What the hell is going on in Oz? The makers of Oz, the Great and Powerful can be forgiven for James Franco’s atrocious Wizard, the ridiculous sidekick monkey and china doll and even making Emerald Square look a little too much like the Vatican, but not for making the wicked witch look like she’s going out clubbing. 
Thank God they didn’t have the rights to use Dorothy. Who knows what they would have done to that poor girl.
Paris as Dorothy
As mentioned previously, I once had a sports column with four different publications over a span of eight years (1989-97); only The Vancouver Courier is still in print. 
I covered everything from hockey and curling to basketball and bull riding and threw in the occasional vaguely philosophical piece, such as the following much-abridged Spirituality of Sport from The Voice in January 1997:
Professional sport is much maligned these days; popular thought intimates that it has become nothing more than a soulless business that devours athletes and fans alike. Championships are no longer won; they are bought. That’s what the Yankees, Bulls, Avalanche and Cowboys did. 
Money has spoiled thousands of athletes, embittered millions of fans and laid waste to entire seasons. Indeed, for many, it has permanently scarred the game. And yet this greedy, gold-toothed face is not the only visage of professional sport. in 1988, Orel Hershiser pitched a complete game to win the World Series and become the World and National League MVP. He was asked how he was able to perform so well under pressure. 
“Hymns,” he said.” I was listening to hymns in my head.” There was no gloating or Disneyland, just the hymns. While this idea can be much obscured by the commentators blathering illiticisms and sponsors hijacking triumphant moments, somewhere in between is something pure, almost divine. We only have to fill our heads with music. 
That’s when we will truly see Barry Sanders dance through the line, Hakeem Olajuwon loft the soft jumper, Paul Kariya tuck it in the open side and Orel Hershiser look for the sign, check the runner and let it fly.
In years gone by, I had a sports column for a now-defunct weekly in Toronto, Metropolis. The following is an abridged version of my article, Pink Tights and Empty Net Goals, published on April 12, 1990:
The beer ads say it all, the same old glorified fantasy of breasts and buns, another ode to the faceless jiggles of procreative dolls. 
Women have never been accepted as equals in sports. In spite of the occasional accolade in tennis or track, they cannot shake the stereotype of cheerleader/parade queen, always the voluptuous muse proudly displaying her pearly whites and profound cleavage. 
Sports Illustrated’s bathing suit issue has become an institution, Cheryl Tiegs and Kathy Ireland well-rounded icons, while films like The Laker Girls and The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders are common viewing. This is what some might call soft-core pornography, the portrayal of women as objects, as vessels to be judged by their flesh, rather than their ability, character and intelligence.
It’s not as if sports is anything but entertainment, a time to turn off the real world, but despite what marketers might think, that doesn’t mean that minds have to dissolve and comprehension be whittled to a twig of barbaric need. To have women constantly reduced to physical parts, demeaned into a position of sexual subservience at every commercial break and sideline shot, is to maintain the pathetic consciousness of master and slave, owned and owner. 
Men seem to have no need of female athletic heroes – unless synchronized swimmers can be dug up to substitute for a ‘disgraced’ demi-god (Ben Johnson) – no desire to cheer for “her” achievement when we can have “his”; “her” achievement is always second-best. Examples are inexhaustible: Grand Slam tennis always feature the Women’s Final first, the opening act to the Men’s; coverage of Women’s World Hockey Championships gave as much space to the color of uniforms as to the quality of play. 
Even in something as low profile as The Toronto Star’s “Stars of the Week” – a weekly feature on the sporting achievements of the city’s kids – it is a rarity to find even one girl in the lot. It’s as if women aren’t capable of anything physical except sex, as if they can’t run, jump and strive as well. A look to the sports pages in tabloids confirms this, where between the stories and statistics are the advertisements for strip clubs and phone sex. 
Male domination seeks to portray women as a toy, a thing that looks great when wet, that acts as fodder for the mendacious, a perambulator for the lazy. Sport doesn’t need it, nor even insinuate it; sport is about the triumph of the body, not its exploitation.
Perhaps there has been a change in the last 20 years, in soccer but that’s about it. The ads and sideline shots are the same as always, and now we have beach volleyball in the Olympics, a much more popular event in the women’s division. I wonder why. 
Literary agents can be very specific in how they think a query letter should be pitched. 
Send a query letter of no more than two pages, which includes your credentials, an explanation of what makes your book unique and special, and a synopsis.
Rather than leading with the plot, lay out the case for your book in a crisp, tidy four-paragraph format that begins: 1) Here is a (describe type of book), 2) It’s the story of (give only a three-sentence summation), 3) Here’s how the book came to be written and what people think of it, 4) Here are my credentials.
I prefer a short, clear letter rather than one that is overwritten or opaque. By which I mean, get to it: Know how to talk about your work succinctly.
