The Olympics: How I Mostly Love Being Half-Canadian

Croooosby! [Shakes Fist.]  I - living in Detroit of all places - have been a fan of yours for two or three years. But maybe a little less today.  Because I did want the boys from this side of the border to win. The way I figure it, you folks have clean, safe cities and great healthcare. You could've thrown us the bone of one little hockey game.

But mostly, I do love Canada and Canadians. And although I haven't spent much time there, I'm proud of my Canadian ancestry. (My dad's side came across Lake Huron from Ontario and from way on up in Beauharnois, Quebec.)

And I especially have adored Canadian figure skaters. Brian O. Kurt. Jamie & David. Virtue and Moir. Joannie.

I've been a fan of the latter since well before the Torino games. Like so many others, how  long I had waited for the times she would pull it together at a big event.

And in the meanwhile, I too have faced my share of hardships over the years.

So how much more personal did this second week of the Vancouver games seem to me.

I think I've handled my challenges as well as I could. But if there's ever a day I feel myself faltering, I will look back on the way that beautiful (on the inside and out) young woman acquitted herself in the face of tragedy and with the eyes of half a billion on her. And pulled out two of the performances of her life. Merci, ma petite.

And Tessa and Scott. Temporary transplants to my state. The millennial Torvill and Dean. How special, how ethereal, yet how down-to-earth. I'm thrilled to witness the gift of your talent.

Thank you, Canada. Ya got some good kids there. Even the one who scored the OT goal. I'm fully proud to be half Canadian.

Shorpy, Part The Second

Early Motown
No matter where you live in the States, on Shorpy.com you might find pictures that’ll hurtle you back a century in your own neighborhood’s life. How I have pored over this view of a sunny day on Woodward Avenue, 93 years past.

I’ve wondered about the mothers and their children. Was that girl in the white dress – above the ankle! – a flapper-to-be, a handful for her worried parents? And just up the street from them, a mom grabs onto her exuberant young son as he attempts, (like all boys everywhere and everytime) to make his great get-away.

Look, there’s a soldier, in the same kind of Army uniform I’ve seen in a picture of my grandfather that was taken the same year, in a town 100 miles to the north. And what is the man in the shade, the White Suit with Hands on His Hips, what is he looking at off beyond our frame to the left/west?

My gawd, the cars. The streetcars. The signs. Hudsons. A movie theatre playing a picture show about Ty Cobb. The Soldiers and Sailors monument, which still stands downtown.

Such moving personal emotions come from looking at these 100-years-past strangers. But Shorpy is also about sharing the view with other commenters.

Roadside Gawkers

Take for instance, this picture of gawkers (there‘ve always been gawkers) eyeing a D.C. storm‘s damage, 1913.

The range of 21st-century comments on Shorpy are typical: Wry jokes about those people who finally got to be on the internet. Another who expresses the all-too-common desire to jump into the photo and strike up a convo (as we say on the Internet) with those denizens of this black-and-white world.
 Who Made It Out Alive?

One thing leads to another, and then a different picture of the same storm’s havoc.


And as I read the reports of the terrible damage, I study my own reaction. Hastily skimming, hoping to learn that people described as “perhaps fatally hurt,” or “likely to die,” (they didn’t mince words in those days), did indeed survive.

And why do I wish that, as those people are all long gone anyway?

Doesn’t it go back to the same reason we wish to jump in the photo in the first place - the connection we feel with these people, the feeling that they’re not dead - because they still live in those photos.

And then I wonder - who’ll find a picture of us, 100 years from now, and will they think about us, and care about us, and wish they could talk with us?


All Images Courtesy http://www.shorpy.com/

This Old Photo: Shorpy.com Part One

Shorpy.

First Shorpy was a kid coal miner who had a short, hard life. But because a few pictures of him were taken one day long ago, he lives on in that ephemeral way that photos can bring us immortality - randomly, sometimes whimsically, very often poignantly.

This is Shorpy the boy.

Shorpy the Website

And now Shorpy lives on as the very name of a website devoted to the mystery and yet the immediacy of old photos.

Each day brings a few new photos, some of which have been lovingly restored by the site runners. And with these instant portraits of long-ago days comes witty, informative, nostalgic, always fascinating and fascinated blog commentary.


It Takes a Village, ca. 1905

Here’s a recent gem from New York City, 110 years ago. Sure, it's a chance for non-New Yorkers to discover this beautiful, still existent architectural gem which has had at least three lives. (Market, courthouse, library.) A kremlinesque colorful lower Manhattan landmark which has posed for paintings, from the Ashcan School all the way to present-day sidewalk artists.


But on a nonspecific day, circa 1905, was the centerpiece of this quick study on early 20th-century urban street life.


