I admit that in the past, I wanted to attend the Cannes Film Festival once, just to say that I had done it. Having attended many years of the Toronto International Film Festival, I think it would be interesting to go to France and experience the festival there. The chances were always pretty long, since you REALLY have to know someone just to get tickets to a screening, not to mention the cost of travel and accommodations.
One of the great things about TIFF is that it is very laid back. Yes, stars and industry people are in attendance and often are dressed very well, but the movie going public are in jeans and shorts and whatever they wish to wear. Obviously, the same can’t be said for the French festival.
According to ScreenDaily, the online version of the industry magazine Screen International, “a handful of women in their 50s” were turned away from the screening of the movie “Carol,” directed by Todd Haynes, because they were not wearing high heels. According to the website, “multiple guests, some older with medical conditions, were denied access to the anticipated world premiere screening for wearing rhinestone flats.”
This is particularly ironic since the festival has been criticized in the past for the dearth of women filmmakers invited to present their work at the competition. This year, the Festival has gone out of its way to feature women directors and producers.
The irony practically drips all over this story since the women were refused admittance to the film “Carol,” which is a lesbian romance that has been praised for its theme, and especially its predominately female cast and its female producers.
Admittedly, this festival is even more focused on glamour and being seen than even the other festivals, but the web site also noted that the Festival seems to have been caught flatfooted by the reports. ScreenDaily reported, “The festival declined to comment on the matter, but did confirm that it is obligatory for all women to wear high heels to red-carpet screenings.” However, the festival’s director reportedly tweeted in French that “the rumor” the festival required high heels for women was “unfounded.”
Now, perhaps high heals are a requirement if you are a star, attending a film where you will be photographed on the red carpet. Maybe if you are a woman in the industry and let’s be honest, these festivals are business events, not personal or fun. When I see women at TIFF, they are usually dressed very well, especially at night and at Galas and premieres. OK, that’s fine. But to require people just attending a showing to dress in a certain way is preposterous.
If I were a woman, I’d be pissed off and tell other women that aren’t in the industry to tell the unruly French where to shove their festival.

The NFL released its report on “Deflate-gate” led by Ted Wells – noted defense attorney on the deflating of footballs by New England Patriots’ staff before the AFC Championship Game against the Colts last January. While it found no evidence of wrongdoing by Coach Bill Belichick or the Patriots’ front office, the report, in typical legalese, said that “it is more probable than not” that QB Tom Brady was “at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities” of locker room attendant Jim McNally and equipment assistant John Jastremski in the deflating of the balls. Jastremski has been with the team for 14 years, the past three as the staffer in charge of preparation of the game-day footballs.
Rumors flew that the league would suspend Brady for as many as 8 games, which some pundits calling for an entire season suspension, but the league wasn’t going to suspend one of its top stars that long. Instead, the NFL suspended Brady for the first four games of next season without pay. Brady’s agent/sycophant Don Yee, was quoted by USA Today that “there was no fairness in the Wells investigation whatsoever,” calling the findings “pre-determined.” Yee said that he felt that after the appeal process for his client, “the Wells Report will be exposed as an incredibly frail exercise in fact-finding and logic.” Wells responded on Twitter: “the conclusions were not influenced in any way, shape or form by anyone in [NFL] office,” and he followed that with “I think it is wrong to criticize my independence because you disagree with my findings.”
What sealed this in the minds of most were the signed memorabilia and shoes that McNally and Jastremski received and the many texts that flew between Brady and the pair after the deflated footballs were discovered. The NFL also came down hard on the Patriots, fining the team $1 million making forfeit its first-round selection in the 2016 NFL Draft and fourth-round pick in the 2017 draft. Still, four games is equal to the original penalty against wife-beater Ray Rice; and it doesn’t doom the team to mediocrity next season. Even the draft choices aren’t as big a deal for the Patriots since they have never heavily relied on the draft to replenish their team – they use free agency more.
There are so many angles one this story that it’s hard to capture them all. First, we shouldn’t be surprised that Brady tried to gain an advantage; he has spent his entire career under Belichick, whose minions were caught taping opponent practices before a previous Super Bowl. The Hoodie Jedi Coach Belichick has shown a willingness to bend if not break the rules entirely. I believe that is the reason that the team was fined, why the fine was so high and included draft picks.
