Happy Fun Bear
I have a black hole in my C.V., a lost year spent working on a children's TV show that never made it to air. Too bad, it was very 2.0, way ahead of its time. Long story.
Anyhow, I was deleting old files from my Palm Pilot the other day and came across this little oddity. One of the show's conceits was that it was to be a pirate broadcast, hacked into CBC's regularly scheduled and overly-good-for-you kids programming.
The working title for the lame show we'd interrupt was "Happy Fun Bear." Here's what I scribbled down for the theme song.
Happy Fun Bear
He's the nicest bear that you'll ever meet,
He's the teacher's pet and his room is neat,
He helps old ladies cross the street,
Hooray! for Happy Fun Bear.
Fun Bear does his best in school,
He helps kids learn the golden rule,
So come along, we know that you'll
say Hooray! for Happy Fun Bear.
Who wouldn't want to hack into that crap?
I even had a little tune for it, which is now stuck in my head (and mine alone, forever. Sometimes I wonder if one day I'll be humming it to my grandkids, and they'll look at me with sad sympathy... Sure you worked on a kids show, gramps. Sure you did.)
Damn you, Happy Fun Bear!
Freezing them off
Right now it's -15 degrees Celsius in downtown Toronto (-24, if you believe in windchill.)
Toronto's weather is pretty nice, generally speaking, but you have to be prepared for summer peaks of +35C and winter lows of -30C. Closet space comes at a premium.
Anyhow, last week a colleague of mine (who gives me all my blog ideas, lately - thanks!) found a way to profit from the cold.
She took a trip to Washington D.C., and stayed in a hotel that charges you by temperature.
The Georgetown Suites Hotel has a special rate called, "Baby, it's cold outside!":
Check out Georgetown Suites' Cool Deal: Stay the first night at the regular package rate, and the second's night rate is the temperature outside at check-in! First-night rates start at $185. Promotion valid November 17, 2006 to February 28, 2007, subject to availability.
Washington's an expensive town. So her first night's fee was a touch over $200 (which is apparently typical). But on the second night, it was 21 degrees F outside, and she payed $21.
I was quick to remind her that if the hotel was in here in Toronto, with Celsius temperatures, the hotel would actually have to pay her $15 to stay another night (though that'd be Canadian dollars.)
And she pointed out that after a day of walking around D.C. in the cold, she would have been happier to fork over another $20 and have it pleasant outside. Unfortunately no such reverse deal is possible: the weather won't get better depending on how much you can pay.
Still, at least it isn't -45F, as it was in Fairbanks, Alaska last month. Be sure to check out the YouTube videos of what happens when you throw boiling water at such temperatures. Instant snow!
Pre-Valentine’s chocolate
"Daddy, at kindergarten today I was the first person to come to the mat for story time and my teacher gave me a chocolate for me but not for the other kids, and she said, 'Put it in your pocket so the other kids don't get jealous,' but I didn't have a pocket so I put it in my pants. But then I forgot about it and it melted and I asked my teacher for help and she said, 'You can eat this part, but this part has to go in the garbage.'"
My skull is burning
I'm scared of Ghost Rider.
Mainly, I'm scared he'll suck.
I was a reader of the original Marvel Ghost Rider comics back in the Johnny Blaze days (1973-83). By the time the spirit of vengeance took over Daniel Ketch (1990-1998) I was a collector. I'm sure there are plenty of purists who argue (as with anything) that the original was vastly superior, but I quite enjoyed the new incarnation and Javier Saltares' dark artwork.
Both comics were pretty cool. GR was a definite anti-hero, of the model that became so popular throughout the rise of the graphic novel (a kind friend has recently loaned me the original Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen graphic novels, and they're blowing my mind. By trying to answer how any sane person in this day and age could dress up in tights and beat up suspected fellons, they really drain the "hero" out of "superhero.")
