Theme Songs, Plagiarism and the Azzuri

Is this the biggest news story in history or what ?

Some wizened old crone decides to hold up the mothercorp for more than a million bucks for her jingle and Scott Moore shows some fiscal responsibility by saying No. The result is that the weasels at CTV jump in and pay a reported $2.5 million for Dolores Claman's ditty and you would think someone had just taken a dump on the front lawn of the Parliament buildings and wiped their ass with the flag from the resulting firestorm.

Moore is vilified by every moron with a keyboard for ruining our heritage.

Let's get some freakin' perspective here people. If the Theme song to "Hockey Night in Canada" is the last bastion of our cultural heritage then we are seriously fucked.

The national economy is slipping into a serious downturn, gas prices are through the roof, Canadian soldiers are shipped home weekly from Afghanistan in body bags and our principle concern as a nation is a jingle changing networks ?

I love the song, it's an iconic anthem but I'm sorry as a tax payer who ultimately pays for the CBC I am happy to wave goodbye to Ms. Claman's anthem to greed. I mean c'mon $65,000 a year wasn't enough ? A million bucks wasn't enough ?

It's a shame that Hockey night in Canada won't have it's theme song but let's move on people.

Oh and two more things: Won't it be a bit embarrassing for CTV to advertise the competition every time they play the song? and before last week did anyone not named Claman have any idea who wrote the thing ?

A week or so ago David Pratt was dismissed from his position as a weekly columnist at The Province for plagiarism. This shocked me on a number of levels, first off that anyone read Pratt's column and thought to complain, and secondly that the editors actually fired him over it. I mean really, plagiarism is a crime against journalistic ethics and so by extension the editor is calling Mr. Pratt a journalistic. A bit of a reach I think.

Euro 2008 opened this weekend and since Scotland failed to qualify I am unburdened with having to cheer for the Tartan Army. All went as planned on Day 1 and Day 2 but yesterday a major bump occurred when the consistent under achieving Netherlands took Italy out behind the woodshed 3-0.

Now the Azzuri are the defending World Champions and as a result there appear to be as many Italian soccer fans as there are Irish on St. Patrick's day. Personally I've never been a fan of the Italian style, which for the last two decades or so has been one of stifling defense, pray for a 0-0 draw and win the shoot out.

The only downside to yesterday's Dutch Treat was that the first goal was fairly clearly off side so the Italians can all wail and moan about the officiating. Of course I'm not sure what the excuses will be for goals #2 and 3 but the early line appears to be:

"Well c'mon, after being jobbed so badly for the first goal how could we possibly concentrate".

We'll see how things progress in "The Group of Death" but I still think Italy will find a way through to the next round. Hopefully this will be the year Spain or Portugal can seal the deal overall but I'm not holding my breath.