Admittedly, many people are cheering that the fair-haired Golden Boy splashed mud on his reputation. Good looking; four Super Bowl titles; three Super Bowl MVPs; three league MVPs; a lock for the Hall of Fame; and married to the richest supermodel in the world with adorable kids; jealousy is a big factor. I am not among those people; I was OK with Brady up to now, but I have lost a ton of respect for him in light of this. It’s not just the cheating; it’s the lying about it publicly; and now, vowing to fight the charges. Come on Tom; step up and accept your punishment like a man.
(I do wonder if as much would have been made over the whole incident if Russell Wilson had handed off to Marshawn Lynch in the Super Bowl for a touchdown and a second consecutive championship in Seattle? Of course, as I mentioned here before that game, both coaches – Belichick and Pete Carroll – are as dirty as the day is long.)
What these coaches and players don’t understand in their single-minded determination to win is that the games must maintain their integrity; otherwise, it becomes professional wrestling. It’s not just the bookies and work penny-ante pools that would be upset – it’s the whole support of the fan base. If fans think that the fix is in, they won’t watch. Fans like to celebrate athletes doing incredible things with everyone trying and doing their best to win. That’s why cycling is in decline – the doping scandals, especially the Lance Armstrong fallout has tarnished the sport. (Quick – when does the Tour de France start this year? Don’t know? It’s not as big a deal anymore.)
Which is why I’ve always questioned the NBA’s aloof stance on the perception that the league, through the referees, prolong series and have calls go against teams in smaller markets or not make calls against teams with superstars. I have read a number of Facebook postings about the league joking about punishing refs for making calls that didn’t go in LeBron James’ favor. The same thing was said about the Bulls in the Michael Jordan era too, but with former officials admitting that they tried to teach players a lesson about who’s boss on the court, and the gambling scandal that involved a referee, the NBA has just scoffed and said that it not true and tries to drop it. But the reputation remains.
The NFL, just as media savvy as the NBA, knows that fans are already upset about domestic violence cases, and concerned about brain trauma that players sustain. Even celebrities like LeBron James admit that they may not let their sons play football. So, the last thing they need is a cheating scandal.
Honestly, they couldn’t forfeit the championship, and since there was no evidence that the front office or Belichick were involved, they couldn’t drop direct sanctions on them except for cultivating a cheating culture. I’m sure that in the Boston area, they will be supporting Brady and crying that the league is being unfair, but if the league is going to be serious about performance enhancing drugs, which is also cheating, they have to come down hard on other types of cheating.
There’s no question that Tom Brady will be in Canton, Ohio sooner rather than later to be enshrined in the Hall of Fame, but there will always be a cloud hanging over his plaque.

The NFL released its report on the New England Patriots and “Deflategate.” In case you’ve forgotten, it was discovered that several of the footballs used in the AFC Championship Game between the Pats and the Indianapolis Colts were seriously underinflated, against NFL rules. An underinflated ball allows quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers to gain a better grip on the ball.
After having been caught spying on previous Super Bowl opponents’ practices in the couple of weeks before the game itself, the Patriots were in many ways considered guilty until proven innocent. This report clears the team except for probable future Hall of Fame quarterback Tom Brady.
The league reported that Brady was “at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities” of a locker room attendant and an equipment assistant. The report found “that it is more probable than not that” the locker-room attendant and equipment assistant “participated in a deliberate effort to release air from Patriots game balls after the balls were examined by the referee” during January’s AFC title game between the Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts.
“Based on the evidence, it also is our view that it is more probable than not that Tom Brady (the quarterback for the Patriots) was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities… involving the release of air from Patriots game balls,” the report, prepared by attorney Ted Wells, said. The report found no evidence that anyone else was involved.
The Patriots were the better team back in January and probably would have won with fully inflated footballs, but this report casts a cloud over the whole team. First, I don’t believe that anything can happen on the Patriots’ bench without the knowledge of “Head Coach Hoodie,” Bill Belichick (Hall of Fame Coach Don Shula calls him “Beli-cheat). Football coaches, especially the winning ones, leave very little to chance. On top of that, the cheating that Belichick has already been caught engaging in sends a message to everyone else that rules can be broken as long as you win and don’t get caught.
And the “Golden Boy” Brady has played his entire career under Belichick, and they have won four Super Bowls, putting them both at the pinnacle of the NFL both on a year-to-year basis, but also on an all-time basis. Both men were guaranteed trips to Canton, Ohio to be enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Many people have looked for some mud to throw at the good looking All American Boy, married to the supermodel with the beautiful kids, with more money than can be spent. Brady mixed the water and dirt for them.
