#cancon and great

[wicer1]

Lately, I wake up to this song playing in my head.

[laresearchette]

Sunday, October 06, 2024 Canadian TV Listings (Times Eastern)

WHERE CAN I FIND THOSE PREMIERES?: AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS 50TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL (Global) 8:00pm THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF POTOMAC (Bravo Canada) 8:00pm THE FRANCHISE (HBO Canada) 10:00pm VINYL OBSESSION (AXS Canada) 10:30pm

NEW TO AMAZON PRIME CANADA/CBC GEM/CRAVE TV/DISNEY + STAR/NETFLIX CANADA:

AMAZON PRIME CANADA MR. ROBOT (Season 1–Season 4)

CRAVE TV CHASING LIBERTY THE FRANCHISE (Series Premiere) WHAT A GIRL WANTS

GRAND SLAM OF CURLING (SN) 10:00am: Tour Challenge - Men's Final (SN1) 2:30pm: Tour Challenge - Women's Final

NFL FOOTBALL (TSN/TSN3/TSN4) 1:00pm: Browns vs. Commanders (TSN/TSN3) 4:00pm: Packers vs. Rams (TSN/TSN3) 8:20pm: Cowboys vs. Steelers

WNBA BASKETBALL (SN360) 3:00pm: Liberty vs. Aces - Game 4 (TSN4) 5:00pm: TBD vs. TBD

MLB BASEBALL (SN) 4:00pm: Mets vs. Phillies - Game 2 (SN) 8:00pm: Padres vs. Dodgers - Game 2

NWSL SOCCER (TSN2) 5:00pm: Orlando Pride vs. Washington Spirit

MLS SOCCER (TSN2) 7:00pm: Portland vs. Dallas

HEARTLAND (CBC) 7:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): Heartland struggles with competition from Pryce Beef just as Amy agrees to help Nathan Pryce in a sheepdog competition; Lou, Jack and Tim are feeling the strain as a water shortage is on the horizon...AFFECTS HORSIES!

NORTHWOODS SURVIVAL (APTN) 7:00pm: Running Low: Amidst a harsh Canadian winter, the Northwoods Survival homesteaders search the land for essential resources to replenish their supplies and survive the season.

NBA BASKETBALL (TSN4/TSN5) 7:30pm: Wizards vs. Raptors (SN Now) 8:00pm: Bucks vs. Pistons

THE GREAT CANADIAN BAKING SHOW (CBC) 8:00pm: Ten of Canada's amateur bakers arrive at the Baking Tent to start their quest for the cake plate.

THE LITTLE MERMAID (2023) (CTV2) 8:01pm: Longing to find out more about the world beyond the sea, a spirited young mermaid visits the surface and falls for the dashing Prince Eric. Following her heart, she makes a deal with the evil sea witch, Ursula, to experience life on land.

CRIME SCENE KITCHEN (Global) 9:00pm (SEASON 2 PREMIERE): Six self-taught baking teams arrive at the "Crime Scene Kitchen" to start their hunt for clues, leading them to the mystery dessert.

ROCK SOLID BUILDS (HGTV Canada) 10:00pm: While on a school break, Randy's young son Grady helps supervise a big dig in Brigus, but momentum sags as the homeowners keep tweaking the design.

[sammaggs]

3x08 Spy vs. Spy | Protection

So this is the true story of how Sports Illustrated came to Canada, and it was such a problem that the government shut it down.

Here’s the thing about being this close to America, and this small by comparison: Canada is at constant risk of having its culture entirely dominated and obliterated by the States. All of our music, movies, TV, magazines—we don’t have the money or the manpower to compete, so it’s all American.

It sounds kind of silly, but in 1991 Canadian magazines were operating on a profit margin of TWO PERCENT. It’s impossible to compete with glossy, expensively-made magazines from America. The government subsidizes our magazine industry now; that’s how magazines like Macleans can continue to exist.

In the ‘60s, to try and stem the cultural hemorrhaging, the government established what we now call “CanCon” mandates, or our Canadian Content laws.

