Townie Elite

Actually, it began quite a bit before this, but if there ever was a moment that perfectly captured the hubris of the Muskrat Falls delusion, this Dec. 17, 2012 spectacle was it. You can picture then-premier Kathy Dunderdale the night before, carefully honing every mixed metaphor and tired cliché in front of a mirror. I don't think she wrote the speech, to be honest, but it was certainly an amazing piece of work. And by amazing, I mean gob-smackingly bad. With today's announcement of an independent inquiry into the lower Churchill development — one that has mushroomed in cost and is proving to be an economic albatross around our necks — I immediately thought of this speech. I remembered how clownish it seemed at the time, and how I knew it would come back to bite these people in the ass in the not-too-distant future. Minister Jerome Kennedy (right) seems to be genuinely enjoying the absurd hyperbole. On the other side, Nalcor boss Ed Martin looks a little uncomfortable. Pe...

A couple of years ago I saw a fun video by Bob Blumer called "Man vs Can." Blumer is a Canadian TV host perhaps best know for his former show "The Surreal Gourmet." The premise of Man vs Can? Blumer bets he can make a fresh pasta dish on the stove faster than his young guest can open a can of Spaghettios and heat them. The outcome is predictable. You can see it here: What struck me about the preparation was how simple it was. You don't have to be all that handy with a knife or know much about cooking. I've been making big, rich pots of spaghetti sauce all my life, always using canned tomatoes and paste. But you can take a fresh tomato or two, a bit of garlic and Parmesan, a sprinkle of this or that and – presto! The tastiest pasta you'll ever eat, in no time at all. When my wife and I visited Tuscany last year, I was expecting pasta to be a mainstay. Big plates of deep red sauce and delicious, steaming pasta. What we got instead was pure simplicity; fres...

Climatologist Michael Mann is barely able to hide his incredulity as he fends off asinine attacks in Washington on March 29, 2017. Last week's Committee on Science, Space and Technology hearing in Washington should have been a sober discussion about the latest findings on climate change and the direction the U.S. should take towards mitigating the damage. Instead, it was about as productive as a World Wrestling Entertainment match. Lots of melodrama and smackdowns with no real winners, but one very real loser: the truth. At the bottom of the scrum was Michael Mann, a mild-mannered paleoclimatologist who works with proxy data to map historic temperatures. He and his colleagues produced a graph in 1998 that took the world by storm. It was dubbed the "hockey stick" graph because the sharp upward turn in the past century or so resembles the blade of a hockey stick. An extended version of the graph was incorporated into the Third Assessment Report by the UN's In...

I was just browsing through some concert reviews I filed more than 15 years ago, and came across one I wrote on a Quintessential Vocal Ensemble concert in May 2000. The choir, conducted by Susan Quinn and primarily populated by Holy Heart of Mary graduates, was in its prime at the time. One of the pieces it performed was Samuel Barber's Agnus Dei, which the composer set to his famous Adagio for Strings. You can find it on QVE's album Ave Maris Stella. Meanwhile, here's a rendition I found performed by the Flemish Radio Choir based in Brussels. Beautiful.

  A belated review of The Red Pill , a film by Cassie Jaye In February, federal Conservative leadership hopeful Maxime Bernier received an endorsement from Alberta Wildrose MLA Derek Fildebrandt. It was an important coup for Bernier who would normally face an uphill battle convincing right-leaning Albertans to bet on a Quebecer. He wanted to tweet something clever, something to show that Fildebrandt "gets it" — that he sees the real thing when he sees it. So he posted the following meme. It's an allusion to a scene from the 1999 film The Matrix in which the main character is offered a choice: take the blue pill and remain in the artificial reality you're blissfully trapped in now, or take the red pill and discover what's really going on behind the scenes. As metaphors go, it's a sledgehammer. And it's been exploited endlessly since the film came out. We're being manipulated by the system. Do you want to wake up to reality, or stay...

In the past 36 hours, social media has exploded over a controversial headline in The Telegram. The story, by court reporter Rosie Mullaly, covered the first day of testimony in the trial of Carl Snelgrove, an RNC officer charged with sexual assault against a young woman to whom he offered a ride home in the wee hours of the morning. (Some have also condemned CBC's and NTV's television and online reporting of the trial.) Before we get to that, this is what's known so far through evidence presented in court. The constable saw the complainant on a street downtown. She was intoxicated He offered to drive her home. She accepted. After that, the woman says, everything is hazy. She vaguely remembers the officer helping her in through a basement window because she couldn't find her key. She evidently let the officer in the house. Then things go pretty well blank, although she has a fragmented recollection of him engaging in anal sex. And the man's DNA was found on her fu...

