Monday 18 March 2013

What is the best NHL logo--response

http://zorgreport.blogspot.ca/search/label/Sports%20-%20Hockey  (you have to scroll down)

( Well, I had meant to put this simply as a response to my own post.  However, googleminds does not allow more than a few phrases, so I have to go this way, and create a separate post.)

Man, did this post go viral, or what.   I got a lot of hits, but.  Only a few weeks after I posted it, I heard the guys on my “sports” radio station going over the same topic exactly.  Then lo,’ today I’m waiting in line at the supermarket, and I see the *cover story* is my topic—greatest uniforms—for the still relatively new Rogers Sportsnet magazine.  You’re welcome, mainstream media.  I think I even heard some bit of piped-in American media on this topic, too, but I can’t remember now.  Back in the day, a “magazine” would have some new idea to break, but the best Rogers Sportsnet could come up with was recycling mine.

Oh, it’s not an original idea, and it’ll come back again soon, but it’s nice to know I gave the mainstream media some ideas they’d otherwise be without and searching for like car keys under a brass rail. 

You could say, if you don’t like the blog, “No, dude, it’s just this unusually major coincidence,” but then you’d be faced with names and dates and this huge logic mountain to have to climb and get up over, and you’d need Lance on steroidal steroids to do that.

Anyway, whatever your perspective, it is an interesting object lesson in how the mainstream media, which always complains that the web and the blogosphere and so on have no credibility, are now beholden entirely to the very media they revile.  Mainstream “journalists” will often bemoan that webkids just repeat and retweet and don’t really have to ‘work’ like them.  I’m quite sympathetic to this mainstream media argument, really.  I do think that there’s such a thing as a journalist, but it’s becoming increasingly vestigial.  Take Mags Wente--holds a dinner party and writes about it and calls it work. Gets a hip replacement and it's "news." Take Christie Blatchford--Obie won't sleep with her and it's news.  Friend's in tough with a hockey rink and it's "news."  In fact, it could be that these so-called "mainstream" journalists were just the canaries in the coalmines.  By refusing actually to do any journalism, but rather have dinner parties and talk about dog parks, they inspired people to say, well, if that's what it is, I can do that, too, and better.
  These gals could get a job, but they don't have to--all they have to do is *just be right-wing enough.*  Brains checked at the door.  What a sad retroversion for women everywhere.
 
Anyway.
 
First of all, media and journalism is disappearing into partisan entertainment.  Second of all, there is no spectrum, owing to corporate mainstream media concentration, so if you want to work, you have not only to have Stalinist sensibilities, but to anticipate them.  And thirdly, media organizations and journalists themselves believe that they just don’t have the money or the time any more (in reality, they do) to actually do journalism, so they just end up like the boys at Rogers sportsnet, sitting at their computers reading my blog and riffing on it.  Back in the day, a Rogers sportsnet employee would get up and get out there and go find something to talk about.  Nowadays, s/he gets up in his/her underwear and has a coffee and scans the web for ideas to recycle—and his/her employers would probably fire him/her if she/he didn’t do exactly that--and come up with recycled pablum, pronto.  The very fact that Rogers Sportsnet would be recycling my ideas proves my point exactly.  Rogers could hire journalists, to do a job, but instead Rogers hires talking faces to. . .be talking faces reading me.

I know where I got the idea for the topic, but one sort of subliminal reason I must have come up with it for is precisely because, in relentless marketing pushes, so many once-proud franchises have introduced more or less a new jersey for every game—fans of the Oregon Ducks could be fans of. . . .?  In other words, the reason I came up with the topic imitated by Rogers Sportsnet and its affiliates was because I might have been tapping into something fans longed for—a time when a crest had an ineffable, as opposed to merchandisable, feel.

In the grocery-store lineup, I saw that Rogers Sportsnet magazine placed the Habs first.  Well, this is Canada.  But I stick to my rankings above, and it isn’t just because I spent a long time rooting against the Habs.  The crest is too small, the bands too wide.  The Habs look slow and stumpy—their uniforms look more like prison uniforms or nineteenth-century bathing dress of a country I associate with being colourful, like, say, Spain, or Venezuela.  Iconic uniforms like those of the Red Wings emphasize dynamism and fluidity—the Habs look like pylons.  Or take the Bruins, often the Habs’s (when the Habs contended now and then) greatest rivals.  The simple spoked B wasn’t made to make the team look fast, but those spokes somehow broadened the effect of the upper body of every Bruin, making them look a formidable force.  It’s just a farce to say that Habs have a great uniform.

 But I guess there’s the rub.  Sportsnet Magazine, or whatever it’s called, then added the Yankees, the Celtics, the NZ All-Blacks, Real Madrid, the Packers, etc.  In other words, the “greatest uniform” issue wasn’t really about that at all; rather, it was about: “what is the most successful franchise so that we can say they have the best uniforms?”  Sad.  Even their also-rans (Flyers, Cardinals) are teams that had more success than most teams.  So, if the point of your exercise, unlike mine, is simply to say “which franchise made the most money”. . . well, ok, it’s Rogers, Rogers Sportsnet.  Put a picture of Ted Rogers and his kids on the Blue Jays uniform and it’s #1, uniformly.  The Toronto Teds’ kids—that’s the best one of all.  Yes.

