Hi all

My posts on here have been extremely limited so far and comes down to one simple fact. I am a lazy git.

I find it much easier to talk into some method of audio recording device than to sit and type out my random meanderings onto a computer.But as I think Simply Read is such a fine addition to the Simply Syndicated site, I was inspired to come up with a more regular contribution.

Now deciding what I could write about was not easy, in fact it took some guidance from my eminently brilliant co host to get me to this point.

Some of you may know that I do a rather massive amount of driving in my job and over the years have been to countless places. My little corner of simply read is going to be experiences, impressions, recollections and as I said before meanderings about my travels. The places, the people and er………… the local takeaway amenities?

I am sure at some points it will enter rant territory and much will be with my tongue firmly set in cheek. There may well also be some bashing of local customs, enforcing of stereotypes but on the flip side there will be some that I dispute. I hope that in doing this I get across to those not UK based some of the vast differences here between places so geographically close on such a small island.

There will be little or no research, no accurate historical facts, just whatever comes out of my head. So er………..sorry in advance. Continue Reading…

The DeGrassi brand is a big one in Canada, and in parts of the States, too. It can refer to four or five TV series, some movies, books, even pencil cases and glittery nail polish. Today, though, I’m talking about just one facet of the franchise: DeGrassi Jr. High.

This 80s teen drama fooled a lot of people who thought they were watching a funny little show about kids. Instead, they got kick-assed by actual relevant topics: right off the bat, a 13-year-old girl announced she was pregnant. Later, characters would drink, use drugs, experiment with sex, question their sexuality and basically do things that real kids were really doing. This was possible because Canada has always had a much more mature attitude about television than America.

Do you remember when Brandon got drunk (on his first sip of liquor) and crashed his car off-camera, later to swear he Would Never Drink Again? That kind of 90210 heavy-handedness was largely absent from DeGrassi Jr. High. Later, when the show became DeGrassi High, the writers started dumbing things down, and by the end of it (a TV movie) it was a full-on Melrose Place tribute.

DeGrassi Jr. High was unabashedly Canadian, even after it started appearing on US TV in the late 80s. There was never any attempt to disguise dirty old Toronto as anything but. One episode features an attempt to buy beer at one of our Brewers’ Retail outlets, and nails it perfectly, stubby bottles and all. And there was a lot of sex-based humour; in one episode, Wheels thinks he might get lucky with Stephanie, but when he tried to buy condoms, the pharmacist is Stephanie’s mom. D’oh!

The show gave us some memorable characters. Joey Jeremiah, Caitlin, Snake, the twins, Spike, BLT (did you see BLT on the Lost episode What Kate Does? Yeah, that was him), Liz, Arthur, Yick … These were children first, actors second, and they looked it. Shot without makeup, in natural light, in a real school on a real street (a popular tourist stop in Toronto), DeGrassi Jr. High looked like a bad documentary, but felt like real life.

We all knew kids like the kids on this show. I’m a few years older than the actors, and by the late 80s I was out of high school and off to college, but even then, Monday nights meant everyone stopped what they were doing and tuned in for some DeGrassi. And we all knew someone who reminded us of someone on the show. There was a rock band called The Zit Remedy that knew exactly one song, and there was a band like that at my elementary school. We were called The Rhythm Method, and I am not making that up.

There’s a new series. I’ve never seen it, but I understand that it’s a direct sequel, with the original characters now the parents, and a new crop of young’uns. But every commercial I’ve seen makes it look slick and Hollywoody. Somewhere around here I have a DVD of the Kevin Smith appearances on the new DeGrassi: The Next Generation (love that title), so I guess I’ll have to watch at some point.

I found old DeGrassi DVDs, five episodes apiece, for a few bucks at a local store. I think I’ll pick them up for my kids, because as they get older, TV gets stupider, and I’d like them to watch something with heart.

– Kennedy, Starbase 66

This article was written by a Simply Syndicated fan, Shane aka “token bg” on our forums.

While you may regard this as hyperbolic it is said by some that the most high pressured job in England, with the obvious exception of Prime Minister, is the manager of the England soccer team. Given recent news headlines it seems we can add the position of England soccer captain to the list. For those who aren’t aware, here is the background to what I am referring.

