Description 65 - Everywhere, part 1

Go with the flow as I do a soundseeing tour of my television screen, then approach a big old building where cameras, ideas and egos ran free. Includes exclusive music from Memory Bank, an impending bathroom break at Second Cup and people pressed against the glass.

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Associated links
Citytv @Wikipedia
CP24
"Vintage" Video of The New Music @Muchmusic
thenewmusic.net
"Lament for The NewMusic" @CBC
Citytv @Museum of Broadcast Communications
Moses Znaimer official site (Flash-heavy)
Opening of TVTV: The Television Revolution
Moses Znaimer and TVTV @Media-Studies.ca
City Pulse Tonight intros: from 1985, from 1988, from 1990, from 1996 and from 2003
CHUM Limited timeline @Canadian Communications Foundation
"Whatever happened to Muchmusic?" @EYE Weekly
Scrolling Eye talks to Christopher Ward about City Limits and the birth of Much
When things started to turn (Globe & Mail via Friends of Canadian Broadcasting)
Zoomer Magazine
Citytv Official Site
CityNews (what was City Pulse)
Memory Bank @myspace
299 Queen Street West @Wikipedia
Speakers Corner @Ryerson Review of Journalism
A 2006 episode of Speakers Corner
Intro to Electric Circus
CP24/CHUM Christmas Wish

I have to say that in researching this show, I discovered there's a pathetic amount of Citytv/CHUM stuff out there on the ol' internet. For all the content that has been created, it was incredibly hard to find what little I did find. Maybe back then we thought of everything as being so of the moment, we didn't consider saving it for the future, like the whole vibe of the thing would always be there.

Yeah, that's what we used to say about the Oilers. :-)

So if you have some old tapes knocking around of stuff you recorded off City or Much or who-knows-what back in tha day, no matter how lame it may seem, think about converting it and putting it up somewhere. I know I will. It doesn't seem very likely that the parents in this divorce are going to do it for us.

Yes, JD Roberts of The New Music and City Pulse and any other number of things (because City people multi-tasked) is now John Roberts: previously Dan Rather's anchorman heir at CBS News and now the American Morning guy at CNN. And yes, Jeanne Beker remains the face, heart, legs and spleen of Fashion Television; which started the revolution of runway shows, supermodels and superstar designers on television - and is now a multimedia force unto itself (though it is worth noting she was the editorial director of @fashion, the first major fashion website EVER, in 1995). They are only two of the many, many Citytv people in front of the camera who took their work ethic and lessons learned into the rest of broadcasting and beyond.

But I haven't talked enough about the many more people not in front of the camera with the same elements of creativity and intelligence which made Citytv and its spinoffs what they were. More on a couple of those people is coming in the next episode in a few days. Just one example, though, is the late John Martin, who came up with the idea for The New Music and drove it for most of its (and the rest of his) life. For a great in-depth look at this work, check out this 1997 article about him from the Ryerson Review of Journalism.

He also applied his sensibilities to Muchmusic, about which he was quoted as saying, "My gig was to sort of mould the anarchy. It was a bunch of absolutely crazy people reinventing their lives every day. It was fun."

It sounds a little like what social media (including podcasting) has been going through. Mark well the achievements and issues of the past as they come back around.

Description 64 - The Jersey Canuck @ The Bloor

I go to a place where I worked illegally to listen to a famous American guy caught up in a romance with Canada that echoes my own. Includes music by The Ambers, candy bars in Tupperware, Alanis yelling and the return of the King of Kensington.

