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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

See Ya's!

Last night I caught bits and pieces of A&E's new series Southie Rules, a reality show revolving around several generations of a family living together in a house in South Boston. This seems to be a good example of something I've stated before, that you can become a reality show participant solely on the basis of having an "interesting" accent.  I doubt I'll be watching again, as accents don't make up for the show being not particularly interesting.  Like Duck Dynasty it all seems a little bit too staged for its own good, and the antics of the cast are mostly  just dumb in a largely uninteresting way.  I found TLC's Starter Wives, which also debuted last night, a bit more interesting, although it's obviously TLC's attempt to do an African-American version of the Real Housewives franchise.  I wouldn't be surprised however if both these shows get 6 episodes and are done.  We recently saw TLC's Sin City Rules, a show that included poker pro Jennifer Harman amongst its cast, cancelled after only 3 episodes due to poor ratings, and something tells me these won't do much better..

Monday, January 28, 2013

One Week To Retirement.

If you're a penny fan, and don't feel you have enough around, you'd better get collecting.  Monday, February 4 will see the retirement of the Canadian penny.  Banks will no longer give out pennies, and those that come into banks will be returned to the federal government for disposal.  Although they technically will still be legal tender I suspect most places won't take them. If they know that is,  Some reports claim many businesses aren't aware of the penny going away.  Consider this a head up if you didn't.

I'll miss the penny.  Throwing them in a tin to be rolled later is a good way to save a bit of money away.

Friday, January 25, 2013

Gas In Saskatoon, January 25, 2013.

Another week of odd gas price changes.  The week began with gas dropping to 103.9 cents a litre, soon followed by a drop toi 99.9 cents.  But Thursday saw a jump up.  Gas in Saskatoon is now 107.9 cents a litre at most locations.  Given the long stretch of price stability we saw last year it's a bit odd to see prices changing several times in one week.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Goodbye, Metro.

Chances are the name Les Pavelick won't be familiar to most visitors.  Unless you're of a certain age and from the Canadian Prairies  the name Metro isn't likely to be much more familiar.  But he was another element of my 1970s childhood.  Pavelick died Tuesday at 71.  The kind of humour that Pavelick presented as Metro is hard to find these days, and of course many are no doubt quite happy about that.  You can judge for yourself.  "Big Bad Steve" is a parody of the classic country tune "Big Bad John."

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Full Mess Poker.

The cover story for the January 2013 issue of Bluff is a profile of Erick Lindgren.  Lindgren is a familiar face to many poker players and poker watchers, having appeared numerous times on programs like Poker After Dark.  But as the article reveals he's a man with major problems.  His gambling addiction has put him into Chapter 7 bankruptcy, as he owes numerous people several million dollars in unpaid gambling debts, some going back almost a decade.  Yet he's still playing poker, as that's pretty much the only way he has to possibly pay back those debts.  Generally when you think of addicts trying to fight their addiction you think of them having to avoid the addictive activity, but not in this case. 

The article includes discussion about Full Tilt Poker, which Lindgren was a spokesplayer for before the US crackdown.  Some of what's in the article won't be new to anyone who has been following some of the revelations made by people like Howard Lederer online.  But for me it was a surprise just how messed up Full Tilt's management in the months before Black Friday seemed to be, with Full Tilt pros like Lindgren being given loans with little thought put into how such loans might be paid back.  In fact just before the crackdown Lindgren was reportedly give a 2 million dollar loan twice.  In other words the company loaned him 4 million dollars, instead of the 2 million they were supposed to.  It's not hard to imagine that even if the US government hadn't gone after Full Tilt the company would soon have been in the news for screwing up its finances.

Online poker players can only hope that PokerStars, which now owns and runs Full Tilt, has better people running the fnances than the old Full Tilt did. 

Friday, January 18, 2013

Gas In Saskatoon, January 18, 2013.

The price of gas bounced like a ball this week.  The week began with a drop to 98.9 cents a litre, followed by another drop, to 96.9 cents a litre.  But yesterday saw the first jump up of the year, and it was a major one.  Gas in Saskatoon is now 105.9 cents a litre at most locations. 

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Today's Cassette, January 13, 2013.

Yep, it's time for another item from my boxes of cassettes.  Tonight it's Iron Path by Last Exit, from 1988.  This was the sole studio album by the quartet of Bill Laswell, Ronald Shannon Jackson, Peter Brotzmann, and the late Sonny Sharrock.  Their previous albums, on the Laswell oriented label Enemy, were live recordings.  Iron Path finds them in much more restrained mode.  It was released on Virgin during Laswell's brief association with the label, which also saw the release of his 1988 solo album Hear No Evil.  This was never one of my best sounding cassettes, but years of sitting unlistened to in my cassette collection hasn't done it any harm.  I was actually going to listen to it a couple weeks or so back, but got sidetracked for reasons I can't remember.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Gas In Saskatoon, January 11, 2013.

The downward trend continues, and it was a double dip this week.  Monday saw prices drop to 102.9 cents a litre.  This was followed by another drop yesterday.  Gas in Saskatoon is now 100.9 cents a litre at most locations.  It's been a long time since it's been that cheap, and a dip below the dollar a litre mark looks likely.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Seriously, Macleans?

I really can't believe it.  I look at your article on supposed wasteful government spending, and what do I find?  Your writers used the word expensed,  Ugly.  As if we need another one of these awkward concoctions around.  And here you are promoting it.

Friday, January 04, 2013

Gas In Saskatoon, January 4, 2013.

Once more I proved I'm not a prophet.  In the last one of these I speculated the next gas price change would be upward.  Instead the downward trend continues.  Gas in Saskatoon is now 104.9 cents a litre at most locations.  Will the price drop below 100 cents a litre this year?  Stay tuned. 

Hey There, Harmony Central Forumites!

For some reason my traffic from the links in my HC Forum signature has gone up.  Thanks, I appreciate the hits.  Now if a few more people would hang around here I'd be the next big blogger.

Yeah, right.

Tuesday, January 01, 2013

More Of The Same.

TV networks sure like to beat ideas into the ground.  Tonight was the debut of Storage Wars New York on A&E.  If you've seen the other Storage Wars shows, or their copies, the format is totally familiar.  A group of quirky auction hounds buy abandoned storage units and try to find a big score amongst the contents.  Is the viewership there to support another one of these?  We'll see, but I'd say the concept is starting to get a bit worn out. 

One thing I'm surprised about is that one of the Canadian networks, like the Canadian version of Discovery or History, hasn't licensed a Storage Wars Canada series.  There is of course Canadian Pickers on History, which fits in the same genre, whatever one would call it, but no direct Canadian version of Storage Wars.  It's probably a bit late in the day to cook up one, but when has that ever stopped TV networks and producers?

Welcome To 2013.

You made it.  I made it.  Another number has turned over on the year counter.  Of course calling it 2013 is arbitrary, counting off the years since a religious figure a large percentage of the planet doesn't believe in was born. 

Hopefully we'll all have a better year than last year.  And hopefully for some of you reading this that will mean you'll have an utterly fantastic 2013, versus the merely terrific 2012 you had.