Franchitti the joker may be wild at the Indianapolis 500

IndyCar drivers spend on average about three weeks each year at the
Indianapolis Motor Speedway in preparation for the series’ biggest race, the
Indianapolis 500. Much of that time is spent testing and adjusting the cars’ setup, getting them just right for the track conditions in the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing,” which this year airs Sunday, May 29, on ABC. Then of course, the drivers must also satisfy the myriad media requests and commitments to sponsors. Still, that can take up only so much time, leaving drivers, crew and other racing personnel to their own devices to pass the time and combat boredom.
For some, that can mean practical jokes. Back in 2005, then-Andretti Green
teammates Dario Franchitti, Tony Kanaan, Dan Wheldon and Bryan Herta engaged in a friendly war of pranks that culminated in Franchitti hacksawing
Kanaan’s expensive racing bike in half during the live broadcast of a
nationally run preshow, a debt that Franchitti has since repaid by
purchasing Kanaan a new set of wheels. Still, Franchitti wants what he says
is his due. “The deal was,” says Franchitti, the two-time Indy 500 and
threetime IndyCar champ, “that he was going to give me half of the frame I
sawed in half, and he was going to keep the other half. He hasn’t given me
the other half yet, so I’m waiting for my half bicycle. When I see him at
Indy I’m going to be asking for it. “What I’m going to do with half a
bicycle, I don’t know. I’ll probably stick it on a wall to remind me,” he
says, laughing. “But I haven’t had much time for practical jokes lately.
But Indy’s always a good time for it because we’re there for such a long
time, and most of the drivers stay at the track in their buses. So yeah,
there could be some practical jokes in there. We’ll see.”
Pranks notwithstanding, what is certain is that a 33-car field that includes
Kanaan, Scott Dixon, Danica Patrick, Will Power, Ryan Briscoe and Helio
Castroneves will take to the venerable Brickyard’s 2.5-mile quad oval to
challenge Franchitti and his 2010 title in the race’s 100th anniversary and
95th overall running.  Franchitti won this race last year under caution
after leading it for 155 of 200 laps. He played his fuel strategy perfectly,
crossing the track’s brick finish line just ahead of Wheldon with a scant
1.6 gallons of fuel left. Moments later, the 38-yearold Scotsman was sipping
from the winner’s traditional quart of milk.
“Had the race gone green,” Franchitti says, “I’m not saying we would have
been able to do burnouts on my victory lap. But we had calculated we had
enough fuel to make it. So for me, apart for the last 20 laps with having to
save fuel, it was a day I was able to run in front.  The Target car was very
fast, and I was driving it well, and I was able to lead something like
150-odd laps or something. So it was a nice feeling to be out front and
leading all those laps.
“But typical Indianapolis,” he says. There’s always something that happens,
and you have to adapt to it. So it was definitely an interesting end.”
Weather also has a way of making things interesting at Indy, be it the
ever-present crosswinds that can make for unexpected handling issues and
force changes in car setup; rain, which can shut things down entirely; or
sun and heat, which can affect tire grip and also influence setup. A good
example of that, says Franchitti, was last year’s race, when “the
temperature went up a lot in the two or three days before the race, which
means the track loses grip, so you have to adjust the car for that.
“In windy conditions,” he continues, “it can make it very difficult for the
driver. All these things kind of have to be taken into consideration,
especially with the speeds you’re running there and the fact the setup is so
critical. Because there’s so little speed differential between the high
speed you go and the slowest speed you go around a lap of Indy that any gust
of wind and any slight change in any of the conditions makes quite a big
difference.” Franchitti, who has been racing in the U.S. since 1998 and
running at Indy since 2002, also won the Indy 500 under caution in 2007,
when rain brought about an early end with 33 laps to go.
Franchitti described that first win as “the culmination of a dream,” and he
maintains that the excitement he feels racing and winning at Indy has not
diminished with time and success. “No, not at all,” he says, laughing, “I
think because it’s so difficult to win there, like any race. When I won the
fi rst race at St. Pete this year, the excitement was every bit as much as
my fi rst win in America back in 1998. Obviously, there’s something
extra-special about Indy because it’s Indianapolis, and the second one I was
as equally excited as the first.”

