Now, back to the “real news”: Sean Spicer quits as Trump’s WH press secretary 


So, it was interesting seeing all this hand-wringing in the press about the O.J. Simpson parole hearing coverage yesterday. People were declaring it “fake news” and were positively alarmed that it was upstaging the “more important” news going on — in particular, all this daily nonsense surrounding President Donald Trump and the White House, most of which makes O.J. look like “serious” news in comparison.

What these folks failed to realize is O.J. was always going to be a one-day story. You have all the other 364 days of the year to focus on Trump, today being one of them.

And what happened today is that long-embattled White House press secretary Sean Spicer resigned, after new Director of Communications Anthony Scaramucci was hired. The story here from “failing” “fake news” CNN.

Deja vu: O.J. Simpson goes free, again!

Yes, I tuned into this whole “parole hearing of the century” coverage earlier today in which a panel in Carson City unanimously granted O.J. Simpson his parole from Lovelock, Nevada prison.

It is almost like this was the “last stand for the media” in covering this Simpson story today, they really did go hog wild on this, with live coverage everywhere. They even had a guy from the AP briefing reporters outside the jail on what happened! The media will surely also go hog wild covering his release this October, as well. 

Anyway, the next stop for O.J. after he leaves Lovelock is Florida, where he will no doubt field multiple offers from TV news organizations for exclusive interviews. Why do I get this feeling that O.J. will end up doing his first interview with Megyn Kelly?

The news tonight is that John McCain has a brain tumor


The big news broke earlier tonight that Sen. John McCain has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. He had surgery earlier this week for what was said to be a blood clot discovered during a routine checkup, but it sounds like they also found cancer with it. It appears the cancer was taken out and McCain is out of immediate danger, but this is an aggressive cancer with a low survival rate. It sounds grim. 

Also, the political implications of this are huge — the GOP cannot afford to lose John McCain in the Senate. Not that anyone down there in D.C. really cares about that at the moment, they are all praying for his health. Anyway, this is not good news; I just thought I would pass it along.

O.J. Simpson set for “Parole Hearing of the Century” on Thursday


The big hearing on whether to grant parole to O.J. Simpson for his armed robbery antics gets under way tomorrow in Carson City, Nevada. 

Already, the media hype for this is through the roof, and this is going to be televised on multiple networks and news channels, including on ESPN. People are calling it the “Parole Hearing of the Century.” 

Except, this has to do with his armed robbery-kidnapping convictions in Nevada. This has nothing to do with the murder case in California that captured the public’s attention and for which Simpson was infamously acquitted. No, this is about the boring sequel that was set in Las Vegas, albeit one with a better ending,

Count me as one of the cynical people who thinks the parole board will set O.J. free come October; he’ll be in jail nine years by then, which is a long time for this sort of crime. Others like Gregg Jarrett think the parole board ought to let O.J. rot in prison. And maybe he should, because there is no guarantee that “the Juice” will stay out of trouble. Heck, look what transpired when that jury in southern California allowed him to go free.

But the thing is: these killings in California that Simpson was accused of have no bearing on this parole decision. And the jails in Nevada are overcrowded anyway, so I think Kato Kaelin is right: the Juice will probably be set loose. So brace yourselves for the worst, all you O.J. haters out there.

Controversy over Trump Jr., health bill fiasco, and wildfires dominate News from Nowhere


Welcome again to News from Nowhere. The big fiery controversy over the last week has been Donald Trump Jr.’s infamous meeting with the Russians.

Honestly, I have not been paying too much attention. It still looks like a big fishing expedition by President Donald Trump’s opponents about collusion with Russia over the election. Moreover, I was preoccupied with covering Canadian politics last week. 

I covered the New Democrats leadership debate and interviewed candidates Niki Ashton and Guy Caron, both of whom campaigned in my area, and had no time for any of this usual Trump nonsense we have come to expect on an almost minute-by-minute basis out of the USA.


Now, I understand the repeal of Obamacare is on hold again, after Sen. John McCain fell ill and after a couple more senators pulled their support. Anyway, this is more misery for a miserable White House.

Other news: Venezuela is a mess. The opposition held this big plebiscite against the Maduro regime in that crumbling country, opposing the government plans to scrap the Assembly and rewrite the Constitution. Now the Trump administration is threatening sanctions. What a state of affairs there.

Here is an update on the BC wildfires that are still burning and blanketing western Canada with no end of smoke. 

In other news from the “Left Coast”, their new NDP government has been sworn in.

Also, here is the latest on that near-miss by that Air Canada flight at San Francisco last week.

