With how inconsistently Canucks’ netminder Roberto Luongo has performed outside of his home rink - getting yanked in Game 6 after being shelled with three goals before the first half of the opening period was through – it’s really anybody’s guess as to whether the Canucks will prevail tonight, even if they are now back in their Vancouver safety zone.

Regardless of whether Vancouver wins, becoming the first Canadian team to hoist the Cup since 1993, I’m not convinced they deserve it. Luongo’s crappiness aside, Vancouver’s play has not exactly been the stuff of champions in this series (ditto for their work in the opening series against the Chicago Blackhawks).

But hey, who am I to talk? My hometown Toronto Maple Leafs have been Cup-less since 1967, and Vancouver fans would the first to note this. Still, I’m fully willing to admit that I’m jealous as hell of them right now; damn, wish I was anxiously awaiting the fate of my squad in Game 7 of the Cup final.

Reportedly a pair of tickets for this all-important game sold for $7,800 a piece. It got me thinking how much I would shell out to see the Leafs battle for Lord Stanley’s mug (if that day ever comes…)

Not sure I could bear spending nearly eight grand, though, even it was for a once-in-a-lifetime experience – especially if my financial well-being hinged on the play of a goalie as erratic as Leaky Luongo.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

The Huff-Po has certainly garnered lots of negative press in the past year, largely over its not paying contributors. All that aside, though, I think it will provide a much-needed shake-up to the media landscape here, particularly in the digital media realm.

There aren’t many sites in Canada with nationwide scope that aren’t affiliated with the country’s big media/newspaper companies. This means there often isn’t a lot of innovation going on; or at least, the known quantities seem to be chasing the same, not-so-intriguing stories.

The Huffington Post might not be the most ethical operation around – and if it wasn’t before, it too is big media now, having recently been acquired by AOL. But the self-proclaimed “Internet newspaper” does tend to cover things our established players would probably turn away from (granted a lot of it is gossipy tripe, but hey, it’s also mildly entertaining and can be quite relevant).

I wonder whether the Huff-Po will be able to break lots of Canadian stories; if so, the mind races to wonder what those might end up being.

Either way this will be an experiment worth watching/reading; provided, of course, the Canadian media establishment doesn’t cry foul, as is it’s wont to do, and demand that the CRTC intervene and protect our market from foreign invaders. Competition doesn’t always work well up here in the Great White North.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

APPARENTLY RACHEL BARNEY didn’t get the memo.

You know, the one from Green Party of Canada headquarters explaining how distributing glossy campaign fliers on thick card-stock paper for two days in a row in downtown Toronto condos runs completely contrary to the concept of “environmental responsibility.”

Indeed, for the past couple of days I’ve come home to find a campaign leaflet from the Green Party candidate for Trinity-Spadina annoyingly wedged into my front doorjamb. I tossed the first one in the (wait for it) recycling bin, but decided to hold on to the second one for the purpose of shaming her on my blog.

To be fair to Barney, it’s not like it’s abnormal for a candidate’s behaviour to prove to be inconsistent with his/her professed values. And I’m not anti-Green or anything; in fact, I’m still having trouble figuring out which of the federal parties is the lesser of the evils in this election.

But sorry Rachel, judging from your littering ways, you certainly don’t seem to be offering any sort of “real change” I can believe in.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

The Canadian election campaign currently underway is particularly snooze-worthy, and it appears that, as was the case the last time we went to the polls back in 2008, not a heck of a lot is going to change as a result.

There was early chatter about Conservative leader Stephen Harper finally getting a majority government, but it’s not clear at this point if the helmet-headed one will end up getting his wish.

Regardless, it’s been a rather dull month of campaigning. Thank heavens, then, for David Leibl, a 31-year-old communications strategist from Winnipeg, who’s launched the website www.vintagevoter.ca, featuring hilarious photos of the federal party leaders from the days of yore.

While it would be enough just to have a good chuckle at the looks these guys rocked back in the day – especially NDP leader Jack Layton (above left) and Bloc Québécois chief Gilles Duceppe (whoa, dude…) – turns out there’s actually an underlying noble purpose to this project.

“The motivation came from frustration with the level of voter participation in Canada,” he told the National Post. “People that don’t vote often say they don’t have enough information, or they tell you that politics isn’t relevant in their lives and they feel disconnected or disinterested in the political process.

“Humour, though — there’s no one who doesn’t like a good joke. And we think that humour and parody are pretty effective tools in breaking down the barriers to political participation.”

I was planning on voting anyway. Otherwise I can’t legitimately criticize and sneer at the chimps who (attempt to) run this country. Meantime, though, I’m enjoying laughing at them for a while.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, it would seem Harper’s always had a helmet for a hairdo:

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

On Saturday Russia’s Olympic organizing committee unveiled a trio of 2014 Sochi Winter Games mascots: a snowboarding snow leopard, an Arctic-exploring polar bear, and a figure skating bunny:

Far as I’m concerned they’re a heck of a lot better than those weird, indecipherable mascots they had for the Vancouver Olympics:

The Vancouver characters were inspired by mythological First Nations creatures, which is cool, but I think they ended up missing the mark.

What good are mascots if people have no clue what they’re supposed to be (for the record: a winged animal guardian spirit, an earmuff-wearing sasquatch and a mythical sea bear), let alone how to pronounce their names, and, well, what does any of this have to do with Vancouver anyhow?

