Lost

Now that the show is over and we've all had a few days to sort out the final episode, what does the summary report on Lost say about its phenomenon? Make no mistake, it was a phenomenon, even for people like me who loved it initially, missed a few episodes, the could never get back into the plot especially once all the time travelling started going on. 

Evangeline Lilly waves goodbye...

Ah yes, time travelling. Lost broke two taboos from screenwriting 101: Don't time travel as a way to escape out of plot traps, and don't kill everybody off at the end. Virtually every cheesy science fiction device was trotted out over six seasons. Included an a partial list: mysterious hatches, doomsday devices, rifts in the pace-time continuum, crazy as fruit bats teams of scientists, peaceful villagers, non-peaceful villagers, shape-shifting into the body of a main character, explosions and a big creepy monster. And Ben Linus who got beat up every week. Granted, there were no space aliens, but every week you halfway expected someone green to say, "We do not wish you to take us to your leader. We are the leader." So there might as well have been aliens. Whether you go for all this or not depends on your taste for la fromage scientifique. 

And many people dined on the Brie of Lost. According to the numbers supplied by the ever-efficient CTV press office, the final episode drew 5 million views with a peak of 2.5 million. more than a cult hit. It crushed the last episode of Celebrity Apprentice by almost three to one. Added to that, Lost fans have streamed the videos on the CTV site 6.4 million times this season, including half a million between Sunday's finale and Tuesday morning. So Lost was more than a cult hit. 5% or less is the barrier point for cult status. More than that, you''re mainstream these days.

Truth be told, I've always thought that creator J.J. Abrams and the producers were lying through gleaming well-capped teeth when they said that they knew the ending of the show right from the start. If they did - and I have my doubts on that - they definitely had no idea how they were getting there. Hence all the devices. Bizarrely enough, that is a compliment rather than a criticism of the creative team. Bogart and company didn't know the end of Casablanca until they shot it, and perhaps the best Star Trek: The Next Generation cliffhanger had Picard turned into a Borg and the writers had to sweat all summer to think of a plausible way of turning him back. 

The series survived because of a handful of extremely compelling characters,a nd not necessarily the leads of Matthew Fox and Evangeline Lilly either. I won't miss my mind running its opinions back and forth back and forth trying to decide if Evangeline Lilly's Kate Austen was incredibly annoying or just incredibly hot. Possibly both. As a retired yet jaded veteran of the wars of love I have found that women's natures can occasionally run contrary to their appearance. Yes yes, men too. What of it? 

No, this was Hurley's show and Sawyer's show and most especially Terry O'Quinn as Locke's show. I read on the E! Network blog recently that O'Quinn deserves an Emmy for his work as Locke. He brilliantly expressed two contrasting characters and the development of one into the other in an absolutely bell-tone perfect feat of acting prowess. O'Quinn is also bald and ageing. Hollywood being Hollywood, his career may have just ended. let's hope not. Until next week, be seeing you.

Fear and Loathing on the Health Care Trail

Perhaps this best belongs on the Kimberly: The Road to Recovery blog, as definitely this is an outcome of that entire experience. But I noticed a certain political creep starting to happen there in Chapter Eight and I don't necessarily want that very human story to get diverted by argument. Not yet anyway. I'll see how its shape takes place. But this blog is definitely my 'rant' blog and what I have to say definitely fits here. 

To quote from the Kimberly blog:

Much later, when we had returned to Thunder Bay, a Doctor at Thunder Bay Regional told me that they had the human resources, the doctors with the skills, to perform the surgery that eventually saved Kimberly's life. They just didn't have the money to purchase the additional equipment they would need. It's a pricing problem. This is why, although I am not a red flag waving socialist, the one industry I would support a government takeover of is the medical industry - pharmaceuticals and equipment manufacturers alike. I absolutely am skeptical of the Adam Smith or Milton Friedman argument that only a private company in a competitive market will press the research and innovation to stay ahead in the market. The competition in a government-run system would be in the form of the research grants doled out to successfully competing bidders. Furthermore, the actual manufacture of pills or machines would also be contracted out. the difference would be that the government, as principal buyer through the hospital system and subsidized drug plans , would also set the most advantageous price for itself while still achieving a result expectation of excellence.

