The power of choice

Tash and I were chatting today about people we know who almost exclusively watch the news on TV and how terribly anxious these people are about the state of the world. It got me thinking, are they concerned because of how well informed they are or because of the way they are informed.

Like most of my peers, I read my news. Google reader aggregates my news outlets of choice, I get stories sent to me by friends and I can end up scanning up to 1000 articles a day. Not all of these are hard news stories, but there are a good bunch in there. I think I can, with good conscience, call myself informed.

There's something about the TV news and how it's presented, the manner in which information is shared that, I think, creates more anxiety for viewers. The only choice they have is in which news program to watch. They don't get to decide the story line-up or the manner in which it is presented. I suppose with the advent of PVRs, they can decide when they watch it.

I think I'm in more control of how I'm getting my news and the by reading online, it's quick and easy for me to check a different source and get another point of view. Further to that, I have most of my close friends ready via IM to share the article with and discuss it. I think even that small amount of control makes a huge difference. Sure there's lots of streaming video news online, but I feel like I have more control over it.

At the end of it all, the world is still a mess but at least I'm absorbing the magnitude of it on my own terms.

HRH

Fond memories

It seems there's a kind of closure on the whole HNIC theme song situation. CTV has purchased the perpetual rights to the theme. And as a private broadcaster, they have the means to. If the CBC had ponied up $2.5 million for the rights to the song, many a Canadian tax payer would have their hands up in ire. I mean there are a LOT of things that the CBC pays $2.5 million for that I raise an eyebrow at, but I digress. Maybe that amount isn't outlandish, but that's the argument I'm using to help keep my chin up about it all.

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm glad the song will live on. I'm glad that the composer is being well paid for a song that left an indelible mark on the country. I just feel like it has a little less magic to it now. As Graeme said so well, HNIC was the whole package. The theme was part of the format that everyone under 40 grew up with. It was part of what made the experience of crawling out of hibernation in the dead of winter to watch the Leaf's get smoked (even though you always hoped they'd prevail) with your friends. I think everyone has had moment where they've sung along to it or perhaps done a little dancing in their seat. And yes, we can still do that... just not on Saturdays. Just without Ron and Don. Without the cheesy HNIC logo. Without my favourite part "Hello Canada and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland". The part that speaks to the history of HNIC and the CBC. Two legacies in a young country generally short on legacies.

I kind of feel like I felt when I found out that Santa wasn't real. Christmas was still fun, I still got to make cookies, get presents and decorate the tree, but the magic was gone. I still celebtrate Christmas to this day, just like I'll still watch hockey. But in both cases, there is, and will be, a tiny part of my heart that will ache for what was.

HRH

On the good ship Battlestar Gall-actica

After completing season two, episode four

C:...and so season three comes out on March 18, and we have to get Razor in there somewhere before the beginning of April.
M: I think we can do that.
C: Are you enjoying it?
M: Yeah, but is it starting to lose me a little. It's like they're doing things for the sake of the audience rather than what works for the plot.
C: I imagine that's pretty hard not to do in a time when the audience of a given show has such a huge and potentially active voice. Still, I think it's better than most things on TV.
M: Yeah, it is. It's just starting to feel a lot like "24" in space.
C: Well, no one has bitten anyone in the jugular... yet.

HRH

Strangely specific

It will come as no shock that I'm getting organized for the new season of television. Not because there's a huge volume of it, but because I'm still trying to reduce my TV face time. Frankly, I'm not interested in a lot of the shows I used to like anymore as they've just gone down in quality. Yes 24, I'm looking at you.

Anyway, so I was making the list, comparing it to my schedule at the gym and I noticed that all of the shows I plan on watching start with "h": Heroes, Heroes Origins, House and The Hills. I think, with the exception of the Heroes shows, the letter "h" is where the similarities end.

Still this means that after Tuesday nights, I am free from the shackles of appointment television. I can't help but note that hobby starts with "h" as well.

