Taylor Swift Beat Me To The "Stevie Knicks" Pun

We just saw the NBA and NHL championships handed out on consecutive nights. I don't have much to add to the Carolina Hurricanes win, beyond pointing out that they now join Colorado and Tampa Bay on the list of places that have now won a Stanley Cup, rebuilt, and won another cup with a different team, all since the last time a Canadian team won the cup.

Speaking of long championship droughts, congratulations to the Knicks on their first NBA championship in more than a half-century. That should give the Leafs some optimism. Maybe.

But that brings up one unsettling aspect of their win. We've now seen a few teams end long championship droughts in the twenty-first century, and the feelings around them are a bit different. Obviously, the Cubs spring to mind as a team that had a long and painful futility streak. When they won a World Series, there were generally good feelings from those who didn't have a connection to the team. We were glad to see their long-suffering fanbase have their moment of success. After all, they were the Loveable Losers, people who took their misfortune with good nature. You felt like they deserved a change in fortune.

Contrast that with the Red Sox a few years earlier. Their World Series drought was also measured in lifetimes, but there wasn't such an outpouring of joy to see them finally happy. I'm sure some of that was their rivalry with the Yankees, and thus taste-makers in the media capital weren't so happy to see them succeed. But there was also a feeling that the Bosox weren't such loveable losers; rather than being seen having a laid-back acceptance of their fate, they came across as a little too intense and taking it a little too seriously. Their continued failure gave the rest of the sports world a bit of schadenfreude, and watching them finally have their day didn't give us nearly as much joy. 

So when it comes to long-suffering fans, there's differing levels of sympathy. To bring this back to the Leafs, they'll definitely be the extreme counter to the Cubs. Yes, plenty of Leaf fans have a Cub-like humour to their futility, but for every one of them, there are twelve with dangerous levels of obsession. Even as a Leafs fan, I realize that if they ever win a cup, no non-fans will feel good for them.

So what about the Knicks? Well, I found that this was one of those Medium-is-the-Message situations. Watching them win - clinching on the road - it was easy to feel good for them. A hard-working team, coming from behind, it all seemed to parallel a fanbase that has remained passionate through thick and thin.

Contrast that to the previous game, where they won in an exciting, record-setting comeback. But that was at home. Normally it's great for a neutral observer to see a home team win, with a passionate crowd cheering them on. But a Knicks crowd is second only to a Lakers crowd in celebrity sightings, and the director of the TV coverage was intent on getting a reaction shot from every famous person in the lower bowl after every decisive play. You could just imagine him in the control room shouting out the names in succession to cut to the close-ups, "Sandler! Seinfeld! McEnroe! Stiller! Swift!" 

I have nothing against any of those celebrities, but it does make it harder to cheer for the team. If I'm envisioning the long-suffering Knicks fan as some janitor from Queens, then I feel really good to see their sports dreams come true. But if it's Jerry Seinfeld, then it's harder to imagine that this team's futility has left a gaping hole in his life. 

So I hope that future sports broadcasts will think about this. Aside from the fact that you should really have more cameras showing the game than the crowd, you should also think about how that shapes the view of the team.

The Secret Life Of The Centre Square

 It's kind of depressing how fandom can come and go. I mean, there logically will be a last person alive who still misses Automan, what if it's me? That's why I find it reassuring whenever I see evidence of an old fandom. So if I come across Greatest American Hero fan fiction, I rejoice (but don't read it) because I'm glad to see passion for an older media franchise. And genuine passion too, not just someone name-dropping it to sound eclectic like I just did.

So recently, when I saw a personalized license plate that read "Zsa Zsa G," I found it reassuring. I was never a fan of the actress, Zsa Zsa Gabor, but I'm glad that there's still someone around who misses her. So much so that I'm not going to do the math on the likelihood that it really is a Zsa Zsa Gabor fan, vs just someone named Zsa Zsa G. I don't think there's a big Hungarian community in town, so I'll just go with my initial assumption.

By the way, it's as good a time as any to revisit those 70s-80s pseudo-celebrities. It might seem weird to current generations, but there was a certain type of D-list celebrity that hung around on game shows or did guest spots on sitcoms, or appeared on a talk show in need of a human punchline. Today, we often talk about someone who's "famous for being famous," but that just means they are famous for reality TV or social media. But back then, these people just kept showing up on our TV and we weren't always sure why. 