He'd be less than impressed with current events...

I'm quite serious about this. I make no bones about it: when Kimberly's son Bradley is finished high school and I hope goes on to study at a good university, I want us to move to Toronto. Why? We have now had two huge medical crises - my bypass and Kimberly's aneurysm. Both times we had to be flown out of Thunder Bay for surgical care in Hamilton and Toronto respectively. Odds are grim but good that this will happen again at some point or points in our lives. I don't love rocks and trees that much. Choosy mothers choose Jiff. I choose to go where the pros hang out. 

We mock the American health care system and the full-blooded and gruesome debate that may, may, have doomed the Democrats for a decade. We look at the millions who will remain uninsured even after Obamacare is fully in place and smile smugly and think 'That can't happen here.' We pat our tummies filled of the High Canadian Church of the Highly Satisfied flesh and blood - poutine and Tim Horton's - and go back to trying to decide if its really worth watching the Stanley Cup final because there are no Canadian teams playing in it. 

Oh really? When I live in a city that has 30,000 supposedly 'insured' citizens who do not have a family doctor, I call bullshit. And let's say that the family doctor of one of the other 80,000 'insured' decides to retire. I live in a small panic every time I think of my general practitioner who has treated me since I was 30. I'm within a few laps of retirement, so imagine where he must be? And there is no guarantee - none - that my patient file will be passed on to another GP. So which is worse - having an open access to an American system which could prove gruesomely expensive, or having a so-called free system (it's not - we very much pay for it) that has a bottleneck at the front entrance? Granted, if one's physician retires, you are guaranteed access to your files. Hurrah. This is the equivalent of hearing a strange knocking noise in your car engine but instead of getting a mechanic, you're handed a Chilton Guide and a wrench and told to go fix the effing thing yourself. 

But let's say you do finally get into the system. Like Kimberly, in an emergency room, after years of being told by her walk-in clinic doctors that her tested blood pressure of 190/120 was the result of white coat syndrome. There you are. The Canadian and Ontario Health Care system is ready to go, because now you're pronate and unconscious. Welcome to our big, shiny party.

The saddest and best part of it all is that we really do have a fabulous health care system...where it exists. Saving someone like myself with open heart surgery was unheard of when I was a boy; saving someone like Kimberly who had suffered a burst brain aneurysm was unheard of when I was thirty. It absolutely shocks me when I hear some people sneer at medical research because 'they haven't cured cancer yet.' What? Like science is laying around in the basement playing cards with its buddies or something? We can do incredible things with incredible machines and techniques that were science fiction a few decades ago.

But it's a goddam lottery. Canadians, particularly Quebeckers, are the biggest buyers of lottery tickets in the world. No wonder. We live, or attempt to live, with a lottery-based health care system. It is wasteful and pitiable to have personnel - doctors - trained in a life-saving art that they are unable to practice because we can't afford the bells and the whistles, the gizmos and gadgets, the shiny and the new.

I used to work for a guy named Frank who was in charge of the clean-up shop at the old Port Arthur Motors. At the time, I was a student at Queen's and was polishing newly sold cars for their buyers. In the shop was a Cadillac, priced say $60,000 then and some little Chevy worth maybe $10,000. Frank said, "What's the difference? They both metal and rubber. They both take you places. Why should one cost so much?" And there is a serious point there.

The true majority expense of equipment should be in its invention, not in its manufacture. A 2008 CT Scanner goes for $3.5 million. This is a function of an extremely limited market - no one's buying one for Auntie's Christmas present and the law of supply and demand. Supply and demand in the oil industry was once defined by Robert Klein as, 'We have all the supply. We can demand whatever the f*** we want!' The medical industry has done a fine job of absorbing oil's case studies. 

Will a gigantic overhaul of the health care system happen? Will there be a Medical Bill of Rights whereby every Canadian citizen is guaranteed the right to reasonable access to a family doctor? Will the medical industry be nationalized and in return free up money to pay for that Medical Bill of Rights? Not in your lifetime. No pun intended. Certainly not with Harper who would happily treat the sick with leeches and transport the dead on ice floes. 

