All show, and plenty of go

September 26th, 2007

Football was a lot of fun on Sunday night, especially the Dallas game where the Cowboys made fools of the Chicago Bears by running up a 34-10 victory on the strength of three interceptions; which are always fun, unless your favourite player happens to be the one throwing them.

The best part of the show was Terrell Owens, the new poster boy for the “performer first, athlete second” plague that continues to infest professional sports. Terrell Owens is a talented, productive, outspoken and controversial wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, and has a real knack for letting his mouth, and flamboyant touchdown celebrations, get him into all sports of trouble.

You may remember Owens as the player who was fined one week’s pay—a tidy $24,000—for scoring a touchdown, pulling a black marker out of his sock, signing the football, and passing it into the stands to his financial adviser. He was also fined $7,500 for taunting an opposing coach by mimicking the motion of a movie camera; and used a towel as a waiter might, when he served a football to the opposition after scoring his 100th touchdown.

Whatever he has done, it is obvious the fines he pays aren’t making a lick of difference. And why should they. Pay a person millions of dollars to play a game, and you can expect them to toss a few thousand back at you for the privilege of acting like an immature jerk from time to time. The beauty of watching a maniac like Terrell Owens is that he has the talent to back up his shenanigans. The guy is flat out amazing. He holds the NFL record for the most catches (20) in a single game, led the league in receiving touchdowns in 2001, 2002 and 2006; and put together five straight 1,000-yard seasons from 2000-2004. He also wrote a children’s book entitled “Little T Learns to Share.”

Terrell Owens brings the goods—like Barry Bonds.

Say what you want about Bonds, his drugs, his legacy and his controversies, but he has clobbered more home runs than anyone else in baseball. Period. There is no denying that. We might as well make drugs legal in professional sports. Science and technology being what it is, cheaters will always be one step ahead of those trying to catch them.

Drugs should not only be legal, but encouraged. Just imagine what a hoot it would be to see a yellow eyed, foaming at the mouth, jacked up, drug addled, 315lb freak with two per cent body fat step up to the plate, grunt once, and hit a ball so high it knocks satellites out of orbit. Just imagine how much fun Sunday would be if the NFL featured running backs spliced with rhino DNA, fed an all protein diet of raw meat and steroid gravy, washed down with energy drinks, strong coffee, and a few bee stings. I would buy a ticket to see that, and bring the family too.

Who wouldn’t? It’s all about entertainment, you see. Die hard fans will follow their favourite sports, teams and players no matter what. The real money lies in attracting the casual fan, and spotlight seekers such as Terrell Owens and the many others who are all show, and plenty of go, are the ones who are truly filling the stadiums. You might as well sit back and enjoy it.

Where’s Ed Sullivan when you need him?

September 19th, 2007

Years ago, when television was still black and white and Elvis Presley was still a skinny hick, there was a weird old man on TV every Sunday night named Ed Sullivan. With his hunched shoulders and nasal delivery, Ed was an odd duck, but it didn’t matter much. Television was so new back then you didn’t have to be beautiful to be a star.

Ed was the host of a variety program that brought music, comedy and a dizzying array of other entertaining acts to the viewing public each week. It was called The Ed Sullivan Show, and audiences ate it up like candy. The Ed Sullivan Show was a Sunday night staple in the 1950s and 60s, and the affable host was a respected star maker, because of the number of performers that became household names after appearing on his show.

He had a knack for identifying and promoting top talent, and often paid a great deal of money to secure that talent. Virtually every type of entertainment appeared on the program. Opera singers, rock stars, songwriters, circus acts, comedians and ballet dancers were all regularly featured.

Ed Sullivan brought the world to television viewers. Unlike many other shows at that time, Sullivan asked his acts to perform their music live, rather than lip sync to their recordings. He promoted country when it wasn’t cool, broke the colour barrier by promoting black acts, and had a knack for finding what the “youngsters” wanted to see, no matter how out of touch it made him look.

If only Ed Sullivan were alive today, because we need him now—more than ever. Television today has been assaulted by “reality TV”, a relatively new phenomenon where everyday folks are thrust into the limelight to fight for the spotlight. Some of it actually makes for compelling television, but the bulk of it is a bombardment in much the same way a manure spreader bombards a farmer’s field in the fall.

On any given night on television, seemingly average mullet heads can be found trying to survive in a hostile environment, trying to get rich, racing across the globe, or gobbling down horse intestines. You can watch them become a model, an idol, a comic, rich, married, popular, or all of the above. You can watch everything but talent.

The latest assault on television viewers is the new game show “Don’t Forget the Lyrics”, where ordinary citizenry can go home with million, provided they accurately guess the words to a selection of well-known songs. It might seem like a good idea, until the poor saps start singing, and you could swear a flock of geese were drilling holes into your skull.

Ed Sullivan would never have let this happen, and neither should we. Television should be a showcase for the talented, a place where the best of the best can be recognized, and duly appreciated. When Ed Sullivan brought Elvis, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Doors, James Brown, Tom Jones, and hundreds of others to a nationwide audience, you knew you were watching the best of the best.

Today’s viewers deserve the same courtesy. Instead of reality TV, we deserve quality TV and, right over here, I think Ed Sullivan would agree.

