Jays ready for rumble in East
PHILADELPHIA–One last day of make-believe baseball behind them, the Blue Jays headed to New York yesterday primed for their most serious challenge in the AL East since the glory days of the early '90s.
Manager John Gibbons, who has the most to lose if this club does not contend, has been stark about his options this spring. His team must succeed.
"I don't want to be a manager just to be a manager. I want to be on a winner," Gibbons said yesterday. "I mean, this job's fun, but it's not that fun to get your brains kicked in."
Battered by injury, the Jays managed an 83-79 record in 2007, nowhere near good enough to catch the Yankees and Red Sox. In the off-season, Toronto added bench depth through utility infielder Marco Scutaro and catcher Rod Barajas. They shored up the left side of the infield by adding Scott Rolen and David Eckstein from St. Louis. That longer bench is paying dividends already, as Scutaro will step in for the injured Rolen for most or all of April.
The infusion of talent means expectations are sky-high. Gibbons, GM J.P. Ricciardi and the players seemed anxious to begin fulfilling them.
"Everybody says spring training's a week or two too long. Now we're ready to go, anxious to get to New York and especially to get back to Toronto," said second baseman Aaron Hill.
Hill has been the standout offensively this spring, going 21-for-47 through yesterday. Last year, he brought that same momentum into the first month of the season, hitting a scorching .313 with 20 RBIs in April.
"I got in the cage, stayed consistent with my workouts and the results have been great. I'll take those any time," Hill said.
On the opposite end of the spring spectrum stands slugger Frank Thomas, who's batted .173 through March. Miserable springs are de rigueur for the future hall of famer. Thomas shrugged off any doubts yesterday.
"That switch turns on when you get those 50,000 people in the stands," the 18-year veteran said off-handedly. "Same as always."
After being called out on strikes in the fourth inning, Thomas brooded in the batter's box for 10 long seconds. Then Hill stepped in and hit a two-run homer. That's the Jays pre-season in a nutshell.
Gibbons singled out first baseman Lyle Overbay, who's coming off an injury plagued season, and centre fielder Vernon Wells, who had shoulder surgery last fall, for praise yesterday.
Pitching? Not so much.
"We didn't dominate during the spring," Gibbons said. In particular, he has subtly called out young starters Dustin McGowan and Shaun Marcum in recent days. Both have battled with control while they try to refine their repertoires. The days of experimentation are over. Coming off breakout seasons, McGowan and Marcum will be counted on to shoulder a heavy load.
Yesterday, the visiting clubhouse at Citizens Bank Park had a regular-season feel. Thomas marched back and forth between his locker and the batting cages, basking in the "big-league atmosphere." Roy Halladay panted through his daily three-hour workout.
"He prepares himself so differently than the rest of the guys," Gibbons said of his ace.
Hill and new infield battery-mate Eckstein volunteered to go out before the game and work on turning the double play.
The bullpen committee sent out to pitch both these final exhibitions in Philadelphia threw with urgency, aware that someone has to go once B.J. Ryan returns.
Brandon League, in particular, showed flashes of brilliance.
Beginning tomorrow, they get to do it for real.
The End: Canada's oldest bookstore shut down
Canada's oldest bookstore, located in Halifax, has come to the end of its final chapter and closed its doors on Saturday.
The 169-year-old Book Room survived wars and the Great Depression, but couldn't outlast the vagaries of today's retail and economic realities.
"The market reality is really changing," said owner Charles Burchell, who described how a book was delivered to his store by mistake around Christmas time. The Book Room sits on the bottom of an apartment building; an online order was made by a tenant upstairs.
"The book was on our shelf, so they could have come down in two minutes and picked the book up, but they chose to order by computer and wait five [to] seven days for it to come in," Burchell told CBC Radio.
Burchell said the Christmas of 2007 was his worst on record in the 42 years he's run the bookstore.
He added that the straw that broke his store's back was the dual pricing of books, with higher prices in Canada than in the U.S.
He accused publishers of not reacting quickly enough to the rising Canadian dollar. Books take about three years before they reach the market, with the selling price already set. Burchell said that model is archaic in today's world.
Special ordering
The store has served the Halifax community since 1839, and customers said the closing will be like a family member gone missing or dying.
"Book people are quite close," noted Dawn Underwood, one of the shop's final clients.
"It's one of those … unique little, you know, sort of businesses where you know a lot of people and you're close with your customers, you're close with writers and … you become a family."
Burchell said the store's first owners fostered a strong bond with its customers. He said newspaper ads from the old days show how considerate the first owner was.
"It said that anybody wanting special books that he didn't have, to let him know before Christmas because the last ship leaving before the winter would take the request and it would come back in the spring when the ice was all gone with their special order books."