Basically, about one-third to one-half of all the media we consume has to be written, shot, produced, published, created, etc. by Canadians, in Canada. That goes for music on the radio, books on the shelves, shows on the screen, magazines on the rack—everything.

It was codified into NAFTA in '92: Free Trade includes everything except cultural exports.

I mean… they barely tried

The Americans obviously think this is stupid, and also not their problem. We are a huge export market for them culturally—almost all media we consume is American, and that’s big $$$ for American companies. They would love to swallow us whole.

So on April 5, 1993, American publication Sports Illustrated rolls in and slaps the word “Canada” on the end of it. They include some references to Canadian sports teams (even getting some wrong) and try to call it a legal day, even though it was foreign-produced and really did not hit the CanCon marks at all.

And the Canadian. Government. Got. Furious.

The government basically tried to litigate and tax them out of existence entirely. It was a massive controversy through the '90s, which is why they're still bringing it up in this 1997 episode of due South.

And uhhh... yeah Canada fuckin super lost. We lost as fuck. Deeply unsurprising.

Many scholarly articles came out about this at the time, as you can see above, and if you want to know more you can read a great one for free here. But yeah, this is a real thing that happened.

Dave Cole, who wrote Spy vs. Spy, also wrote Perfect Strangers, which includes that perfect bit about the human tragedy that is the lack of arts opportunities for filmmakers in Canada so, he was obviously a big supporter of all this (and rightfully so).

Bonus treat! Because Canada is not real, here's how music qualifies as CanCon: It must fulfill two of the following four conditions:

M (music) — the music is composed entirely by a Canadian

A (artist) — the music is, or the lyrics are, performed principally by a Canadian

P (performance) — the musical selection consists of a performance that is: Recorded wholly in Canada, or Performed wholly in Canada and broadcast live in Canada.

L (lyrics) — the lyrics are written entirely by a Canadian

That's right... it has to fulfill two of the four...

MAPL conditions.

Quiet Canadiana in due South [more]

[volleypearlfan]

Canadian Cartoons Are Great

Today, the popular cartoon YouTuber Saberspark uploaded a video talking about the infamous “fart episode” of the 2023 Total Drama series. The comments were filled with hatred and generalizations towards Canadian animation. These terrible comments are not the fault of Saberspark, but it is true that the “big users” in the cartoon community are (mostly) Americans who spread myths and stereotypes about Canadian cartoons. This has bothered me and a few others for quite a while, so here, I’m going to prove why Canadian animation is great, actually, and dispel common misconceptions

All Canadian cartoons are about fart jokes - if you say stuff like this, you clearly have never seen a Canadian cartoon outside of Total Drama and Johnny Test. That’s like if I said “all anime is naughty tentacles” or “all American cartoons are about anvils falling on your head.” And don’t act like your precious USA cartoons and anime are exempt from toilet humor. One example of an anime with toilet humor is Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt - their first episode was about a monster made out of shit. And we all know about the gross out cartoons such as Ren and Stimpy.

Canadian cartoons are cheaply mass-produced because of CanCon - No. What CanCon ACTUALLY states is that a certain percentage of content on a Canadian channel has to be Canadian-made. The policy is about supporting Canadian art, not “mass-producing” cartoons, since this applies to ALL Canadian TV and radio content, animated or otherwise.

Now, let me tell you some reasons why Canadian animation is actually great

Some of your childhood shows, such as Arthur, Franklin, and Little Bear are Canadian in origin.

Some of the most acclaimed cartoons within the cartoon community, such as Ed Edd n Eddy and MLP:FIM, were both animated in Canada and had voice actors from there (same talent pool, in fact - Vancouver)

Inspector Gadget and the Beetlejuice animated series helped keep good animation afloat during the 80s. In a decade full of uninspired and insipid cartoons, these were two of the highlights.

Canada is still a great place to outsource animation, as proven with the works of Nelvana, Mercury Filmworks, Jam Filled, and countless others.

