Apologies are in order.

It appears that television was not perfected last night.  It was already perfected two months ago.

Evidently, Splash was not the first celebrity diving show to air in North America.  In January 2013 Fox ran a show called Stars in Danger: The High Dive which featured stars such as JWOW and Twitch from So You Think You Can Dance performing high dives.

Splash was not an original idea (I know it hurts my heart too).  In fact it turns out Splash is already a hit in the Netherlands.  So at best Splash is the third celebrity diving show worldwide with more on the way.  If network TV is right (and I don't see how it can ever be wrong) public demand for high-diving competition is at such an all time high that we are demanding multiple shows about high diving to be on prime-time television. 

We all need to pay attention.  How many of us have dove lately?  Do you even know what a triple gainer is?  Can you name a diver other than Greg Luganis (note - saying "that Chinese guy who did all the flips last Olympics doesn't count").  People wake up and smell the chlorine.  I for one am now well versed in all things diving.

However, our lack of knowledge is not the biggest problem.  We may have a serious shortage on our hands.   How are we going to make shows if we have already used the d-list celebrities we have? Watching Kareem Abdul Jabar is fine the first season, but we have to think long term here.  What are we going to do for Splash Season 2 (the Wettening).  How are we going to cast Splash - All Stars (Return to the Pool) where previous winners of Splash stars worldwide will compete for the crown (or should I say bathing cap) of Splash Ultimate Champion.  We need to ensure that this amazing idea lives on.

I have the solution.  If we keep having other reality shows we will ensure that there is enough grist for the ongoing mill that is celebrity diving.   Take JWOW.  She is herself a celebrity because of a reality show (Jersey Shore) and now she is a diving puppet for our amusement.  Much like planting Christmas trees, if we ensure that we make at least two non-celebrity diving shows each year we will always have celebrities to fuel the insatiable public demand for diving.

So the next time you scoff at a particularly crazy reality show just remember that without that show we will not have an even stupider show down the line.
If you don't take the leap of faith from the high dive board you will never end up in the idyllic lagoon of your television dreams.   You also never end-up bleeding and alone in a pool of despair after smashing you head a la Mr. Luganis in the 3m springboard competition at the Seoul Olympics in 1988.

The choice is yours.  I personally am willing to risk my brain being clubbed in by inanity for the promise of a brighter future where celebrities risk life and limb for my amusement.

They finally did it!

Today is a historic day.  We will tell our kids about this day.  We will speak in hushed tones about it. 

We will mark March 19 on our calendars.  We will pay tribute to it.  We will remember.

For today is the day they perfected television.

I am of course talking about Splash.  The perfect television show.

Splash pairs celebrities and diving.  I know - I know - It is heaven.  Splash has a 65 year old Kareem Abdul Jabar trying to perform a summersault. Splash has Ndamukong Suh  (a 300 pound linebacker from the Detroit Lions) attempting a swan dive.  Splash has Rudy from the Cosby Show in a swimsuit and pairs her against comic Louie Anderson. 

Splash has synchronised swimmers kicking into commercial breaks.

 I can't think of a better program. Wait....Wait....I spoke too soon.  There are several better ideas.


Jump - Celebrity Skipping

Fall - Celebrity Parkour

Slide  - Celebrity Luge

and of course

Pong - Celebrity Table Tennis.


It turns out TV truly has no limit to the heights it can reach or the depths it will dive to.

What time is It? It's time to watch!

I am comfortable with the fact that I spend a lot of time watching TV.  There is nothing that can be done about that.  How can I resist the copious amounts of mind numbing entertainment one button push away?  What am I supposed to do, go for a walk?  You know that right now there is both an episode of 'till debt do us part' and 'strorage wars' on (these are both on 24 hours a day. I am beginning to suspect that, ironically, Gail Vaz-Oxlade owes a debt to some seriously powerful people and she is essentially an indentured servant).

