It's THAT Time of the Year Again!

 Okay, fair warning. I did no real prep for this post. At least nothing like I normally do. But I have a duty to the world to tell you what I THINK might happen over the next three weeks in the annual March Madness extravaganza south of the border. And no more chalk picking in this year of upsets (including a Saturday last month that featured the top six teams losing and seven of the top ten overall .... in ONE DAY!). Anybody who tells you they KNOW who's going to win it all this year is full of leftover hot sauce.

Also, I remind you that simply being one of one million that pick Gonzaga to go one step further this year is going to get you nothing worth anything at all. Nope. Be adventuresome. Like me. I'm calling for two of the one-time top-ranked teams to meet in the final, with the Auburn Tigers doing what Baylor did last year in becoming a first-time champion. But not at Gonzaga's expense. I DO think Gonzaga makes the Final Four, but they have to buy tickets to the final when Purdue upsets them in the West vs East semi-final.  Auburn will have to climb over the fastest climber this month in the Tennessee Vols.

Auburn, not Kansas (one of the teams that disappoint me regularly since I last won a TShirt and a Laptop for backing them to the title ... many, MANY years ago), wins in the Midwest. It'll be a largely chalk region with #9 Creighton and #11 Iowa State (going from two wins LAST year to the second round) pulling off the only upsets prior to Auburn dunking Kansas in the regional final. Texas Southern earns their way into the tournament proper with a win over Corpus Christi.

While Gonzaga marches to the Final Four out of the West, it'll be Alabama on a march to the Elite Eight ending a strong season for Texas Tech AND the Hall of Fame coaching career of Coach K and the Duke Blue Devils. I like #10 Davidson's international cast and crew to join with #9 Memphis in other West upsets. Rutgers and Ron Harper Jr. over Notre Dame in the first four.

Why NOT Gonzaga?? It's a weird reason. In addition to Kansas and Tom Izzo, I've had a predilection for picking Florida and being disappointed. And disappointed. And disappointed. And who's the engine that drives the Gonzaga team? Why ex-Florida guard Andrew Nembhard, a Canuck to be proud of. 'nuff said. Really, THAT is the reason.

I also think that Purdue has the size to contend with Chet Holmgren and Drew Timmie along the Zags' front line when it comes to the Final Four. That's because of another good 'ol Canadian boy, Zach Edey. He'll split time with Trevon Williams as he has all year long and hope Jaden Ivey has a game for the ages when it matters (almost) the most. I don't have any issues predicting Purdue over Kentucky just because it's John Calipari and nothing makes me happier than predicting no second week for the Wildcats. It'll take Oscar Tshiebwe getting out-rebounded for the FIRST time all year to happen, but that's what I'm calling to happen. After handling The Big O, I think Purdue will then shock the defending champions Baylor who have shocked by being number one at times this year again and grabbing a one seed. The only other upset will be #9 Marquette over North Carolina.. I'm taking Indiana over Wyoming in the First Four.

I think injuries play a part in the only two upsetting squads in the South. Definitely Ohio State is in tough with #10 Loyola of Chicago, the darlings of Sister Jean. The top-seeded Arizona Wildcats, featuring Canadian Benedict Mathurin, are handling their injuries better, but I had Houston beating them BEFORE I got the injury report. But then again, I DID know of the uncertain comeback from injury by André Curbelo which sets up Illinois to be upset by Houston to set up the follow-up upset of 'Zona.  Having run off two higher seeds, Houston will run out of steam against Tennessee. Wright State gets my First Four nod over Bryant just because I can't stand the nation's leading scorer getting another game to make a mockery of the sport. I really, REALLY hate the antics of Peter Kiss. 

So, Houston, Alabama and Purdue to spoil OTHER brackets, not mine. And congrats in advance to Auburn and Jabari Smith, along with coach Bruce Pearl.

Mark Bell, RIP: A Remembrance

 I lost my good friend Mark Bell to Covid three weeks ago. On the day Georgia called to tell me that, shortly before noon on the Tuesday, I sat in front of my computer staring at the same page of the book I was reading for three hours. I cannot tell you the page number, not even the book title. It was a white page with black text. I think. A grief counsellor would tell me I was in the first stage: Shock and denial. But that counsellor would be wrong. I believed Georgia, having let loose with a sorrowful "Noooooooooooo!!" even before she told me. She told me nicely. And I believed her and shortly thereafter hung up the phone. 

Mark Bell wouldn't be checking up on how things were going with me ever again. I rarely asked for anything, telling him "I didn't want to abuse the privilege." Didn't stop him from asking next time we talked. And sometimes we talked once every couple of weeks. Sometimes months passed by. But to me, Mark was one of my best friends (from a fairly small pool). On the other hand, he would have described me to other people as one of his friends. Best friend? No. Not at all. You see, Mark Bell was friends with just about everybody he came into contact. He was a good man.

He wasn't perfect, nobody is. But he wanted to be the best he could be within that understanding. He formed a partnership with Andrew Stanley to sell comic books and that company eventually morphed into The Comic Warehouse, where you could by comics, graphic novels, action figures, cards, games and just about anything else a kid of any age could possibly want. Georgia McDonald entered the picture later, splitting time in Brampton at Mark's and her other home in Kingston, Jamaica. Hurricane Georgia I called her because she is a force of nature, who liked cruises and sitting on the couch with Mark on Friday nights binge-watching something or other with a never-empty bowl of popcorn at hand. 

The last time I talked to Mark was about three weeks before his passing. Georgia and he were on a break from the night's marathon of something or other, one headed to make more popcorn, the other for a bathroom break. Mark got back first and picked up the phone and dialed my number. It wasn't our first conversation this year, but being only the second wasn't good news. He and I had been under the weather this year. And at our age, under the weather is a euphemism for being pretty sick. I normally would have played a game of 'Can You Top This' with him, but something in his voice troubled me. A lot.

First, he described what had happened to me back in May to a 'T' as he described his symptoms and weight loss. For me, being weak isn't anything new. Mark, the brawn of the store in may ways, was describing his legs turning to jelly in the aftermath and seemed astonished such a thing could happen. I knew just how he felt. But instead, I let him give me the laundry list of 2021 malaise. I didn't want to add my complaints to his long list of things rotten from this year. Despite still not feeling his best, he then did as he always did. He asked me whether there was anything he could do for me. I demurred. Usual reason, and I REALLY meant it this time. 

"Hey, we've been buddies for what, 30 years now? If you need something, just say the word. Talk to ya later, buddy." And with that little giggle-cum-laugh, he hung up the phone. I didn't even correct him. It was closer to 35 years. It just felt wrong. 

I have been customer, provider, customer, employee, customer, reluctant provider, and friend through tout. I think I have the sequence correct. Being a comic buyer, with a 200 buck a month habit when comics were largely less than a buck apiece, made me a fairly big customer of the store. I bought graphic novels, both for myself and for gifts. Each Christmas I give the O'Neill family a game, usually after advice from Mark and Andrew. In many ways, the stores Andrew and Mark operated were my idea of the ultimate playground. I wish there had been a golden ticket to let me sit in a back corner and just read. And read. And read. There was even a little café at the front of The Warehouse for any needed sustenance. But no Willie Wonka stepped forward to give me the ability to completely shut the real world out. 

Having jumped ship from the Brampton Guardian, I started writing for the Brampton Daily Times. They took my Bridge column and my Comic Book column and were due to start with my Trivia column when the paper folded without warning. Mark and Andrew paid for the comic book column. 

Later, when I was between jobs (again), having quit the CKMW-790AM radio gig, and not yet headed to Memphis to take over the Media Liaison job with the American Contract Bridge League, I needed somewhere to go and get out of the house. A new comic shop was opened on the other side of Brampton, not far from the old Dixie Cup factory. Mark handed me the keys to be the counter guy there. IF memory serves, that was something like six months of me calling him Boss. 

When the ACBL gig went south, I was okay with it because I now had a social life. At least I did until an unexpected death knocked me for a loop, the first time that had happened to me. I didn't get over Laura's death for three months. By that time, I was doing computer consulting by being one page ahead of the others in the manual. And I was programming, systems software. And that led me to being a service provider for Mark once again. He wanted me to do a Point of Sale program for his operation. He disliked the software he was using and couldn't get any modifications made. For a solid six months, I found reasons not to do the software.

But I eventually ran out of excuses and said yes. The result was software that was used at multiple stores connected to the Warehouse and was modified as needed. For most of the first part of this millennium. Around 2017, the business that Andrew and Mark had built up and weathered through rotten weather, crooks and worse financial times, was changing. I have the logo I created for Mark17, the replacement I started for cwRegister. And still haven't finished. 

And now, I am not sure it will be. That discussion is still to be had with Andrew. I'm not even sure the Warehouse survives Mark's passing. I don't want to talk about it with anybody because not talking about it means Schrödinger's cat is still alive in the box. I guess that covers pain and guilt. I've put off until tomorrow, until there are no tomorrows left on the calendar. Not something to be proud of. 

At some point, I told Mark my worst problem, something I've never told anybody else. Not Patrick, not Marilyn, not James nor any member of my family. To the best of my knowledge, Mark never broke the confidence I had sworn him to. But he did come back three days later with a solution, albeit not one I wanted to act upon. Still, the knowledge that there was an approach made sleeping that night and most nights since then a lot easier. That was Mark. Don't judge, figure out a fix. 

When I made out my will earlier this year, Mark, Andrew and Georgia were part of it. I expected my brother Rick to get them to curate my collections of books, magazines and comics, as well as electronic media, and disseminate parts of the library to assorted other people in my will, and then the rest of the SF-oriented material would head for Kingston to Georgia's local library down there. I was thankful they all agreed to help in the event of my passing.

Never thinking for one second that any one of them would pre-decease me. 

If I'd been raised to curse in public forums, I would be swearing up a blue streak right now. I know a LOT of the words and I've used them in private. But I just can't turn a memorial to Mark into a place where I get my anger out. He doesn't deserve that. I do. But not Mark. 

So, I remain right where I was when I head the news. The only differences are that I have moved away from the computer, even got dressed. I have seem Mark's memorial service on the web (Thanks to Georgia's son). But I am still depressed and I'm not going to try and play 'Can You Top This.' 

Mark Bell was a good guy. He was my buddy. And I miss him and will continue to miss him, even if it's only at the other end of a phone call. Covid-19. A killer of good buddy phone calls, a murderer of the good guys. 

RIP Buddy. 

The Question Is: Who are the Gonzaga Bulldogs?

 Of course, in honour of the late great Alex Trebek, a fellow Canadian, the answer is: Who will win the 2021 NCAA Men's Basketball championship in Indianapolis the first week of April.

