Not so Xtreme

I suspected as much! During the Super Bowl halftime show my neighbour and I got into an argument over sports injuries. It isn’t that we dislike Madonna, but when you’ve seen one glitzy, over-the-top, mega-musical, song and dance, laser light extravaganza…well, you know. I’d just as soon watch Leonard Cohen croak out a handful of ballads. Anyway, my neighbour convinced me to turn the channel to watch a snowboard competition, and that’s when the argument started. He maintained that the number of extreme sports injuries was decimating the ranks of the young, and I said that there was no danger of that since the vast majority of the young stayed safely indoors engaged in life or death struggles with aliens on their Xboxes. I could see where he might get the idea of impending sports doom. The media are full of pictures and stories of spectacular crashes involving extreme sports activity, despite the fact that the number of adventurous young people who actually attempt high amplitude jumps, spins, and flips is actually very small. Oh, sure, every town has a skate board park and every ski hill a half pipe, but only a few kids can accomplish even basic tricks. Most of the participants’ time is spent watching others do tricks and then trying to copy them, or in the case of skateboarding, falling down repeatedly on concrete surfaces while trying to copy them. I maintained that the old, traditional sports were responsible for the most injuries and after the game I did a little research. Sure enough, according to statistics compiled by American pediatricians, the greatest number of injuries requiring hospital attention occurred to the young while they were playing basketball: over 500,000. Skateboarding was down the list with 112,000, after football, hockey, soccer and baseball. Snowboarding, skiing and motorcycle racing didn’t even make the top 15; golf was more dangerous, injuring 47,000 Of course, the statistics are skewed a little because pediatricians don’t classify those injuries that occur while people are doing the most extreme activities, things like jumping snowmobiles over garages or riding mountain bikes off rock ledges, as “sports injuries.” They use a variety of other descriptive terms, along with head shaking and eye rolling. I am glad that the statistics favoured my side of the argument, but more than that, I am pleased to note that many parents are not content to let their children remain couch potatoes. No, instead they continue to enroll their children in those traditional sporting activities that most effectively teach young people life’s most valuable lessons: Don’t be a baby; suck it up; it could be worse; no pain, no gain; in a couple months you’ll be as good as new! Extreme sports have a long way to go to match that.

The Tweets Did It

I uttered an oath at the television screen yesterday. I’m not proud of my behaviour; however, I maintain that I have a valid excuse. My wife disagrees. She maintains that I am showing signs of “the early onset of….” Something. I forget what. Anyway, my abuse of the small screen was brought about by two more indications that we are all being overwhelmed by a deluge of drivel. The Global evening news had a story about a formula that predicted the year’s most depressing day, which happened to be January 16. The formula, we were told, was phony, a fake, a concoction of a PR company to stimulate January shopping. That didn’t matter. The News Hour spent three minutes covering it anyway. The story featured interviews with shoppers, commentary from psychologists and Tweets from viewers. I began to squirm in my overstuffed chair when the interviews began, and by the time the newscaster started reading Tweets, I was ready to explode. I did explode. There are hundreds of thousands of Haitians without shelter, gang shootings, protesters, rebellions in the Middle East, typhoons, shark attacks, looney Republicans vying for the U.S. presidency and the News Hour, the most highly regarded evening news program in the country (we are told) is spending valuable minutes covering a phoney predictor of middle class melancholy. It was the Tweets that did it. I won’t tell you what I said, but I will gladly own up to the outburst and in fact tell you that I am likely to reoffend. I don’t care that Megaboy thinks “January really sucks” or that Phyllis21 believes “shoppings good Jan 16 cuz no crowds.” I don’t watch the evening news to hear the inane rambling of people who have nothing better to do than Tweet. I want the news to provide an intelligent summary of important events throughout Canada, B.C. and the world. I want to hear what people have to say who are more intelligent than I am with greater background in current affairs. Why news programs all over, from CNN to Global are beginning to read randomly over the airways the erratic reactions of viewers is absolutely beyond me. My wife, as usual, added an appropriate word of caution, suggesting that I should reconsider writing this column. If people, in fact, stop being interested in “inane rambling,” she mused, no one would read my column.