Others aren’t as encouraging: No unsolicited queries accepted.
I will try to get my bad side query right.
Sporting moments can make for effective points in the narrative arc – both the highs and lows – and draw the audience in.
Bad News Bears
But most often they don’t. The team scores. Everybody cheers. So what?
The Natural
These moments are too grounded in winning; the immediacy is all that matters. Indeed, one of the weakest moments in my script, Sister Prometheus, is a game of badminton between the Adamantine sisters. Virginia and Willow are the younger siblings and have something to prove.
WILLOW serves the shuttlecock. VIRGINIA slams it back for a winner. WILLOW lobs to LOUISE who serves. DIANE volleys back. LOUISE volleys. 
WILLOW volleys. DIANE drops. WILLOW volleys. VIRGINIA volleys. WILLOW drops. DIANE volleys. LOUISE slams it for the winner.
Yes, it’s badminton; there’s lots of volleying. I’ve inserted the glares, exclamations, even a bit of profanity, but it’s still flat. And so I took them out again. It was too stuffed and pointless.
Caddyshack
The key in these sporting moments is in the stakes, as the script gurus say, making the winning proposition more than a game. Something real.
The Hustler
It’s not the game that matters, but why they’re playing it.
VIRGINIA (Slumping over the shuttlecock): Fucking birdie.
Ray Lewis is a good football player, focused and strong, a good tackler and all that; however his athleticism does not excuse him for his embarrassing antics in celebrating himself, strutting like a comic book character, weeping at The Star-Spangled Banner and wearing Jesus on his sleeve. 
Like many before him, Ray Lewis has fallen victim to the cult of his own personality. Vainglorious, exhaustedly so, he has come to believe that he is more than he is, like many a pharaoh, dictator, queen and pop star before him.
This could be amusing, but it’s not. Lewis is a severely flawed individual who needs the cameras off him. The father of six children by four women, worst of all, Lewis was involved in the stabbing deaths of two men 13 years ago, murders that remain ludicrously unsolved, murders for which Lewis has paid one family an undisclosed out-of-court settlement, murders that should haunt him for the rest of his life. 
Lewis is expected to stop playing football today, and hopefully it will be the last we are forced to endure his antics. To quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
New York’s famed Broadway starts at Bowling Green, the city’s oldest park. 
It was here, on July 9, 1776, where the Sons of Freedom, in an act of defiance against England, took down the statue of King George III and sawed off the finials from the fence – the saw marks which are still visible today. 
Bowling Green is also where New York’s ticker tape parades begin, all of which Manhattan’s Downtown Alliance has documented by imbedding granite slabs into the sidewalk. The first parade was impromptu – a collection of people going up Broadway after the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. 
There were another six parades over the next 35 years…
27 parades in the 1920s…
17 in the 1930s…
22 in the 1940s (all after the end of World War II in 1945)…
A whopping 62 in the 1950s…
32 in the 1960s…
And 20 over the past 42 years, many of which were sports-related. It is actually an interesting exercise to review the list of these ticker tape parades, especially to note how these celebrations have transformed from a focus on politics to that of sports. 
It is the very apolitical nature of the more recent parades that might indicate how unlikely it is that the current statue in Bowling Green will be taken down any time soon.
Wall Street’s Bull at Bowling Green
Wow, what a great trade for the Toronto Blue Jays, right? I mean, right, eh? Eh?!? 
The Toronto Blue Jays have just acquired two bona fide starting pitchers – Mark Buehrle and Josh Johnson – as well as All-star lead-off hitter Jose Reyes. 
Not to mention speedy infielder Emilio Bonifacio – remember how Dominicans flourish in Toronto – and former Blue Jay All-star catcher John Buck. And all of this for pitcher Henderson Alvarez, infielder Adeiny Hechavarria, catcher Jeff Mathis, three minor league prospects and the obnoxiously homophobic Yunel Escobar. 
This is a trade that promises genuine World Series contention, as these players enrich an already strong hitting lineup – Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, Brett Lawrie – and potentially strong pitching staff – Brandon Morrow, Ricky Romero, J. A. Happ, and just one or two of Dustin McGowan, Shawn Marcum or Jesse Litsch. It seems that the glory days of 1992-93 might very well be on the horizon. And it could even work out for the Florida Marlins in the years to come. Who knows? Who cares? 
Oh. I see. It appears that this does matter in the US of A. Not only do we have American sports journalists weeping and screaming about what is fair, but we also have Commish Bud Selig doing his ‘official’ review thing. What’s this about? Does he want in on the pipeline? Was there a suitcase of coca in this deal? Or perhaps some fine Canadian dollars? 
What’s with all of this weird talk about making sure the deal is right? Where did this hate for Toronto the Good come from? Truth be told, this reminds me of the Jays-Braves World Series of 1992 when the National Guard accidentally (okay…sure) paraded the Canadian flag upside down. 