Of course, those were real people, and in the modern day, we've learned more about them. It’s sort of like  when Dolly Parton was only known for her bustline, and Betty White was just another frequent TV star. It'd be quite a tragedy if society had never seen beyond that. Well, I’ve since learned that Charo was actually quite a good guitarist. Fannie Flagg wrote Fried Green Tomatoes. JM J Bullock lived with HIV for much of his career and co-hosted a talk show with Tammy Faye Bakker. Which reminds me:

Things Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #46:

An actress will win the Best Actor Oscar playing Tammy Faye Bakker.

Anyway, it’s unfortunate timing for that generation of borderline celebrities. Today’s media landscape is just built for such people: Then, they had to make do with guest appearances, but today they’d have reality shows, Hallmark movies, and so many social media followers.

Swilce? Tayvis? Traylor?

I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but Taylor Swift is dating Travis Kelce, star tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs. You probably have heard this, because it’s created a perfect storm of American popular culture, combining the hype of football and the ubiquity of pop music. The Yin and Yang of American culture have been suddenly pushed together, and both sides are acting kind of awkward. 

As someone who watches football, but shies away from popular music, I’m only seeing part of it. But the football half is pretty embarrassing. On the one hand, a lot of people want to talk about it, but aren’t really sure how, so they just make a lot of bad puns on Swift’s songs. And that got old really fast. I don’t know if something similar is going on in the pop world. Oh God, I just realized, they must be making endless “tight end” jokes. My condolences.

It’s also embarrassing the way the football world is acting like a nerdy kid who gets a chance to sit at the cool kids’ table. That’s a bit surprising, given the grip that football seems to have on American culture. But even football has room to grow, and suddenly getting exposure with a young and female demographic has them seeing dollar signs. So now the NFL is passing notes in class asking if the cool kids have said anything about it.

But more than anything, this incident shows how we, as a society, still haven’t figured out how to handle the current culture. The celebrity industry wants to make this the story of the century, but many of us have got the message that obsessing over people we don't know is a bad idea, even when we are fans of them. The fact is, there isn’t much for any of us to say about two people dating, when we personally don’t know either one. Whether you’re a fan of one or both or neither, there’s not much of a reaction you can have, other than wishing them luck. Again, the football world is demonstrating this well, with football analysts suddenly being asked to say something about the couple, but not really having anything to add, and instead just making the umpteenth "Blank Space" joke.

Part of the problem is that we just don't have universal touchstones in society anymore. There are few things that everyone cares about, but the media keeps excitedly hoping it will find one. Even Swift on her own is a good example of it. Her fame has reached a level where the media is assuming she is a universal obsession. But we don't really have universal obsessions in a world where we're so free to choose our personal culture. The most anyone can hope for is fandom from a dedicated and large minority, like Swift has. (Or, for that matter, football has.) But that still means that most people don't have a strong connection. So although you’ll see some examples of fans crossing over into both cultural worlds — like those who famously flooded retailers with orders for Kelce’s jersey — more people are just aggravated with the expectations to suddenly care about the other side of American culture. 

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #36

In 2016, Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg will co-host a cooking show. And that won't even be one of the top 100 craziest things to happen that year.

Voices Carry

I was just reading a transcript of a speech by President Obama, and realized I was reading it in his voice.  I'm sure in not the only person who does this, especially for people with distinctive voices.  I first became conscious of the phenomena when I read something written by Stephen Hawking, and just couldn't get through it without hearing it in his computer synthesized voice.

In some cases, reading in another's voice is inevitable, if they have a distinctive way of putting words together. It's easier to read Donald Trump's words in his voice, because that's the way we're used to hearing those meandering parades of sentence fragments.

Surprisingly,  I don't often read tweets in other's voices,  though that's because of the strange fact that I have heard little if any spoken words from the folks I follow.  So many of them are people I've found on twitter or elsewhere on the Internet.  The one exception is sportscaster Vic Rauter who tweets in the same spurts of phrases that he talks in, so I find it impossible to read them any other way.

I've tried to think back to remember if I did this reading quotes in the past, but I don't think I did.  But it occurs to me that we didn't really read the words of others very often.  Books and newspaper articles were written by people we'd never heard the voices of. Famous people spoke on TV,  but we didn't really have the chance to read anything they wrote. The most was perhaps reading a quote,  say in a newspaper. But they were often edited for grammar, and weren't very long.  Actually reading things written by famous people is a unique feature of our age.

So You Got To Go And Text It / Should I Remain Or Should I Brexit?

On Thursday, the people of the United Kingdom will vote in a referendum on whether to stay in the European Union or to leave.