Carol Nielson, who has been a customer for 18 years, said she will miss the unique qualities that go with a local, independent bookstore.
"Because it's rather small and personal compared with some of the larger ones, and you get to know the staff and they have provided good service."
It's not just bibliophiles bidding a sad goodbye. The store was also a special place to the area's authors, one of whom posted a farewell message on the Book Room's website.
"After months — sometimes years — of solitude working on our manuscripts, the Book Room would welcome us and make us feel special. It was a rite of passage," Allan Lynch wrote.
John Hiatt Releasing New CD in May
John Hiatt will release a new album, Same Old Man, on May 27 on New West Records. He also produced the album which features Kenneth Blevins on drums, Patrick O'Hearn on bass and Luther Dickinson on guitar, mandolin and National resonator guitar. Hiatt's daughter, Lilly Hiatt, sings harmony on two songs. Same Old Man will also be available as a limited edition 180-gram vinyl record.
Nelly wants to collaborate with Springsteen
LOS ANGELES — Nelly is bummed he wasn't able to collaborate with Bruce Springsteen on his new album.
"I was really trying to get The Boss, but The Boss is all over the world," Nelly told The Associated Press on the orange carpet at Saturday's Kids Choice Awards. "It didn't really work out. I know he's interested in doing it. And I'm interested in doing it."
Nelly was mum on what a duet with Springsteen would've sounded like, but the Hot In Herre rapper is hopeful he'll be able to work with the Born to Run rock and roller later this year.
"We still might get a chance to get it off," Nelly said. "We're saving it. We might repackage it for the holidays."
The 33-year-old rapper from St. Louis last formed an unlikely union in 2004 when he teamed up with country star Tim McGraw for the song Over and Over from Nelly's album Suit.
Brass Knuckles, Nelly's fifth album set for release in June, won't be lacking in names. Akon, Ashanti, Chuck D, Ciara, LL Cool J, Lil Wayne, Pimp C, Snoop Dogg and T.I. are all set to appear. Party People, the first single off the album, features Fergie.
TV, film actors' unions sever ties
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Unions representing film and television actors will negotiate separately with producers in upcoming contract talks after board members of the TV actors union voted Saturday to sever a long-standing agreement between the two guilds.
The vote by the board of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists came hours before a meeting with the Screen Actors Guild and just three months before the expiration of the contract covering movies and prime-time shows.
Despite a sometimes rocky 27-year relationship the unions had shown recent signs of peace as they prepared for the upcoming talks.
The two groups had hoped at Saturday's meeting to set a start date for negotiations. Instead of discussing strategies the sides swapped accusations.
"For the past year SAG leadership in Hollywood has engaged in a relentless campaign of disinformation and disparagement," AFTRA president Roberta Reardon said in a written statement.
SAG President Alan Rosenberg's written response: "AFTRA's refusal now to bargain together with us and their last-second abandonment of the joint process is calculated, cynical and may serve the interests of their institution, but not its members."
The AFTRA board said the vote to terminate the agreement, known as "Phase One," was "overwhelming."
Wary of repeating the damage wrought by the recently ended 100-day Hollywood writers strike, producers and several A-list actors including Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro had been pressing for negotiations to start as early as this week.
The 120,000-member Screen Actors Guild represents actors in movies, TV and other media. The 70,000-member TV and radio federation represents, among others, actors, singers, announcers and journalists.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents studios, said in a statement that it looks forward to bargaining with AFTRA. It did not mention SAG.
Cyrus is Kids Choice winner - twice
LOS ANGELES - It was the best of both worlds at Saturday's Kids Choice Awards for Miley Cyrus, who took home trophies for favorite female singer and TV actress and rocked the show with a spirited performance of her hit song, "GNO — Girls Night Out."
It was also a slime spectacle for the Nickelodeon children's television network, which broadcast the 21st annual show live from UCLA's Pauley Pavilion in front of 10,000 screaming fans, almost all of them teens and preteens.
Akon crashed a dune buggy into giant containers of Nickelodeon's trademark green slime, Usher blasted a sumo wrestler several yards with slime fired from a cannon and supermodel Heidi Klum, attached to a bungee cord and wearing a specially equipped "butt spike belt," flung herself into a wall covered with slime-filled balloons.
"Don't try this at home," boxer Laila Ali said as Usher turned the cannon on the sumo wrestler.
The slime stunts and other assorted foolishness — which included a soundtrack of celebrities burping as an instrumental version of the Village People song "YMCA" played in the background — took up so much time that presenters never got around to announcing three awards.
In the categories that were announced, teen heartthrob Drake Bell was another double winner, collecting his third consecutive orange blimp-shaped trophy for favorite TV actor and another for favorite TV show for "Drake and Josh."
