Lowe blow nothing new for our fine community

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Kenny Boyce photo Rob Lowe (right) with Roger Waters.

When it comes to insulting Winnipeg, Rob Lowe has a long way to go before he can touch former Bombers quarterback Dieter Brock.

Back in the early '80s, the immensely powerful pivot ran afoul of the entire city for wisecracking there was not much for his family to do in this town after they made a few visits to the Assiniboine Park Zoo.

Brock was eventually traded to Hamilton and spent a season in the NFL before he retired from pro football. Winnipeg fans eventually came around to cherishing his memory as one of the greatest players to ever wear the Blue & Gold,

But make no mistake, Brock was actually trying to diss Winnipeg three decades ago. That's quite unlike Lowe, the latest celebrity to learn a lesson about tweeting before consulting his cerebral cortex.

The former Brat Pack thespian is in this city to shoot a flick about Casey Anthony, the Orlando woman acquitted in the murder of her two-year-old daughter.

As everyone in this corner of Twitterverse knows, Lowe was trying to catch an NBA game on TV Tuesday night when it appears WDAZ, the ABC affiliate in Grand Forks, N.D., broke in with some election results.

"The local affiliate is interrupting the 4th quarter of the #NBAFinals to show city council election results!!! #TrappedInAHellHole," Lowe tweeted.

Within seconds, Lowe was well on his way to becoming public enemy No. 1 among Winnipeggers offended by his characterization of the town as a Satanic indentation in the ground. By Wednesday morning, people across southern Manitoba and a chunk of North Dakota were feigning indignation.

While a spokeswoman for Lowe's production company declined to set up an interview with the actor, City of Winnipeg film liaison Kenny Boyce attempted to reclaim Lowe's high ground.

The bar, not the city, was the hellhole in question, Boyce claimed.

"We won't say what the bar was, but it wasn't great to start with. It got worse when they changed the channel," Boyce said. "That was the hellhole."

Lowe made nice Wednesday morning with a follow-up tweet.

"Thanks. Will find a better sports bar," he responded to a follower who suggested TSN was a better bet for NBA-watching.

This is actually Lowe's second stint in Winnipeg, added Boyce, who insisted the actor has enjoyed spending time at the city's restaurants and at events such as a Roger Waters concert and Pride celebrations.

"He's filming here for a couple of weeks and he thinks Winnipeg is a great city," Boyce said. "He's a good guy and he's brought millions of dollars of business to Canada."

Now even if Lowe intended to call Winnipeg a hellhole, this city has endured far worse. As recently as 2011, when it looked like the Phoenix Coyotes might return to Winnipeg, former 'yotes goalie Ilya Bryzgalov said he wouldn't want to play here because of the cold, lack of excitement and apparent absence of parks.

Bryzgalov, it must be noted, hails from Tolyatti, a crime-plagued Russian city where five journalists and two politicians have been murdered in apparent Mafia hits over the past 15 years.

In 2007, meanwhile, minor Hollywood actor Julian McMahon called Winnipeg "the weirdest place on Earth" while promoting some now-forgotten Sandra Bullock movie.

"It's cold for nine months of the year and nobody goes out," he told reporters. "And then when it gets warm, they have those worms that drop out of the sky!"

To be fair to McMahon, Winnipeg is blessed with many entomological wonders. To be fair to Bryzgalov, Winnipeg is in fact one of the coldest cities on Earth.

And to be fair to Dieter Brock, the family entertainment options in Winnipeg are so bleak, our current mayor has spent four years trying to spend $7 million worth of public funds on a private water park.

A real city, however, simply laughs off celebrity insults. Being offended by an errant tweet is like getting upset when a five-year-old calls you smelly.

The only appropriate response to Rob Lowe was to poke fun of the guy in response. Judging from the Twitterverse on Wednesday, mission accomplished, Winnipeg.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca

A few other famous disses

At least they didn't riot

OUT on the West Coast, X-Files star David Duchovny earned the ire of Vancouverites for clamouring to move the production of the 1990s TV series to Los Angeles. But the real source of the city's hate-on for the actor was a famous diss on late-night television.

"Vancouver is a very nice place, if you like 400 inches of rainfall a day," Duchovny told talk show host Conan O'Brien in 1998.

To this day, Duchovny is the second-most-hated man in Vancouver, after Zdeno Chara.

Winging it in Buffalo

During the lead-up to this year's Super Bowl, New England Patriots' QB Tom Brady inexplicably chose to diss Buffalo's hospitality industry.

"I don't know if any of you guys have ever been to the hotels in Buffalo, but they're not the nicest places in the world," Brady said at a press conference, apparently trying to praise his dad's dedication in following him around on the road.

The reaction was as comical as it was indignant.

"Tom Brady comes to Buffalo once a year and to pass judgment like that I think is just irresponsible at best," Embassy Suites manager Bryan Drew told a CNN affiliate. "We've got some great hotels, especially here downtown."

But on the serious side

In 2003, former Winnipeg Blue Bombers placekicker Troy Westwood started a tradition when he offered up a few words for Saskatchewan Roughrider fans in Regina.

"I had referred to the people of Saskatchewan as a bunch of banjo-picking inbreds. I was wrong to make such a statement, and I'd like to apologize," Westwood said.

"The vast majority of the people in Saskatchewan have no idea how to play the banjo." As a result, Winnipeg now plays Saskatchewan in the Banjo Bowl every September, during the weekend after Labour Day.

-- Kives

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 14, 2012 A2