slowhopes

Cordell Baker: The Cat Came Back to Cannes

2009-05-08T17:09:00.000-07:00

Cordell Baker is a great animated filmmaker. He's been nominated twice for Oscars. The Cat Came Back, his 1988 animated short, is a hilarious nine minute long film. He's been courted by Pixar and The Simpsons, but instead he stays in Winnipeg, turning out little mini-masterpieces once every half-decade or so.

It isn't exactly a recipe for a mega-career, but maybe a mega-career was never the goal.

Now Baker has a new film, Runaway, his third film in 27 years, and he's heading back to the Cannes Film Festival--so while he may never get bought out by Disney for $7.4 billion, the way John Lasseter and Pixar were a few years back, at least he gets the odd free trip to the south of France.

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/630953

Nobody Knows Anything

2009-04-26T09:19:00.000-07:00

Screenwriters need better publicists.

Really. I mean, name five great movie directors. (Coppola, Allen, Scorcese, Egoyan, Truffault).

Now name five great screenwriters working right now. (Charlie Kaufman,Diabolo Cody,Tony Gilroy, Larry McMurtry, Willam Monahan).

Everyone knows the first five. Movie geeks know the second five.

All the screenwriter usually does is completely create the universe and the people and the tone and the tempo of a movie--and then watch as the critics, academics, studio heads, talking heads, Larry King, politicians, rock stars, bloggers and people on the street rave about the directing, as if the story and the world emerged, untethered, out of the fertile imagination of some 32-year-old film school graduate best-known for directing a memorable series of Infiniti car commercials. (We'll exempt directors who direct from their original scripts, like Allen or Tarantino).

Check out the Writer's Guild West website sometime. There's some advice for credited screenwriters who are having a movie shot: be sure to be included in the interviews when they do all those extra features for the DVD package, because it's your union-negotiated right to be part of the DVD extra features--and there have apparently been more than a few times when they forgot to call the screenwriter up and invite them to the set that day.

Anyways, William Goldman--give or take Billy Wilder--is the godfather of modern screenwriting. He wrote Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid (Oscar winner, highest grossing film of 1969); All the President's Men (Oscar winner), The Princess Bride, Marathon Man (based on his novel), Magic (ditto) and has been a highly, highly-paid script doctor for 30 years now.

He also wrote Adventures in the Screen Trade in 1983, a memoir about his Hollywood experiences, where he coined the legendary piece of Hollywood wisdom: "Nobody knows anything."

And if you think that's an outdated piece of insight, consider that in 2008, studio suits tried their hardest to send Slumdog Millionaire straight to DVD without a theatrical release, and you'll see that it's still as relevant as it ever was.

He also is a celebrity screenwriter, someone whom the producers would never forget to call up the day the DVD extras were being shot, because having Goldman on your picture is a selling point--something other screenwriters ought to remember, particularly during those award speeches when some emotionally overwhelmed actor or actress remembers to thank their agent and their high school drama coach, but forgets/neglects to thank the writer. (But would an actor ever forget to thank the director? I think not!)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/apr/25/william-goldman-screenwriter-interview

Slowhopes Hearts Slowhomes

2009-04-23T12:21:00.000-07:00

Not everyone loves a McMansion.

John Brown is a University of Calgary associate dean of research in the faculty of environmental design who is the anti-McMansion man. He's spreading a new vision of the idea of home: it's smaller, more sustainable, and from the sounds of it, eminently more human-sized.

On his website, Brown posts a vlog a week discussing his vision of what a slow home is. Basically, it is a place that is simple, light and open.

Versailles it isn't--which is pretty much right in tune with the times. (See today's first blog, about the epidemic of bossnapping in France. They're feeling downright revolutionary these days.)

I have always wondered who wrote the book of interior design that said to fill every available space with something. It seems like such a lot of work when nothing quite often works just as well.

(Somehow, judging from a few of the photo spreads I've seen, Elton John, who is a notorious collector of objets of every sort, will not be dropping by the Slowhomes website anytime soon, either).

http://www.theslowhome.com/

This is a Lisa Rochon piece that ran in the Globe & Mail earlier this week about theslowhome.com:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090418.AROCHON18ART01153/TPStory/Entertainment

Word of the Day: Bossnapping

2009-04-23T11:29:00.000-07:00

Maybe I've just been too caught up in trying to discover whether or not the Susan Boyle saga is real or just reality TV at its staged, written, pre-meditated best, but there's a new trend breaking out in France that I totally missed: taking your boss hostage.

Apparently, layoffs and mergers don't go down so well for a lot of employees in France. So far, from the sounds of it, no one has gotten hurt--they're basically using these bosstages (another new word!) as a negotiating ploy.

(Not that I'm suggesting anything to those Canadian Auto Workers being asked to take wicked pay cuts to keep Chrysler afloat).

Now, hostage taking is never a solution, and is, in fact, against the law and can get a hostage-taker in serious trouble.

And lest any of you disgruntled employees out there who find the prospect of taking the boss hostage, tossing a hood on his head and letting him gather moss in some drop cellar for a few weeks a prospect that appeals to you, just remember The Stockholm Syndrome. That's the one where kidnapped people fall in love with their kidnappers.

