I wrote last week about a podcast we’d be listening to, where one of the show themes was about TV reruns [ms604]. The woman producing the segment said that Boy Meets World was her guilty pleasure, which made me shudder then wonder, what are mine?
First off, I know you’re thinking ‘why not just turn off the TV, get up from the couch and do something else if there’s nothing new on?’ Well there’s a time and place for everything. By reading my blog you can probably tell that John and I are not afraid to hop out of the house and go for a walk which then turns into a several-hour-log trek through muddy pathways. We do have a social life, we do get exercise but there are just some times when you need to sit down and let your mind go to mush.
There are those shows you’ve seen 100 times but always prompt you to end your channel surfing the minute you come across them. On the podcast [thisamericanlife] they mention it could be a questions or comfort, feeling comfortable watching reruns, if even just to reminisce about that time in your life when that show came out. I don’t know if I have many reasons for watching them, I just know there are only a select few that do make me stop in my tracks when I’m looking for TV to be my companion for the night. The repeat offenders in my books, (and I’m probably not alone on this) would be The Simpsons, who dominate syndication.
But what about the lesser knowns? Not just Simpsons, Friends or Seinfeld, but the shows that were and are total crap. The ones you might not want to admit you watched religiously 10 years ago. The ones available for viewing several times a day now, so you just give in and you watch. If there’s new nothing on TV, why not venture down the rerun road?
A couple of my guilty pleasures would be Futurama & Family Guy but they’re too recent and too great to fit into this category. So I guess I have to say News Radio (with Phil Hartman, pre-Lovitz era), and Saved by the Bell (not the original old one, or the newer College years).
John bugs me when I won’t re-watch an episode of, say… Heroes the day after it first aired but I’ll watch things I’ve seen dozens of times before. Well, aside from the buffer zone of about 8 years since I last watched certain episodes of those shows, it is also kind of amusing. Things you thought were funny, or things that were serious and now looking back, they’re just hilarious (like most of the fashions from the early 90s and 80s). It’s a trip down memory lane, opening a time capsule, discovering a new reason why some things are funny, reciting hilarious lines that you thought you’d forgotten… “that is SO not the opposite of stealing someone’s underwear!” or “that’s okay DJ, you can be grounded next weekend“.
Yes, I didn’t make a post for Episode 17, but I was working on it, I swear. It wasn’t a true round table episode as is the norm with TCC, it was audio from our experience on Hockey Day in Canada. With the blessing of our co-hosts we posted the audio on The Crazy Canucks feed. Run time: 18:18
As promised, Rebecca and John were able to check out the Canucks game against the Leafs on the new scoreboard at GM Place this past weekend. The UBC Thunderbirds played a game against the Regina Cougars following the broadcast. Overall, a great way to spend a Hockey Day in Canada.
The audio quality is not the best, but hopefully the die hard fans out there will enjoy the sounds of what it’s like to attend an event like this in Vancouver.
Now for Episode 18, which was recorded last night.
The plan was to have us all be online for this episode, but Dave got held up at work and couldn’t make it in time. The rest of the crew gathered to go over the rest of the road trip out east. Two wins over Montreal and Ottawa, and a shootout loss to Buffalo that didn’t seem as bad as what losing should be.
Record as of this episode: 27-19-2
Northwest Division: 2nd
Western Conference: 7th
It’s the All-Star break, so we take a little time to talk about the festivities and the new uniforms that have been unveiled by the league. They ain’t so bad, but the change might result in more than just new threads. Also, we can’t help ourselves from talking about the Bullis rumors of him wanting a trade out of Vancouver.
* NHL.com: “Players will have the EDGE in 2006-07?
* Website for new NHL uniforms by RBK
This does end up being a long episode, but there is something a little extra on the end of this one. J.J., Rebecca, and John met up to watch the game against Buffalo at a pub in downtown Vancouver and caught some audio of the crowd gathered there during the shootout. Hopefully you enjoy the atmosphere of watching the Canucks in the heart of Vancouver.
It runs about 64 minutes, which is pretty long for an Episode of TCC but there’s some special audio tagged on the end, as we often do in ‘secret track’ fashion.
