Your hostess with the most-ess

So there I was, minding my own business going through my Bloglines, and I check out the rss feed on paved.ca: your GTA roadmap, an excellent daily blog about stuff happening around T.O. There's some mention about Toronto podcasts, so I follow the link to the post. And there's a plug for Description! Holy crap! To the best of my knowledge (I'm too used to using that phrase at work), I've never had the podcast plugged by a site to whom I haven't contributed something. And the man behind paved is Marc Weisblott, who has been a ubiquitous media guy in this town as long as I can remember. (eye Magazine? Radio? Forums? Who's surprised he has a blog?) Evidently, I'm a "hostess," to use his terminology, which makes me feel like I should be wearing black slacks and blouse and should wear my hair in a sleek ponytail. (Fine, picture in your head what you want. Saves me the trouble of grooming.)

The show was grouped with an very interesting and much better-looking diary-type thing called Quirky Nomads because it's maintained by a person who's also from the States. The big quote from that one is "The story of a family that said, 'If the Republicans get any worse, we're moving to Canada.' And then? They really did." The Reagan-era Republicans of the time I first left were pretty bad, but they didn't really send me screaming to the Peace Bridge. Maybe if I'd stuck around, they would've.

It seems we were grouped together in this paved post because, as Marc writes, "Given how the overhyped medium has been slower to ignite in Canada than the U.S., maybe it's not a coincidence that both [podcasts linked] are from Americans who've taken up residence here." I don't know. As explained too often here, I found out about podcasting from a Canadian on a Canadian radio show, and was ultimately inspired by a Dutch/American guy, a British guy and a New Zealander. So go figure. Maybe there's something to be said for the American propensity to just say shit without considering any consequences, leaning on the notion that to have just said something was noble enough. I don't actually believe that, but perhaps it's in my DNA somewhere. Maybe it's my ebonics? Yeesh...

Now I sort of know what it feels like when, say, Indian actors are grouped together in some sort of comparison just because they happen to be of Indian descent. US people will become an "ethnic" group yet, dang it.

Sorry, this all sounds like I didn't appreciate the link. I often sound like that. But I completely appreciated it. It's just that this was the first time I've looked at the podcast from another perspective, and it was interesting. So thanks, Marc. Keep on paving.