Later this summer, England will compete in The World Cup. As always, England are seen as one of the competition’s potential winners. For a change, this belief is not unfounded. England’s performances over the past two years have been generally impressive and they can be rightly considered amongst seven or eight countries with a realistic chance of victory come early July.

But there’s a potential spanner in the works. Last Friday (29th January) it was revealed that the England captain had cheated on his wife with the ex-girlfriend of Wayne Bridge. Bridge used to be a team-mate of Terry’s at club level and is a current colleague of his in the England team. This has caused a media furore, with many in the media, as well as England fans branding Terry a disgrace and demanding that he have the captaincy of England taken away from him. The reasoning for this is that as captain of England, Terry is seen as an ambassador for the game of soccer and a role model for young children. As he has fallen short of these duties he must be punished. Continue Reading…

10: You will discover that there are people out there in the world who think the way you do, and you will be surprised.

9. Your friends will ask “What’s a podcast?” and you will get to say “I don’t know if you can handle the concept.”

8.  Your coworkers will notice that you have stopped trying to talk to them about Star Trek. This will lead to an immediate change in workplace status, ie: They’ll tell you about the box of doughnuts before they’re all gone.

7. You will eventually realize that most podcasts are pretty bad, and gravitate to Simply Syndicated, which has better T-shirts.

6. You will sign up for a forum that offers cameraderie, knowledge, wisdom, civility, and a few Floridians.

5. You will get to the point where you have to clear room off your iPod, and those Nickelback albums will be history.

4. You will discover that foreigners are kind of okay.

3. You will learn that it’s perfectly all right to just talk. And talk. And talk.

2. At some point, you will realize that not all microphones are created equal, but also that it doesn’t matter.

1. You will learn that there’s no such thing as “off topic.”

– Kennedy, Starbase 66

Death Comes To Town is the hot new TV series from The Kids In The Hall. It’s a miniseries, a couple of months’ worth of a sketch comedy take on Twin Peaks, with a little Grim Reaper thrown in for flavour. I have not yet seen it, because I work when it’s on, but when it’s done, I’ll watch the whole thing in one sitting, probably. For two reasons:

1. It was shot in North Bay, Ontario, where I lived for two years about 20 years ago. I loved North Bay, and I hope I get a glimpse of my old waterfront house in the background of a scene or something. I left my 10-speed on the back deck, and it might still be there.

2. It’s made by and stars The Kids, who appear to be greyer and wider and balder in the commercials I’ve seen, but still willing to move the manila when it comes to generating laughs.

Their self-titled TV series was a big deal when I was in my early 20s, and represented a kind of comedy we hadn’t seen on TV since Monty Python. It was odd, edgy, a little surreal, sometimes spectacularly unfunny, but sometimes brilliant. They used swear words on TV, for shit’s sake.

Characters created by the five kids — Scott Thompson, Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCullouch and Mark McKinny — are still a part of Canadian pop culture. We all know someone who likes to whip out “I’m crushing your head!” at exactly the wrong moment, right?

Example: a recurring sketch was called 30 Helens Agree. It was a short little slap featuring 30 women named Helen standing there repeating a line. Obscure, weird and excellent. Other sketches relied on recurring characters like Kathie and Cathy, Simon and Hecubus, those cops, Buddy Cole, The Chicken Lady, Gavin (“How much would my head cost if it was made out of beef?”) … Once in a while, a damp hairy fat man would wander into the scene wearing nothing but a towel.

I’m going to credit The Kids for legitimizing nerds. They’re nerds, but they’re cool nerds, and they welded comedy to the oddness we nerds embrace. Sketches were built around the nature of sarcasm, or wordplay. In one classic, Foley plays a character who says “I’m sorry, I speak only enough English to tell you that I speak no English,” or something along those lines. Brilliant. Funny. And nerdy.

The Kids In The Hall ran for five years here in Canada, and appeared on television in some other countries. It was a hit. The five were gifted writers, excellent comedians, pretty good actors, and looked hot in drag. They did this a lot, and pulled it off, in a Bugs Bunny kind of way.