HD Web-See
Ramp open the Hi-Def view and drink in the details of a day when George M. Cohan was actually performing somewhere in that city: Take a look up 10th Street - The laundry airing on the roof opposite. The cop, the stairway loiterer, the streetcars, the horse-and-buggies, the wagon piled high with barrels, the horse fountain(?) on the corner of the building. And to the left, on Sixth: The train pulling away, the guy below striding along, reading his paper, a sign on a more distant building advertising a Famous Old Remedy Painkiller (Keep It Handy).


30 Rock, '33

Now quick, jump forward with me. Is this moment in time in the Village really only 28 years before this stunning central Manhattan image? 
And is there any more spectacular city image anywhere than this moody night shot of the brand-spanking new, now-iconic 30 Rockefeller Center?

All images courtesty http://www.shorpy.com/

OOOOOhhh! The 2010 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies

The Opening Ceremonies. What'd ya think?


I’m an Olympics freak. I want to like any Olympics’ Opening Ceremony, and I really want to like anything Canada does. (Technically I’m half-Canadian, with ancestors from Quebec and Ontario).

Sport, art, music, drama, spectacle - this is my thing. But … how can I say this politely, and friendly, like a good half-Canadian.

Um, I liked the whales on the floor.

Semi-Hot Mess 
Really - the best parts were those that celebrated nature more than that big noisy hot mess involving violins on the moon and mohawked dancers. Grungie tapdancing fiddling kilted lumberjacks. (And I’m still confused where the Maritimes thing turned into the Quebec part.)

Aside from the music going on forever, and the not-particularly exciting dancing, the set and costumes for that long East Coast section were just jarringly unappealing to me. Even the neon-blue boat against that weird scary orange-yellow moon. Yuck.

The Good, The Meh and the Whimsical 

I liked flying prairie boy. The evocative rainforest. The dudes in red going completely vertically down the tissuey white mountain. And those whales.

But oh, the many phallic symbols. And the cauldron malfunction. And Wayne Gretzky in a fecking pickup truck tooling around downtown Vancouver with a giant doobie. Worst torch light in my memory. Not exactly like the guy coming down the ski jump with the torch (Lillehammer?) or the flaming arrow lighting a cauldron (Barcelona?).

And O, Canada, one of the most beautiful national anthems ever. That dirge version was an early indicator of more missteps to come.

Bob Costas Will Be Back to Say Something Dumb In a Minute 
It also almost seemed like the long musical “codas” were there so US TV could cut away for commercials. Switching back and forth from NBC to online viewing of Eurosport feeds I noted one of the few times NBC missed a really new music section was the Samuel Barber piece - yeah, they missed the *American* composer* - at the end of the rainforest section.

Why We Love the Winter Os 
That said, I still love the Winter Olympics. The small, cozy feeling just makes you want to move to a quaint mountain valley and ski and skate all day. Even if you can't do either.

I enjoy watching almost all the Winter Olympic sports except curling. (Brooms? A top?)

In light of Friday's tragedy, I don’t want to come across as insensitive - but the very fascination of the Winter OOOOOs as a whole IS just how dangerous almost all the sports are. People hurtling down icy mountains and even icier roller-coaster-like tracks. Or in a rink, crashing onto the ice or each other.

And that highest ski jump? I don’t even want to go to the top of that thing and cling to it for dear life. Let alone ski down it and leap off. How breathtakingly insane.

[Photos 1,3,4: TylerIngram. Photo 2: © VANOC/COVAN]

Let’s Not get Overly Coo-coo for Coco

Did the greatest entertainer in the world just pass away or something? Good lawd, the most rabid Conan fans need a bit of perspective. A guy lost a job. He's still rich. You'll get to see him somewhere else. Stop posting comments on blogs wishing all the Olds who watch Leno would die. Because, first of all - nobody has been watching Leno. Not “older“ people. Not even Jeff Zucker.

Ah youth, to be so naïve you’re actually still surprised by the fact that quite frequently crappy no-talents get ahead of other people at work. Yes, it’s true! I’m old enough to have been on the Conan end of that scenario several times. (Only I was making in the tens of thousands what he makes in the millions.)

 It's All So Goofy
At some point this past week or so I went from being transfixed by the highway wreckage that is NBC to being tired of all the Coco-hype. He's not always THAT funny. Especially if, like me, you prefer more intellectual, political satire to goofiness. His monologues are frequently in the mediocre-to-average range and some of the bits, like Masturbating Bear, pretty juvenile. To me, the funniest stuff on his shows have been the taped-on-location bits - the UPS delivery guy, the pool boy. (Triumph was funny but a little too mean at times for my taste.)