HRH

Fallout from the season premiere of The Hills as heard in the car on the way home from work

M: I felt dumber for watching the two minutes of it that I saw.
C: Listen, the only thing that you watch on TV that I mock is baseball.
M: And I only mock you for watching The Hills. Besides, watching baseball makes me smarter. I'm learning statistics.
C: Inane statistics and fat men in unflattering pants. I watch The Hills mostly for the clothes. Two of them work at Teen Vouge.
m: Yes TEEN Vouge.
C: Still stylish. And it's entertaining. Spencer is such an ass. He and Heidi said they needed art for their living room and decorated it with the word Hollywood done in graffiti and she didn't even flip out on him. She just asked if he got any white paint as well. She doesn't stand up to him. She's so brainwashed.
M: She's told to act brainwashed, so that you'll want to watch the show.
C: Are you suggesting that The Hills isn't real?
M: Okay, get out of the car. I'm not even slowing down.

HRH

I like change, I just don't want to be there when it happens

M and I have been making our way through the first season of Monk. I think it's a show that we both appreciate on a different level than the general public. Mostly because we're both dancing back and forth along the line of normal and OCD. Some people find it entertaining. I find it sadly validating.

HRH

Help me through American Idol

I'm watching the American Idol finale by myself, I need a place to get the myraid of emotions I'm experiencing out, so here we are.

When we lived in Prague we, unfortunately, watched a lot of ridiculously bad Czech variety shows. There were performances by Czech pop stars, celebrity visits and painfully bad skits. I would mercilessly mock these shows when they were on. I could tell, even through my limited Czech, that the humour was lame and every performance was lip synched. And these bad variety shows are not limited to the Czech Republic. Every European nation I have been to has their own version of it. You know it when you see it. A 20-year-old mostly plastic female host and a 60-year-old patriarch male host, lots of sequins and group numbers.

Watching the American Idol finale I am having oh so many bad variety show flashbacks.

I know that it is an inheriently cheese show, but in the last few seasons it has steadily moved from reaily-TV type competition to totally overblown variety show. The stunts and personalities get more wrong with every show, but, at least, the singing (from the contestants) is live. There's something I guess. And here I am still watching.

HRH

Update: Okay Sanjaya and Joe Perry of Aerosmith was really strange (and of course the crying girl), but now Greenday... on American Idol... performing "Working Class Hero"... Say What?

Catching up, keeping cool

M and I have been on vacation since Wednesday. We're in Kingston, taking care of 50 pounds of cat (two 20-pound Norwegian Forest Cats and one 10-pound Zeus) and trying to stay warm. We came here to kitty sit while my parents took off on a nice little spring vacation. Our thinking was that we would take this time away from Toronto to go for walks, take lots of photos and I was going to teach M how to run. We thought since spring would be here, it would be the perfect time to get outside.

Needless to say our plans were seriously derailed by all the snow and wind that passed its way through this part of Canada in the last five days. Bird watching was relegated to looking at all the fowl through the windows, and walking, or even running? Humourous.

The weather has been miserable. However, when you're stuck inside, my parent's house is a great place to be and with the company of my favourite person and my favourite cats, it's been a nice break. The crappy weather has meant that M and I have been able to sleep/nap as much as we need to and watch all kinds of movies, TV and DVDs without feeling like we really should be outside.

I had plans to use this time to become physically renewed for spring, but instead I think I've managed to rest away that napping problem I was developing, at at the same time be entertained by some great movies and TV.

We're almost half way through season two of Twin Peaks, which has been more than a treat to watch, esp. here at my parents house, which is surrounded by trees. To be fair, watching it on a 52" plasma TV with a fantastic 5.1 system doesn't hurt the experience either.

To balance out my David Lynch obsession, we've also been watching a lot of Law & Order for M. When we watch a lot of this show we invariably get talking about what our dream team Law & Order team would be. For me, it would be Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson) as DA, Jack McCoy (Sam Waterson) as Senior Prosecutor, Abbie Carmichael (Angie Harmon) as ADA, Anita Van Buren (S. Epatha Merkerson) as Lieutenant and Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin) as detectives. I almost could have had it if Angie Harmon had stuck around for just one more season. Imagine Jack as the moderate. He he.

