This Hour Has 22 Minutes - Fugly Blankets

Blankets with sleeves from This Hour Has 22 Minutes. I've seen the ads for these things and thought it was just about the dumbest idea ever. But, as 22 Minutes points out, they are also very, very ugly. Thanks Diane!

Television Links Update

It's been a busy weekend but I've added promos or sample clips to the Canadian Television links. This has already been done for film, music and comedy. I'll add to these link sections slowly as time goes on.

Polkaroo & Jodie Run In Provincial Election

Here are two interesting post-election tidbits:

1. The Libertarian candidate for the riding of Toronto-Danforth was Mike Scott. You might think I'm referring to the Mike Scott who pitched for the Houston Astros in the 1980's; but I assure you, this is a different Mike Scott. This Mike Scott happens to be the man who wore the Polkaroo costume on TVO's Polka Dot Door. Don't believe me? Just read this article.

I had to see this with my own eyes, but when I got to the Libertarian office, I was told Mike Scott had left. Aw, I missed him again.


2. In the riding of Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, the Liberal candidate was Nerene Virgin, who played Jodie on Today's Special. It's unknown if Ms. Virgin had a mannequin who would come alive at night and dance around the campaign office.



You never know who might run in an election.

It begins: The internet eating into TV/Radio

According to a CTV story Canadians spent more time online last year at the expense of conventional radio and tv. It should be pointed out that all of this ultimately won't matter. The best way to plan for the future, if you're in media, is to stop thinking of your tv, radio, telephone (including cell), and computer as seperate things - very soon they will not be. Each of these will perform all of the functions of the other with the only real difference being size and portability.

It is great news though for independent media and independent artists. As long as net neutrality remains in place the line between 'big media' and small/independent media will blur. There will be nothing to stop someone from visiting your indie media site instead of CTV or Global. It will also kill geographic boundries. There will always be some demand for local stuff, but when people turn to look beyond their neighbourhood your little website/podcast/internet radio station in rural Saskatchewan is available to people in Toronto, Sydney, London, and Tokyo.

It will be, in effect, a global free trade zone for art and ideas. When asked the question: If you could live in any era of history, which would it be? I've always answered - right now.

Sign Of The Apocalypse #54

Joey Buttafuoco and Amy Fisher will be having a candlelight dinner together.

Why are they having dinner together? Well, apparently they want to see if they can rekindle their romance. You remember their romantic tale. It ended with Joey going to jail for a few months for statutory rape and Amy serving seven years after shooting Joey's wife in the face.

Why are they trying to rekindle their romance? Well, a producer named David Krieff thinks he can turn their reunion into a reality television program.

Of course! That's what people want to watch. What's more entertaining then two g-list celebrities falling in love again? As if we couldn't get enough of Nick and Jessica, Vili and Mary-Kay, and most recently, Tori Spelling and Hamilton Steelheads' captain Mark Simpson....er....Dean McDermott.

Seriously, what's next? Living With The Bobbits? The Monica Lewisnky Show? The Simple Life: Justin and Sophie?

Just For Laughs, Indeed

If someone told you the American network ABC had just announced one of its upcoming midseason series (what replaces the crap in the fall) would be the original version of a Canadian series (a pretty historic thing), could you guess that Canadian series?

Degrassi? Already a big hit on digital - which does kinda mean something there.

Trailer Park Boys? Dude, ABC is a major US network - no swearing and drinking in your car. The closest they'll get to that is My Name Is Earl while the Boys romp around on BBC America for some reason.

Maybe King of Kensington? Oops, already remade unofficially as King of Queens, though admittedly both are part of the Honeymooners tradition.

Cold Squad? Oh, yeah, they already remade that...unofficially again.

Got your liberal fingers crossed for Little Mosque on the Prairie? Sorry, though we can content ourselves on France's Canal+ picking it up.

Canadian Idol? Just kidding.

No, ABC will be airing Just For Laughs Gags.

Yes, that show the CBC runs when they don't have anything else and feel like having big ratings once in a while. That show you see sometimes after your in-flight movie. I'm guessing an ABC exec saw it there.