If you grew up without cable, you probably watched PBS Kids and/or Qubo a lot. Guess what - lots of the shows on both of those channels were Canadian. For example: the PBS Kids Bookworm Bunch: Timothy Goes to School, Seven Little Monsters, Marvin the Tap-Dancing Horse - these shows are all Canadian! Qubo was also home to Jane and the Dragon, Jacob Two Two, Babar, Spliced, etc - they’re all Canadian too.

Because Canada’s censors are far more lax compared to American ones, Canada has made huge strides in teen and adult animation. Such shows include Total Drama, 6teen, Detentionaire, Undergrads, Producing Parker, etc as well as the movie Heavy Metal.

Also because of the lax censors, Canadian cartoons had positive LGBTQ representation far before the United States did. One episode of 6teen has a character stating “I’m gay,” and in Braceface, the main character assists her gay friend in finding a boyfriend. Unsurprisingly, these episodes never aired in the US.

6teen also dealt with periods before Turning Red, Baymax, and Molly McGee did it (again, the episode was banned in the US).

Finally, here are a few Canadian cartoons I recommend, and where to watch them:

Cybersix (it was a Canadian and Japanese co-production). The whole thing is on TMS’ YouTube channel.

Redwall is on Pluto, and there are episodes of it on YouTube courtesy of Treehouse Direct

Toad Patrol (unfortunately you’re gonna have to resort to low quality YouTube uploads)

Silverwing - again, the complete series is on YouTube

Detentionaire- On Tubi and Pluto!

Ruby Gloom is a great show if you like cute gothic stuff; it too is on Tubi and Pluto

The Adventures of Sam and Max: Freelance Police - on Tubi

One of my favorites, The Raccoons. Basically the Canadian equivalent to The Simpsons, and with a banger ending song. The show’s production company has uploaded episodes of it for free on YouTube.

The original Clone High was animated by the legendary Nelvana (if you’re wondering, the new season is not outsourced to Canada 😔) It is on Paramount Plus and HBO Max

Undergrads - yet again on YouTube, in low quality unfortunately. Like Clone High, it was on MTV.

I also recommend watching some short films from the National Film Board of Canada. My personal favorite is the Log Driver’s Waltz.

Tl;dr - American cartoons are not bad because of Allen Gregory, anime is not bad because of Pupa, and Canadian cartoons are not bad because of Johnny Test or fart jokes.

[stories-of-the-nrm]

Thanks again for the Jeff the black 5 stories and I have another project its a thomasififed story of Alice in Wonderland as Emily as the star and it is a human cancon and I have list of the engines as the characters on deviant art

Wow. Sounds great! I'm glad you got my message.

If you ever want to share what you wrote or your thoughts on the things I wrote, feel free to send a message.

[talenlee]

Cancon 2023 Wrapup

Cancon 2023 Wrapup

As I write this, I have gotten home from Cancon 2023. The day started at around 7 AM, then started on the con floor at 8:30, and following that we had to pack down at 12:30 and finally got ourselves on the road at 1:30. It’s now many hours later than that and much of my time has been spent recovering from the drive and the weekend of standing on my two feet and shouting at people a lot. What follows is memories constructed, as best I can, from the notes I took of the time, and the information present to me now.

First things first, this is a convention that differs from most I do by being so far away from my home that I have to sleep near the event. This year, we got lodgings in someone’s spare room, with myself, Fox, and the driver who took us. That driver, who I won’t name on this blog so as to not blow up their spot, was super helpful the whole time, didn’t have to be there and was generally 100% great. I do not know how to repay them the effort they put forth to help us get the convention run.

But anyway, we drove down on Friday morning; this gave us time to get to the convention centre, register our presence, then set up our table area and the display of our goods. Our displays this year featured three 3-meter long tables arranged in a L shape, and we had some card tables as well, that put some of our stock out away from us, and meant that you didn’t have to approach us as people to look at the products we were selling. I thought this was a bad idea because I thought our most useful tool for converting attention to sales was me, talking to people, but I also didn’t think it was good to argue about it, so I just let it go.

