The Daily Number

350 billion.

That's the number of American Dollars spent in the past 4 years on the highly successful Iraq War.

100 billion.

That's the number of American Dollars more that the greatest President who ever lived wants to continue the Iraq War.

Sam's New Program

The Mayor has just announced a startling and exciting new initiative.

In his continuing bid for a "civil city" that will play well before the millions of Olympic visitors, Sam has revealed his new HRP - Homey Run Program.

How it works is this. The homeless will be trained to operate rickshaws. That way they will stay healthy and earn minimum wages and be able to afford rent on apartments. The rickshaws will be imported from India and Thailand. Councillor Peter Ladner is considering adding an RL - Rickshaw Lane to the Burrard Street and Granville Bridges.

HamNation: Better Living Through Activism

This is completely silly and completely anti-sanity and completely right wing in-total-denial madness...but it's still funny.

School Daze

The current flap over schools for foreigners is a)long overdue, and b)the tip of a much concealed iceberg.

Downtown Vancouver is replete with young Koreans who are bringing much to our local economy. They rent apartments, pay exorbitantly for English language studies, buy food and beer, CD's, DVD's, clothes and coffee.

The only problem is the schools that are claiming to teach these kids English are doing a terrible job.

Language is spoken.

Say, it again. Language is spoken.

You can write declensions until you're purple, but if you can't say "Buon Giorno," you're toast.

The main library downtown is filled with foreign students pouring over their workbooks and electronic translators. None of them talk to Canadians. None of them speak English. None of them make local friends. They huddle together in floating ghettos, smoking cigarettes and speaking Korean. All of which is understandable and their right.

But don't these schools have an obligation to get these kids connected to the English-speaking community? Doesn't the government have an obligation to assure that schools actually teach what they claim to?

Big Smoke

Provincial Minister of Tourism, Sport and Arts, Stan Hagen, is blowing smoke up yer ass, again.

He's released a little self-serving fiction about how TV production is way, way up here in B.C., and The Local Rag has soaked it all up. Numbers, stats, flag waving, trumpets.

The only problem is this alleged piece of news is as believable as an episode of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer.

Every actor I know - and that includes actors who have been used to working regularly and buying homes and cars - has been crying the unemployment blues for about a year now. The pickings are slim and the pay is cheap.

Maybe Mr. Minister should try a few months of waiting on tables.

Michael Penn - Try

O.K. Here's another Michael Penn video, this one directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the director of "Magnolia" and "Boogie Nights."

The video also features Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Michael Penn - Walter Reed

New to me is Michael Penn. But isn't he darn good?

read before using

The biggest industries in the world are:

- armaments

- pharmaceuticals

- illegal drugs

- oil

These enterprises share at least two qualities: They are vigorously aggressive and almost psychotically secretive.

The biggest selling pharma pill in the world is Pfizer's Lipitor. It is a statin drug used to lower bad cholesterol levels for heart patients or anyone else who feels this is necessary or a good idea. Most cardiologists, for example, self-prescribe a statin, usually lipitor.

Aggression?

A tiny news release out of Dallas today advises that the American Heart Association has changed its take on how and what children should take to help with their cholesterol levels.

This is the most spurious and questionable reporting and science. Did Pfizer support this study?

A major study also just released from Norway looked at two large groups of heart patients. One group was put on a severe program of diet, exercise and statin drugs. The other was told to "just live your life normally." Result? The exact same number of people in each group died of heart disease.

This is not to say that statins are a sham or that they should be dismissed. I take an older formulation statin drug every night before bed. Next month, we'll have a look at my blood cholesterol levels.

But, to encourage more children to take more drugs on one study with no real details explained is downright evil.

Don't believe everything you read, and read the labels on everything you think you believe.

Black, Black, Black

The Trial of Conrad Black is the most fun in town, the town in this case being Chicago. If you're not following this melodrama, you're not really up and breathing. It's got everything: more money than you can shake a Todd Bertuzzi stick at, power, greed, theft, betrayal, sex, bad words, local color, and the best ingedient of all - the chance to lay a good wager. Will he or will he not do jail time? Is Radler taking the fall, allowing the Good Lord to walk?

Last night, at the Third City Salon, sponsored by Bob Ranfsord, Virginia Richards and me, the 15 or so guests could hardly get into their soups and salads or focus on the subject at hand (Global Warming - Do You care?) for all the chattering excitement about "the trial."

O.J., the Trial of the Century? Ha!

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Snow ((Hey Oh))

soft rock rules...

Nixon Re-Dux

Executive privilege is a dangerous piece of law in American life.

President Bush, sounding more and more like a batty Richard Nixon, is now calling on this cancerous legislation in his refusal to let the man who created him, Karl Rove, testify in a messy political story.

"We will not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honourable public servants."

Leave us not forget what Shakespeare's Marc Antony had to offer about "honourable men."

The Justice department fired eight U.S. Attorneys last December. Numerous documents, including e-mails, suggest that Mr. Rove, Bush's puppet-master, and Attorney-general Alberto Gonzales were both at the head of these firings and that the entire order was completely political. Friends and enemies stuff, as usual.

How can Congress hold a President accountable? How can parliament hold a Prime Minister accountable? These are not cavalier questions. They go to the heart of our democracies.

David Iglesias was one of the eight fired U.S. Attorneys. Read his comments in today's New York Times and then tell us again what a great president is Mr. Bush.

The Federal Budget

Huh?