Okay, so Gags is hardly an original concept. The hidden (ahem, "candid") camera prank show has been around for longer than most of us have been alive. But the Just For Laughs kids in Montreal refined this idea to its most simple, almost elegant (!) form, and this is partially why it's been wildly successful around the world. Nobody talks, there are no smarmy hosts saying "we took our cameras to such-and-such a place, and you wouldn't belieeeeve what happened! Let's take a look!" No, they just show the setup and let 'er rip. Comedy gold. (Well, for some, at least.) And somehow it doesn't seem as mean-spirited as many of these kind of shows. Ordinary people react to extraordinary situations and that's it, sometimes with shots of the folks laughing at the end. That said, I'm not a big fan of the show. Is anyone, really? It's hard to either love it or hate it. It's just there.

Another series that you could neither love nor hate? That was just there? Whose Line Is It Anyway. The US version of that British show (of course with two Canadian stars, Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles) was a massive hit for ABC that made them tons of money and ran for ages. But it didn't just do that because it was generally funny (sometimes very funny) and fairly likable, but because it was CHEAP! Improv people, bare stage, studio audience, done. With Gags, they don't even need the audience or stage or improv-trained union talent! You couldn't make a cheaper show with cardboard and bailing twine! I think that's the main reason ABC is taking a run at this show. Since they finally canceled Whose Line, they soon missed having a little-show-that-could to get them huge ratings value for a tiny budget, and Gags just might fill that slot - and the time slots of those expensive but ill-conceived and stupid shows that will be dead by maybe October.

So bonne chance, Juste Pour Rire! And you guys at APTN who came up with Bingo and a Movie? How closely are you watching what ABC comes up with for their National Bingo Night tomorrow?

Welcome To The World Of Gentlemen, Gentlemen.

I have never been a big fan of car commercials but, I have to mention this one.



Talk about absurdity. It's like something out of a play that's written by Eugene Ionesco.

It's funny. It's memorable. However, it's not going to make me want to buy a Cadillac. And what does it say about Cadillac's take on gender equity? Heck, I didn't even know there was a world of gentlemen.

I wonder where I would go to sign up ;-)

Thoughts on "Little Mosque"

I admit it, I bought into the hype.

Maybe it was the name or the fact that it was covered by the New York Times and CNN. Nevertheless, I was in front of the television to watch the premier of Little Mosque on the Prairie. It's hard to form an opinion on the show after just one episode. However, I've decided to share my thoughts on the show, and then compare them after watching a few more episodes.

The best way I could describe the program is Corner Gas meets King Of The Hill. C.G. in the sense of location and supporting characters; and K.O.T.H in the sense of the emphasis on stereotypes. There are two groups of characters; the Muslim population and the rest of the town of Mercy's citizens. Both groups can then be subdivided into two smaller groups: Those who think sensibly and those who think insensibly.

With the Muslims, you have those who think in a progressive way. This would include Amaar, the new Iman, and Rayyan, the daughter of Yassir. You also have Muslim characters who think in a very strong Conservative and traditional way such as Baber, the old Iman, and Fatima. The Conservative Muslims are the ones who refuse to let any type of Western influence into their life. Case in point, Baber's sermon when he exclaims, "How can the Desperate Housewives be desperate when they are only fulfilling their womanly duty?"

Then, there are the town's folk. Most of whom are paranoid and somewhat ignorant. This includes everyone from the Mayor to the local radio talk show host. Ironically, the only person who is actually open and respectful to the Muslims, is the town's Priest. There are also characters who have a presence in all the groups. Most notable of this is Yassir and his non-Muslim wife, Sarah.

The foundation of the program is having these groups and their respective sub-groups, clash with each other. The results of the clash can vary. Sometimes you'll be laughing (i.e.: cucumber sandwiches vs. goat curry); and other times, you feel very uncomfortable (i.e.: everything said by the talk show host).