In sports news, Friday marked the last of those four Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor “world tour” events in London, promoting their upcoming boxing match. The prevailing impression I got was that people were finally tired of them.

In TV news, Game of Thrones is back and has shattered HBO’s ratings records.

In other TV news, CNN’s Alisyn Camerota has quit Twitter. 

Finally for now, here are the Emmy nominations.

That’s all for the moment.

Movies: Apes reign supreme, Martin Landau dies, and Charlize Theron sexes it up in Atomic Blonde

I have a lot of movie news I want to get to today: 

First, it was a big weekend for cinematic chimpanzees as War for the Planet of the Apes won the domestic weekend box office at $56 million, beating Spider-Man: Homecoming which fell all the way to $45 million. I guess “franchise fatigue” didn’t show up last week for this latest re-booted Spider-Man movie, but it sure did this weekend with a 61 percent drop. Also, while it was a decent showing for the Apes, it was still lower than the $72 mil opening for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

In another astute observation that any chimpanzee can figure out, CNBC reports superheroes are single-handedly saving the box office. (Note: it appears Wonder Woman may win the entire summer box office race now.)

Personally, I don’t think I am all that enthusiastic about the Apes. What I like are the spy movies, and I’m definitely interested in this Atomic Blonde movie starring Charlize Theron, who is being billed in the trailers as the “female James Bond”. (I thought Blake Lively was supposed to be the next “female James Bond“; whatever.)

This Atomic Blonde movie is going to be hot stuff, apparently. Charlize has a big sex scene in the movie in which she makes out with another woman, and Charlize was quoted as saying “I just loved it.”

Well, well, well. Atomic Blonde rolls out July 28th.

In other actress news, I read this piece in TMZ about the movie Quentin Tarantino wants to do about the Manson murders, in which the sister of Sharon Tate said she prefers to see Margot Robbie cast in that role instead of Jennifer Lawrence, saying Lawrence isn’t “pretty” enough. 

Well, that statement got the usual uptight people upset, yet again, but the cold hard truth is she’s right! The hard reality is that anyone playing Sharon Tate is going to have a tough act to follow in any event because, let’s face it, the real live Sharon was absolutely, incredibly gorgeous. She really was/is a timeless beauty — and taken way too soon.

Anyway, I think Margot Robbie is about as good as you’re going to get to play Sharon Tate, because she is gorgeous. That’s my vote, and too bad Jennifer Lawrence.

Finally, I don’t know about you but I was quite despondent to hear the news that Martin Landau had died this weekend.

Of course, he had appeared on Mission: Impossible and Space: 1999, but he also saw his career revive years later when he appeared in movies like Ed Wood, playing the legendary Bela Lugosi. That’s probably my favorite Landau role of them all. Later, he was in Entourage playing producer Bob Ryan.

That’s all for the moment.

WSOP Main Event playing down to the final table tonight


This is it! The $10,000 World Series of Poker Main Event is playing down tonight to a final table, we presume, at the Rio in Las Vegas. It is down to 18 players as I speak; the last nine survivors will then reconvene for the final table which happens, uh, later this week on Thursday and Friday, and not in November as was the case previously. Updates here.

As an aside, it has been totally frustrating trying to follow this freaking WSOP all freaking summer! First of all, instead of the WSOP providing free livestreams on their site for the fans as they did in the past, they consigned it to PokerGo which expects people to pay $10/month for their feed. No way am I paying for that waste of money, I’ll watch the non-WSOP poker feeds on Twitch instead! Second of all, I am mad at TSN because instead of showing the two hours of ESPN’s WSOP coverage that was scheduled for Saturday, they instead showed the same Wimbledon tennis match on four of their five channels. Canadian poker fans who had waited all year to watch the World Series of Poker Main Event on TV ended up with a grand total of 18 minutes of WSOP action on Saturday on TSN! 

So, once again, I’m furious at Canadian sports-television programming decisions, and mad at Canada for having to live here and put up with second-rate TV options, etc., etc. Even the Mexicans have it better than us, folks! There, that is my rant about that, now back to watching the WSOP coverage on TSN. At least they’re showing some of tonight’s coverage!

Update (Tuesday): the final table is now set!

Evacuation order has just been issued for Williams Lake, BC 


The news here. 

Mayweather and McGregor keep it classy in Brooklyn. Not!! 


I had nothing better to do this evening (All-Star Break still on, etc.) so I tuned in the latest Floyd “Money” Mayweather- Conor McGregor world tour/circus act from Brooklyn. 