"Drake and Josh" upset Cyrus' hit program "Hannah Montana" in the TV show category.
Other winners were Eddie Murphy for favorite voice from an animated movie for "Shrek the Third," "American Idol" for favorite reality show and, one of the biggest crowd favorites of the night, the Jonas Brothers for favorite music group. The ever-polite Jonas Brothers each offered brief thank-yous. Chris Brown won for favorite male singer.
Ryan Seacrest accepted the reality show award saying he looked forward to presenting it to "two of the three" of the show's judges.
Cyrus, in a black dress with silver spangles, thanked several people, including her mother, father, agent, manager "and my lord and savior Jesus Christ."
She returned a few minutes later to perform her song, and had a camera crew scampering to get out of the way when she charged into the audience, microphone in hand.
The Naked Brothers Band also performed a song from their forthcoming album "I Don't Want To Go To School."
Cameron Diaz injected one serious moment into the 90 minute show when she accepted a silver blimp as this year's Wannabe Award winner, for the person kids most want to be like. After a montage of clips from both her movies and her efforts on behalf of environmentalism was shown, she encouraged the crowd to do their part to protect the planet.
"You're going to change the world. Every one of you kids is the future," she told the audience. "Everybody go out and make the world a better place."
Diaz, who was the first ever Kids Choice Awards burping contest winner, has long said that was the favorite of all her awards. She said this one trumped it.
Jason Lee accepted the favorite movie award for "Alvin and the Chipmunks" and said it was one of his biggest thrills.
"I'm going to hang this from the ceiling because it's the greatest award anyone could receive because it was voted on by the kids," he said as he held his blimp.
Awards are voted on by people who cast their ballots at Nickelodeon's Web site, with voting continuing until the day of the show.
The show's host, Jack Black, announced that 88 million votes were cast this year, more than twice last year's record number of 40 million.
The show concluded with Black and Orlando Bloom sitting in chairs high above the audience being drenched with what Black claimed was 27 million gallons of green slime.
'21' rakes in $23M box-office jackpot
LOS ANGELES - Movie-goers laid their money down on "21," a gambling romp that was the weekend's box-office high roller with a $23.7 million debut, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Starring Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth and Jim Sturgess as math geniuses who make a killing at Vegas' blackjack tables, Sony's "21" bumped off "Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!", which had been No. 1 the previous two weekends.
"Horton Hears a Who," distributed by 20th Century Fox, slipped to second place with $17.4 million, raising its total to $117.3 million. It is the first movie this year to pass the $100 million mark.
Despite solid holdover crowds for "Horton," overall business continued to dip. The top 12 movies took in $90 million, down 23 percent from the same weekend last year, when "Blades of Glory" was No. 1 with $33 million.
Hollywood started 2008 with a strong uptick in January, but revenues have trailed off steadily since. Movie admissions had been up as much as 10 percent in early February but now are 2.6 percent behind 2007's, according to box-office tracker Media By Numbers.
By this time last year, Hollywood already had churned out a blockbuster with "300," which eventually topped $200 million, and other hits that included "Wild Hogs" and "Meet the Robinsons."
"Last year was very, very strong at this point. It's made comparisons very tough," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media By Numbers. "We're not that far into the year, so every down weekend has a huge impact on the bottom line."
This weekend's other new movies had so-so openings. Debuting at No. 3 with $9.5 million was the MGM-Weinstein Co. release "Superhero Movie," a spoof of one of Hollywood's favorite action genres.
Paramount's "Stop-Loss," starring Ryan Phillippe as an Iraq War veteran sent back against his wishes for another tour of duty, opened at No. 8 with $4.5 million.
Former "Friends" co-star David Schwimmer's directing debut, the comedy "Run, Fat Boy, Run," was a dud, taking in $2.4 million to finish out of the top 10. Released by Picturehouse, the movie stars Simon Pegg as an out-of-shape slacker running a marathon to impress his former fiance, played by Thandie Newton.
The audience for "21" was split almost evenly between men and women and those older and younger than 25, according to Sony.
"One of the coolest things is it really did play to everyone. It got male, female, young, old," said Rory Bruer, Sony's head of distribution.
Here are the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "21," $23.7 million.
2. "Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!", $17.4 million.
3. "Superhero Movie," $9.5 million.
4. "Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns," $7.8 million.
5. "Drillbit Taylor," $5.8 million.
6. "Shutter," $5.3 million.
7. "10,000 B.C.", $4.9 million.
8. "Stop-Loss," $4.5 million.
9. "College Road Trip," $3.5 million.
10. "The Bank Job," $2.8 million.