Our break ends on Tuesday when we have to return to Toronto and the real world. It's been a nice break. Chris and Tash dropped by on their way to and from Ottawa, enabling us to raise a glass of bubbly in honour of Natasha's birthday last Thursday. Hopefully tomorrow the weather will be nice enough for us to get out for a little day trip and get home in time to watch "24" in HD. I hope there are a lot of explosions this week.

HRH

The owls won't see us in here

On Sunday I decided that action would be the best solution for fighting off the SAD. SO while M was out freezing his tail off looking for owls, I threw on season 1 of Twin Peaks (saw some owls of my own - the owls are not what they seem) and painted a nature scene on the canvas that as sat blank in my living room for the last three years.

(Aside: Every time I watch Twin Peaks it strikes me just how much I completely adored that show and what an indelible impact it made on me)

I then baked a pie for the first time in my life. From scratch. Crust, everything. It was a pumpkin pie. My family's much renowned pumpkin pie recipe, hand written out for me by my grandmother. And while I ended up making the crust twice because I rolled out the first one too much and because I didn't have powdered ginger or powdered cloves and instead used whole ones (doh), it wasn't perfect. The crust was really good, but the filling wasn't quite right. Edible, yes, but not amazing.

Still painting and baking are much healthier uses of my weekend time than sitting on the couch feeling crappy. And maybe, with practice, I will one day be able to make a pie that will be worthy of a place in pie heaven with the ones from the Double R diner.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Dance of the dream man" by Angelo Badalamenti

HRH

Very Victoria

When M and I were in Italy and we had collapsed in our hotel rooms for the evening, we would watch at LOT of MTV Italia. We're video junkies and our Italian being as pitiful as it was, MTV was one of the stations we could kind of comprehend.

Every night at 9 there was this show on called Very Victoria where this very cute Italian woman named Victoria Cabello, who has a most-awesome Wiki entry, would interview Italian celebrities. There would also be the requisite silly gags and risque segments involving people in their underwear that you can only see on TV in Europe or maybe also in Quebec.

Anyway, she was cute and well dressed. Her set looked like it had jumped out of Moulin Rouge and she was a very un-bimbo like TV presenter. A complete and total rarity of modern Europe.

We watched a lot of this show, even though we had NO idea what was going on. I was always mesmerized by the opening dance sequence. First because of the clothes and shoes and second because of the charmingly bad dancing. Every time I see it I am tempted to change the shape of my bangs.



Today's sing-a-long song: "Ruby Blue" by Roisin Murphy

HRH

Mental mash-up

I'm not sure what's up with my head these days. Chose your instability factor, insomnia, boredom, SAD, PMS, general neuroticism, and I think it's factoring into my mental processing these days. The only way to stave off the ill effects is denial through entertainment. Just stick my head in the ground (and by sticking my head in the ground I mean sitting my ass on the couch, cuddling up with M and watching TV, so I guess that would have been a better metaphor, but it's too late for that now, isn't it) and hope that the malaise passes on by like a storm cloud.

The medicine I'm using this time around is the first season DVD of "Animaniacs" (given to me for Christmas by Mike (W00t!), the first season DVD of Robot Chicken (lent to me by Jenn (back on the blog again!) and the sixth season of "24." Always take your crazy with a side of violence.

On Sunday I was down. Down right in the dumps and M had left me in the living room while he made some bacon and eggs. In his absence, and sick of my wallowing in abstract sadness, I put on the animaniacs. Like a morphine drip I was laughing and singing along with the show. ("I take umbrage at that!" "Sure, take all the umbrage.") The good feelings lasted well over two hours and gave me strength enough to start reorganizing the art on the walls of our place.

That was until around 7 p.m. Then the sadness was back. But good news! "24" was on at eight. Happiness again! Absurd plot lines, violence and tolerance to pain again! The show is so over the top it's fantastic and I simply must know who thought of the idea of biting a man to death. Like seriously, where does that idea come from?

