Segacs’s World I Know

Sorry for the lack of weightier posts since my return to blogging. You surf over here looking for Gilad Shalit or North Korea, and instead you get treated to googling and hockey talk.

Well, I make no apologies, but I do have plenty of good excuses.

For one thing, it’s bloody hot outside and, by extension, in here. Too hot to think, let alone rant.

For another, I’m still not caught up on the main news headlines since I’ve been away, let alone on all the zillions of bloggers who have been covering them. The travel bubble is all-encompassing, and it’s ironically easier to learn about what’s going on “out there” while “in here”.

Besides, the news is kind of like a bad soap opera: stop reading it for a few months and pick it up again, and you’ll realize that nothing much has changed. Same shit, different day. Frankly, it’s exhausting.

So I’ll probably be blogging about fluff for a while yet. But hey, it’s summer, we can all use a little lighter fare these days, right? If not, you know where to go for your servings of meat.

And you thought the Governator was bad? Texas’s race is shaping up to be a real battle of the nicknames:

Writer and musician Kinky Friedman, who once sang “They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore,” may include the name by which he is best known on the ballot to choose Texas’ next governor in November, the state’s top election official said on Monday.

Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams said Friedman’s nickname was not a slogan and thus did not violate state law. His name will appear on election ballots as Richard “Kinky” Friedman.

But Williams, a Republican, said Carole Keeton Strayhorn, who is also running as an independent against incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Perry, cannot include “Grandma” as a nickname on the ballot.

Strayhorn’s campaign advertising calls her “One Tough Grandma.”

Well, say what you will, but Kinky is certainly no Dubya:

“I support gay marriage,” Friedman said in 2005. “I believe they have a right to be as miserable as the rest of us.”

Let’s hear it for equality!

How do you turn a paperclip into a house? Ask this guy.

Hmmmm… I wonder if he knows Rumpelstiltskin?

(Hat tip: Mark)

It’s official: Google is a verb.

Higgins will be back next season as well.

Gainey has been steadily signing most of last year’s young talent to (mainly short-term) contracts. Still notably unsigned are Ryder, Perezhogin, and acquired-for-Theo Aebischer. More notably, we haven’t been dipping too heavily into the free agent pool. Will next year’s Habs be able to compete?

One World Cup, many heroes, and one villain:

Zinedine Zidane headbutts Marco Materazzi

The horns are honking all over Montreal tonight. Congratulations, Italy.

I must admit, even for a clueless Canadian, the World Cup has been exciting once I got into it. But now it’s over, so back to our regularly-scheduled programming (of off-season hockey trades and rumours).

Some things never change. Anti-Israel media bias is one of them.

From today’s Reuters: Israel rejects Hamas ceasefire call.

From the headline, the casual reader would make the assumption that big bad Israel is at it again, rejecting the perfectly reasonable offer of a peace-loving Hamas.

Hah!

Rocket attacks? Kidnapped soldiers? Terrorist attacks? The fact that any cease-fire offer by Hamas is nothing but a ruse anyway? Well, none of those are even suggested by the headline, and are only vaguely referred to in the text of the article itself.

A better headline might read something like “Israel stands strong against Hamas’s blackmail” or, perhaps, “Israel sees through Palestinian terrorist government’s transparent cease-fire ruse”.

But of course, headlines like that would be called – what else? – biased.

Update: Here’s Meryl with more anti-Israel-media-bias-of-the-week, this time from AP.

…but not Canada’s.

As the rest of the globe prepares for tomorrow’s World Cup final, Montreal is not entirely quiet. Flag-spottings and car-honkings are a lot more prevalent than I’d expected, especially given Italy’s presence in the big game. But soccer is still nowhere near the sport here that it is in most other places around the world.

Here’s Josh Freed’s take on the subject, from today’s Gazette (link requires subscription):

I’ve spent the last week at Italian and Portuguese cafes enjoying World Cup fever. I like the passion, the flags – even the honking car horns that go by my house until 1 a.m.

Yet soccer itself mystifies me. Like many North Americans I grew up on sports like football, basketball and hockey, filled with high scores and simple rivalries between cities – not nations.

But soccer is totally different, an often scoreless game whose blood feuds go back centuries and feel practically medieval.

Soccer also has a slow and, dare I say, dull pace which isn’t suited to many of us hyperactive North Americans. It’s like European films – where the pauses are as important as the action. In fact, it’s so low on thrills that last week, New Yorker magazine called soccer “the Canada of sports.”

So, as half the planet prepares to watch tomorrow’s World Cup final, here are some thoughts from a soccer know-nothing on why “the beautiful game” is a mysterious one to me.

To start with, North America is a goal-oriented society, literally. We like goals and points – and our sports are filled with them. A typical football score is 45-35, while basketball games often break 100. Even “boring” baseball has scoring extravaganzas of 11-8.

But in soccer your basic score is 1-0. Or even 0-0, which they craftily call “nil-nil,” obviously to disguise the fact nothing has actually happened. And we’re watching World Cup. In the regular season I hear scores are sometimes so low they give them in fractions: Denmark 1/15th, Argentina 1/37th.

There are rumours of a game where Croatia beat the Ukraine by minus 3 to minus 5.

Even when North American athletes aren’t scoring, they’re almost scoring, as hockey announcers scream: “He shoots … Ohhh! – what a save!,” every three seconds. But soccer announcers just say things like:

“Ronaldo passes to Ronaldinho … who passes back to Ronaldo … who passes back to Ronaldissimo … who passes back to the goalie … who was out having an espresso but returns to kick the ball.”

There are long four-minute stretches when even the wildest fans at my local cafe are utterly silent – though they’re not actually bored like me. They’re just tense. North American sports are about action and excitement, while soccer is about anxiety and dread.

In Montreal, it seems to be mostly about car-honking and flag-waving. But it’s nice to see at least some excitement in the air here. Isn’t it time we Canadians joined the rest of the planet and got on board? After all, it’s not even hockey season. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll even have a team good enough to participate? (I’m not holding my breath).

A week late, but better late than never. Went to see Great Big Sea at Ottawa Bluesfest last night, and finally found all the maple leafs, cheesy t-shirts, and Canadian pride that had been sorely lacking from last week’s Canada Day festivities at the Old Port. The guys put on a great show, as usual, and went on for a while about their newfound obsession with Beaver Tails.

Moral of the story? Want Canadiana? Leave Montreal and head to Ottawa.