1. Footloose remake: Starting Friday, you gotta cut loose, footloose, kick off the Sunday shoes, because the remake of 1984’s music drama Footloose is out. It’s about a big-city kid who moves to a small town where rock music and dancing have been banned. So … please, Louise, pull me off of my knees! Jack, get Mack, come on before we crack! Lose your blues, everybody cut footloose!
2. Save a high school: PCVS, a historic downtown high school in Peterborough, Ont., founded in 1827 that counts Lester B. Pearson, Sean Cullen, Serena Ryder and Jim Balsillie as alumni, is fighting through public protests, petitions and YouTube videos to keep its school alive after the local school board recommended that it close. Shutting down an inner-city arts school with culture and heritage will have a significant impact on the economy and fabric of a downtown in a small city. Forget Footloose, this is real-life drama.
3. Winnipeg Jets: Yes, the Jets are flying again after a 15-year hiatus, with a star-studded home opener against Montreal Sunday night that included our PM, George Stroumboulopoulos, and Jim Cuddy and Chantal Kreviazuk singing the national anthem. The Jets might have lost the game, but they won the nation over and their home crowd of 15,000, which gave them a thunderous ovation at game’s end. Welcome back.
4. Ping pong hip: SPiN Toronto, a new 12,000-square- foot basement ping-pong bar in downtown T.O., had its grand opening this week. It’s trying to mimic the success of one of the same name (which it’s part of) in Manhattan, part owned by Susan Sarandon. SPiN is a place to drink, play ping-pong and socialize. Just watch: The next big fad will be pool tables in every basement in the world. Next to a beer fridge.
5. Ron MacLean’s Cornered: The hockey broadcaster icon’s new memoir, Cornered, went on sale this week, and offers inside accounts from his early days as a part-time radio announcer and weather forecaster in Red Deer, Alta., to his time hosting Hockey Night in Canada. Sounds promising, but they should have just called it Coach’s Corner and let Don Cherry write the prologue and epilogue.
6. Rosie’s new crush: Rose O’Donnell is back — four years after leaving The View and a decade since ending her successful daytime talk show — with The Rosie Show, which debuted this week on the Oprah Winfrey Network. Thankfully, it appears she’s not resuscitating her infatuation with Tom Cruise. That’s so ’90s. Apparently her new boy crush is Russell Brand. That’s more 2011.
7. Lee Harvey Oswald’s lover: Judyth Vary Baker is making a rare public appearance next week in Toronto to mark what would be Oswald’s 72nd birthday. Baker, author of Me & Lee: How I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald, has been trying to clear Oswald’s name. Her take: Lee was an undercover agent who had penetrated a ring determined to murder president Kennedy and was actually trying to prevent it but instead got framed. So, JFK conspiracy buffs, there you go.