And he's certainly not a great interviewer, which should be a prerequisite for a talk show. But then again, neither is Leno, Ferguson or Fallon. (Letterman, when he's not being snotty, has his moments with guests that he likes.) And to be fair, there was actually a time when Leno used to make some half-way decent political zingers.

Anyway, deep breaths, people.

The Weekend of Weird Outfits & Who Got What? Golden Globes & Figure Skating Championships

Bling, Bling, Bling
This weekend I was overwhelmingly bedazzled - and sometimes due to actual performances. Let's put it this way - any actress who's being panned for her choice of high or low coture at the Golden Globes need only check out Johnny Weir's free skate outfit. She will feel much better about herself.

Gold Medals and Golden Globes
These strange few days included trying to monitor:

Two sets of figure skating national championships - the prelude to the Winter Olympics, and

That fluffiest of Hollywood self-congratulatory events - the Golden Globes. Which are supposedly a prelude to the Oscars. Yawn.

It's all a blur at this point. Did Ryan Bradley win the Best Supporting Actor in a Musical or Comedy? Did Drew Barrymore and Justin Long win the Pairs event? 


 I do know this - the Golden Globes broadcast did not win best Short Program. Gawd.


Some Globes You Got

The movie-star laden Globes also tosses a few bones to the supposedly lesser (but often greater) TV lineup. My primary interest.  (And by the way, feck you, movie stars who couldn't be bothered to even applaud for the TV show nominees and winners. We saw you, and we took names.)

As an event, it's the Hostess Twinkies of television. Occasionally you like to indulge in something so frothy and unfullfilling. But after awhile you get a little sick.

But I'm glad Ricky Gervais thinks he's so funny -that makes one of us with that opinion.

Making the Team
When the GGs rolled around Sunday evening I was still recuperating from three days of US and Canadian skating events.


Miracle of miracles, a few standout performances revived my sadly flagging interest in the art/sport/occasional farce of skating. I'm back on Team Jeremy and Team Joannie (Rochette) for their work in winning the US Men's and Canadian Ladies crown, respectively.


Jeremy Abbott's 2010 Nationals Freeskate

And then there are the incomparable Virtue and Moir. You could OD on this OD, feel compelled to watch their Compulsory and freely watch the Free Skate for hours.They Are Magic. The Best. The End.

Abbott and Tessa and Scott grew up elsewhere but now train in Detroit. We are happy to take credit for them.

And now a couple days rest before more rich people patting themselves on the back (the Screen Actors Guild awards) and the divas of American dance and lady skaters take the ice for U.S. Nationals, Part the Second.

MY DEAD CAT COULD RUN NBC BETTER, AKA JEFF ZUCKER'S REIGN OF ERROR

I would’ve never thought I would look forward to Comcast taking over a company. But as Jeff Zucker continues his Reign of Error at the not-so-proud peacock network, I’m rooting for the lousy cable company to do something better.

Even if that means with Comcast running things I might have to wait for Parks & Rec to show up on my TV sometime between 8 a.m. and noon, noon and 6 p.m. or 6 to 9 p.m.

And then there’s the NBC Talk Show Titanic.

Where’s Johnnnny (Carson, When You Need Him)?
I grew up on Johnny Carson. He managed to project himself as both a Hollywood Rat Pack-type insider and a good Midwestern boy; do schtick and political humor; AND interview everyone from starlets to opera stars better than any current host (except perhaps Colbert) does.

It was the perfect package.

NBC Disaster Movie
But this current lineup - this was all destined to go bad from Day One - Conan being too "weird" for 11:30 and too East Coasty for L.A., Leno completely stinking up the place at 10. (Fallon sucking like a stoned guy at a college station is a given.)

As the youths say, EPIC FAIL.

My Perfect Talk Show
These days it's much harder to do something really different and appeal to a really mass audience. It's all niche programming.

But if I were trying to put together a late-night show with a little of something great for everyone, here are the ingredients I’d want:
1. The Tonight Show with Conan theme song,
2. A little Letterman monologue (and perhaps an even smaller quantity of Kimmel),
3. The first five minutes of Jon Stewart's Daily Show,
4. The bondage-guy dancer from Craig Ferguson,
5. Conan’s taped pieces out and about and
6. A Stephen Colbert interview

This combined would make one very good show.

I'm Thinking Arby's
Also, Jimmy Fallon should be working someplace at his true talent level, perhaps as the drive-through window guy at Arby’s. And Jay should confine his public appearances these days to eating at Arby’s.

And here’s a novel idea - how about a woman/ person of color on one of the Big Shows? Or is 2010 too soon for such a radical idea?