 Oh all right, I also justified some of my own choices that way.  Oh all right.  It’s just how they had to copy _everything_!!

Like me, the magazine also referred to jerseys of days gone by, but people, honestly, I only had really a couple of minutes before my groceries just advanced too far down that black rubber conveyor belt and there were other people behind me.  If I see a left copy of the magazine at the gym, I’ll look at it. 

If you want to find out which teams in history have made the most money and won the most championships (but you don’t really care one way or the other about uniforms)—then go check out Rogers Sportsnet magazine after you’ve found your way to my blog that came out months earlier.

-zr

Friday 1 March 2013

Tom Flanagan's Workday


Tom Flanagan’s Workday

 

8:23 Hoo well.  Gotta get up again, tell all those worthless losers to get out there and get a job. 

 

8:25 Whoa, I just dreamed I was a young buck from Texas who paraphrased a bunch of  stuff and ‘wrote’ about hapless Indians and got a lifetime’s reward for it from some bumblf**k northern community.  I went because they had amazing pensions and would tolerate me.

 

8:27  Whoa whoa, not dreaming.  Where’s that other wife I used to have??  Damn.  Said I was too self-absorbed, too self-interested, took her for granted because I was a big star.  I mean, what, she saw me on TV every day, or at least knew she would!!  Women. 

            But man, that stuff I spun in Lethwhatever the other night, that was the s**t!! 

 

8:30 Alright.  Shower.

 

9:00 Wife couldn’t do that!!

 

9:02 If I have to start parting from the right anymore I’m gonna look like Rene Levesque in reverse!!

 

9:03 Well, if I wasn’t such a good-looking son-of-a-gun, then why would CBC keep begging me to be on TV?  I think SUN tv and CTV just take me for granted, but when Evan thinks I’m emo, I’m bad, I’m nationwide.

 

9:04:30 Yep, still got it.

 

9:10 Coffee.  No, if I made it here, I’d just be supporting peasants.  Sometimes I’d really like to just have coffee in my own mansion, but it’s better to support the economy by eating from those useless losers.

 

9:52 All these years I’ve been here, and still nobody can make huevos rancheros like mama juanita used to do.  I should kick her out of the country for not being around this country.  I haven’t had a taxpayer-funded trip back home for weeks.  I’m gonna call the university and ask for another paid leave.

 

9:54 Damn.  I’m already on one. 

 

9:55 Awww, what am I thinking.  They’ll let me.  I mean, if that medical guy can get away with it, what the hell, eh?  No medical guy is gonna beat on my time.  I’ll fly to Rio and back and not even get off the plane to prove *that* point.

 

9:56 Did I say “eh?”  Jesus.

 

9:59 There’s a nice piece of. . . . 

 

10:20 Hoo well, back at the computer again.  This thing doesn’t show my face to advantage nearly as well as tv.  Maybe I need one of those “wide-screen” things, with the different “aspect ratio.”  This “aspect ratio” thing sounds creepy to me, but I hear it makes you bigger.  Or elongated, anyway.  (heh heh)

 

10:22 email.  Meetings.  Don’t these people realize that I just went to a meeting, before Christmas?  What do they think I do, go to meetings all day?  Don’t they get that I’m busy?  Why can’t these people just get jobs?

            Ezra wants to know if I’ve got a good Lincoln mechanic.  The hell would I know?  Why wouldn’t he just get a BMW like me?  Guy like him oughta know how to cut a deal on a mechanic, anyway.  Ministering to these minions gets so tiresome.  Who’s that hot babe on SUN. . .?  I’d talk to her again. . . . .

 

10:25 Now some dips**t is saying that something I said in Lethwhatever last night was annoying.  These people.  How many times have I told Stephen that these people have to get jobs?  If they had jobs, if that “action plan” would just get more active and _make_ people get jobs, then I wouldn’t have to read this whingeing and complaining while I do my Job.

 

Nuuuuhhhhhh.  Wonder how my chin looks?  Nuuuuuhhhhh.

 

10:32 Yep, time for a movement.

 

10:44  That was good.  But where will I go for lunch?

 

10:47 Phone keeps ringing.  Pinheads.  14 messages already.  Someone should develop a national policy to prevent people from calling you like this.  I’ll call Stephen.

            There’s a message from Coop!!  We done gone gonna fish the hell right out of the Old Man River in April.  Good ol’ Coop.  That’s his number.  But I gotta get ready for that greasy Evan kid.  EST.  You’d think that by this time of my life they’d damn well swing the world around enough.  But no, hoa no.  If some of these people would just get jobs, or start their own damn businesses, hiring me, to talk.  Some idiots just. . . .