It’s grow time for the ‘Canada AM’ garden guy

Time was that Victoria Day was the opening gun for the gardening season.
Now, says CTV’s gardening expert, Mark Cullen, people are a little more
flexible about when they start working the earth, how long they go at it and
how they do it. Victoria Day “is not the massive peak that it was 25 years
ago,” he says. “What’s changed more than anything are gardeners,” Cullen
explains. “The previous generation was trained to do their gardening early
and to get their plants in the ground by May 24, which was officially the
first frost-free date in most parts of the country.”
Nevertheless, this is the busy season for Cullen, who joins weather and
adventure guy Jeff Hutcheson every Wednesday on CTV’s “Canada AM” to talk
about all things leafy and green.
Nowadays, he says, because so much of what we plant comes already sprouting
in a container from the nursery, the preparing and planting phase of
gardening can start later and run longer. “You can plant all summer long,”
he says. “And that’s encouraged us to relax a little bit around this sense
of urgency that was felt around the May 24 weekend.
“People are planting in June and July. They’re the two growth months for
retail plant sales, and they have been for more than 10 years.” Cullen has
spent his life in gardening and gardening supplies, but he’s best known as a
writer and broadcaster. He writes columns for the Toronto Star and Home at
Home and Gardens West magazines.  He hosts a Toronto radio show and used to
have a gardening series on HGTV Canada. He has written several books.
He also is spokesman for the Home Hardware chain. And he was literally born
with a green thumb. The Cullen name is well known in the Greater Toronto
Area, partly because of the famous Cullen Gardens in Whitby, a tourist
attraction until the family closed it in 2006.  His parents ran that and the
family nursery, and he grew up and into the family business. Nowadays, he
says, his main preoccupation is organic gardening.  For example, in his
Wednesday, June 1, segment, Cullen plans to talk about things you can plant
to attract butterfl ies and hummingbirds to a garden.
“There’s a whole series of trends in gardening that are associated with the
naturalizing of our residential landscapes,” he says. “That includes the use
of native plant material and the attracting of desirable wildlife. “We don’t
want raccoons or skunks, but we do want songbirds and butterfl ies and
hummingbirds, and the more the better.”
This ties in with what, for want of a better term, you could call green
gardening: passing up exotic or imported plants in favor of native ones,
fertilizing and controlling weeds without chemicals, and attracting that
“desirable wildlife.”
Cullen also says that Canadians are starting to reject the idea that having
a garden means pouring tons of water into the ground. “People are looking
for ways to conserve water,” he says. “And this idea that you plant a garden
and then you have to water it frequently, every couple of days – that notion
is disappearing. “People are planting a lot of plants that require a lot
less maintenance.  They’re drought-tolerant.”
One aspect of landscaping that has gotten a bad rap by environmentalists, he
says, is the lawn, which is good as long as you keep the chemicals out of
it. “I say that the lawn is like a potato.  It’s not the potato that’s bad
for you; it’s what you put on it. “The lawn, from an environmental point of
view, is extremely beneficial. An average suburban lawn provides enough
oxygen to supply a family of four people. It sequesters carbon. It filters
pollutants out of rainwater. All kinds of neat things happen.”

The most common theme, when it comes to questions he gets from homeowners,
Cullen says, is how to cut down on the ugly side of gardening. For example,
almost nobody will claim to love weeding and watering.  “Without chemicals,
you can bring 90 percent of your weeds under control with a five-centimeter
layer of bark mulch,” he says. “It works wonders, and you’ll eliminate the
amount of water that’s needed by 70 percent. And if you eliminate 90 percent
of your weeds by mulching, that leaves you a ton of time to do things you
prefer.”
And the most common mistake he sees people making is not paying enough
attention to soil preparation: putting down good soil and enough of it,
adding compost, and improving the drainage (essential in a country that has
as much clay as Canada has).
Planting without proper soil preparation, he says, is “like building a house
without a foundation.” The main thing to remember, he adds, is that you
can’t ever really fail with a garden, because there’s always next year. “I
like to say there’s no such thing as failure. Just composting
opportunities.” Mark Cullen is the gardening expert on CTV’s weekday series
“Canada AM.” His segments air Wednesdays.