By taking your boss hostage, you might be unleashing a whole world of new emotional complications to your life--let alone legal ones.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6078521.ece

Jam Band Optometrists

2009-04-19T19:38:00.000-07:00

I remember the first time I saw Government Mule. It was, appropriately enough, in a field, at the New Orleans Jazz Fest. I had never heard of Government Mule, but their guitars spoke my language and we soon fell in love.

I don't know if guitar-loving optometrists experience this when they come across another guitar-loving optometrist, but it seems there is a new sub-genre of garage band springing up--one I'm in favour of.

Optometrist jam bands.

After all, these guys aren't trying to change their world with their jam band. They're just trying to work off the stress of the work week. They've discovered that playing music, when you're not relying upon digital downloads to pay the mortgage, can be hugely psychically healing.

We've tried electroshock therapy to cure our blues. We've tried psychoanalysis. We've tried Eastern Meditation. We've tried multiple marriages, kids, no kids, cocaine, bling, reality tv, real estate porn, real porn--so why not a jam band?

http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/Jammin/1512048/story.html

Bemidji State Hockey!

2009-04-07T18:26:00.000-07:00

Slowhopes has always had a soft spot for Minnesota and Wisconsin and Michigan, the states dad spent many summers driving the fam through en route to our summer sojourns living in a campsite, circa 1967-1970. (More about that at another date)

While the people aren't what you'd call lookers, the states themselves are quite gorgeous. They're green, quiet and modest places--well, Minnesota and Wisconsin, anyways. Michigan is a little more torn up. But Michigan has its charms as well.

Still, pop culture manages to pretty much avoid this verdant corner of the planet. Apart from the film Fargo and Prince at the top of his game, you never really come across these places.

Until tonight, when the NY Times website featured Bemidji State's hockey team on its front page. I have been to Bemidji any number of times, and of course the first thing I thought, upon seeing the word 'Bemidji' on the front page of the NY Times website was: the statue of Paul Bunyon was sleeping with Babe the Blue Ox!

But no. The college hockey team is on a win streak for the ages, and all the town's t-shirt shops are selling out of Bemidji State memoribilia.

To which, all I can say is: go Bemidji State!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/sports/hockey/08bemidji.html?hp

Stuff Blue Eyed People Like

2009-04-01T19:01:00.000-07:00

Throughout this latest economic crisis, we've been desperate to find someone to blame.

After all, there is a lot of lag time to fill, a lot of op-ed pages to opine on, between a multi-trillion dollar crash and eventual recovery.

As any studio head worth his seven figure paycheck can tell you, it's hard to hate a system. There's no payoff when the evil villain is all of us.

When bad things happen to good countries, there's got to be someone to indict--(and we haven't yet figured out how to make A-Rod take credit for the credit crisis.)

For a while, there was Richard Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers. He looked like a bad guy--heavy brows, a pompous manner. There was even something mildly Nixonian about his jowls that just made the hair stand up on the top of Andy Rooney's eyebrows.

But then the Fed let Lehman go under, and Fuld was out one multi-billion dollar brokerage house.

Then, there was Henry Paulson, the secretary of the federal treasury, but that was so unsatisfying, really. Let's face it: he had just taken over the job from Alan Greenspan.

Alan Greenspan actually may be the man most responsible for this mess, but he's so kindly-looking--particularly for someone who revered Ayn Rand.

Bernie Madoff stole $65 billion, a lot of it from charities and foundations. He was good to hate, but then he pled guilty and went to jail and he's already 70.

When each of the auto giants flew corporate jets into Reagan International to ask for a federal bailout, GM CEO Rick Wagoner became someone to hate--but it's hard to really, really hate anyone whose primary residence is Detroit. I say this with all sincerity. (And now I suspect Rick is just another unemployed Michigan guy looking to scalp some Final Four private box seats).

Over the last few weeks, anyone associated with AIG has been feeling the hot, sticky breath of a planet full of angry, broke people--but at the end of the day, these are insurance people. The optics suck.

It would have been nice if we could have pinned it on Dick Cheney, but he's gone hunting.

No one quite worked out as a bad guy--until Lula met Gordon.

Lula is Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the President of Brazil. Just the other day he met with Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of England, and this is what he said.

"This crisis was caused by no black man or woman or by no indigenous person or by no poor person," Lula said after talks with the prime minister in Brasilia to discuss next week's G20 summit in London, (according to a Guardian article by Nicolas Watt).

"This crisis was fostered and boosted by irrational behaviour of some people that are white, blue-eyed. Before the crisis they looked like they knew everything about economics, and they have demonstrated they know nothing about economics."

Challenged about his claims, Lula responded: "I only record what I see in the press. I am not acquainted with a single black banker."

Finally, the credit crisis has a face, and a gender. It is, to be blunt, white guys.

As a white guy myself, whose book The White Guy: A Field Guide comes out in the U.S. May 1, my reaction to Lula's comments can probably be summed up in a single word.

Guilty!

Now this is a broad, ultimately superficial verdict based on the lowest-common denominator factors one can judge a person by--their race and gender. (All things I am sure critics of my book will enjoy pointing out to readers).