But we must never give up trying, because sometimes strange things happen. Be seeing you.

A Chunk of Dialogue

I welcome your comments on this chunk of play I'm working on ...

H

A suggested staging...

Dialogue: Quitting Smoking 

HE: I do however miss smoking.

SHE: What did finally make you quit? You were always so ... devout about it.

HE: Well it certainly wasn't all the medical nonsense. That had been around for years - decades! - and I'd never really deep down much cared. For one thing, I am of course invulnerable -

SHE: Yes, one bout of cancer, two heart attacks and four clogged heart arteries later - you've never had three of anything dangerous have you?

HE: Marriages, if I do it again.

SHE: I meant medically dangerous.

HE: So did I.

SHE: Surely you can't blame me or Rosanne -

HE: Roxanne -

SHE: - one of those - for your medical issues? At least share some of the blame with your nightly gargle of gin, a dinner plate where the fat and the salt battle it out for taste supremacy, and a mindset that honestly believes that carrying a garbage bag thirty feet to the curb qualifies as exercise.

HE: Two words.

SHE: Hm?

HE: Causus. Belli. My flaws were thrust upon me by an ungrateful world. Madame, I stand before you a tremulous victim of woman's cruel hand.

SHE: Oh dry up. 

HE: Shan't. I use moisturizer.

SHE: You don't. I know you. You bought moisturizer and in your mind that's the same as using it.

HE: (howls with the laughter of self-knowledge, extended) By God, I do do that don't I? That's very good. Yes, very good. I'll give you that one.

SHE: No thank you, I've already taken it. But despite all the bravado mixed with craven self-victimization, you quit smoking. Why?

HE: They banned it on the stage!

SHE: (quietly) What? (loudly) What!?

HE: Well look at it! You can have live sex with porpoises on stage if you have a big enough tank and no one would care, but light a cigarette and dear God elderly women start fainting like each one lit is an amputated burning penis being sucked on by an actor.

SHE: What a disgusting metaphor.

HE: Yes ... perhaps I should sell it to the Cancer people? Anyway, if something's so bad that it's bad on stage then it really must be bad for you. So I quit. Easy as that.

SHE: So how many a day are you still sneaking - the 'occasional' smaoke?

HE: Six. Never more than ten. You?

SHE: Four. Never more than eight.

HE: Your moral strength is an example to us all.

Canadian Comedy Awards

Inside Television 502

Publication Date: 5-14-10

By: Hubert O'Hearn

If you're not so sparkly-eyed by the derring-do and swagger of the Montreal Canadiens that the thought of watching anything that doesn't have prominent puck placement puts you into an ugly emotional mood of hate and whispered vengeance unseen since the days of Ivan Denisovitch, there's a little comedy show I'd like to recommend to you. Tomorrow night at 10PM the full CTV network (Thunder Bay not included) presents the 10th Annual Canadian Comedy Awards Anniversary Special. Hosted by Daily Show veterans Samantha Bee and Jason Jones the show will feature the best routines and interviews with past winners of the, er, Beaver Award. I have to say this. Forgive me. I wonder how past winners like to have their Beavers mounted? There are other punchlines. If you give it some thought you'll think of them all. 

But - of all things on television, why do I think you should watch this program? First, you've already seen the Star Wars Trilogy (which must be playing somewhere on Saturday night) sixteen times and people are starting to talk. I heard the word intervention used. Second, Canada is to comedy what Ireland is to literature - we punch way above our weight. For a relatively small population, I'd say we dominate sketch comedy, are equal to the Brits in Improvisation, do excellent movie comedy (although rarely in Canada) and have some unique and successful stand-ups. Plus we have William Shatner, the only man in history who turned his own life into an extended comedy improvisation and had it work. He's the Jaroslav Halak of our comedy team. 

So it is right to celebrate our best, and I'd say that the laffs are guaranteed. And it's good to laugh. "It feels good to make your Mom laugh." What? Who said that?

It was said by Nathan Macintosh, last year's winner as Best New Stand-Up and one of the featured performers on Saturday night's show. In an interview kindly set up for me by Mary Costa at CTV, Nathan chatted on the phone about his career and the Comedy Awards. And not one Beaver joke was killed in the process. 

