The Freshest

Nightmare

Last night saw one of the most shocking political upsets in recent American history. Somehow Republican Scott Brown defeated Democrat Martha Coakley in one of the most liberal states in the union, Massachusetts. Not even a last minute visit by Obama could save Coaksley’s bid and the results of her loss are only now beginning to be understood.

1. Scott Brown represents vote number 41 for the Republicans in the Senate. Now that the Democrats no longer have a filibuster proof sixty seat majority, they will face much stiffer opposition in getting bills passed.

2. As a result of this healthcare reform is once again dead in the water. As little as two weeks ago it seemed like a done deal, but somehow the insurance industry has pulled a full house and looks likely to come out victorious again. A watered down version may still pass, but for now even this seems unlikely. 2010 is starting to look alot like Hilary’s failed bid to fix healthcare in 1993

3. This is truly a sad irony as Brown will be filling the seat of the late Ted Kennedy. Ted once called universal healthcare the, “Great cause of my life,” and was easily the greatest advocate for universal coverage in the Senate.

4. If the Democrats can’t win a Senate race in Massachusetts, where/what can they win? The 2010 midterm elections could turn into a blowout if they are unable to reverse this tide.

5. The number one way to reverse this tide is to immediately switch to a laserlike focus on, “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.”

6. Barack Obama’s agenda is not seriously threatened but it is clear from his dropping poll numbers that something needs to change. The cerebral Obama needs to come down from his pedestal and play the Chicago politician he once was.

The World’s Coolest Subway Stations

I came across this link the other day and thought it was pretty interesting:

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/8346/subway-architecture.html

I’ve always been interested in urban planning (Big Ups to Sim City) and have recently become more interested in architecture. Somehow this website must have known this because they decided to publish pictures of the craziest designs for subway stations throughout the World. The above picture is of Solna Centrum station in Stockholm and it is probably my favourite one of the bunch.

Sidenote: THE TTC MADE THIS LIST?!!??!?!?!? At first this shocked me but in reality Museum subway station is pretty cool when you think about it.

Essential Reading from Fareed Zakaria

http://www.newsweek.com/id/229996

Editor of Newsweek and one of the foremost geopolitical thinkers of his generation, offers his thoughts on the consequences of the recent events in Detroit. His comparison of the attempted Christmas Day attack to the events leading up to September 11th is particularly enlightening.

Top 10 in Arts of the Decade

Time Magazine has decided to jump on the media bandwagon and publish their top list for the best movies, TV shows, books, and plays of the last decade. Below is the link to their list starting with TV shows.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1949837_1948607,00.html

I am only going to comment on the TV shows list, because in my opinion TV has surpassed film as the best storytelling medium our culture has. The serial drama is now my favourite form of entertainment for its ability to tell a story longer than your typical 2 hour movie. That being said I really want to see The Hurt Locker and read Never Let Me Go. As for plays, I have virtually zero interest. This is a 19th century form of entertainment, and I don’t know of a single play that can match some of the movies or TV shows listed in terms of sheer emotional entertainment.

1. The Wire
Hard to argue with this pick. The Wire is the most complete TV series ever filmed. It somehow presents a dysfunctional American city in its entirety and still manages to make it entertaining. Although not my favourite show of the last decade I would still call it the best.
 

2. Lost
The first season of Lostmay be the greatest television series season of all time. That being said, the series should not rank this high on the list. The period in between the 2nd to 4th season where the writers dragged their feet to collect pay cheques should relegate this show to below the top 5. However, JJ Abrams might still have an absolutely mind-blowing finale in store for 2010.

3. Freaks and Geeks
I have not seen this show but have heard great things. The names involved (Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, Jason Segal) read like a who’s who of today’s comedy landscape. This makes it even more remarkable that the show aired in 1999-2000 and was promptly cancelled.

4. Arrested Development
Single best comedy show of the decade and in my opinion more influential than Freaks and Geeks. It is still one of the great shames of the decade that this show was relegated to Fox and canceled after under 3 seasons.

5. Mad Men
To put Mad Men ahead of the Sopranos is to say that your favourite Paul McCartney band was Wings. The show has great potential but it is not nearly as entertaining as most Sopranos episodes.

6. The Office (UK and U.S.)
In my opinion the most influential comedy of the past decade. The mockumentary style that Ricky Gervais perfected is becoming more and more mainstream in both TV and movies. I think the British version is still the best but the fact that I have to express that is credit enough to the US version.

7. Deadwood
Like Freaks and Geeks I never saw this show.

8. The Sopranos/Survivor (Tie)
Both shows should be ranked higher on this list. Survivor gave birth to the reality TV craze that continues to dominate network TV to this day. It also had Richard Hatch, one of the greatest TV villains of the decade. As for The Sopranos it remains my favourite TV show of all time. Maybe if I grew up poor and a minority, I would relate more to The Wire, (Thanks Mom and Dad) but for me you can’t touch The Sopranos. I am willing to admit that I have fully cried during some episodes of The Sopranos. That is how good the show is and that is how deeply you find yourself caring for the many times evil main characters.

