Hey there fine folks of Wiarton, cold enough for ya?  Sorry, redundant question, it is February in Wiarton after all.  That’s it isn’t it?  It’s cold, and the best way to lift your spirits is with, well, with spirits.  “Let’s turn it into a festival!  Then we could get grant money, write some stuff off and get more spirits!”  Hats off to the crew that came up with that idea, it’s brilliant, there is just one problem … we don’t really need Willie himself anymore.

Willie has been a great help over the past however many years, but in this day and age of information technology and never ending consumer consumption, we really don’t need the albino rodent’s prognostication (“Six more weeks of winter, or early spring.”)

To find out what the weather is really going to be like all I have to do is visit any neighborhood Canadian Tire or Home Depot.  Sure it may be February but the selection of snow-blowers is almost gone.  Hey, but check out that shinny new lawn tractor.  Wow!  Just what I need … in February.

Willie, whatever it was you said it would be this year, staying winter-like until the 16th of March, or spring arriving – as usual – on the 20^th – 21^st, its information we can pick up at any area Walmart.  Hey, that’s it!  How about a “Wiarton Walmart” festival?  Do they have one up there?

Hasbro is launching a nation wide vote to find our nation’s 22 favourite cities that will be included on the new MONOPOLY Canada game board!

Beginning January 11, 2010 at midnight ET, MONOPOLY fans can visit www.monopolyvote.ca to cast votes for their favourite Canadian cities to help create a new MONOPOLY Canada game board. 65 great Canadian cities have been pre-selected for the top 20 city vote and Canadians are invited to cast their ballots for 3 of these great cities each day of the vote, which will be open until February 7, 2010. The city that receives the most votes will be placed on the highest rent property traditionally held by Boardwalk.

The 20 cities that receive the most votes will be part of MONOPOLY history as the first cities selected to be on the Canadian game board through a consumer vote. However, two spaces on the board will be reserved for cities that are nominated through a wild card vote, which means any city in Canada can be nominated for these property spaces. Once the top 20 city vote is complete, the top 10 nominated wild card cities will also be put to a vote and the wild card winners will occupy the low-rent property spaces traditionally held by Mediterranean Avenue and Baltic Avenue.

The wild card vote will take place from February 8, 2010 until February 21, 2010.

The long cold winter … is over!  After a few weeks of rest the PGA Tour season kicks off Thursday in Hawaii.  This year, it’s a cold start to the new campaign.  The inaugural 2010 event is for 2009 winners only.  However, the biggest names won’t be there.  Phil Michelson is not showing up, and many of the sports superstars didn’t win last year.  Of course the games biggest draw is still recovering from a bad drive.

Canada’s Mike Weir didn’t qualify for the SBS Championship on the Plantation Course at Kapalua.  But he could have.  Weir finished 2^nd to Dustin Johnson at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, where the final round was cancelled due to weather, eliminating his shot at a spot in the season opening event.  The good news is this years US Open is at Pebble, go Mike go.

Canada’s Stephen Ames won the final regular event of the 2009 season, the Children’s Miracle Network Classic, and will carry Canada’s hopes in Hawaii.

Let’s face it, all anyone is really talking about in golf circles is you know who.  In the past decade he elevated the sports popularity – as both a game to play, and a game to watch – to levels never believed possible twenty years ago.  The Athlete of the Decade will come back and chances are that the roars will be stronger than ever.

Will Eddie seek another term?

The on-line rumor-mill is working overtime on Tiger Woods.  His car crash on the weekend has brought speculation that an affair with a 34-year-old nightclub promoter Rachel Uchitel may have some merit.  It has also sparked a flood of double-entendre jokes:

Tiger Woods is so rich that he owns lots of expensive cars. Now he has a hole in one.

What’s the difference between a car and a golf ball? Tiger can drive a ball 400 yards.

Tiger Woods wasn’t seriously injured in the crash, but he’s still below par.

What were Tiger Woods and his wife doing out at 2.30 in the morning? They went clubbing

Tiger Woods crashed into a fire hydrant and a tree. He couldn’t decide between a wood and an iron.

As for Rachel Uchitel, she first hit the headlines during the 9/11 attacks.  She was photographed in a distraught state searching for her fiancé, who had been working in the south tower of the World Trade Centre when it was hit by a plane.