But the troupe imploded in the mid-90s (there was a movie made called Brain Candy, which is not for you, or for me, even). The five went their separate ways; you probably saw Dave Foley on News Radio, or Mark McKinney on SNL. I saw McKinney eating breakfast at the Mars Diner in Toronto a few years ago. I was on my way to a comics convention; he was pouring maple syrup.

A reunion tour a couple of years ago led to Death Comes To Town, which tells the tale of small-town crime, murder, intrigue and gossip, all of it prompted by the arrival in town of Death. Thus the title. McKinney plays Death, as he did in a memorable guitar-slinging sketch from the original series.

Here’s the weird part: As Death Comes To Town prepared to debut, I mentioned to the lady in my life that I would be watching it, and she said “I’ve never seen The Kids In The Hall.” And I was stunned. So I went out and picked up the Season 1 DVDs, and I’m seeing them for the first time in years, and I’m blown away by how well these sketches hold up after two decades. I’ll play them for her this weekend in order to make her 100 percent fully Canadian.

I’m crushing your head.

Kennedy, Starbase 66

Welcome back to Canadian Content, a weekly look at the glorious country I call home. As always, I guarantee this column to contain at least 50 percent true stuff.

This is Canada’s Royal Coat of Arms, also known as the Arms of Canada. It’s a familiar sight here, especially if you spend a lot of time waiting for the judge to call your name in federal court, not that I have any experience with that, honest.

We’ve had this as our Coat of Arms since 1921, when it replaced a woodcut of a beaver fighting a moose. A lot of work and planning went into designing the Arms, and the end result is this messed-up, overly busy concoction. Today, dear readers, I will break it down for you so it’s easier for you to understand. I’ll keep it simple because I know a lot of you live in Florida.

From the top:

1 The Empty Crown: This is meant to signify the fact that we are ruled by Queen Elizabeth II, but she’s almost never here. When she does show up, someone goes around and sticks her picture on all the Coats of Arms.

2 The Angry Little Lion: This guy is waving a maple leaf and yelling at you, because that’s something lions do, eh? I like to think he’s shouting “This leaf is red! REDDDD!”

3 The Union Jack and some French flag on spears: This is really typically Canadian; we put some other countries’ flags on our royal seal.

4 The Golden Toilet: There’s a chemical toilet on our Coat of Arms because we spend a lot of time in little huts on frozen lakes, trying to catch fish. I am not making this up.

5 Some Maple Leaves: Just to make sure you know this is Canada, eh? Get used to it. We drill those maple leaves into you. What you don’t know is that those aren’t maple leaves. They’re pot plants. America was founded by Freemasons; Canada was founded by Deadheads. Anyway, there are more at the bottom, but those are just weeds.

6 The Big Lion: The lion is Canada’s national symbol, because so many of them roam our forests.

7 The Unicorn: Our Coat of Arms was designed by a 13-year-old girl. If it were being done today, we’d have stupid Edward Cullen on it.

8 The Shield: This has a bunch of smaller images on it: Ninja throwing stars, a harp, some lions having a three-way and some “maple leaves.” It’s a secret code that, when deciphered by Robert Langdon, spells out “Canadian bush party!”

9 The Motto: “Desiderantes meliorem patriam” is Latin for “Desiring a better country.” An alternate translation is “This place sucks, eh?” This is Canadian National Pride at work.

10 The Other Motto: “A mari usque ad mare” means “Take off, you hoser” in a rare and little-used dialect called Etobicokan.

So there you have it: our Coat of Arms. I hope you like it. If you ever want a closer look, let me know; I have it tattooed on me, and the Speedo doesn’t cover it all.

Kennedy, Starbase 66

Let’s test your geography knowledge. We all know Canada shares a border — a very long border — with the United States. After the U.S., though, which two countries are closest to Canada? This is a tricky one.

That would be Denmark (courtesy of Greenland) and France (courtesy of St-Pierre et Miquelon). What? France? Yeah, France still has two little islands off the coast of Newfoundland. They have some cows and stuff, I think. If you travel to these islands, you’ll find Euros in use and hear a kind of French we don’t have in Canada. It’s a bit of the Old World in the New.