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Associated links
Degrassi: in Canada and in the U.S.
"Degrassi Classic"
Quick Stop Entertainment
Quick Stop covers Kevin Smith at Degrassi (including press conference video)
SModcast
The View Askewniverse
The Bloor Cinema
Torontoist (of course) on The Bloor
Kevin Smith Fest
Q&A from the night before
Mill St. Brewery
Yongesterdam
The Ambers on CDBaby!
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Dogma @IMDB
Dogma in full on YouTube
The Sweater @NFB.ca
An Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder (2006)
The parking garage scene in Dogma
The same scene re-enacted
SModcast 76: The Great One
The View Askewniverse Message Board
The Message Board makes plans for The Walter Gretzky Street Hockey Tournament

I have a couple more dots to connect. Alanis also played God in Dogma. When that film caused a big ol' ruckus among panicky, crusading people who thought it was anti-Catholic (it's not), movie distributors got all spooked about releasing it. Who had the cojones to take it on? A fledgling outfit at the time called Lion's Gate Pictures - which, faithful to its name, was born in Vancouver. When I worked at AudioVision, we described quite a few films of theirs, but unfortunately not that one. I had to content myself with narrating and producing description for American Psycho (filmed in Toronto, btw), another film that courted controversy and my favourite one we did while I was there.

Speaking of Vancouver, Kevin is doing another snazzy Q&A ("An Evening With...") at the Centre For Performing Arts March 27. It's not confirmed as of me writing this that he'll turn up the next night at a Clerks Festival showing I&II at the Rio Theatre, but it still sounds like a good time.

If you're new because you've found this through some sort of Kevin Smith/View Askew-related search/link, hiya. Here are some useful things to know:

1) This podcast isn't about me going to movies, although I've now done two episodes in a row where that happens. Those are the only two movies I've seen in six months, and that's a lot for me.
2) Yes, I realized too late my spring jacket makes rustling noises when I walk.
3) I can't believe I said "I'll drink the Kool-Aid" twice. That was just wrong.
4) Yes, there may be samples in this episode that aren't the most legal in the world. I'm gutless, but I don't make money off this thing.
5) The editing isn't meant to be tight - it's a style I took from the Modern Roadie Cast. For more professional-sounding editing, check out my other podcast.
6) To the question "When does she stop talking?", the answer is "Eventually. Pack a lunch."

TO In 6 Words

(New episode next week. I hope.)

Today is the 175th birthday of the city in the title of this podcast. In part to celebrate, Jaime Woo of Torontoist (yes, they're still around!) and Suresh Doss of Spotlight Toronto put together a short film with various Torontonians - well-known, partially-known, unknown - to do the same things: introduce themselves (usually involving how long they've lived here), name their favourite part of the city, and describe Toronto in exactly six words. Jaime writes about the process here. For those who haven't been here, it's a really nice snapshot of the place and the people who help make it what it is...whatever that is.

So how would I have done what these people did?

Well, I'm Valerie and I first came from Ohio to live in Toronto in 1986 for university and lived here for about four years, then was able to come back for a year in 1996, and have been back again for 10 years with no sign of stopping.

My favourite place in Toronto is The Annex, where I've lived for about five years. I love all the things I can experience here just by walking around.

And how would I describe Toronto in 6 words? Jeez, I haven't even pulled it off in 63 podcast episodes! But I formulated what I would've said before watching this video that I've embedded below, and one of the people came sort of close to it.

Home home home home home home.

Description 63 - The Annex to Rexdale

If a goofball vegetable cutter can go from a Delhi market stall to China to fulfill his warrior destiny, then I can go from my downtown neighbourhood to the outer reaches of the GTA to help celebrate a friend's birthday and muse about the multicultural mosaic in practice.

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Associated links
Katherine Matthews: 42point1, purl diving and cinefolle
Rob Lee's blog Unconventional Wisdom
Rexdale in the Urban Dictionary
Albion Cinemas
Chandni Chowk to China: @Wikipedia, official website, official trailer (large) @Apple.com
Aishwarya Rai Official Website (find your own mousepad...)
Yorkdale Shopping Centre
OMNITV Ontario

Thank you to Rob for instigating the festivities for Katherine's birthday. Everyone who wanted to join in no doubt hopes all your plans work out next time.

The bus was one of those accessible low-floor deals with a step that lowers and raises for folks to get on easier, and that's what the beeping was about. No one was actually using it at the time, though - maybe the driver was trying to shake snow from it? Anyway...