HICCUPS

Meet Millie Upton; a childrenís book author who is wildly successful, internationally popular, and socially unpredictable. Millie s success in writing for children is perhaps due in part to her being about as emotionally evolved as a six year old. Millieís emotional ìhiccupsî get her into no end of situations. In an effort to get a handle on things, she impulsively enlists the aid of a life coach Stan Dirko, to help set her straight. Only problem is, though heís got a big heart and big ideas, Stan has very little life-coaching experience.
Everyday, Stan attempts to balance Millieís sudden outbursts of laughter, sadness and rage. Along for the ride is Millieís publisher and owner of Haddison House, Joyce Haddison. Joyce reaps the financial benefit of Millieís popularity, but consequently suffers the pitfalls and endless lawsuits that result from being associated with Millie. Joyce also has to suffer her new receptionist, Crystal Braywood, the daughter of a wealthy banker, who has no desire to ìwork,î and whom Joyce agreed to hire in exchange for favourable terms on her buildingís mortgage. Joyceís other stick in the spokes is Millieís literary agent Taylor Rymes, who is as self-centred and as slick as greaseÖor maybe just slimy.
Drifting through both the publishing world and the personal world is Anna Dirko, Stanís loveable and slightly bewildered wife who does her best to support his impractical dream of becoming a life coach..
Canada’s ost-watched new Canadian comedy series returns to CTV with the Season 2 premiere on Monday, May 30 at 8pm before moving to its regular slot Sundays at 8:30pm June 19.
Stan (Brent Butt) and Millie (Nancy Robertson) resume their adventures in baby-sittingÖerrÖlife-coaching, in Hollywood, setting the tone for an even more exciting season full of laughs and mishaps.
Filmed in Vancouver, “Hiccups” is produced by Sparrow Media in association with CTV and The Comedy Network. Brent Butt is creator, writer, show runner and executive producer.
Adding to the fan experience in a distinct way this season is an up-close look at the cast and crew of “Hiccups” with the all-new hiccups.tv. The website promises some hiccup-free hilarity with original, exclusive webisodes, interviews and behind the scenes footage for viewers, as they play to win prizes with new Facebook game, ìWhat Would Millie Doî.
As a new season begins, itís still a case of the lost leading the lost, with the best of intentions and very little chance
of success. Millieís motley crew of colleagues and supporters includes Laura Soltis as Joyce, David Ingram as Taylor Rymes, Emily Perkins as Crystal, and Paula Rivera as Anna.
In the premiere, a trip to Hollywood is in order for Millie, Stan and Taylor to investigate some options for a Grumpaloo movie. Back at Haddison House, Joyce uses Anna and Crystal as guinea pigs to test homemade skin care products