Speaking of Newfoundland … that’s pretty much a foreign country in itself. Newfoundland didn’t become part of Canada until 1949, and its combination of geographic and cultural isolation and its rich history make it a very, very different part of Canada. When Cabot first sighted the coast of Newfoundland (in 1497, the “discovery” of Canada), he found Basques fishing its waters; people were coming for centuries before Columbus. The site at L’anse aux Meadows is the first confirmed Viking settlement in North America, dating to the 10th century.

I have a long-standing fascination with the province, even though I’ve never visited it. The music, the lifestyle, the sea … these are things you don’t experience in the rest of Canada. Not the same way.

It’s the people. They’re a unique breed, more European than North American. Some communities on Newfoundland are more than 500 years old, fishing villages clinging to the rocky coast with the kind of tenacity bred through salt-lashed centuries of hard work and hard play.

Their accents are like nothing else you’ll ever hear. I have a Newfoundlander friend from one of those little communities, and his accent gets more and more back home the longer the night wears on. I could listen to this guy read the phone book aloud. These accents were featured in at least one big-budget movie: The Shipping News.

When Annie Proulx’s novel was first being adapted for the screen, John Travolta was attached and wanted to move the action from Newfoundland to Maine. That never happened, thankfully — it would be like someone adapting Dune, but moving it to Texas and making it into a Western. Lasse Helmstrom’s film, starring Kevin Spacey, is flawed, and ultimately fails, but it does capture Newfoundland wonderfully. It makes me want to visit that much more.

Canada’s a big place. It’s diverse. I was born in the Okanagan Valley, a temperate part of British Columbia where snow rarely falls and vinyards yield superior wines. I grew up on the rugged north shore of Lake Superior, where winter comes in September and blasts through to May. I’ve lived on the prairies and in the mountains, but never on the sea.

Someday.

Meanwhile, I should mention the jokes. “Newfie” jokes are a long Canadian tradition, the sort of thing that would be about Poles or blondes or whoever. You know what I mean. I won’t repeat any of them, and I won’t use the word, even though every Newfoundlander I’ve ever known has used it. It’s their word, and I’ll let them take it back. The jokes are based on the idea that Newfoundlanders are backward and stupid, but nothing could be further from the truth. The ones I’ve met are quick-thinking, adaptable and tough as granite, both physically and mentally.

Every country, I suppose, has a region that stands apart, alone, different, whether by choice or by chance. In diverse Canada, we’re lucky enough to have a place that’s like nowhere else on Earth. It’s beautiful, it’s rare and it’s exciting, even if it is kind of close to France.

– Kennedy, Starbase 66

This was the most Canadian television show ever made. Set and filmed in Gibson’s Landing, British Columbia, the half-hour comedy/action series was the story of Nick Adonidas (Bruno Gerussi) and his friends and enemies, all of whom were enmeshed in the high-stakes cutthroat world of … collecting logs that had floated away.

Most Canadians have fond memories of this show. We don’t really have a choice; it seemed to be on pretty much all the time. Before school, after school, on weekends … my local TV station was notorious for pre-empting cool American Saturday morning cartoons like Three Robonic Stooges and replacing them with The Beachcombers.

There’s another reason we all know this show: It ran from 1972 to 1990, which is a long time for a Canadian show. Heck, for any kind of TV show. It had a lot of cast changes along the way, but Nick and his sidekick Jesse Jim (Pat John) were constants. Other popular characters were Constable John Constable, the village cop (Jackson Davies) and Relic, Nick’s crusty rival (Robert Clothier). When Clothier died in 1999, my pub threw a Drink To Relic night. That’s impact, people.

What was its charm? The locale was a big part of it, I suppose. I’ve been to Gibson’s, and it’s beautiful. Somewhere there’s a photo of me standing outside Molly’s Reach, the iconic cafe that was the primary focus of the series. Episodes were shot out on the water, with plenty of speedboat chases, goofily sinister villains-of-the-week and odd attempts every now and then to work social issues into the mix.