Macintosh is 23 and has been touring as a stand-up since he was 19. I could tell he was young because of the stand-ups I've interviewed over the years, he was the first one who wasn't at best cynical and at worst bitter and snapping turtle mad. Macintosh was completely courteous and was equally interested in talking about Thunder Bay as he was in discussing himself. So that was refreshing and I resist the urge to say, 'He'll learn.' 

The framework of the Comedy Awards is an equal balance between industry professionals who vote on-line and a judging panel composed of the Canadian Gods of Thunderous Laughter, including the hoary thunderer himself, Yuk-Yuk's owner and president Mark Breslin. To put Breslin in proper perspective (and this didn't come from Nathan Macintosh, by the way), Johnny Carson made everyone's comedy career in the U.S. for thirty years of his run as host of the Tonight Show. Breslin has similar weight today in terms of Canadian stand-up. So these Beaver Awards truly mean something. 

I asked Macintosh how he got into this racket. "I always wanted to, right from when I was a kid and I'd watch stand-ups on TV with my Mom. I thought that looked like a really cool thing to do. You get to be like the geek in high school who all of a sudden comes back really cool." So who was his first favourite? "Sam Kinison, who maybe I shouldn't have been watching at that age, but Mom let me." 

Ah, Kinison. For those who don't remember, Kinison was a huge, shrieking man in a beret who took stand-up to a different place of sheer anger and force. It was like Mort Sahl on crystal meth with a shotgun in one hand and a megaphone in the other. Sam Kinison died way too soon. 

Macintosh continues to tour and is touring the hard way, as an independent comic, not part of the travelling collectives we see come through our hometowns. That tells me that he really does love stand-up as much as he says. I wished him well and we equally expressed hope that he'd be  booked here soon.

Go Habs go. Be seeing you.

Declaration of Human Writes

Declaration of Human Writes

Nothing like starting with a horrible pun, now is there? Onwards.

I debated whether or not I should put this article - I don't like the word 'post', it reminds me of something you'd tie a horse to or an unfinished section of fencing - on the By the Book blog. But I want to keep that site as pristine as possible with just reviews along with a possible Top Five Recommended list somewhere in the future. Fear and Loathing is more my personal toy where I write what I wat about whatever i want and if you happen to enjoy it, then all so much the better. And this is an article about writing itself. 

I've been reviewing books full-time for five months now, which has me reading about two and a half new books a week, ten a month. I don't review all of them, or at least don't archive all the reviews at the site. If I hate something, why write about it? Unless of course I hate it for really interesting reasons, as with Tell-All (reviewed here) which was a gimmick disguised as a novel. But if I sincerely dislike something for an interesting and/or unusual aspect of the book, it is quite true that someone else might love it for those exact same reasons. Placing your opinions in public is a gamble. On the opposite side of the poker chip, I loved all the early work, through 1980 or so, of the late Kurt Vonnegut Jr. You might find that to be juvenile mock-science fiction. And you might be right. Literature can be a love/hate thing, like eating squid, or buying a painting for the living room wall. 

But boring has no defence or possible virtue, so I don't post reviews of boring books. (There. I used the word post. I feel unclean.) What is wonderful is that I have read very few books that were less than wonderful. I sincerely and absolutely believe that one outcome of the computer/internet age is that people write a hell of a lot more than they used to. If you're old enough to have been an adult pre-1996 say, how many letters did you write in a year? Honestly now? Signing Christmas cards doesn't count, although I'll begrudgingly allow Year in Review Family Letters. Someone could do a wonderful thesis in anthropology or sociology by compiling and analyzing them. at their best, they're found poetry, heroic ballads built around the theme of Aunt Nancy's Recovery from Her Broken Foot. I'd happily read a compilation. But I digress (and as I say, Fear and Loathing is my favourite toy, so I'm allowed tangents).