EXTREME MAKEOVER: WEIGHT LOSS EDITION

In the competitive reality show “The Biggest Loser,” which airs on NBC, contestants are sequestered on a ranch in Southern California, where they struggle with diet and exercise to shed pounds, always hoping theyíve lost enough to escape elimination at the next weigh-in.
The producer of that show is J.D. Roth, and he’s also behind the new ABC series “Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition,” premiering Monday, May 30.
The focus is still on tackling obesity, but this time, the stay in the lap of luxury is brief, and then the participants fight the rest of their battles at home.
Sitting in the high-tech gym at the California Health & Longevity Institute, a wellness and medical facility attached to a Four Seasons Hotel in Westlake Village, Calif., north of Los Angeles, Roth looks around and says, ìThis isnít where they lost their weight. They spent one week here. The help that they got allows them to use the nuclear option. If youíre going to go on a show like this, itís all in. Itís all or nothing, every single day.
“We have cameras in their houses. We check in on weekends. Each of the eight episodes focuses on one superobese person (the highest starting weight was 651, and the lowest 369) over a year. They start at the institute for a ìboot camp,î which includes a complete medical work-up and nutrition education. They then return home, where trainer Chris Powell (ìThe 650-Pound Virginî) has turned a room in the house into a gym.
Powell stays with each participant for several weeks to get him or her started. Then theyíre on their own, with periodic check-ins, both at home and at the institute. Some do incredibly well; some struggle with themselves; others, with their loved ones. In a way, the show is an answer to those fans of ìThe Biggest Loserî who grouse that anyone can lose weight if he ís tucked away at a fancy ranch with top-notch trainers.
Roth admits,”It ís tougher to motivate without the weigh-in every week, and thatís presented some challenges. … This show proves you can do it on your own, too.”
While those who donít weigh well north of pleasantly plump may think these people suffer from some exotic malady that put them in this situation, Powell begs to differ. “What (these people) have in common is no different than what we all have in common.” he says. “For them, they deal with their emotions with food. That’s it. I deal with my emotions, right now, I’m a workaholic. If you asked me three years ago, it was caffeine. I had way too much of it. ìWhat they encounter in everyday life is the same thing that we all encounter. … They have issues that so many of us deal with. Food is the drug of choice.
It could be sex; it could be work; it could be gambling.”
Powell believes that these people are dealing with a true addiction.
“Absolutely,” he says. “They measured the chemical release in the brain when a food addict smells food. Sure enough, there’s a similar kind of chemical release in the brain at the same time. Also, the amount of sugar we get nowadays in one pop in our food has changed.
That sugar elicits such a strong chemical response in the body. It is a chemical addiction.”
Inspired by a seven-minute video in which one contestant, 651-pound James, struggles to just put on his socks, Roth doesn’t just want to change bodies. He says, “I thought, ‘This is sad. This is a guy who’s going to die, and he doesn’t have to.’ I went to ABC, and I said, ‘What if we could give that guy his life back?’”
As much as this is a show about weight loss, it’s really not. Itís a show about people changing their lives. That’s one reason Roth came to the institute. It’s more than just a well-appointed medical facility, wellness center, gym and spa; it also has a stated mission of sustainable change.
“If you transform people in a sustainable way, you’ve done something really, really great.” says its medical director, rheumatology and internal medicine specialist Dr. Terry Schaack. “We believe if you can bring people, give them immersion for … days or weeks, that you can actually give them the skill set, the knowledge base, then they can go home and incorporate that into their home lives and actually make sustainable change. We’re not delusional. We know that not all of these people are going to continue to lose after 365 days, but many of them are, and many of them are going to maintain the weight they’ve already lost. That’s a wonderful thing for us, that this is a sustainable change that this show has been able to help these people experience.”

