Christian Cleland is a 1st year professional writing student at Algonquin College and proud father of a 6 year old intellectual prodigy. As a sports and current events junkie, Christian has spent the last ten years gathering and sharing sports and pop culture news with local patrons at his bartending job. This blog aims to inform and discuss a range of current events from the world of sports.
Unconventional rants about sports personalities who make front-page headlines.
Friday, April 13, 2012 at 4:15PM Since 1999 professional athletes have been plagued by the Madden curse. Now in 2012 an even more diabolical curse has become apparent—the curse of the Kardashians. In the 13 years since EA sports began choosing an NFL star to grace the cover of its hugely successful video game franchise Madden NFL, every player featured on the game sleeve has been plagued by injury or personal tragedy
Thursday, April 5, 2012 at 10:00AM Writing this blog has been a great experience for me. For this column we’ve been tasked with doing a feature piece on someone with relevance to our blog. I struggled to think of someone I had access to who would be relevant to my sports theme. So I called up my old, friend Paul Homuth, who aside from sharing my passion for sports talk and news, also writes his own sports blog called DAS BOOT. For as long as I’ve known Homuth he has been an aspiring writer. I called him up and started with the small talk. Feeling bad about not keeping in touch the last year or so, I didn’t want to jump right into the favour asking. After a half hour of “what’s so and so been up to,” I asked him if I could interview him for my sports blog. Homuth’s not the type to hold a grudge over friends for being busy, and as the super talkative guy he is, he was excited. The only thing he asked me is if he should wear a tie, which gave us both a laugh.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012 at 12:55PM At first glance Jason Lanier’s You are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto takes a surprisingly negative look at the effects of the world wide web. Especially considering it was written by a guy who helped shape the technologies that the book so frequently bashes. Jason Lanier has written extensively for Discover Magazine and other publications about technology and its effects on society. Fans of these articles will be immediately mesmerized by this book and the concepts discussed in it.
Jaron Lanier, internet, technology in Reviews Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 10:45AM Every time I post a comment on ESPN.com sports articles it is immediately removed and my account gets banned. It gave me great satisfaction to see the recent controversy surrounding racially insensitive remarks made by ESPN commentators about the New York Media’s newest darling Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin. One ESPN employee was fired and another suspended after 3 separate “chink” puns were used on ESPN news, radio and even as a headline on ESPN’s mobile site.
ESPN, Jeremy Lin, NBA, Saturday Night Live in Blogs Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 8:44PM Ever since Janet Jackson’s infamous wardrobe malfunction during the 2004 Super Bowl half time show, NBC and the NFL has moved away from huge collaborative shows filled with pop artists. Since 2004 the performance has been done by aging musical acts who have been around the media long enough to know not to flash a nipple or some other profane gesture during such a high profile performance. That brings us to this year’s halftime headliner Madonna. Sure Madonna kicked up her share of controversy in the 80’s, but at the age of 53 with so much time spent in front of the spotlight she surely could be counted on to provide a well-choreographed performance that wouldn’t offend any viewers.
Halftime, Madonna, Super Bowl in Reviews