Yorkdale ended up as a footnote in this episode, but as snazzy as the place is now, it has no small historical significance as one of the first major malls in Canada and the largest in the world when it opened in 1964. Shawn Micallef (that's two podcast posts in a row mentioning him) wrote an interesting piece about it on SpacingToronto a couple years ago. While not near any of the places I've lived, I would often go there because of its relative proximity to York University (for people who drive cars, which included me) and because it was a place to park and get on the TTC heading downtown. While it was never, to use a word I was suddenly using everywhere in this episode, skeezy, it was also nothing like the dizzying labyrinth it is now.

Up there at the top of this post, I use the term "multicultural mosaic", which I didn't use in the episode. But this business of various ethnic/cultural groups living among and not-among each other has to do with that. For people from outside Canada, "mosaic" is used to distinguish itself from the American term "melting pot", which suggests more assimilation required of immigrants. As thumbnailed in this Wikipedia article, the mosaic idea grew in Canada throughout the 1960's, and multiculturalism became part of official federal public policy in 1971. The CBC Digital Archives has an interesting section about that. You can pretty much figure, though, that when the government starts making rules and laws and initiatives about such things, it can get pretty tricky. But it has become as much a part of the Canadian identity as anything else - and so here it is in an episode about me seeing a bad Bollywood movie.

Speaking of Bollywood, in my previous job describing movies, I did get to work on a singularly Canadian version: Bollywood/Hollywood, Deepa Mehta's romantic comedy centred on a well-to-do Indo-Canadian family in Toronto. Dance numbers and everything. Well worth renting, maybe with some take-out curry chicken poutine from Smoke's Poutinerie.

Now that would be f-ing nuts. ;-)

Obama's Canadian Playlist

Sorry I don't have a new episode up by now. There's been work stuff that has had me uncomfortably busy, and a couple major technical snafus in the past week have not helped. If I don't get something up in January, an early February episode is very likely. I hope.

While I'm checking in, I'll say a little something about this initiative CBC Radio 2 has been doing which is now in its final day: voting for a playlist of 49 songs ("from North of the 49th Parallel") for incoming U.S. President Barack Obama to listen to (likely around the time he visits Canada soon) so he can get a better idea of Canada through its music. It's unlikely the guy will have time to listen to all this, but it's a nice exercise and probably beats giving him a polar bear statue or something.

Nominations came in from all over the place, and CBC settled on a shortlist of 100 tracks. Again, this the last day of voting from those lists - I say "lists," because there's one for pop/rock, one for classical, one for Francophone and one for jazz - and one can vote for just one track per list per day. So being late, I had to decide on one for each. In the end, I voted for "The Canadian Dream" by Sam Roberts in the big pop/rock list, although my other choices would have been "Bobcaygeon" by the Tragically Hip, "Crabuckkit" by k-os, "Democracy" by Leonard Cohen, "Four Strong Winds" by Ian & Sylvia, "Ordinary Day" by Great Big Sea (which I know I've played here way back), "Rise Up" by Parachute Club, "Try" by Blue Rodeo and "Soobax" by K'naan. In classical, I went for "I'm Going Up a Yonder" sung by the very awesome Measha Brueggergosman; my Francophone pick was the previously-featured "Dégénération" by Mes Aïeux (though I would have also gone for "Montréal -40C" by Malajube); for jazz, I had to go with "Hymn to Freedom" by The Oscar Peterson Trio.

If you have a chance, head over to that shortlist and vote if it's not too late, or just check out the list of pretty amazing music (with samples and iTunes links), all Canadian, and all just really scratching the surface.

In these heady days prior to the inauguration (not to mention the impending re-opening of Parliament here, and we should mention it a lot), if I could nominate a recent song for Obama that is not Canadian, it would be the title track off the album Join With Us by the British band The Feeling, an album I was looking for in Description 55 (I still don't have the damn thing, btw). I've said in passing how much I love these guys, and I first heard the song when I saw them play in Wolverhampton UK a couple years ago. It took that long for it to grow on me, possibly in part because of the way the world is now.