Folks, what a gong show. First, I guess everyone showed up late. Then, Conor was using all this foul language (ie. “s@ck my d!ck”, etc.) and then was hurling racial insults by saying he was “half black from the belly button down”, and gyrating up there on stage. Really, he was awful. Meanwhile Floyd was going around saying Conor was a “b!tch” and a “quitter”, and he showered Conor with dollar bills.

As for the fans in Brooklyn, it was yet another boo-fest, but this time they focused their booing mainly on these guys in the suits who went up there and were giving their boring statements about the fight. What a waste of time that was. Instead, everyone wanted to hear the trash-talking from Conor and Floyd, which turned out to be not worth waiting for, anyway. 

The commentators were of course hyping this up and saying how interest in this fight was “insane”, but I’m beginning to wonder if it is us, the fight fans, who are the insane ones for following this and supporting this absolute nonsense. Boxing used to be a dignified sport, to some extent anyway, but this display in New York was so beneath even the WWE’s low standards that I almost feel like apologizing to the WWE. 

The bad news is that these two fools have one more of these to go, in London. Or maybe this is good news to you, because this is surely entertaining, all right. In a bad sort of way.

A dull day in sports is livened by today’s Mayweather-McGregor hypefest

Folks, it is the baseball All-Star Break, traditionally one of the deadest weeks in the world of sports. So unless you are a Wimbledon tennis fan, the biggest news today was the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Conor McGregor world tour press conference in Toronto for their upcoming boxing match, a bizarre affair in which Conor carried Floyd’s bags while Floyd carried around an Irish flag.

From what little I tuned into, it sounds like the fans there were mainly cheering McGregor and booing Mayweather. Anyway, the sooner all this fight hype ends and the fight itself begins, the better.

BC is being ravaged by wildfires: 14,000 evacuated

The big story on the west coast, and frankly throughout much of Canada, is the rapidly escalating forest fire situation across British Columbia. The number of fires has escalated and more places are seeing evacuation orders, including 100 Mile House. Williams Lake is particularly a hard-hit area. In total, 14,000 residents have been forced to flee, with reports of 220 fires. I understand the western U.S. States are also getting hit hard by fires at the moment.

Of course, my family is in Kelowna, BC, and while they aren’t living in the impacted areas of these particular blazes, nevertheless there was a big fire that levelled a condo build there on the weekend. Yikes!

Here are some of the Tweets that I re-Tweeted about the situation over the last few days:

All in all, this is not a good situation. What is worse is that I’m meant to be in BC next month for what is supposed to be a vacation. 

Hopefully, that is still what it will be: a vacation, and not yet another news story that I will be in the middle of.

Spider-Man: Homecoming. Domestic box office: $117 million bucks!


Here are the reports from Deadline: Hollywood about the winning weekend for Spider-Man: Homecoming, the latest “reboot” of the Spider-Man movie series, which opened to a massive $117 million domestic for Sony plus another $140 million internationally. 

Obviously, “franchise fatigue” is certainly not impacting Marvel in any way, shape or form this summer, based on these latest numbers.

Marilyn Monroe’s dress was in Luseland, Saskatchewan today!

The big, exciting news in Saskatchewan today was a dress. I am not kidding. In small-town Luseland today, they were showing off the iconic dress that Marilyn Monroe wore on the famous night when she sang “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy way back in 1962. 

The dress ended up being put up for auction last year, and now it belongs to Jim Pattison who owns it at a price tag of $4.8 million. Today, they had the dress on display at the Luseland community hall for free for the local folks to see there.

Given some of the media coverage you would have thought it was Marilyn herself who was in Luseland today. Personally, I would have been far more excited if it was her there, actually, since I’m a Marilyn fan of long standing. I would have been waiting in line for hours for an autograph. Alas, it’s simply not to be.

Interesting stuff.

My movie column, about how tired everyone is of all the sequels this summer, is now up!

Read it here.

Heat wave in so. Cal.! 120 degrees coming to Coachella Valley!

It’s summer, and as someone used to being frozen stiff during the extreme pit of winter, I am amused at all the stories of boiling hot weather in these places in the southwest USA that normally are pleasant the whole rest of the year. 

According to this report the heat wave hitting Southern California is going to ramp up by Friday and likely break records. Temps are to hit 120 in the Coachella Valley! 

You know, right now where I am, a lot of people consider our weather here to be “hot”. They ain’t seen nothing yet.

July 4th ruined by North Korea test-launching of an ICBM

Happy 4th of July, all of you Americans. So, do you still think President Donald Trump is nuts? Clearly, it looks to me like he is simply trying to keep up with the world’s other leaders in that department. 

Leaders like the guy currently in charge of North Korea, whose country just successfully test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching American soil. Namely, Alaska.