I haven't really followed it closely, and I don't have real strong opinions either way. I've kind of instinctively supported the "Remain" side because:

• I generally support people working together rather than walking away because they can't get along.
• All the stupid people are supporting "Leave"

Of course, the latter is a silly reason to support something; just because the stupid, childish, and intellectually-lazy like something doesn't make it bad. I started to realize this when I saw that John Cleese is in favour of leaving. Sure, he's no political expert, and despite being a geek, I'm not a Monty Python fanboy who takes his word as gospel. But he does seem to be fairly thoughtful and intelligent. And in the same way that I don't trust the stupid, I do tend to trust the funny.

So I thought I'd look up what other famous Britons have said on the issue. I know, I may seem like the last person to make a serious decision based on the word of celebrities, but I'm treating this as an experiment to see if I can get a feel for the issue based just on the kind of people supporting it.  Here's a small sample

Stay

David Cameron (Prime Minister)
Tim Berners-Lee (creator of the World Wide Web)
Billy Bragg (singer)
Simon Cowell
Jeremy Clarkson (former Top Gear host)
Bob Geldoff
Eric Idle
Ian McKellen
JK Rowling
Emma Thompson
Stephen Hawking
Richard Branson
Alex Kapranos (singer, Franz Ferdinand)
Benedict Cumberbatch
Eddie Izzard
Helena Bonham Carter
John LeCarre
Jude Law
Keira Knightly
Philip Pullman (writer, His Dark Materials)
Richard Curtis (screenwriter, Mr. Bean, Four Weddings and a Funeral)
John Hurt
Derek Jacobi
Patrick Stewart
Steve Coogan (comic actor, Philomena, 24 Hour Party People)
Peter Higgs (of the famous boson)
Arsene Wenger (longtime Arsenal manager)
Danny Boyle (director, Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire)
Daniel Craig
Daisy Ridley (Rey from The Force Awakens)
Idris Elba
Chiwetel Ejiofor (actor, 12 Years a Slave)
Lily Allen (singer)
John Major (former Prime Minister)
Gary Lineker (former soccer player)
Chris Martin (singer, Coldplay)
John Oliver (comedian, Last Week Tonight; here's his take on a Brexit)
Florence Welch (of, "and the Machine" fame)
Alt J (music group)
Peter Gabriel
Elton John
David and Victoria Beckham

Leave

Boris Johnson (former London mayor)
Bernie Ecclestone (Formula 1 CEO)
Rupert Murdoch (media tycoon)
Julian Assange (Wikileaks founder)
Michael Caine
John Cleese
Joan Collins
Roger Daltrey (singer, The Who)
Bruce Dickinson (singer, Iron Maiden)
Peter Hitchens (journalist, brother of the late Christopher)
Elizabeth Hurley
Right Said Fred
Irvine Welsh (writer, Trainspotting)
Milo Yiannopoulos (controversial blogger)
Sol Campbell (soccer player)
James Dyson (of vacuum cleaner fame)
Julian Fellows (Downtown Abbey creator)
Ian Botham (former cricket star)

And here is Wikipedia's even more comprehensive list. So here's my reaction to the lists:

• Really? Morrissey doesn't have an opinion on this?
• I wonder if Cleese and Idle have clashed on this, and will they sell tickets?
• There's a surprising mix on both sides.  Both have their side of intellectuals, and both the lovable and hatable. 
• Though there are old and young on both sides, the Leave side seems to be older on average.

In my still poorly-informed and ultimately irrelevant opinion, I'd still stick to the remain side.

Things The Twentysomething Me Would Never Believe About Life In The Future

It will take over twenty years for them to make a miniseries of the O.J. trial.

Okay, to be exact, there were a couple of made-for-TV movies earlier, but that just doesn't get across the sheer scale of the trial. And I found out O.J. Simpson is Kim Kardashian's godfather. Did I already know that and just block it out?

Kobe Beef

The Kobe Bryant retirement tour pulled into Toronto on Monday, as the retiring basketball star played his final game in Toronto (with the possible exception of the upcoming All-Star game.) Although the Toronto Raptors usually have good fan support, a big portion of the audience was there purely to see Kobe, cheering him, and the rest of the Lakers. The cheers for their baskets was nearly as loud as for the home team. That rubbed a few people the wrong way, including Raptors coach Dwayne Casey, who criticized the pro-visitors fans in the post-game interview.

It bothered me too. It's not just that this retirement tour is starting to resemble the ridiculous Derek Jeter tribute tour last year. And it's not just that Bryant isn't a real great person to look up to. But it also seems like it's missing the point of being a sports fan.

