Breaking down the door

I’ve been listening to Steven Page on CBC Radio’s Stranded

We interrupt this post to ridicule the CBC’s radio guide page. I wanted to link to Stranded, so I went to the site and clicked the title link… which moved me back to the top of the page, as most poorly-written open-in-a-new-window JavaScript links do because I’ve disabled window opening in Mozilla. So I went to the source to find out what page was actually being pointed to–often embedded verbatim in a JavaScript function–and found the following:

<a class=”lgblackbold” href=”#”>Stranded</a><br>This Saturday on Stranded, host Jane Hawtin welcomes Steven Paige of the Barenaked Ladies. Find out which book, movie, munchie and – most of all – music – he’d like to be stranded with – and where! That’s Stranded, Saturday morning at 11 (11:30 NT) on CBC Radio One.

What’s wrong with this? You can’t get there from here, because there is no target. In fact, according to the list of programs, not only is there no page for the program, but it doesn’t even exist.

(And I’ll be kind and refrain from pointing out that they’ve misspelled the guest’s name.) (Um, yeah, whatever.)

Ahem.

As I was saying, I’ve been listening to Steven Page from Barenaked Ladies on Stranded, a program hosted by Jane Hawtin where her guests discuss their stranded-on-a-desert-island-with-only selections. While discussing his food of choice, and whether he’d want something he likes or something sustaining, he mentioned that he’s Jewish. And I realized that a) I didn’t know that, and b) it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t know what religion most public figures belong to–other than the ones who are known for their faith, like, say, the Pope–and I don’t particularly care to. I’m slightly more interested to discover that someone’s an atheist, but as a trivia buff, any religious affiliation (or lack of same) is just another fact.

The title of this post, of course, is inspired by Brad Garrett‘s 2002 Emmy speech, where he deadpanned I just hope that this award breaks down the door for Jewish people who are trying to get into show business. Religion is funny.