“You know how many programmes I could buy for $100,000?” The speaker is the programme director at a local television channel. He is responding—with a straight face, I am told—to a suggestion by a group of excited young men smitten with the television bug and naïve—or rash—enough to think that …
Read More »Calypso cricket; Sparrow, Shadow and Shannon’s Sunday slog
Out of the woodwork they have come in their numbers, rushing to the defence of poor Shannon Gabriel whose unsurprising eleventh hour Sunday evening brain fart handed Pakistan the Third and final Test in Dominica two weekends ago. But what know they of Caribbean cricket, to misquote CLR James, who do …
Read More »MEDIA MONITOR: Property tax and personal positions before patriotism?
I want to begin with a confession: I voted for the PNM in 2015 and would probably, all things being equal, do so again if an election were called tomorrow. But I am NOT “a PNM.” Nor am I anti-PNM. I think of myself as a patriot. I am, however, …
Read More »Dhoni, Sobers or Warne as World T20 skipper? Best looks at ESPN’s World XI Team
Neither Brian Lara with his multiple batting records nor Curtly Ambrose with his deadly destructive 20.99 ODI bowling average was deemed good enough to make the final ESPN World XI. Joel Garner, whose ODI strike rate is an impressive 50.8 and whose average is even more impressive at an incredible …
Read More »Are reports of Carnival’s demise exaggerated? Stakeholders await govt post-mortem
Forty days and 40 nights. And counting… NCC has had its say. Communications is largely silent. Tourism has been silenced. Community Development, Culture and the Arts has had nothing to say. But the volume of kangkatang in this year’s Carnival, it seems to me, makes a proper post-mortem imperative. And …
Read More »MEDIA MONITOR: Cuffie’s confusing crucifixion communication and Rowley as bobolee
“Faith,” the King James version of the Holy Bible tells us in Hebrews 11:1, “is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” But Communications Minister Maxie Cuffie was careful not to mention that very relevant Bible verse in his Easter message to the troubled citizenry …
Read More »MEDIA MONITOR: Trinidad Express shoots itself in the foot; sister station also hurt
POW! POW! POW! Fans of Chinese food could be forgiven for licking their lips on the morning of Tuesday 4 April. Who really could imagine, before seeing the ‘Three shot dead in Port of Spain’ drop head, that the Express’ front page headline referred not to the steamed or fried …
Read More »MEDIA MONITOR: Wired868 takes a side; classy commentary coming to a device near you
Ivy pack up she clothes to leave/because John was down and out (…) (…) Johnny nearly kill she with blows/Poor Ivy bawl like a cow… (“No money, no love”) Women are taking a beating in Trinidad and Tobago. And if that were merely a metaphor, neither the news nor Sparrow’s …
Read More »Running for my life with COSTAATT; Best finds things not so easy on a Sunday morning
Tiger Woods, I read somewhere, trains with 50 pounds of weights strapped to his chest and back. Tiger was just 41 last December 30; I was 67 on Saturday. A quarter of a century makes a big difference. They do say, however, that age is just a number. But if …
Read More »Media monitor: Unimpressed by the Express… or the Guardian
I doh have no media tabanca. Some Wired868 readers think I do but I don’t; I swear. I abandoned the conventional media—well, more accurately, the conventional media amputated me—after I had spent four years at the Guardian followed immediately by six at the Express. I have no regrets. There hasn’t been …
Read More »Juba Doo Bye Bye? Best calls on Chalkdust to hang up his guns once and for all
The Mighty Chalkdust has no more than one month to make a public announcement that that’s it, he’s calling it a day at last. In February, in his 50th year in the business, the former schoolteacher who celebrated his 76th birthday in early March sang “Learn from Arithmetic” to beat out 16 others …
Read More »Trexit?! Best looks back at the Hex road so far travelled by the Soca Warriors
In the beginning was the word and the word was with Hart and the word was heart. And the Soca Warriors were looking like the 300, capable of beating tremendous odds. But there was a boy called David who, like the fellah in front in Sparrow’s “Ten to One is …
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