TOO BIG TO FAIL

If the economy hadn’t hung in the balance, the economic meltdown of 2008 would make for a great tragic play. Still, the epic story of hubris and greed makes for a gripping, if overly taut HBO film, “Too Big to Fail,” airing Monday, May 23. Based on Andrew Ross Sorkin’s best-seller and directed by Curtis Hanson (“L.A. Confidential”), the film goes behind closed doors to reveal how then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (William Hurt) and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (Paul Giamatti) strong-armed CEOs of major banks into staving off a full-out crash.
“While this was happening I sort of had a sense of what was going on, and now that I do have a sense I am retroactively scared,” says Cynthia Nixon, who plays Michele Davis, assistant secretary of the treasury for public affairs. “It’s really galling. On a certain level, Hank Paulson and Bernanke were heroes and saved us from what could have been truly cataclysmic.”
The federal bailout was fraught with doubt, over which loomed the specter of economic ruin not seen since the Great Depression. The film focuses on the difficult machinations to reach that point. It’s a complicated, dry and often abstract subject, yet one that affects everyone.
“I’ve been thinking about, reading about the issue for as long as it’s been going on,” Hurt say of the crisis. “My friends and I talk about it. I studied economics in college, so it’s not that alien to me as a person.”
While the other actors were interviewed separately for this article, Hurt, at a press conference last winter, says, “One of the things we did was develop a glossary of terms, a list of characters’ personae and a history of events.”
Like the exceptionally reported book upon which this is based, the film does a solid job of explaining what happened. There is, of course, plenty of blame to go around.
“People act like we are crack dealers,” James Woods as Lehman Brothers Chairman and CEO Richard Fuld says in the film. “Nobody put a gun to anybody’s head and said, ‘Hey, nimrod, buy a house you can’t afford.
And while you’re at it, put a line of credit on that baby and buy yourself a boat.”
Many books, documentaries and TV shows have examined what happened, but this film comes at it from montages of news clips stitched into the narratives of the people behind the major decisions. When financial terminology is flying, it can be an impenetrable subject.
Jim Wilkinson (Topher Grace), chief of staff at the Department of the Treasury, cuts to the essence of the crisis when he says, “Wall Street started bundling home loans together into mortgage-backed securities and selling slices of those bundles to investors. And they were making big money, so they started pushing the lenders saying, ‘Come on, we need more.’ ”
As excellent as the actors are, a movie about meetings and decisions has limits. This feels like a play turned into a film rather than a film adapted from a book. It could be a lot more visual, and it would have been had we had a glimpse into the lavish lifestyles of the Wall Street bosses.
Then there’s Warren Buffett, the world’s richest man, who is shown at a fast food restaurant with his great-grandchildren. Many of the principals — Hurt, Nixon and Grace — talked with the people they portray, but Ed Asner didn’t meet with Buffett.
“I’m not a moneyman,” Asner says. “It would be such a mitzvah to have Warren Buffett take every penny I earn and say, ‘Let him handle it.’ ”
Though not every actor is a doppelganger of his real counterpart, care was taken to create striking resemblances. Giamatti’s shaved head, white beard and the measured way he speaks are so very much like Bernanke. As for the blondish wig he wore to portray Buffett, Asner, deadpan, says, “I have so much hair it was a minor adjustment.”
Some of the main players, such as Wilkinson, are not well-known.
“He has a very low profile for someone in PR, which I respected him for,” Grace says.
While Asner and Nixon let their feelings be known on some issues, respectively politics and public schools, Grace is purposefully mum about his opinions.
“I want to be really careful that I don’t say anything when I am doing interviews that bring my politics or point of view,” he says. “I am just careful that no one should care what actors think — about anything. Anything to do with money, you should not care what actors think.”
The actors interviewed agreed that this film puts recent history into perspective.
“It gives a real sense of what might have happened if we had gone off the precipice,” Nixon says, “if we hadn’t been able to stop the downward spiral.”
“Had there been a defeat, it would have been a defeat for everybody but it was only a victory for the very top,” Nixon says.
Since this crisis broke, 10 banks now hold 77 percent of all U.S.
assets. They have been declared too big to fail.