Does Little Mosque live up to the hype? Again, only the first episode has aired. However, it did reach my expectations. Is it funny? You will certainly get a few good laughs. Personally, I was hoping for humour that was smart and bold (such as Arrested Development and The Newsroom). Instead, I would describe the humour as "safe." Is it the best Canadian sitcom? That remains to be seen.

I'll certainly be watching the next episode.

What are your thoughts on the show? Feel free to post them.

****
-Cheap plug time: Check out Episode 24 of The Audio Circus-

Another View of the Mosque

Hi, guys. Here's my first post on this blog, and it's fraught with trouble.

I won't do a whole lot of introduction of me here - there's a fair amount of that on my blog for my podcast. Okay, that plug's out of the way. :-) It looks like my first couple posts will be about tv, because in my day job, I get to see some Canadian television before you do.

Unfortunately, though, the first show I'm discussing has not only been written about here, but written about by our Fearless Leader and my podcast landlord - and I have to sort of dispute him on what he said. Eek.

Yes, kids, it's time for yet another bit of business about Little Mosque on the Prairie. And in a way, that's sort of the point.

So Justin was miffed that The National did a story about this new CBC-TV series, labeling it as shameless marketing disguised as journalism. What news was it exactly, he wondered. For him, the whole thing smacked of the World Series on FOX ("hey, isn't that the cast of Ally McBeal in the front row?").

Here's my perspective. Let's go back a couple weeks to when I was at the family home in Ohio for the Christmas season. I'm channel-surfing the folks' digital cable when I run across CNN Headline News and that tool Glenn Beck, but the graphic under his mug is about some new sitcom about Muslims. Wha-? Like the one I'm working on? The Canadian one? Yep, he's talking to Zarqa Nawaz, the creator and co-writer of the show.

Okay, never mind this Beck guy was being his lunkheaded self, being all scared of Muslims and the notion of making fun of them and trivializing the threat of terror. My first thought (after "wtf?") was whether the series had been picked up by some station in the U.S. Why would I think this? Because by and large, the American media doesn't give a crap about any television shows any other countries make unless they're shown in the U.S., and I don't think border towns count.

But it didn't stop with Headline News (and btw, what the hell are actual shows doing on that channel anyway? Isn't it supposed to be just headlines? Doesn't CNN have another channel for non-headline stuff, namely, CNN?). As many of us know by now, there was a piece on Little Mosque in the New York Times, among other U.S. media outlets. Oh, and how do we know this? Because the Canadian media gets all fluttery when the U.S. media pays the slightest attention to something we do. (In a way, that's kind of what I'm doing here. Yay, I'm acting like a Canadian!)

Okay, so why is the U.S. media paying attention to Little Mosque on the Prairie if it doesn't air there? I guess it's because it's a comedy about Muslims living among non-Muslims, and Americans still have a hard time having "Muslims" and "comedy" in the same sentence. But they still wouldn't care except for the fact they still tend to identify Muslims as "those people who killed so many of us in 9/11, and may try to kill us again - gasp!". You see, it seems the U.S. media can only talk about stuff that directly affects their country. Though of course, the first important element has to be some possibility of conflict or controversy.

All this is a fantastically roundabout way of answering Justin's implied question of why The National would treat Little Mosque as a news story. I think it's mainly because the NY Times treated it as a news story. That might be more of a cause for concern than the CBC shamelessly plugging anything - something they're pretty crappy at doing on any other day.

(Oh yeah, I just remembered something. Remember the big doc miniseries China Rises on the CBC earlier in 2006? That was the first of a series of proposed co-productions with...the Times and its Discovery Times Channel! Hmmm...)

Beyond all of this muck, I'm actually most concerned that the CBC is going to screw things up on Little Mosque's scheduling: debuting it after Rick Mercer, but then repeating it on Wednesday, and then having it on twice a week, 8:30pm Monday and 8pm Wednesday (eastern). It's like CBC can't decide whether to confuse the viewers or shove the show down their throats, so they're trying both.

And I'm concerned about this because of one little thing that always gets lost in all the media about Little Mosque on the Prairie: it's a nice, funny little show. Go watch it. If you can.