Nothing confusing or odd about that bad-ass snowboarding Sochi snow leopard, though. Apparently the cat was the top vote-getter from the Russian people and was the pronounced favourite of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin – with good reason, that’s one great mascot.

Not so great on the Russians’ part? The Paralympics mascots are a pair of extraterrestrials.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

In this case, a sign at a parking garage near where I live, it’s more the latter. The mangled, ambiguous phrasing makes me giggle (in a manly way, of course).

Placing the adverb ‘only’ where it is in this sentence serves to obscure the intended meaning of the sign. The syntax slip-up makes it sound like an access key or ticket purchase will only raise the door – it won’t cause it to explode, cry, dance or break out in song.

So yeah, drivers, don’t get your hopes up. Just buy the ticket/swipe your access key and carry on through that raised door.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

AN AN AVID beard wearer, especially in colder months, I had to chuckle as I read about the “Beardo,” a knitted faux-beard mask designed to keep tender visages warm and protected from bitter winter weather – a snuggy for your face, in other words.

The Beardo is the brainchild of a Canadian (obviously) snowboarding enthusiast (obviously), who says he came up with the idea on the summit of Blackcomb Mountain in Whistler, B.C., a veritable hotbed of bearded boarders.

Response to the Beardo has been enthusiastic so far, the company says. The product – which sells for about $40 – is being embraced by skiers and snowboarders, and others too; outdoor workers, for example.

I can see why. The Beardo looks as cozy as it does silly, plus I dig that the marketers are able to have fun with this clever gimmick, suggesting that in addition to “bearded boarder,” there are a number of other possible looks you could rock:

I don’t know if this is the start of a new trend in men’s fashion, but at least the Beardo brain trust has fully embraced the fact that their product is both great and goofy.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

CANADIANS ARE

It is true that an unsettling number of our southern neighbours can’t manage to even find Canada on a map (despite it being a rather large landmass that takes up America’s entire northern border.)

So how unfortunate and regrettable – to use a bit diplomatese – that our defence minister Peter MacKay apparently couldn’t get his basic geography right yesterday, telling ex California governator Arnold Schwarzenegger that, “California and British Columbia have a shared border, a strong relationship.”

The two men were speaking at an event in Winnipeg – poor Ah-nold – when MacKay made what the Toronto Star dubbed his “border blunder.” The Star — no fan of Canada’s Conservative government — even went to the trouble of creating a helpful graphic to show just how off the mark the Tory minister was:

It’s not clear whether MacKay truly didn’t have his facts together, but Schwarzenegger was charitable in how he handled his host’s Dubya-like mess up.

“I think it is important for the American people in general to learn as much as possible about Canada,” he said, according to the Star. “They’re not as educated about the rest of the world as they are about America.”

The irony there is so thick you need a machete to cut through it.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

Talk about a deadline. (Click to make larger)

“FUTURIST” ROSS DAWSON has created quite a buzz – among media junkies at least – with the publication of his “Newspaper Extinction Timeline,” which outlines “how quickly we can expect newspapers to remain significant around the world.”

Dawson predicts that the U.S. will be the first country to move beyond newspapers, in 2017 – that’s less than seven years from now (in case you couldn’t count). The UK and Iceland will be the next nations to ditch dead-tree news in 2019, and Canada and Norway will follow in 2020, he surmises.

In other less-developed nations in Africa and parts of South America and Asia, though, Dawson thinks newspapers will hang on until at least 2040.

Some have called Dawson’s prognostications “complete rubbish,” and one commenter on his blog took him to task for failing to account for the people “just wanting to sit in a cafe and read the paper.”

But this grim forecast for the death of newspapers might not be all that far-fetched, given how severely print publishers these days are being buffeted by a perfect storm of heavy debt and plummeting advertising revenues and an explosion in online news sources – and all this was before the Great Recession kicked the crap out of everyone.

Click to read a larger version.

Dawson outlines factors that will hasten the extinction of newspapers, including, on a global level: the increased cost-performance of mobile phones and tablets/e-readers; changes in newsprint and print production costs; and development of high performance digital paper (straight out of Back to the Future, this is paper that can do cool things like display video, and still be rolled up and folded).

Within countries themselves, the things he suggests will help kill off newspapers are technology uptake, economic development and industry structure (the financial position of leading newspapers and the balance of advertising and print sales revenue). Consumer behaviours will also play a part, Dawson notes, citing factors such as the “relative interest in local and global news” and the “willingness to pay for news.”

That last factor is crucial, I think. If people are no longer willing to pay for news – in whatever format it’s delivered – it won’t be simply the extinction of newspapers that we’ll need to be concerned about, rather, the extinction of quality news period.

When it comes to journalism, you get what you pay for – or don’t pay for, in this case.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com

Rynn has dubbed his sendup ‘The Canadian.’

The New York-based funny man crams an impressive number of stereotypes into the two-minute clip, most notably the unique way we Canadians pronounce ‘out’ – ‘owt’ – and our excessive politeness, among other Great White North staples such as Tim Hortons and The Tragically Hip (who no one listens to anymore, but still…)

Rynn insists his video is not meant to offend, or even be accurate. “Everyone likes you,” he told the Toronto Star, somewhat condescendingly. “You have publicly funded health care and education, no military entanglements or oil spills – it’s not fair. We have to make fun of something.”

Er, dude’s apparently not aware of Canada’s small entanglement in Afghanistan. You could conclude from this, then, that Rynn is ignorant about what’s happening beyond his country’s own borders. But then, he’s just being a stereotypical American (zing!).

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com