Living the dream on Space with the resident fan boys

If you’re a fan of comic books, video games and science fiction, being one of the in-house fan boys for Space: The Imagination Station may be as good as it gets this side of Middle-earth. As co-hosts of “InnerSPACE,” airing every Tuesday through Friday, Ajay Fry and Teddy Wilson are two thirds of a trio of house geeks who report on current events for fans of all the things the network holds dear: sci-fi and fantasy in the form of movies, TV, video games, comic books, graphic novels – even the occasional science news.
As Wilson says, “geek” is “a label we embrace proudly.” “People write Ph.D. dissertations on elements of sci-fi and fandom,” he says. “I think part of geekdom is that you go down the rabbit hole as far as it takes you. Everybody who works here is a geek, and everybody has elements of geekdom that they’re even more into. But in general, everybody here loves the content that we talk about.”
Wilson, 34, and Fry, 27, hail from Ottawa with backgrounds that weren’t geared toward producing genre mavens.  Fry started acting as a child and appeared on such series as “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” and “Big Wolf on Campus.” He moved to Toronto to study comedy at Humber College and Second City and was a YTV host before being picked up in 2008 as the face of “The Circuit,” the predecessor to “InnerSPACE.”
Wilson also got his start as a child performer, as a regular for two seasons on the 1990s kids show “You Can’t Do That on Television.” “I was aware of Teddy Wilson,” Fry says. “Part of the reason I got into the entertainment industry was because ‘You Can’t Do That on Television’ was my favorite show. My earliest memory of learning about being an actor was my father sitting down with me watching that show and saying, ‘They’re just playing pretend, Ajay, like you do with your friends. But they get paid to do that.’ And I said, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ ” Unlike Fry, Wilson veered away from show business and into politics, getting a degree in political science from Carleton University and then working as a policy adviser and speechwriter for the Ontario government in Toronto.
He says he’s still a political junkie. “I still actively follow it, but I got to a point where I wanted to do something else workwise. I had a blast, though.”
Wilson also plays drums for the indie rock band Huddle. “That’s my passion outside of work, in addition to all my work passions.”
It was while he was working at Queen’s Park that Wilson slipped back into entertainment by promoting comedy shows on the side. That led out of politics and into a job on the now-defunct Comedy Network series “PopCultured,” which in turn led to work as a producer and reporter with Bell-CTV stablemates MTV and Space. In 2009, when the weekly “Circuit” became the four-days-a-week “InnerSPACE,” Wilson signed on to co-host with Fry. The third component of the “InnerSPACE” trio is Natasha Eloi, a high-tech freak and videographer who has been with the show since it began as “HypaSpace” almost 10 years ago.

So You Think You Can Dance’ takes a spin for its eighth season

Of all of the dance shows that have cropped up over the past few years, “So You Think You Can Dance” is arguably the most grueling and showcases the best dancing.
When the Fox hit returns for its eighth season Thursday, May 26, it will again celebrate dancers from ballerinas to breakers. Celebrate them, then mandate that they use their talent to learn completely new genres, then require that they perform with different partners whose names are picked out of a hat. It’s such a tall task that it’s akin to asking a drummer from a jazz quartet to play a Beethoven sonata – on piano in an orchestra.
This season brings a return to the old format and the return of a popular judge, Mary Murphy. The two-hour performance shows will be on Wednesdays and the results shows on Thursdays. Murphy, who missed almost all of last season because of illness, is excited about the upcoming season.
“I’m on the road doing auditions,” says Murphy, who will team this season with Nigel Lythgoe and a guest judge. “I just finished Las Vegas week, and we’re having an amazing season. I don’t know how to describe it. I don’t know if it is me with a newfound appreciation, because I am over my cancer. I feel like we have a special connection to this group. We all felt it in Las Vegas. We are all bawling our eyes out. It’s never been that way. I felt such a connection to this group of kids, There were 160 brought to Las Vegas, and we had four days to pick our top 20.”
Cat Deeley attends every audition. This season that meant five cities and roughly 5,000 dancers.  “I actually think it is a really vital part of the journey,” Deeley says of the auditions. “It is very interesting for me to see how they come in and watch their growth. I want to be there every step of the way. I want to develop as natural a relationship as I can and not have them say, ‘Who is this English chick trying to be my friend?’ It is good to know you have someone there every step of the way.”
Though the dance world can be intensely competitive, Deeley says the show fosters an esprit de corps among the hopefuls. “We want them to feel they can always come back and ask questions, about personal matters, family matters, contracts,” Deeley says. “We often see people from past seasons. They pop in and grab lunch and have a gossip.”
Reflecting on the evolution of the show, Murphy acknowledges that she initially was unsure this would work. “In the very beginning I don’t think we knew that anybody would be able to do what we asked of them,” she says. “I thought it would be a train wreck and not like a comedy show.”
She recalls, “I was so blown away. There was some dancing that was not that good the first season.  Then some extraordinary dancing that was the start of it all. There are extraordinary dancers out there.  Over the eight seasons, people cross-train, of course. There are still plenty of kids who can’t afford to do that. We do get these superheroes who have trained across the board.”
Both women are boosters of other dance contests and are proud that “So You Think You Can Dance” alumni – Dmitry Chaplin, Lacey Schwimmer, Chelsie Hightower – are on “Dancing With the Stars.”
Though Murphy comes to the show as a ballroom dancer, choreographer and dance teacher, Deeley’s dance background was limited to an annual viewing of “The Nutcracker.” Where Murphy focuses on a dancer’s precise foot placement, Deeley, like so much of the audience, keys into individuals’ stories.
“The narrative that runs through the show is dance,” Deeley says, “but essentially what you are doing is connecting with human beings and their stories and trials and tribulations.” Of the dance shows, this one rivets dancers, but Deeley recognizes, “there are fans of dance, and people who come from the dance world, and they would watch the show, of course. It’s not typical for them to be so populist. What happens is because it is a reality show, but not mean-spirited, and fun, with the best intentions, that people come to watch it who would not normally watch a dance show. And they stay with it and realize how talented the kids are.
“The audience has to become attached to them and are looking for people with that certain star quality,” Deeley continues. “And that’s not just talented dancing.”
If it were just a matter of the fastest, cleanest taps or a series of perfect pirouettes, the best technician would automatically win.
“You can make it so far with amazing technique,” Murphy says.  “And there are extraordinary technicians out there, but if they don’t have the personality,” viewers don’t call in for them. They have to have that personality, and look into the camera and have an organic honesty and that makes them come alive and not be shy,” Murphy says. “That’s where a lot of dancers will fall down.  It will always be the better performer.  Luckily for this show, they’re usually wrapped up in one.”

