R.I.P. – M. Scot Skinner
People: Tribute - M. Scot Skinner, Journalist
Longtime Arizona arts reporter and journalist succumbs to bacterial infection, but M. Scot Skinner is destined to leave a lasting impression on all who knew him -- even those who shared the briefest of encounters
April 4, 2016-- I barely knew M. Scot Skinner. But the news of his death today keeps gonging in my head, sending a heavy rumble down my spine, and tripping some tingle to my fingertips… tap, tap, tapping on the keyboard in the endless love-hate relationship called ‘writing.’
Or ‘typing,’ as we journalists sometimes call it when we’re feeling particularly cynical. And we can all be so cynical. Especially now. But I don't think Scot ever lost his journalist soul, even if it did get a little scuffed.
I could tell from the first time we spoke on the phone. It was about a year ago. I’d lost my job as national movie critic for Postmedia News and was launching The Ex-Press with some friends – all former ...
Feeling the Vancouver Bern
Rod Mickleburgh: Bernie Sanders in Vancouver, Washington
Tilting at the windmills of politics called Super PACs, Bernie Sanders seems perfectly comfortable playing the modern equivalent of Don Quixote
By Rod Mickleburgh
VANCOUVER, WASH. -- The 74-year old, white-haired politician advanced to the podium, and the roof nearly came off the Hudson’s Bay High School gymnasium. No wonder. For nearly four hours, thousands of us had been standing in line, braving a cold, miserable rain, without even knowing whether we would be among the 5,000 or so lucky enough to make it inside. Our little group, friends after sharing the miserable ordeal outside, scraped through by the skin of our chattering teeth, but the doors soon closed on thousands more.
As the cheers continued to cascade down from the packed, rickety benches of the high school gym, Bernie Sanders leaned forward and shouted in his hoarse, Brooklynese. “All I can say is: WHOA!” The roar got louder. “It sounds to me like ...
Close encounters on the third base line
Sports: Jays' Spring Training in Dunedin
Whether you're sponging up the baseball, sponging off the spilled beer, or buying a sponge in a seaside tourist shop, catching Blue Jays spring training in Dunedin is a ball fan's beery version of Valhalla
By Jay Stone
DUNEDIN, Fla. — On my first day in Dunedin this year, I went to a spring training baseball game and saw a pitcher named Pat Venditte, who can throw with either arm. He has a special six-finger glove with a thumb at each end, and he can put it on whichever hand he wants and throw with the other arm.
Venditte, who is in the Toronto Blue Jays camp, has been in the league for a while — he was with the Yankees two years ago and Oakland last year — and there’s even a rule named after him. It says that he has to declare which arm he’s going to throw with against a switch-hitter. This keeps baseball, which is kind of a leisurely sport anyway, from becoming an endless game of chicken, with Venditte moving his glove from ...
Handing out Canadian Candy
News: The Canadian Screen Awards 2016
Room cleans up with nine wins in the film category, including best picture, while Schitt's Creek, Book of Negroes and Orphan Black dominate the TV side of Canada's annual awards show... now called The Candys?
By Katherine Monk
It was pretty good, eh? They had a big stage. A band. Gold statuettes. A host that wasn't William Shatner. And people in the audience -- some of whom were even recognizable. More importantly, this year's Canadian Screen Awards also included a few titles with proven international appeal, such as the TV show Orphan Black and the film Room, the Oscar-nominated drama that cleaned up with nine wins at Sunday night's gala, including best picture, best director, best actress, best actor, best supporting actress and best adapted screenplay for Emma Donoghue.
For an awards broadcast that's struggled with audience ambivalence and stumping films with no box-office visibility, this year's show, hosted by Norm Macdonald and ...
Trump Stumbles Right On
Politics: Feeling Blue in a Red State
As Republican rallies descend into racist violence and rhetorical chaos, right-wing talk-radio's angry baby of anti-government sentiment comes of age carrying a verbal assault weapon and a whole lot of attitude
By Carla McClain
OK, boys and girls, time to cut to the chase. Time to figure out why a once-functional nation like the United States of America is about to nominate for its President -- arguably the most powerful political office in the world -- a bloviating birther braggadocio blowhard, aka Donald J. Trump. How did we get here? What in the name of God has happened to us?
That’s not hard to figure out....
Welcome to the fruits of twenty-five years of the highly effective brainwashing of a good chunk of the American people -- OK, let’s say it, the weak-minded sheeple among us, and there are lots of those throughout the human species -- by right-wing talk-radio.
