identical characters (step forward Rose McGowa, star of Rodriguez Grindhouse entry Planet Terror ), and insert liberal amounts of violence, genre aesthetics, pop culture references, and signature Tarantino Dialogue. Why screw with the formula? It works .

Except, this time, it didn't.

Not for me. Not completely, anyway.

If you are going to make the kind of dialogue-heavy movies that QT makes, you better make sure the dialogue is up to snuff. If it ain't, the talky bits can be a bit much. For the first time, I found myself viewing a Tarantino movie and thinking "Get on with it, already!". I watched in dismay as Tarantino descended into self-parody, with absurd parabolic profanity-laced riffs that contributed nothing to the plot and went absolutely nowhere. It wasn't that the characters were badly-written, it was more that at times they seemed to be working to arrest the plot, rather than propel it forward. Of course, this being Tarantino, he did manage to redeem himself with virtuoso action set-pieces and some compelling character work from Kurt Russell, among others, so the movie is still very much worth seeing, especially the parts where Stuntman Mike is onscreen.

It becomes very clear when you watch the Grindhouse special features on DVD that Quentin is a man still very much enthused and besotted by film and the art of filmmaking. I trust that for his next work --supposedly the long-awaited Inglorious Bastards, Tarantino will recover his footing and deliver a war flick that will cement his place among the giants of contemporary cinema.

Empty Suit in Need of Filling

Terrence Corcoran thinks November is a long time from now. Now that he is the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, very soon Obama is going to begin to come under much heavier fire, and eventually his followers won't be able to just shrug it off and go right back to spewing their same old vague platitudes about "change" and "inspiring people" --the kind of thing I have really enjoyed, since it has usually led to steam shooting out of both Bill and Hillary's ears. The continue to look on, incredulously, as everything they toss at Obama just slides right off of the media-applied teflon coating. By the time Hillary's run ends, both Clintons should be certifiable.

Already, there are signs that the honeymoon is over. Barry Obama's wife is taking hits for saying that for the first time in her adult lifetime, she is proud of her country and for whining about the student loans that paid for the ivy-league educations that enable her and her hubby to make a nice fat six-figure salaries. Even some of his acolytes have been forced to come to terms with the fact that he is not Jesus. Check out erstwhile Obama fluffer Chris Matthews beat the piss out of Kirk Watson



Embarrassing. Chris Matthews did the Obama campaign a favour. He gave them a bit of a preview of what is rolling on down the road towards them as the Republicans coalesce around their man and load up the rocketlaunchers. They better hand out some meatier talking points or else prevent starry-eyed goofballs like this from championing their man in the media.

***

After all the craziness of the Kinsella/Levant Blogwar of 2008, which I'm not going to rehash here, it is great to read something so genuinely thought provoking on such an important topic like this piece from Andrew Potter. On a not-entirely-unrelated subject....

In Slate, Christopher Hitchens does one of his trademark imolations on another religious target, and on this occasion I can't help but agree with his disdain for the Archbishop of Canterbury. Because what the Archbishop said was a disgrace :

just look at how casually this sheep-faced English cleric throws away the work of centuries of civilization:

[A]n approach to law which simply said "there's one law for everybody and that's all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts"—I think that's a bit of a danger.

In the midst of this dismal verbiage and euphemism, the plain statement—"There's one law for everybody and that's all there is to be said"—still stands out like a diamond in a dunghill. It stands out precisely because it is said simply, and because its essential grandeur is intelligible to everybody. Its principles ought to be just as intelligible and accessible to those who don't yet speak English, in just the same way as the great Lord Mansfield once ruled that, wherever someone might have been born, and whatever he had been through, he could not be subject to slavery once he had set foot on English soil. Simple enough? For the women who are the principal prey of the sharia system, it is often only when they are shipped or flown to Britain that their true miseries begin. This modern disgrace is deepened and extended by a fatuous cleric who, presiding over an increasingly emaciated and schismatic and irrelevant church, nonetheless maintains that any faith is better than none at all.

Williams should really consider giving up his position as putative head of the Anglican Communion.

CRAP

CRAP CRAP CRAP

Day Seven is delayed until next year

What the heck do we do until then?

Oh, and just to rub salt in the wound, today we find out that co-creator Joel Surnow is leaving the show

Surnow was the right-wing wingnut who is largely seen as being most responsible for 24s controversial "ends justify the means" ethos during its early seasons.

One of my favourite examples of this particular sensibility was at the begining of Season 2, where Jack, having executed a police informant in cold blood, asks outraged CTU Director George Mason for a hacksaw so that he can decapitate the corpse in order to formulate an elaborate deception. When Mason protests Jack's drastic measures, the CTU agent rounds on him:

That's the problem with people like you, George. You want results, but you never want to get your hands dirty. I'd start rolling up your sleeves.

I can't help but think that with Surnow's departure, the show will lose a bit of its trademark ruthlessness and cruelty.

Five from Factory Records

I recently saw a really great movie about the heyday of Factory Records and the Haçienda in Manchester during the eighties called 24 Hour Party People. Before I saw the film, I had no idea what an important role the band New Order had played in supporting the iconic club.

While I'm a big fan of New Order's music, I never knew much about their history. I was only five when Ian Curtis died, so I didn't know the story of Joy Division and how it had reformed as New Order following Ian's suicide. It's really quite remarkable to listen to JD and NO songs back to back. The bands sound so different, and yet they consist of nearly all the same people. Of course, JD were post-punk, whereas New Order quickly transitioned to electronic and dance music, and Ian Curtis' vocals could not have been more different than those of Bernard Sumner, who never wanted to be a singer, and apparently only took on singing duties by necessity!

Apparently, there is a biopic about Ian Curtis out there -a 2007 film called Control, which has gotten good reviews -so I'll have to check that out next!.

Dead Souls
by Joy Division
Recorded 1979




Love Will Tear Us Apart
by Joy Division
Released 1980




Blue Monday
by New Order
Released 1983



Bizarre Love Triangle
by New Order
Released 1986




True Faith
by New Order
Released 1987