9. The Daily Show
Forever changed TV news. Makes it hard to take serious news anchors like Brokaw and Williams seriously. Jon Stewart seems smarter than any real anchor and he is infinitely more entertaining to the MTV generation.

10. Battlestar Galactica
I have had girlfriends in the past decade so as a result I have not found myself watching this show. Jokes aside though one of my roommates in university was hugely into this show. He was also an expert on all things science fiction, which for me means that this show is probably pretty good.

Sidenote: Wall-E as the movie of the decade?!?!?!!!! Are you f#%!ing kidding me!!! I have not seen it and have heard it is actually pretty good, but movie of the decade status is just insane. From what I understand it is an animated movie about a virtually mute robot who discovers a post-apocalyptic society. I also have heard that there is great metaphorical significance in the film and that it is very timely considering recent events. That is great but do you really mean to tell me that an animated movie with very little dialogue was the best Hollywood came up with this decade? Fuck you Richard Corliss.

Dead Man Running

This time last year Gordon Brown was a dead man walking. As we approach 2010 he has risen to at least purgatory but most of the media continues to write his obituary. Despite the utter lack of freshness in the New Labour movement, and the presence of a relatively charming opposition leader in David Cameron, the dour Mr. Brown continues to fight what most see as inevitable. With an election coming at some point between March and May of 2010 Gordon Brown may pull off the unthinkable and somehow find a way to win.

In the past year Mr. Brown has been written off so many times that you would not fault an outside observer for wondering if he was still the leader of Great Britain. As recently as April he was twenty points behind Mr. Cameron in the polls and was almost forced from his job in June. In the aftermath of Labour’s disastrous performance in the European elections in June there were daily calls for his head from within his own party. Brown was able to sidestep these problems only to find himself mired in the expenses scandal that has poisoned British politics for the better part of a year. Despite all of this the latest polls show him just nine points behind Mr. Cameron nationally. This seems surreal but people must begin to accept the real possibility that Gordon may live to fight another day.

Gordon Brown is not Tony Blair. He is the Abbot to Blair’s Costello or perhaps more aptly the Cassio to Blair’s Othello. A useful comparison for Canadians is that Mr. Brown is Paul Martin and Mr. Blair is Jean Chretien. Blair and Brown were rivals in the mid 1990’s for the leadership of the Labour party, just as Martin and Chretien were rivals for the leadership of the Liberal party earlier in the decade. In both cases the better politician won and then quickly offered his rival control of his nation’s economy. In the ensuing years both Paul Martin and Gordon Brown contributed a great deal to the political success of their respective bosses through their competent overseeing of economic growth. When the time came for the two of them to assume the throne they both faltered and were haunted by mistakes made by their former bosses. Mr. Martin was defeated in 2004 by a resurgent Conservative movement led by Stephen Harper and it is virtually written in the history books already that Mr. Brown will be defeated by a resurgent Conservative movement led by David Cameron in 2010. The comparison is in fact striking and I congratulate myself for identifying it. As for that Costello, Othello stuff I should let you all know that I am a rapper at heart. (Just one who knows his Shakespeare)

So can Mr. Brown do what his Canadian counterpart was unable to do and turn the tides against the Conservatives? Maybe, but at this point it remains unlikely. Since Tony Blair defeated John Major in the 1997 election and sealed the lid on the Thatcher Era, Labour has been in power for twelve consecutive years. This is an incredibly long time for one party to be in power in virtually any stable democracy outside of Japan. For Brown to pull off the impossible, he will still need to have the stars align for him in several ways.

First off Mr. Brown will need to go back to the Scottish street fighter he was at the beginning of his political career. His recent populism in limiting banker’s bonuses has shown misguided glimpses of this but he will need a lot more to win. Secondly Mr. Brown will need to pull to within five points in the polls leading up to the election. If he can do this he might be able to rely on Labour’s massive majority to deny Mr. Cameron the ability to form a government. Finally he will need Mr. Cameron to slip up, not hugely, but enough to make a difference. This is far from outside the realm of possibility when it comes to David Cameron and his ego. So there you have it, unlikely but not impossible, despite what most of the British and International press would have you believe. Regardless of all prognostications though it will take some miracles yet to keep this Labour man employed.

Black and White

I spent this Sunday afternoon watching the Toronto Raptors defeat the New Orleans Hornets 98-92. The game was fairly uneventful but I do have the following thoughts:

1. For those not from the Toronto area I should let you know that when the Raptors score 100 points everyone can redeem their ticket for a free piece of Pizza Pizza. With the clock ticking down and the Hornets having stopped trying it was still too much for one of the Raptors to score and give everybody in the crowd lunch. This made me furious. These millionaires can’t make the effort to feed the people who pay premium prices to watch them bounce a round ball. And don’t tell me it hurts the integrity of the game for someone to score uncontested at the end just to give the crowd pizza. Not when Tim Donaghy spent years officiating NBA games while also living a double life as a degenrate gambler.