While I love the crunchy bits in the last minute, what matters are the lyrics, which include "The world is in your hands / The world is in your hands / The world belongs to those of us who still believe we can / And it matters what you do / Though they all look down on you / Cuz it's better that you've come from nothing / Than nothing comes from you"

Join With Us - The Feeling

The Other Side of A Christmas Story

So I'm going home as usual for Christmas next week (U.S. border guards permitting) and it's unlikely I'll be recording any festive podcasty stuff this time. You may remember last year I went with my friends Ron and Julie to "A Christmas Story House," the house in Cleveland which was featured as Ralphie's house in the movie. That trip served as the soundseeing tour for Description 49, which was about the connections A Christmas Story has to my birthplace and where I live now. While I did talk about the Canadian significance of director Bob Clark and mention how the most of the movie was shot in Toronto, most of the episode out of circumstance focused on the American side.

Now the beautiful people of Torontoist, whom I will miss dearly when they stop publishing on New Year's, are filling in the Canadian side. The latest (last?) edition of their awesome "Reel Toronto" series, pinpointing exact locations in made-in-Toronto movies, features none other than the adventures of Ralphie and his pals. So enjoy the historical and geographic trivia here to prime yourself for non-stop showings of the film on tv. And keep digging through Torontoist for excellent news, reviews, commentary and nostalgia about Toronto - for that old acquaintance should never be forgot.

(Update: Literally due to popular demand, Torontoist is staying alive! Woohoo! So I'll keep linking there as much as I can. You keep going there, so they can...er...keep going.)

Description 62 - Citizenship

To celebrate my 10th anniversary of being officially Canadian, I look through my old application, friends and family share memories of misplaced hats (goofy and otherwise), and the government implodes.

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(in 96 kbps for your drive space pleasure)

Associated links
Feed for the QN Podcast
Citizenship and Immigration Canada: Applying For Citizenship
CBC Becoming Canadian: From Immigrant to Citizen
A Look at Canada
Shawn Micallef covers a citizenship ceremony at the AGO for Spacing Toronto
Town & Country Buffet is closed?
My initial post about the coalition thing
Rick Mercer on the coalition thing (pre-prorogue)
CBC.ca archive on the coalition thing
Canadians For a Progressive Coalition
Rabble TV on the coalition rally
The Tory site for winning hearts and minds

My humble thanks to Sage and Amit (my good friend going back to the mid-'90's and the TPOH mailing list) for their wonderful, thoughtful contributions. And of course, there are my parents...

I neglected to mention the singer early in the rally montage was Richard Underhill, sax virtuoso of the Shuffle Demons (Spadina Bus!) and member of the Kensington Horns featured in my PS Kensington video.

Here's a wacky thing: if I'd stayed in Oshawa, my local MP now would be Jim Flaherty, the guy who presented the budget update that started this whole mess! *shudder*

Shortly after he spoke at the rally, Stéphane Dion stepped down early as Liberal leader (which he was going to do in May anyway) so the party could continue marshalling its forces for when Parliament convenes again January 26. To replace him, the Liberal caucus has chosen our star (at least in words) of Description 14, Michael Ignatieff. He has come a long way as a politician since that speech of his I read in that episode, going through much of that buzzsaw faced by fresh "philosopher kings" and still standing with some of his ideals intact. Those ideals factor into his statements about studiously reading whatever it is the Tories come up with for a revised budget update when Parliament meets up again before lowering the non-confidence boom. He's not saying coalition-no-matter-what, but also maintains the preparation to present a coalition if necessary. While that takes a little of the air out of the passion about a coalition, it is also definitely, prototypically Canadian (ah, "reason over passion" - Trudeau strikes again), holding out for compassion and compromise to the bitter end. We will see how bitter Stephen Harper chooses to make it.

6th Photo Meme: Yoko at the El Mo

Yoko at the El Mo
Originally uploaded by Valerie27

I'm back so soon because I've been tagged by Rob Lee of Unconventional Wisdom (and husband of the previously mentioned Katherine) for the 6th Photo Meme. Since he's such a nice, level-headed fellow and I don't want a dolphin to be killed, I'll see if I can pull this off (since it's my first proper meme).

