Kill the Beast

Kill the Beast

Sports, Politics and Entertainment

Monday, July 7^th, 2008

Sports

Like His Last Name, Favre’s Out of Order - Christopher Alberta

Legendary quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, Brett Favre retired after this latest NFL season. It was a stellar campaign in which the Pack made it to the NFC Final, only to lose in overtime to the eventual New York Super Bowl Giants. The interception that all but ended the game was a sure sign Favre’s time had come. In the flat, his receiver would have had an easy catch, but Favre just under-threw it. The next thing you knew the Giants had pulled off the win on the barren tundra of Lambeau field in December. Miraculous. Still, with the ball in his hands, with a chance to get in the Super Bowl when his team was favoured to win the conference final, Favre didn’t pull it off. Sounds like the time to call it quits, especially after you’ve won everything in the game and with more touchdown passes than any other man to play the position.

But Brett Favre is now un-retired, as he officially requested the Packers release him from the two-year $24 million contract he had previously walked away from as a retiree. Green Bay didn’t mind Favre retiring. They didn’t have to pay the contract and they finally got to move on and go with a youthful QB for the first time in well over a decade. But now Brett wants to go play somewhere else. This is not as good for Green Bay. If they granted him his release, they wouldn’t be on the hook for the money, but they might have to play against him. Chicago or Minnesota are teams that have expressed interest in Favre and both division rivals with the Packers.

Brett Favre is hardly the first athlete to ever un-retire. Michael Jordan is probably the most famous multiple retiree in sports. He did it so many times, we’re not even sure when MJ retired or how many tries it took to get it right. The first time, he changed sports entirely and had a short, unsuccessful stint with the Chicago White Sox. The last time, was after a brief effort with the NBA’s Washington Wizards, the team in which Jordan has an ownership stake. However, it’s difficult to remember an un-retirement with as many implications for the best teams in the league as Favre’s. If the Bears, the Vikings, or any mid-level team were to add him, that team would immediately make the jump to legitimate Super Bowl contendership. Naturally, the Packers don’t want Favre playing elsewhere unless they are well compensated. So far, they’ve maintained that if Favre wants to play this year, it will be with the Packers, as the back-up QB.

In all likelihood, Green Bay will trade with someone, but any divisional or even conference rivals will have to pay dearly. For his part, Favre doesn’t seem to understand the position in which he’s put his old team. For a classy veteran passer, he is sure grumbling like the perennially disgruntled star receivers, always at odds with their current club. When all is said and done, it will probably look ugly for both the player and theteam, but it’s only Favre who is out of order.

Politics

Cartoon Confusion – Fritz Kenwood

There was a time when cartoons were for kids and Saturday morning, not politicians and major national news outlets. Nowadays, it seems even drawings have the power to offend even the powerful. Last week, the New Yorker magazine published a cartoon which featured Barack Obama, dressed in full traditional Muslim attire along with his wife, dressed in guerilla commando gear. The couple stands in the Oval Office, in which they’ve hung a picture of Osama Bin Laden. Since its publication, the cartoon has elicited critical responses from both presidential candidates, who condemned it as offensive and in poor taste.

So what exactly is offensive? I’m not sure really, because just what the satire is driving at is a bit of a mystery. Supposedly, and this is the explanation of a spokesperson for the New Yorker, the cartoon is a stab at Obama’s detractors who want to paint him as a fundamentalist and his wife as a radical, more like terrorists than Americans. Ok. So in order to show that Obama and his wife are not evil and un-American, as their critics claim, the New Yorker decided it would be effective to publish a depiction of the Obamas dressed up as terrorists. Make sense? Nope.

Maybe Obama and McCain think the cartoon is offensive because it’s so confusing, but more likely, the two aspiring presidents are just knee-jerk reacting to a controversial image. Who the image is offending is unclear. Obama? Surely he has to be ready for worse insults than can be hurled in cartoons. And McCain? The cartoon has nothing to do with him and has no relevancy to his campaign whatever. He’s confused, understandably, but offended?

As always, the cartoon has become an opportunity for politicians to show how sensitive they are by expressing their deep disgust for something as trivial as an off-colour drawing. When will these shirts learn that it’s better to ignore remarks which offend (or confuse) you, than to respond, and, in doing so, justify them as discussion worthy. Sticks and stones might break my bones, but cartoons that don’t make sense aren’t even worth mentioning.

Feature

An Electric Personality – Topxes Sexpot

Walt Disney and Pixar are at it again this summer, with another fully computer animated feature length cartoon, this time about a little robot trying to clean up the earth and fall in love for the first time. Sounds like the classic stuff of Disney, but nothing special, right? Wrong. Pixar, somehow, always manages to make the classic Disney plot just a little more interesting than the regular old ink and paper cartoons. Not only are compu-toons like Toy Story, Monster’s Inc, and Finding Nemo a vast improvement over the drawn features near the ass-end of the ink-era, they take a step in children’s story telling which classics like Jungle Book and The Little Mermaid never fully took.

While most movie goers would classify anything Disney as a “kids’ movie”, Wall-E, even more than the other Pixar features, is aimed at kids but hits hard enough for adults. Moreover, while kids might get all the sight gags and be enthralled with the goofy and cuddly characters, the theme of the film is decidedly mature and surprisingly deep. The main character, Wall-e, is all alone on earth, save for his cockroach companion, until a highly advanced probe robot, called Eve, lands on earth to search for vegetation. Wally and Eve build an on-screen romance like no other. Not only are they both robots, neither really has a proper face or even a proper voice. Instead, both character have only a limited range of verbal expressions (all adorable) and their faces are limited to eyes…er, visual sensors. Even with these limited tools, by the end of the film, when it looks as though Wally might be gone forever and Eve left all alone, the audience cares to say the least. Even though these are robots with no face (a big no-no for Star Trek creator and sci-fi godfather Gene Roddenberry) and they say about as many different phrases as their stuffed-toy look-alikes will, Wally and Eve have more personality than the people.

We’ve come to expect wizardry from the people at Pixar, but never has an actor without a mouth, nose or talent agent, given a performance so stirring or genuine as Wally the Robot.

Horoscopes

Aries: Big things happen to big people. Bigger isn’t always better though

Taurus: Don’t wait for opportunity to knock. Sometimes you have to go looking for it

Gemini: Worrying never helped Abe catch the White Whale. It won’t help with your latest problem either

Cancer: Keep up the good work and you will be rewarded. Flag before the finish and it was all for nothing

Leo: The summer is the great season for Leos: lots of daylight to sleep through and short nights to prowl around

Virgo: Try to ignore the nagging doubts you have about your latest plans. Sometimes, to follow something through to the end is an accomplishment unto itself

Libra: Watch out for unexpected arguments. Don’t talk to someone you whom you know is looking for a fight

Scorpio: Boredom is one person’s prison and another’s vacation. Try to make the most of your free time

Sagittarius: Be all that you can be is a great idea, but in real life, it often falls short of the mark

Capricorn: To keep things simple you have to say no sometimes. Current complications come from too many obligations

Aquarius: Music can’t solve your problems it can only make you forget them briefly.

Pisces: Hey! These are the same horoscopes as last week!

KTB HOME

CONTACT KTB