Now, as things go, this is about the least unlikely champion pick in the tournament that I have ever made. Which should worry you. It's been 45 years since the Little General, Bobby Knight, guided his Indiana Hoosiers to a perfect season. Five times since then, schools have stumbled after perfect regular seasons. This time, the sixth sense says bet the Zags.

Along with 60 per cent of the betting public in all likelihood. 

I haven't done a deep dive, looking for defensive teams with senior point guards, a pair of good three point shooters (if not more), good defense, GREAT rebounding and having momentum. THAT's the definition of an upset school. So, a LOT of my upset picks are gut shots. And for a change, I'm entering in my true picks in the Gontram Architecture pool that welcomes this Canuck into the free pool every year. And I've never come close to winning a free meal at the local diner of choice. Not once. So, I'm not filling in a lot of pools this year AND I'm starting with Eddie Gontram's pool first. With my best guess. 

First Four games starting tomorrow? The one that everybody wants to see is Tom Izzo and Michigan State against UCLA (and Mick Cronin, a guy I like quite a lot). But everybody knows I think Izzo is one of the best coaches in the college ranks, ever. Sooooo, the Spartans to party. And I like the game to be a great tourney lid-lifter. Drake over Wichita State despite me being a Shocker supporter generally. Mount St. Mary's over Texas Southern is another wish pick, mostly because I think MSM can give Michigan a tussle in what is usually a 1-16 bore, Lastly, I've got Norfolk St. beating Appalachian St on a pure coin toss. 

So, that's my field. And I've got a chalk board to go, with a total of 14 upsets, eight of which go in the first round Friday and Saturday. I'm upset-light in the West compared to some of the upset darlings of the big name prognosticators. Just UC Santa Barbara, who will fulfill everybody's hopes by downing Creighton. As far as Ohio, VCU and Mizzou? Nope. But in the SECOND round, and even-numbered round that I traditionally mark chalk and be done with it, I have UCSB taking out Virginia AND USC bouncing Kansas. Just not that convinced the COVID-belaboured Jayhawks, one of my usual picks, are going to be ready for the USC size, due to lack of practice time.  But other than those upsets, Gonzaga will have an issue working up a sweat getting to the Final Four.

My most upsetting region is the East. I like St. Bonaventure over LSU in an 8-9 match-up and Michigan State will go on a bit of a run by adding BYU to it's victim list. It'll end with BYU, 'cuz Texas is going to end the party in the second round. And then we come to Georgetown who are one of the reasons Louisville didn't make the field. The Hoyas stole berth 68 or even 67 from the Cardinals when they ran the list in the Big East tourney at Madison Square Gardens, the newest version of which, Patrick Ewing had some part in building. His defensive monsters will swarm Colorado in a defensive showdown and then add Florida State in round two to the run. And it won't end there. Yep, Georgetown will take down Juwan Howard's Michigan top seeds in the region before meeting it's match in Alabama. The Crimson Tide will have had some practice with defence first basketball when dispatching Rick Pitino's Iona squad in the first round. Think it sticks in the Cardinal's craw that Louisville is out and Pitino is in?

The staid South will see Winthrop bounce the Wildcats of Villanova in the first round to give the tournament THREE #12 seeds advancing, and I like Utah State to do in Texas Tech. Why? I think western teams are generally under-seeded and this was a team that gave the Pacific sides competition all year long. And aside from Baylor, the top seed in this region, I just don't have Big 12 supporter-itis this year. Or ACC devotion either. So, go figure. Only OTHER upset in the region, I have Arkansas doing in Ohio State in a mini-upset before bowing out to Baylor in the regional final. 

Leaves me with the MidEast which starts with two upsets in the opening round and ends with Houston upsetting Illinois in the regional final. The first-rounders are the usual 8-9 game where I expect the rapidly improving Georgia Tech Rambling Wreck to take down the Loyola Chicago Ramblers (sorry Sister Jean, I truly respect anybody who can travel at age 101 to support her boys, but not this time) and I think Tennessee is reeling as the season finishes and the Oregon State Beavers will win the battle of the Orange. (San Diego St. will takedown Syracuse in another battle of the Orange, but that won't be an upset ... unless Buddy Boeheim, one of my favourite players in the event, goes truly off, which he IS able to do). The Beavers are the partners of the Hoyas in sidelining Louisville, stealing the auto bid in the Pac 12.

Final Four will end with Gonzaga taking down Baylor in the long-delayed showdown between the two best teams of not only this year, but of the last two years (in total).  I think it will be a comfortable win, but I just don't think there is a weal-point Baylor can expose in the Gonzaga game. Andrew Nembhard gets to hoist the cut-down twine and that's all right with me. 

Player-wise, enjoy Cade Cunningham, who can't improve his draft position, as he leads the Cowboys of Oklahoma State past Liberty (a must-watch first round game) and then Oregon State before Illinois finishes his college career. Evan Mobley and USC will make noise as I noted. Jay Suggs won't be the best Zag, maybe not in any of the team's games. But he's the third of my NBA top picks I think bears watching. 

I want to see Zach Edey with Purdue and the Oregon Duck Canucks, especially Chris Duarte. I have Purdue winning twice, Oregon once. Luka Garza isn't Canadian, but I have an appreciation of great college players who won't be great NBA players. He'll end his career with yet another loss to Gonzaga, but three wins leading up to the loss will gild his legacy. 

And those won't be the only players that are must see. The others? Well, a fortnight plus from now, you and I will both know. Enjoy.

Pascal Siakam and Al Brown, Together in My Mind

 The Toronto Raptors' Pascal Siakam is one of the most likable players in the NBA. He is a self-made multi-millionaire who has taken moderate talents (it appeared) as a late first-round draft choice out of New Mexico, worked diligently with high-level coaching with the Raptors organization and summers at UCLA in the off-season and has become an all-star. This from a guy who wasn't interested in basketball much growing up in Cameroon and only started a path towards NBA stardom a continent and an ocean away because he tagged along to a basketball camp with a friend as something to do during a hot summer weekend.

He's a goofy guy who is one of the few Raptors to star in local commercials (along with the make-good idol of the undrafted, Fred VanVleet) because he doesn't have to talk to make people feel good. He does talk though and his punchlines bring smiles and laughs. 

So, I do not come here to bury Siakam. Far from it. If I had a daughter, he's exactly the kind of guy I would hope she brings home for the 'talk' with her parents. But there IS a thing Siakam does that drives me to extraction. He has a propensity for jumping in the air looking for someone, ANYONE, to pass the ball to. A lot of those times, he passes behind himself, frequently to poor effect. Other times, he actually gets the pass off to a fellow Raptor and then CRASHES into a defender, standing there ready to take the charge. And those fouls/turnovers are doubly hurtful for the Toronto team. 

My old high school coach at the junior level was Gerry (T-Tough) Thompson, who had a long and distinguished career coaching Bramalea Secondary Bronco junior boys' teams. Good coach, one of three I would think of, when asked who were the best basketball coaches in town. But I watched him learn a real tough lesson one year in the region final against Applewood Heights. There was a game plan that day. Shooting guard Bob Hamilton was going to be the ball distributor, throwing a curve ball at the Axemen in their gym. Coach Thompson figured Hamilton, the leading scorer on that team, would do a good job distributing the ball. And he was wrong.

Just like Siakam, Hamilton drove into the paint as often as he could, planning to distribute the ball. But his way of doing it was to jump in the air, and when that happened, the well-coached Applewood Heights team just sloughed off him or stood their ground. A good shooter isn't necessarily a good passer and on that day, Hamilton looked like a flopping fish before fouling out late in a one-sided loss. Hamilton's play that night violated what I thought had been a cardinal Thompson rule. "Never leave your feet to make a pass without knowing where that pass is going."

It's one of the rules that became foundational to my understanding of the game as a rarely-used, undersized, and slow, back-up point guard. And later a sports reporter and an announcer for pro basketball in Toronto. You don't leave your feet to make a pass without good reason (and virtually guaranteed success). I had been provided with the proof and in my own play, the difference between jumping and not leaving my feet was only a few inches anyways. I was living proof of the stereotype, white men can't jump.

Which brings me to Al Brown, the principal at J.A. Turner Secondary and it's senior girls' basketball coach. Brown was the silver fox of the coaching set and created a mini-dynasty at the school on the other side of Brampton from Bramalea. It took me until after I was done being a sports reporter and he'd retired from the teaching of our young for me to add Brown to my pantheon of best school coaches I knew. He wasn't self-effacing, but at the same time he wasn't a big talking self-promoter. It was my understanding that he was an outstanding administrator and a better teacher. He had some ... let's call them interesting ... training routines that he mandated be run early and late in practices and in warm-ups before games. The germane one here was his jab-step, stop and jump for a short range shot. Not the raindrop extended layup popular today. He had his ladies come to a stop by jabbing hard and jumping backward and maintaining good proper shooting form for a ten-foot shot attempt. 

This was extraordinary successful as the Hamilton sisters, Janet Weaver and a host of other players scored consistently in the (semi) fast break, rarely charging and hitting a high percentage of their shots, no matter the size of the opponents. And it wasn't just the guards. Tracey Gerber, the lion-maned power forward was equally adept at the art. The key was arresting the forward momentum with a hard step, falling back and depending on form and two changes in angular momentum to actually create a fairly good up-and-down shooting posture. 

Brown coached technique as well as any of the coaches in the boy's game did during that era, the 70s to the early 90s. The game at that time was changing in town as the town became a city became a mega-city. The complexion changed and schools in town became more athletic. There were strong runs at several schools over the next 25 years, putting Brampton on the map as a source of NBA-calibre talent. 

But I don't think the coaching in town is any better than the last quarter century if the 20th century. In fact, I could argue in some ways that it isn't as good. Better athletes, more year-round roundball players. Yes. But better coached?? I think Al Brown would have a credible argument to the contrary.

Back to Siakam. He's a devout disciple of the DeMar DeRozan school of adding a skill each summer. I fervently hope the skill he adds this summer is the jab-step jump stop. It's more difficult for him, given his racing horse speed and there's always the worry his joints won't agree with his decision to bring himself to a sudden stop. But he can't keep taking charges, costing him a foul that might put his butt on the bench AND turnover the ball at the same time. It's a double-whammy. He's got to stop doing that. If it means curling out when there's more than one defender between him and the basket, so be it. Better to pull it back under control. 

Wish there were some tapes of J.A. Turner's old warmups. Sure, it's a bunch of under-sized white girls, but I'm sure Siakam would benefit from the viewing.