Point is, we write more emails or blogs or Facebook status updates in a week than we used to write letters in a year. I have no scientific data to back this up, but I really don't think I need any. As the caption on the old dorm room poster used to read: your problem is obvious. You remember it. Here:

 

Ah, good times. Anyway, as we write more, perforce there are more writers - people who get good at it. Rising tides really do lift all boats, but it lifts the big boats higher. There are more great writers right here and right now in time than any comparable time in history. And I do have a degree in English Literature and wrote the curriculum for OAS :Level Canadian :Literature a few years back, so I think I know what I'm talking about. Talent's breaking out all over, all over the valleys and the plains.

Which means that this is a wonderful time for readers but ironically a difficult time for writers. All this great competition means that is perversely harder for a new writer to be read because people only haved so much time and money and there are entertainment choices coming out the wazooey. 

The other factor behind this article is that as I'm a reviewer - three papers, two dailies and a weekly and I'm working on getting more - people are starting to share their work with me. And while my partcular comments remain confidential, nonetheless from all this reading and writing and thinking you learn a gfew things. Tips. Like Harvey Pennick's book for golf (which you can buy here ), a series of tips that you can keep in your head, your pocket or your hard drive. Your choice. Or decide I'm a babbling idiot who couldn't construct or edit a five word, one clause sentence if he tried. Also your choice. But onwards.

Here is what I know I'm looking for in a book, and what I think nthe major publishers and their readers are looking for in a book.

Surprise Me: I want to get more out of the book than I thought I'd get when I first opened it. Two examples: C'Mon Papa (reviewed here ) surprised me by the humour and the depth of revelation about living with a disability along with the bexpected charming story of a blind man living through the pregnancy and the first two years of his first child's life. As well, the best book I have read in years, Curiosity (reviewed here) made very early archaeology during the time leading to Darwin and a full theory of evolution into something brilliantly romantic yet also presenting a great role model for women. That's what I mean by surprise me. Tell me something about a time, a place, a subject that I hadn't known and make me want to know everything about it.

But It's Not Wrestling: Don't go nuts on the surprises. Surprises does not necessarily mean plot or character swerves more fitting ti the wrestling ring when The Mad Jap turns on his tag partner The Russian Muslim by bashing him in the head with a steel chair, which turns The Russian Muslim babyface and starts a three pay-per-view feud that cumulates in a Hell in a Cell match at Wrestlemania. That works great in wrestling. It may not in your novel, is what I'm saying. 

    This is particularly true if you're looking at writing a detective or mystery story. A completely crap book like The Penalty Killing (reviewed for grins here) has its swerves so obviously coming they might as well be driving down the street in a bright yellow 1960s convertible Camaro, tooting the horn and shaking cowbells as cowering pedestrians while shouting out, "We're the Swerve Brothers!!! Yeeeee-Hawwwwww!!!" 

Obvious in other words. So be careful of that.

Be Accurate: This man is God: 

He is Harold Ross, who invented The New Yorker and edited it though its first twenty-five, best years. I've always wanted to write a play about Ross but I never have. A curious man for many reasons, and the subject of excellent biographies by James Thurber, Brendan Gill and reminiscences by the Murder's Row of great American writers of the mid-twentieth century.

Ross as an editor should have his picture hanging on every writer's  wall. The one above the computer, not the one behind your chair. He demanded accuracy. In everything. He argues for hours about the drawing of a cartoon if it did not make logical sense to him. From an interview with Thurber:

He called me on the phone and asked if the woman up on the bookcase

was supposed to be alive, stuffed, or dead. I said, “I don’t know,

but I’ll let you know in a couple of hours.” After a while I called

him back and told him I’d just talked to my taxidermist, who said

you can’t stuff a woman, that my doctor had told me a dead 

woman couldn’t support herself on all fours. “So, Ross,” I said,

“she must be alive.” “Well then,” he said, “what’s she doing up

there naked in the home of her husband’s second wife?” I told him

he had me there.

If you misstate a fact, or imagine a coffee shop on a particular block of Parliament Street in Toronto that you think no one is going to give two hoots about, you are dead wrong. Some reader, probably lots of them, are going to know that fact or know that block and it's going to drive them so nuts that they're going to doubt the veracity of absolutely everything else you write or have written. Don't be lazy. Let your Harold Ross voice be heard.