I am looking at all this news and feeling powerless about this whole situation. This character Kim Jong-Un is out of control.

By the way, I spent late last night watching live news coverage from South Korean all-news TV, just for fun. While I understood next to nothing of what they said, I did understand the graphic on screen that read “ICBM”. Even with the impossible language barrier, I could tell just from watching the feed that South Koreans are freaking out over this latest threat. My question is: why isn’t the rest of the world?

Fox Sports in turmoil: Jamie Horowitz fired, writers out the door etc.

It is bad times at Fox Sports. Today, they fired their head man Jamie Horowitz over apparent sexual harassment allegations. It also looks like Horowitz has hired a lawyer and is preparing for a big fight over this. This latest news is just a week after Fox Sports canned 20 of their writers as they turned their website into one that is video-only content.

This latest whacking of writers is what I care about the most, because it come on the heels of the other well-publicized bloodbaths at ESPN and elsewhere. Quite honestly, I don’t like this move by Fox Sports at all, and I don’t like what’s going on at ESPN, but my opinions as a consumer never seem to matter. I notice Clay Travis of Outkick the Coverage did a huge screed in which he analyzed whether this is the death of sportswriting as we know it. Travis basically lays the blame on the business model of getting ad clicks, saying it’s a broken business. 

So, where the heck are the fans expected to get the latest scoops, now, on what trades are happening? From thin air? I guess the teams and leagues have their own writers who can supply this information on their websites, but in my mind a lot of their content is less about sports news and more about “propaganda”. 

It seems to me there is still a big demand for “insider” information (as the recent NHL and NBA free agency coverage has proved) from these sports media outlets. Instead, we are getting “debate shows” with hosts arguing the merits of LeBron James every week. We’re seeing the likes of Skip Bayless being shoved down peoples’ throats — who, by the way, was a prime Fox hire by Horowitz, along with fellow bigmouths Colin Cowherd and Jason Whitlock. 

As far as I can tell, there is overwhelming fan sentiment against seeing any more of Bayless, or Stephen A. Smith or any of their ilk! Yet these sports media organizations somehow believe this is what will make them money! In fact, ESPN is getting totally roasted today for foisting Stephen A. on the fight fans during their boxing coverage the other night.

Something’s out of whack, all right, when fans are being prevented from getting the content they actually want! That is all.

Maria Menounos leaves E! News due to a brain tumor 


This is horrible! I found out today that Maria Menounos has a brain tumor and is leaving E! News. The story from People, here.

Well, my day off has been ruined with this news. Thanks a lot, Twitter.

Once again, it’s mostly all about that maniac Trump in News from Nowhere


Welcome to News from Nowhere on what is the Canada 150th holiday weekend here at our base of operations, and so I am trying desperately to take a break from the news for a few short days. Unfortunately, the news is not taking a break from me.

President Donald Trump made the news this week, which surely must be a big surprise to everyone. You know, this ought to have been a great week for the President. His big “travel ban” was reinstated, sort of, by the Supreme Court. Moreover, all these “Russia election collusion” allegations against him are coming up very short on evidence. The credibility of the entire media took a colossal hit after word that three CNN staffers resigned over an online story about Russia ties that was retracted.

So, yeah, it turned out to be a big “I told you so” week for the Trump administration.

But then Trump goes right ahead on Twitter and blows it by getting into a feud with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and his future wife Mika Brzezinski on Twitter again! Trump doesn’t know when to quit!

See, this is the real problem with the Trump administration: no class. And also, a lack of humility. If Trump had simply displayed a little more class and, actually, far more humility, things wouldn’t be such a gong show down there in D.C. and Trump might actually be able to get on with most of his agenda. But he simply insists on enraging people, no matter what. This is what the real problem is here, not Russia or any of that. 

Now I understand he’s sent out another Tweet this morning about CNN. Something to do with wrestling, I guess. Seriously, Trump needs to leave Twitter immediately, this is beyond embarrassing now. 

In other media news from the week, Greta Van Susteren has left MSNBC after only a few months of her new show. The word on the street – or, more precisely, from the White House – is it’s because she didn’t want to join in the Trump-bashing on her new network.

Other news from TV: Canada held its 150th anniversary celebrations this weekend and the big one in Ottawa was covered by the CBC, with Peter Mansbridge hosting for the final time in his last on-air appearance before his big retirement. 

Speaking of milestones: Pam Anderson turned 50 on July 1!

Let’s see, other news:

Oh, there was another huge cyberattack this week, with Ukraine particularly hard-hit. This is getting to be a real nuisance.

In sports news from Canada, Edmonton Oilers’ enforcer from their Cup-winning days, Dave Semenko, has died.

