HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2011-06-16, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JUNE 9, 2011. PAGE 5.
Human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
– T.S. Eliot
Idon’t get reality TV. Oh, I understand why
it’s popular with television producers and
entertainment conglomerates – they get
entire TV series delivered to their door without
having to pay for writers or expensive studios
and sets; they get to use non-union ‘actors’
willing to perform for free or next to it.
But why does anyone want to watch the
result?
To see what happens when a gaggle of
strangers gets marooned on a desert island?
Puh-leeze. That’s no desert island and
nobody’s marooned. This is a celluloid
entertainment, remember? At the bare
minimum there’s a camera operator, a lighting
technician and a sound man riding the levels
on hidden microphones. I’m also willing to bet
there’s a director, an assistant director and a
gaggle of college dropout ‘special assistants’
clutching clipboards just off camera. Not to
mention a helicopter and crew on standby in
case somebody wants fresh croissants with
their coffee.
It’s a shuck, folks – and the French, bless
their mercenary hearts, appear to have figured
that out. Last year the highest court in France
ruled that contestants in the French version of
Temptation Island were entitled to contracts
and employee benefits, including a 35-hour
workweek, overtime…
And oh yes, a base pay rate equivalent to
$1,900 per actor per day. French production
company executives sobbed that they’ll have
to come up with nearly $71 million in back
pay.
Cry me a riviere. The American Idol
franchise brought in that much in just three
months on air.
But when it comes to reality TV, the money
is just, well, unreal. Consider the maximally
mammaried, minimally talented reality TV
star Kim Kardashian. Estimated salary for
2010: $6 million.
And then there’s Planet Calypso, a mineral-
rich frontier on which investors around the
world have been snapping up properties and
leases for the past few years. One of those
investors, Hollywood filmmaker/entrepreneur
Jon Jacobs, recently cashed out his Planet
Calypso properties for a cool $635,000 U.S.
Not bad, for an investment of a mere
$100,000.
Especially not bad when you consider that
Planet Calypso doesn’t exist.
It’s an imaginary asteroid, part of an on-line
game called Entropia Universe. Jon Jacobs
pocketed more than half a million real dollars
by selling fictional real estate on a make-
believe celestial body.
As usual, you and I are slightly behind the
curve. Planet Calypso is only one of many
mythical marketplaces on which online
investors are actively ‘doing business’. A
marketing firm called In-Stat estimates that
online players spent $7 billion last year on the
purchase of non-existent property and goods.
Which brings us to the Toronto Public
Library (TPL). Thanks to the introduction of
an innovative project. TPL patrons with an
active library card can partake of a project
called the ‘Human Library’. Participants don’t
take out a book, a tape or a CD; they take out
a living, breathing, interacting human being.
Some of the people waiting to be ‘signed out’
(for a half-hour at a time, conversation only)
include a retired police officer, a comedian, a
former sex worker, a model and a person who
has survived both cancer and homelessness.
The idea is to facilitate conversations
between library patrons and people from other
walks of life who they might not otherwise get
to meet. The Human Library is an attempt
to ‘travel back in time’ in effect, to an age
when, as a TPL official put it, “storytelling
from person to person was the only way to
learn”.
Sounds like a great idea, The Human
Library.
No doubt some Hollywood hotshot is
figuring out how to turn it into a reality show.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Come on! A small dose of ‘reality’
There’s a reason why everyone outside of
the five burroughs of New York City
hates the New York Yankees. There has
always been a stigma surrounding the team,
accusing them of buying championships.
So last year when arguably the best
basketball player in North America, LeBron
James, said he and Chris Bosh (the best player
the Toronto Raptors had seen in some time)
were both heading to Miami to play with
another one of the NBA’s top five players
Duane Wade, it looked like the Yankees
business model had been adapted for the hard
court.
After all, who couldn’t win an NBA
Championship with three of the league’s best
10 players on one team? Not only had they
chosen this shortcut, but James had also
scorned his former team, the Cleveland
Cavaliers, in an hour-long television special
where he announced he would be leaving his
hometown team (he was born and bred in
Akron, Ohio).
However, on Sunday night, it was the Dallas
Mavericks that hoisted the coveted Larry
O’Brien Trophy. This was a team that had been
together for so long that critics everywhere
were thinking it was about time to “blow up”
the team and start from scratch, as many of the
team’s better players were starting to get on in
age (in basketball terms).
Often there is no substitute for hard work put
in as a team. This was the stance taken by
Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert who still feels the
sting of James’s departure, stating after the
Dallas victory “There are no shortcuts. None.”
That’s why fans of baseball (and really all
sports) hate the Yankees. Every year after the
World Series is won by someone other than the
Yankees, the question always becomes “What
move will the Yankees make to put themselves
into contention?” This move, of course, won’t
be in the New York farm system, it will be, as
they call it in hockey, cherry picking.
It has gotten to the point that some of the
clubs with lower incomes, such as the Florida
Marlins, the Oakland A’s, the Cleveland
Indians and others serve as a farm system for
the Yankees. These teams have great scouts,
they draft good players, develop the talent,
only to relinquish said players to the Yankees
when they can no longer afford to pay them.
