Tag: Media

Trump Vs. Everybody

Hiya Regina! It’s-11 with a -16 windchill. It’s supposed to get to -5 this afternoon and sliiide down -8 tonight. The sun came up at 8:41 and it sets at 5:42. Slowly closing in on that 6:00 threshhold! So we lost Mary Tyler Moore yesterday. She was a big deal. You can read more here, here, here, here, here and here. I was a kid when her show was on the air and it was good for my child-brain to have TV that depicted smart, independent women. Wikipedia has a page on her production company, which put out a lot of great shows including one of my all-time favourites, WKRP In Cincinnati. Rest in peace, hero.

1. SAVE CANADIAN MEDIA! A government report recommends lots of things, including a $100 million Journalism and Democracy fund. A.) Yeah, you think? You think maybe there’s no democracy without professional media to keep the public informed? B.) Sounds like groundwork for a slush fund to billionaires who can’t run newspapers, as opposed to funding for journalists and, ahem, SMALL MEDIA OUTLETS THAT HAVE NO STAFF AND WOULD LOVE TO HIRE SOME OF THEIR UNDERPAID FREELANCERS.

2. TWO CANADIANS SUPPOSEDLY RUN 200 COMPANIES Good CBC story.

3. POTASH PLLLLLBBBBBBBBBBTH PotashCorp made $1.23 billion in 2015. Last year it only made $336 million. Ruh-roh! There go the royalties!

4. JUSTIN REGINA The PM is in town for a quick stop.

5. LIBERAL FRAUDSTER SENTENCED TO PRISON Jacques Corriveau pocketed $7 million in kickbacks from the sponsorship scandal. He’s been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Aww but it’s not fair, he’s ollld, give him a break. Related note: how many of you would trade 10 years in minimum security prison for a million bucks? Thought so.

6. FAST FOOD NATION McDonald’s and A&W launch all-day breakfasts across Canada next month. I’m dooooomed. #McMuffinsAreMyKryptonite

7. YES HE CAM! Probably my favourite player on the Columbus Blue Jackets has been added to the NHL All-Star Game, hooray wait you don’t care

And here’s today’s Trump Dump:

T1. AMERICAN CITIES ARE MAAAD Trump threatened them with funding cuts, now they’re pissed. Trump may learn that enemies are a lot of work. Wonder how much of the U.S. GDP is going to go to lawyers under these Republicans? One half of the country is going to be suing each other while the other half is going to be rioting. What a waste of human time, effort and potential.

T2. MEXICO IS MAAAD No, the country is not going to pay for Trump’s stupid wall. Trump, an idiot, is predictably acting like a child. Mexico’s president, also predictably, just cancelled his U.S. visit.

T3. ONE REPUBLICAN STUDENT ORGANIZATION IMPLICITLY THREATENS PROTESTERS WITH VIOLENCE “If you keep prodding the right you may be unpleasantly surprised what the outcome will be,” say dipshits on the College Republicans at the University of Washington Facebook page. This nonsense after a protester was shot at their idiot event with gay white supremicist (!!!) Milo Yannipoulos. Seems to me universities should disband groups that make threats and get people shot, but America! Fuck yeah! I guess.

T4. CHELSEA MANNING IS A “TRAITOR” Whatever, anyone Trump doesn’t like is going to be a traitor.

New, New, New Dog!

New Dog (may 16)The latest Prairie Dog is out, out OUT and it’s great and you should grab a copy at your nearest street box or convenience store or restaurant counter or friendly neighbourhood pub! People! There are at least four reasons you MUST do this! Here they are!

1.) Prairie Dog is a fan-fucking-tastic newspaper and there’s nothing else like it in the province!

2.) Smart, talented, funny, friendly and sexy people read Prairie Dog and since you are (OBVIOUSLY) all of those things, this is the paper for you!

