Hey, remember that Concordia University baseball team I talked about last week?
Concordia University baseball champions (photo by Al Fournier)
They won the national championship this weekend. This despite losing two of three games in round-robin play. They won a quarterfinal tiebreaker, and then their semifinal match and the championship final of the … uhh … six-team tournament.
Go Stingers!
Concordia journalism students François Nadeau and Steven Myers put together this short video documentary with the help of CUTV. It features some interviews with members of Concordia’s baseball team.
Concordia baseball has been trying for years to get the kind of recognition that high-profile sports like football and hockey get, though they say the university has been immensely supportive of their efforts.
Insert your own joke about Jeffrey Loria and the Expos here.
UPDATE: I should mention the team is going to the national championships. Let’s hope Rick Monday isn’t there.
UPDATE (Oct. 26): They won! National champions! W00t!
Just when you thought the ex-Expos couldn’t embarrass themselves further, quickly grabbing the worst record in baseball by losing their first seven games of the season (and 10 of 11), they made themselves into even more of a laughing stock by misspelling their own name.
I’d laugh if it wasn’t so sad.
Lots more fun out of the CRTC this week:
The biggest news (or at least the most titillating) is the approval of a new Canadian-based pornography channel. Called Northern Peaks (cute), it would feature 50% Canadian content (i.e. Canadian-produced porn) from various categories, including pornographic sitcoms and game shows (that actually sounds like fun, but it’s really just the company covering all bases, so to speak).
The 50% mark is actually quite unusual, and is well above what would normally be required for such a network. But apparently it was the applicant’s request, according to the National Post:
Mr. Donnelly said he was required to offer as little as 15% Canadian content to appease regulators.
But because he wants “to legitimately be Canada’s adult channel,” he started at half Canadian. He said there is a huge unfulfilled market in Canada for local porn. Beginning last year, he began getting calls from cable companies looking to license his Canadian productions.
“I’ve always found there’s a real turn-on to watching and knowing it’s people you could run into in the grocery store,” he said.
But with more than 200 titles (and presumably they can be replayed over and over again, since most viewers wouldn’t mind repeats of classic programming), he thinks he can do it.
Quoth the CRTC: “The Commission did not receive any interventions in connection with this application.” Really? Not even from the pizza guy? Or that nosy peeping-tom neighbour you’re just waiting to have sex in front of so they can masturbate to it?
Needless to say the media had a field day with this one, the National Post turning it into a front-page story (complete with photo) and an opinion piece that’s pretty tongue-in-cheeks (sorry) asking readers to comment and either denounce the channel or come up with some programming ideas for it. (A funny side-effect of the latter is offhand mentions of Sheila Copps and Avi Lewis, which means searches for these two under “related stories” brings up a comment about a porn channel they have nothing to do with.)
One comment posted to the Post:
When do the adults at the Post return from summer holiday?
Of course, it wasn’t just the Post. The Globe and Mail also had a lengthy article on it (about 12 inches), and the news was picked up by Canadian Press and Reuters and Agence France-Presse and reached news outlets all around the world (well, those two anyway). It also got a mention on an anti-abortion (but still pro-women) conservative website.
The channel is being run by Real Productions (apparently not this Real Productions nor that Real Productions, which appear lower in the Google raking and I’m guessing confused or offended at least a few potential customers), which is run by a man named Shaun Donnelly (but not this Shaun Donnelly, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Europe and the Middle East).
Due to the nature of the channel, it can’t be included in any channel packages and must be specifically requested by the subscriber. The network also promises to spend at least 25% of revenues on developing new programming.
Also of note is the 100% closed-captioning requirement, which may foreshadow a fight with Videotron concerning their demand that they not have to closed-caption on-demand video porn.
UPDATE (Aug. 18): The Globe has more on the channel, including an idea of what a broadcast day would look like. And then even more on the channel here. (They won’t let this story go, will they?)
UPDATE (Aug. 24): Farked. With suggestions on Canadian porn titles. Some of these people should write headlines for a living.
Stephanie Myles, who was once the full-time baseball writer for The Gazette and is now mainly covering Tennis, wrote last week about how she’s become disconnected from baseball ever since the Expos left for Washington.
The piece generated a lot of response from letter–writers, many of whom feel the same way.
Now that the impossible has happened for a second time in four years, perhaps it’s time to reflect on how some of the media down south are recognizing this momentous achievement on their websites:
The Boston Globe’s Boston.com:
The New York Post:
The New York Daily News:
Yeah.
It’s also as good a time as any to delve into the vault and bring back this jewel of a fake ad from just after the 2004 series, which starts off asking Boston fans what they would give to have the Sox win it all. (Off the Comedy Network’s website since Comedy Central blocks Canadians now. If it doesn’t work, you can get it off YouTube here)
And if you’re the more sentimental type, Nike’s Red Sox Memories of Losing is here.
UPDATE: Never underestimate the Sox.