And make no mistake, GR was scary. Aside from all the death and hell imagery, both swung chains and could project flame that burns the soul. The Ketch version added a a Penance Stare "which made the target experience all the pain and suffering they've caused others." Sounds corny, but it's an interesting metaphysical twist.
So, this week the Ghost Rider movie comes out, starring Nicolas Cage. And I'm terrified that it'll ruin everything for me.
Nothing against Cage - the man can certainly act. I'd love it if he brought a little bit of psychotic darkness to the film. But I'm afraid we're in for more Con Air than Wild at Heart.
Maybe it'll work out. I collected X-Men, and those movies weren't so bad. But the only other series I collected with as much fevour as Ghost Rider was... Judge Dredd.
I collected Dredd from the first time I spotted him in the pages of 2000AD when I was a young boy visiting English relatives. I had all the Eagle Comics issues, some of the brief D.C. Comics run,and plenty of the British newsprint weeklies from IPC.
The comic book Dredd too was a perfect anti-hero, a futuristic policeman who routinely goes much too far in the name of the law. Like the Dark Knight and The Watchmen's Rorshach and The Comedian, it's never clear if Dredd is a necessarily brutal response to rampant future crime, an uncomfortable slip into fascism, or a parody of fascism.
(I recently rediscovered a series I briefly collected in the late 1980s that took this parodic fascism to the extreme: a Marvel/Epic character named Marshall Law. A university friend made the mistake of dressing up as him for Halloween once; nobody knew the character and thought he looked like The Gimp from Pulp Fiction. He had an interesting night.)
Like Ghost Rider, Judge Dredd also had a big-ass motorcycle, chains and leather. Worked like gangbusters in the funny papers. Stank like manure on the silver screen.
The 1995 movie adaptation of Judge Dredd - with Sly Stallone cast solely because he had the proper chin - was a total, unadulterated flop, artistically, critically and financially. It was so awful that it not only ruined my comic book collection for me, but probably forever devalued them to the level of Weimar Republic marks, Bre-X shares and last year's TTC tokens.
Rotten Tomatoes gave the Dredd movie a mere 18 per cent rating. Said Susan Wloszczyna of USA Today:
Never has such a big, dumb movie seemed so small, as it shrinks from Blade Runner sharp to Jetsonian junky.
Filmcritic.com's Christopher Nell summed it up more succinctly:
In the future, the world sucks.
I sincerely hope Feb. 16th's GR debut doesn't suck that badly.
It may be mouldering in my parent's attic, but I'd prefer not to have the other half of my comic book collection self-destruct.
Prop chop
Yesterday, 64 of my CBC colleagues got some bad news: the corp’s Toronto design department is getting the axe.
The design department is – was – one of CBC’s secret treasures. Squirreled away four floors underground and elsewhere in the building are world-class carpenters, painters, tailors, artists and more, working away with their hands and minds.
These were always my favourite locations to show visiting friends – from file clerks to reporters to the vice president, most of the Toronto Broadcasting Centre is just people typing at computers. But these people actually made beautiful, physical things.
What sorts of things? A tour the B4 mezzanine reveals tree trunks, fireplaces, antique suitcases, medieval torture devices, jail doors, phone booths.... when they talk about the magic of television, this is the stuff they are talking about.
You may recall that CBC tried to pull the plug on this area a year ago. And the very astute may recall a document suggesting that this had been planned more than 10 years ago:
The majority of production--with the exception of news--should be contracted out to the private sector. Regional production centres and facilities would be wound up.
But CBC was persuaded to hold off while the corporation and union tried to work out an alternative. They failed to do so, and this time it sounds like there’s no reprieve.
Says CBC in an e-mail:
Unfortunately, while alternatives were explored with the CMG, no viable option that meets the needs of both parties has been found.
The union sounds like they’ve given up too:
We deeply regret that the CMG and the CBC were not able to reach an agreement on the idea of an employee co-operative as a way of preserving TV design in Toronto,†said Marc Philippe Laurin, the president of the Guild's CBC branch. “The closure is another sad result of the fact that the CBC is coping with one-third less government support than it had in 1990.
