Einstein in Goal

Thanks to the recent foray through sunny southern Saskatchewan by my daughter (check her blog at www.deborahhodge.com) I have come upon this treasure of sports news:  Albert Einstein once played goal for the Canwood (population 374) Canucks.

It is said that Al (as he was known in the Schnapps League) came to peaceful Canwood to escape the sturm und drang of Europe while working on his theory of relativity.  Some may say this story is apocryphal, but that simply means if it isn't true, it should be.

Checking the little known biography of sports reporter Ace Pfefferneuse I have found that Al not only set a record for shutouts while in Canwood, he also came up with the famous equation E=MC2, which, as you know, reveals that a small amount of matter can release a huge amount of energy.  This breakthrough came to Al after he was beaned by a puck traveling at roughly the speed of light. 

Al's theory of relativity, known in scientific circles as the Canwood Conundrum, tells us many things, including the curious fact that the faster one moves, the more slowly time runs.  Hockey coaches ever since have worked to apply this principle in key situations; e.g., power plays.

The favorite pre-game energy builder of Roberto Luongo, the current Vancouver Canucks goaltender, is lobster linguine.  Einstein's choice was knackwurst and sauerkraut. Often when an opposing player would close in on the net, Al would breathe on him.  Not only would the player fall down, a patch of ice would melt.  

It was, it's said, the secret of Albert Einstein's sensational saves.

You say Bayzul, I Say Basil

I have a great admiration for football commentators, especially Matt Dunigan, who recently was dubbed "patron saint of concussed quarterbacks."  But I do have to throw a flag on the subject of mispronunciation:  15 yards for every announcer who continues to pronounce "route" as though it rhymes with lout, tout, shout and snout.

Route, in football parlance, is what the receiver runs to catch the ball.  Fine.  But it is "route," rhyming with toot, boot, hoot and loot.  How about root?  There's something for football commentators to lock into their memory banks.  Route is root, as in root for the home team.  (Not that they would do that, for that would make them homers, which is a topic for another day.)  "Rout," which does rhyme with shout, etc., is what happens when one team crushes another by 34 points.

Okay, now that the pronunciation curmudgeon is fired up, here's another complaint:  all the Food Network hosts (including the great Bobby Flay, but I can forgive him anything) who pronounce "basil" as "bayzul."  Anyone who ever watched "Fawlty Towers" knows that basil rhymes with dazzle, not hazel. 

The CBC used to have an invaluable man who daily would issue pronunciation guides for on-air personnel.  Apparently such a position no longer exists.  There was a long period when CBC announcers would do serious damage to their necks attempting to pronounce "Bach" as something like "Bawh-khh."  They did not, however, try to get "Van Gogh" right, which, properly pronounced, sounds like someone with a serious case of catarrh clearing his throat.

I worked for many years with an announcer whose pronunciation was flawless in several languages.  At a time when the men's fashion line Gino Paoli was popular, he insisted on saying "Powli" rather than "Pay-o-lee," which was then the accepted reading, payola being something radio announcers understood.

Getting out of here now.  But I must pass on my favorite turn on pronunciation questions.

This, we're told, was scribbled on a wall of the Yale music school, where the subject under discussion was Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana":

You say Carmeena, I say Carmyna

You say Buranna, I say Burayna

Carmeena, Carmyna,

Buranna, Burayna--

Aw, let's call the whole thing Orff.

 

Leave it to Steve

"Hi there, fellow Canadians, and welcome to 'Leave it to Steve,' broadcasting live from the keyboard in the fabulous John Diefenbaker Lounge.  I hope you enjoyed my rendition of 'With a Little Help from My Friends,' dedicated to my new best friend, Jack.

"I see we have a request here for the great Mose Alison tune 'Your Mind is on Vacation,  But Your Mouth is Working Overtime.'  The request says 'Please play this for John Baird.'  Signed 'Mike.'  Ha ha!  Very funny, Mike!  Watch for a tax audit coming your way very soon.  And here for you is 'I Can  Dream, Can't I?'   

"A little instrumental noodling next, on 'Sleepin' Bee,' for our friends in the Senate.  And then

a personal choice of mine for Danny Williams of Newfoundland-Labrador:  'Mean to Me.'

Mean to me--why must you be mean to me?

It seems to me you like to see me cryin'.

"Moving on now to a number requested by Jim F. for Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney.  It's the old Steve Allen rocker 'You Gotta Have Something in the Bank, Frank.'

"Finally, we're going to wind up the show with a song that I think has a special message for all you voters.  Ready?  Here it comes:

I only want what's the best thing for you

And the best thing for you would be me.

I've been convinced after thinking it through 

That the best thing for you would be me.

Every day, to myself I'd say, point the way--

What would it be?

I ask myself what's the best thing for you

And myself and I seem to agree

That the best thing for you (big finish coming)

The best thing for you--would be me!

"That's it for now from 'Leave it to Steve.'  Good night and good voting!"