What I didn't realise is the amount of kids shows I would watch after becoming a parent.   You see my genes are strong and my son also loves TV.  Except he has terrible taste in shows.  I figured we would be watching the Wire together.  Instead, we watch Bubble Guppies.  OVER AND OVER AGAIN. 

Now all of this repeated viewing has taught me somethings.  First, I now realise that the Sun is indeed a beautiful Sun and it goes around and around us.   That said I am starting to see the hidden stories that exist in each of these shows.  I also am noticing that there is serious need for some fact checking.

Allow me to now pass judgment on the following:

Bubble Guppies

• Lobsters doctors should not sing about the 'bones inside them'.  Lobsters do not have bones.  They have an exo-skeletons. 
• These fish live under water.  Yet nothing behaves as it would underwater.  My son is not going to understand fluid dynamics. 
• Why the hell is Nonny always frowning?  Is it because he has glasses and Molly (his crush) doesn't give a second look, instead preferring all look and no substance Gil? 
• Are you telling me that Goby (the only Black bubble guppy) is not on the Fishketball team?  I don't buy it.

Max and Ruby

• To quote the joker: "Where does he get those marvelous toys".  Max has the highest tech toys possible.  He has like remote control blimps and rockets with real fire.  I am pretty sure these do not exist. 
• Where are there parents?  I mean Max and Ruby live by themselves in a giant house.  The only adult involved in their lives is their Grandmother.  I have a theory on this.  Keep reading.
• What is up with Ruby?  Sometimes she is very nice to Max, but often she is the biggest bitch possible.  She tells Max to shut up and leave her alone when all Max wants to do is let her that t her chameleon has escaped.  She just doesn't listen.  I am very troubled by her bi-polar nature.   I think this explains the lack of parents.  I am 99% sure that Ruby (in a manic episode) killed her parents when they tried to take her out of the cult she was in (bunny scouts).  On the advice of the leader she offed them and has been taking care of Max ever since.  I am pretty sure we will see all of this in a series of flashbacks at the end of the season in a huge cliffhanger.  Max's word for the episode will be 'murder'.

Fireman Sam

• What the hell is wrong with this show? Why are the characters so sexist (at one point the lone female firefighter is told to stay in the kitchen while the men go fight the fires).
• What is up with Norman?  His voice is the most annoying thing ever.  He also literally sets a fire every episode.  This is a small town.  This kid is just torching a building everyday.  Do they not have juvenile detention in England?
• I think that the fire station is funding Norman to start fires so that there will be no questioning of why this small town afford a fire station and a rescue boat and a helicopter.  It makes no economic sense otherwise.   I also pretty sure Norman is Fireman Sam's illegitimate child.  

Thomas the Tank Engine

• Do you all see that Mr. Topenhat is running a totalitarian regime in which the engines are caught under his thumb and made to be useful or suffer the consequences?  The only one who understands the injustice of it all is Toby.  But he's too square to do anything about it.  If only Thomas would open his eyes and become the leader he was meant to be and start the revolution. 
• Also, Thomas should totally shunt Emily.  Am I right?

Toopy and Binoo

• There is nothing strange or weird about this show at all.  This show is very true to life and in no way will cause my child to suffer the equivalent of an acid flashback when he is older.  Way to go Quebec.

At least my son will be able to say that everything he learned,  he learned (wrong) from TV.

In Soviet Russia Cars Drive You

I am sure you all have heard about the meteor that almost hit the earth.  I am sure you all saw the footage of it from Russia.  It was awe-inspiring and amazing.... and all that.  But the meteor coming close (not really) to hitting the earth buried the real story. 

Living in Russia is like playing a real-life video game.

You see most of the footage of the meteor was captured by dash board cameras from Russians.  Why are there dash-board cameras in Russia, you ask.  It seems that there are a lot of corrupt cops in Russia and the best protection from being falsely arrested and thrown in the gulag is to have evidence that you were just minding your business driving your beets to the local borscht making factory when you were pulled out of your car by KGB agents and forced to dance the Cossack dance while said agents threw matryoshka dolls at you. 