And it’s not just design, this time - an extra 15 layoffs were added to the body count. “Back at you, with interest,†as one colleague put it.
That same colleague has a friend who works for an external company that frequently utilizes the design department to rent props and get stuff built, and says the service was run with superb creativity and professionalism. The department had already graduated from building stuff for CBC shows – these sorts of deals bring in outside production dollars, which around here have become a bit like hard currency was to a collapsing Soviet republic.
But I guess it wasn’t enough. Nor are other efforts, I guess – despite the enthusiasm for endeavours like renting out our studios to Global TV productions, the 15 new casualties include “CMG staff from Studio and Remote Production, Video Post Production, Technological Maintenance, and Administration.â€
So. The employees will be let go, and the lovely, one-of-a-kind collection of costumes and props will presumably to be scattered to the winds, or sold to some movie studio for pennies a pound.
What’s to become of the space? According to the CMG, it was one sticking point in the failure to find an alternative arrangement:
After securing a delay in the planned closure of the department in 2006, the CMG hired a consultant to conduct a feasibility study on forming an employee co-operative for TV design. The study concluded that the start-up business would be viable if it were able to rent space in the broadcast centre and if CBC guaranteed the co-op the lion’s share of its TV design work. The CBC rejected those conditions earlier this week.
But you can be certain someone will be working there. Last April, the CBC asked the City of Toronto's Committee of Adjustment for a “minor variance†to dramatically boost the amount of space it can rent out. And it took out an ad for "200,000 square feet of contiguous space above ground", leading employees to conclude that they’d be shuffled off to the basement to make room for paying clients. As one radio employee wrote to his V.P. at the time,
With a few exceptions, these spaces were designed for industrial uses and are occupied by people whose work allows them to move around. They are bound to make an oppressive and dispiriting environment for desk and screen-bound clerical and production workers.
Sigh. Maybe this is all paranoia, and we’ll use the millions we save by outsourcing our design to give all employees a clean, well-lighted place. If not, at least we’ll be able to take the freight elevator to our cubicles. (Obscure fact: I was once told the TBC freight elevator is one of the largest in the country. Designed to bring massive props from design shops on the bottom basement level to the studios on the roof, it is large enough to drive a truck into, though the CBC site says actually doing so is not allowed.)
But you know what really makes me paranoid? The idea that CBC can no longer create its own large-scale productions – we have to get them from independent producers. And the idea that the Canadian Television Fund, which funds those creations, may be “dead."
If both those come to pass, er… where are we going to get our shows?
Google box
Caption, courtesy of my boss:
"Mr. Gorbould, your search results have arrived."
----------------
I work in one of those few environments where Google can be a physical thing, not just something is cyberspace (or, to my dismay, a generic verb.)
CBC.ca licenses its search engine technology from Google, and that deal includes hardware, such as servers and um, Systems, and Googlinators.
OK, I'm out of my depth, but my point is that the cardboard box shown here contained something real, with mass and volume and upon which you could rest a coffee cup. (For those of you wondering how Google actually makes money from its "free" service, it isn't just advertising, and it's free to you, not us.) Stuff that comes in boxes, just like research results used to, once upon a time.
I remember dropping by Comdex a few years ago (or one of those "internet shows" that used to grace the convention centre but don't any more) and wondering how they filled a whole trade floor with The Internet. I mean, there was really nothing to see or smell or touch, but the place was packed with its trappings. A zillion computer screens, showing computer stuff that was supposed to be superior to the computer stuff one booth over. Lots of paper detailing same, and some cutesy giveaways like little beanbag Intel guys in radiation suits.
But no... product. Nothing I could buy and then explain to my wife where the money went. As a web guy, I understood this stuff, but it still felt like an assload of money tied up in magic beans and clothes for the emperor.
