One of the advantages of living where I do is that I happen to be in the Papineau federal riding. It's apparently the smallest geographically in Canada because of its high residential density.
But more importantly, it's the riding currently being represented by Justin Trudeau, Liberal Party superstar and the closest thing this country has to a political prince, making him an easy target for harmless fun.
Being a constituent apparently gets me one free calendar every year. This year's came last week in my mailbox - almost four weeks into the year, far beyond the point when calendars in stores enter liquidation pricing. I don't know if it's a party expenditure (since it has the Liberal Party logo on it) or if it comes from his MP's budget (since it has his parliamentary contact information on the back).
What I do know is that, like last year's calendar (this is apparently his third), it's filled with pictures of Trudeau, in most cases more than one on each page. As you can see in the video above, I count 33 pictures of Trudeau in his calendar, which is the same as I counted in last year's. Some photos are captioned as "Justin", others "Mr. Trudeau", others are written in the first person, and the rest don't have a subject.
But that's not interesting. Nor is it interesting that his welcome message spends more time bashing the Conservatives than talking about his family. What's interesting is that someone thought it didn't look silly that a calendar with 12 months has 33 pictures of Justin Trudeau in it, and a year later decided that shouldn't change.
There are some things at CHOM that will always be constant: The name, the format, the listeners complaining that the same songs get played over and over, and every decade or so the program director deciding to shake things up by putting Terry DiMonte back on mornings.
Terry DiMonte reads the paper just before he starts his first show. (And by "the paper", I mean the section in Saturday's Gazette seemingly devoted to him)
I'm not a music critic. I couldn't dissect a song to tell you what parts of it are good and what parts are bad. That's why you won't see me writing about music a lot.
But this is an exception.
The above is United State of Pop 2011 (World Go Boom) by DJ Earworm. It's a mashup of the 25 most popular songs of 2011, including songs by Katy Perry, Bruno Mars, LMFAO, Rihanna and Adele. It was uploaded to YouTube on Christmas Day.
And it's awesome. But I expected it to be.
To describe it as a "mashup" seems unfair. In reality, this is a song created from little bits of other songs, a masterpiece of musical editing that is as awe-inspiring by its complexity as it is catchy in its melody.
If you haven't heard of this before, you need to listen to the previous years' versions:
Each is just as impressive. And for added awesomeness, each can be downloaded free as an MP3. Just follow the link in the YouTube description to DJ Earworm's website.
Last month, I gave a talk to some student journalists from Ontario and Quebec who gathered in St. Henri as part of a regional conference of Canadian University Press.
I occasionally get asked to talk to students, and like most professional journalists I'm happy to do so, because it gives me a chance to help others and because it totally inflates my ego to see so many people look up to me.
As it happens someone was there with a camera and recorded the whole thing.
About half of the talk (which is in English but has questions answered in English and French) has been posted to YouTube in three parts (keep in mind I was low on sleep and didn't have enough time to prepare a script or even a list of talking points, so you'll hear a lot of "uhh"s and awkward pauses - the question period is better):
Okay, I admit, maybe it's just that Annie Brocoli catches my eye more than other artists. But I still think there was a cameraman or director who paid a bit of extra attention to this lady.
It wasn't quite the way I pictured it would be, but on Friday evening I was on national TV for the first time.
Well, maybe calling it "national TV" is an exaggeration. It was during the 5pm hour on a Friday, and the audience was probably somewhere in the low five figures at best. I was actually more curious about the experience than I was excited about the idea of having wide exposure or getting famous or something.
Well, you knew it had to happen eventually. Big Orange Crush (on Ruth Ellen Brosseau) is the creation of Snowman in Heat, a Vancouver-based band (about as far from Berthier-Maskinongé as you can get). You can listen to their other songs here.
As it turns out, knowing about it for months didn't soften the blow too much.
Aaron Rand, who announced in February he would be leaving CFQR/Q92/The Q after more than 20 years as a morning host, spent his last day at the microphone on Thursday.
And when he finally said goodbye, there weren't too many dry eyes in the room.