A Guy's Gotta Eat

 Truly, madly, deeply, I like to eat. To do that, I occasionally need to get a service to deliver me food. The ones that come the closest to delivering you your choice of foods for a sawbuck, and getting mostly what you ordered from them, is Sobey's Voilà and Longo's Grocery Gateway. I'm mad at the first for the most recent deliveryman's ability to spread my delivery all the way to the far end of the porch and for Grocery Gateway for their creative use of the phrase, pricing.

But here's what you can expect from neither company, is a surprise on the payment page under the heading TIP.

I LOATHE the idea for tipping, have long come around to the view that restaurants pay their workers a living wage and leave the customers to look at the prices in the menu and quickly tote up how much longer the kids will have to wait to go to college in order to order from the menu. In fact, I still think tipping can be added, since service above and beyond should be appreciated. By a single bill, not a percentage. 

So, why the Scrooge act?? Well, let's start with a lady I called Sunshine in the days when once a week (or sometimes twice), I'd end up in a local bar playing NTN, which stood for Network Trivia Network, or somesuch silly thing. I played in Brampton ON where the trivia competing was actually pretty tough. My team, the BUMMS (Brampton Union of Marvelous Mugford Sympathizers) and a team of teachers from one of my alma maters, Balmoral Public School, were regulars in the North American top ten. More them than us, but we had our moments. I was offered the chance to jump ship (from my OWN team, which would have simply been The Bums, but the network wouldn't allow that name), but being overly competitive decline with malice aforethought. Occasionally, I'd show up at their bar and give a good accounting of myself, all by myself, just to be contrary. 

Sunshine was our waitress at Tom O'Malley's bar. She was a pretty, young lady who didn't smile nearly enough. She HATED being called Sunshine and I was too immature to care. I never tried in the least to get flirty, personal or touchy. And I tipped well. I could afford to since my share of the bill was always as close to peanuts as I could get. Basket of french fries, one or two orange sodas. That was the fullness that the restaurant/bar got out of me. I could afford to tip better than 30 percent and I did. But I admit, one thing she said to me bugged me till the day I retired from active trivia competition (concurrent with Tom selling the bar). According to her, TIPS was short of To Insure Prompt Service.

And that bugs the heck of me, still, after all those years. It's NOT my responsibility to insure Tom paid Sunshine well. That was between him and her. Off-loading paying her enough onto the shoulders of the customers MIGHT have been all right, but honestly, TIPPING has ALWAYS been a bad system made worse in SOOOOO many ways. Tip sharing is common. Why should hard-working Sunshine share with one of her co-workers who spent most of her time flirting with well-dressed customers than doing her job? Or the other workers?? Well, because they all assumed tipping was off-setting the wages Tom was NOT paying them. And I don't want to single Tom out. That was the way the bar/restaurant biz ran back then. And still does for all I know. 

But shaming customers into paying to avoid some spittle in the drinks? NO. Just NO. Paying is what I do at the cash register, not looking over my shoulder to see that no customer or worker or owner helps themselves to the money meant for the single person it was meant for. 

And I THOUGHT about my tips. I have tipped a single penny to a particularly rude and incompetent server. And on that occasion I went over to the owner, or manager, I didn't know which, and said that I wouldn't be back and the server I was pointing at was why. Mean?? You betch'em Red Ryder. Everybody has a bad day and incompetency's happen. Being rude for something that is essentially your fault?? Not on my watch. EXCUSING that behaviour is how it happens again. And again. And again. You owe it to your fellow diners and drinkers to stop the boorishness now. A word to the manager, commiserating without being nasty, should be the reward for a server who apologizes for lack of good service. But tick me off, then blame me?? Well, reap the wind. 

So, imagine my surprise earlier this year when I got to the payment page trying out Real Canadian Superstore and saw a TIP in place. Fifteen percent no less. And I had neither met the shopper from Insta Cart doing my shopping, nor had a lick of service from them to adjudge a tip. And oh, it gets worse. The instructions on my order for NO replacements didn't mean much to my ad hoc replacement. That shopper was getting a PERCENTAGE of my bill as a tip. So, ignoring my no-replacements comment, the shopper merrily replaced a whole lot of stuff. I have allergies. Wrong trust and I could be in hospital assuming I could dial 911. So, the food bank did well with my groceries that day. 

I still paid the TIP I'd promised. Later, I found the despicable amongst us, most of whom could laughingly be described as the well-to-do, rich slimeballs, would log in after the fact and CANCEL THE TIP!?!?! And why would these (frequently rich) jerks do this?? Well, the tip wasn't a pedestrian ten or 15 percent. No, the number would be in excess of 60, sometimes even 100 percent. They weren't going to pay it, so why not promise the moon??

Why?? Because the highest tip got the best treatment by the shopper. None of this queue business with first in, first shopped for. No, the orders get prioritized. That means shopping first, getting to the customer domicile first. Freshest food, items to those early in the priority, items not necessarily being available at the tail end of the queue. Survival of the richest. And to that, a plague on all your houses. Delivered as is, thank you. 

So, a guy like me with my modest tip, well I get what's left over. Literally. And to my shopper, no schadenfreude from me when you get bamboozled. Your integrity should be to ALL your customers,  not to the robber barons first, but to the customers who have ordered through the web, through apps, however. 

Of course, that ignores one thing. A guy's gotta eat. Should I come down on the shoulders of somebody willing to risk his or her life out in a pandemic to do what I won't do? Honestly, I'm housebound. I don't have much in the way of choice. Shoppers have a choice. I don't want to enforce a choice on them, but if they take the job, then playing favourites isn't the way to conduct yourself doing that job. And to the company that once again avoids paying its workers a living wage, SHAME ON YOU. 

This past week, still seething at the latest delivery from Voilà and the smacking around my credit card got from Grocery Gateway, I decided to try CornerShop. I'd looked at their site in the summer and seen emblazoned there-on, "NO TIPPING, WE PAY OUR SHOPPERS A GOOD WAGE!" So, imagine my disconcert when there, on the payment page, was a five percent tip already sitting there with options to make it bigger. I shook my head and decided to finish the order out, having wasted an hour 'shopping.' The food would be here in less than six hours. 

The shopper called me and asked me about no replacement. "None," I said. He argued anyways. The potato chips were available in the half-as-large size (for sixty percent of the price). "Okay," too tired to argue. I sat ten feet from my front door waiting for the delivery, which had the instructions, "Knock on door, Ring Doorbell, Phone in advance."

He was zero for three. I only noticed the groceries sitting on the porch when I got up to do something I do once a decade, look behind my TV. 

When I was finished hauling in the groceries I got on-line and made an attempt to cancel my account with the organization. I got one of those RATE OUR SERVICE emails and in a fit of blind fury, stabbed at the single star (zero not being available) and when faced with yet another TIP field, zeroed THAT out. Only later, I realized it might NOT have been an extra tip, it might have been the ONLY tip, And then, freshly revitalized at raging, I thought to myself that zero was more than he deserved. What if the order had been hot food on the very cold morning?? Or cold food in the midst of July?? The sheer callousness to deliver food and NOT let the customer know is ... well callous is about the right word. I didn't get my full order (which included fresh-baked bread) which was because my tip screwed my queue emplacement. My shopper didn't earn my money. Didn't earn his employer's money either. Cost them a customer. But the company that proudly proclaimed paying people a living wage, no longer bothers to do so. It would be a lie. 

I'll probably place an early spring order with Grocery Gateway. I've made my point. After a couple of months after that, I'll probably do a Voilà order again. Voilà does the best job of providing you with an order without resorting to unrequested replacements. I won't ever use a surrogate shopper service again. I have friends and extended family who regularly want to do it for me and I refrain during these troubled times. I love them too much to send them out into the cold, cruel world, with me having a LARGE WELL-FILLED PANTRY. It's NOT like I'm belt-tightening. So, I will wait until the Pandemic eliminates the excuses for these shopping services doing odious things in the future.

And yes, I understand I'm choosing their lives to endanger over those of my loved ones. And I'm being callous. But I'm not going to support the failure of organizations to pay their workers either. That day is done.

If you are a user of VPNs, check the fine print ... Especially if you consider PIA

 I am a dupe with a preference to using Windows 7 despite it ending being supported by Microsoft in January. Since I employ both a firewall and a decent anti-virus, I continue to use a system I have setup to my preferences a decade ago. It's a familiar piece of equipment that keeps me contributing to the companies I'm involved with. I  understand Microsoft feels that Windows 10 is sooooo superior that they were willing to sunset the most popular desktop computing operating system in the world. 

And I DO have a Win10 box that was built to my specs. I originally tried to buy a fan-less system out of Israel that was more than three times the price of any computer I've ever bought. Turns out the pandemic got in the way of that deal, so I had Patrick build a system that will eventually be something I'm happy to be using. 

Some day.

I have to find time to spend seven weeks (roughly) to customize the new machine so that I can transfer my day to day work over to it. SEVEN WEEKS.  That makes Microsoft's gunpoint assault on my Windows 7 system more costly to me than the hardware. So, a raspberry to Microsoft.

Now, let me introduce you to Personal Internet Access, aka PIA. It's a VPN. And in case you don't have your three-letter dictionary handy, that's a Virtual Private Network. While a number of critics would point at a VPN user as a person with elicit secret activities to hide, the truth is that bad guys are getting better and better at finding innocent bystanders at home and invading their privacy. For the cost of a cup of coffee, it's possible to have another layer of protection.

And yes, if I want to watch a US-only video on YouTube, it's nice to be able to do that. I have to remember to switch it off when looking at SportsNet and TSN videos here because if I don't, I get that same off-putting notice about the video not being available in 'your' country. 

I did the due diligence and found PIA was a mid-level performer at the lower end of the pricing tiers. The decider in my matrix was the fact that the service supported up to 10 devices. Given that I have six eligible devices within my sight at this moment, having 10 covered seemed like a good idea. So, in the middle of the year, I bought a year's subscription to the service. It cost a few coffees, but that's not the point. I paid for a year for ALL of my devices, not the least being the main machine, which was running Win 7 then as it does now. 

There was some growing pains. The Win 10 machine had a tumble over the Hosts file on the computer. I asked for some help from PIA to help get by that problem. The response was the usual boilerplate pablum. I eventually resolved the issue by wiping the machine and restoring a two-week old machine image backup. This time I found what program was diddling with Hosts as I re-installed and upgraded programs.  All of that without PIA's help. Was it their responsibility to solve the problem?? No. But help, hell yeah!!

Then, in September, PIA decided unilaterally with no notice to me that it would no longer support Win 7, which was within their rights, given the weasel words in the fine print. These Licence Agreements don't hold up all that well when challenged by well-heeled victims of bad software or bad management of good software. The managers at PIA decided to pull the plug on Windows 7 support, hiding behind the sunsetting of the OS by Microsoft. 

