Author: Peter

Near miss

About three and a half months ago I met Karla Rexer, a local singer-songwriter. She performed mostly original songs, on guitar and piano, but the few covers she sang were different: if she hadn’t identified them as such, I’d have thought they were her own.

Karla recently started hosting a weekly artist showcase featuring a set by a different local musician each time; Stanley Mark Herr and Tanya MacLean stand out as favourites. She’s also got regular gigs around town, including being one of the Mongolian Grill’s Saturday Night Divas, and she’s preparing a CD for release next year.

Near misses

Like most people, I’ve got stories about meeting famous individuals, and it’ll surprise approximately none of the regulars here that most of those meetings came at music events. (At some point I’ll have to write about the experience of talking to a Canadian astronaut who was a guest performer at a gig.) Equally interesting, to me at least, are the near misses: they’re slightly higher on the scale than sightings, as there was potential for actual conversation.

The first I can remember is walking into Althouse College for a Holly Cole concert—the first I’d ever gone to by myself—and recognizing Steven Page and Tyler Stewart (from Barenaked Ladies) ahead of me in line. This was around the time of the Yellow Tape, and must have been before they’d gained notoriety for being barred from playing in Toronto due to their name, because as far as I could tell no one else there recognized them. Holly’s opening act did, though: they were Moxy Früvous, who were also starting out at the time, and in improvised lyrics for Blow Wind Blow they riffed on the idea that they were often confused for BNL because they both did “funny” songs, and pointed out Ty and Steve in the crowd as they sang the verse.

I had another near-miss with Steve Page just recently. My friend Bob invited me to see “Weird Al” Yankovic at Massey Hall, and as we were walking in one set of the front doors I realized that Steve was just entering through the next ones over. He was with his family, though, and I didn’t want to intrude on their night out, so I didn’t say hello.

The strangest venue for an almost-meeting has to be the Ontario Science Centre. I had taken a couple of days to go to Toronto to see Lenni (natch) and wound up with a free afternoon, so I decided to go to Body Worlds 2, which had recently opened. (If the name sounds familiar but you don’t remember why, let me refresh your memory: it’s a controversial travelling exhibit of actual human bodies that have been preserved using a process called plastination and then posed in configurations that highlight certain parts, such as muscle groups in various states of flex, internal organs, and so on.) I’d gotten about halfway around the main hall when I noticed a slim, dark-haired woman on the other side of the central display. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her. As I continued around the exhibits I caught sight of her a few more times, but it wasn’t until we got near the exit that I realized she was Sarah Harmer. Given the… unique… environment, it certainly didn’t seem like the right place to go up and be Joe Fanboy, so I refrained.

It was on the same trip that I managed to not invite Rachel McAdams to Lenni’s show as I passed her on Queen St. West near the Drake Hotel (where Lenni was performing). As with Sarah Harmer, I wasn’t quite sure who she was until it was too late; all I’d seen her in at that point was Slings and Arrows (in which she was great, by the way).

Walking in to the Centennial Concert Hall, performance space for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and seeing Jeff Goldblum playing the piano in the lobby was unexpected, to say the least. We found out later that he was there visiting his fiancée’s parents, and had somehow used his connections (his fiancée, Catherine Wreford, had trained with the RWB) to score the opportunity to perform and schmooze with the crowd who were there to see The Nutcracker. He wasn’t half-bad on the keys, either.

Perhaps the funniest, unintentionally, was an occurrence with a local celebrity—although that term might be overstating the case slightly. For reasons I can’t remember, I was at Bertoldi’s Trattoria here in London with my friend Jessie and her mother, and we’d gotten to talking about high school. I’ve written before about having played on my school’s Reach for the Top team, and I was opining at some length about how Alex Trebek was good and all on Jeopardy!—and had hosted the national edition of RFTT for several years—but the best quiz-show host I’d come across was Mark Lade, who’d been the quizmaster for the CFPL-TV version of Reach. (Yeah, I know how to impress the ladies; watch out George Clooney.) As we got up to leave the restaurant, out of the corner of my eye I saw something… no, someone… no… it couldn’t be…. Um, Jess… remember what we were talking about earlier? Look over in the corner… the tall guy in the sport jacket? That’s Mark Lade!

To this day I don’t know how long he’d been there, or if he heard me or not. I hope he did. 🙂

RRJ article on CBC and blogging

A couple of weeks ago I received an email out of the blue from Emerald Austerberry, a journalism student at Ryerson University. She was working on a story about blogs and journalism, specifically about the recently-released and much-discussed CBC blogging policy guidelines for Self-publishing and self-expression on the Internet. I told her I’d be willing to be an interview subject, and a few days later (after I cleared it with work—we’ve got understandable but slightly-paranoid rules about talking to the media) we talked for about half an hour about Planet CBC, the CBC Blogging Manifesto, the new policy, and some of the more outstanding supporters and critics of all things CBC. (And for the record, not once did she push me for juicy bits or inside information about TVWorks or anything else. Not all journalists should be tarred with the same brush used for sensationalist American media outlets.)