Which brings me back to the Google box, which presumably housed the Google Box the Ops guys beside me talk about once in a while. Just cardboard, but the writing on the outside made it cool cardboard.
Still, I can beat that. Here's a similar box (which once housed my cable modem) which my daughters customized for me last week. If you don't read Kindergarten, it very clearly states that the box is in fact a spaceship. Now that's a cool box.
Not just cool - most likely it's worth a fortune to somebody, and I'll be releasing a public stock offering shortly. See, I learned a thing or two from Google after all.
(But I'll need the Googlinator to map my trip from Google Earth to Google Moon...)
Neon light sign says it
Maybe I've been in the city too long, but I adore neon lights.
Manufacturers can do stunning things with LEDs and lasers and pixelboards these days, but there's nothing like the old-school, gaudy charm of neon. Expensive, fragile, hard to shape, but timeless. Dangerous and friendly, sleazy and classy all in one.
As a kid, I used to love looking at neon tubes up close. The way you could see the gas flowing and glowing inside the tubes was mesmerizing and magical. I still stop and stare at them sometimes, but as an adult I look like an idiot when I do so.
I pass 48 neon signs on my way home from work - I counted (more on that later.)
So, last night I thought I'd snap a few pictures of the ones near my house. I looked like an idiot doing that, too, but you have to admit they are pretty in their own way.
Dig that phone? It sits on a desk in a street-level office on Queen St. Who cares if it even works?
Cutting edge
Have you noticed how much the grille of a Ford Fusion looks like the grille of a Gillette Fusion?
I thought this was a gimmick to make the car look distinctive and, er, "sharp." But it looks like Ford is rolling out the gimmick to the rest of the line. Witness the new Ford Edge (see, now they're actually naming the car after a razor):
Why razors? Sexy, smooth and dangerous? (Not really. T-shaped razors like these are known as "safety razors" and are decidedly un-dangerous.) Still, I suppose it's sexier than designing a car to look like a toothbrush or Q-Tip.
It goes beyond safety razors, though. If you want the luxury of power, you'll have to upgrade to an SUV. The GMC Envoy's face looks a lot like that of a single-foil electric shaver:
Those seeking even more comfort can look to the Range Rover, the Remington Microscreen of the car world:
And in case you are wondering, Dodge also has a concept car called the Dodge Razor. 
You might notice it's the same colour as the Gillette Fusion razor.
Oddly, the razor/car theme isn't a two-way deal; there are no razors designed to look like car mufflers or windshield wipers, and I couldn't think of any razors named after cars (though there is the Mach 3 Turbo.) Too bad - I'd probably buy a Schick Mustang or a Gillette Stingray.
Sadly, I'd probably buy anything they associated with something cool. Last year, when my trusty Philishave finally died, I went razor shopping. They all looked the same, except you add $50 for every piece that wiggles.
But the salesman sealed the deal on a new Philishave 8894 by casually mentioning that it was known in the industry as the "James Bond razor." Seems 007 was seen using one in one of the recent Bond flicks (dunno which one, but who cares?) Sold!
Here's the appalling description that Amazon is using to sell the James Bond Razor:
Licensed to shave closely and painlessly, this cord/cordless electric shaver is designated Norelco's James Bond model not only because it's high-tech but also because its heads can be adjusted to suit the sensitivity of 00-anyone's skin. The shaver has a comfort-control dial that varies the spring and pressure of the three floating heads through nine settings. Roger Moore might opt for a gentle setting, while Sean Connery surely would choose a firmer setting--and novices to grizzled veterans can please their faces as well.
I’m so very, very ashamed. But smoooooooth, ladies!
Speed reader
Two days ago, a colleague forwarded an article from the New Yorker that I've been talking about ever since: Google has plans to scan every book ever published.
They've already started.