 

11:00 It’s a nice day, really, sunny.  It’s just all these pricks on the road who won’t drive the max.  What, I’ve gotta sit here while all these people don’t get out there and get jobs?  Unbelievable.  Here I am, going to this piss-ant public studio to get all gussied up for tv, and all these pinheads doing nothing won’t get out of the way.  It’s amazing.  I don’t know how many times I’ve told Danielle, the most important thing in government is “roads, roads, roads.”  No wonder she lost.  Pinhead.

 

11:30 gettin’ ready to roll.  Anybody got a paper?  Oh yeah that Lethsomething crap.  That greasy CBC kid, wimp but fair, he’ll be pleased to see me.

 

11:34 I better pee again.

 

11:42 Read the Post, watched the SUN, getting bored.  All these people walking around and looking at computers—why don’t they just get a job?  They could start their own businesses! With, I don’t know, computers, and walking around.  A drill maybe. These people.  It’s so tough to be me.  I know there’s only one me, but still, it’s tough.

 

11:53 More idle chit-chat.  I hate that.  I mean, that’s what made Riel such a loser.  That’s all he did, chit-chatting.  I’m getting jumpy now, but I have to admit that I do also have a feeling of advanced boredom.  That is, I know already what I’m going to say, and I haven’t even heard the questions.  I’m getting sleepy and need a nap.  It reminds me of an old prof of mine.  He used to say: . . .say. . .say. . .say. . .say. 

 

12:01 Showtime!!

 

12:05 “Well, I think these people are making all too much of it.  I mean, if people are criminals and they don’t want to get shot, then they won’t or will get shot, right?  So it’s something that government really shouldn’t have a hand in, anyway, and I think most Canadians would agree with that.”

 

12:06 (hoo hoo, zinger alert on that one!)

 

12:09 “Well, you know, we had this discussion 40 years ago, and people at the time said it wouldn’t work.  So why should we be talking about it again?  I mean, it’s just people who don’t have jobs trying to make them up.”

 

12:10 (zinger, stinger!!)

 

12:13.30 “Well, look, if the coastline of Louisiana wants to move, that’s up to the coastline of Louisiana.  I’m amazed by how many people who aren’t the coastline of Louisiana want to talk as if they’re the coastline of Louisiana.  I mean, it’s a Louisiana thing, and I think most Canadians would agree with that.”

 

12:15 Chinese buffet, Indian buffet, definitely buffet for lunch.  Ok Chinese it’s closer.

 

12:17 “Well I’m just gonna say what I’ve been saying, it’s that these senators, they go to all this trouble of putting EEE in their farm fields and then they only get $240 000 back in cash money for a coupla years’ travel, a job for life and a gold-plated pension?  I mean, is this Soviet Russia or something?  I mean, I mean, I think most Canadians would agree with that.

 

12:22  Phew.

 

12:31 Traffic is hell.

 

12:32 I hate this buffet.  I don’t know why I keep coming back here.  Hoo-hah, hoo-hah, maybe I do.  I’ll have a little more hoo-hah.  These rice balls are too sticky, but I like the consistency.

 

12:48 Tea was cold.  I guess that’s the way it always is.  If there weren’t so many social programs, tea would be hot.  Actually, that’s insightful.  I’ll put that in my next emission.  Coop’ll put it in his next book.

 

12:53 Sleeeepy, sleeeepy.      GET OFF THE ROAD!!!!!!!!!!

 

1:02 I could read more email.  Bloody phone.  Meeting.  Hah.  That’s what they think I do, go to meetings?  Hah.  I’ll have a snooze.

 

4:48 prime rib. . .?

 

5:06 that salmon would have been delightful if I had caught it myself. . . .  What’s that? I did?  Oh, that salmon was wonderful!!!

 

5:09 are these ribs I see before me??

 

5:14 Gotta get up AGAIN.  I can’t believe it.  I had this terrible dream about some wimpy teacher I had, trying to tell me those ring-candy things around my neck were the best meal I’d ever have. 

 

5:19 Drink, drink.  A drink would be good now.  But there’s too many taxes.  Too late to drive to Montana now.  Bloody hell.  I’ll bet Coop is having a bourbon.

 

5:23 Why do I always have to pee these days?  I mean, I’m old, but not old old.

 

5:30 TV says I shouldn’t say it’s consumers’ choice about teen girls or whatever.  Blah blah.  Been saying that for years.  It’s like, they just noticed now?  I’ve got my pension, I’m going to the Senate, sticks and stones, people, sticks and stones.  I should eat something before I go to bed.

 

7:48 This phone thing, it keeps ringing, or buzzing, or whatever these kids say it does.  That’s probably what did in Riel, failure to notice the ringing before the buzzing.  I don’t feel all that hungry.  I’ll just go back to sleep.  My dreams will be gr8 (the kids say, but I’ve got the “drop” on them, heh heh).  Probably Danielle will call in the morning.  I’ll call the goddamn university and make them emeriti me or else!

 

Following day:

 

8:48  “Look Tom, it’s Stephen.  We’ve got this big hole to fill in the Senate. . . .