Where pregnancy can end a life

Most of us think of pregnancy as something that naturally ends in a new life. But there are still places in the world where it’s considered just as natural for it to end in a woman’s death. The documentary “No Woman, No Cry” by model Christy Turlington Burns looks at four places in the world where this is still true.
The film, airing Sunday, May 22, on OWN, was inspired by Burns’ own brush with tragedy; she suffered serious complications after delivering her first child. Being American and wealthy, she had access to first-rate health care, and the incident had a happy ending.  But it got her to thinking about women who are less fortunate, 500,000 of whom die in childbirth every year. In recent years, Burns has devoted much of her time to advocating for maternal health issues. In her film, she shares stories from four countries about women for whom pregnancy is a life-threatening condition and others who are trying to improve the chances of their survival.
In Tanzania, she documents the struggle of a Maasai woman who must walk five miles to a clinic to deliver her baby — and where another woman is even farther from an operation that could mean the difference between life and death for her and her baby.
In Dhaka, an activist tells her about Bangladeshi women who would rather take their chances with a home birth than risk a visit to hospital.
Closer to home, things are almost as dire and in some ways sadder. An official with Planned Parenthood in Guatemala talks about having to overcome the attitude that death in childbirth is as natural as a healthy birth. And in the United States, pregnant women without health insurance often never see a doctor until they are taken into the emergency room to deliver their babies.