You may have noticed that my last example shows that I know nothing about Russian culture.  I am sure it is a varied tapestry of experiences that I unfairly reduced to the most obvious caricatures that I have gleaned from television.  That being said, Russia is seriously fucked up.

Take a look at the compilation of videos captured from Russian car cams in the following link.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50141258n

Did you see that?  There was gun shootings, crazy car crashes, helicopters buzzing by and an airplane landing on the freeway.  Life in Russia is obviously way cooler than all of the Die Hard movies put together.  It is no wonder that Russia has banned adoptions to the United States.  They are afraid of giving them the next generation of action superheroes.  Now I know that the 'occurances' that were taped will likely harm some babies, but those that survive to adulthood are inevitably the next  John McClane or Martin Riggs.  You have to look at the silver lining.  Given what I know about superheroes from comics, Chernobyl must have resulted in at least one superhuman that the Russian government has kept secret and who will ultimately be used to gain global supremacy. 

Now I know that it is probably true that if there were dashboard cameras on every car in Canada we could probably film some crazy shit too.  But, we generally do not fear our police and as such we don't film everything and no one knows about the crazy shit we go through on a day-to-day basis.  

Because of our trust our legacy is lost.

If we fear more, we will record more.  If we record more we will see more of the bad shit that happens to others.  If we see more of this, we will fear more. 

I for one am investing in dashboard cameras.

The reason why I did it

I, like so many Canadians, watched the Superbowl last night.  It was amazing.  But, like other Canadians, I am now going to be arrested because I am going to have to try and kill the lead actress from CTV's "Motive".

Normally the commercials are the best part of the Superbowl. This is only true in America. In Canada, every second commercial was for Motive which was (as we were informed) airing after the Superbowl.

It started off ok.  There was an ad for Motive.  I was mildly intrigued.  Then the ad aired again.  And again.  And agian. 

Then there was a power outage during the game and the ad aired approximately 1000 more times.  It slowly drove me insane.  I begged the TV to stop.  But it just kept going.  It kept taunting me.   I slowly started to see that the show was secretly the work of the devil. 

As far as I can tell while other shows ask who, what, where and when - Motive dares to ask the question why?

So I have a couple why questions for it:

Why would you think that exploring motive is a new idea when literally every crime show does this already? I mean the whole ending of every show is always the explanation of why something happened.  Have you watched CSI? Law and Order?

Why would a cop not care about the who, what, where and how?  I suspect that real cops don't give a shit why something happens as long as they find out who did what to who. 

I purposefully left the channel on and waited for Motive to start and immediately turned it off the moment it came on so that whoever watches viewing habits would know that I disapprove.  

I suspect no one noticed. 

They were to busy learning from good commercials that only aired in America why God made farmers or learning about a goat who eats Doritos.  I didn't learn about any of those things.  I learned that Canadians make horrible shows and have horrible promos for them. 

Why am not surprised?

Our fine furry friends

I was reading the newspaper on my way to work yesterday and I read an article about the fight by Toronto parents to improve a local school by cleaning-up a raccoon infested portable where their children are taught.

This article made me realise what a sorry state our city is in.  No one is thinking about the bigger picture.  Everyone is so caught up in their own little lives that the larger point is being lost on them. 

These parents are looking to get rid of potentially the best thing that could ever have happened to them. 

You might at first blush think that having children share their learning space with a feral animal would be a bad thing.  Clearly, you know nothing about raccoons.

Now don't get me wrong.  I, unlike most people, do not think that raccoons are cute and cuddly.  I think they are evil spawns of the devil that must be eradicated.  I am at constant war with our neighbourhood raccoons over our green bin.  A war I am losing.

That said these raccoons could be a very good motivator.  Imagine your child is in the classroom with the raccoons (which will now be referred to as the coon house).  That teacher now has a powerful incentive for your child to perform well.  If you don't you are going to have your desk moved near the coon hole and may God have mercy on your soul.