But here's the gigantic hole in their fig leaf defence. I bought this product FIVE months after end of life and I used it for more than three months WITH PIA's continued support of the non-supported operating system. Then PIA decided manpower in a pandemic dictated that they throw the Win7 Users overboard. But they did something still worse than selling me a product they wouldn't support after I'd used the product for more than a month. They cancelled the support WITH NO NOTICE to me and the others in my situation. And the service worked intermittently for weeks after. All it took was cycling through servers all over the world, to occasionally get a connection. That was until this month when no amount of fiddling made things worked.

That's when I went to the website and found the now two-month old notice. I contacted support. All I wanted was the half-year I wasn't going to be using the service (I certainly couldn't trust a devious organization, moving forward). The support person politely pointed out the refund policy was specific about when it expired and that she'd be happy to put a stop on my automatic renewal. You can imagine the words that crossed my mind, especially after the legal eagles pointed out that I'd win the case (worth 20 bucks) here in town, but travelling elsewhere might result in a loss (lawyer's fees to be included) and the travel costs. And in a different jurisdiction, their crappy, one-sided licence could be upheld. Even though they no longer offered the service they sold me! 

So, the best I could do is to cost PIA future sales. I hope readers, however few they might be here, will share and, of course, avoid PIA like the plague (a joke that is immediately stale, but true nonetheless). I'm telling all my friends and family. Somebody, somewhere, will believe me and will shop for a VPN elsewhere. And I whole-heartedly recommend VPNs. I know some of you are either current or will be future users of NordVPN.. Not the worst choice, but I urge you to do your due diligence.. Heck, you might even be a non-Windows 7 user and think the dreadful support from PIA is worth the price savings. YMMV.

To me, PIA represents the worst of the pandemic responses. They can't support the work for a key section of their customer base and just cast the workers AND the customers adrift, without returning money taken WHILE IN THE PANDEMIC, thus without the ability to claim they didn't know. The company made no effort to contact me that they were doing that. And when contacted, they didn't respond with a decent effort to split amicably. They said your money is ours and we'll do the right thing and not automatically try to take your money again NEXT year. 

Not good enough. Not close. Not part of my life moving forward.

And not a single creative slur in the whole rant. Mom, I AM mellowing.

Be safe, Even you PIA folks.

IF My Last Name Was Bettman ...

I'm going to give the new Blogger interface a whirl today with some meanderings about the NHL Draft lottery last night. Although it means my beloved Montreal Canadiens will PROBABLY have a 12.5 percent chance of winning the lottery (aka Alexis Lafreniere), I'm in the camp with Brian Burke thinking my namesake from the Bettman branch of the United Gary's of the World, screwed this up.

Burke believes in the lottery. The worst should draft first. Or close to it. He thinks a lottery is okay ... providing there are no outside interlopers. Like the mystery team, still to be determined after the play-in round of the playoffs, commencing some time between now and the end of everything. Might be the worst of those teams, my Habs, or the best of those teams, the Pittsburgh Penguins. Heck, it could even be the horrible local team around these parts, the Toronto Maple Leafs. Ugh! No, make that QUADRUPLE UGH!!!!

I'm hardly an Ottawa Senators fan. Still think the idea that they wear a centurion on their chest is REALLY STUPID. But I grew up in a family that grammatically didn't shudder supporting the Maple Leafs. Took me till grade TWO before I realized what a bobo that was. But I would have liked the Senators to draft one-two, take Lafreniere and Tim Stutzle, leaving Detroit, hopefully, with Quinton Byfield. Keep all the studs in Montreal's division cuz I like watching great hockey players. Except in the Blue of the Maple Leafs. And really, not that fond of the other blue team, the Tampa Bay Lightning. Or the Rangers. They wear blue too. Hmmmmm, a journey of self discovery just found a profound place. Yep, no blues in hockey. Although, I have to admit, sorta liked the St. Louis Blues ever since their inception.. Glenn Hall, three Plagers and the best uniform not worn in Chicago. Montreal's third, if you are wondering.

Where was I? Meandering, that's right. Back to the lottery.

All pro sports leagues are struggling with the lottery. You have to do things to prevent squads tanking in the hopes of landing the Next Great Hope. Thus was born the lottery. The lotteries used to be one ball/envelope/whatever, but have mostly become three chances at the winning ticket. And in the time of Covid19, it's become two lotteries in one, an NHL invention. And it is a bad scheme made very much worse by the fact that the worst fears were realized. NOW, we have eight to TWELVE teams potentially thinking of TANKING. You know, the idea the lotteries were invented to STOP!!! Habs stars were already thinking of not playing. If the squad gets down two, where's the strength of resolve for them to go for a triple upset and win three straight elimination games in a row??? Just to play Boston and face the shame of losing to the Black and Gold. Hold on, maybe it's blue AND black? Have to add that to the pondering list.

Here's two ideas for my fellow Gary to ponder for the next NHL Lottery season. Let the losers EARN the top pick. Think of it as an in-season tournament of equals. On the day AFTER the team is eliminated from the playoffs, the team gets to start earning points in the Draft Tournament. Obviously, the worse teams will start accumulating points earlier than say, the Habs, who rated to finish as the ninth team to enter the pool, maybe with only two or three games left on the schedule. Might even finish the Draft Tournament with ZERO points. Tied with, say, Carolina. But Ottawa and Detroit might have a dozen points, having started earning them a month before. If two or more teams tie in the Draft Tournament, you break the tie in reverse order of where they would have finished in the overall standings. And the Draft Tournament ONLY dictates the order of the first round of the upcoming Draft of Eligible Juniors. After the first round, strict adherence to the reverse Regular Season standings.

What else would change in this system??? Glad you asked. No more selling off of players that might help YOUR TEAM be competitive in the Draft Tournament. If it's a good deal, go ahead. But no more fourth to sixth defenceman suddenly becoming eighth defencemen on playoff-bound teams. No more getting sixth and seventh round picks in the future for them. If a team comes around and offers you a boatload for your soon-to-be free agent centre, you weigh what that guy could help you with in the Draft Tournament and what the boatload could do for the GM that gets hired after you're fired after the season. And if you think it's a good HOCKEY trade, you take the boatload and wish your successor well, having done him a solid. (I HATE, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY HATE the buyout crap that goes on in the NBA. I'd want this Draft Tournament for the NBA more than any sports league.)

Yeah, Trade Deadline Day might be a REAL downer with all the semi-unknown names no longer switching around to give the two hundred commentators something to yak about. But the real movements would be dissected with much more intensity merely for the fact that it's impact on TWO events would be that much more to talk about. Less chaff and more wheat. And imagine a late-season game between Detroit and Ottawa NOT being a tank fest, but a playoff-intesity match to see who drafts first ... and lands Lafreniere!!! You want the WHOLE season to mean something. The WHOLE season to have value with NO meaningless games. The WHOLE season to consider when moving players. NO MORE letting players BLACKMAIL you into buyouts on their terms, maybe for a savings of a few thousand dollars in savings. The players would play for SOMETHING. Maybe not a title (of which one or two of the moving players would earn, the rest WILL FAIL). But SOMETHING.

By the way, the idea is not original to me. Just repeating it since it seems to have faded from view over the last little while.

My other idea is not original either. It has it's origins in the long gone early years of the ... NHL Lottery. One ball, one team, one chance to move up by as many as three spots. If, say the tenth place team wins, it gets draft slot seven. Lottery done. Or at least that was HOW IT USED TO BE.

So, revive the same idea. But with the understanding there's three numbers coming out of the magic ball machine now. Place the Too Good to Luck Into Top Spot bar where ever you want. I think Burke wants it at five, with NO CHANCE for teams higher than that. I say, put the bar at five, to resolve Burke's biggest complaints and allow the first number to move up three spots or less, the second one two spots and the last one, well, you guessed it, one spot.

So, let's go through the repercussions this would have on this year's bifurcated snafu. The To Be Lucky team that sits above the bar at five, gets to move up THREE spots from nine to six. Los Angeles with the second number goes from four to two and Ottawa goes from two forward to ONE, leapfrogging Detroit in doing so (with their San Jose pick). The draft now goes Ottawa, Los Angeles, Detroit, Ottawa ... with the Lucky team getting six. The rest of the draft fills in around the lottery winners. That's ONE way to look at the results of the lottery.

Maybe, we stick with the ABSOLUTE top picks in play. Mystery team still only does the nine to six move because of the bar rule, limiting teams HIGHER than that to a three-spot jump. (And let's say the winner IS the nine pick originally, regardless of whether they were the nine going into the lottery). But give LA the top pick thanks to getting the next most golden number. And Ottawa gets two, cuz that's the best of what's left. Hmmm, LA, Ottawa, Detroit, Ottawa. Better than the actual lottery. Not as good as the play-in Draft Tournament.

Last refinement that will bug Burkie but might appease the lords of the NHL in my imaginary turning back of the clock to before my fellow Gary hatched this plan. Give the mystery team OR teams, the slots STARTING right behind the bar. Sixth through eighth would be the best available starter spots, but the three-spot jump would come from their position POST bar. In my scenario with only ONE golden number to a mystery team AND that golden number being triple gold, the draft order in my scenario would be LA, Ottawa, Mystery team, Detroit, Ottawa. Burke would HATE, absolutely HATE a team like Pittsburgh lucking into a Byfield or a Stutzle after choking against Montreal, but c'est la vie. Maybe moving the bar back to six works well enough for Burke. SOOOOOO many drafts are top three drafts when it comes to franchise altering players, that I think six is the right number. Negotiations start on the left.

An adjunct to why the draft lottery has failed in this wacko pandemic-driven year is that the mystery team is going to be one of the play-in series' losers with EACH team getting equal odds, supposedly to stop tanking. Every team has an equal shot. And in a five-game series, a hot goalie means a good team might very well 'earn' the one and eight shot at Lafreniere. Ridiculous. It's why Carey Price is such a pivotal player in making this Lottery scheme fraught with danger. Imagine Pittsburgh with Lafreniere on a rookie-scale contract for the next three years???? Or just as bad, the scheme could very well hand Les Habitants the next great French Canadian player. Think some fans will yell "FIX!!!" Ummm, sure. But a man can dream, can't I??

It's hard to screw up an idea meant to help the poor (in terms of talent) by potentially adding the Next Great Hope to a team that was in contention for a title all season long. Just after a bad two week stretch. The NHL has succeeded in failing all logic. Gary ... Bettman, you need to step up and prevent future screw-ups. Our name demands better.

You Don't Buy A Name, You Buy A Computer

This is another case of Trust being abused. Wasn't me this time. It was just a friend operating on my advice. And I failed him. And because of the circumstances on depending on a store and of the product they sold, my credentials as a computer consultant can be called into dispute.