And when a great player hits the market, it’s
assumed that the Yankees will pick him up.
When Cliff Lee became a free agent at the end
of the 2010 season, the Yankees (essentially)
drove a dump truck of money to Lee’s house.
Sure, he decided to go to Philadelphia, but the
Lee situation last year was yet another example
of the Yankees having the best chance at a
World Series, simply because they have the
most money to spend.
This came, of course, after a defeat in the
American League Championship Series at the
hands of the Texas Rangers in a series that set
the record for the biggest payroll disparity in
sports history. The Yankees cost owners $207
million that year, while the Rangers only cost
their owners $55 million. But it was the
Rangers who went on to the World Series, only
to lose to the San Francisco Giants (who had a
slightly higher payroll at $118 million).
When O.J. Simpson jettisoned his
possessions before going to jail, anyone could
buy his 1968 Heisman Trophy if they had
enough money. Laying down that kind of cash,
however, doesn’t mean that you rushed for
over 1,700 yards and scored 22 touchdowns
that year for the University of Southern
California. You didn’t earn those things, it just
means you have the deepest pockets.
Can’t buy me love
I’m beginning to feel like a one-trick pony
when talking about school closures and my
experiences with them, but I believe the
most recent announcement by the Avon
Maitland District School Board (AMDSB),
to potentially rename existing schools that
are going to stay open, is a flawed
decision.
The board opened a questionnaire on its
website last month to allow students, parents
and community members to name the new
school in Wingham, but also gave the
opportunity to rename the schools that will
remain open after the slated closures next year,
including Grey Central Public School and
Hullett Central Public School.
I understand the need for the proposed
Wingham public school to have a name that
represents all the communities it will draw
from, but, if my experience with the school
board has taught me anything in this particular
forum, we’ll probably be dealing with an
uninspired, unoriginal name.
I’m very jaded when it comes to the idea of
renaming schools because the first public
school I attended was recently renamed as a
result of amalgamation and I was downright
furious when it happened.
I attended Robertson Memorial Public
School in Goderich.
Let’s break that down – Robertson (the last
name of three brothers in Goderich who
were well-thought of in the community
and successful in their fields when the school
was opened in 1963) Memorial (meaning it
has been named in memory of someone who
has passed away) Public School (well.. that’s
pretty self-explanatory).
The school was renamed Goderich Public
School.
Now the blandness, the absolute vanilla-ness
of the decision to name it that really grated my
nerves, but what got me green with Hulk-like
rage was that they had changed something that
had been named in honour of someone and
renamed it to something that didn’t represent
anything about the community besides the
name.
Even something like Goderich District
Collegiate Institute is better than
simply appending the location to what it
is. The DCI part of GDCI has flair and
character.
Wingham already has F.E. Madill Secondary
School which is, as far as I know, not a
name based on location but as an honorary
act.
So, suffice to say, I was unhappy about the
renaming not because of the act but because of
the result.
I can see a similar reaction from people who
have children attending, or who themselves
attended, Hullett Central or Grey Central
Public Schools.
Yes these schools are named for the area
they are in, but there is history behind those
names.
For each letter of their names there are
hundreds of graduates with memories of the
school they went to.
To change the name of a school when it was
decided that it should stay open seems to be a
waste of money (letterhead, signs, sports
jerseys, student cards, etc.) and time in my
opinion, especially given the track record I
know of.
No announcement has been made regarding
the names of the three schools, but I can only
hold my breath and hope that Grey and Hullett
remain the same.
Changing the name to reflect the schools
that students previously came from would be
nice, but, in the end, it won’t change the fact
that schools have been closed.
It won’t stop the schools from closing
and, in the end, won’t allow past graduates to
point at a school and say “I graduated
there.”
To this day, despite the initial confusion it
sometimes causes, if asked I say I went to
Robertson Memorial Public School. To those
new to the area it requires some description,
but I didn’t go to Goderich Public School in
the same way graduates of Hullett or Grey
didn’t go to, for instance, Londesborough or
Ethel public schools.
The closure of Blyth, Brussels, East
Wawanosh and all the other schools is a
mistake in my mind because it leaves the
school board unprepared for when the
population does begin to grow again.
The process seems to be planning for the
worst (a declining enrollment) but leaving
very few options if the population begins to
rise.
If we ever get to the point when Blyth and
Brussels need their own schools again, the
long-term ramifications of closing the
schools are going to be felt and the cost of
building a brand new school is going to be
high.
That said, forcing the schools that stayed
open to be renamed isn’t going to draw
attention away from the fact that Blyth
P.S. students will no longer be Blyth P.S.
students.
Brussels students are going to become Grey
students, or Wingham students, or something
similar.
East Wawanosh students will probably still
refer to themselves as such until they graduate.
Renaming the school isn’t going to change
the way people feel about the closure, it’s only
going to cause the people who got to keep
their school to feel as if they’re losing it
anyways.
The idea is flawed, the process is
unnecessary and the result is going to
be, in my opinion, far from what anyone
wants.
Schools are already closing, taking the
unique local identity they provide away from
students, let’s leave it at that, don’t take the
identity away from the students and families
and communities who ended up keeping their
schools.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Renaming of schools unnecessary