However you want to parse the facts, there is an essential truth to what Lula says: this crisis was created by white people--the same white people who spent decades telling everyone else how to manage the economies of their (broke, indebted, poorly-regulated, corrupt) countries, no matter what the human or political cost.

Who could have forseen the delicious irony that the single most broke, indebted, poorly-regulated, corrupt country of them all is the not-so-good, old, U.S.A?

Besides, it will help when Oliver Stone decides to film his version of The Credit Crisis: he can cast a real A-Lister to play the bad guy. (Anthony Hopkins as Greenspan? Frank Langella as Fuld? Leonardo DiCaprio as Wall Street?)

Memo to the banking industry: next time you're up on Capitol Hill, testifying to save your annual seven and eight figure bonuses, spare us the garbage about how those bonuses are necessary to attract the best and brightest.

What you really mean is best-(connected) and whitest.

Anvil

2009-04-01T15:32:00.001-07:00

I wasn't a fan of Anvil the first time around, in the early 1980's. But now, 25 years later, they are the subject of a documentary look at their most recent world tour which they undertook on behalf of journeymen rockers everywhere, encountering a slew of tiny, perfect, personal indignities along the way.

Anvil are slowhopes kind of rock stars.

http://communities.canada.com/calgaryherald/blogs/bladerunner/archive/2009/04/01/anvil-coulda-woulda-shoulda.aspx

2009-03-27T17:50:00.000-07:00

I've been watching Catherine Keener since she played a thirtysomething New Yorker who ends up dating the video store guy (Kevin Corrigan) in Walking and Talking, Nicole Holfcenser's first film, back in the mid-1990's.

If you ever wondered what living in New York is like, it's sort of just like Catherine Keener: cool, smart, not too into itself, prone to little emotional disasters, and ultimately a bit of a closet sweetheart.

It's great to see that she has gone on to have a fantastic acting career, because she always fell a little bit in the cracks between the pretty girl (I think the other one in Walking and Talking was Naomi Watts) and wacky sidekick (think Joan Cusack).

Catherine Keener is the pretty, wacky sidekick, and her presence in anything makes it worth checking out.

She has two new flicks coming out: Genova, and Where the Wild Things Are, a popular kid's yarn that Spike Jonze turned into a movie that has freaked out the studio who made it. (More about that later).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/26/catherine-keener-genova

The Great Withnail

2009-03-27T11:04:00.000-07:00

You can have your Rocky Horror Picture Show, or your Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or any of those long ago films that have gone on to become midnight cult classics (OK, I love Rocky Horror). But for a certain generation of film lovers, one of the greatest cult comedies remains Withnail & I, Bruce Robinson's 1987 British classic about an aspiring actor and writer living the boho life in London, circa 1969.

Starring Richard E. Grant, a British actor who has worked plenty since but never in a role that quite demanded the brilliance that the part of Withnail did, it's a film that I loved. The first 45 minutes or so are just about the funniest 45 minutes of film comedy I've ever seen. The dialogue is great, the tempo spot-on and the little absurdities of London life for the poor, starving artist are abundantly on display--particularly the way the apartments in London don't really have any heat.

Here's Roger Ebert paying tribute to Withnail & I in the Chicago Sun-Times:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090325/REVIEWS08/903259987

Felder Rushing, The Slow Gardener

2009-03-27T07:38:00.000-07:00

Some people like their yards to be nothing but a lawn, as manicured as the 12th green at Augusta National.

Others, like North Carolinan (if that's a word) Felder Rushing, have a higher tolerance for a little more variety.

Appropriating the term from the slow food movement, Rushing is preaching slow gardening these days: lo-fi, modest in scale and making use of all sorts of wacky junk most people do not associate with a garden.

He's also a radio host of a show called The Gestalt Gardener on National Public Radio.

http://the-gestalt-gardener.blogspot.com/

As you get older, the world sometimes seems to be divided between organized and disorganized people, and the organized people get all the year-end bonuses, (at least they did until year-end bonuses became little acts of economic treason).

Nice to see there's a third way: slow.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/garden/26slow.html?pagewanted=1&em

David Barton

2009-02-15T13:00:00.000-08:00

One of Slowhopes favorite movies is Tootsie, if for no other reason than its better-than-average depiction of the life of a middle-aged New York actor named Michael Dorsey. Although I never was a middle-aged New York actor, I hung around a few, and the essential conceit of Tootsie--that Michael would do absolutely anything to get cast in a part--revealed itself plenty of times. It's just hard to be an actor, and the subtext of "New York actor" is that you're talking about a certain type: a character actor, not a leading man. Not a looker, but someone possessing something, but not necessarily something that earns them many juicy parts in their twenties and thirties.

Character actors, like fine wine, usually take a few years to emerge into their best light.

(All of which is fine and dandy, but tell that to a schlubby, eager, sensitive young man with a little too much hair growing on his back that he may not really work until he hits his forties).

Of course, there are exceptions: Liev Schrieber is the patron saint of character actors, and has worked steadily since he graduated from Yale 15 years ago.

David Barton isn't Liev Schrieber. He was a high school teacher in Hendersonville, Tennessee, married to a minister and the father of two daughters until, in spring 2007, he decided to visit New York for spring break, for two reasons: 1. His daughter was in grad school and he could hang out with her for a week, and 2. There was an open call for a touring production of Annie, and Barton had always played Daddy Warbucks in various amateur community productions over the years. He was Daddy Warbucks before he turned 30.

