Size doesn't really matter

The dragon boat races over the weekend taught us a number of things: first, you can't swim in the East River by order of the health board and the Town of New Glasgow.
I assume this isn't because of shark sightings, but rather the stuff that probably gets dumped in the water (although no one admits to anything). But maybe the bacteria is up, or something.
It'd be interesting to know what kind of mutated life forms lie beneath the East River.
Is there some kind of hulking monster down there under the river bed, that will one day rise from the deep? A flesh-eating, alligator/grizzly bear hybrid with intelligence greater than humans? Not that that would be something to brag about. Still, it's worrisome.
Our dragon boat team (the Paper Dragons) had a coach that scared most of us, a Bill Parcells type who in the first 30 seconds of our practice the Thursday prior, told someone to shut up. He wasn't fooling around, either.
I liked that - a dragon boat team is similar to a football team: the coach needs to instil discipline and order right away, that way we have a better chance of winning a championship and keeping the boat upright.
Anyway, we 'made' the consolation round and finished in a respectable third place - if, that is, you view third place in a three-boat consolation race as 'respectable.'
I really wanted to beat the Eastern Sign Print team because we'd done some pre-race trash talking (sure it was childish, but they started it… no, wait… I started it), but they out-paddled us by a second or two.
In a hotly anticipated battle, Elizabeth May's team beat Peter MacKay's team in a head-to-head matchup earlier in the day. Another boat finished first in that race, but with the May-MacKay drama, who cares?
This race divided the spectators (media spin doctoring right here before your eyes, done so we can keep you paying attention more than 15 seconds): on one side was a group of tree-hugging, pot-smoking iceberg lovers who only listen to Joan Baez if she's on vinyl, on the other side a bunch of stuffy, money-driven corporate types who listen to smooth jazz and opera, drive SUVs and whose most thrilling moment in life was shaking hands with Brian Mulroney.
Oh, and making all that money.
I won't say which group rooted for which boat as I'd prefer to remain impartial, but I can say that MacKay's people blamed the former Liberal government for the loss, while May's people were actually shocked they could finish ahead of anybody in anything.

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The TV conked out last week, a disheartening turn of events for any sports fan. What's worse, this one isn't even two years old - a 27-inch shiny silvery idiot box that a bunch of co-workers bought as a present when the wife and I got hitched a couple of years ago, is now a space-eating pile of junk.
We've been told by people in the know that we'd be better off buying another new one. Shouldn't a TV last 10 years, like they used to? Or at the very least, two years?
So we went to Plan 'B' - the wife's old TV that looked very small sitting over there on the television stand. But after a couple of hours watching TV last Thursday as the Jets and Browns hooked up in an NFL exhibition game, we discovered that you don't even notice the size difference. This means that we won't need to Supersize the TV in the future by buying one of those big screens, and won't be joining that merry-go-round of blind, gotta-have-the-gizmo consumerism (although I heard that once you go Hi-Def, you don't go back).
The important thing is, we have a TV that works just in time for the NFL season. And, it's colour. Awesome.

Kevin Adshade is sports editor with The News