Every weekday, a truck pulls up to the Cecil H. Green Library, on the campus of Stanford University, and collects at least a thousand books, which are taken to an undisclosed location and scanned, page by page, into an enormous database being created by Google.
Google scans tens of thousands of books a week from various libraries, and dumps all that text into a full searchable search engine.
It's already online: books.google.com
Of course, only a smattering of the total content is there right now. How big is the project?
No one really knows how many books there are. The most volumes listed in any catalogue is thirty-two million, the number in WorldCat, a database of titles from more than twenty-five thousand libraries around the world. Google aims to scan at least that many. “We think that we can do it all inside of ten years,†Marissa Mayer, a vice-president at Google who is in charge of the books project, said recently, at the company’s headquarters, in Mountain View, California. “It’s mind-boggling to me, how close it is. I think of Google Books as our moon shot.â€
Yowzer!
I've always been a fan of public domain efforts like Project Gutenberg. That effort has been running since 1991, when they entered two books a month, typed by hand (it now had 20,000 books available for free download, all scanned by volunteers.)
And today, by coincidence, I saw the mother of all scanners.
Google is using it's own "custom-made scanning equipment", but I imagine it's similar to the mechanical marvel that I spotted at the Ontario Library Association's Superconference (librarians really dig the CBC Digital Archives, so we do our dog and pony show there each year.)
The particular scanner shown here is the Kirtas APT BookScan 2400 – so named because it can scan a purported 2,400 pages an hour.
It's quite a sight to behold (at least at a librarian's conference it is… then again, it was the only thing in the building that moved or made noise – and nobody shushed.)
As you can see in this image from their site, a vacuum-equipped arm turned the pages every couple of seconds. The rig I saw had a pair of 16 megapixel Nikon digital SLRs mounted up top to snap the pictures (cheaper versions have one camera and a mirror to capture both sides.) The images are fed to a pair of CPUs for processing, OCR, etc. The unit I saw ran about $200,000 – a lot of money for a librarian, but peanuts for a Google.
Another cool feature – the guys at the booth showed me an ancient children's book that was falling apart. They ran it through the scanner and sent the created file to one of those publish-on-demand book machines, and got back a brand new version of the book that had no noticeable decline in quality.
I picture the two linked machines replicating food, like on Star Trek (or maybe the machines from The Fly...)
The OLA conference had something like that, too (but less sinister) - a booth where people could chat with an author located in another city, and get their books signed remotely. The machine, called LongPen, was developed by Margaret Atwood's company Unotchit ("you no touch it!")
There was a long lineup today for people wanting to interact remotely with an author in Montreal.
Ironically, yesterday Margaret Atwood was at the conference in person. When I saw her, there were perhaps three people lined up to speak to her.
I may have glimpsed the future of the book industry: a machine that writes, and a machine that reads. (What would happen if we plugged Unotchit into BookScan?!?)
I just hope actual people are still required somewhere...
Flagrante delicto
Got a great little advertising idea yesterday when I was at a Raptors game.
Just about everything in basketball - like most sports - has some sort of sponsorship tie-in.
It's never more obvious than when you enter the Air Canada Centre - walking past the Smirnoff Icebox and the MGD Best Seats in the House to the Sprite Zone (worst seats in the house.)
When the Raptors sink a three-point shot, the scoreboard tells you that it's brought to you by McDonald's, and you hear the "ba duh ba ba ba" audio sting (in radio we call these mnemonics.) Then there's the Axe Raptors Dance Pak gyrating, promotions like the AMJ Campbell Move of the Game, the Casino Rama Halftime Show (really bad this year) and video features like the Playstation Big Plays of the Week (last night, I noticed the lamest one of these ever - the MedCan Clinic Inactive Players list!)
It's much worse on television. Depending on the network, you'll be treated to the IBM Winning Strategies, the T-Mobile Halftime Report, Direct Energy Looking Forward, Nestle Crunch Time, Got Milk Rookie Report, somebody-or-other's Keys to the Game, somebody-else's Connection of the Game, etc.