So he flew to New York, and at the age of 47, became a working New York actor for the very first time.

Here's a story I wrote about him in the Herald:

http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/entertainment/story.html?id=81031f2d-0bae-497a-bcb9-e50a3ff37602

U.S. Economy: I Used Performance Enhancing Drugs

2009-02-10T11:05:00.000-08:00

by Stephen Hunt

NEW YORK. In a startling televised interview, the American economy today confessed that it used illegal performance enhancing drugs, but that it has since stopped.

"It's true, I did ingest a banned substance," said a chastened economy, referring to the period beginning in the late 1990's and continuing through to the bursting of the housing bubble in 2008. "But you must understand: everyone was doing derivatives in those days. There was no testing. No regulation. We were all into them--Iceland, Spain, Ireland, the UK. We thought we were part of the next wave of economic innovation."

Instead, the popping of the economic bubble has resulted in the near-collapse of economies around the globe. Iceland's economy has melted. The Irish are fondly recalling the famine of the 1840's as the good old days, and a condo on the Costa del Sol can be had for llittle more than the price of a bus ticket.

The English economy is so bad, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a dour, doughy Scottish economist with the personality of a stewed turnip, is beginning to look good.

(The Canadian economy issued a press release following the American economy's interview with Katie Couric denying that it had taken any performance enhancing drugs. "Canadians don't do derivatives," it said. "We believe in being boring. As everyone now knows, boring is the new interesting." The Canadian economy wore beige, pleated cordoroys, sensible shoes and a baby blue denim shirt when it made this statement).

The dramatic confession by the American economy came after weekend reports leaked drug tests performed anonymously on global economies during the 2003 fiscal year, at the behest of the IMF, which showed that a whole lot of bankers, brokers and politicians knew something was broken, but decided that the American way was to let the market decide when it would implode and spark a global economic crisis rather than suggest that letting the market decide was the problem.

(The market continues to insist that its fine, although it could use a trillion or two in public funds to help it decide for sure.)

The American economy has been hoping for some time now that everyone would just leave it alone, and that the trillion dollar bailout by the U.S. Treasury would catch up all the banks and allow those same bankers to collect their multi-million dollar year-end bonuses, buy $35,000 drapes with which to redecorate their corporate offices and host lavish retreats in five star resorts, where they would get to know their new colleagues: everyone from the investment houses they bought out for a nickel on the dollar, because no one from those investment houses went to (economics! LOL!) school with the Secretary of the Treasury and thus had no access to the TARP fund, designed to save the American economy from itself.

Instead, the nattering nabobs of negativity who now dominate the business pages of the world's floundering newspapers continue to harp on a bunch of office expenses and act as if earning eight figure year-end bonuses paid for by American taxpayers is anything but business as usual.

"Without paying our top people competitive salaries, we lose the chance to recruit best and the brightest," said the economy, while neglecting to mention that it was the best and brightest who got us in this mess.

A recent initiative by President Barack Obama to limit the salaries of CEO's who accept bailout funds to $500,000 has been met with what can only be described as limited enthusiasm by the American economy.

"What am I supposed to do with 500K?" asked one corporate CEO. "That's car service money--if you don't pay the taxes!"

The startling admission by the economy was a coup for perky CBS anchor Katie Couric, whose stock is way up following her stern questioning of Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin during the 2008 election.

"Katie hit the ball out of the park in the one on one with The Economy," said a CBS insider who declined to be identified for fear that his superiors would discover he had an opinion about anything. "If you can bring The Economy to its knees on national TV, you can pretty much write your ticket in Washington these days."

-30-

Fed Seeks Secretary Who Can Explain How to Get Us Out of This Mess

2009-01-29T12:20:00.000-08:00

November 24, 2008

A jobs posting we may soon be seeing on the Washington, D.C. page of Craigslist:
Reply to: Job8548322111@craigslist.org
Post Until: Credit Crisis Ends, or Global Economy Returns to Medieval Era. Which ever comes first.

The U.S. Federal Treasury is seeking to hire a secretary who can help explain how to end the global credit crisis. Normally, we wouldn’t post such a significant job on craigslist, where any old unemployed, morbidly obsese, socially-challenged, Second Life-obsessed, professional-poker playing types can apply, but hey — desperate times, etc. etc.

I mean, face it: if they took all the economists from Princeton, Harvard, Yale, University of Chicago, Wharton Business School, MIT, Stanford, the London School of Economics, Oxford, Cambridge, and Germany, and locked them all in a gym and told them they couldn’t leave until someone sinks a three point shot, do you think the global economy could get any worse than it is now? (Where were we the day they told all the economists that their jobs are just like meterologists–you get to be wrong 90% of the time and still get to keep your job, providing you have good chemistry with news and sports?)

Wanted: YOU have a facility with numbers, although the Ph.D from the above-mentioned elite institutions is probably optional at this stage. Any and all agility with addition and subtraction will be considered. A gift for multiplication highly desired. A passion for long division would be a gift from above.

