Monthly Archives: January 2009

Bye-Bye won’t go away

January 7, 2009 – 4:35 pm| Posted in Media, Opinion, Slow News Day

Quebec has two New Year's traditions: one is watching Radio-Canada's Bye-Bye variety show. The other is spending an entire fucking week MONTH talking about it in the press.

It's gotten so bad the anglo media is starting to take notice, with belated articles in the National Post and Globe and Mail. Naturally, the Journal has an article talking about how there's articles in the anglo media about this now.

Now that this is officially a thing, the media is putting together stories about the stories:

This doesn't even include all the stuff that was written about it before it aired.

And this is just the beginning folks. Some actual news better break to push this off the front page or Jean Charest is going to have to create a commission on this.

UPDATE (Jan. 9): Véro and Louis's mea-culpa-but-not-really has ensured at least a few more days of this.

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YULblog relaunches tonight

January 7, 2009 – 4:28 am| Posted in Blogosphere, Montreal

yulblog

Local bloggers (and their groupies) might recognize YULblog ... yulblog ... Yulblog ... however you capitalize it ... as a monthly meeting of local bloggers (and their groupies) for drinks, discussions and oggling iPhones.

But once upon a time it was also a website that republished Montreal-centric blog posts from its members. That part fell by the wayside because the people behind it (essentially Patrick Tanguay) didn't have enough time to maintain it (see Patrick's comment below).

Now, organization of Yulblog's monthly meetings is being handed over to the new, less busy hands of Michael Boyle, and the website is being relaunched tonight to coincide with this month's Yulblog meeting (8 p.m. at La Quincaillerie, 980 Rachel St. E., near Parc Lafontaine). It's worth braving early January weather to go see.

I hope.

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Star runs You Be The Editor quiz

January 7, 2009 – 12:33 am| Posted in Media, Opinion

The Toronto Star, still looking for some holiday filler, has produced a journalism ethics quiz which it invites readers to answer on its website. (via J-Source)

The Gazette did something similar a while back.

Editors deal on a regular basis with tough ethical decisions, and must choose between publishing something or holding it back. The Star gives some examples, at least some of which were based on actual events which were published in the paper and got complaints.

Most are unfortunately a bit too easy to answer for me.

As holiday filler for this blog a public service, here are my answers to the quiz and the explanations for them:

Read More »

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Gazette photos of the year

January 6, 2009 – 11:21 pm| Posted in Media, Video

The Gazette's Phil Carpenter (who has a blog now, by the way), has created a little movie of Gazette photographers' pictures of the year.

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Yeah, we get it, Being Erica is set in Toronto

January 6, 2009 – 11:00 pm| Posted in Opinion, TV

Being Erica

I just watched the premiere of CBC's Being Erica, a show I was hopeful about a few weeks ago because of stuff it produced that it turns out has nothing to do with the show.

I was worried that this would turn into another amateur-produced series with cliché-crammed scripts that scream "this is a Canadian-produced show that wouldn't survive 10 seconds south of the border".

After the first episode, it's too early to tell either way whether the show is worth watching. There's plenty of cliché in it (rain starts pouring instantaneously when her date totally disses her). But there's just enough nudity insanity later on to make up for it... I think.

I'll let you know when I form an opinion. Until then you can watch it and form your own.

One thing that does annoy me (and, I imagine, most of the country) is the constant unnecessary references to Toronto. The high-school setting is set in 1992 (and makes a joke about a home computer that is at least a decade older than that), and references to the Blue Jays winning the World Series are inserted everywhere. The actual printed word "Toronto" appears at least four times in the 45-minute episode by my count. Even Sex and the City doesn't reference its home city as often.

I'm starting to wonder if the city doesn't have some product placement contract with the series somewhere, or if the Torontonians behind CBC television programming are really that obsessed with name-dropping their home town.

UPDATE: The premiere's ratings were good or awful, depending on who you ask, but it's hard to judge because the World Junior Hockey Championship on TSN sucked away most Canadian viewers. Nevertheless, critics seem to like it.

Inside the CBC has a post about Being Erica's social media strategy (which will no doubt be analyzed to death on every Canadian social media blog). It includes the blog and YouTube videos I raved about earlier, as well as a fake Facebook profile (isn't that a no-no on Facebook?).

UPDATE (Jan. 16): I just watched Episode 2, which apparently tried to make up for all the Torontoing of the pilot by mentioning Montreal seven too many times, and name-dropping some other towns too (Etobicoke?). Is the CanCon Committee paying them for every mention of Canadiana?