I don't know how much the sponsors fork over for these opportunities, but it must add up. Great opportunity, though - unlike a commercial, which you can tune out, in these cases your product name gets dropped during the action itself, whenever something noteworthy happens and people are paying attention.
So I'm thinking, "How can I get in on this action?" What would I sponsor, and what can I afford?
It couldn't be anything as frequent as a three-pointer. The Raptors are averaging six of those per game, so anything over a buck a pop would be out of my league.
Then it came to me: the flagrant foul!
A flagrant foul is defined as follows:
To be unsportsmanlike is to act in a manner unbecoming to the image of professional basketball. It consists of acts of deceit, disrespect of officials and profanity. The penalty for such action is a technical foul. Repeated acts shall result in expulsion from the game and a minimum fine of $1000.
A flagrant foul-penalty (1) is unnecessary contact committed by a player against an opponent.
A flagrant foul-penalty (2) is unnecessary and excessive contact committed by a player against an opponent. It is an unsportsmanlike act and the offender is ejected immediately.
Two levels, you see – a tech for being rude, and an ejection for being dangerous.
But both are testaments to aggression and poor sportsmanship, and that's TV gold. They always get the crowd going, and they always make the highlight reel. I'd like to sponsor both levels.
I suppose sponsoring technical or flagrant fouls might give the perception that I was encouraging poor sportsmanship, but that's not the case. I couldn't afford to! Each flagrant would cost me money - sort of like a fine - so I'm sure people would know I'm against them.
Best of all, they happen relatively rarely.
Flagrants, the Cadillac of fouls, happen once in a blue moon and cause quite a stir (e.g. the possibly-ordered-by-Isiah hit by Mardy Collins on J.R. Smith, causing this year's Knicks-Nuggets rumble and many, many suspensions.)
And techs? Even crazy eyes Rasheed Wallace only got 17 technical fouls last year. And that led jokesters to suggest the NBA name a new foul after him, and even his own rock 'em sock 'em DVD.
My Raptors don't have any 'Sheeds on their bench. They've earned just six technical fouls this year, and not one flagrant. They don't have a single player in the top 25 NBA foul leaders.
So the Raps are on pace for a dozen techs this season, and that's a pace I could afford. Over the year, sponsoring the flagrant foul would probably only set me back the cost of a lower bowl ticket.
And the standard for unsportsmanlike conduct is very high for the Raptors. Chris Bosh got a tech for looking at his bench!
And remember last year when Morris Peterson got ejected for goofing around with Vince Carter?
It's like the refs are already stretching to squeeze in advertising opportunities for me.
![Rasheed’s crazy eyes say… read Gor[b]!](http://www.gorbould.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/rasheed_foul.jpg "Rasheed’s crazy eyes say… read Gor[b]!")
Of course, I don't really have a product to advertise, per se, but I'm not sure it matters. Perhaps I should just get my name out there. Maybe it could be the Gorbould.com Flagrant Foul, or just "this flagrant foul brought to you by Paul Gorbould," and put my headshot up on the pixelboard and let people puzzle it a while.
I could even have a mnemonic... maybe blow a raspberry or something.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. There are so many more unsponsored parts of the game, so many missed opportunities. We could have the Swiffer Sweat Mopping, the Dofasco Steal of the Game, Lego Brick of the Game, the Nestea Plunge (whenever someone flops), the Nerf Air Ball of the Game, Lava Life Nightly Rejection…
The pharmaceutical industry has cash to throw around - where's the Metamucil Block of the Night, the Beano Offensive Foul, the Viagra Drive to the Hoop?
And I'm absolutely shocked that there aren't already brands attached to announcer Chuck Swirsky's "break out the salami and cheese" proclamation when the game is in the bag.
"Break out the Schneiders and Cracker Barrel, momma, this game's over"? I'll give you that one for free.
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