I considered composing my own annotation of Donald J. Trump's inauguration diatribe, but instead will defer to this excellent piece from Vox.  http://www.vox.com/a/president-trump-inauguration-speech-transcript-annotations

A scene from "The Sweet Hereafter" (1997). A school bus rides along an open country road in winter. The children are laughing and jostling, the two in back waving at the man in a pickup following behind. Suddenly, the driver loses control. She tries to straighten the vehicle, but instead swerves off the edge and trundles down an embankment. The man in the pickup pulls over and rushes over to see the bus fishtail out to the middle of frozen lake. It comes to a stop, then slowly sinks as the ice beneath it gives way. This is the horrific central event in Atom Egoyan's 1997 film "The Sweet Hereafter." There are no special effects or explosions. Just the sickening vantage point from the road as the vehicle slowly submerges. When the witness rushes to the scene, we can hear the screams of children. Fourteen of them perish. "It is typical of (Egoyan's) approach that 'The Sweet Hereafter' neither begins nor ends with the bus falling through the...

Until this week, it would have been hard to imagine how the words of Trump and his spokespeople could become any more Kafka-esque. But Kellyanne Conway managed it. On Monday, the incoming president's chief counsel told an American TV audience that the media should stop listening to what Trump says and look instead into his heart. The subject was Trump's unambiguous mockery of a disabled reporter during the election campaign — a shameful event revisited by actor Meryl Streep in a short speech at Sunday's Golden Globe Awards. Trump mimicked the reporter's jerky movements during a rally as supporters cheered him on. Conway, of course, has for several months proven herself unparalleled in her ability to dodge questions. Even Paul Calandra's antics in Canada's Parliament seem amateur in comparison. On Monday, however, Conway outdid herself. “Why don’t you believe him? Why isn’t it taken at face value?” Conway told CNN's Chris Cuomo, when asked why Tr...

Saying Russian hacking had nothing to do with the outcome of the U.S. election is like saying sexting other women had nothing to do with Anthony Wiener's political career. The former New York congressman may well have botched things all on his own, but revelations about penile postings — including messages allegedly sent to a minor — certainly put the nail in the coffin. Most rational U.S. politicians — and there are scant few — realize the Kremlin's interference in the 2016 election is frighteningly unprecedented. Yet Donald Trump's apologists seem more intent on digressing from the central point — none more than Trump himself .  That Russian president Vladimir Putin's meddling was intentional and far reaching is unassailable, as anyone who's read the intelligence report released Jan. 6 would know. Perhaps the most ironic section of the report, however, are the pages dealing with Russian TV, abbreviated as RT. This international service is not simply fun...

Many years ago, I was at a New Year's Eve party and a fellow I knew suggested we put this song on at midnight. I knew why, but you have to listen to the whole song to realize. Not long afterwards, he committed suicide. So, here's a happy new year to you all. Hope it's a good one. But don't forget to live in the moment sometimes too.

Nobel award-winner Bob Dylan basically defined the protest song in the 1960s. What do protest songs sound like today? Well, here's a favourite example, from 2011.  https://youtu.be/0Fju9o8BVJ8

I hate Christmas. Those who know me are painfully aware of this. They call me "the Grinch" or "Scrooge" or some other moniker drawn from the repertoire of Christmas water torture that makes me despise the season in the first place. In fact, I don't hate Christmas at all. Despite a predilection for scientific skepticism, I am still enamoured with the Christmas story and its message (literal or allegorical) of hope and salvation. It's just that I'd rather poke my eyes out with needles than listen to Burl Ives one more time. There are still a few old carols that, for me at least, haven't worn out their welcome  When I sought out one of them on YouTube, however, I was greeted with the following message from Conservative Party leadership hopeful Kellie Leitch.   Now, I wasn't keen on Sting's version anyway, but I thought it rather rude of Ms Leitch to intrude with an attack the very broadcaster that has brought us so many wonderful musica...