I happen to know how this got done because I -- unlike ...
Feeling all pains and needles
The Sick Days: Part 22
After toughing out the chronic pain of inflamed joints and fever flashes, a young reporter hits the wall and lands in the hospital where hiding the truth about her illness is no longer an option
By Shelley Page
An ‘X’ was drawn on my back to mark the spot where the biopsy needle was to be plunged. That’s when the nephrologist executed the bait and switch.
“Ok, how about you do it?”
“The biopsy? Me?”
Hovering over me — face down, backside up— the attending nephrologist discussed the procedure with the resident, who’d been at his side since I met them the previous afternoon. (It was a teaching hospital).
“Yes, you’ve watched enough of these. You’re ready.”
“It’s a straight shot?”
“More or less.”
One of them touched my shoulder. “How are you feeling?”
Uh.
I lifted my head, twisted my neck to look them both in the eyes. I’d read somewhere that you’re supposed to make eye contact with ...
After a life in news, one last plea
People: Tribute to Ron Rose (1919-2015)
A veteran newspaper man files a final message to readers: "Do what you can to stem the unedited and often unsourced outpourings in the flood of social media."
By Rod Mickleburgh
We said farewell late last month to a good man. Part of the great generation that survived the Depression, World War Two, the tinderbox of the Cold War and Liberace, Ron Rose was part of this crazy world for nearly a century, falling just four years short of the big One Zero Zero. But that’s not why so many of us gathered to pay our respects. We were there because Ron Rose, besides being the most gracious and generous of individuals, was a newspaper man. It was a gathering of the clans, a celebration of someone whose working life as a knight of the keyboard stretched back to the Depression. Ron Rose was history. When he started at the Vancouver Sun as a copy boy in 1938, he reported for work in the celebrated Sun Tower, then topped by the paper’s majestic neon ...
News: The National Film Board and Vimeo launch new service
News: Streaming Services
New platform showcasing short films from the Oscar-winning studio is available now
By The Ex-Press
It’s the first rule of drug dealers and encyclopedia salesmen: The first one is always free. And now, the National Film Board will be adopting a similar strategy hoping to get you addicted to short films.
Partnering with Vimeo, the on-line streaming service, the NFB has created NFB Shorts on Demand. The subscription-based, on-demand platform (SVOD) was unveiled in a press release late Wednesday — declaring it available immediately.
One newly added film will always be available for free, but after that, there’s a $4.99 subscription fee for monthly unlimited streaming, a $1.99 single streaming fee, or a $3.99 charge for download-to-own.
The new outlet is designed to showcase the latest work coming out of the acclaimed studio, unlike the current film board website, which allows access to a great deal of the deep and decorated short film ...
Falling apart at The Citizen
The Sick Days: Part 21 - Hot and Bothered
Moving from The Toronto Star to The Ottawa Citizen was supposed to reduce symptom-inducing stress, but once installed in the national newsroom, Shelley Page starts feeling like a lobster
By Shelley Page
While I never told the editors who hired me at the Ottawa Citizen that I had a serious chronic illness, I confessed my secret to the doctor performing the employer-mandated medical exam.
I had to. Otherwise, my blood would betray me.
A routine white blood cell count (WBC) would reveal I suffered from neutropenia and leukopenia — chronically low numbers of white blood cells which left me highly susceptible to infection. Lupus often attacks and destroys these disease fighting, workhorses of the immune system. A normal WBC is between 4,500 and 11,000, mine hovers around 1,800.
If the doctor requested more sophisticated tests, she might also have seen extremely high levels of anti-double-stranded DNA antibodies, which ...
The Ex-Press Oscar Predictions 2016
Movies: Oscars 2016
Our expert guide -- and some good guesses -- about who will win the little man with the gold complexion come curtain time
By Katherine Monk
Chris Rock is in a hard place. Hosting this year’s Oscars isn’t a task for amateurs who get by on dimples, he’ll need to do an entirely different song and dance and address, and hopefully undress, the diversity issue that continues to ripple through every corner of the industry, putting legendary stars in embarrassing situations.
Poor Meryl Streep. You know she’s going to get some zinger about about how “we all come from Africa.” And poor Sylvester Stallone, having to represent Creed as the white guy, and poor Bryan Cranston and Michael Fassbender who handed in spectacular performances as two different brands of genius in Trumbo and Steve Jobs but will not take home the big prize.
It was a year of great performances in so-so movies, or at least movies that never fully connected with audiences in the ...