Just because I know the phone number for my hardware guy Patrick does NOT make me a computer consultant. Knowing a bit about the hardware I buy and letting Patrick make it fast and reliable supposedly does.

Back in the summer of 2018, almost two years ago, I was asked to recommend where and what to purchase a replacement for a now-ancient Mac laptop. My friend's budget was in the low two-grand area. I snorted. I could quarter that and let him continue doing what he had been doing, which was writing, a bit of web-browsing and watching movies and TV shows on the laptop. Didn't need to bother Patrick this time at all.

Really, he was describing a low-end Windows laptop. But for him, I wanted some quality in the recommendation and maybe I wouldn't hit the quarter mark, but a third was certainly in play. I recommended a computer shop and told him to go buy a Lenovo.

Lenovo has been my go-to laptop for most of YOUR lives. I'm old, so it's less than half my life that I've been recommending Lenovo's all the way back to when IBM was making them. They had the unique j-pointer nub that served as a short, stubby and always available mousing device ACTUALLY ON the keyboard, negating the need for all those that had touchpads, which I hate with a loathing that eclipses that of the Oleaginous Orange Oaf infesting the Oval Office for a few more months. I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY hate touchpads, which are always TOO touchy or TOO inert to actually do anything. Touchpads are the last resort. Maybe, it's not worth having a computer at all if you are forced to resort to a touchpad. Surely a pencil and writing paper is better (You can scan it later and turn it into text). Touchpads are hardware non grata.

Lenovo's, even since the product line got bought by Chinese concerns and moved to Asia, are still, generally speaking, solid, reliable machines. They are not the best at all things. Far from being the best at this or that, they are the second or third choice. And at the same time, when all those other laptops with the better graphics, or sound, or chassis or ... well you get the drift ... fail badly at something other than their starring feature, the Lenovo rarely has a down side that makes them place low on the ratings of a single feature.

UNTIL that fateful day in 2018 when I recommended a Lenovo that came with Windows 10 ... and just four gigs of memory. That's right, in 2018, SEVEN long years since Microsoft stopped merely saying Windows 10 would run on a machine with just 4G of memory, but that the recommended minimum was EIGHT gigabytes of memory. The INDUSTRY STANDARD for new computers SINCE Windows came out has been 8G since Justin Trudeau wasn't yet Prime Minister.

And of course, there's a reason why the minimum is weasel-ese for "Yeah, it'll do SOME things, one at a time, as long as you are careful" while the actual WORKING minimum is twice as much so that you can write a letter, have the web-browser running to grab a picture of the internet and maybe playing some music in the background. The kind of thing EVERYBODY does with their computer. Or a variation of the same.

When you install Windows 10 on a Lenovo with it's stuff and boot it up, you can check your memory resources and you will be astonished to find it THREE-QUARTERS used up!!!!! What then happens is sort of like a busy working professional working at the desk of their elementary school child with all the deskspace he or she has, versus sitting at their desk at work where the desktop holds everything they need for their job. Instead of storing everything under the chair at school and pulling out various resources as the teacher requests them to, the professional has all the files over in one corner, pictures of their loved ones in another, the phone and computer screen somewhere else and a daily planner, notebook in front of them. Everything in easy reach quickly. No grabbing the backpack and searching through it for particular papers and textbooks. And purses?? I'll leave that topic alone.

The way the four-gigabyte computer works is that it fills up the remaining gig of working memory with program code and data until the overflow mark gets hit. Then it off loads what it thinks is currently unneeded code and data and grabs more off the hard drive. Swaps it in and out. And this swapping goes on as needed, allowing Microsoft to claim Windows 10 WILL WORK in 4G of memory. It's legally true. But it ain't practical. Not by a long shot.

I was having a bad day that day. I screwed up at an epic level. I let my friend, no, I GUIDED my friend into buying a computer with an inadequate amount of memory. And he ended up paying a little over a THOUSAND DOLLARS for this computer and a few gewgaws I insisted were absolutely necessary to having a laptop these days ... external storage, a powered USB hub, etc. I SAVED him a grand, but not the 1500 hard-earned dollars I sort of promised I would. I FAILED my friend now. And later.

My friend endured this slow hunk a junk for more than 18 months (long after the warranty had worn out). He asked me to take a look at it. I was confused and went down the wrong way a couple of times. Eventually I found the memory issue and had a meltdown. I was furious. I was sure there was bait and switch involved. Nope, they sold him what they said they would sell him AND WERE STILL SELLING LENOVO's with only 4G of memory IN THIS WEEK'S SALES FLYER!!!!!! In 2020!!!

They WERE doing a bait and switch with a novel twist. Sell rubes the computer and then wait for the inevitable return by the customer asking why the computer was so slow. Offer to fix if for between 70 and 140 dollars and suddenly, a computer worth MAYBE 500 bucks, being sold on sale for  759 marked down from 850, turns into a one thousand dollar sale. I had actually contacted the store chain in question (the local store wouldn't answer any of my four calls mid-afternoon on a Saturday) so I had to phone one of the other branches to ascertain the cost of adding memory to the Lenovo. Thiry bucks for the technician, 40-110 for the memory, depending on model and desires for how much memory. Off I sent him A SECOND TIME, to do one last bit of business with these crooks.

I had already canceled my account with the store chain and told Patrick that I would never pay an invoice from them ever again. HIS choice of where to buy the hardware for me, but it had to be behind my back. Yeah, it's cheating in a way, but I HONESTLY never want to see a CENT of my money ever go to these amoral, unethical, crooked, (the list of adjectives runs on for 21 more words,, which I will spare you at this point) SOBs.

And of course, feeling immensely worse, the situation actually got worse. On his way to buying more memory to cure the laptop's performance issue, he ran into two techs who figured out there was not going to be any more money in this customer. So, they told him it wasn't a MEMORY situation, he had to get a new solid-state, all memory drive to cure his problem. Only 220 dollars of his money, rather than the 95 I had figured for the fair acquisition and installation of the memory. And my friend, remembering why his old Mac ground to a halt (storage space completely consumed) and some of my ramblings when I was searching for the lack of speed on his new Lenovo, thought to himself, okay, experts all agree. Time to pull out the plastic and solve the problem right there and then.

He was robbed. Pure and simple. The rolled him like thugs in a blackened alley. Mugford's recommended shop mugged my friend. I am ashamed of myself. Of them, contempt close to Mount Mugford erupting. And my lawyer recommends against that. So do my doctors. And based on the advice of the legal eagle, I can't named this well-known chain of Computer stores in Ontario that seem to be a national brand. ALL I can do, is to warn shoppers that if a store is WILLING to sell you name-brand computers with only 4G of memory, they are willing to screw you over time and time again until you catch on.

Patrick, as slow to anger as any non-Zen Buddhist monk, got angry. Not like me, but he was upset. He hardly tried to tamp me down. 

He found that the computer with the added SSD (and the old drive stuck in a bitlocker protected case that couldn't be plugged in to the new system and all the original installation and data was missing as an old Windows 10 image is what was installed on the SSD ... crooks AND LAZY, what a wonderful combination), was about 15 percent faster than the mechanical hard drive the SSD replaced. Granted, with Windows updated, all the drivers updated and obvious settings changed to take advantage of the SSD, Patrick was able to bump up the speed benefit for the new SSD to something approaching 30 percent. He also installed two new memory strips (I gave him a hundred bucks and told him that was the budget for the memory AND HIS TIME), quadrupling the original amount of memory. And he fiddled with the drive unit he'd been given to house the old drive and turned it into something usable by my friend, meaning he now had a hardly-used 256G drive he could put into a shirt pocket. My friend will finally be well-served.

NOTE: It is accepted wisdom that users ONLY start to notice a speed increase when it passes 10 percent.

What those two techs did crossed the line I'm sure the lawyers for this bandit organization vetted as being legal. I think they committed actual fraud. But my friend is joining me in putting the store chain in the rear view mirror. It's just too bad that they old saw of buying a name brand means safety and basic levels of performance.

You aren't buying the name any more, you are buying what you get. Caveat Emptor indeed.

The Don Cherry Legend: R.I.P.

Every piece, be it written or spoken, over the last three and a half days regarding Don Cherry's final Hockey Night in Canada Coach's Corner segment follows a fairly standard template. First, the person excoriates the commentary regarding 'You people,' and then launches into their own personal saga of acceptance as an open-minded person. Finally, a fair percentage salute Sportsnet for having the courage to 'fire' the seventh greatest Canadian of all time according to the 2004 poll CBC ran.

I want to go in a slightly different direction, although I end up in the same place. And I worry that it will come off as an apologist. It isn't. It's an explanation and an appreciation for years of public service by Cherry. But I assure you, I don't condone his words. Or many of his words of the past two decades.

Many a moons ago ... about 37 years ago, give or take three months, I was working as the Sports Information Director for a radio station that has been gone for awhile now. There suddenly developed a hole in the syndicated market when a weekly show about the NHL went under. Ken Mackenzie of the Hockey News and I had a conversation and I pitched a quiz show set in a pub with a celebrity quizmaster. Even wrote the pilot episode. The man I wanted behind the bar dispensing quips and questions was none other than Donald S. Cherry. He had his own pub-based hockey commentary and interview show on at the time. I thought 'easy set to transform' and a star with proven ability to tell a joke.

So, off to see Don at his then-home in Mississauga. As a guest in his house, Don made every attempt to treat me as well as Ken (a legend that possibly eclipsed Cherry at the time, at least in the media). We didn't stay long enough for libations, but it was a pleasurable meeting. If Don had decided to do the job, I think he would have been a breeze to work with, even though he was as far right as possible and I'm a small C (as in conservative) Liberal--like the majority of Canadians.

Sadly, Don passed on the show, making the task of bringing it into life immeasurably harder. We eventually landed Dave Hodges to be the emcee/quiz guy. But I never felt comfortable with him and the meeting at CHCH TV in Hamilton to pitch the show went ... disastrously. Hodges made more than a few 'change' suggestions and I felt that, plus the incredibly tight schedule to pull it all together, doomed the show. And yes, I never liked Hodges subsequently. Hodges probably doesn't even remember ever having met me.

Now, over the years, Don Cherry was very predictable in his behaviour and his commentary. Never strayed an inch. He loves the people who serve this country. Putting their life on the line immediately makes that person a hero in Cherry's mind. His support of the military, the police, the firefighters, has never wavered a second. And when he tears up talking about a fallen hero, Don, is as genuine as the definition of the word. That support prompts comments from the heart, not the head. As in this past weekend. And the ugly words he spouted Saturday are Donald S. Cherry at his least finest.