YOU see macro-trends before macro-trends come crashing through the door, toppling the global economy like that 80 foot wave that sank Clooney in The Perfect Storm. Even spotting a micro-trend–for example noticing that small, quirky independents often hog all the Oscar nominations, would be appreciated, if only to keep us posted on what the good movies are, because we’re so over super hero sequels. We’ve asked the smartest people on the planet to weigh in on this global liquidity crisis, and frankly, we don’t like smart people so much anymore. Stupidheads–you have our ears!

YOU aren’t afraid to go negative in a room full of sunnysiders. Frankly, over here at the Fed, we have all had just a few too many can-do conference calls with old Ayn Rand Hands, Alan Greenspan chatting from his tub in Georgetown about how fantastic American economic fundamentals are. We could use some hick from the sticks, or at least Bob Costas or some real midwestern bad haircut to come over here and tell us it’s the end of the beginning of two decades of hell, and bring along some sandwiches, because the free lunch has officially ended.

YOU are familiar with the terms derivatives, liquidity, trillion, TARP, Too Big To Fail, rescue package rather than bailout. That’s what we talk about when we talk about money these days, baby. (If you can explain deflation, run, don’t walk, over to the Treasury. We’ll keep the lights on!)

YOU have an interest in going on CNBC from time to time to pontificate about the state of the global economy. It wouldn’t hurt if you were a hottie of either sex–the better to take the viewers’ mind off the bad news you will invariably be delivering. If Aaron Eckhart’s agent reads this, he would make an excellent Secretary of the Treasury. Call us?

The Secretary of the Treasury is employed at the discretion of the President of the United States, or until the money runs out, whichever comes first. You will have at least $350 billion with which to spend your way out of this crisis, maybe more.

After all. The United States is simply too big to let fail.

This is a contract position. It may last until 2012. Maybe even until 2016 if the stimulus package takes and people all replace their DVD players with Blu-Rays at the exact same moment in early 2010. Questions? Email us at: soyouthinkyoucanbesecofthefed@gmail.com

Compensation: To be discussed. It’s all about national service these days, so don’t get your hopes up.

This is a part-time job. Some weekends, such as when it’s necessary to rescue Citigroup, et al, from oblivion.

This is at a non-profit organization. LOL!

Principals only. Recruiters, please don’t contact this job poster. This means you, Goldman-Sachs!
Please, no phone calls about this job! We’re busy saving the economy!

Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests. Yes, we got the memo, GM. Now go design a hybrid and leave us alone!

The Presidential To Do List

2008-12-26T12:50:00.000-08:00

The White House
Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C.

The President of the United States
George W Bush

To Do List--January, 2009

1. Pardons.(Double check to make sure none of us can be tried. Question for Attorney-General: pre-emptive pardons?)
2. Outgoing legislation. Save automobile industry--at least until spring. Then it's Bam's problem. (Real shame, that).
3. Farewell phone calls to global leaders. Keep them short.
4. Also remember to call Tony Blair. Nice guy.
5. Visit more foreign countries. (In retrospect, this would have been nice to do before running for President, but it is what it is. Is it my fault Midland has no international airport?)
6. Hire one of those lit agents to get me a book deal. I hear Bubba got $10 million. Maybe Bam has agent?
7. Talk to Laura about where she wants to go for Feb. vacation. (We could take an extra week.)
8. Ask Poppy about getting hired by Carlyle Group.
9. New York Marathon--early registration!
10. Read some Presidential autobiographies to learn how to write one.
11. Never too early to start callin' around to see if anyone needs a former two-term President to throw out the first pitch on Opening Day.
12. Call Bob Woodward. Get him to autograph all four books he wrote about the Bush years.
13.Quality lunch with Condi.
14. Cancel hunting trip with Cheney.
15. Call Wolfowitz. See if he has any bright new ideas.
16. Work on historical legacy. (Call Harvard & Yale. See if they want speech about global vision things, letting the market decide, or spreading freedom and democracy around the globe).
17. Speak to Roger Ailes at FOX News about becoming their newest military expert.
18. Give Bam the nuclear codes, and speech about having the fate of the planet in his hands.
19. Call Rumsfeld, then tell him you'll call him back--after the quality lunch with Condi. LOL.
20. Email Arianna about getting a blog on HuffPo, even if it's filled with liberals.
21. Hire Frum to ghostwrite it. That oughta to piss off all those Hollywood elites.
22. Join Facebook. Don't add Roger Clemens! He's calling about pardons.
23. Buy newest Kinky Friedman novel. They're always fun.
24. Book some plane tickets to Houston. How does one book plane tickets?
25. Turn out the Pennsylvania Avenue lights. The party's over.

stephenbhunt@gmail.com

Dear Prime Minister

2008-12-22T18:51:00.000-08:00

Dear Prime Minister,

It has been brought to my attention that you have changed your mind about the shameless partisanship and essentially undemocratic nature of having an appointed Senate, because appointed senators tend to vote the way the people who appoint them want them to. Fair enough. The senate is quite the august political institution, and in these days of stateless countries (see: pirates, Somalia) with no governments at all, it's difficult to see the harm in a few appointed senators coming aboard just in time to keep the coalition of the winless from doing anything foolish.

I hear you may have eight spots left to fill. You have my Blackberry coordinates. I am ready to serve.