MOVIE TIMES TWO

It's not often that we get to see two movies released in the same year, telling the same story, with the same real-life characters, and two entirely different casts of actors and producers.

Such was the case over the past 18 months with Capote and Infamous.

Both are excellent films telling and re-telling the tale of American writer Truman Capote's obsession with the murder of the Clutter family in rural Kansas. Capote was already the toast of New York literary society for, among other things, "Breakfast at Tiffany's," when he found himself drawn to Holcomb to research the effect a gruesome murder might have on a small American town.

The result was "In Cold Blood."

That book was itself made into an extraordinary film in 1967, in which the part of Perry Smith, one of the 2 killers, was played to chilling and powerful and strangely sympathetic effect by Robert Blake, a movie actor for almost 70 years, who was himself recently charged (and acquitted) with murder.

"Capote" was nominated for 5 Academy Awards; "Infamous" for none. Philip Seymour Hoffman won the Oscar for the title role, predictably and deservedly so. Toby Jones, an actor who looks curiously almost identical to Mr. Capote, and who was first-rate as a supporting player in "The Painted Veil, is also quite wonderful in "Infamous."

But, whether it is the direction or the whole tone of this second movie or that Mr. Jones, as good as he is, simply does not have the chops that Mr. Hoffman so obviously does, his portrayal doesn't have the weight that the Oscar-winner does.

In Capote, Catherine Keener plays Harper Lee, Capote's good friend and the author of the iconic "To Kill a Mockingbird," and she's terrific. But so is Sandra Bullock playing the exact same role in "Infamous." With no make-up and subdued speech and movements, Bullock gives one of her very best, and entirely unheralded, performances.

Then, you can compare and reach your own conclusions about Chris Cooper vs. Jeff Daniels as Alvin Dewey, the local cop. I think Jeff Daniel's is a superior actor with a much broader range than Mr. Cooper, and I'm often amazed at what he brings to the party. Remember that this is the guy who stood toe-to-toe with Jim Carrey in "Dumb & Dumber."

John Forsythe, who achieved household fame for "Charlie's Angels," may have been the best Alvin Dewey in "In Cold Blood," 40 years ago.

The most astonishing casting, however, is James Bond - Daniel Craig - as Perry Smith. This performance alone is worth the rental fee. You'll be surprised.

Most of you have seen "Capote." Take a night off and rent "Infamous," for the curious but rewarding experience of "deja...what-a-minute!"

Being jewish Yair Nitzani

This is wonderfully politically incorrect...and hysterically funny!

Life is a Cabaret!

Long before Liza became a cartoon of herself, she was a gifted performer.

Here she is from the movie with the equally brilliant Michael York and Joel Grey.

THE SMALL PICTURE

Listen to wallet-weary Canadians kvetching about the price of gas.

It's a riot of self-serving blindness and ignorance. Canadians think that the oil companies are "gouging," and that the government should intervene. We always want the government to stay out of our affairs until we feel diminished in some way, and then we insist "they" come to our rescue.

Shell and Exxon have been amongst the worst offenders world wide for a great many years in terms of their corporate citizenship. All over Africa, for example, billions of barrels of crude oil are shipped and piped and billions of dollars are being made, while the local people, far from benefiting from the good fortunes in their own backyards and on their own shores, are placed in ever more desperate and deplorable human conditions.

When it comes to oil, the words exploration and exploitation are almost interchangeable.

Now, you Canuckleheads expect the captains of oil to be concerned with the price at 41st and Arbutus? Give your SUV a shake. Stab yourself with a fork. Try checking into Reality for a change.

Who You Callin' Drunk & Dishorderly?

4-3-2

These are the various a.m. closing hours that Vancouver City Council, in its customary clarity of purpose, has allowed for Granville Street bars. Now, to its astonishment, there are unruly drunks falling out of every little over-serving, irresponsible hole in town.

What is truly amusing now is to hear the bar owners themselves bleating that"something must be done." Aren't these the good folks who have been lobbying so consistently to have their swill palaces open as late as possible? Any good drunk knows the beauty of a morning pick-me-up before heading back to the rigors of working for a living.

"I hate mob violence. Hell, I'll kill to prevent mob violence!'

Here's that rainy day--http://brunello.interfree.it/

fabulous Jimmy Van Huesen tune....

The Master Planner?

Is George Bush an undiscovered genius?

Or is he even more of a bumbling, Clouseauvian oaf than we ever imagined?

Iran, the sworn enemy of America, is now THE main supplier of everything from shoe polish to refrigerators to bank buildings in Iraq. So says today's New York Times.

Please read that article and explain to me if this is part of Mr. Bush's secret machinations, or, yet another unintended result of a program based on total ignorance.

Either way, not is all what it seems...

Blockhead Quebec

Just when you thought it was safe to live in Canada...

Andre Boisclair is the leader of the Parti Quebecois and he is facing an election.

He is also a racist fool, unrepentant, and undeserving of holding office in Canada or any other civilized nation.

Here is what he said the other day, talking about his one year of study at Harvard University, where apparently he learned very little:

"When I was in Boston I was surprised to see that on campus about one-third of the students doing their bachelor's degrees had slanting eyes."

Nice.

When I was a kid, growing up in Winnipeg, orientals were pejoratively called "slants." If you were an ignoramus and you felt you had gained the upper hand in a bargaining, you said, "I Jewed him down."

Very few of us outside La Belle Province have had much sympathy for the Parti Quebecois over the years. Now, Monsieur Boisclair has done us all a favor and confirmed our worst suspicions.

Drop this guy, toute suite.