And it had a fantastic theme song.

Most of all, it was just fun, and was a rare show the whole family could watch. And I liked the unapologetic Canadianness of it. We’re saturated with U.S. television up here, and for a kid in the 70s, The Beachcombers was a homegrown treat.

It was also a bit of an ambassador, airing in numerous other countries. Foreigners watching this show would probably conclude a few things about Canadians:

• … we all live by the water
• … we enjoy the cultivation of big healthy moustaches
• … our teenagers live alone or with strange old men, and are pretty obnoxious
• … collecting lost logs won’t make you rich, but you get to Be Your Own Man
• … every crook, fugitive, con artist, smuggler, thief or random beautiful woman will wind up in Gibson’s Landing at some point.

It was never cool. Later attempts to jazz it up — including a name change to Beachcombers! with an exclamation mark — never clicked. There were a couple of sequel movies and attempts to revive the concept (with most of the original cast dead, new actors were brought in, and things never clicked). But it wasn’t supposed to be cool. It was supposed to be Canadian.

– Kennedy, Starbase 66

We take a lot of time off in Canada. This is a matter of necessity, of course; we all live beside lakes, with docks and boats and stuff, except for those of us who live beside excellent ski hills. So we need our leisure time.

Our holidays are somewhat similar to what they have in the U.S., but there are some differences.

There are also a lot of holidays we don’t take off work or school, like Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Father’s Day and Mother’s Day. The flexibility of these holidays can tempt parents to get tricky; I spent my first 20 years thinking the last Saturday in June was Topsy Turvy day, on which the kids cooked and cleaned and Mom watched cartoons and played. Thanks, Mom.

So I thought I’d take a moment to run through our actual days off for you, starting with our national statutory holidays. These are days we are mandated to take off by law, unless we work in a convenience store or movie theatre or some fast-food places and discount shoe emporium in that corner of the dowtown mall nobody goes to anymore.

• New Year’s Day: January 1. This holiday was created because Canadians know how to celebrate New Year’s Eve, which is not a holiday but is treated like one, and requires a day to recuperate.
• Good Friday: The Friday before Easter. This changes year by year for reasons I don’t really understand, which means I’m usually scrambling to buy stale chocolate eggs the night before, because I didn’t know.
• Canada Day: July 1. This is the birthday of our country, the anniversary of the signing of the paper that made us a country separate from Britain. We’re still waiting for evidence that this actually happened. Sometimes Canada Day falls on a Monday or Friday, which means we get a long weekend. It sucks when it’s on a Thursday.
• Labour Day: The first Monday in September. This holiday also coincides with the beginning of the school year, and is meant to celebrate the union movement. Once, I worked on my roof on labour day and a guy in a pickup truck yelled at me.
• Christmas Day: December 25. This is observed in some other countries, too. I don’t much like it because there’s never enough gravy.

Canada’s provinces celebrate some other statutory holidays; they’re all different and some don’t mark them at all. They are not technically statutory holidays but most employers treat them as such, there’s no school (when applicable) and most stores close. I’ll stick with Ontario, where I live:

• Family Day: The third Monday in February. This is a new holiday invented by Ontario’s current Premier, Dalton McGuinty, who included it in his most recent re-election campaign (the one where he said “no new taxes). He was elected on the basis of a day off in February, and is in the process of raising taxes. Because we’re sheep.
• Civic Holiday: The first Monday in August. Every city or town has the option of naming this holiday after someone significant, but few do. In my city, it’s named after our founding father. But nobody knows that. It’s usually called the August Long Weekend, and is a key date in the summer drunken softball circuit. I think. I can’t really remember, because I’m usually playing softball that weekend.
• Thanksgiving: The first Monday in October. Yeah, you heard right. October. We do Thanksgiving right. In Canada, we sit down to our massive turkey dinners when the leaves are still falling and the pilgrims can play their bagpipes or whatever it is they do without wearing gloves. Some people have ham for Thanksgiving, but we’re pretty sure they moved here from the U.S.