This is hard for me, since my sports fandom is permeated by that rare understanding that sports are ultimately meaningless. There really is no logical reason that the Toronto fans should cheer for the Americans (and Lithuanian) in Toronto uniforms rather than those based in Los Angeles. No, there is no moral need to cheer for the home team. But I have to question their motivation. Yes, I'm sure some of them have a deep appreciation of Bryant's athletic skill, but most are just attracted to his mixture of accomplishment and attitude that is oh so marketable to young people. You know there will be similar reactions a few years down the road when Lebron James retires, but there will be nothing of the sort when Tim Duncan calls it a career.

The Raptors are an interesting case for this kind of worship. You know that Boston fans won't be so fawning over Bryant, just as they weren't with Jeter. Of course, that's a team that has both success and history, things the Raptors have little of. But I also think there's a bit of good old Canadian self-deprecation, where we just have a natural assumption that American things are better and cooler, at least in matters pop-cultural. It will be interesting to see how the Minnesota Timberwolves react to the Kobe retirement tour - they too are a young and not-so-winning team, an American counterpart to the Raptors. And oh look, the Lakers are playing there on Wednesday. So we'll get a quick comparison on how to host a retiring superstar.

Leaving The Neutral Zone

Wayne Gretzky recently threw his support behind Stephen Harper and the Conservatives in Canada's election.  The endorsement is purely symbolic, since Gretzky - a dual American/Canadian citizen - lives in the U.S., and that means he can't vote, due to recent law changes by...Stephen Harper's Conservatives.

It's a bit of a surprise, because hockey has its own political spectrum, in which Gretzky would be the Bernie Sanders to Don Cherry's Donald Trump.  But I suppose you have to include demographics: men, whites, rich people and Eastern Europeans are more likely to be conservative, so one would assume that the hockey world in general would prefer Harper.

Not surprisingly, there's been sharply divergent reaction to this.  When a public figure suddenly supports a politician, I wonder what motivates it.  Obviously, it could be that the public figure is really passionate about the politician and the issues at stake in the election.  But the other likely explanation is the complete opposite: they don't know or care much about politics, they're taking a stand without realizing how controversial it will be. 

If it's a celebrity that has a history of taking a stand, you know it's the former.  If it's someone new to the public eye, you'll also assume it's the former: it's probably someone with a passion for politics who will be making this a part of their persona for as long as they are famous.  But in a case like Gretzky's, you have to wonder why a guy who's been famous for decades would only take a stand now.  It's entirely possible that he didn't realize many people would turn on him.

I'm not saying you should feel sorry for him or anyone else who wades into politics and suddenly becomes controversial.  While I appreciate people taking a stand, that's because political issues have real consequences.  As such, it's irresponsible to get involved in an important discussion you don't understand. So always get informed before wading into politics.  People will still hate you for it, but at least you'll be sure you're right and they're wrong.

Take My Name, Take My Name

A lot of people are talking about actress Zoe Saldana getting married, and her husband taking her last name, rather than vice versa. That’s pretty controversial, and it’s great for our modern media, since it’s something they can talk about without doing any research or delivering any facts. Just run down all the possible reactions people have to it, and that’s considered enough. Though I am surprised none of the news stories have mentioned that there's already a male celebrity who took his wife's last name. I'll give the answer at the end.

Is amusing that this is such an unusual thing that the media isn't sure how to report on it. I just read an article reporting that Marco Perego changed his name. I believe that should be, "Marco Saldana, nee Perego." Seriously, you reported that a man changed his name, using his old name.

I'm actually pretty surprised that the wife-taking-the-husband's-name tradition is still as strong as it is. I never would have believed that we'd have gay marriage at a time when it's still expected that women take the man's name. For that matter, there seems to be more open vitriol and debate over a man changing his name than changing his gender.

It's not just the tradition’s longevity that surprises me, it's the enthusiasm with which it is still enforced. I've seen women get quite upset with women who don't take their husband's name. I've heard of businesses that automatically change a woman's name in their contact info when she gets married; they find they gave less anger from women about the automatic change than they get from women annoyed the change wasn't automatically acknowledged.

So why is it still going strong? It could be self-perpetuating: as long as women think of their name as belonging to their father, the less attached they are to it. And one could argue that a marrying woman is choosing between her father’s name and her husband’s, so neither is really a unique part of her identity. I haven’t talked to many women about this, but what I have heard - and read in a brief online search - is that there aren’t many deep explanations of why women change their name. It seems that the costs of changing your name are small, so if the expectation is that you will take the husband’s name unless you have a good reason not to, then you probably will. While the man will keep his name, because he doesn't have a reason not to.  Unless you're Jack White, then you'll take Meg's name.

