National Notoriety

I'm a bit more famous this morning.

On weekday mornings, CBC Radio One has a show called the Current. It's been around for a long time and it is known for its sense of humour and take on current events.

Before this whole Middle East thing became the news, there was a bit of a furor over a show called The One: Making a Music Star hosted by George Stroumboulopoulos. I guess some people (including me) thought it was a bit lame that The National (CBC's flagship news show) would be jostled around on Tuesday nights for some reality show produced by CBC.

Anyway, The Current decided to have its fun with this controversy by hosting its own reality show The Radio One: Making a Journalist Sing. The gist of the contest: CBC radio and television personalities face off doing their own interpretations of Elton John's Rocket Man. The results were pretty funny (which you can listen to in the above link) and I was lucky to catch last week's episode of The Current when they were playing clips and encouraging listeners to vote for their favourite.

So I voted. And I added a bit of my own flair to my entry about why The National's Terry Milewski should win.

Well, I guess Terry won today and it was all thanks to me and the 36% other respondents that voted for him. But, here's where the national notoriety comes in: my entry was read on the radio today. Yup, I'm officially part of the Milewski fan club.

Don't believe me? You can listen for yourself. (Requires Realplayer.) The contest wrap-up begins right away. Milewski's reading begins at about 5:30. My moment of fame follows right after. If you feel like listening beyond, you'll notice that my endorsement of Milewski is brought up again in an interview with him.

Now that I think about it, I'm pretty impressed that they pronounced my name right. But, in retrospect, I may have chosen my words a little better if I'd known they'd be read on the radio.

National Film Board

My last semester ever in university, I took Canadian Animation. I was excited to take this class since watching cartoons for marks sounded good to me. It was even better when I found out marks were only based on three exams throughout the semester. Thanks to this class, I got my only A+ which some what illegitimate since it's based on watching cartoons.

To my delight, the NFB has just posted many of their fantastic, superlative-eluding films online.

So if you're bored at work, you could probably plow through many of these. You'll find old favourites that you watched years ago and new ones that are incredible.

There are a few I highly recommend.

Neighbours. Done by Norman McLaren who is the father of Canadian animation. McLaren was always pushing the boundaries of animation weather it was drawing on film, stop-motion or printing overlapping images. George Lucas, among others, lists McLaren as an influence on his style, so take that as you will. This won an Academy Award.

The Sweater. It's a classic based on the eponymous story by Roch Carrier. It's charming especially since its narrator is Carrier himself.

The Cat Came Back. Oddly I only saw this for the first time in class while everyone had seen it before.

Two Sisters. Done by Carolyn Leaf. This film owes its interesting style to Leaf scratching layers of IMAX film to reveal different colour layers.

There's a few I wish were on there like Getting Started, Log Driver's Waltz (remember it from YTV?) and Begone Dull Care. Begone Dull Care was the first film we saw in class. It was done by McLaren where he scratched and painted on film. It was set to fantastic piano jazz music by Oscar Peterson. I was blown away by the energy and mood created by such a simple technique. Unfortunately, some people were turned off by the abstract nature of the film

What I find fascinating about the NFB was their hands-off approach. When McLaren joined the NFB during WWII, he was told to make propaganda films. He agreed if only he could do it whatever style he wanted. You got some crazy films as a result and it also paved the way for other artists. There are many films about a pedestrian topic such as food safety but the artists went to town on the presentation.

In large part to the NFB, Canada has gained a worldwide reuptation for animation. So I guess the ultimate Canadian would be a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic hockey playing, Tim Hortons coffee swilling, funny and drunk animator.

Killing the Easter Bunny

I heard the oddest quote on the CBC morning news a couple of days ago.

Go here. It's about war brides and their children that may lose their citizenship for some obscure reason. Even Romeo Dallaire, born to a Dutch mother and Canadian father could be affected.

The quote was from some women who was involved with war brides. It is the most bizarre quote ever.

"If Romeo Dallaire is not a Canadian, you might as well kill the Easter Bunny."

I'll let you puzzle over that one.

This is my face

So, by now you probably know I'm a tad bearded. I think it's kinda neat, mostly for the novelty factor. I've never had a beard before and it's definitely a different face I see in the mirror.

So, who's face is it?

At the end of May, Nicole made a blog entry about a webby device that scans your face and compares it to celebrity photos in their database. Intrigued, I cropped and downloaded this photo for them to scan:
Which is part of this larger photo from Arone's grad:
Once downloaded, the site does it's high-tech scan (complete with sci-fi green grid moving over my photo) and promptly tells me that I look like:

Joshua Jackson - 54%










Michael Palin - 53%










Antonio Banderas - 53%










Stephen Jay Gould - 52%









Gary Cooper - 51%










Ben Johnson - 49%
Tom Welling - 49%
Bill Gates - 47%
Georges Brassens - 45%

Ewan McGregor (as Obi-Wan Kenobi): 0%
But, I'll take Gary Cooper... just don't talk to me about Bill Gates.

Darnat is one!

To all those who picked one year or less for the divorce pool, guess you lose out.

Yes, today is our anniversary. We walked down 17th Ave, stopped for sushi with bad service, and perused several bookstores. Shortly, we'll be chowing down on perogy pizza because a one-year anniversary deserves Ukranian pizza.