Monthly Archives: August 2008

Oh those Summer Games. I didn’t realize there was only a handful of events!

Our household was very disappointed with the broadcasting of the Olympics in Beijing. The games themselves seemed very good and there were some pretty good events like the 100M and 200M dominiation by Usain Bolt. It’s the broadcasters we loathe.

Sonia (and I agree with her) was very disappointed in what NBC and CBC (and TSN I guess, but who cares about them since they only were able to show basketball and boxing. Whoppeee!) were broadcasting, particularly in prime time. Of the most irritating things: why did they have to spend about 40% of their broadcast time showing profiles on Olympians and docucrap on China? My god, we can do this ourselves on the internet. So, add in commercials and of the ‘billion’ of hours of broadcasting, about 25% was actually devoted to showing the events themselves. And that leads to aggravating point number 2: they were often showing stuff that we just didn’t care to watch. IN PARTICULAR: BEACH VOLLEYBALL. Man, this made up hokey sport for drunken teens to play on spring break shouldn’t even be in the Olympics (nor should a lot of other events like syncro swimming. Table tennis can stay but it should be officially renamed to ping-pong). If you add the amount of time CBC spent on Beach Volleyball, now were down to about 18-20% of the broadcasting time was spent on anything remotely interesting. And get this: Canada didn’t even have any entrants in Beach Volleyball that would have garnered any real interest! But I guess that could be said for pretty much every event (Bah-dum!)

So, grow up you silly excuse for a ‘national’ television station and start using TV a little better. Start getting the real guns involved like Rogers and start offering multiple On-Demand options so that I can watch what event I want, when I want. Boy, I was Jonesing for some badminton or archery, you know, stuff I never see outside of the Olympics but not once did I catch any of that. And don’t give me that ‘how do we make money if we go On-Demand’ crap because there are many creative ways to make a profit going down that path. Though I’m not going to make your life easier by telling you how.

My Nazareth Story

I’ve been adding (slowly) to my blog page about songs that invoke vivid memories of my past. While I was scrolling through the Nazareth part of my brain, I remembered a couple of funny things that I just have to repeat here:

“You’d think that these memories should come out of high school or even earlier, but they are more about my 2A to 3B terms at UW, most of that time living at Batavia place. The ‘Nazareth Anthology’ came out the term I was in 2A. But it all started in 1A, when I received one of their cassette tapes in the big first purchase from Columbia House (do they still exist?). Yes, cassette tapes. I would listen to this during my walks to class in the dead of winter (1B). “Heart’s Grown Cold” is a big memory maker. It was during this period of purchasing albums from Columbia House that I made the transition to CDs. Wow. My Nazareth Anthology box set was eventually stolen while living on 3rd Street (near Lansdowne) in Ottawa during my third workterm. One day Scott Murphy and I bought a couple of these keg contraptions holding 36 beer equivalent that Labatt’s was trying out for their Genuine Draft product. All day in the backyard we were sitting around listening to old vinyl Metallica albums that the neighbour was ‘introducing us to’. I don’t know how it happened but for some reason 2 absolute strangers joined us in the fun. These guys were shady at best (think mullets, cut off jeans and wife-beater shirts). After drinking a lot of beer with us, they eventually left. They seemed like nice guys. Later that day Scott and I went out to shoot some pool and when we got back, my bedroom window had been broken into and these guys (obviously) were the culprits. But they only took 2 things: my jar of change and my Nazareth Anthology. Now, I say obvious because we had left the keg contraptions in the back yard but not the taps. The kegs were also damaged….as if somebody were trying really hard to get some more of that wonderful Duff they had been drinking earlier that day. True story!”

Oh, and something I’m also proud of: I once went to see Nazareth when they came to the Flying Dog. But it wasn’t called the Flying Dog back then. Does anybody remember what it was called back in the early 90’s?

Garden reminders

This year’s garden:

2 rows of onions
1 row of lettuce 1 row of spinach. Note: next time plant another row each 2 weeks after first planting
1 row of french beans – best yield to date
1 row of yellow beans
16 pepper plants
16 tomatoe plants
2 rows of potatoes, 5 or 6 seeds per row
cucumbers – too much space

20 words for the past 3 months

Cottaging in Wiarton
Olivia’s 3rd!! Birthday
Garden has potatoes this year
Trip to NYC
Last year at Yankees stadium
Olivia into soccer class
1st blown transmission on vehicle
last year of baseball at NCR
summer with baby #2 on the way
odd weather – very cold and very warm – good for growing
biking into work the odd day
biggest wimbledon ever?
gas prices are up to 1.30/L and rising
food prices going up
see more windmills in the area
swimming classes on her own now