Speaking of ... Voices: The first person narrative -"I" did this, "I" saw that - may not be for you for a few reasons. Every novel is a biography in one way or another. Argue with me all you'd like. I respect your feelings, but I'm committed to this thought. But ... and but. Like the surprises, be honest about how interesting your life really is darling before asking the rest of us to live it. The first person doesn't give you much room for objectivity, particularly about the character him or her self. That is one of the principal flaws of the mightily flawed yet ultimately fascinating Beatrice & Virgil (reviewed here). No one ever questions why the narrator, a very Yann Martel-like writer, is bothering with this weird taxidermist. That's because Martel himself was fascinated with the taxidermist,a s here he was writing and creating him, so why would his avatar be questioned? I think it's a mistake. Your mileage may vary.

I do know that I've seen stories improve 150% when the first person voice was dumped. Still, if you have a terrific ear for dialogue and if - really important if - if your character is someone readers are going to want to listen to for 320 pages, the go right ahead. Or dare to use multiple narrators. A technique I'm quite enjoying is using notes or letters or diary entries by a second character to rest the inner ears from the first voice.

Okay. Enough for now. I'm not writing a whole book tonight. Cheers!

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Rant 'Em Notes

Inside Television 501
Publication date: 5-7-10
By: Hubert O'Hearn

Some weeks there are big shows to occupy space and thoughts, other weeks smaller stories that still deserve passing comment. This is one of the latter. Onwards.

William Shatner for Governor-General: Personally, I'm all for it. What does the Governor-General do? Makes speeches. Shatner can make speeches. Cut ribbons and tousle kids' hair. Shatner - the man used to open Loblaw's stores. Piece of cake. he'll even serve pieces of cake. He's from Montreal, is a member of a minority group (Jewish) and he'd be completely comfortable at State Dinners in Washington or London. He's a senior citizen, so that makes him an encoyraging role model for an aging population. He rides horses. The Albertans will love that.

But what about the serious duties of the G-G? You ask that? You ask that after the nearly universally adored Michaelle Jean completely bottled it when Stephen Harper begged her for the first proroguing of Parliament. She let him do it and what has been the result? Harper, thusly encouraged, has proceeded to treat Parliament like a box of tin soldiers that can be taken out or stuffed back into a shoebox at moments of his pleasing. So with such an informed precedent to guide him, I scarcely
think that a screen actor could do any worse. (By the way, Harper will re-appoint Jean. He'll claim he's going with public opinion and so seem like he's making a 'babyface turn' in wrestling terms.)

I'm Enjoying this Feud: I've never had a journalistic feud before, but once again I have issue with John Doyle of The Globe & Mail. I opened my Facebook to find a link to Doyle ripping Conan O'Brien over his 60 Minutes appearance last Sunday. To boil it down, Doyle thinks O'Brien is being querulous and has nothing to complain about.

The issues are well-known enough that thank God I don't have to repeat them here, but I don't blame O'Brien at all for being royally pissed. What NBC did was a public humiliation. The guy was told, 'Hey, you're not doing good enough, so we're going to bump you back a half hour and bring in the guy as a lead-in who's the same guy that's killing the local news lead-in to you because his show sucks. You're good with that, right?' Personally, I'd start his new talk show coming this fall on TBS (aka Peachtree) by a rear shot of O'Brien peeing on 30 Rockefeller Center. Or invade Leno's set with a chanting mob carrying pitchforks, feathers and tar. So frankly O'Brien's being moderate in his response.

Shaw Buys CanWest Global: This one truly bothers me. On the one hand, I completely understand the coalescence of media outlets into larger collective corporations. As I've said in this space many times, media is convergence and convergence is media. And capitalism hates a crowd. This is the natural flow of human events as everyone from Adam Smith to Karl Marx to Marshall McLuhan would agree. (I hear they're looking for a fourth for euchre in the Heavenly Card Room, by the way.) But damn, it makes me uncomfortable.

Perhaps it's because I remember the Kent Commission from 1980 which strongly warned against media concentration. I may not be a believer in objective media - doesn't exist - but Canada is too small a country with too few major media outlets for such small oligopolies to exist. In pretty short order, this country will be down to Shaw, TorStar, CTV-Globemedia and The Sun group and by and large that's it for national coverage. And the CBC, which Ottawa is doing its damndest to smother with a pillow embroidered daintily with the phrase, 'Happy retirement!'