When did baseball become something other than a capitalistic deal? Is there truly some kind of wayward morality or ‘rightness’ that can be applied here? The concern, as I understand it, apparently revolves around a stadium that had 80% public financing from the city of Miami, and therefore granted those citizens some kind of rights. If that’s really the concern, maybe they could have cut back on expenses, like the aquarium behind home plate… 
Or perhaps the plastic marlins that pop around after each home run? 
That might have saved an American dollar or two. Otherwise why don’t we get back to reality and accept the fact that baseball is all about capitalism. America loves that, right? I mean, what about the Yankees! All of that money and all those…rings? 
Okay, the Blue Jays probably don’t want to buy crazily into this, but if good old Bud green-lights the deal, we’ll have to start to talking about a manager. There are a lot of options out there. Ozzie Guillen could be all right. 
Canadians are forgiving toward the bombastic and they don’t have such a problem with Castro. Or what about a Ernie Whitt/Buck Martinez tandem? Or John Olerud? What’s he up to these days? He could co-manage with George Bell. 
If all else fails, the one to really consider is Cito Gaston. 
If he could somehow be coaxed out of retirement again – maybe be allowed to smoke in the clubhouse or hang out on a La-Z-Boy at the clubhouse stairs – that would be it: the ground out to first base, the ball in the glove and the dancing in the streets! And if he won’t do it, what about that guy, Phil Jackson? I mean, he likes money, right? Why the hell not?
Compromise (verb): Settle a dispute by mutual concession.
Compromise can be a noble action. It is something that leads one from an extremist position and actively helps in avoiding acts of conflict and war. It’s an action to which we should aspire, and yet an action that evokes terror to those in power. When asked to compromise to avoid the upcoming fiscal crisis, House Speaker John Boehner, balks, insisting that Obama intention to raise taxes on the wealthy “will destroy jobs in America.”
Boehner, like many other in the Republican Party, are wedded to a pledge of not raising taxes and believe that to compromise is to sully this position, or, as the dictionary says: to weaken a reputation or principle by accepting standards that are lower than is desirable. A good example of this is what happened to New York when it was compromised by the tidal surge of Hurricane Sandy 
or what has happened to the public reputation of David Petraeus in admitting to his extra-marital affair.
Mr. Petraeus and Ms. Broadwell
But this not the understanding of the word when opposing groups are asked to seek compromise. As absurd as it is to think, even those negotiating the current dispute for the National Hockey League believe this as well. Players’ representative Donald Fehr and League Commissioner Gary Bettman remain entrenched in their positions, 56 days into the lockout and only a short time from potentially cancelling yet another season. 
They don’t seem to understand that if there is no hockey, there is no revenue…and leads us to another interesting word: extinction. 
This National Hockey League lockout/strike/work stoppage thing is pathetic; the owners and players can make as many serious faces and proclamations as they like, but the farce has to end. 
If these gravel-heads can’t figure this out – how much money do they want now?!? – they need to hire an arbitrator to do it for them. It’s that simple. They can hire me, and I’ll do it gratis, out of the goodness of my ice-cold heart. I’ll solve it in one hour. One hour, that’s a promise. Done. (And if they don’t like my final solution, I’ll send in the fourth line to straighten the matter out.)
Let’s be clear about this. Both groups – the players and the owners – are to blame. None of those involved in this brain -damaged dispute can hope for understanding for the simple reason that they both decided to have beer-drunk summers, doing absolutely nothing. I’m sorry, did I say nothing? No, I’m wrong; they actually did engage in a spree of free agent signings, including Parise and Suter for $98 million apiece…uh, what?!? 
Make no mistake, these ne’er-do-wells are greedy, stupid and expendable. Indeed, as much as today’s players might impress – Stamkos, Karlsson, Quick – they can all be switched out – every last one of them – if they don’t want to play. They can go to Europe, go to Russia, or go home. Or if they want to stand firm in their cute little collective, they can all get jobs in a hockey school together. But if they want to play hockey, if they want to play the game, they need to do that now. No excuses. No press conferences. Nothing but ice. Nothing but hockey. They need to just shut up and play. 
Bettman, Fehr, Leipold, Crosby can pretend all they want. They can pretend that they’re something in their owner’s boxes, in their jerseys, in their locker rooms, on their benches, microphones in their sad little faces, drafts of contracts on their table, their ridiculous numbers – 57%, 46%, 50% – in hand, but it’s nothing, worse, just a percentage of nothing. Hockey is a game, not a business.
I own hockey. That’s me. The game, the cup, the dream, they are all mine. These others, these pseudo-players and pseudo-owners, these halfwits and buffoons will be gone soon enough, all of them; and the game will remain as it was, mine, truly. Somebody should tell them soon. Or did I just do that? Goal.
Social Widgets powered by AB-WebLog.com.