Film

Is Llewyn Davis a Loser?: The Coen Brothers’ Comedy of Error

January 12, 2014 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

inside-llewyn-davis-1024x540

THERE’S A STORY about Mike Dubue of the Hilotrons that goes something like the following:

Mike plays a gig in Ottawa. An ex-girlfriend is in the audience, and she loves the show. So she takes out a scrap of paper and writes WOW, hands it to Mike. When he reads it, it’s upside down: he thinks it says MOM. Well now Mike’s freaking out, because he’s got his ex-girlfriend pregnant and he has no idea what he’s going to do.

The story ends with laughter, the imagined scenario having been a case of simple miscommunication. But these things do happen, and if you’re Llewyn Davis – the principal character of the latest Coen brothers’ film Inside Llewyn Davis – they happen a lot.

Obituary, Wayne's Picks, World

Ariel Sharon’s Life of Vigorous Inertia

January 10, 2014 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

Ariel Sharon Retrospective

A SETTLEMENT, John Kerry said this week, is better than settlements. Yet for years now, a practical sublation of this withdrawal versus occupation dialectic has been in place, involving the concurrence of ongoing peace talks and settler expansion into the West Bank. As I write this, news arrives both of the progress of the negotiations and the announcement of another 1,400 Jewish settler houses in Palestinian territory. Whatever the terms on paper, on the ground it is not one or the other: the peace settlement “process” now serves rather than contradicts the settlements.

Current Events

How the Cold War Became the Climate Warming War

January 7, 2014 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

THE PROPOSITION THAT human activities are drawing the Earth to its climate-derived apocalypse was already an old idea when I first encountered it thirty years ago. Long before the topic of global warming was cornered by Al Gore, two acquaintances of mine – Brian J. Walsh and J. Richard Middleton – in 1984 published a book entitled The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian World View. Their Toronto-based publisher, IVP, describes this now three-decades-old book as follows:

Canada, Politics

Chuck Strahl, Stephen Harper and the Oily Politics of Contempt

January 6, 2014 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

FOR FAR LONGER than it was defensible to do so, the rabble and occupy elements of the opposition to Prime Minister Stephen Harper maintained the paranoid trope of an extreme and hidden agenda, whose Reform agents awaited the propitious moment to conquer the duped public by stealth. Eight years into the Harper Conservative era, it arrives as a historical irony – as well as a rebuke to an over laboured conspiracy – that the foremost reason to oppose Stephen Harper was also the reason many Canadians had tired of the Liberal Party of Canada. And that reason was the open contempt of the public shown by its government, a contempt whose exercise and underlying agenda was anything but hidden.

Podcasts

The Roundtable Podcast 58

December 29, 2013 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

• Week of 28.12.2013

2013

Thousands across eastern Canada still in the dark | Stephen Harper thanks ‘brave men and women in uniform’ in annual Christmas message | Canada departs Afghanistan in 100 days | Featured Article: The Corporate “Free Speech” Racket – How corporations are using the First Amendment to destroy government regulation | Associated Press announces Top 10 stories of 2013 | Music: Ian and Sylvia, “Got No More Home Than A Dog” | Edward Snowden says government surveillance now far worse than George Orwell’s 1984 envisioned | Activists clear to come home after Russian charges dropped | Wisconsin Has So Much Cheese They’re Using it to De-Ice the Roads | Botched circumcision allegations against Quebec doctor grow | 27 Things to Leave Behind in 2014

Download entire podcast (320 kbps mp3) | Visit The Roundtable on Facebook.

Podcasts

The Roundtable Podcast 57

December 15, 2013 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

• Week of 14.12.2013

Mandela

Nelson Mandela: July 18, 1918 – December 5, 2013 | Josh Matlow urges council to hit pause on Scarborough subway | Top Ten List: How to celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2017 | Game: Finish the Headline | Beyoncé | Featured Article: The End of the College Essay, An essay | Police In Thailand Lay Down Vests and Barricades In Solidarity With Protestors | Music: Greg Ashley, “True Love Leaves No Traces” | Google is now funding numerous Tea Party groups | Bots now ‘account for 61% of web traffic’ | Public-health advocates pushing for graphic, cigarette-style health warnings on wine, beer and liquor containers

Download entire podcast (320 kbps mp3) | Visit The Roundtable on Facebook.

Politics, Toronto

FORD NATION: the game (a Roundtable Exclusive)

December 2, 2013 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

Game requirements: Two to four players, one die, play or real money (you only need 100s and 500s), player pieces, rule sheet, beverages. To play: Cast die and advance clockwise, or west to east, beginning at the lime green Etobicoke circle. Follow instructions on circles as you land. Only collect/pay on the four city circles (Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough and Downtown) when you land on them, not if you pass over. Be the first to collect $3,000 and you get to go to the crack house at 15 Windsor Road (WIN!) Enjoy.

Podcasts

The Roundtable Podcast 56

December 1, 2013 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

• Week of 01.12.2013 | Black Friday

black-friday

Black Friday shopping in US marred by violence | ‘This isn’t Toronto,’ sheriff says after U.S. mayor’s drug arrest | Afghanistan to reintroduce public stoning as punishment for adultery | Game: Finish the Headline | Featured Article: Rumsfeld’s War and Its Consequences Now | Syria war ‘damaging a generation of children’, UN warns | Music: Queens of the Stone Age | Feds spend $40 million to pitch natural resources | Feds to monitor social media round-the-clock | New Snowden docs show U.S. spied during G20 in Toronto | Highlights from Boring Tweeter ‏@b0ringtweets | Teacher’s attempt to educate students on Internet safety turns into weird viral science lesson | Meindfeld | Why I Keep a Spreadsheet of Everyone I’ve Ever Slept With

Download entire podcast (320 kbps mp3) | Visit The Roundtable on Facebook.