Exterior decorating with the deck man

When Paul Lafrance isn’t playing guitar or drums, he’s making sweet music with people’s backyards.  As the founder and head designer of Cutting Edge Construction and Design, Lafrance is responsible for some of the most imaginative decks and patios in Eastern Canada – which is how he came to be on TV.  Lafrance’s series, “Decked Out,” debuted earlier this year on HGTV Canada and is getting the marathon treatment for Victoria Day, Monday, May 23, with a full day of his backyard creations.
The series airs regularly on Thursdays. After 13 episodes, it’s scheduled to morph into “Decked Out Challenge,” in which amateurs who fancy themselves natural-born designers will match skills with one another to see who can create the best decks.
Each episode of this series involves homeowners with a blah outdoors who want to turn their backyards into little holiday resorts.  Actually, in some cases, the projects aren’t so little. One episode involved a family who wanted a pool put in with a deck around it. The result looked like a five-star resort hotel, with several seating areas, assorted gazebos, and an outdoor kitchen and dining area.
“Interesting projects, large or small, are selected to be on the show,” Lafrance says. In all cases, from the modest to the palatial, the philosophy is that a backyard can be a convenient substitute for a summer cottage or a trip to a resort.  “Why do we pack up our families and drive up to a cottage that we have to maintain all year, just to spend a couple of days up there or a week in the summertime?” he asks. “We could have this all the time, 20 feet off the back door of our house in our own backyard.” What we see on the show is largely what happens on every job site, Lafrance says: a tightly knit crew that has as much fun on the job as a lot of people have at play.  Lafrance works with his three brothers-in-law – Joey Fletcher, Patrick Burden and David Kenney – and carpenter Kate Campbell, whom he met doing a segment on “Holmes on Homes.”
“I’m working with my brothers,” Lafrance says. “And Katie’s like our adopted little sister. Why it works is that you’re watching a family dynamic. You’re watching natural funny.”
Lafrance started out wanting to be a professional musician and worked in construction to pay the bills. But after a while, he decided that he could feed his creative drive and make money at the same time if he took his skills out of doors. What he saw in people’s backyards, he says, was usually, “very utilitarian – the barbecue in one corner and the table over there, and that’s about it.”
In 1997, when he was 22, he started his company. Lafrance and his wife, Janna, were pastors of an evangelical Christian church which allowed them to keep their hands in music. Now they write Christian pop music as a sideline, and this spring they expect to release their first CD, which Lafrance he as ranging from stuff you could play in church to “intense, blow-your-head off rock ’n’ roll.”
Though he’s handled projects that cost a quarter million dollars or more, Lafrance says the job he’s most proud of is a small one: converting the “unusable space” behind a townhouse outside Toronto.  “It was this 20-foot by 50-foot bowling alley of a backyard,” he recalls. “And it was, ‘What could we possibly do back here?’ “To take that place and do a radical transformation, to be able to give this young couple the feeling of being in a resort, was so rewarding.  “It doesn’t just translate to the people with megabucks. It’s for everybody.”

JOURNEY TO THE HEART & SOUL OF SONGWRITING: RON SEXSMITH

Vancouver-based Paperny Films and director Douglas Arrowsmith’s feature music documentary, “Love Shines,” most recently won the 2011 Audience Choice Award during its US premiere at SXSW Festival under the 24 BEATS PER SECOND category, and screened as a special presentation at Hot Docs in Toronto, on Fri, May 6.
Eight years in the making, the film takes us to the core of Ron Sexsmith’s gift for song, intimately revealing his elements of character along the way.The documentary will premiere Saturday, May 14 at 8pm on HBO. The critically acclaimed film continues to receive rave reviews from media, ardent devotees, and newfound fans during its festival screenings at SXSW, Available Light Festival, and worldwide premiere at the 2010 Vancouver International Film Festival.
Since its release on March 1, 2011, Ron Sexsmith’s new album, Long Player Late Bloomer, has received glowing reviews throughout the US, UK and Canada.  After its recent premiere on UK’s BBC Four, “Love Shines” and Ron became a trending topic on Twitter, which shot his new album to the #1 spot on Amazon UK’s Alternative and Indie chart and #6 on the UK’s Independent Albums Top 10 Alternative chart.  In the US, the album debuted at #37 on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart and #9 on the Folk Chart, and in Canada,  #8 on the national SoundScan sales chart and at #7 on the national Digital Album sales chart.  This marks the highest chart position and greatest single week’s sales Ron has ever achieved in Canada.
In “Love Shines,” the curtain is pulled back for a rare glimpse inside the recording studio as Sexsmith partners with legendary hit-maker producer Bob Rock (Metallica, Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe) as they work on Long Player Late Bloomer. The process with Rock turns introspective and, through a series of flashbacks, the songwriter confronts the meaning of success, the realities of the music industry and the humble beginnings that sparked the birth of his songs. Punctuated by Super 8 footage chronicling the early years, an extraordinary playlist and a stellar cast featuring Elvis Costello, Steve Earle, Feist, Kiefer Sutherland and Daniel Lanois, “Love Shines” is a journey to the heart and soul of what songwriting is truly about.

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