Emerald’s article was published today, and I think it’s a good summary of the history of and controversy over blogging at the CBC. Plus, I have to admit it’s kind of cool being name-checked alongside CBCers like Joe Mahoney and the mysterious Ouimet.

TVWorks blogging policy

This policy governs the publication by employees of TVWorks Canada Inc. and its related companies (“TVWorks“) of blogs and other on-line commentary on platforms such as Wiki’s and social networking sites such as Facebook (for ease of reference all called “blogs” on this policy).

In all the time I’ve been blogging I’ve been quiet about where exactly I work; it hasn’t been for fear of retribution or anything like that—it’s always been a cool place to work that way, and it’s not like I get all that controversial on even the worst of days—but just because I didn’t have much to say. I’m not sure I’ll have that much more to say now that we’ve got a blogging policy (based on Sun’s) but it’s nice to know that we’ve got an executive team who recognize that there are conversations out here—about OCAP, interactive television, cable and media in general—to start and to contribute to.

Oh yeah, before I forget: everything I post here is my own opinion and doesn’t represent the views of TVWorks or Major League Baseball.

Evolution of user friendliness

The new attachment warning could mean the end of those “Sorry, I forgot to attach the file” emails. If you try to send an email that contains the word “attachment” (or similar words), but don’t actually attach a file, you will see a helpful warning.

Things I learned today

From CBC’s Test the Nation: The correct spelling of just desserts is actually just deserts:

Deserts, in the sense of ‘things deserved’ has been used in English since at least the 13th century.

From the Quirks and Quarks blog: The Voyager 1 spacecraft was launched over two weeks after Voyager 2. Despite that, Voyager 1 is the farthest human-made object from Earth, due to differences in trajectory between the two probes. (Also of interest: a playable/viewable version of the Golden Record is online.)

Love for Dear Harvard

Brett Love at TVSquad has posted a review of the Dear Harvard pilot:

[…] there was a nice surprise in Dear Harvard. […] Of the four drama pilots that I saw, this one is the closest to what I would call ready for prime time. It starts with a solid premise. The ‘Dear Harvard’ from the title is a blog kept by the main character, Honor, chronicling her quest to make it to the Ivy League. […] It’s also the best ‘pilot’ of the bunch as it really does a good job setting up what the series would be. […] The production values of Dear Harvard are really high as well. It’s one of the best looking of the pilots I have seen.

(You’ll remember that Dear Harvard is the TV pilot in which Claire Jenkins has a few songs. There’s a trailer online, but it’s being served in such a way that I can’t play it to see if any of Claire’s music appears in it.)

He suggests, as I did, that it’s obvious CW fare, but points out that that mini-network has a similarly-targeted show already scheduled. There’s obviously hope, though, so I’ll keep fingers crossed and an ear to the ground for new developments.

And developments there are…

“Harvard,” a teen drama about a young girl at an elite private school, won three awards, including the TV Guide Audience Award, which is voted by popular choice. The Anne Jarmain-produced pilot also won for best drama, and Ella Rae Peck was named best actress.

By the way, lest any regular folk think from the recent slew of posts about Claire that I’ve forsaken Lenni, fear not! There’s much good news to come from Miss Jabour… just not quite yet.

Gilmour, Sowande and Ellington

A brief followup to Li Robbins’ Radio 2 blog post, mainly for my own future reference: the particular movement of Fela Sowande‘s African Suite that was used as the opening theme song for Gilmour’s Albums is the fifth and last, Akinla. (For some reason the CBC Shop claims it’s the first movement, Joyful Day, but unless it was changed or the song changes substantially from that sample, that ain’t it.) The closing theme is Duke Ellington’s Saturday Night Function.

Ahoy!

Those of you who will be near or in Toronto next Monday night need to find your way to Supermarket for Claire Jenkins Avec Band‘s CD release concerts. I hesitate to call Claire’s music indie rock, because that can refer to an awful lot of stuff that’s nothing at all like what she does; on her MySpace page she says indie / acoustic / pop, which is closer, but your best bet is to head on over to listen to the tracks she’s posted and come up with your own genre.

There’s an early show at 7pm and a late one at 10pm, so no it’s a school night excuses will be accepted. (I’m driving down for the late show, so I’m less than sympathetic to the it’s too far folks either. 🙂 ) And bring cash, because you’ll feel awfully silly not being able to relive the show (through the magic of CD technology) as soon as you get home.