It was a big weekend in Canadian Football as the Saskatchewan Roughriders held their home opener at their new stadium. Unfortunately, they also found a way to lose in OT to Winnipeg, 43-40.

While that game was happening, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. found a way to win a crash-fest of a Coke Zero 400 race down in Daytona.

And in a big freaking boxing upset, Manny Pacquiao was decisioned by Jeff Horn to lose the WBO welterweight title! Unbelievable.

There was movement in the NBA this week with Paul George going from Indiana to the OKC Thunder. 

Meanwhile, Blake Griffin is staying with the Clippers.

And I notice TSN had their NHL free agent frenzy coverage, as usual.

Finally, the box office report: $75 million for Despicable Me 3 whose numbers came in below expectations, as the storyline of this summer — the lack of enthusiasm for the usual sequels and retreads — continues yet again. 

That is all I feel like posting today. Now, back to the holiday goofing off for yours truly.

Where were you 20 years ago?

I was in London, Ontario watching live coverage of the Hong Kong handover. (I even taped the live coverage but, being a fool, I accidentally erased it years later.)

All done: Christy Clark govt. is toppled and John Horgan is new Premier of BC

So, that’s it. The BC Liberal government has fallen and John Horgan and the NDP have taken over British Columbia.

I don’t think certain members of my family expected this when they moved to BC. When they left Saskatchewan they thought they were escaping the NDP.

High drama right now in BC legislature


I am currently tuning into the live coverage online of the unfolding events at the BC legislature where the BC Liberal government is about to face a confidence vote that will result in its likely defeat. After that Premier Christy Clark goes to the Lt.-Governor, and what will happen next is somewhat uncertain. The government could be handed over to the NDP, or an election could be called. We shall see.

My “Cairns on Cinema” column about Cars 3 is up!

 

Read it here.

Franchise fatigue hits Transformers: The Last Knight. Opens at $69 million.


The summer movie box office has not been kind to a lot of familiar franchises and sequels. The two big hits of this summer so far have been Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (now at $380 million domestic) and Wonder Woman ($318 million). Most of the others have ranged from mildly underperforming, to big flops in terms of gross. 

Just now, I read a report in Variety that said Transformers: The Last Knight opened in first place this weekend with a haul of $69 million. Normally, any studio ought to be pleased with a haul like that, but this is the worst domestic opening for this franchise in years, maybe even ever if this number holds up, after opening hauls around $100 million for previous efforts. 

The Variety article was blaming franchise fatigue, yet again, which doesn’t surprise me. Surely, people have got to be tired of this god-awful series by now. Others are blaming poor word of mouth due to bad Rotten Tomatoes scores, which would be the first time in human history that a bad Rotten Tomatoes score made any negative impact at all on ticket sales for any Transformers movie. 

Oh, well, it sounds like the international box office will save this particular effort and give the folks at Paramount enough reason to serve up Transformers 6. 

There’s no excuse whatsoever to not go to the Argos CFL games!


It was a sorry sight on TV this weekend at BMO Field. Today the Toronto Argonauts were playing their home opener of the Canadian Football League season against their fiercest rivals, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Except there was hardly anyone at this game! The attendance was a crummy 13,583!

Folks, the Saskatchewan Rush lacrosse team regularly does better than that. In fact, half the National Lacrosse League does better than that! That’s how far the Argos have fallen in Toronto, folks.

And once again, everyone is coming up with the excuses for why they didn’t draw better. Last year, there were weather-related excuses and the competition from Duran Duran concerts and Blue Jays games and Indycar races and what have you. 

The big excuse I am hearing about this weekend is that it was Pride Weekend in Toronto, so that was the reason why people didn’t show up. This has surely got to be the most creative excuse I’ve heard yet.

Bottom line is, if there were football fans in Toronto, they wouldn’t care about any of the multitude of other stuff that goes on in the city, they wouldn’t even care about the gridlock traffic. They would find a way to be at the effing games, dammit! And they would surely be at a game involving the Tiger-Cats! 13,583 for the home opener against your arch-rivals is sad, ladies and gentlemen. 

And I don’t want to hear about how people in Toronto would rather enjoy the good weather than go to the CFL game. You can enjoy the good weather while sitting there in the seats, drinking a beer! But clearly, not enough people took advantage of that opportunity today at BMO, because there was row after row of empty red seats, on television.