Sincerely,

Stephane Dion

Dear Steve,

Duffy? Duffy is a senator? LOL. That guy's in such bad shape (don't buy it if he tries to sell you that he's quit smoking, either), the over under on the guy lasting 18 months in the Senate is not high. If you want a political junkie journo on the senate who's gonna be around a while, Steve-o, here I am brutha!

Sincerely,

Rick Mercer

Dear Prime Minister,

Ignatieff is behaving as imperialistically and pompously as ever. The guy gives such long-winded, thoughtful, judicious, extemporaneous answers to even the dumbest little question, it leaves no room for pedantic, over-sincere, economically-challenged, ideological progressives like myself to get on television anymore. I'll reform your Senate for you. Just name me to it.

Best,

Bob Rae

Dear Mr. Harper,

I read with interest your recent appointments to the Senate. While I have a great deal of respect for Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin, and Nancy Greene, I noticed you haven't named any former NHL general managers to the Senate recently, an oversight I may be able to help you with.

Yours,

John Ferguson Jr.

Dear Prime Minister,

This is just a bit of a pre-emptive attack (Ha!), but could you consider me the next time you make a batch of Senate appointments? I do good work, and have done a lot of television, and will live a long time, in case you get elected out of office and want someone to stick it the Liberals for the next six decades.

Sincerely,

Daniel Cook

Dear Mr. Harper,

Me too!

Happy holidays,

Emily Yeung

Dear Stephen,

A pardon from any future malicious attempts to prosecute me for stupidly accepting those envelopes full of cash nearly two decades ago would be nice; a seat on the Senate even nicer; the Habs winning it all, priceless.

Best,

Brian

Dear Steve,

Catching a lot of heat for accepting this Senate appointment. Any chance I could get a sitdown with you for the national news to discuss? (I'll ask tough stuff so it doesn't look like you were trying to buy off the media on this).

All best,

Mike

PS. I quit smoking. I swear.

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

Just want to confirm that I can use the whole 90K travel budget you provide each Senator with to hang out in New York and go to cocktail parties with my Big American Media pals.

Love,

Pam

Post Up or Die! Ken Mink, 73, Oldest Living College Basketball Player

2008-12-10T13:50:00.000-08:00

Slowhopes is a sucker for late bloomers, but 73-year-old Ken Mink is ridiculous. He made the Roane State (Tennessee) junior college basketball team this fall as a 73 year old! He played in the 1950’s, for Lee, Kentucky Junior College but got kicked off the team and never played again, for another 50 years. He started out in college ball with President Ike, and may finish up with President Obama!

Fox Sports ran an item about him in late October:

Ken Mink may be the first guy who can qualify for a senior discount during his senior season.
Ken Mink is living his college hoops dream at the age of 73.
Mink, 73, is a 6-foot, 190-pound newcomer to the Roane State (Tenn.) junior college basketball team about 35 miles west of Knoxville.
He’s likely the oldest person to ever play college hoops. To put Mink in perspective, Utah State’s Gary Wilkinson will be among the oldest Division I players this season; he just turned 26.
Mink played for Lees (Ky.) Junior College until 1956 when he was dismissed following a prank he still denies.
Mink, an avid outdoorsman, said he realized he could still hoop it up when he was shooting baskets in his driveway last fall.
“I had been knocking down shot after shot, so when I came in the house I told my wife, ‘I’ve still got it,’ ” Mink told the Knoxville News Sentinel. “She said, ‘You’ve got what?’ I said, ‘I can still play.’ ”
Mink wrote to some coaches seeking the chance to play, and Roane’s Randy Nesbit gave him a shot. Mink spent the summer getting into shape and playing with a senior team from the area in three state tournaments.
Mink says he was a good high school player in the ’50s and had several scholarship offers, but went to Lees because it offered a full ride. He says he averaged about 12 points a game until his dismissal.
He can still shoot (watch this video from the Knoxville News Sentinel), moves pretty well for a septuagenarian and has bonded with his younger teammates.
Mink is unlikely to play for more than five or six minutes a game once Roane State opens its season Nov. 3.
“There’s a lot of complicated offensive and defensive schemes that I have to learn, but the other players have been helping me every step of the way,” Mink said.

Today, the New York Times weighs in with a story of its own.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/sports/ncaabasketball/10player.html?em

Greg Freaking Maddux

2008-12-09T18:42:00.000-08:00

Greg Maddux was the most ordinary-looking, least ordinary sports star Slowhopes ever came across.

He had a body like an office administrative assistant.

He threw a baseball with the ferocity of a Sunday afternoon, Central Park slow pitch superstar.

And he won. And won. And won. 355 times, against the best batters in the world, more than any pitcher in baseball except seven other freaks.

Maddux also is personally responsible for one of Slowhopes worst decisions of his life.

It was the 1996 World Series. The Braves v. the Yankees, who weren't quite the Yankees yet--they hadn't won a playoff series of any kind since 1978. Jeter was a rookie. Torre was the new manager in town.

And Slowhopes somehow managed to score tickets to Game 1 & 2 of the World Series!

