It's been another big week, so let's open with the most time-sensitive information:
[Information Tsunami: Ambassador Gary Doer, streaming Nov. 1]
If you don't have anything down in your day planner for 10:00 this morning, you are invited to watch a live stream of Premi dammit Ambassador Gary Doer speaking to Creative Communications students at Red River College. What about, I have no idea; it could be "Brain Drain is Awesome: How to Get Out of This Province", for all I know. You know you'd watch that, too, don't pretend like you wouldn't.
I don't know what Doer's itinerary is for the rest of the day, but maybe after the speech he'll drop by the Legislature and it'll be really awkward. That'd be amazing, wouldn't it? Like Selinger stands beside him to shake his hand, starts to lean in for a half-hug, Doer glares at him and shakes his head 'no', and then they just keep shaking hands painstakingly slowly.
if i lapse into longform fanfiction i need you to promise you'll shoot me
[CBC.ca Player: Winnipeg's air terminal opens (1964) (via West End Dumplings)]
"Modern facilities required by the Air Age are housed in this new, 13-million-dollar terminal project."
Everything old was new, once, so get a load of this: twelve minutes of black and white (!) documentary-slash-promotional footage for our then-new, now-abandoned Airport terminal, with persuasive narration and bursts of swank 1960s production music and everything.
Jump to about 8:45 in for some hilariously baffled patron reactions to the modern art ("It's god-awful." "I don't know what it's... supposed to represent.") and the narrator's chuckling transition of "Whatever your taste in art, it... calls for a drink." Really, just watch the whole thing straight through, it is pretty fantastic.
"Thirteen million dollars is a lot of money... but it's given us something to be proud of. A thing of beauty as well as utility. In a way, I suppose it's also given us a better stake in the future. We'll get used to the modern art in time, I guess."
lol nope
[Urban Compass by Colin Fast (Metro Winnipeg): Welcome to the ’peg: watch your back]
As I'm sure you've noticed several times before, we as a city and as a province distract very, very easily; we are Dug the Talking Dog, and the police helicopter is our squirrel.
Our once and future Policy Frog combines the unveiling of the new Airport and a nearly-simultaneous shooting death on McPhillips to call out our leaders, of all stripes and styles, who prefer "random acts of publicity" to the actual hard and dirty work of pursuing and implementing lasting solutions.
And he's right! Local politicians and authorities will continue in perpetuity to roll out any cynical lipservice they can afford, unless we hold them to account, and the time is now for we the common people to rise up and--SWISS CHALET
[Observations, Reservations, Conversations: Swiss Chalet Now Open in Winnipeg]
I used to date a girl in Ontario whose absolute favourite thing to eat was Swiss Chalet, whose favourite luxury was ordering it online and having thirteen-dollar chicken delivered right to her door, so I am qualified to tell you that affection for Swiss Chalet is not necessarily a regional quirk; it is not necessarily a Winnipeg thing, nor is it necessarily an Ontario thing. Definitely a white people thing, though! White people love Swiss Chalet, oh man, that shit is white people catnip. Hold the little container of that weird sauce near the carpet and they roll over for it, it's great.
John Dobbin -- incidentally a guest on this week's Winnipeg Internet Pundits! -- notes in a later update that "no other post I have written has ever come close to matching Swiss Chalet for traffic", and reports indicate that the store has been consistently slammed since its opening. Between this and our collective civic post-Jets afterglow, there are probably a lot of people figuring we can bring back anything and everything we used to have back in the day; the Occupy Winnipeg encampment will be infiltrated and then eventually overtaken by signs like "WE WANT CONSUMERS DISTRIBUTING" and "BRING BACK GRAPES", assuming this hasn't happened already.
[AlysonShane.com: Let's get serious for a moment]
For a city that so desperately declares itself 'world-class', holy smokes, are we ever bad at things like wireless hotspots. You can walk around other cities with a Nintendo DS and get better internet access than our computers get here, our town still about a decade behind on the whole idea of it actually being the 21st century.
Remember when our Mayor made a campaign promise to establish a downtown-wide Wi-Fi network? In 2006? It's going real well, so far!
Ahhhh, I shouldn't pick on the guy too much, though; he may be the third least popular Mayor in Canada, but he does have his supporters, like--
[Winnipeg Sun: Who is the real Sam Katz?]
--wait, what
Okay, did Sam Katz stonewall a Sun TV interview request, or what is this? Did Metro Winnipeg land a plum Goldeyes sponsorship deal? Did he run over Laurie Mustard's dog?
Katz is the same Katz he's ever been, the same kind of guy making the same kind of decisions with the same kind of mental processes -- but last year the Sun assured us he was "the mayor Winnipeg needs" who "can be depended upon to keep the city gradually moving forward" and "can also be trusted to keep his word when it comes to freezing property taxes for at least one more year", and now this year they think he's a promise-breaking disappointment scumbag poop.
The headlines within the span of a year have literally -- literally -- gone from "Winnipeg's Caped Crusader" to "Katz, you're no hero". He's the same guy he was before, Sun dudes, I don't know what to tell you.
Okay, seriously, though, what did he do? Did he shoot a cop? He shot a cop, didn't he.
[Upper Deck Blog: Upper Deck Celebrates the Return of the NHL in Winnipeg with a Special Jets Set]
Hockey card collectors, traders and prospectors converging on Winkler Video and Thompson Book Nook? It's more likely than you think!
After all the chaos of uprooting and replanting a hockey franchise, particularly the delays in jersey design and related merchandise, it appears that sports fans will be able to get hockey cards of the Jets in uniform after all. Not of all the Jets, mind you, and not inexpensively; the article mentions buying "select amount of 2011-12 Upper Deck NHL packs" to get three Jets cards, and their declining to specify the amount of packs indicates it'll probably be a fair number of packs.
The front designs of all fifteen cards are included in the link above, and one of the cards in this "special 15-card set of current Jets players" is Mark Scheifele, who was reassigned to the Barrie Colts last week. So, uh... whoops. Is there such a thing as a pre-rookie card?
Mind you, though -- the Phoenix Coyotes have banned pressbox photography after the media kept taking embarrassing shots of the mostly empty arena during games, so I suppose there are worse problems to have than a limited availability of player cards. Right? Right.
So on that cheery note -- see you next time for more ManLinkWeek!
2 comments:
You da man James!
There's an anecdote in Dave Thomas's SCTV book -- they were working late into the night to bring in an episode before deadline. The cast and crew were starving so the producers thought it would be a good idea to order up some Swiss Chalet and have it delivered to the studio. As soon as he saw it, John Candy went berserk and punched a hole in one of the sets.
Ah, Edmonton Swiss Chalet.
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