Also, given that raccoons are nocturnal it also seems to be a natural solution to funding issues.  Rather than hire security staff we just populate our schools with raccoons and let them deal with any after hours issues for us.  Win Win.  Plus, I imagine that there will be a whole lot less clamouring for extra-curriculars.  I for one would want to get my child out of Dodge before the raccoons wake up and start searching for fresh children to munch on (raccoons will eat anything and I am sure over the years they will develop a taste for kindergartners).

The media is also all-over obesity in children.  What is a better incentive to get fit than avoiding being eaten by a large rat-faced creature?  Not only will our kids be fitter they will be instilled with a healthy fear for mother nature.

I am so sick of these helicopter parents bubble wrapping their kids and insisting that they never have to deal with real life issues like how to cross the street by themselves or the best way to fight-off a flesh crazed mammal who is consumed by blood lust and living in your classroom.  If our kids don't learn how to deal with such bullies now, how will they ever be able to stand up to Bob in accounting later down the line?

Now an added benefit for me would be that if the raccoons are in schools contentedly munching on textbooks, they will not be trying to eat my garbage.  That is not the reason I suggest this.  I am only thinking of your children.  Now, I suppose the raccoons might try and eat my kid when he goes to school, but we will cross that bridge when we come to it.  No need to worry about that right now. 

These parents are looking a gift-coon in its rabies-filled mouth.

Captive Audience

I got stuck on the TTC.   Again.  

This time there was a passenger alarm activated.  I don't know what that means, but it better have been serious because I once again sweated through another dress shirt.  At this rate I am going to need to invest in a new wardrobe or botox treatments. 

This time I tried to look on the bright side.  The delay meant I got to spend time with my fellow Torontonians.  I got to experience my fellow man.  Unfortunately, the fellow next to me was listening to his iPod way too loud and man did it cause me to want to strangle him.

In order to not strangle him, I proceeded to shuffle around until I was far enough away so I could hear myself think.  Lo and behold I was left in front of the stupidest thing I have ever seen.

It was an ad to help problem gamblers.  I stared at it in disbelief.  Let's see if you have the same reaction I did.

The ad is here (go take a look I will wait)

http://safeorsorry.ca/pdf/SafeorSorryPrintMaterials2012.pdf

So what was wrong with the ad?

First, it seems like a safe sex ad.  Is it not even clear that it is a problem gambling ad right away.  Why did they name it hearts?  That just further complicates things.  I mean who gambles on hearts?

But that is not why it is an idiotic ad.  I was able to figure out it was an ad for problem gambling.  Then I read the fine print on the bottom where it says "Take our quiz online for a chance at a home entertainment system."

So let me get this straight.  You want to reach a bunch of problem gamblers.  You presumably want to get them to realise that gambling is something they should consciously avoid.  So you lure them to your site by getting them to engage in a contest where they have a chance at winning a prize.  You get them to give up gambling by getting them to gamble.  Seriously?

Does Jenny Craig get people to sign up for diets by offering a discount for all members at KFC?

Maybe the theory is that the quiz will be like methadone for heroin users.  Or maybe the people behind preventing gambling are just stupid idiots.  I suspect it is the latter.

I started to look around me and realised that the TTC is the only place where I am forced to see ads.  With all the signal delays I am literally stuck looking at ads for hours at a time.  There is nothing I can do.  I can't fast forward, I can't switch the channel, I don't want to look my fellow man in the eye. 

I am truly a captive audience. 

One  would think that this should mean that the ads would be amazing.  The TTC should have Superbowl quality ads.  My morning commute should be a wonderful experience where I get the best that the ad world has to offer.

Instead, I get ads for non-profit entities which paradoxically probably serve to make the problem they are trying to solve worse.

It was too much for me.  It all hit me at once.  The ad was a microcosm of the world around  us where things are being done with no sense of purpose and no actual intent.  I cried out at the utter insanity of it all. 

No one noticed. 

The other passengers just continued to bob along to the music on their iPods, oblivious to the world around them. 
 