I feel like I’m writing a theme composition in grade 3 about what I did over the weekend, but this is about blogging, why I’m here and why you’re here and the free stuff I want to win.
Darren Barefoot put the call out yesterday:
In February, I’m giving a talk called “Why We Blog†at Northern Voice here in Vancouver. In preparation, I’m launching this ad hoc survey to gather more opinions and voices from the blogosphere. [db]
I have filled out the survey as best I can, answering questions about anything from site stats to how emotional my writing might be. There are many reasons why I do this and there’s various reasons why people come back everyday to read what I’ve posted. If you feel like sharing your thoughts on the matter, take the survey (if you’re a blogger yourself) or feel free to comment here, regardless if you’re a blogger, lurker, active commenter, admirer or disliker of all things blog. Why do you read?
John just sent this article my way…
“Reel Big Fish have announced a tour, but have only revealed that their tourmates rhyme with “Shmess than Shmake.” Some astute readers have noted that this probably – but not definitely – refers to Less Than Jake. Other contenders include, Stress Span Snake, or perhaps Mess Man Make. Dates for the upcoming tour are expected shortly.” [punknews.org]
Back in 1998 I was a huge fan of two bands a) Matthew Good Band b) Less Than Jake. I must admit this isn’t my first website as I had a fan site (as was the style at the time) for the latter.
The site for Less Than Jake featured discography, a sample mp3, and photos from their concerts in Vancouver, which I attended. Complete with scrolling marquee headers (as was the style at the time) the url was something extremely long like ‘members.home.com/ beckbeck9/index.html’. I created it using Netscape when we had this ‘new’ technology called cable internet offered by Rogers. It was pretty fun to create and maintain but when I moved out at 19, and Rogers Wave changed to Rogers @ Home and then Shaw, everything was lost. I continued to follow the band although the most recent album of their that I own is Anthem, so I’m a little behind and out of touch. Continue reading this post ⟩⟩
I’ve watched more sports on TV in the last year that I have ever before. It helps when you are the co-host of a hockey podcast, but I’ve been watching Canucks games my entire life. The difference this year is that I’m watching more football than I ever thought possible, that’s what I get for marrying an American.
One tradition before most sporting competitions is to sing the national anthem. Of course, if the teams are from different countries, both anthems will be sung as in the NHL. As a result, I now find myself walking around the house singing the Star Spangled Banner [wiki].
Now, it’s not that I’m a patriot (or even American), the song just gets stuck in my head. I’m still not sure if John knows all the words to O, Canada! [wiki] but as soon as he does master it, I’ll be teaching him the French version. Discovering that I knew all the words to the American anthem prompted him to fill me in on the history of the tune, which in turn prompted me to look up the origins of Canada’s song.
“The Star-Spangled Banner†is the national anthem of the United States of America, with lyrics written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key. Key, a 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, wrote them as a poem after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland, by British ships in Chesapeake Bay during the War of 1812. [wiki]
“O Canada” is the national anthem of Canada. Calixa Lavallée composed the music in 1880 as a patriotic song for that year’s St. Jean-Baptiste Day ceremony. The first lyrics that were composed for the song were written in French by Sir Adolphe Basile Routhier in 1880 for the same ceremony. An English translation did not appear until 1906… [wiki]
Both anthems have several versions and verses [gov], and both are to the tune of drinking songs from the UK. Whether it’s asking for God to keep our land or describing the bombs bursting in air, both are criticized for their un-PC-ness as well.
Regardless, it still gives me chills when O! Canada is sung during the NHL playoffs and the person singing moves their microphone away to hold it up and capture the song flowing from the mouths and hearts of the spectators. It also reminds me of elementary school, when we would sing half the anthem in English then half in French. That was around the same time we had a Principal who would walk around with an acoustic guitar during assemblies. The anthem was usually followed by the entire student body being lead in singing “One Tin Soldier” [wiki] or “What Shall We do With a Drunken Sailor” [wiki].
History always fascinates me and when my little search for information pertains to something that conjures up so many memories and emotions (no matter how silly), it’s always worth the trip down memory lane via a blog post. I just hope John doesn’t feel disrespected when I sing his nation’s anthem while cooking breakfast in my pajamas… in a funny voice… really off-key.