3.) Prairie Dog is a magic potion of genius news reporting and opinionating and HAIL-arious stupid bullshit, plus cartoons! If you read it you’ll see things no one else can see; do things no one else will do! Come ON do I have to keep explaining this?

4.) I can’t remember what the fourth reason was so I asked Morash (publisher) and he said “it will make you taller or at least raise your standing among your peers.” YEAH.

WHAT EXACTLY IS IN THIS EDITION THAT HAS WHITWORTH JIBBER-JABBERING LIKE AN ADHD GERBIL ON A SUGAR HIGH, YOU ASK? Oh, lots of stuff. This Prairie Dog starts off with another amazing cover by Shuster Award winning cartoonist Dakota McFadzean! Flip on into the paper and there’s a hoarder’s attic of great stuff to read — NewsQuirks, a review of Little Saigon, Top 6 columns, a Q &A with a dead pet, a story on the organized labour-bashing Bill 85 (which was just passed in the Sask. legislature), a beautiful obituary for Regina’s indoor skatepark, about eight sentences on our gallant Fougemayor’s housing summit, interviews with the bands Cannibal Corpse and Chains Of Love,  an epic column by John Conway about Stephen Harper’s assholery, CD reviews, Sound Check and Hnetflix, a review of The Great Gatsby, Dan MacRae’s awesomely dumb-ass hockey column, Queen City Confidential, Typo Wiener and more, more, more, MORE!

Prairie Dog! Holy poop, you guys! It’s the most unique reading experience you’ll find in Regina!

New Dog!

New Dog (may 2)I know Regina doesn’t like negativity. Oh, do I know. But even this town’s stare-at-the-sunny-side-until-its-eyes-melt citizenry unites in collective wrath at the snow season that’s only just ended. And why not? The winter of 2012-12 was a frozen, loitering molester that overstayed its welcome by at least six weeks, crushing our dreams of a warm and lovely April in the process. This cold cur, this icy cad, this frosty cockadoodledipstick has earned every fleck of rage-propelled spittle that our righteously frothed gobs can expel. Ptoouii!

But winter’s over now! And to make sure it stays over, we combed through our file photos to find the most springy, warm-weathery image we could for this issue’s cover. BEHOLD! This 2010 shot by Darrol Hofmeister features Whitney and Derek frolicking on a sun-lit Wascana Park path. So bright! So cheerful! So devoid of icicles! Let this Prairie Dog cover be Regina’s talisman against any further unseasonal precipitations of a sub-zero nature.

If you see so much as a speck of snow before October, just roll this edition up and smash that fucker until satisfaction is achieved.

SO WHAT’S IN THIS ISSUE? So glad you asked! Ridiculous weather is the focus of both Greg Beatty’s report on the science of the season and an Aidan Morgan essay on April’s under-appreciated horror. Elsewhere, our mighty American friend Paul Constant delves into his nation’s post-Boston, conspiracy-obsessed psyche, while me and Paul Dechene team up for a beat-down on the Conservative party’s latest boundary commission malarkey (fun game: try to guess what parts I wrote). What else? Oh, lots of stuff. We’ve got film and CD reviews, Canada’s most  ADD hockey column, a new Ask Greg (it’s been a while!) and of course the always-popular “and much more”. It’s a good little issue of Prairie Dog! Pick it up at your nearest street box, convenience store, restaurant, pub or coffeeshop, or wherever better free publications are available.

Q Live in Regina

Today’s special Juno episode of CBC’s Q was recorded live at the Conexus Arts Centre in Regina last night.  Host Jian Ghomeshi’s guests included locals Sandra Butel and Jayden Pfeifer, Canadian Music Hall of Fame inductee k.d. lang, Juno winner Tom Cochrane, Dragonette, Bahamas and Corb Lund, Juno Cup hockey rivals, Jim Cuddy and Gary Roberts. Local photographer Chris Graham (me!) was in attendance and captured photos of the show, which can now be streamed HERE.

© Chris Graham Photo 2013

Many more after the jump!