They still will make the trip to Canton, but there will be a pall over their victories. They are far from the first coach/player to cheat, and far from the first ones to get caught. One wonders if the Hall of Fame voters will show their distain by failing to vote them into the Hall on their first year of eligibility as perceived “penalty.” More likely, fewer people will vote for them so that they get well above the required number of votes to be enshrined, but not close to historic or unanimous vote totals.
I know one thing: like last year’s Super Bowl, there will be a lot more scrutiny of the air pressure in the footballs at Patriot games for as long as Belichick and Brady are around.

In the sixth year of Barack Obama’s presidency, forgive me my Caucasian friends, but white people are going out of their f$%^ing minds. All attempts to limit the President’s agenda have failed. Attempts to make him a one-term president have failed. Gay marriage, legal marijuana, healthcare for all are law and facing their final legal barriers.
That said, this is bringing out the rawest hatred. Police are killing unarmed black men all over the country; the carefully worded statements intended to rouse the true bigots is becoming more and more open, even as people are paying for these statements and posts on public media.
Still, I was raised in the 1960s, and I was taught to hold tight reign on the charge of “racist” – to make sure that you have an almost unimpeachable case; to keep from slandering the innocent; and to only pull it out when it is truly worthwhile so that it keeps its potency. Now, the “r-word” is everywhere – either people claiming that others are racists, or people saying that they aren’t racist just before or after spouting the worst kind of hate speech.
So, I have to take former Philadelphia Eagle, now Buffalo Bill running back LeSean McCoy’s charges about his former coach Chip Kelly. In six seasons in Philadelphia, McCoy became one of the best backs in the league (he’s the NFL’s third-leading rusher since being drafted in 2009) but as a stalwart of the Eagles. Despite that, the Eagles traded him to Buffalo in March, where he agreed to a five-year, $40 million deal.
ESPN The Magazine recently ran an article on McCoy, and they asked a question as to whether McCoy believed that Kelly doesn’t “like or respect stars.” McCoy said “The relationship was never really great. I feel like I always respected him as a coach. I think that’s the way he runs his team. He wants the full control. You see how fast he got rid of all the good players. Especially all the good black players. He got rid of them the fastest. That’s the truth. There’s a reason. … It’s hard to explain with him. But there’s a reason he got rid of all the black players — the good ones — like that.”
McCoy made note of the fact that Kelly, who has complete control of the football operation, released another excellent black player, wide receiver DeSean Jackson in 2014 after going to the Pro Bowl after the 2013 season. (Admittedly, Jackson held out a couple of times for more money in his days with Philadelphia.)
McCoy first made his comments about Kelly in a Philadelphia newspaper when he was traded, and it has to be a bit of an ego blow to be traded, especially after posting your best results in your career the season before. I don’t know Kelly, but from what I hear, he is egotistical and wants to be in control of everything on his team, which makes him like every other football coach in the history of the sport, from Pop Warner level to the NFL.
Ordinarily, I would think that football coaches, especially those in the NFL, would be the last ones to be openly racist. From my experience, coaches don’t care what color, race, religion a player is as long as he can help you win. Considering the head coaches who helped force the NCAA and NFL to accept black players, I would be surprised. But a lot of white America sees an end to their long term privilege and that scares the sh%t out of them.
Kelly has made tons of moves in this offseason, including a failed attempt in last week’s NFL Draft to move up to the second overall pick so that he could draft Oregon QB Marcus Mariotta. He has shuffled QBs around like playing cards, getting former Ram signal caller Sam Bradford; trading last year’s starter Nick Foles; and even bringing in Tim Tebow.
If they win, it won’t matter. If they don’t, he’ll be out of a pro job and perhaps back in college soon enough. Considering how important African-American players are to football, if Kelly does have a problem, he should probably keep them to himself.

This past weekend, all of the major sports converged which drove many sports fans into apoplexy. The NFL Draft was pushed back into early May and since New York’s Radio City Music Hall was booked, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel convinced Roger Goodell into holding the draft in Chicago.