This evident miracle rapidly turned into a fiasco. Andruw Jones, who was 19 years old, clobbered two homers in Game 1 and the A-T-L crushed the Yankees, which was depressing enough, but the very next night, Slowhopes watched in total despair as Greg Maddux completely shut down the Yankees. We think the score was 4-0, but it seemed worse--Maddux simply owned them in the way an ace sometimes destroys his opponents. He didn't throw hard, either. He looked like a librarian getting some fresh air, and threw like one, too, and the Yankees simply couldn't touch him.

Cut to:

The Yankees, against every conceivable odd, after losing those first two at home, won the next three in Atlanta! It was insane! Pettite won a 1-0 thriller v. Smoltz. Leyritz lined a three run homer into the ATL bully late in Game 4, erasing what remained of a 6-0 Atl lead. It was incredibly dramatic, sensational October baseball drama, all of which led to:

Game 6, Saturday night, Yankee Stadium.

Slowhopes, as luck would have it, possessed a pair of tickets for Game 7. The question was: would there be a Game 7? If the Yanks won Saturday night, it was all over.

Who was pitching Saturday night? Maddux the Witch.

Slowhopes had discovered, in the nascent days of the internet, a Yankees thread, and managed to wrangle an offer of an exchange: two Game 6 tix in return for his two game 7 tix. Plus $50 for beers and whatnot.

The only obstacle to this MLB Sophie's Choice was the witch. After sitting in pain through Game 2, in which Maddux utterly dominated the Yanks' lineup, Slowhopes made the call:

Don't bet against Maddux. We held on to our Game 7 pair and tuned in.

Only to hear Joe Girardi, of all the unlikelies, scorch a triple to deep left center early, to drive in two or three and stake the Yanks to a lead.

Saturday night, late October, a two or three run lead, 57,000 lunatics cheering: there was no hope. The Yankees prevailed, winning the first of their four 1990's World Series titles. Slowhopes was happy and heartbroken at the same moment. Later that week, he caught the D train to the Bronx and redeemed his two useless Game 7 ducats for $140, then caught the train back.

You were still one of the greatest, Maddux.

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/8913826

Charlie Brown: The Original Slowhopes

2008-12-09T15:23:00.000-08:00

It is always a little weird to see the things you loved as a child all those years later, when they turn out to be completely idiotic, trite, and not as funny as you remembered.

Happily, Slowhopes checked out A Charlie Brown Christmas Monday night and found it funnier, smarter and more enjoyable than he remembers it being when he watched it as a kid. (This could be even more disturbing. We're not sure).

Whatever!

Charlie Brown is a wonderful creation. Even though he's a loser/blockhead, who does everything wrong, Charlie's heart is in the right place. He is disheartened by the rampant commercialism of Christmas. He is a bit of a pushover as the director of the Christmas pageant, mainly because he isn't bossy, like Lucy, his chief tormentor. And when Lucy sends him out to find a flash Christmas tree, he comes back with a distinctly underwhelming, undersized, malnourished tree everyone hates but he sees potential in.

There is also a lot of very toe-tapping jazz piano that we have always loved, and Snoopy doing his ecstatic Snoopy dance, which we have always thought was one of the finest expressions of happiness ever animated!

We watched A Charlie Brown Christmas with Gus, the five year old, who didn't quite get all the anti-commercialism blasts, and even if he did, probably wouldn't have agreed with them. But we can only hope ABC will continue to broadcast A Charlie Brown Christmas year after year, and the message will hopefully take.

slowhopes@gmail.com

Selected Entries From the Diary of Prime Minister Stephen Harper

2008-12-03T15:50:00.000-08:00

Selected Entries from the Private Journals of Prime Minister Harper

Oct 14, 2008
Dear Diary:
No majority. No biggie. The Libs are in ruins. I don't see any problem keeping this gig going until around 2011.

Oct 15, 2008
Dear Diary:
Dion is toast. Announced he's stepping down, after a new leader is chosen in May.
Don't say I never did anything for Canada: I kept the the wrong Steve from setting his carbon-free footprints in 24 Sussex.

Nov. 4, 2008
Dear Diary:
America now has a hipper leader than Canada. There. I said it. Who says I have no sense of humour? I bet I have a better backhand than Barry, although I'm pretty sure he'd trounce me in a game of H-O-R-S-E.

Memo to self: finish the hockey book sooner than later. Statesmen need to write books in order to have a legacy. (Be sure to include a shot or two at Dion in the chapter about the Nordiques moving to Denver.)

November 27, 2008
Dear Diary:
Flaherty unveils the budget tonight. Have I got a surprise for Canadians! No more taxpayer-provided funding for those poutine-eating Bloc Quebecois freeloaders! No more right to strike for public service employees! No stimulus package! Hey Windsor: suck on this!

Who's going to stop me? Jack Layton? LOL!

November 28, 2008
Dear Diary:
Boy, you should have been in Ottawa today. Talk about a shit-storm erupting. You would have thought I'd pre-emptively invaded Toronto. (That's not the worst idea I've come up with. Discuss with McKay).

Dion says he has the NDP and Bloc onboard to form a coalition government. He's bluffing. Is that all the little green tax man's got? I'll eat his lunch! Does he really think this country is going to stand for a coalition that includes a separtist party? (The same separtist party who wouldn't form a coalition with me in 2004 to take down Martin. I hate separtist parties who hate me).