You May Know Me From Hollywood Boulevard

Every now and then you hear about someone new being added to the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. What's weird is that the people being honoured seem to be at different levels of their careers. It's not like a sports hall of fame where their career has to be finished, or a lifetime achievement award where it's for a lifetime body of work.

On the other hand, they sometimes do give it to someone who's been around for a while. So we get these announcements that there's a ceremony to give stars to Kesha and Rich Little. And I'm wondering who decided that they are at the exact same level of accomplishment? And what did Rich Little just do that got him over the line? Is he lifting the ceremonial cover off that star thinking, thank God I did that show in Tucson last week, that finally got me here.

I'm really wondering about that, given the recent announcement that Phil Hartman is getting a star. I'm all in favour, as you can guess given that in the tag cloud in the margin, the SNL label is about the size as my hometown. But I have to ask what just happened to make him worthy, given that he died sixteen years ago. But then I realized: it was the recent Simpsons marathon. Apparently Troy McClure made a big impression on the Walk Of Fame people.

Overshadowing

Trivia question: aside for being British authors, what did Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) and C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) have in common? Answer later.

First: a big entertainment news story this weekend was the death of Hollywood legend Mickey Rooney. Although many tributes have been paid him by people in the business, he had the unfortunate distinction of outliving many who would have been fans.  So he is perhaps not as appreciated by people today as he could be.  For me the only thing I can think of that I know him from - other than cameo appearances and voice work - would be his role in Breakfast at Tiffany's. And the less said about that performance, the better.

Since celebrity deaths seems to be the theme of this post, you may have guessed that is the answer to the above question. Huxley and Lewis both died on the same day. Unfortunately for them, that day was November 22, 1963, which you may recognize as the day of a much more famous death, that of JFK. Because of that, hardly anyone even noticed, never mind celebrated their lives.

And that was kind of unfortunate yesterday. I'm sure Rooney touched many more lives in the world, but for me, I had more of a connection with comedian John Pinette. His death was reported about an hour earlier, and so it was missed by many.  So why not have a salad in his memory.

Last Impressions

There’s a lot of people who are classics for impersonation, even after the originals have left the scene. You still hear people do Nixon impressions, particularly the, “I am not a crook line.” What’s weird is that some generations know people only through their impressions. Take Humphrey Bogart, for instance. I’ve seen some of his movies, yet I probably know his voice primarily from actors and comedians imitating him.

But the leader in the living-on-through-impersonation category would have to be Ed Sullivan. I’m too young to have seen his show; of course, I’ve seen clips such as the famous Beatles performance. But mostly I know his “really big shoe” voice and mannerisms through years of comedians hamming it up.

But, when I hear people imitate Bill Cosby, I wonder, can I really trust impersonations of Ed Sullivan? If they're as far off as Cosby routines, we've been lied to.

It's Tough Being The Anti-Paris

I don’t follow celebrity news much.  As a kid I used to watch Entertainment Tonight all the time, but I no longer find it interesting, which I take as a comment on celebrity culture’s intellectual level.  I say all this to point out that once a celebrity story gets to me, I’m assuming that it’s pretty big.  So I have to ask: what does everyone have against Anne Hathaway?

There seems to be a sudden rise in articles talking about how people don’t like her.  This surprised me, because she’s always seemed like a nice person.  Granted, I didn’t see the Oscar telecast where she and James Franco co-hosted; based on people’s reactions to that show, I’m assuming they barbecued kittens on stage or something.  But on talk shows she’s always come across as friendly and humourous without being pretentious.  Whatever negatives you can find against her are hardly worth mentioning when compared with the grand list of things to hate about people in Hollywood.

And yet, people are now turning against her.  Worst of all, the articles I’ve read are all phrased in the form of “I don’t know why I want to hate her.”  That’s a bad sign: once the media starts reporting on itself, you know the story has taken on a life of its own.  Any article that asks why everyone is talking about Purple Giraffes means that we’re going to be hearing about purple giraffes for the next couple of years.  It’s the same process that gets professional celebrities into the public eye.  People keep talking about the Kardashians because people keep talking about the Kardashians. 

So it seems Hathaway is the first person to be the reverse:  If Paris Hilton is famous for being famous, then Anne Hathaway is the first person to be hated for being hated.