The Canadian Sportsman
Archive for March, 2010
I’m sick and tired of the government sticking its grubby hands in my pockets. Every day they come up with some new way to nickel-and-dime me, and the rest of us.
In Ontario, we’ve got this new Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) set to come in this summer. Soon we’ll be holding the bag and paying 13 per cent tax on lots of stuff that we used to only pay five per cent. All because some fancy pants politician clapped his hands and made it so.
‘Harmonized’ makes it sounds like these taxes go together like peanut butter and jelly. The two taxes, the GST and the PST, will now be in harmony. Isn’t that nice? Sounds like hooey to me. Sounds like something my tree-hugging son Robbie would’ve named it or that airy-fairy horse psychic lady who also blogs for The Sportsman — she’s all into peace and harmony and the rest of that free-spirit crap. Hope she likes trying to charge people eight per cent more to get their horse’s head read. Good luck to you, sweetie.
She’s also probably a big fan of the government’s mandatory Emissions Tests for older vehicles. She just loves the cleansing of toxins and the release of negative energy so it’s right up her alley. Well, guess how my 1987 Grand Marquis just did on its e-test? That’s right, not so good. Let’s see how she likes it when her tenement-on-wheels ‘harmony’ van has to take the test.
I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t take out my frustrations out on such a nice, clueless lady when it’s really Uncle Sam — or whatever the hell we call him in Canada — that really gets my goat.
It’s going to cost me another couple hundred bucks to get my car up to snuff and back on the road, just so I can drive myself downtown to pay another fee to renew my driver’s license and health card. Oh, and I might as well fork over the money for Patches’ dog tags while I’m at it, even though Patches hasn’t left our yard since 1997.
And for what? The government doesn’t do much of anything for me. I pay my fair share of property tax, but they’ve done nothing to get rid of the hophead teenagers that hang out in the public park near my house.
I can tell you for a fact that those kids are putting their own harmful emissions into the air every night and they damn sure aren’t being fined by the government because of it.
Harmony, Sharmony.
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March 19, 2010
The best from our Post Parade Q & A feature
Past Posts
Favourite answers from past Post Parades
Trond Smedshammer (Sept. 2, 2004):
In a heated moment, do you ever swear at the other drivers in Norwegian?
“I don’t think I swear in Norwegian. I probably swear in English. It’s not like you yell out and curse. You just say it to yourself.”
Anthony Haughan (March 5, 2009):
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What’s the best thing about being Irish?
“The rugged good looks and natural charm.”
What’s the best thing you built in your former life a carpenter?
“I would hate to live in anything I built.”
How would you solve the OHHA / WEG contract dispute?
“How about a six-man tag-team match — David Willmot, Bruce Murray and Jamie Martin kicking off against O’Donnell, Double J and Jim Whelan with John Burns and Dave Boughton as guest refs. OHHA should jog.”
Moira Fanning (Oct. 18, 2008):
What’s your best brush-with-celebrity story?
“I did not recognize Muhammad Ali at the height of his fame when I was a 16-year-old usherette at the Valley Forge Music Fair. On the first night I was promoted to ticket taker I refused to let him and his entourage in because they did not have tickets. He was a sweetheart and very charming. The theatre manager knocked me out of the way and swept them all into a box. Needless to say I was demoted immediately.”
What bugs you most about a typical horseperson?
“They won’t take care of themselves. They provide extraordinary care for their horses as they should, but then — their own health be damned! There are never any sick days in racing.”
The Commish
Everyone gets the “If you were the Commissioner of all of harness racing...” question. Here’s the best responses.
Bob Marks (Feb. 28, 2008:
“Order whomever appointed me to immediate confinement.”
Rick Zeron (April 29, 2004):
“Remember, I’d be the commissioner, not a horseman, so I’d hire more people like judge (Gary) Cahill. He doesn’t let anybody off with anything. He’s tough on everybody. As a commissioner I’d want more judges like him.”
Sarah Lauren Scott (July 30, 2009):
“I agree with John Campbell’s thoughts on ‘If I was Commissioner...’ from The Sportsman’s past issue 100 per cent. We need to improve harness racing integrity once and for all, for everyone involved.”
Handicapping Challenge
Post Parade subjects set the odds when asked the “chances the following will occur in the next 10 years”
You will win the Hambletonian
Randy Waples (June 9, 2005) — “5-1. (My brother) Ronnie, Jr. will get me there.”
Jody Jamieson (June 21, 2007) — “15-1”
Wally Hennessey (July 12, 2007) — “100-1”
Greg Grismore (Sept. 25, 2008) — “Probably 25-1.”
John Bax (Oct. 16, 2008) — “10-1”
David Scharf (May 1, 2008) — “100-1. But I would have given you those same odds after I won the Hambletonian with Self Possessed, so if you had gotten down you would have hit the 100-1 shot last year with Donato.”
Rod Hughes (Feb. 4, 2010) — “15-1”
Gord Brown (March 18, 2010) — “99-1”
March 18, 2010
Photography is a psychological game; an art if you will. If something, anything, knocks the creative equilibrium wonky, start lowering your expectations for pretty pictures Mr. editor guy.
I have learned this through countless road trips with our photographers. They are tremendous guys, but creatively temperamental. Well, one of our photographers is. He shall remain nameless. Okay, it’s Dave Landry.
He is one hell of a photographer. We are blessed to have him, not just for his work, but because he’s the kind of guy you’d love to have as a neighbour, or a brother-in-law or your mechanic.