Toronto

So Rob Ford Wants a War? Let’s Make Sure He Gets It

November 18, 2013 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

ROB FORD, henceforth the pro forma Mayor of Toronto, delivered a short statement just before Toronto city council moved to deplete his staff, privileges, budget and authority. After a brief introductory flourish, congratulating the Hamilton Tiger-Cats for their recent victory, came a patchwork of personal anecdote, Bible verse and self-justification lumped together in an effort to discredit Ford’s fellow municipal councillors. His closing was of special note, striking as is so often the case with a Ford self-defence that irritating mixture of self-pity and belligerent menace:

Podcasts

The Roundtable Podcast 55

November 17, 2013 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

• Week of 17.11.2013

Rob Ford: The week that was | Councillor not ruling out snap election to oust Mayor Ford | Rob Ford-coached football player charged in Christopher Skinner murder | Russian artist nails his genitals to Moscow’s Red Square in front of tourists to protest ‘police state’ | Recommended Article: Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei built vast US$95B business empire through systematic seizure of properties | Quiz: Finish the Headline | Study urges privacy policy before widespread use of drones | Music: Songs: Ohia – “Just Be Simple” | Palestinian officials: Israel only suspect in Arafat death | Experts Rule Out Homicide in Death of Pablo Neruda | Florida Man Gets Stuck In Chimney Trying To Rob House | Scientists recreate genome of giant Ice Age animals, including huge cave bear, using new technique

Download entire podcast (320 kbps mp3) | Visit The Roundtable on Facebook.

Podcasts

The Roundtable Podcast 54

November 10, 2013 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

• Week of 03.11.2013 | “THE UNIVERSE IS EXPANDING” Alvy Singer

How one video dragged Rob Ford into the dangerous world of gangsters | Conservatives condemn sex-selective abortion, assisted suicide as party convention winds down | Fifteen Tory motions to know about from the convention (and the Top Ten Conservative Motions that Didn’t Make it to the Floor) | New galaxy ‘most distant’ yet discovered | Recommended Article: Ben Franklin’s Daylight Saving Time Proposal Was Written as a Joke | Jailed Pussy Riot Member Missing Following Prison Transfer: Nadya Tolokonnikova’s relatives have had no contact with the jailed punk rocker for 10 days | 10-Year-Old Boy Discovers a 600 Million Year-Old Supernova | Music: Arcade Fire – “Flashbulb Eyes,” from the Album Reflektor | Hakimullah Mehsud, charismatic and ruthless leader of the Pakistani Taliban, killed by U.S. drone strike

Download entire podcast (320 kbps mp3) | Visit The Roundtable on Facebook.

Toronto

The Rob Ford Apology: A Bit Churchill, A Bit Lincoln

November 4, 2013 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

toronto_skyline

WITH SO MANY items from which to choose, it was inspiring to see the great Rob Ford, Canada’s bestest mayor ever, taking the courageous and principled course by candidly admitting guilt in what is doubtless his most outrageous crime. On his radio program this weekend Rob Ford admitted that he drank a touch too much on St Patrick’s Day (something looked upon with horror and disgust in this city and elsewhere) and that he’ll try to slow it down a bit, that is if he plans afterward to leave his basement. No promises, people, because who on earth can promise not to get hammered and make a public ass of oneself. Be realistic. Even the best mayor Toronto has ever had (Rob Ford, obviously) can’t promise you unicorns and sunshine and your own private Idaho.

Film

Bad Grandpa, Decent America

October 26, 2013 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

jackass-bad-grandpa

IN THE PROLOGUE to his ribald and comic tale, contained in Geoffrey Chaucer’s brilliant fourteenth-century poem Canterbury Tales, the Reeve observes of “olde men” that

Till we be rotten, can we not be ripe.
We hop away while that the world will pipe.
For in our will there sticketh aye a nail,
To have an hoary head and a green tail.

Or to phrase it another way – as indeed it is phrased elsewhere in the poem – though there be snow on the chimney, there is fire down below.

Toronto

Rob Ford and the Mammoliti Way

October 17, 2013 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

I HAD TO LAUGH – a morbid laugh, please note – when I read Robyn Doolittle’s article revealing that a Toronto city manager had tried to keep the hazardous condition of the Gardiner Expressway a secret. You see, long before then I’d walked under it and thought “the Gardiner Expressway is coming down.” You can’t miss it.

Canada, Politics

Stephen Harper’s Throne Speech: just a little like Jell-O

October 16, 2013 Wayne K. Spear Leave a comment

green jello

ROUGHLY THREE YEARS ago, on a visit to the office of then Senator Consiglio Di Nino, I was shown a voting card signed by the Progressive Conservative and Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance members who on Wednesday, October 15, 2003 created the Conservative Party of Canada. Acknowledgement of this anniversary — ten years ago, exactly — was understandably absent from a voluminous Throne Speech which noted the approach of several other anniversaries, including Confederation and both World Wars.