Not that Cherry's commentaries on immigrants need reinforcing as examples of him at the core of his being. He supports Canadian-born hockey players at the expense of all non-Canadian born players. That's always been the case. When Cherry, who famously mangles foreign names, states his admiration for a player like Alex Ovechkin, I guarantee it's grudging admiration. He hates, absolutely hates, something that promotes foreign involvement in the NHL over a Canadian. By the way, those mangled names? Absolutely not planned out. I laugh when I think of Cherry and my father both trying to handle Yvon Cournoyer. A hero from Canada, from MY favourite team, the Montreal Canadiens. Ivan Corn-you're-yer. (It's actually Eevahn Corn-why-ay) They'd both go that route, almost in rhythm.

Hockey-playing kids are next dearest to Don's heart to his family and the service. In 'CBC/Sportsnet' retirement, I expect Don to see even more kid's hockey, where he is adored. There might be some parents and some old enough kids to be perceptive that some of what he says is puerile. But the kids? If they'd had a vote back in 2004, he would have been named the top Canadian ever, not just seventh.

When I think of the sudden end of Don S. Cherry, media icon, I wondered immediately who to compare it to. Woody Hayes, the great Ohio State football couch, and the perpetrator of an attack on an opposing player in a moment of madness beyond the pale. Joe Paterno, maybe the greatest college football coach, and a man oblivious to the sexual predation done under his nose by an assistant coach, turned into pariah when the story broke. Bill Cosby, if you want to include non-sports folks, although his days at Temple included being a part of the Track and Field squad. Any number of people who didn't censor themselves sufficiently to hide dark, ugly sides.

And who knows, maybe a President of the USA can fall, through the means test of his own words. Lies revealed through the pomposity of an enfant terrible's own boastful accounts that nothing was wrong here.

In a different time, at a younger age, Don would be able to apologize (completely out of character and he's already refused to do so), spend some time hanging around hockey players of a younger age (not in a creepy way, but in a supportive way that they almost all appreciate), and then come back, probably on Sportsnet's competitor TSN. But the 85 year old Cherry will not do that. He'll go to his grave thinking he got a real raw deal supporting the troops who gave their lives in muddy fields in Normandy, France all those years ago. He won't understand.

And that's the sad part. His greatness was his weakness, the inability to be impartial, to see everybody NOT on his side by his own definition, as the other side, the enemy.

And as Jeff Blair said so eloquently on Monday's Writer's Bloc on Sportsnet, EVERYBODY, either personally or through ancestors, has been "You people, the others." What Don missed and still misses, is "We Canadians" ALWAYS supersedes "You People."

Every time.

All Hail Canada, My Country

My fellow Canadians did our country proud yesterday/last night, electing a Minority government.

Canada is a multi-party parliamentary system. We have 338 Members of Parliament who then have the right to elect their leaders without further interference from the electoral masses. The leader of the party with the most votes in a Majority (i.e. 170 seats) government becomes our Prime Minister. For the last five or so years, Justin Trudeau has ruled Canada as a Majority leader.

Trudeau, the charismatic son of a former multi-time Prime Minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, didn't exactly make the last few years smooth ones. He had a variety of issues, starting with possible malfeasance in trying to protect the crooks from SNC-Lavalin. He then had cultural issues that offended many people of colour or of Indian heritage. And Indian heritage here in Canada is amongst the most widespread of any ethnic group. (NOTE: By Indian, I mean from the Indian sub-continent, not First Nations)

On the other hand, in a world where the Oleaginous Orange Oaf of the Oval Office represents Western leadership, the good-looking PM from the north looked SOOOOOOOO much better in comparison, that he was able to give Canada some serious world cred. Canada's leadership on Climate Change responses is to our nation's credit. I think MOST Canadians are happy with Trudeau as our figurehead ... and occasionally with his policies beyond Climate Change.

Ergo, the Minority government. Canada is a small-C Liberal country. We think of taking care of each other before ourselves, as a nation. We hold out our helping hands. Suburbanites are liberal, farmers and oilmen are conservative. No different than our American neighbours. But we have a different form of government. The American citizen that ran for the Conservatives nationally actually won the plurality of votes nation-wide. The Conservatives wiped the Liberal presence on our prairies out of existence. So, the electoral map of Canada shows the Liberals with a healthy prominence in Ontario, a dominance in Atlantic Canada and a carving up of Quebec with the separatist Bloc Quebecois. With a smattering of seats out on the west coast, it gave Trudeau the chance to continue to govern.

BUT the key difference is one that bedevils Majority governments, whether it is here or down south in the good 'ol USA. The arrogance of insulation from consequences.

Trudeau was not a rousing success in his first go-round as the PM. Growing pains?? Some of his problems could be given to that. Murphy's Law?? Well, every government runs into that. The response to Murphy running the nation off the tracks in a way nobody could have anticipated is more important than that Murphy screwed things up. No, the real problem Trudeau had was being secure in the knowledge that he was going to be in his seat for five years come hell or high water. Ergo, he stuck his hand into the SNC-Lavalin hornet's nest and got stung. And paid for it years later.

In reality, the case against Trudeau was almost ALL SNC-Lavalin. There was the hassles of the complicated energy issues out West. There's oil on the east side of the Rockies and tankers on the west side. Ever the twain needs to meet. The hows are ... complicated. And Trudeau and cabinet didn't get it right in a way that left MOST people happy. Cultural misappropriation?? From decades ago in the worst case, cluelessness in the latter examples. Still, not worth toppling a majority government over. It was SNC-Lavalin that made Conservative Andrew Scheer think he had Trudeau by the short hairs. He was wrong. But not FAR wrong.

So we have a Minority. Trudeau's had his hands slapped. But the country hasn't given way to the conservative Populism that has been a blight on the world this century. The worm has been s-l-o-w-l-y turning with rebuke after rebuke of the poster boy for Populism petulance, Comrade Donald. The Israelis seem to have gotten over their Netanyahu fixation and installed somebody who doesn't fall into line with Putin, President Small Hands and a host of other calamities for world peace. And we in Canada, who elected a village idiot to run our largest province, seem to be learning from the mistakes of others.

Why do I like Minorities?? Well, they have short-lived existences, six months to three years seems predictable. But a Minority government has no arrogance. It cannot. It must govern with a consensus of sometimes opposing points of view. That's not always true. Stephen Harper governed Canada as if he HAD a Majority, even when he didn't. To Canada's detriment. But that required particularly weak Liberal opposition and the acquiescence of the other parties. Mostly however, Minorities pass the laws the country needs, without the agendas that Majority governments employ when the arrogance of a Majority lets them. Those laws tend to be ideologues. And bad laws.

Generally speaking, the laissez-faire attitudes of Majority governments are diminished when there are true consequences to things like patronage appointments. We don't have utterly unprepared national diplomats representing Minority governments as adverse the kind of dipsticks that have represented the US on the international stage the last three years. We don't make TV hosts and hoteliers with big checkbooks posts as our representative to the UN or Europe, for example. Trudeau COULD have done that with a Majority. He didn't. And won't with a Minority.

There's one last advantage of this particular Minority. No upheaval of the government. It'll operate largely as it has last week. No learning curve for new incoming (in one big Tidal Wave) as there is when the colour of the team changes. The country's still Red. (and Orange with a little bit of Green thrown in. Heck, the teal of the Bloc might also come into play). But not Blue.

Canada remains stable. Trudeau has been chastened. The next few months/years will show whether he and the Liberals have learned from the experience. And that should lead to a better-governed country. Won't be MANY laws passed (Gridlock tends to be the greatest negative about a Minority government), but the laws passed will be good for all.

And if that last paragraph is wrong, the country will be awash in Blue soon enough. Maybe I'll be dead by then.

Trust and How Metro.ca Misplaced Mine

Trust.

Big topic. Everybody wants services and goods around them to be trustworthy. To not have to look at the invoice, because you've trusted somebody or somebodies that they have done right by you.

I NEED people around me to be trustworthy. I'm house-bound, leaving every couple of months to see doctors or a series of doctors. So, I have my prescriptions delivered (shoutout to the BramQueen PharmaSave and their phenomenal staff who I discovered after 50 years of trusting Shopper's DrugMart ... which was maybe 10 years too long). I have my friend Marilyn, with help from my friends James and Mark, help out with food and transportation. When there's a blank spot in their calendars, I've been able to mostly trust GroceryGateway for, well, groceries.

But not all groceries. There were some products Marilyn found hard to find and that GG just didn't have. Marilyn reported that Metro.ca was now competing with GG. And there was a deal that meant free delivery for three orders over a three-week span AND a bag of random goodies on the first order. So, I gleefully filled my Metro.ca shopping cart with all the items I had had problems getting (Cavendish played a big part here, with their Onion Rings and Restaurant-Style French Fries, and Metro.ca also carried the Selection brand of products, including the nectar of the gods, the indispensable Mandarin Orange soda). So, I ordered the goods to be delivered the following afternoon.

I was downstairs waiting for delivery when the delivery person called to inform me that they were outside my front door. I plodded my way over to the door, opened it, and peered out at an empty drive way. I called back, using the call return feature of my phone, and informed the driver that he was at the wrong address. I gave him my address. At the time, I didn't know who's driveway he was parked in.

Leaning out the door, I peered up and down my road, waiting to see the truck as it came into view. I watched as the driver (who I now knew to be ... as directionally-impaired as I was, and I get lost as soon as I get outside my front door. I'm LEGENDARILY bad with directions), as he pulled his truck into the driveway ... of my next door neighbour. Sigh. God save us from ... directionally-impaired people. I am SO proud of my calm and patience writing this. It'll end soon. But I've got this far without any nasty jibes. Stay tuned.

I yelled out the door at the cretin (see, my limit for not going ballistic lasted six paragraphs), "NO, over here!" shouting at him my address. Again. So, once again, said idiot, pulled out of the wrong address and finally got it right on the third try. I'd refrained from any name-calling, but I was thinking them, and adding adjectives to more accurately describe the level of stupidity I was witnessing. (As Mom will say, "beware name-calling, you might deserve some yelling at too." Too true).

The driver said a quick, "Sorry, sorry," and then went about the business of delivering the goods. I proffered the required identification the website had warned me of, but he just waived me off and started hauling the groceries into the house. No good sturdy boxes like GG (who, admittedly, had started using lots of green plastic bags and only a few boxes, of late). No, the whole delivery was in bright red bags, a contrast that I'm sure is nowhere close to coincidence. Some of the bags were dropped at the front closet (where do YOU store your soda??) and the rest in the kitchen. I signed the electronic device he thrust at me and they departed. Without much furtherance of the apologies, other than saying it was HQ's fault. I was okay with that. Recently, I've gotten into an apology war, fit for Alphonse and Gaston. It's awfully tiring. I think both sides of a discussion should be allowed a maximum of one sorry per week.