Just don’t mess with his photographic mojo.
I learned this the hard way in the summer of 2006 on one of those road trips to the Meadowlands my coworkers think is some glamorous boondoggle.
We begin at 4:30 a.m. as the shrill sound of an unfamiliar alarm clock pierces the murkiness of a strange hotel room on the outskirts of the Buffalo Airport. A crummy bagel on the go, shuttle buses, oh-so-cheery airline employees, the crush of herded cattle that is the mile-long security check line. And all of this before dawn.
Oh, the glamour.
In a desperate need to fire up the central nervous system, I grab a couple of large coffees on our dash to our gate. Landry is lugging about 36 bags of photographic equipment too sensitive to check, so I agree to carry his java. And then, as we rush onto the smallish plane with narrow aisles, my first brilliant idea for the day hits me like the lightning bolt I wish had struck me dead: to avoid slamming the computer bag slung over my shoulder off the heads of my fellow passengers, why not carry my bag in one hand and stack the coffee cups in the other?
Fun fact #1: Did you know airplane carpets are extra-absorbent? Neither did I until I spilled both full, oil-drum sized coffees down the aisle and partly onto some guy’s pants. That will teach him to push aside passengers traveling with the elderly or small children in order to rush onto the plane at the first boarding call.
Still, not even scalding strangers is going to wreck this day. We are on assignment for adventure.
It is a gorgeous, hot summer morning in not-so-gorgeous Newark, NJ as we slide into a sweet rental ride — it was a Tempo, I think — and head for the Jersey shore. I throw some reggae on the iPod. It’s Friday. I’m not in the office. We’re heading for the ocean. The tunes are cranking. Life is good... Then Landry mentions he hasn’t been feeling well. Says he’s having sort of an “out-of-body experience or something.”
Uh oh.
We have come to the marina in Belmar, NJ to tag along with driver Ron Pierce, avid outdoorsman, as he attempts to spear fish while scuba diving.
One word of advice from Pierce before we leave the dock: if you want to keep anything dry, put it in one of these two storage compartments right here, he says, pointing to the holds at the bow of the boat.
This is what we in the writing game call ominous foreshadowing.
Perhaps Landry is having an out of body experience as Pierce says this. Landry looks like he heard the driver — he nods slightly, as he pans the scene for photographic gold — but experience tells me he sometimes zones out when you’re speaking to him... all in the name of art, I say. You can hardly argue with the man’s track record. He’s a multi-award-winning photographer, I remind myself. He knows what he’s doing. So, I decide to kick back.
Besides, Landry has a waterproof backpack protecting a second camera and some other gear in it.
Pierce nudges the throttle and we head out. It is positively blissful. Landry and I are like two dogs on a car ride. Heads out the window, tongues hanging out, drool flying as we take in the seaside mansions. Sure, sure, Landry’s not taking any photos, but that would be nit-picking.
Before we know it, we’re booming along the Jersey shore at 50 mph heading to a spot where Pierce wants to dive. We get there, anchor, Pierce tugs on his wet suit and Landry fires off some shots as the driver vanishes beneath the surface brandishing his spear gun. Killer stuff to be sure, but not as killer as what came next.
Landry was rolling as he made preparations for the money shot — the one he can see in his mind’s eye of Pierce returning to the surface with a pile of fish. It’s a cover shot to be sure, he says, as he struts to the bow to retrieve his other camera and a different lens from the... live fish hold.
From deep inside him, in a place we don’t speak about after dark or in front of small children, he feels the power of a torturous wail. No sound comes out, but it’s right there on his face like Edvard Munch’s famous impressionist painting Scream. I feel his pain.
There, floating in about 10 inches of sea water, is Landry’s backpack containing equipment that’s worth more than my car.
Starting to hyperventilate and sweat profusely, Landry says he tried to put his gear in one of the two waterproof compartments, but they were full of huge bottles of Gatorade. Instead he tucked his bag inside the next closest compartment. We didn’t see him do it. At the time, the fish hold was dry. Somewhere along the way, Pierce flipped a switch to fill it with sea water.
“But it’s waterproof, right?” I say, helpfully, as he yanks his dripping backpack out of the well. This is called damage control.
Turns out his backpack is, indeed, waterproof... if he hadn’t left the zipper open about a millimeter.
Then depression set in.
Fun fact #2: Expensive, high-tech camera equipment and corrosive salt water do not mix.
At this point, Landry hasn’t even realized we’re talking about salt water here. I decide to keep that little nugget of good news to myself for now. At least he has insurance. And there’s more good news: Landry still had one of his cameras around his neck — and we left his biggest lens in the car — so not all was lost. Oddly, he wasn’t interested in hearing the bright side of his worst nightmare as he dropped to his knees on the deck and desperately tipped the water out of his camera gear and backpack, as he looked for any sign of life from a camera that was now smoking slightly.
Fun fact #3: keeping your head down while anchored on bobbing seas is a surefire way to get sea sickness.
The fact that Pierce quickly returned to the surface empty-handed — a couple of recent storms have led to low visibility below — was immaterial, really.
The bigger issue was how we were going to get a depressed, moaning, sea sick photographer safely back to shore.
Turns out the best thing that happened all day, to that point, is the fact Landry didn’t hurl. Though, he did turn a delightful shade of Shrek green.
Then things became positively surreal, which, to be honest, was a strong bet with Pierce. But let’s save that for next time.
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