You know what’s even sadder? It looks like the Argos might be fielding a better team than the Saskatchewan Roughriders this year, in spite of the fact that it took the Argos all offseason to find a coach (Marc Trestman.) Yet even if they have a winning season, the Argos will probably be a drag on the attendance for this entire league, and create more bad publicity about how poorly the CFL is doing — all because people in Toronto don’t care and won’t show up. Last fall’s Grey Cup in Toronto was also a debacle, by the way, with tickets practically being given away, and it turned out to be one of the best games in history with Ottawa winning in OT!

Come on, Toronto people, get with it. Give the CFL and the Argos a chance — especially after this game today. There, that’s my soap-box rant for this week.

Hey, NHL, is Vegas hot enough for you yet? 117 degrees Fahrenheit today!


Wednesday in Las Vegas is the NHL Awards and the expansion draft for the new Vegas Golden Knights. I hope Gary Bettman and all these NHL players in town for the awards are enjoying sweltering in the Nevada desert as we hit the first day of summer.

I was reading this piece in the Daily Mail saying how the streets were deserted because people were hiding out from the 117 degree F heat! That other great hockey town Phoenix, Arizona hit an even worse 120 F today as well. 

This heat is so bad that planes cannot take off, and you’d fry your hands by simply opening the doors outside! As a Canadian, I simply cannot get my head around this sort of extreme temperature. (To think that I once thought Toronto was a hot place.) Anyway, I hope these new Golden Knights players enjoy getting fried to a crisp while walking the streets in Las Vegas.

Cars 3 races to $53.5 million on Father’s Day weekend!


Box office news: Cars 3 has halted Wonder Woman’s two-week reign atop the domestic box office. Lightning McQueen and the rest of the race cars finished with $53.5 million to the DC superheroine’s $40.8 million.

You’d think Disney would be pleased. Unfortunately, this is the worst opening ever for a Cars movie. The first Cars opened to a little over $60 million and then the sequel Cars 2 got $66 million! Maybe people are finally believing the many critics of this series, who have continually showed little enthusiasm for this Pixar line of animated movies compared to others from the studio. Then again, maybe people are simply bored with sequels in general. Or maybe people are bored with all things NASCAR. I dunno what the deal is. 

Anyway, it could’ve been better. That’s all for the moment.

France Election, Part II: parliamentary vote results today


Today, the second round of voting finishes in the French parliamentary election. Yes, that’s right, folks; their presidential vote wasn’t the end of it, they had to go through yet another vote for parliament, too.  

The expectation, based on how the first round turned out last week, is that Emmanuel Macron’s party En Marche! will will a massive majority in excess of 400 seats, an incredible showing for a new political party. 

It’s also looking to be a historically awful showing for the other mainline parties, in particular the once-powerful Socialists, who are being reduced to rubble. Here’s an article from Politico Europe on what to expect today if you’re not all that familiar to French politics. (Update: results are here.)

And as for those people who want to read whatever they want to read into Marine Le Pen’s parliamentary results, keep in mind that her party always does very badly in parliamentary elections. Yet another dismal result is just par for the course for her movement.

In other news from France, Porsche won Le Mans again, and I guess the surprise for me was finding out that Audi isn’t competing there anymore; instead, they’re focusing their effort on Formula E. 

Mistrial declared in Bill Cosby case

You know, in the good old days I used to wake up on Saturday mornings to TV shows like Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.

Today, I wake up to the news that Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial ended in a mistrial.

It’s on! Thoughts on Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor 


August 26 has been set as the date for boxing’s next Superfight! It is indeed Floyd Mayweather Jr. versus Conor McGregor, in Las Vegas.

But I dunno if boxing fans are all that impressed. I notice a lot of them on social media have flat-out blasted this fight. They used words such as “joke,” “farce“, “pointless”, a “circus”, and even “dogsh!t” to describe this contest. 

A lot of people think Mayweather will win easily. But no matter who wins, honestly, does it matter? 

Here’s the question I have: is there even a title on the line with this thing? Mayweather is a former champ who vacated all his belts when he retired, as far as I know. Meanwhile, McGregor is a UFC champ but not a pro boxing champ! In fact, I read this will be his first boxing match, ever. 

So, if there is no real title on the line, what’s the point? Then again, maybe some sanctioning body will invent one for these two.

Anyway, this fight is on, and the interest is insane, and it is supposed to be a $1 billion dollar fight. We shall see. 

Bad News Roundup dominated by Steve Scalise shooting, blaze in London 

Welcome to Bad News Roundup, on what is typically the worst news day of the week, Wednesday. Wow, was it ever a bad day, right from the moment you woke up. 

Let’s run down what has happened:

Bad news No. 1: House third-ranking Republican Congressman Steve Scalise among several people shot by a crazed Bernie Sanders supporter today at a practice for tomorrow’s congressional baseball game. For his part, Sanders has denounced what has happened. Scalise is in critical condition.