The food ran the gamut from good to great for the items I ordered. Except the small case of Coca-Cola with orange. This was a mistake on my part and I vow NEVER EVER to order flavoured Coca-Cola ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever again. May Marilyn hit me about the head. The freebies almost completely ended up with Marilyn, who seemed to derive some enjoyment from them. I split the very, very green bananas with here and kept a wonderful loaf of artisanal bread. I burbled with happiness when Marilyn came over to get her share of the haul.

I wasn't forgetting the delivery snafu. I did the on-line survey as requested by email and let them know the delivery to the wrong house was a mistake that needed correcting. I also had a LOT of issues with the shopping interface on the web-site. 'Course, I have major grievances against GG's site too. And given I write POS (Point of Sale) software, my opinion is not exactly uninformed.

I had three orders with free delivery coming up. On Thursday night, I decided to take advantage of the first of them. I put in an order that would have been bigger, but a limit on ordering the Mandarin soda showed up without warning. The interface didn't allow me to merely type in 36 and be done. No, I had to hit the Plus button and wait for the interface to update with each click. Horrible, time-consuming and unlike better shopper carts, no expectation of a limit until I tried to add a 13th bottle. Arrrrggghhh!!!!! I don't drink alcohol. Don't (mostly) do sugared soda either. This is sugar-free, calory-free stuff that doesn't taste like Engine Cleaner (not that I know what that actually tastes like). When trying to self-motivate, I hold a bottle of the stuff in the fridge out as a reward. And here, they were limiting me without warning. Fill in your guess at what string of epithets I used. You're short a word or three.

Okay, let's get this delivered between six and eight tomorrow, which by this time, was actually today, I think.

Come the supper hour, I hauled butt downstairs and sat in my TV chair waiting. I watched an hour of CNN and the ever-present Friday Foul-up of the Week (Trademark pending). The Obstructionist Orange Oleaginous Oaf of the Oval Office doing his best to create a new lower limit for rating humanity. Not a good mood inducer. Then an hour of the Toronto Blue Jay game. It made things worse. Five minutes past eight, I went to my tablet to get the phone number for Metro.ca customer support.

And there it was, an email, asking me to fill out a new survey. The groceries had been delivered a half-hour ago. Immediately, I assumed the village idiot had done a Comrade Donald-like quadrupling down of something stupid and failed to ring the VERY LOUD doorbell and had merely piled the groceries on my front step and did a runner. I stumbled my way to the front door, opened it, expecting a sea of red, and found ... nothing. Nada. Zilch. President Small Hand's most recent score for mental acuity.

Back to the chair to call Metro.ca. After a moderately long wait, I got somebody named Donna. At least I think it was Donna. Obviously, future events were to question my hearing. Donna, regrettably, was soon to be subjected to my wrath. I think I apologized three times in all for yelling at her. Still feel bad about doing that to a lady. I know it's sexist, but I would have rather been yelling at Brad. Or Raj. Or Juan. Or Orlando. Or Herschel (my Aunt Dorothy's life-long nickname for me). Or Ian. But it was Donna. I think.

I explained the situation and heard her furiously typing in notes. Her silence after the first apology when I was being polite spoke loudly. Even she was shocked by what had went on. She asked for time to talk to a superior over remedies. I graciously, truly, I was gracious, thanked her for looking into this. She put me on hold and I examined the emails I hadn't bothered reading (indeed, commercial stuff that's 95 percent sales come-ons, gets automatically shunted to my "Ignore unless needed" folder). There, right on the two emails announcing my order and then the warning it was coming, was the wrong address. Yep. The wrong address.

This could have been a major oopsie on my part and a tail-between-the-legs moment on the phone. But no, I was still on morally upper ground. The driver obviously knew of the address mistake. One would have assumed he would have complained to management. I'd told the survey LEAVING MY PHONE NUMBER. Which nobody called. But I had made a second order with the auto wrong-address being used without looking at it. And truth be told, the differences between the two numbers was maybe two small pixels. And I'm at an age where it might be good to get my eyesight checked. I've been ducking the Drs. Thompson because I don't want new glasses. I'd prefer a new computer.

So, when Donna returned, I copped to being complicit in this idiocy. But, as I informed her again, I had told the driver, who I would have assumed told his management, and the survey. Further, the thieves at the other address had signed as GARY MUGFORD (I assumed) for the delivery of groceries they'd never ordered. That's fraud from where I stand and I hope a detective from the local constabulary visits. I want a pound of flesh from those thieving souls. A broken kneecap might suffice. I wish a plague of horrors upon all the inhabitants of the house.

Now, at some point SOMEBODY had to have said to the driver, "I/We didn't order anything." Said driver had to have asked himself, let me verify this. And whatever happened next, the driver and the thieves conspired to take the groceries I HAD PAID FOR! All of this was shouted into the phone.

I apologized for the second time to Donna. Not to Metro.ca. But to Donna. Then she informed me NOTHING could be done tonight to fix things. Tomorrow morning. Which was going to be better than replacing the order with an order with GroceryGateway. The soonest I could get stuff from them would be Sunday. I told Donna that morning would be fine, as long as it was 11 AM or later. Preferably 1 PM. Oh, and I wanted an apology from Metro.ca. I'd lost it again. So, a third apology was in the offing.

And that ended the phone call. Right now, as I write this, before the inevitable edits, it's closer to 3 PM. The deadline for resolution of this mess is daylight's end today. I don't want a delivery in the dark. Too easy for this merry band of fools to get it wrong. I am sanguine of getting the food (and soda, sadly for the last time). The apology?? Of that, I figure my odds are roughly equivalent with winning the lottery. These clowns are going to replace my food, knowing my cancellation of our association is almost automatic.

And the story continues...

Not long after writing the first three-quarters of this long-winded rant for this blog, I called the comically-misnamed Customer Support again. Patrick answered. In a half-hour of talking to him, nothing. Nothing was accomplished. I wasn't allowed to talk to a supervisor (His supervisor was new, having replaced PATRICK in the job a week ago ... yep, I was talking to The Demoted) and, miraculously, nobody 'there' had ever heard of Donna. Yet, just as miraculously, my address info had miraculously been corrected. But no magic, however powerful, could compel him to have my groceries delivered that day (or any day). A waste of time. I did apologize to him twice, once after SCREAMING into his ear after he told me to, in effect, hurry up and finish my story. I have that problem. I like all the details when I am faced with trying to resolve a problem. I foolishly think others, who work in the support sector, have the same detail-oriented approach. So, I treated Patrick the same as Donna. Somebody not deserving of being yelled at. I was wrong. Wrong as in, he deserved not to be yelled at.

Sunday? Shawn/Sean or something in-between. This lowest-level on the evolutionary support scale categorically refused to let me talk to a supervisor. He, like the other two, put me on hold to talk to somebody with higher authority than him ... I believe the word you're thinking is, Supervisor, then came back on the phone and told me, and this shocked me, "No, you can't talk to a supervisor. Somebody will call you in the next 24-48 hours." Head, palm, smack. Epithet. I'm proud I never let a curse pass through my lips in three separate half-hour phone calls. Didn't even engage in any name-calling. Which was INCREDIBLY stressful. Which my doctors REALLY, REALLY, REALLY hate. This carbuncle on the back-side of customer support wouldn't last a day at any company I worked with. It'd be him or me and I write the systems software. Bye-bye. The company's better off without you. This blithering idiot said, seven times, cuz I counted, "I understand your frustration." No, he didn't. No, he didn't at all.

So, I called the cops. After talking to a retired detective friend who told me it was likely the case was a civil one. But a winning one. On the other hand, if the criminals at the other address had signed my name ...

The officers who came to talk to me were polite, empathetic and almost ready to get involved. But I was not the aggrieved party. The crooks five doors down had stolen from Metro.ca, not me. And with lawyer bills being what they are, the likelihood was that Metro.ca would not swear out a complaint, just absorb the cost of doing business. But if they did, the officers would be back to talk to me as a (WILLING) witness. I tried to get them to call Metro.ca, if only to say that. They smiled, an shook their head. I think they respected me for trying to get them to engage Metro.ca, but  stuck to non-involvement in what to them was a civil matter. A nice interaction with the local constabulary. And despite not getting the wrath of the law on my side, I can't complain.

Hmmm, it's now Monday. Late afternoon. That idiot Shawn's prediction of a response coming on Tuesday seems pretty solid.

Then the phone rang. A gentlemen introduced himself as being from Metro. I didn't catch the name. Didn't want to. I knew where the conversation was going, so why add one more name to the list of people I hope to haunt from the dead as soon as I get interred or crisped up beyond all redemption. I'll still be busy with the Shawn's of the world.

The call came in about 5 PM. I asked him at one point in the conversation whether if I'd agreed to it, whether I would have had groceries Monday evening. "No." So, the supervisorly response from Metro.ca was not to deliver my paid-for groceries on the Friday, the Saturday, the Sunday, the Monday but maybe by the Tuesday. Please pause for an epithet break. He started, I believe, to tell me the groceries would be delivered eventually and that any charges would be withdrawn. Maybe offer me some inducement. Free delivery on my next order? Ten free deliveries? A million deliveries. Free for life? Don't know. I cut him off. I despise people who complain in order to get something free in exchange for silencing their opinion. Too much of an ego. My honor is worth more than most companies would even dream of offering. I admit, there's been times where I've taken inducements. I then hate myself for a decade before my failing memory lets me do it again.

Marilyn and I had discussed it. She'd suggested I ask for two cases of my beloved Mandarin soda every month, delivered for free, for a year. Which would have been good. After all, I was dealing with Metro.ca in large part so that I wasn't asking her every week to break her back lugging soda from the store to my house. She's an angel. Time I repaid that kindness in small part when and where I can.

Nope. I went for the cut my nose off to spite my face response. "Gimme my money back and I never want to deal with Metro.ca or Metro ever again." And when he used the lawyerly, "Let me get this clear..." I cut him off again, "I know you are taping this phone call. For the lawyers who are listening, I want my money returned and then I never want to hear from Metro again." Which ended my fourth and final interaction with 'Customer Support' at Metro.ca. And I will never order from them, allow Marilyn to buy product there on my behalf or ever drink another bottle of Mandarin  soda again. Well, after I empty the closet. I wasn't going to accept any freebies from this empathy-deprived organization that had caused me no end of stress for four days and thought bribery might appease me. They were wrong.

Because in the end, you can't trust Metro.ca.

NOTE: I have used the real names, albeit with guessed-at spelling here. To the best of my hearing. I will point out some ironies. My best friend's name is Patrick. His wife's name is Dawna. Shawn is my more-than-helpful neighbour from the other side from James. NONE of those three were the Donna, Patrick or Shawn I talked to.