The Potemkin Village

There has been criticism of the federal government's current advertising program, a frequently aired television commercial saying, in effect, that the national economy is in the pink, not the red.  It is a very well produced commercial, shot in various parts of Canada, with excellent actors expertly playing actual Canadians.  And it should be good, if the $40 million price tag placed on the campaign is correct.  

Critics have said this money might have been put to better use, but if I were still in the public relations game, and advising the government, I would tell them the campaign could be justified as psychological stimulus, as essential as economic stimulus to get the bucks rolling again. 

I would also recommend a follow-up commercial in which Prime Minister Harper, backed by a chorus line of cabinet ministers, sings "We're in the Money." 

Meanwhile, thoughts turn to what became known as Potemkin Villages--fake villages, which were really mock-up building fronts, like Hollywood sets, constructed by Grigori Potemkin to please Catherine the Great, and defined, in the Merriam Webster Dictionary, as "an impressive facade or show designed to hide an undesirable fact or condition."

Heads You Lose

A recent book called "Frozen," written by a former executive of a US cryogenic facility, contains the alarming suggestion that the head of Ted Williams, the legendary Boston Red Sox slugger, has been separated from the rest of his person and used by employees of the facility for batting practice, an irony the Splendid Splinter might or might not appreciate.  Williams's family had placed him in deep freeze (at a cost, it's reported, of some $120,000 a year) in the hope that advanced medical technology would someday allow him once again to come out swinging. 

I cannot verify this story, but I can report that my friend Darwin, traveling through Afghanistan some years ago, watched teams of horsemen playing polo with the head of a departed enemy.

Mortality is much on everyone's mind, it seems.  Two of Philip Roth's recent novels, "Everyman" and "Exit Ghost," deal with this disagreeable fact of life.  I recommend both books, although perhaps not as gifts for someone in hospital.

One summer I attended a lecture series on death and dying given by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in Naramata, from whence now come many fine wines.  Ms. Kubler-Ross told of a trend in US funerary arrangements allowing non-persons to be posed in familiar attitudes, at a table sipping tea, for instance, or bending over a billiard table.  Friends could then come by and chat, although it would necessarily be a one-sided conversation, unless the departed had left a tape recording, which seems, in light of the rest of it, not unreasonable.  

My friend Bernie Vinge had an elaborate scenario for his funeral:  it called for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir parachuting over his shorefront home, humming "Ein Heldenlieben," following which a fiery arrow would be shot into the Viking ship carrying our hero to Valhalla.  To be sure his wake would go according to plan, Bernie had a dress rehearsal at his favorite watering hole.  He stretched out on a pool table, glass in hand, while his fellow pubsters stood 'round and mournfully sang.

I do hope all this has brought you comfort.  As for the Ted Williams story, I thought it was important to give you a heads up.

Chicago--No We Can't

Despite the star-heavy US presentation in Copenhagen, despite the duet of President Obama and Oprah ("Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin' town!  Chicago, Chicago, we'll show you around") the IOC didn't love it.  

Instead, the 2016 Summer Olympics will be held in Rio de Janeiro, August 5-21, and Olympians will arrive at the Antonio Carlo Jobim International Airport in the dead of winter.  Average August temperature:  15 degrees celsius, 70 degrees fahrenheit.

So, with Chicago out, we will not watch the Olympic torch being carried into Capone Stadium 

by gentlemen in black fedoras.  We will not witness the St. Valentine's Day Marathon.  We will not see the eagerly anticipated Broad Jump.

It could have been so different, if only the selection process had rested on the presenters shooting hoops, one on one.  Surely Magic Obama would have taken Yukio Hatoyama, King Juan Carlos, and Brazil's Lula de Silva.   

But it was not to be.  And friends, this is the kind of thing that makes Chicago IL.  

Pointless Digressions redux

It all began--as Ted, the dim-witted anchor on The Mary Tyler Moore Show liked to begin his reminiscences--it all began in the lounge of a West Hastings hotel when Brian Brenn, over a glass of wine, suggested that I might consider a program on the Vancouver radio station AM-1040, of which he was then manager.  Mr. Brenn and I were alumni of CHQM, that fine 1960s vintage crafted by Bill Bellman.  The old QM was a terrific place to be, despite sloping floors, low ceilings, bad coffee, and an air conditioning system composed of an electric fan blowing over a block of ice in a wash tub.

I proposed several ideas for AM-1040, the most promising being "Sports Reports from Mars," but this seemed not to be what audiences were desperate to hear.

Well, I had other ideas, equally strange, since I had been doing this kind of thing for years, as a means of avoiding actual work.  It all began--he said again--in a radio station that might have been the setting for Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion."  It was the kind of station that had quiz programs like "Third Degree."  Contestants were forced to sit on uncomfortable chairs staring into a bright light while the good quiz-master and the bad quiz-master took turns grilling them.

It occurred to me that in a milieu like this, I might be able to digress my way through life.  And that's why I gave the inspirational messages I produced for AM-1040 the title "Pointless Digressions."

AM-1040 no longer exists in that format.  It is now Team 1040, an all-sports station.  I still maintain that "Pointless Digressions" had nothing to do with the old format's demise.

Right, Brian?  Brian?