Turns out I was completely wrong: By having the table there, we invited people to stop from the flow of traffic, then I saw them slip in closer to avoid being an impediment, then they’d come to the table and just… buy things. Just buy them! No explanation, no hard sell, no rules explainers, just… they’d buy them based on the boxes.

That’s weird enough as it is, but know what made it weirder? The things they chose to buy. There are a bunch of games I sell that are, in my opinion, aggressively weird. Some of our games have a great clear aesthetic that pulls the eye – games like You Can’t Win, Hook Line & Sinker, and The Botch and The Botch Is Back are all based around clear and bright designs that I think hold attention. But Winston’s Archive is a game I made with an incredible niche theme: Sorting books. What’s more, Winston’s Archive is a game where, thanks to trying to incorporate dysexic-free fonts, the cover kind of looks a bit… drafty? Like a first draft. Like the things that would normally make it look more interesting make it harder to read, so the result is a box cover that I feel a little awkward about.

We have one copy of Winston’s Archive left.

I have no story about it, no viral hit, no explanation from some source about a game that infected a group and then they all came back to play it more. I have no story about that. I just know that somehow, left to their own devices, a bunch of people looked at this game box and went ‘oh yeah, I’ll have that for $15’ and they just straight up bought it. That’s really exciting!

Another memorable thing is that on the first day, I wore my This Shirt Says Trans Rights shirt. I did this because I figured it’d be the busiest day and if I was going to get into a fuss over it, I’d rather get it over and done with. What I got instead was a consistent response from strangers, even people I walked past, complimenting the shirt, which was really nice. What’s more, I wound up having a lot of conversations with queer gamers and parents of queer gamers who wanted to be able to connect to people, and also get games that didn’t seem they were going to be likely to shock anyone with anything upsetting.

It reminded me of that awkward phrase I don’t like, ‘find your tribe,’ where the whole point in our disconnected landscape of socially unmoored people-bubbles, there are definitely factors that let us anchor ourselves to one another, and bereft of anything else, finding one another is helpful, it’s a way to be able to say ‘I can connect on at least this.’

We sold a bunch of Queer Coding too; a game that I think of as just an icebreaker, something you want for cons and meetups where you’ll be dealing with people you don’t know. Similarly, Senpai Notice Me flew off the shelves, but it always does: people love a meme and this one is also very pretty. Finally, You Can’t Win continued its weird presence selling itself, because despite the game being very clear about how hard it is, people kept buying it.

The other thing I usually bring back from Cancon, aside from stories of people I yelled at and a sore throat, is a haul of games I bought, and this year I didn’t buy any. It was a conscious decision: I was busy, and afraid of spending money at first, but then as things became more relaxed, and the large stall I was excited by dropped their prices more and more, I found myself nonetheless deciding to instead not buy new games this year. This wasn’t a wholly painless choice: What I wanted to ‘buy’ effectively, was more space in my house; by not buying new things until I had exhausted what I owned, I was making sure I didn’t have an ever-growing stack of games I didn’t know if I wanted any more.

There are a few things I kind of wish I had picked up, but not enough to have actually done it; Red Rising was down to $20, B’Twixt: A Game Of Thrones is a game I want to have a copy of but not a Game of Thrones copy, and that’s all we have so far. Wise Guys, a $100 big box game, was going for $10 and I passed it over, and I even saw games on my wishlist – like Not Alone and Fog Of Love at steep discount, and decided to not get them.

I am thinking about this feeling, this decision to do things this way and about how excited I was to see how many of the games I took to the Bring-And-Buy had sold. I want to make sure I’m not focusing on acquisition and instead on what board games are; Experiences.

The last story of Cancon – at least for now, as I remember it – is of my Tyranids. I have some Tyranids, a whole army’s worth, from 2004. I have played with them once, and then they sat in a drawer, in a box. I decided this year to try and rehome them, to put them in the bring-and-buy and sell them on to someone else. Since it’s a whole army, it’s expensive, and people interested in the field have told me it’s a good price for them… but also someone needs to want to buy a whole army’s worth of Tyranids, even retro metal ones.