You know what, don't answer that.

Lastly, my saving grace is Robot Chicken. I'm just starting into the DVD and it's great. While I was starting in, John R sent me a YouTube link to something from the second season that almost made me shoot my drink out of my nose.

Never underestimate the healing power of laughter.

HRH

Oohh, I need a hug

Last night "Becoming, part 2" was on Razer. It is the singular episode of Buffy that makes me weep heavily and openly every time I see it. You'd think that eight years after it aired I would have developed some kind of emotional resistance to it, but no. From the moment Angel has his soul restored to the moment "Full of Grace" starts I'm a mess.

And like any good Buffy episode it spurred on a nice little debate about Xander's decision not to tell Buffy that Willow was attempting to restore Angel's soul. I've been having this debate for eight years and like any Whedon-created conundrum it's never an easy answer, and I'm not going to get into that debate (because I always take the side of Buffy and Angel over the side of all things Xander or Spike, and no amount of reasoning will ever get me to sway... Stubborn like a goat I am), but only pass on that it did result in me shunning M's comfort as I began my weeping, stating "Don't touch me. You sided with Xander."

Today's sing-a-long song: "Wild Horses" by The Sundays

HRH

Alas for Toby

Another season of Rockstar has finished. I was honestly rooting for Toby by the end of it. I thought he might actually fit or at least be something I'd be interested in watching if he were the lead singer of Supernova. But with Lukas winning, I can whole-heartedly push the "super group" aside and pay them no mind.

I'm not really a fan of the band. With Rockstar: INXS, I actually liked INXS back in the day. Liked them quite a lot, so I had an interest in how the band found it's new frontman. But I've never really been into Motley Crue, Metallica or Guns & Roses beyond the songs you might hear on the radio. And when Supernova would play their originals, I was bored. They paled in comparison with the covers, whereas I actually bought "Pretty Vegas" on itunes I found it so catchy.

So there came a point in the show where I realized that I wasn't actually cheering for the contestants to become the frontman of the band, but hoping that they could get heaps of exposure and then be freed to make their own music. Case in point Ryan and Storm. I really liked them as performers, but I didn't want to see them stuck playing with a bunch of old men, so I was almost happy for them when they were sent away.

Toby I found interesting, kind of like how I found Daniel Feldspar: The Stereotypically Australian Dragon interesting. Toby was a whole lot of fun and I think he would have been entertaining live. He didn't take himself super seriously, while a lot of the people on the show were so into themselves and neurotic that it made me want to slap the television. Once he was eliminated this evening, I went back to doing the laundry.

I suppose it's interesting in a "hey patterns are neat" kind of way that both of the Rockstar winners have been Canadians and that's about where the interesting ends.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Sour Times" by Portishead

HRH

The dumbest show on TV

So last weekend M and I were enjoying the hospitality of my parents and enjoying their various satellite television systems. They have an American feed, so I enjoy watching TV there as it feels kind of like going on vacation without leaving your chair.

Last Saturday, we were perusing the stations on DirectTV. We love music videos so we try to see what's happening on MTV proper and all of its spawn. Sadly there are very few actual music videos on the music stations these days. There's an MTV competitor called Fuse that I've, on occasion, enjoyed watching, cause they'd play videos from time to time and play more rock than R&B. Yay for Fuse. So I head to Fuse in the guide and see a show called, and I'm not joking when I tell you this, "Pants-off, Dance-off"

With a title like that I just had to see what the heck this show was.

What was it? Basically seemingly normal people apply to come onto the show and strip down to their underpants in front of a screen playing a music video of their choice. Viewers then spend the next week voting who was best and they become the champ. They get fame and some cash so they can actually have a monetary value for their pride. Thing is, it's not all young, attractive people that typically people would want to see strip down to their skin. No, it's the young, the old, the fat, the thin... Nature's diversity in all her glory.