Stop the world I want to get off...

It appears that even getting home from work has now become a series of trials and tribulations.

Since October of 2012 they have been updating the elevators in my office building.  There are only 4 elevators, but the 'elevator improvement' project appears to be as involved as the preparation for the Olympics.  There are signs and construction everywhere and the security guard has been taking random drug samples from office workers (at least I assumed that is why he has been asking us for urine samples).

Last week, one elevator was finally upgraded and released for general use.  However, it looks exactly the same.  The only difference is that it has:

(i) a slightly different layout of buttons inside and;
(ii) it now refuses to stop at my floor. 

So cosmetically it is nicer, but functionally it is useless.  It is the New Coke of elevators.  The problem is that it is currently the only functioning elevator in the building. 

So last night I stood and waited....and waited... and waited. 

Finally it opened, but it was going up.  So I waited for it to come back down and it skipped my floor. 
I eventually caught it on the way back up the second time. 

I then hurry to get on the subway and am treated to the words every commuter longs to hear... we are experiencing signal difficulties.

I was of course outfitted in my winter Canada Goose jacket.  Ironically, my preparation for winter was to my detriment, because the TTC can't handle cold weather. 

Now for those uninitiated few who do not ride the TTC, there is a stretch of track between St. Clair and Davisville stations that experiences signal difficulties in the winter because the track in this stretch are outside and evidently the signals were not designed for cold weather.  I would have expected that this would have been thought about beforehand.

Engineer:  I think we should design the signals to work in cold weather.

TTC Guy:  Why? Its summer.

Engineer:  I think it will get cold in winter

TTC Guy:  Have you not heard of global warming?  I watched this documentary with Al Gore in it and he says that it will never be winter again.

Engineer:  I think it will nevertheless get cold.

TTC Guy: My recent investment in shares of Coppertone says otherwise.

I proceeded to sweat through my dress shirt as I stood in my own personal hot box for 40 minutes.

Why not take off my jacket you ask?  Well, my fine friend, the subway was packed because of the aforementioned signal delays and I could not raise my arms above my head.

When I got off the subway I was a mess and then had to walk several blocks through the freezing temperatures outside.  I am now inevitably going to die of the flu.

My tombstone will read:  Here lies Tim.  He died as he lived - covered in sweat and raging against the world.

Those Crazy Bulgarians

So I was surfing the Web when I came across this picture:



With the headline: "Who masterminded the failed attack on Bulgarian politician?"

I was like: "the head of the Bulgarian Society for the Legally Blind" or (BSLB to the uninitiated).  A gunman was  literally able to get up on stage point a gun to the head of this politician and the attack "failed".  What the hell happened? 

We are left with only one possible outcome.  The Bulgarian politician is a robot who was unable to be harmed from a straight-on bullet to the head.  He, like the Austrian Schwarzenegger, is a robot from the future sent back to either enslave or protect us for future robot warlords.

The newspaper story said that it was "a gas gun", but we know that the future all powerful robot warlords control the media.  I mean "gas gun"?  Really?  How gullible do they think we are?  I have never heard of a gas gun and I have heard of Robot Warlords (see "Terminator", "Terminator 2", Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" or "Short Circut"*)

(* If you really think Johnny 5 was a good robot you have not caught the undertones of evil that are contained in every act he performs.  Think about the way he says "John 5 still alive".  While he may not say "...to rape your women and destroy your civilization", it is certainly implied)

People we need to organise now - we must begin to stop the mechanical Belgians from recognizing their manifest destiny of control over us and every other biological thing on Earth.  We must now boycott:

Chocolate
Beer
Potato Fries
the Saxophone (invented by Adolphe Saxe)
Hercule Poirot

Who am I kidding?  While I might be able to avoid those things I could never, ever, ever resist the siren song of Tintin comics which were penned by a Belgian.

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

The Kids are (not) Alright

I was at a family function this weekend.  Family functions are the only place outside of pick-up basketball where I can connect with the youth of today.  My wife has 4 cousins all in the 17-24 age range and we usually sit and talk. 