She has been linked to many married celebrities, but says she will never kiss-and-tell.  Step-aside John and Kate …

I got a call from an old golfing buddy, I’ll call him Robert (real name Bob), saying that he scored his first ever hole-in-one.  I was very happy for him, and a little bit jealous.  That is, until I heard the details.  (If you’ve ever talked to a “golfer” before, then you know there will always be details to follow.)  In Bob’s – ah, Robert’s – case, his hole-in-one came on an executive par 3 course.  An executive par 3 course, for you none golfers, is like the value menu at Burger King; can’t handle the Whopper, then just get the Jr.  The average par 3 hole on a regular golf course is anywhere from 150 to 200 yards.  On an executive course the holes are much shorter.  His “ace” (golf lingo for hole-in-one) came on a 73 yard hole.  In my books, this doesn’t count.  Sure it was one swing of the club, but it wasn’t even a full swing, more of a chip-shot.  I believe, for a hole-in-one to “count”, it has to be on a hole of at least 150 yards.  (For women, 125 yards.  That is not sexist, just look at any golf course score card and it will be explained.)  If you’re wondering why this even matters, then you are not a golfer.  You see, to a golfer, an “ace” is a highly sought after, long anticipated, seldom realized, life altering occurrence.  When you have a hole-in-one, you have it for life.  I’ve been playing for 30 years and have only come close once; half an inch.  Owning a hole-in-one provides you with exclusive membership into an elusive club.  That is, the right to say, you have one.  I don’t think he has that right.  But I’ll still let him buy me a beer.  What do you think?

Adopted kids are black.  Straight up, that’s what children think.  I feel at liberty to say this because my wife and I are currently in the adoption process, a domestic adoption, and our young son has been telling his friends about it.  (All of his friends are between the ages of 4 and 8.)  He told a 7 year old buddy of his that he was going to be a big brother “I’m getting a brother, but he isn’t ‘borned’ to us.”  The friend’s first response was “Is he black?”  This same question followed from some of his other pals but in slightly varying terms “Does he have dark skin?”  When my son finally had the chance to tell his “best” friend about the new family dynamic, the statement came out like this; “I’m going to be a big brother.  We are adopting a kid.  And don’t ask me if he has dark skin because he doesn’t.”  Where would this prevailing theme come from?  My guess is; TV.  There are a number of organizations that advertise for assistance, or sponsorship of a third-world child during kids cartoon shows.  I understand that the intended message is probably something to the effect of “children are starving in Africa.”, but what is being perceived by the young minds, that don’t know what Africa is, is that children in need of a good home are of colour.  In the mosaic culture that we live in that is a very disturbing, not to mention inaccurate and irresponsible depiction of our society.  Fortunately, my wife and I have the opportunity to explain to our son’s friends, that a person’s home life is not determined by the colour of their skin.  It is great that there are organizations I hope the organizations producing the advertisements have taken this consequence into consideration.

Trying to keep up with all this techno stuff, it isn’t easy.  For back to school kids want notebooks (portable computers) and iphones (portable telephone, level, fake beer drinking thing …). What ever happened to the lunch box?  If keeping up with technology’s progress seems a little daunting, don’t worry, you’ll cope.  I came to this realization when my 89 year old Grandmother came to stay with us for a week.  Until a couple of years ago she was living in downtown Toronto, driving wherever she needed to go, completely fending for herself.  On the surface that may not sound impressive, but think about it for a minute.  When she was born her brother had to “run” down the street to get the doctor to come to the house.  There were no ambulances or easily accessible hospitals, no phones to call someone.  My Grandmother and her 5 siblings were born IN the family home in Toronto.  What amazed me, was witnessing her adaptation to today’s technology on a recent shopping trip.  Granny had no trouble maneuvering her way through the ATM prompts.  Cell phones don’t faze her; she can even work a remote control.  Bank machines, telephones, TV’s none of those were part of her world growing up.  Neither were cars.  Well, she used the streetcars, but that was it.  Yet here she is today, coping with it all, using it all.  So if you’re feeling overwhelmed by your kids “stuff”, don’t worry; history shows us you’ll find a way to adapt.  I just wish there was an APP for that.