The Draft was held at the Auditorium Theater – a classy place to hold the draft even though it is about ½ as large as Radio City. However, it’s close proximity to Grant Park allowed the NFL to build an aircraft hangar looking temporary building in the park which could accommodate many thousands more, plus have interactive games and memorabilia and of course, food and souvenirs. As I wrote awhile ago, the 25-year-old me would have found a way to be there in some capacity, but a business trip and the knowledge that I no longer want to be surrounded by thousands of people unless it’s a hockey or football game. Still I did watch all of the first round and portions of later rounds.
One thing I did not watch was the Mayweather – Pacquao fight. For one thing, I didn’t want to give money to serial woman beater Mayweather, a fighter who is renowned in the ring more for not getting hit than being a big puncher. Also, the Indignant Wife hates boxing, so there was no way I was watching the fight anyway, and it’s a good thing, since the fight turned out to be a big dud. That is always the risk in a big bowing match: someone gets knocked out early, or it goes the distance with too little action.
Baseball has just started. The Cubs vacillate between being a decent club some days and the return of the Keystone Kops other days. But the White Sox are a real let-down. No hitting, no pitching, no excitement, no apparent sense of urgency to get better. This is important for the White Sox bottom line: Sox fans are VERY discerning – they won’t come out to a bad team. A decent start would get the turnstiles turning which means the long term ability to spend money for the team. It could be a very long season for the South Side.
And of course, we have the Bulls about to face LeBron’s Cavaliers in the NBA Playoffs. Derrick Rose looks like his old self in spurts, and with a much improved rest of the team, could this be the year the Bulls are able to get past King James? And on the ice, the Blackhawks hold a 2 games to none lead in the second round of the playoffs over the Minnesota Wild. This has been a weird season in this division: Nashville looked like it was going to run away and hide with the President’s Cup for most points in the season, but went into a funk in the last month and ended up losing to the Hawks in the first round. St. Louis came on in the last month to take the division, but the Wild were burning hot in that same period and knocked the Blues out again.
The Blackhawks have been maddingly inconsistent since the New Year, but they defeated Nashville and had looked at their best against Minnesota. The series is far from over with the series going back to Minneapolis, but one has to wonder if the Wild can answer the Hawks’ stars: Hossa, Toews, Kane (now returned from injury), Keith, Sharp, and others.
This is truly the best time of year in sports. I hope you are enjoying it as much as I am.

In today’s hypersensitive political environment, people on both sides of the political spectrum are always ready to be outraged. Sometimes, over nothing (Bengazi, various right wing conspiracy theories) and others well worth being outraged about (the killing of black men by police, economic disparity).
Often, we see the major sports leagues make horrendous public relations blunders (Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson), but sometimes, the NFL and Major League Baseball do things that are quite shrewd, but don’t amount to much. The NFL made one of those moves this week.
For a long time, people unaware of the concept made a lot of noise about the NFL being listed as a non-profit organization for Federal tax purposes. The NFL is a multi-billion dollar generating entity and, to the unaware, should be taxed and taxed heavily for its revenues. To end the controversy, the NFL gave up its tax exempt status this week, just a couple of days before the draft.
Trust me, it wasn’t out of a feeling of wanting to pay more to the government. This may cost the league $10 million in payments, but that’s a pittance. The NFL splits revenue amongst the 32 member clubs, which are taxed separately, so there’s very little tax savings. However, from a PR standpoint, the critics have nothing to say anymore. Major League Baseball did the same thing in 2007. In addition, now the league does not have to disclose the salaries and benefits of Commissioner Roger Goodell and other executives.
This silences the critics, but it costs the leagues little in money. The bigger issue would be if Congress took away baseball’s anti-trust exemption, which allows it to act as a monopoly. While the NFL and the other leagues do not have the exemption, they certainly benefit from baseball’s exemption. The NFL has been sued by the USFL and one other time for having monopolistic tendencies, and in the USFL case, the NFL lost, but the USFL got a $1 judgment, which is tripled in anti-trust law for a total of $3.
So, once again, the NFL pulled off a meaningless gesture in order to silence critics and make them less transparent and it will be seen as a minor PR bonus.

Due to the riots in Baltimore, the series between the White Sox and Orioles scheduled for Camden Yards has become strange. The games Monday and Tuesday nights were postponed, but today, the third game of the series is being played, but no fans will be in the stands.
Only the media will be permitted in the stadium; I assume the game will be televised. Still, I wonder if the game will be played in less than 2 hours. Except for commercial breaks, there’s no need for announcements, promotions; there’s no need for a seventh inning stretch.. It’s going to be strange; I can’t wait to see the coverage.