Continue reading “Q Live in Regina”

Pick Of The Day: The Book

CW2008Industrial Fairy Tale croppedBased in Ottawa, Carol Wainio has practiced as an artist since the 1980s. In artistic circles in Canada she’s well-known. But in mainstream society, probably not so much. Although Wainio did receive a bit of a boost in the fame department last fall when she documented on a media blog that she writes an instance of plagiarism involving a 2009 column by the Globe & Mail’s Margaret Wente on how “enviromanticism” was harming Africa by hindering the type of development that was needed to help eradicate poverty and despair on the continent. Turned out that Wente had cribbed the column from a 2008 article by the Ottawa Citizens’ Dan Gardner.

When she’s not doing her media watchdog thing Wainio  paints. The Book is a recent body of work that examines the aesthetics and narratives of children’s story books and fairy tales — the tropes they contain, stereotypes they propagate, the messages of social control they transmit, stuff like that. There’s an opening reception for Wainio’s exhibition at the Dunlop Art Gallery tonight at 7 p.m., then on Saturday afternoon at 1 p.m. Wainio will give an artist talk. The Book runs at the Dunlop until June 2.

The above image is one of the works in the exhibition. The painting is titled Industrial Fairy Tale (2008). It’s from the collection of the artist, courtesy of Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Toronto

Johnny Esaw, Dead At 87

For sports fans of a certain vintage (actually, several vintages) Johnny Esaw is a familiar name. I associate the North Battleford-born sportscaster who passed away today in Toronto at the age of 87 with CFL telecasts during the Riders’ glory years of the Ron Lancaster George Reed era in the 1960s and ’70s. But later on, Esaw also his made his mark as a figure-skating broadcaster. So if you were a fan of that sport at the World and Olympic level you’d be familiar with him too.

I don’t know if it was his most famous moment in sports, but Esaw was the one who interviewed Phil Esposito on the ice in Vancouver after the Canadian leg of the Canada vs USSR hockey series in 1972 had concluded with the Soviets up two games to one with one game tied heading back to the USSR for the remaining four games.

Here’s the clip here:

Announcement: Former CBC News Anchor Costa Maragos Joins Prairie Dog

HAIL TO THE CHIEF Prairie Dog enters the Maragos era.

Prairie Dog is pleased as spiked punch to announce today the hiring of former television news anchor Costa Maragos. Maragos, who retired last week after 31-year CBC career, will assume the newly created post of Executive Chief Editor In Charge.

As the paper’s first-ever ECEIC, Maragos will have final say on all of Prairie Dog’s news, arts and lifestyle content.

“I’m stoked,” said Maragos, reached at his palatial Regina home built of priceless ancient marble harvested from the Acropolis (and paid for with countless taxpayer dollars harvested from his gold-plated CBC gig).

The veteran of the jacket-and-necktie world of nightly broadcast news is looking forward to Prairie Dog’s more casual work environment, which includes a mandatory jeans ‘n’ T-shirt dress code and daily 2:00 p.m. happy hour. “I’m out of my suit and now feel liberated,”  said Maragos, adding, “I’m free, free free.”

More importantly, Maragos is free from the suffocating mask of so-called impartiality he’s been forced to wear these many long years.

“I’ve worked on the inside and kept quiet for too long,” said Maragos. “It’s time for the true voices of this community to stand up and take on the mainstream media of Regina. I aim to give people that voice. The further outside the box the better.”

While the decision to join Prairie Dog will annihilate his reputation as an unbiased journalist (and respectable citizen), Maragos is excited about taking the helm of a paper many Reginans have affectionately called “a [bleeping] rag”.

“I see bigger things for Prairie Dog,” said Maragos, pouring himself a generous tumbler of 25-year-old Laphroaig. “I want to take this thing national. Coast to coast to coast,  articulating the unique Prairie voice that Canada wants and needs.”

You think I’m kidding? Just watch me,” he added.