Monday, December 1, 2008
Dear Diary:
Just to be safe, I postponed the budget confidence vote a week. All hell is breaking loose. Ottawa hasn't been so much fun since Margaret turned up on tour with the Rolling Stones.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Dear Diary:
Have I ever said anything bad about Michaelle Jean? I sure hope not, because I need her now more than ever!

Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Dear Diary:
The (dirty, rotten, evil, liberal) Globe & Mail says for the good of the country, the party ought to consider replacing me as its leader in order to win back to support of the country.

How come nobody likes me? My whole life, it's been like this: Steve sucks. Steve thinks he's so smart. Steve is just a pudgy, Albertan, know-it-all a-hole. (Is it my fault I know it all? Should I play dumb, like Chretien? Should we make Tie Domi the PM?)

How can this have happened? (How can Dion have discovered his spine, so very near his ultimate disappearance from public life? If that little chinless wonder moves in here, I'm going to look for a job as a political columnist at the Globe & Mail and write really, really mean things about him twice a week, like that Dion apologist Jeffrey Simpson writes about me).

Less than a week ago, I was about to crush the Liberals into two decades of sitting on the opposition benches, and now the punditry are saying I must go? (We just painted the bedroom! We just bought the NHL Centre Ice package! The kids would have to switch school in the middle of the school year! I like the chocolate chip cookies the official chef cooks!)

I've got it! I'm going on television tonight to convince the country of the illegitmacy of this coalition! I've been Youtubing a lot of Barry's speeches and I think I've picked up quite a bit:

The Conservative Party is the change we've been waiting for! (Is that an oxymoron?)

Yes we can (govern!) Yes we can (get along with the sore losers, err, opposition). Yes we can! (Cough up a few bucks for Windsor, even though the auto industry is deader than the newspaper industry.)

Contact: slowhopes@gmail.com

Viva la Santa Monica Steps!

2008-12-03T11:57:00.000-08:00

Slowhopes spent the best part of a decade jogging up and down the Santa Monica steps, all 189 of them. They’re at the corner of 4th Street and Adelaide, one of the more gorgeous corners of the universe, and overlook Malibu Beach and the Pacific Ocean.

There’s a class war brewing over the steps because personal trainers have turned the boulevard on 4th Street into a public gym. When Slowhopes lived there, sneaker companies would sometimes do shoe promotions. TV crews would shoot the workout artists, and needless to say, the steps were an outstanding view in more ways than the one looking out at the ocean.

Of course, it’s a little stressful to own one of the $7 million homes that line Adelaide (among them, Santa Monica Councilman Bobby Shriver and Don Bachardy the ex-lover of the late Christopher Isherwood), but the Santa Monica steps are also a wonderful example of the genius that is America when America gets it right: the steps are all about enjoying beauty, they’re as green an activity as you can get, they’re non-exclusive, accessible, fun, and free. Maybe it’s more of an example of California getting it really right– only now, there are cops posted, writing $158 citations to anyone who lies down (as Slowhopes did every day for 9 years) to stretch and do a few stomach crunches.

Wrong! (How can California, with the all-time workout artist as its gov, allow this to happen?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/us/25santamonica.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Mary Margaret O'Hara, Where are Ya?

2008-12-03T11:37:00.000-08:00

Slowhopes can be expressed in a variety of forms:

Books (What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver)

Movies (Atlantic City, Sideways, The Visitor)

Television Show (The Rockford Files, Hill St. Blues, The Sopranos)

Band (Los Lobos)

Singer/Songwriter (John Hiatt, John Prine)

and girl singer: that would have to be Mary Margaret O’Hara.

You may never have heard of her, except for the fact she’s the sister of SCTV alumnus Catherine O’Hara.

MMO is a kind of cross between early Ricki Lee Jones and some great jazz diva. She moves like a toy running out of batteries, sings like a religious movement, and all at a tempo that perhaps can best be described as alt.Canadian.

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/walkoffame/ohara.html

She was a Toronto art student in the 70’s. Slowhopes first saw her at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, in the mid-1980’s, in a field, in a driving rain, hopped up on (for the first time) magic mushrooms and scotch (easier to sneak in than beer). She was part of a band (we think) called something like the Cuban Fence Porch Climbers, although that was 20-odd years ago and it was, ahem, raining that night.

We remembered, in the fog of our hallucination, and the mood of our whiskey, thinking the gal singing lead for the band was an absoute genius of tempo and tone–but it coulda been the ’shrooms, right?

In the winter of ‘87, we found ourselves in Parkdale, on the way west end of Queen Street in Toronto, at some venue of some sort, quite a bit more clear-headed. MMO had left the band by then, and sang solo, and we were there, waiting to discover it had just been the drugs.

It wasn’t. MMO was the real deal.

And shortly thereafter, she released her solo LP, Miss America, on Virgin Records. Slowhopes loved that record, and spent many a Vancouver rainy night at Birch and 10th Street, holed up in the Shaugnessey Apartments listening to it, predicting all manner of greatness for MMO–but instead, it turned out to be the only real album she ever made.

Despite that fact, MMO continues to be a bit of an urban legend,and Slowhopes really really wishes she’d just make another record.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVFzpE-HQ8w