2. The Raptors Dance Pak or the people who assemble it are a racist group. In a sport played predominantly by black men and on a team based in the most multicultural city in the World we have a “Dance Pak” made up almost entirely of white women. We seriously don’t have a single black girl on a basketball team’s cheerleading squad? Seriously? The above picture is only slightly less blonde then Tiger Wood’s harem. This needs to change.

3. The Raptors really need to hope that basketball’s Worldwide appeal continues to grow. Our team now includes a Spaniard, an Italian, and a Turk. Part of what drew them here is the amazing multicultural city of Toronto. With built in ethnic neighbourhoods Toronto is one of the best places for a European immigrant to come to live in. Compare this to other NBA cities like Houston or Atlanta and you can see why our team is increasingly white and European. In the same vein we will never be an appealing city to an African American who grew up in the Southern United States. Toronto is cold, different from home, and taxes are higher here. These are the reasons Tracy left, the reasons Vince left, and the reasons why Chris Bosh is going to leave at the end of the season.

The Harder They Fall

I was a Tiger Woods fan. We all were. Even if you pulled for other players, or didn’t like his arrogance, we all envied and respected his command of the most difficult of games. Beyond his godlike talents on the golf course he seemed to be a modern version of the classic American hero. Sure he was of mixed race and wore flashy Nike shirts but in many ways Tiger was the embodiment of one of the heroes of yesteryear. Unlike his contemporary peers, he never suffered from public scandal or went on TV to air out emotional confessions. In many ways Tiger Woods was cut from the cloth of Ward Cleaver or Gary Cooper. The strong, silent American male. A man who seemed to have it all and then some.

This public facade was shattered when last Friday Tiger crashed his luxury car outside of his Orlando mansion and changed his life forever. It reminded me of the scene at the start of Seven Pounds when Will Smith destroys his fairytale life with one simple lapse of judgment behind the wheel. At first we all hoped Tiger was OK and constantly hit refresh on our internet browsers to try and get the latest information. 10 days later and the sporting World’s brightest star has been destroyed by his own hubris.

Apparently the billionaire needed more than the Swedish supermodel and the adulation of millions. After rejecting his father’s advice and marrying before 30 he went on to treat the institution of marriage as a complete and utter sham. If the rumours are true he has been cheating on his wife since the year they were married and has been doing it with a rotation of white blondes. The latest one to come forward is a 36 year old porn star named Holly Sampson who has starred in such classics as Cheating Housewives 6 and MILF Date 3.

Despite all this I have no doubt in my mind that Tiger will bounce back from this scandal. One day in the not so distant future he will win that 19th major and pass Jack Nicklaus as the greatest golfer of all time. Not so long ago I looked forward to this day with great anticipation because for my generation Tiger is someone we have watched from the beginning. I can remember him winning the 1997 Masters, vividly, and seeing a sport and a belief system change in the course of a weekend. I can remember his dominating 2000 campaign when it did not seem farfetched that he might never lose another golf tournament. I remember Pebble and Augusta, St. Andrews and Torrey Pines, each adding another notch in the belt of this greatest of champions.

Little did we all know that Tiger was busy adding notches to another less noble belt. As the dreadful rumours continue to spread we can all rest assured that Tiger Woods was not the perfect specimen that the media presented him as. Not the image that we all gobbled up after years of being disappointed by our fallible heroes. People like Bill Clinton and Michael Jordan who had seemed and then had been revealed as too good to be true. We wanted Tiger to be non-human, he of the comic book hero name and the mental toughness of a robot. Before last week our biggest complaint with him was that he swore too often.

The one thing I find shocking in all this is how long the serial adulterer was able to live this lifestyle undercover. If not for a wrecked Escallade and a scared neighbour, who knows how long this might have gone on for. How was this possible in the era of Youtube and TMZ? To me the thing reeks of duplicity from several different groups including the media. Not even the famously private Woods could have carried on like this for this long, without some media people treating his philandering the way their 60’s counterparts treated the transgressions (Tiger’s word not mine) of JFK.

So the question remains what happens now? Will Tiger join the long list of American celebrities who apologize through a taped confessional with a television luminary (Apparently Oprah has made an offer). I doubt it, because as much as the suits at Nike and Buick must be pushing for this, it would be the opposite response I would expect from the super secretive Woods. I in fact think there is a chance that Tiger never comments on this whole episode. He might just carry on winning golf tournaments and just accept his now tarnished image in the public eye.

And one day he will hit 19 and become the greatest ever and one day after that he will win his last tournament, retire, and walk away from the public eye forever. I used to think that I would share this moment with my son/daughter and be able to say, “Remember this moment kid, there goes the greatest golfer the World will ever see.” Instead, I can now picture myself staring at the screen in silence, feeling a pang of regret but not wanting to immortalize to my kids a man so morally corrupt.

* I know this isn’t the most organized or cohesive of posts. These are just the ramblings of someone who recently lost one of their childhood heroes.