Bad news No. 2: A massive inferno at a London apartment highrise has killed at least a dozen people.

Bad news No. 3: A shooting at UPS facility in San Francisco kills three people.

Bad news No. 4: Legendary Canadian Football League coach Don Matthews has died of cancer. 

Bad news No. 5: Here is one of those stories that is sure to end as “bad news” regardless of what the final outcome is. I am talking, of course, about the Bill Cosby verdict watch.

Bad news No. 6: Sears.

Bad news No. 7: Finally, a story that really counts as bad news for only one individual: Donald Trump. “Mueller investigating Trump for obstruction of justice, Washington Post reports.” 

Now that I have thought of it, this probably counts as yet more bad news for the people watching at home. The gong show continues.

I think that is all the bad news that fits for tonight.

Still waiting for a verdict on Bill Cosby


Folks, I am still waiting like the rest of you for a verdict on this Bill Cosby sexual assault trial, with Cosby accused of drugging and then having sex with his victim years ago. If convicted, Cosby could spend what is left of his life behind bars.

Day two of deliberations are over; back again, tomorrow.

I haven’t really followed a lot of this trial; in fact, this trial has been very hard to follow, period, because coverage has been so restricted. Not only did the judge throw out all the television cameras, but live tweeting of the proceedings by reporters has been banned, too. They might be trying to prevent another O.J. Simpson media circus situation. If that was the goal, it worked, because it doesn’t sound like much of a circus atmosphere there in Pennsylvania at all for the Cosby trial. Instead, the media has been going hog wild today covering Jeff Sessions. Really, D.C. is where the Big Top is these days.

In any event, this trial has been really short, lasting just six days, and the defence didn’t even call up Cosby to testify in his own defence. Their whole defence lasted just six minutes!

Cosby’s main defence strategy has seemingly been to simply crossexamine witnesses and try and discredit the prosecution’s entire case. They’ve tried to paint this whole relationship between Cosby and the victim as somehow consensual. Good luck with that one. We’ll find out soon enough what happens with Cosby.

Box office: The Mummy gets lassoed by Wonder Woman


Not an enormous surprise, ladies and gentlemen: Wonder Woman dropped a bit from its opening weekend but still easily buried Tom Cruise and  The Mummy, which opened to $32 million while the DC superheroine took $57 million domestic. 

This is obviously a huge blow to Universal who was counting on launching a “dark universe” series of movies to counter all of Marvel and DC’s comic book heroes. What Universal wanted to do was resurrect all its old scary characters from out of its fault, bringing back the likes of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man. That ain’t gonna be such a great plan if The Mummy can only scare up $32 million. 

Anyhow, that is the box office report for this week. Also, my Cairns on Cinema column on Wonder Woman is now up.

Sports in Sask.: Riders open New Mosaic, while Rush lose the Cup to Georgia

Now, a post about the sports scene in Saskatchewan. Last night was one of the more significant nights of pro sports in our province in a long time. 

The Saskatchewan Roughriders were playing their very first game at the new Mosaic Stadium, and it seems the stadium is getting a lot better reviews than the team is! At the same time, the Saskatchewan Rush were playing game two of the National Lacrosse League Champions Cup finals against the Georgia Swarm. 

For those outside SK, these teams may say “Saskatchewan” but they are in two different cities. As the sign on the highway says: it’s South for the ‘Riders (Regina) and North for the Rush (Saskatoon). 

The fact that both games were going at the same time surely impacted the Rush’s attendance: they didn’t even sell out their Cup finals game. No doubt, it was because so many fans opted for their usual drive to Regina to see the ‘Riders, who dominate sports media and sports interest in Saskatchewan so totally that it is insane. 

Check out the media coverage from this past week and it’s been something like 90 percent ‘Riders, with the Rush getting the table scraps from Saskatoon media over the past couple of days. It actually gets to be kind of boring after a while — it’s all Riders all the time, basically.

Most of the media coverage has been on the quarterback battle. But with the much-touted Vince Young pulling a hamstring, that put his comeback on hold and people in Regina lost an opportunity to see him in action at the new stadium. Instead, the main battle Saturday was between Brandon Bridge and Bryan Bennett for a roster spot in a game that ultimately ended in a 25-25 tie.

Now, a big bone of contention for everyone in Saskatchewan last night was the lack of television coverage of both these games. Here was a pre-season game which was the historic first-one-ever at the new Mosaic Stadium, and yet TSN was showing French Open tennis and UFC Fight Night from New Zealand! Which is fine, but they have five channels. Couldn’t at least one of them have shown this game? There wasn’t even a live stream, either, for anyone to watch anywhere.