So here's how this goes: when you're tagged and if you are on Flickr, you go to the sixth page of your photostream, pick the sixth photo and post it to your blog. Then you tag six more people to do the same thing. Yes, it's a chain letter, but somehow when it doesn't feel like a chain letter (like something I received recently and blew off), I'm okay with following along - though having to contact people to further it tweaks my anxiety.

I haven't been posting a ton of photos to Flickr lately, so this goes back to October 2007. As part of my unofficial series of photos taken in reflections, this is in the women's restroom of the legendary rock club the El Mocambo in Toronto. Since the men's restroom is called the "John", the ladies' is called the "Yoko". (Ha! Rock comedy!) IMO, it's one of the nicest, most spacious rock club restrooms in the city, though I think it does still have two stalls.

Now to tag those six people - man, I hope this works out. Sorry in advance...
Justin Beach (my Podcast Landlord and lord of publicbroadcasting.ca)
Bob Campbell (longtime listener and blogger of Note to Myself)
Adam Gratrix (of Transpondency, Foreskin Radio and whatever else he comes up with which upsets whatever balance I possess)
Ninja (of Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters, Ninja Radio and many a supportive Facebook comment)
Dan Misener (of Jim Dupree: Enthusiast, Grownups Read Things They Wrote As Kids, CBC's Spark, etc.)
Rob Winder (recent photo blogger, promoter of the great band Jackdaw4 and friend going back to the TPOH mailing list)

When everyone started caring

Before I get to the meat here: the next episode is probably coming next week, and I've set a deadline for calling the Description 62 comment line. Please call 206-376-1528 before the end of December 8 with your comments about what Canada or Canadian citizenship means to you, and it'll likely get in the episode. I'd really love to hear from you.

And for the last few days, Canadians have been thinking A LOT about what Canada and citizenship means to them. Some extremely complex and I think damn interesting stuff has been happening in Canadian politics that, believe it or not, has started to make the machinations of the last U.S. Presidential campaign (hell, even Bush-Gore 2000!) look a little pale in comparison. By the time that deadline for your phone call passes (and you will have called by then, RIGHT?), it's possible, though not definite, that we'll have a new Prime Minister under a coalition government. Like that presidential campaign, it has been every bit as depressing as it's been wildly fun. And it's all been packed into a week. Man, I love this country!

I'm not going to even try to explain all this stuff to you as I try to explain other Canadian stuff - and believe me, part of what makes this so awesome is how Canadian it is, and what makes the debate about it so sad is how many people don't get that. Fortunately, another blogger has explained it for novices (and we all sort of are) in as complete a fashion as I could ever imagine. Her name is Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, and she has a blog called Yarn Harlot, which is most often about knitting and her life. (She was referred to me by my friend Katherine Matthews, who runs in similar circles as Stephanie, and I thank her.) If you have several minutes, please go to this post of hers and stick with it, because this stuff is very very key to what Canada is about. If you've ever thought there isn't much difference between the U.S. and Canada, and I haven't done much to convince you otherwise, Stephanie will.

I can only add this: through this trial, the ruling Conservative party has become only more American in their attitude and language, and what tears it for me is that their American-ness now defines assumptions they have made about the Canadian democratic system. Seriously. I can hear it, I can smell it. And to me, it is absolutely intolerable. So we will see what happens.

NaPodSubMo

First off, in case it hasn't come up, I wrote an update in the post for Description 57 regarding the death of Kenny MacLean of Platinum Blonde, just so you know.

Now for something more fun. November was National Podcast Post Month (NaPodPoMo), where podcasters post a new episode every single freaking day of the month. I can see how that would be a great experience for someone...who isn't me. There's also the point that "National" may not include Canada, so I was probably exempt anyway. Still, I saw an opportunity to maybe stretch my listener muscles (ouch) and look for new podcasts I'd never heard before. And so I invented National Podcast Subscription Month (NaPodSubMo, or NaPoSubMo when I'm feeling lazy or forgot how to do the proper truncation), in which every freaking day, I would subscribe to a podcast I had never heard/seen before. If you follow me on Twitter (not a requirement, I assure you), you may have seen my daily mini-reviews of each one. It took some doing, and maybe I didn't find all the podcasts you may think are best, but whatever - it was still a very good experience.