Plus, I don't particularly trust corporations when it comes to media. You can get away with it in Britain or the U.S. because there are still large numbers of highly competitive, highly profitable companies, but in general corporate ownership has not been particularly good for journalistic media. When the Washington Post was controlled by Katharine Graham and her family they published the Pentagon Papers and broken the Watergate story. Name me a great scoop since they went cosporate. Money and truth do not get along. That's my opinion anyway. Your mileage may vary, but you do need to think about this. As a citizen, you need to be able to hear both sides of an argument in order to make your own decisions. Be seeing you.

Inside Television 501

Publication date: 5-7-10

By: Hubert O'Hearn

Some weeks there are big shows to occupy space and thoughts, other weeks smaller stories that still deserve passing comment. This is one of the latter. Onwards.

William Shatner for Governor-General: Personally, I'm all for it. What does the Governor-General do? Makes speeches. Shatner can make speeches. Cut ribbons and tousle kids' hair. Shatner - the man used to open Loblaw's stores. Piece of cake. he'll even serve pieces of cake. He's from Montreal, is a member of a minority group (Jewish) and he'd be completely comfortable at State Dinners in Washington or London. He's a senior citizen, so that makes him an encoyraging role model for an aging population. He rides horses. The Albertans will love that.

But what about the serious duties of the G-G? You ask that? You ask that after the nearly universally adored Michaelle Jean completely bottled it when Stephen Harper begged her for the first proroguing of Parliament. She let him do it and what has been the result? Harper, thusly encouraged, has proceeded to treat Parliament like a box of tin soldiers that can be taken out or stuffed back into a shoebox at moments of his pleasing. So with such an informed precedent to guide him, I scarcely
think that a screen actor could do any worse. (By the way, Harper will re-appoint Jean. He'll claim he's going with public opinion and so seem like he's making a 'babyface turn' in wrestling terms.)

I'm Enjoying this Feud: I've never had a journalistic feud before, but once again I have issue with John Doyle of The Globe & Mail. I opened my Facebook to find a link to Doyle ripping Conan O'Brien over his 60 Minutes appearance last Sunday. To boil it down, Doyle thinks O'Brien is being querulous and has nothing to complain about.

The issues are well-known enough that thank God I don't have to repeat them here, but I don't blame O'Brien at all for being royally pissed. What NBC did was a public humiliation. The guy was told, 'Hey, you're not doing good enough, so we're going to bump you back a half hour and bring in the guy as a lead-in who's the same guy that's killing the local news lead-in to you because his show sucks. You're good with that, right?' Personally, I'd start his new talk show coming this fall on TBS (aka Peachtree) by a rear shot of O'Brien peeing on 30 Rockefeller Center. Or invade Leno's set with a chanting mob carrying pitchforks, feathers and tar. So frankly O'Brien's being moderate in his response. 

Shaw Buys CanWest Global: This one truly bothers me. On the one hand, I completely understand the coalescence of media outlets into larger collective corporations. As I've said in this space many times, media is convergence and convergence is media. And capitalism hates a crowd. This is the natural flow of human events as everyone from Adam Smith to Karl Marx to Marshall McLuhan would agree. (I hear they're looking for a fourth for euchre in the Heavenly Card Room, by the way.) But damn, it makes me uncomfortable.

Perhaps it's because I remember the Kent Commission from 1980 which strongly warned against media concentration. I may not be a believer in objective media - doesn't exist - but Canada is too small a country with too few major media outlets for such small oligopolies to exist. In pretty short order, this country will be down to Shaw, TorStar, CTV-Globemedia and The Sun group and by and large that's it for national coverage. And the CBC, which Ottawa is doing its damndest to smother with a pillow embroidered daintily with the phrase, 'Happy retirement!'

