When? Soon. Now! BARF!

If you don't live in Edmonton, or if you do, and have been living the hermit lifestyle for the past month, let me catch you up:

About a month ago, billboards went up all around Edmonton with what looked like the Sprite bottle bubbles in the background and the word WHEN? printed in giant letters.

Then, after a few weeks, all the billboards were replaced with the word SOON. I could hardly contain my enthusiasm.

Then, the big reveal yesterday at 1:02 - the launch of a new radio station in Edmonton called Now! Here are reasons why I already don't like this station:

1) Stupid ad campaign. I hate the build-up / reveal style of ads. Whatever marketing genius thought these up should be tied to a chair and forced to watch endless loops of "Where's the Beef" ads.

2) The name. Seriously? Now! (note the exclamation mark). What kind of name is that? Also, why do they need to shout the name of the station?

3) The morning show. Now, granted, I haven't heard the morning show yet, but the hosts are named Mars and Crash. Is the first lession in DJ school 101 about how you have to pick a zany name? "Here's our morning hosts, Jiffy Pop and Quicky Lube". Stupid.

4) The song selection - "guitar-driven rock songs from artists that write their own songs" - sounds promising. First artist listed? Nickleback. Enough said. Actually, not enough said - this looks like the worst parts of The Bear, Capital FM and K-Rock all mixed together.

5) The frequency. 102.3. That's WAAAY too close to Sonic 102.9. Considering that Sonic's tower is a piddly little thing in Nisku (right by that awesome Flaman treadmill guy) - the Now! broadcast takes over that entire 102-ish frequency range. Which makes it near impossible to find Sonic on my clock radio, which uses an old-school analog dial for tuning.

Don't get me started on how much point #5 upsets me. For years, I've woken up to the hilarious ramblings of Garner Andrews on Sonic. Or, 3 out of 5 days a week, a song by Metric. What an awesome way to start the day! Now that Now! has taken over my clock radio's ability to find Sonic, I had to tune it to the Bear. I do NOT want to wake up to AC/DC. Also, Paul Brown and the other Paul Brown (Yukon Jack) (oh yeah, and the ditzy woman - seriously, why hire a hot chick for radio?) are complete morons, and make me want to throw my radio and smash it when I hear them. Not a good way to start the day in a good mood.

I want my MTV.

And by MTV, I mean Sonic.

Own the podium?

In previous years, I was happy with Canada's performance at the Olympics, especially compared to powerhouse countries like Russia and the US.

But this year, I'm just not happy with personal bests and our perennial 4th place finish. I think it's because of the whole "Own the Podium" initiative that we've been hearing about for 4 years.

I want Canada to win a gold in every sport, even if they don't have athletes competing in it.

I blame the Canadian Olympic committee for ruining the Olympics for me. I used to be happy to see Canada finish just outside the medals - but they built it up so much that we'd win everything that anything else is just a disappointment.

I blame CTV.

I Believe

I love the Olympics - especially the winter Olympics (or, Olympic Winter Games) because Canada actually has a chance to win something.  (more on that later).

Anyway, here's my take on the opening ceremonies in Vancouver - my own colour commentary, if you will.

First off - the light show was amazing - especially the orcas swimming along and spouting water - they almost looked real.

Boo-urns to Nelly Furtado and Brian Adams for lip-synching.  Seriously?  But then again, they showed Miss Furtado singing after the medal ceremony one night and it sounded TERRIBLE.  So maybe lip-synching wasn't that bad of a thing after all.  But really - she's not a chubby person, but her dress also looked TERRIBLE on her.  Ditto on her dance moves.  Also, what's the deal with all these Olympic songs having to be really sucky easy rock songs.  I'm sure the Hip could have done something better.  Heck, even the Bare Naked Ladies could have come up with something better than the drum-banging anthem.

Moving on.

Sarah M was divine.  k d lang (notice the case) was amazing.  A couple of comments on kd:  1)  From Emily:  "Why does that man keep pulling the microphone wire?"  Kathryn's answer:  "Well, first off, that's a girl".   2)  Song choice?  Not sure what the song had to do with the Olympics (or Canada for that matter).  Still, (s)he did an awesome job.

Then I got to thinking - what do people from other countries learn about Canada from these ceremonies?

A)  The prairies are boring, and Peter Pan lives there.  Then, when the prairies aren't boring, there are lightning storms and blizzards.  Also, in this section, could they have gotten a more stupid-looking close-up than they did of Patrick Chan's face?

B)  If you live on the east coast, you wear leather with kilts, have your hair in a mohawk, play the fiddle and make deals with the devil.

C)  VANOC doesn't care about French People.  (don't get me started on this)

D)  Our Governor General likes to sleep

Also, what was with that opera singer's hair?  She looked like a muppet.  Also, her singing was great for the first 10 seconds - then it went on for too long - and all at the same level of intensity.  Also also, the token Quebecois singer (and p.s., who calls themsevles by only one name?) was something I could have done without.

I did enjoy the return of Brian Williams and his outragedness.  I think he started on a tirade about the Russian drug cheats.  I really hope that there's a controversy in these Olympics that he can go on rants about.

I'm not going to talk about the failed hydraulics (though, I wonder if Bombardier had anything to do with them) - but I will comment that it was LAME LAME LAME that #99 had to get in a truck and drive for 20 minutes to light another cauldron.  Overall, the cauldron lighting was completely anti-climactic.  And why wasn't there any security keeping the rowdies away from the truck?

Speaking of the flame's truck ride - my favourite part of the ceremonies was watching dude crouched down behind Gretzky poking the torch up and lighting another one for him, and then hearing Brian Williams go on and on about how special that torch must be since it hasn't gone out yet.  I'm sure Lloyd (pronounced L-Loyd) was kicking him under the desk.

And on to the games themselves.  Really, the only thing I want to say is that I wonder how long it will be until they drive a proper zamboni in to the Richmond Oval to replace the crappy environmentally friendly one.  It must be enviro-friendly because it never works, so it never spits out greenhouse gasses.

Now, on to CTV.  I am not really enjoying CTVs coverage.  Especially the daytime coverage.  It's all too ETalk Daily-ish for me.  I also abhor their website - it's too cluttered, too slow, and too terrible to use.  But what I really miss from the CBC is the Olympic anthem - so I've included it here.  Feel free to click on it at every commercial break so you can pretend you're watching CBC.