If you think that’s bad, what went down with the coverage of the NLL Cup finals game in Saskatoon was absolute bush league. First of all, there was no TV coverage of it at all, unlike last year when TSN showed it. There was not even local SaskTel MaxTV coverage like there was in previous games!

Okay, fine, then: there was still live streaming of the game on Twitter. Except when we all tried to tune in the game from Saskatchewan, we got geoblocked! We got stuck with a message claiming that due to “licensing restrictions” Twitter couldn’t show us the game. This made absolutely no sense, though, because Twitter had shown their past NLL games here, no problems. 

I spent the whole first half tuning in an online radio feed of the Rush game while watching the UFC fights on television, and boy was I fuming. I was thinking maybe I should tune in the UFC more often and just say to hell with the NLL. 

Finally, after half time, the NLL opened up their pay NLLTV stream to Canada free of charge, and so that was how we were finally able to see the Rush blow the game in the final seconds and then lose the Cup in OT, 15-14.

Honestly, this was terrible. Two big games of major importance to sports fans in Saskatchewan, meanwhile TSN and Sportsnet have 11 channels between them and not a single one showing either of them anywhere. No wonder these channels are referred to as “Toronto Sports Network” by people here. The Saskatchewan audience was not served at all Saturday night; our sports teams are being completely ignored. Why, again, are we paying big money on cable TV subscriptions? Why?

That’s my rant, now excuse me as I tune in the coverage of the Grand Prix race. From Montreal.

Batman is dead! Adam West was 88.

Oh, crap, another pop culture icon is dead. The original TV “Batman” Adam West has passed away after a battle with leukemia. 

Now watching hair-raising British election coverage

I notice the entire British media is already freaking out over the prospect that Prime Minister Theresa May’s early election may produce a total hung parliament now. 

James Comey testifies before the Senate

This week the American news media has been going all hog wild over fired FBI director James Comey and his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings regarding President Donald Trump. 

Personally, I have not been paying too much attention. I am tired of all things Trump and am more excited about British election coverage happening later this evening. I get the impression Comey is handing partisan ammunition to both sides with what he has been saying this week.

Moreover, I want to take some time over the next few days to figure out my summer vacation plans, since it is that time of year again. And I plan to spend the coming few days goofing off. Really, the last thing on my mind today is the news, but I will be Tweeting British election night as it happens.

Wonder Woman saves the summer box office to the tune of over $100 million!


Here is the story from Deadline Hollywood about the $100 million-plus domestic opening weekend for Wonder Woman, which is at 94 percent at Rotten Tomatoes the last time I checked. 

Trump, ISIS, Kathy Griffin, and more News from Nowhere


Welcome to another depressing News from Nowhere with the world going mad again, and as usual President Donald Trump is in the thick of it. 

Honestly, I’m getting tired of him and his insane Tweeting, and I’m also tired of all of his opponents obsessing about Trump all the time and telling us how awful he is. “We know, we know.”

After this latest terrorism attack in London, which ISIS has claimed responsibility for, Pres. Trump took the opportunity to promote his travel ban, on Twitter. That got the masses fired up, as usual.

Meanwhile, people are still mad over the other big news of this week: Trump’s pullout of the USA from the Paris Accord on climate change. So yeah, it’s been that sort of week.

It has also been the week of Kathy Griffin. She held her big press conference the other day, supposedly begging forgiveness again for that revolting Trump bloodied-head stunt that got her fired from CNN. But instead, she took the opportunity to blame Trump for it, accusing Trump of trying to ruin her life. 

Um, wait a minute: Trump kind of had nothing to do with this. This stunt was entirely Kathy Griffin’s doing. Griffin has no one to blame but herself for her own self-immolation. When I say I’m tired of Trump’s opponents, it is this sort of thing I am talking about. (Update: Jerry Seinfeld has now weighed in on Griffin and doesn’t see what the big deal is.)

In other news, this has been a big week for comedians self-immolating. Bill Maher has apologized for using the N-word on TV. 

On to the weather — it is starting to get a little too wild for my liking. There was a big tornado that touched down in central Alberta the other day near Three Hills. Yikes, that’s just one province over! We don’t need any of those here, too, we have enough problems. 

That’s about all the news I can stand. Coming up next, the box office report.

This time, it’s London hit by the terrorists

I have London on the brain already after watching Wonder Woman last night, in which it was featured prominently, but now the city is all over the news right now with reports of attacks at London Bridge and the Borough Market. Terrorism is suspected. 

Coverage here from BBC News.