There is always a bigger fish

September 12th, 2007

There really are only two kinds of anglers in this world; those who catch the fish, and those who release them. Now, I enjoy a fresh fish dinner as much as the next person, perhaps more, but I’ve never been one to keep a lot of fish. Just a taste here and there is enough for me.

This summer, I had the good fortune to fish a lake near Kingston. It was supposed to be an angler’s paradise, full of all kinds of fish; big and small, fat and tall. The kid chewing tobacco at the gas station, the girl with the tight shirt scooping ice cream, the guy in the beer store, and the old gummer sitting outside of it, all told me so.

As I paddled out across the water, my thoughts drifted to the fish dinner I was going to produce that evening. My host, who doesn’t know his bass from a hole in the ground, was no help at all. He seemed distracted, disinterested, and the conversation somehow kept swirling back to ice cream, and how some people can really scoop it.

Undeterred in my mission, I fished every corner of that useless lake, under every dock and around every rock. I tried the weed beds, dead heads and lily pads. Nothing. At one point the wind died down, and I could hear laughter coming from the beer store. As it turns out, it was only a loon, who appeared to have no trouble catching his own fish dinner. I even followed the bird for a while, thinking he knew where the fish were, but it was fruitless.

Eventually, we reached the far end of the lake, and the public boat launch, which looked like it hadn’t been used in years, and I could certainly understand why at that point. Getting out for a stretch, I decided to try a few casts off the dock, along a line of weeds, where the water started to get deeper. Surely, this would produce fish. And it did! On about the third cast, a fish hit my lure like it hadn’t eaten since Red Fisher was alive. It fought and thrashed, as if it somehow knew the end was near. When I finally spotted the great whale, however, all hopes were dashed. It was a perch, an energetic little perch to be sure, but one so small you couldn’t set it on the dock, for fear it might fall through a crack.

My host, who found the whole scene rather comical, was drying his shirt on the dock; so that’s where I threw the fish, just to keep it safe, of course. It flopped around like a fish out of water (hence the expression) until my friend gently scooped it up, placed it oh so tenderly back into the water, and then shot me a look like I had just fire bombed his favourite orphanage.

The fish gave a couple little kicks and, for a split second, we both thought it was going to be fine; until a big black bass shot out from underneath the dock, and ate the miserable little thing in one lightning gulp. It was incredible.

Once the initial shock wore off, my friend was rattled by what happened, as if he had been cheated out of an act of kindness. For a moment, I was able to ape the motions of a sensitive human being, but I couldn’t hold it in, and started rolling around the dock, laughing like a cartoon loon. I assured my friend that everything he saw was normal, that there is always a bigger fish; but he didn’t start smiling again until I said we were headed home—for ice cream.

Be glad you’re not on the wagon

September 5th, 2007

For many people, the Labour Day weekend officially marks the end of summer; a time to put away the short pants and tank tops, and generally clean up your act. Other people prefer to ignore the subtle signs of fall. They wear shorts and bare feet until it snows, barbecue in the dark, and couldn’t clean up their act if you dipped them in detergent and hit them with a pressure washer.

I have one old friend who says fall arrives with the brrr months (Septemberrr, Octoberrr, etc.) and marks the occasion each year by switching from beer, over to any drink that doesn’t require lugging a cooler around. One year, he even went so far as to say he was “on the wagon”, using the old term to suggest he was avoiding the demon alcohol altogether for an unspecified length of time.

After recently hearing the story of the origin of the expression “on the wagon”, I told him I had no intentions of ever being caught on the wagon, or even near it, ever again. It seems, in turn of the century Ireland, when a condemned man had been sentenced to be hanged, he would be led to his place of execution in a horse drawn wagon. The man would stand in the wagon, with the hangman leading the horse. They would customarily stop at the local pub on the way to the place of execution, where the condemned man was permitted to drink one last pint. He would have his last pint before his death, with the hangman standing next to him at the bar. In true human compassion, the bartender was required to say, “Can I give him another?” to which the hangman would reply: “No. He’s on the wagon.”

When you take into consideration a story like that, it makes perfect sense to want to be off, rather than on, that wagon. No one says you have to abuse that privilege, but who in their right mind would ever want to be caught on the wagon. You only get one stop, for crying out loud.

There are those who have no respect for being off the wagon. These people should be avoided, like anyone trying to sell you a velvet painting, or the loudest person in a bus terminal, or anyone who says they love clarinet music. For some people, a tumble off the wagon takes them right back to the behaviours that put them on it in the first place.

One of the best cinematic examples of a person falling off the wagon, is the film “Leaving Las Vegas”. The chilling tale depicts Nicholas Cage falling so hard it rattles him. It is a compelling story, and not all that bad of a film, actually. It did win Cage the Academy Award, after all. Apparently, it isn’t easy to play sloshed. Lee Marvin won an Oscar for his work as a drunk in Cat Ballou, Burt Young did an expert job in the Rocky movies, and Dean Martin made a career of being off the wagon. Bad girl Lindsay Lohan is on her way, but still has a lot of work do to yet.

On the wagon or off, dragging a cooler or a corkscrew, or staring a pressure washer in the face; what is important is that, with summer’s light fading, falling leaves and cool night air, we can take the time to slow down and enjoy a good look at things—and maybe even slow that wagon ride down, whichever direction it happens to be headed.