Some of those podcast subscriptions have been chucked in the bin already, not because they're necessarily bad, but because for some reason, I just didn't connect enough to them to sustain a commitment. There are others I like enough to hang onto a bit longer. And then there are those I fell in love with, look forward to spotting in the podcatcher and will commit to for a good long time...which in podcasting, is maybe at least another month or two. And it's those podcasts I want to share with you now. They're in no particular order.

MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show (video)
For those who know, you're saying "duh!".
For those who don't know, this is a current-affairs show on the U.S. cable news channel MSNBC (which I don't get here), which like many such shows is hosted by someone known for being more pundit-y than journalist-y. Unlike those other shows, it does not make me want to hunt the talking heads down and punch them. While I don't always agree with Rachel Maddow, she's smart, funny, talks like a normal person, isn't spoiling for a fight and isn't annoying. I usually watch this while I'm having lunch at home, but the audio version is perfectly fine too.

Ken P.D. Snydecast
I tried this for the same reason most people do: because the super-awesome SModcast (with Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier) hasn't put up a new episode in a while. The guy who picks and edits the music for that podcast, Quick Stop Entertainment editor-in-chief Ken Plume, does his own two-hander with Adult Swim voice star Dana Snyder (you may remember him from such shows as Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Squidbillies). Like SModcast, it's two guys jabbering about whatever for about an hour, but has less of that crazy "what if?" stuff and is usually more confrontational. Funny on its own terms.

Speaking of podcasts where guys sit around and talk...

Talking Canadian
...Which I tried while waiting for new episodes of The Bob and AJ Show. Three friends in the Ottawa area - the producer of the Sens Underground hockey podcast, a guy from Sudbury and a guy from Newfoundland - "get together twice a month, have some beers and just shoot the 'stuff'." (Note: on the podcast, they would not say "stuff" in that context.) It's basically like sitting around at a non-chain bar in a medium-sized Canadian town waiting for the game to start on the tv. Funny, natural, good-natured, not pushy. After all, they are Canadian. :-)

East Meets West
Another two-hander, CNET's Tom Merritt and noted geek Roger Chang talk mainly about current affairs, sometimes associated with tech and science stuff. This is one of those deals where I don't know why I like it besides being comfortable with these guys and their rapport. Notable, though, is how much of their discussion is fueled by discussions in the blog comments.

Zen Is Stupid
The subtitle is "Everything Wrong With Western Buddhism", but it actually feels more like a couplecast just shot through a Buddhist prism. Usually meeting up virtually from far distances, Gwen Bell and Patrick Reynolds talk about what's been going on in their lives and eventually (if at all), incidentally relate it to general Zen Buddhist concepts. Just a nice, smart chat.

Is it Just Me?
Two people shooting the breeze about life again, but this time they're Australian media veterans Wendy Harmer and Angela Catterns. Their 16-week season ended recently, but it's well worth revisiting while they hope for a renewal from ABC Radio (home to many great podcasts).

Dinner Party Download
From California public radio station KPCC, fun info to use at your next dinner party. Each show includes a joke, a drink recipe inspired by history and the same two questions asked of a very cool guest (Irvine Welsh! Robert Wagner!). You'll wish the next dinner party you attend would be as classy and entertaining as this.

The Digested Read Podcast
That podcast monolith known as the Guardian newspaper presents John Crace satirically summarizing hot books in the style of the author. Sneaky funny, and funnier the more you know about the author or book.

Zunior.com Podcast
A monthly podcast featuring a great variety of excellent new music (most of it Canadian) available from the pioneering digital music store Zunior.com. Utterly painless promotion.

The Zygiella Podcast (RSS)
Maybe the next generation of something like Zunior, Zygiella is a Toronto-based online music community with a music player, gig calendar, and links to band sites and merch, all with a brilliant design. The podcast is simple: it "discusses shows in Toronto over the coming week that cost $10 or less and play songs from the bands and performers featured on that week's list." It's as enjoyable and unpretentious as you can get for something this cool.

And that's it! Not a bad harvest for a month. Hope you find something in there you may like, or just be content that they're out there.