Al Franken Revisited

Today, at Mark Evanier's blog, I got the head's up to read Jane Mayer's clinical dissection of the American tragedy known as Al Franken's resignation from the Senate for The New Yorker magazine. And a less clinical, more impassioned critique of Mayer's article by Christina Cauterucci at Slate.com.

I'm guessing you know where I fall in this debate from my opening statement. I want to warn you: I will not follow my usual practice of using a derisive nickname for the current holder of the office of President of the United States in my public (and private) writings. He's named because humour doesn't always seem to do what it is intended to do. Provoke laughs and maybe a thought or two. So, nothing oblique today.

Oh, and I did try to make this comment at Slate, but the permissions I had to give ran to some FOURTY sites to ALMOST be able to post my comment. At the point of a fifth failure for it to work, I said enough is enough, Mug Shots will get the post. (A mini-rant I hope doesn't get in the way of a reasoned discussion to follow here).

⚤

Having read this article and the New Yorker one by Jane Mayer I am struck by the confluence of two things: American politics and #MeToo coming together to create a disaster for the American people. I say this as a Canadian.

I'm trying to understand this article. The fact that it's author thinks Franken's resignation saved the Democratic Party's reputation while any unbiased look at the Trumpian political scene of the last four years would suggest that Franken was the best weapon the Democrats had in a running series of political and policy miscues by the President, before and after election. Losing him was not good for the Republic. The critical balance of Justice's Scales tipped badly for society.

Is Franken a cement-headed, privileged white Male? On occasions, the facts are fairly conclusive. Yes. But I think back over my three score and some, and I am guilty enough that a determined person could paint me as a predator too. And that's despite the fact that I am well known amongst my peers as a notoriously NON touchy-feely person. No grabs, no kisses. Clean record.

But I'm sure there's a woman or two who felt badly in my presence. I once asked a receptionist at the company I worked for on a date. And she told me, after the meal, that this would be the last time. She didn't like me, but wanted to say it in public because, "You're management and I'm the lowest-paid person in the place." Ouch! At least I didn't ask her to split the bill. When I was a callow youth, starting out in the newspaper business, I thought it hilarious to buy a G-String for a young co-worker as her Secret Santa at our Christmas Party. I thought wrong. I'm sure there are other instances where I made women uneasy. Those are the two that come instantly to mind when I get too full of myself.

#MeToo is important. And trying to draw a fine line between the Frankens of the world and the behaviour of the Trumps and Moores of the world (and probably the Clintons) is madness in the attempt. Erring on the side of tarring Franken was facile, and apparently necessary by Franken's peers, the politicians. Which proves what a terrible thing a politician is and always has been. I've always used the term derisively. The two pieces leave me absolutely sure of my stance in that regard. Al Franken is better than being a politician. Mayer's portrayal of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand as an opportunist with too much ego after the falseness of many of the claims against Franken have been revealed, makes me no less hesitant to use politician as the slur it has always been.

As for the rest? The ones that failed Franken and due process? Some I still think can contribute to bettering American society. Too many of them, not so much. The anonymity of the charges, the lack of substance of what was claimed, the edging into a the thinnest of fine lines. Nobody, Franken included, covered themselves in Ol' Glory. #MeToo should have asked for the facts before wasting bullets on a sometimes silly white man with delusions of the grandeur of making a difference. Franken failed. But so too did #MeToo.

And if you interested, public advocates are the elected officials interested in bettering society. There are a few, although fewer then they think. The rest are playing politics, with only the future of the world at stake. Ugh!

Opinions aren't facts. It's why simply making claims and refuting those claims doesn't suffice for justice to be served. Facts are needed. The rush to judgment almost never results in actual justice. Some times, even with facts, feelings are used in place of justice. Just because facts are difficult to uncover. And some times, facts never rise to the surface, leaving us in a they said, they said situation. That put a judge on the Supreme Court. In that case, the feelings weren't sufficient. No matter how much you and I believed the professor. At the same time, the same system allows Al Franken to spend time with a clinical psychologist while a self-admitted predator rules by fiat. Those are the facts. 

Just one man's opinion from a foreign country.

A Secret Kept Until Now

This week's announcement that Big Ned, Vlaclav Nedomansky, had been named to the Hockey Hall of Fame stirred up some memories and I guess it won't harm anybody that I'm going to break my vow of secrecy now that some 45 years have passed.

I think, although I am not positive, that I was the third person in North America who knew Nedomansky had successfully defected from the then Czechoslovakia. But I was sworn to secrecy about that, that night, and stuffed it away in the back of my mind as an interesting oddity. Here's what happened.

The memory is that it was a Sunday night. I was an established cub reporter for the Bramalea/Brampton Guardian weekly newspaper at that time, although I was approaching the end of my high school years. By that time, I was three years into my reporting career. That's why it's a little fuzzy. I had been used to going in Sunday nights to write up minor hockey league results for my tenure there. I started off making FIFTEEN DOLLARS A WEEK, going in Sundays for the duty my boss Ken Giles felt was mind numbing. Collect the weekly report sheets shoved through the door at the Guardian offices, located comfortably at the bottom of my street, and turn them into pages of newscopy with little Johnnies and Jills and their goals and assists for various House League teams, like Matti's Opticians.

As an aside, I developed a nervous typing tick for a spell in that stretch, spelling Opticians "Optitions" for about a three-week period before it was brought to my attention. Oops. Easily fixed, but that SHOULD explain spelling errors seen here. Oh, and I have worn glasses since I was five years old.

Okay, I'd passed through that glorified typist phase and was now actually doing reporting for my 40 bucks weekly, frequently covering the Bramalea Blues junior hockey team, who played at the also-conveniently located Victoria Park Arena, across the ball fields from the Guardian offices. So that's why I question whether it was a Sunday night. It might have very well been a night of covering hockey and then back to the office to write it up some time between 10 and midnight.

I do know that publisher Bob Maxwell was in his office, sharing a drink with the man who co-owned the company that owned the Guardian. That man's name was Johnny F. Bassett. It was not a common thing to have somebody there with me while I clattered away at the keys of my beloved sixty-year old Remington typewriter at the end of the building in the reporter wing. In fact, the back office there consisted of my boss' desk and my own. Bob's office was a well-appointed one, just to this side of the Editor's office and across the hallway from the regular writer's bullpen. Prior to the night in question, I had been in Bob's office exactly once ... when I got hired on the recommendation of my Grade 10 Math teacher (and basketball coach) Freddy Chalk. I recall that Bob knew my father, but my father didn't remember him.

For no reason in particular, I decided to get some water from the fountain at the front of the building and was seen walking back to my desk by Bob, who motioned me into the room. That's where I met Bassett. Now, as history would then play out, I had my issues with the Bassets other than Johnny F. I got along famously with the Eatons, who were the other big-name co-owners. But Bassetts and I were slated not to get along. That would have changed in a major way if Johnny F. hadn't died so early in life. He was a good guy, a man of the people in many ways. He loved being in the pro sports business. He'd bought the Ottawa Nationals and had moved them to Toronto to anchor the World Hockey Association as the Toros. Of course, he took great pleasure in the move, his dad being at one point a co-owner of the NHL Toronto Maple Leafs. But there's nothing like being a co-owner when Harold Ballard was also one. The long time in coming exit of John Sr. from the Maple Leafs was not ... let's call it pleasant. And Ballard, being the small man he was, stuck it to Johnny Jr. when he came a-calling to have his Toros play in the fabled Maple Leaf Gardens.

The Toros needed a jolt and Johnny Jr. came up with the plan to import some otherwise unattainable talent to his team in an effort to be the best pro Toronto hockey team. The idea? Raid the Soviet-controlled Eastern Bloc for one of their greatest players, Vaclav Nedomansky of Czechoslovakia. They sent a scout with connections in Europe to sound out Nedomansky. I have tried valiantly to remember the scout's name. I think it was Martin something or other. It might have been Martin Madden, but honestly, I can't say for sure. I can picture the guy, who I later saw in the business of my work, but that picture keeps coming back as Gilles Leger. At any rate, after a little dickering on money and the process for defection, the decision to move forward was made. George Gross of the Toronto Sun was the only other media person in the know and that because Gross was born over there and had connections to help things along.

Late that night (even later over in Czechoslovakia), the defection had been accomplished. In the wee hours of the morning locally, Nedomansky made it to Switzerland. The call for success was made to our offices because that was where Johnny F. Basset was ... stationed. I can't say it was hiding out. But it feels like that all these years later. Remember, there were no cell phones in those days. If you were going to receive a call, the other side better have the number you were at. No call forwarding either. So, the call came in and Bob snatched up the phone (I assume that, I wasn't in the office that second). And soon enough, the phone was handed over to Johnny F. Seconds later, I was passing the door to the office and Bob snapped his fingers and indicated I should come in.

An impromptu party was the response to the short phone call. Except I don't drink. Never have. The other two men in the office were otherwise inclined and were happy to toast each other over the good news. I was happy too. I was well aware of Nedomansky and the fact that he was coming to Toronto made me anxious to go see him play. (I later did when the Toros played the Calgary Cowboys, two teams that moved/folded before I finished high school).

I was sworn to secrecy of course. And, of course I kept my promise until now. It's possible George got a heads up before the call was made to Johnny F. Bassett. So I can't claim for sure that I was the third person in North America to know that the defection had become a reality. But if I wasn't third, I was probably fourth.

Bob didn't live much longer. He was a gruff kind of guy who never had a harsh word for me. That wasn't true of everybody, but he liked me. Johnny F. Bassett was one of the great entrepreneurs in the world of professionals sports. He died of brain cancer too early in life at age 47, on the day the USFL started it's suit against the NFL over it's monopolistic practices. Had the other owners of the USFL listened to Bassett, who owned the Tampa Bay franchise, the league might have had a long run before an accommodation with the NFL. Instead the league listened to the idiotic rantings of the owner of the New Jersey Generals, a blowhard real estate mogul named Donald J. Trump. He goaded his league into the suit and, to his credit, the league won the suit and got treble damages. An episode of ESPN's 30 for 30 show, had a reporter show the buffoon the cheque for the damages. Three dollars and 76 cents, the pennies being for interest. Trump had led the league into non-existence. It also helps explain his insane hatred for the NFL from his bully pulpit. But enough of that blight on humanity. 

This entry is in celebration of Big Ned being named what he was for most of the last 45 years. A Hall of Famer. No longer just in fact, now in name too. Congratulations go to him back in Slovakia where he now resides.

NOW, the Hall of Fame must do one more thing. Induct Fran Rider in the Builder's category.  She had as much effect on Women's hockey as Nedomansky did by piercing the Iron Curtain.