And then there are the weird ones:

• Victoria Day: The Monday on or before May 24. This is known in Canada as the May two-four weekend, two-four being slang for a case of beer, and weekend being slang for “The sun’s up already? Crack me a Molson Golden, bud.” This is not technically a statutory holiday for anyone other than federal employees, but we all observe it, because we need an extra day to open the cottage, what with all the drinking. While it’s called Victoria Day, it is meant to mark the birthday of the reigning monarch, whenever that may be.
• Remembrance Day: November 11. Marking the end of the First World War, this holiday is a sombre event meant to honour our war dead. Government workers and bank employees don’t go to work; everyone else does, and students go to school, but gather at memorials at 11 a.m.
• Boxing Day: December 26. The day after Christmas is a statutory holiday in some areas, but not in others. Municipalities are permitted to order stores to close on Boxing Day in order to give retail workers an extra day with their families. In others, retail workers get an extra day with crowds of angry, shoving shoppers anxious to save $50 on a Wii. On Boxing Day, you can hear the fighting at Walmart from my house.

This all works out to roughly one extra day off a month, except in June. I’ve been lobbying the government to make Topsy Turvy Day a real holiday, but Mom is pretending it never happened.

While the “sport” of curling didn’t originate in Canada — it’s probably Scottish, but nobody wants to admit to it — it’s definitely a big deal here in Canada. I’ve been to towns that boast no newspaper, no radio station, no grocery store, no gas station … but have a curling club. And it’s always busy, and it usually serves cheap draft beer of the Ring O’Fire variety.

The game is basically shuffleboard, but not as fast-paced, and played on ice. Two four-person teams, or “rinks,” face off on long, narrow ice sheets marked with big targets. The teams take turns sliding heavy concrete “rocks” down the ice, using small brooms to sweep it clean to affect minimal control of the rock’s slide. The goal is threefold:

1. land as many rocks as close to the centre of the target as possible
2. knock the other side’s rocks out of play
3. drink two pitchers before the price goes up at 9 p.m.

I have curled. And as someone who has curled, I can assure you that it’s really, really boring. I was recruited onto a curling rink the same way I once wound up golfing: someone said “It isn’t too hard, and you can get a beer while you play.” I said something like “Oh, like bowling,” and was told “No, bowling’s just a game. Curling is a sport.”

Wrong. It’s a game. Curlers like to call it a sport because it’s played on ice and some of them wear those tearaway pants when they’re sliding along the ice, but really, folks, it’s a game. I tend to define “sport” as something that requires physical fitness and skill to do, and the fact that men’s curling uniforms are available with size 56 waistbands says a lot.

Anyway, back to my point: Curling is dull. It’s slow and repetitive, one of those rare sports that’s less fun to play than to watch. Have you watched it? It’s an Olympic sport now, and let me tell you, when curling made the games in 1998 there were plenty of extra pitchers being sold at small-town curling clubs across Canada, even at full price.

… Weird aside: There is a spinoff version of curling known as jug curling. It’s the same game, but played in hockey rinks with plastic bleach jugs filled with cement (or, as is more typical, gravel from the parking lot, dug up from under the snow at the last minute). Unlike real curlers, jug curlers drink beer and rye right on the ice during games, and fall down a lot, which is funny.

There is exactly one movie about curling: Men With Brooms. It was partially shot in the city where I lived, and I was there for part of the filming. It isn’t very good. It’s the story of a retired curler who comes back for One Last Game or something, and stars Paul Gross, Leslie Nielsen, Molly Parker and Peter Outerbridge and some other actors you would know if you watch late-night Canadian infomercials. (Note: Molly Parker has to appear in every Canadian film. It’s the law.)

For whatever reason, curling is a huge part of Canadian culture. I know more people who curl than people who don’t, and the ones who don’t curl like to watch curling on TV. I used to know a guy who would call in sick if women’s curling was on TV. He was really into Gilmore Girls, too, come to think of it.

When curlers get together, it’s a big deal, too; as a reporter, I spent a week covering a national tournament, and it was a huge event, with the whole city celebrating it like it was the Super Bowl, and media from all over the country packing the press gallery.

I really, really tried to work “Curlers get their rocks off” into my coverage, but my editor changed it.

He was a curler.