Plus, I don't particularly trust corporations when it comes to media. You can get away with it in Britain or the U.S. because there are still large numbers of highly competitive, highly profitable companies, but in general corporate ownership has not been particularly good for journalistic media. When the Washington Post was controlled by Katharine Graham and her family they published the Pentagon Papers and broken the Watergate story. Name me a great scoop since they went cosporate. Money and truth do not get along. That's my opinion anyway. Your mileage may vary, but you do need to think about this. As a citizen, you need to be able to hear both sides of an argument in order to make your own decisions. Be seeing you.

Hitting 500

Inside Television 500

Publication date: 4-30-10

By: Hubert O'Hearn

I just noted the publication date for today's column. 30. That's the traditional edit symbol for The End, or Nothing More to be Said on the Topic. You're reading the 500th edition of this column as written over 501 weeks. I missed one. I was two days out of heart surgery on deadline and half-crazed on painkillers and, you know, contemplating mortality. Not a lot of TV viewing going on that week. But to close shop on a date of 30 would be absolutely hitting the sweet spot in a journalistic coda. I'll remember that some day. Because just like Mike Holmgren told the 1996 Packers after they won the NFC Championship, We're not done yet.

Too much to cover. Too much to understand and convey. Series television is ghastly. Disagree? Here's a measuring stick for you. Are there three narrative shows (comedies or drama) in a given week that you can't bear missing? Are there three that are a regular ritual in your home? I'll wager not and furthermore if you're say 30 or above this is the first time in your life you can say that. The only show I completely love right now is The Sarah Silverman Program. By the way, the only reason i haven't written about that is that I've been in negotiations to get an interview with Miss Silverman since Stella was a pup. There's reason enough to keep writing.

And more and more the most interesting thing on TV is the news and those who seek to manipulate it. There's a series for you, if you feel like writing it. Take the Mad Men concept (also a brilliant show) and set it in the world of modern PR and Media Management. One word for you: money. (now I'm toying with writing it as a play. Hmmm. Look at modern media from the point of view of its primitive self.) 

Which is a long way of saying damn you John Doyle, you went and scooped me again. The esteemed - well one of two TV writers in Canada you could name, along with The Star's Rob Salem - columnist for The Globe and Mail has I think three times now written about on a Monday what I want to write on a Wednesday for a Friday compilation. And news ages about as well as fresh unrefrigerated fish. So this week I see shining up on my Facebook Globe & Mail notification that Doyle has done a piece about right wing vs. left wing politics on TV. With video! If I was any madder I would have spit nails. At a Globe & Mail. 

But I got there first and I'm committed. Last week we were talking about the rise of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats in Britain and how television truly seems to favour the centre or centre left. And I said I would follow up this week. So I shall.

See, Doyle has actually done me a favour by giving me an opinion to argue against. Much more interesting reading for you, I hope. I think he's got it utterly wrong. He makes the point that the left is foundering in North America because the right has all the interesting talking heads. To which I respond that massive traffic accidents tend to draw an audience too. I don't for one moment believe that all of Sarah Palin's television audience are devoted followers of her as a potential President. It may well not even be a majority of the viewers. Rather, many people do have a weird little tic to the human personality. We like a good freak show. It's the same thing that draws some folks to going to NASCAR races in order to see a few good car wrecks. Come to think of it, there may be a significant overlap between the two. 

And Palin is just the extreme end of it. Do you know anyone - anyone - who takes Ann Coulter seriously? Are there people who do? Sure. And they should have their drivers' licences pulled. But just because one finds something amusing or attractively horrifying doesn't mean one endorses its opinions. My favouriote panel show is still the McLaaughlin Group and I'm always disappointed when Pat Buchanan isn't on. 

It is true that the left lacks equally attractive voices and personalities. I'll cede that argument. I'll always be a fan and admirer of Keith Olbermann, but goodness, get over yourself man. And Canada hasn't really had a sparkly public personality on either the news or political side since Rene Levesque. 

The attraction to center and center left will always be natural, just as the classic Freudian battle of Id vs. Super Ego (child vs. parent, want vs. need, left vs. right) can only be resolved by a developed Ego. We list slightly to port because the left always offers prettier toys (daycare and theatres and comfortable retirements) and claims to know how to pay for them. So the next time you see a political debate described as "a clash of egos" that is exactly correct.

But we shall continue thiis argument at a future date. For now, thanks for reading and - be seeing you.

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