It makes me feel old.  But it also makes me feel sad.

One cousin is taking courses at York in graphic design and she is taking an elective in "dance and culture".  I was excited to hear about this course as I know nothing about dance outside of watching "So You Think You Can Dance" and I was excited to learn vicariously through her.  So I asked her what she was learning. She told me she just started taking the class, but each week they watch a movie about dance and then they critique/discuss it as a class.  I was very excited.  That sounds like an amazing course. 

Until she told me about the first movie.  I will let you guess what it was. 

Was it "Top Hat" with Fred Astaire? "Singing in the Rain" with Gene Kelly?  "West Side Story" or "All that Jazz"?

No.  Guess again.

It was "Save the Last Dance".   I literally said, "Shut the Fuck Up".

"Save the Last Dance" is a horrible movie.  First (and most importantly) it stars Julia Stiles.  Seriously, she is the worst.  I know there is no rationale reason to hate her - but I do.

More than that the movie is the most contrived thing ever.  It is the tragic tale of a child whose mother dies while she is trying out for Julliard (and as I remember she falls in the audition at the exact same time her mother is killed by a drunk driver or something) forcing Ms. Stiles to go to an inner city school where she falls in love with this black guy who teaches her how to dance hip hop.  Said black guy then has to choose whether to be there for her new audition to Julliard or instead go rob a liquor store.  He chooses to support her and misses out on being arrested when the liquor store robbery goes south. 

Spoiler - the movie is less compelling than that one paragraph summary. 

If I was making that movie the black guy would go to the liquor store robbery and die and Julie Stiles would fall again in the audition this time somehow managing to breaking her ankle clean off her body and the movie would end with her broke and alone.  The postscript would be that this was the true to life tale of Abby Lee from "Dance Moms" as the Elton John classic "circle of life" plays quietly in the background.

So the movie is horrible - that is beyond question.  But this is a class about dance and culture.  I suspect that the dance scenes in "Save the Last Dance" are likewise horrible.  I can't imagine that they do any justice to street dancing or to ballet.  The fact that this is a 13 week class on dance and one week (or just under 10%) of the class is spent discussing "Save the Last Dance" is pathetic.

If I was in this class I think I might have some words with the professor. 

Professor:  Please turn to your syllabus.  Week one we will be studying "Save the Last Dance".  Feel free to study Ms. Stiles' characterisation in this and also her work in such other classics as "10 Things I Hate about You".

Me:  Um - you actually want me to watch Save the Last Dance? For the dancing?

Professor:  Yes - absolutely.  And this is just the beginning next week we will be watching "Dancing with Wolves".  It won the Oscar.  Pay careful attention to the beautiful Pas de Deux referenced in the title.

Me:  You do realise that just because a movie has dance in the title that it may not be about dance, right?

Professor:  Please refer to the syllabus entries:

• Week 3-5:  In-depth look at the "Step-up" series and whether it truly has stepped-up to the streets.
• Week 6: Dance sequels that surpass the original, including "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights" in which  we will explore Cuban culture in dance. 
• Weeks 9-11: Critical analysis of "Bring It On" vs. "Bring It On Again" vs. "Bring It On: All or Nothing" vs. "Bring It On: In It to Win It" vs. "Bring It On: Fight to the Finish" and testing the hypothesis that the level to which it is broughten corresponds to the extent of Kristen Dunst in the movie. 
• Week 12: Field Trip.  Visit to local arcade to watch people play Dance Dance Revolution
• Week 13: Final assignment on homoerotic sub themes in "Magic Mike" 

Me: Am I being Punk'd.  Seriously, are you Aston Kutcher in a wig?

I seriously doubt I could participate in this course with a straight face.  I really hope this is not indicative of the level of education out there.  If it is Julia Stiles is this generation's Ginger Rogers.  

Our day of reckoning is upon us.  Save the last dance for the devil.