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Les Appendices: A promising start

January 6, 2009 – 9:02 pm| Posted in Humour, TV
Les Appendices

Les Appendices: Jean-François Chagnon, Dave Bélisle, Jean-François Provençal, Julien Corriveau, Dominic Montplaisir

Télé-Québec just finished airing the premiere of Les Appendices, a half-hour rapid-fire sketch comedy show by Québécois 20-somethings that focuses on wordplay and what I can only describe as absurdity.

I was first exposed to this troupe a few years ago at screenings of Tivijournal, a mock news show with mock ads that targetted the media. (Sadly, that troupe has been inactive for almost two years now, though I'm hopeful they'll come back someday.) Before screenings, they'd show some bonus material, which would include a short episode of Les Appendices.

I didn't go to comedy writers' school, so it's hard to describe the type of comedy involved. Just go to the website, which allows you to see the entire episode for a week, and you'll see what I mean. (You can also see a repeat Wednesday at 12:30pm)

But as an example, from their premiere: Julien asks Dave if he can play with Dave's guitar. Dave hands over his guitar, and what follows is a minute-long montage of Julien frolicking outdoors with the guitar, pushing it on a swing and playing hockey with it. It's this kind of silly wordplay that they excel at.

Aired without a laugh track (and for many good reasons), the series has a good habit of doing a sketch, moving on and then revisiting it a few minutes later for an extra laugh. They cut it off just before it reaches annoying-running-gag level.

The first episode (it's not clear if they're going to keep doing this) has a DVD menu theme, with fake behind-the-scenes footage and fake audio commentary. It's a bit odd for a series premiere, but they make it work. I just hope they go beyond it, because there's just so many audio commentary jokes you can make.

As someone who watched their before-they-made-it-big episodes (which, sadly, are not online), I have some suggestions for their new show:

  1. I liked the old opening. The guys would each be shown running out of class, and they'd all jump in the air outside for the cliché frozen-in-mid-jump celebratory picture, only to have it unfreeze and see them tumble to the ground. The new version has the same gag in CGI form, but I find it loses a lot of the punch.
  2. Tighten it up by just a bit. You can take a single play on words only so far. I know writing dozens of these things every week is hard, but we're in an ADD world and the more of these you can cram in the better off your show will be.
  3. Add a female. Sorry, you gotta. You can fake being black, but you can't fake femaleness. That young lady you were performing with tonight, she seems nice. Add her to your cast permanently. I know she doesn't have glasses and doesn't play DND, but we'll get over that.

Les Appendices has also been getting attention from the media (Therrien, Dumas, Arpin, Martel). They all seem to like it.

Here's hoping that the series will only improve from here.

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STM on new schedule today

January 5, 2009 – 5:21 pm| Posted in Public transit

I was going to have my usual quarterly post analyzing changes to the STM's bus schedules, which take effect today, but:

  1. I didn't have time
  2. There aren't many changes, besides already-announced service improvements
  3. The Gazette's Linda Gyulai Max Harrold writes about those in this morning's paper

At the top of the list (PDF) is the 105 Sherbrooke, which gets a much-needed 26% increase in service during rush hour.

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New Jon Lajoie video: Everyday Normal Crew

January 5, 2009 – 3:31 pm| Posted in Humour, Video

Even he admits this is essentially Everyday Normal Guy 3. But it still works.

Jon Lajoie's Live as Fuck tour comes to Montreal March 12, at Club Soda.

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Blog software upgrade

January 5, 2009 – 2:48 pm| Posted in Navel-gazing

I just upgraded to WordPress 2.7, which has a whole new backend and some new features for comments. One is a reply feature, which allows you to respond to specific comments (I haven't tested comment threading yet but hopefully it won't explode). The other is comment paging, which will split comments to multiple pages when the discussion gets too much (ahem).

Let me know if you see any bugs as I've had to update the template myself.

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Bye Bye online

January 5, 2009 – 4:01 am| Posted in Humour, TV, Video

I was going to write a post about how Radio-Canada doesn't put their television programs online for us to watch (unlike Global and CTV) despite being paid for by our taxes.

Turns out they have posted the Bye Bye and other New Year's Eve programs for viewing, for a month. I realize licensing can be a complicated issue sometimes, but is it really so hard to get new programming to include unlimited online broadcast rights?

You can see the Bye Bye starting here in Windows Media format (and decide for yourself whether it's as racist as everyone says it is). There's also Laflaque, Infoman and TLMEP.

Unfortunately, the battle to get CBC and RadCan away from that horrible video format is still ongoing.

UPDATE (Jan. 6): Presse canadienne reports that 28 people complained to the CRTC about the Bye Bye, which doesn't really tell us anything since it's the nature of the complaints that matter. Radio-Canada has received hundreds of complaints.

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