I couldn’t believe my ears, “go back on strike”!  Those were the words shouted from a car window on Dougall Ave. this afternoon from a frustrated motorist being slightly detained from an obviously much needed road-rage therapy session.  You see, city work crews were cleaning up the boulevard on Dougall, close to EC Row, and in doing so blocked a lane of traffic with their work truck.  The result was a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam from the expressway all the way up to, almost, Eugenie.  (You know, that area around Teppermans where Dougall becomes Ouellette, on the curve by the least busy Tim’s in the city.)  Granted, the traffic was a piss-off.  But yelling at the workers – and there were plenty of them – how is that going to improve your time of arrival?  The real problem was for the EMS driver – lights and sirens going full tilt – who had to drive into oncoming traffic to get though the backlog.  Now that’s just asking for trouble.  Never the less it eventually all worked out and people got to where they were going.  But back to the angry motorist for a second, I do have to side with him to some extent.  If I’m held up in traffic like that, when I get to the “incident scene” I don’t want to see people cutting grass!!  I want mangled metal (everyone safe of course);  not a girl with a Stihl whacking weeds.  But maybe that’s just me.

I came up with a brilliant idea a couple of weeks ago, make my own mulch.  My wife wanted some mulch for around the bottom of our trees and so bright-eyes here figured “don’t pay 100 bucks for something that is so easy to do.”  I trimmed some branches – 5 bucks gas & oil for the chain saw – rented a chipper – 60 bucks for the day – but got an extra day because of the long weekend.  I’m sure you can see where this is going.  With taxes and fuel – gas for the chipper, beer for me – the total came in at about 95 dollars.  But what isn’t accounted for are the seemingly endless hours standing in front of a mind numbingly loud and  dangerous piece of equipment, for no pay.   If you have never used a wood chipper just imagine fighting with hockey sticks.  Somewhere in the middle of this ordeal it occurred to me that sometimes do-it-yourself projects (in an effort to save money) often do not.  Now I’m going to go change the oil in my car.

Is this not the most dangerous place to drive?  No rules of the road seem to apply here.  What do you think?

Although the news of the week encompasses a number of different stories, there is an overriding (or underlying) theme. “Living life in Limbo.” Will the strike end? Will the TV station stay open? Will Chrysler workers stay on the line? Those are all different situations but in every case the bottom line is peoples ability to earn money and provide for their families. I don’t recall my parents or grandparents ever having to deal with such uncertainty. Job security was never an issue, they just went to work and took summer holidays.

Well, that’s how it seemed to me. After all, we are talking about a couple of generations that had to deal with the depression, recessions, and war, yet still reminisce about “the good old days.” I don’t get it. Maybe that old line “time heals all wounds” really is true. I can’t wait to find out, cause’ the stress is killing me.

Two of the most defining figures of “Generation X” suddenly gone.

The “King of Pop”, and the “Queen of Pin-up”, Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett both past away Thursday in Los Angeles, Jackson at the age of 50, Farrah was 62.

Love him or hate him there is no denying Jackson’s impact on music and pop culture. The best selling album of all time – Thriller – and the creation of an insatiable fan apatite for anything and everything Michael. Every moonwalk step, and mis-step, was monitored and publicized. He may have been the first “star” to have been so completely hounded by mass media. A practice that is now commonplace with the “whoever, flavour of the month.” (I think today it’s the John and Kate people). But “Wako-Jacko” was a lot more than a couple of hits songs and a unique personality. His music was at times genius.

Farrah was the perfect mix of sweet and sexy. Her poster image – in a one-piece bathing suit – is forever burned into the memory of countless men and women. A smolderingly sexy photo, yet revealing only in it’s depiction of her innocence.

Michael and Farrah were truly Icons to a generation, and their passing, both sad and tragic.

What would it be like to sleep with (you know what that really means) a professional women’s tennis player?  I think you would need ear-pugs.  Have you caught any of the action from the ever so stately proper British grass courts of Wimbledon?  You can hardly hear the announcers over all the grunting, groaning and screaming coming from the players, primarily the female players.  And then when they actually take to the court, it’s even worse.  I know hitting a tennis ball with a racquet is hard work … but do they really need to wail like they’re being tortured? 

Playing tennis is beginning to sound a lot like question period in Ottawa;  juvenile and disrespectful.  Oh what the Queen must think.