We managed to make it through one dancer performing to Robbie Williams' "Rock DJ" (who, upon further research is actually the "Pants-off, Dance-off" all time champ "Masta Wong", oh dear). I have to admit that I hid my face in my hands a couple of times like I was watching a horror film. It was, fantastically dumb, but it wasn't the dumbness that made me scream and change the channel. No, it was the fact that the next dancer was an old man dancing to The Cure's "Friday I'm in Love." There was no possible way for my brain to process it so it had to go away. Far away.

"Pants-off, Dance-off" was pretty surreal. What put it in the "oh my god the world's gone insane" category for me was that the whole thing appears to be hosted by Jodie Sweetin. You know her, the middle child from Full House that recently returned to semi-fame for getting over a nasty meth addiction. Hosting TV's dumbest show is now her gig and I wasted seven minutes of my life watching it. How rude.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Celebrity Skin" by Hole

HRH

On second thought

I was going to do a post about my favourites on American Idol this year (Girls: Katharine McPhee, Paris Bennett, Kellie Pickler and Lisa Tucker; Boys: Taylor Hicks, Elliot Yamin, Chris Daughtry, Ace Young), but then I remembered that I'm NOT getting sucked into it again this year. Remember!? Sigh. I try to resist you, American Idol, yet you keep on sucking me back in like a bad relationship that just won't end.

I'm not watching it. Nope... not at all.

Today's sing-a-long song: "X-Factor" by Lauryn Hill

HRH

Recent Obsessions and Fixations

I have a couple of obsessions going on, most of them healthy. The biggest of which is watching 24 on Monday nights. It's gotten so bad that I have found myself avoid social plans on Monday nights. I won't answer the phone when the show is on. It's all a little crazy, but Jack is just so awesome it's worth a little crazy.

Another thing I'm crazy about these days is ebay. I guess everyone goes through their ebay phase, but I'm still waiting for this one to end. It started last October when I was trying to get an antique pen for M for Christmas. In the process of hunting down a version of this pen I found that you could get brand new, discontinued, limited edition makeup palettes for less than you would have paid retail, if you still could. I've only purchase about three palettes through ebay so far (my auction winning skills took a little time to hone), but the whole experience of looking is getting close to as much fun as the Sephora Web site.

And aside from my usual obsessions (cleaning, being surrounded by good smells and the music of Muse) I'm entering a new obsessive phase with my highly problematic skin. Hopefully this phase will be less of me trying to tear it off my face in frustration and more like my successful dieting endeavours.

Dermatology has failed me again. In an effort to avoid going on accutane again, I was using a very simple regimen of a high-grade prescription vitamin A cream and a very mild cleanser. Sure it was easy, but the results were so much less than I find acceptable and I'm tired of wearing makeup to conceal. I want to wear it to embellish.

So I'm trying the commercial route, which is a lot more complex and currently burns with the fire of a couple of hot suns. It should be a breakout-tacular few weeks ahead. If it works, I'll write about it on The Royal Beauty. If it's doesn't work, I may just have to start wearing a burka.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Glass Ceiling" by Metric

HRH

At least you can laugh at it

Thank goodness for Rick Mercer. I've always had a soft spot him and the charming way he says the word "car." This week I love him just a little more.

When it comes to mocking Canadian elected officials he's fantastic and on last night's Mercer Report he was particularly on his game. If you'd like a good chuckle I suggest you head over to the Mercer Report Web site and have a look at some of this week's video clips. I heartily suggest that you watch the piece on the youth vote and Rick's rant for January 17th and please, please, please be sure to click on the Liberal icon and have a look at his wonderful spoof attack ad. In a shed indeed.

HRH

Welcome back Bauer

A summary of me watching the premiere of 24 last night:

"Oh my god!"
"Yay!"
"Nooooooo!"
"No way!"
"You chinless jackass!!"
"Run you fools!"
"Don't do that!"
"That's our Jack."
"Oh that's not good."
"Use your phone you idiot!"
"Oooh so he's the bad guy."

Oh it's so good to have this show back.

HRH