They didn’t sell, but I’m not upset about it. I want them to go to someone who wants them, not someone who was afraid of missing out. We’ll try again at MOAB and maybe if they don’t move after enough tries, we’ll find some other place to put them. Who knows, maybe the spaces for play will have opened up enough that I get to play with them. I know One Page Rules is a cool looking system with something Tyraniddy in it. Could be useful there!

But this is the joy of material games: They are material. I can share them with people and I can give them away and nobody controls the central authority on how people play with them.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Diary

[heathercauthor]

I just finished boothing at CanCon, a writer's convention spanning the weekend

Did great!

I will now hibernate and emerge next spring, thank you

[parkerbombshell]

From Memphis To Merseyside Ep 104

Thursdays 8pm EST bombshellradio.com From Memphis To Merseyside Ep. 104 - Thanksgiving This week, Tony Stuart and Aaron Badgley celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving with music. A lot of great songs, and a top five of Canadian Artists from the 1970s. Happy Thanksgiving! 1. **Ric Denis** - *This Rumbling Sky* (Cancon) 2. **Bing Crosby** - *I’ve Got Plenty To Be Thankful For* 3. **The Edison Quartet** - *One Horse Open Sleigh* 4. **Peggy Lee** - *I Like A Sleighride (Jingle Bells)* 5. **Vince Guaraldi Trio** - *Thanksgiving Theme* 6. **The Guess Who** - *Share The Land* (Cancon) 7. **Little Eva** - *Let’s Turkey Trot* 8. **Bob Dylan** - *Turkey Chase* 9. **The Beatles** - *Thank You Girl* 10. **Big Star** - *Thank You Friends* 11. **Led Zeppelin** - *Thank You* 12. **The Band** - *Stage Fright* (Cancon) 13. **Cab Calloway & His Orchestra** - *Everybody Eats When They Come to My House* 14. **Luke & The Apostles** - *You Make Me High* (Cancon) 15. **Jesse Winchester** - *Yankee Lady* (Cancon) 16. **Edward Bear** - *You Can’t Deny It* (Cancon) 17. **Steel River** - *Ten Pound Note* (Cancon) 18. **R. Dean Taylor** - *Indiana Wants Me* (Cancon) 19. **James Taylor** - *You’ve Got A Friend* 20. **James Taylor** - *How Sweet It Is* 21. **Helen Reddy** - *Thank You (The Thanksgiving Song)* 22. **Hagood Hardy** - *The Homecoming* (Cancon) 23. **Spirit Of The West** - *Save This House* (Cancon) 24. **Ray Davies** - *Thanksgiving Day* 25. **Kate & Anna McGarrigle** - *The Log Driver’s Waltz* (Cancon) 26. **The Rankins** - *North Country* (Cancon) 27. **ZZ Top** - *I Thank You* 28. **Angela Galuppo** - *Thank You For Being A Friend* (Cancon) 29. **The Good Brothers** - *Fox On The Run* (Cancon) 30. **Supertramp** - *Give A Little Bit* 31. **Dinah Shore** - *I’ve Got Plenty To Be Thankful For* 32. **Brian James Duffy** - *Red Brick Road* (Cancon) ---               Read the full article

[daibhidjames]

Throwback Thursdays Charts - July 1985; Katrina & Waves, Simple Minds, Prince, Depeche Mode, Dead Or Alive, Eurythmics, Tears For Fears (twice), Cyndi Lauper, Springsteen, both Duran Duran & spinoff Power Station and a shockingly catchy New Wave comeback for 70's Montreal Disco crooner Gino Vannelli but not great that only other decent Cancon here is Heart covering a Toronto ballad;

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Hey I have a question. Is the Canadian band Barenaked Ladies big in Britain? Or was it big there, earlier in the 21st Century? Because I have heard a weird number of British comedians reference it. I've heard it referenced far more often by British comedians than I hear it referenced by other Canadians, where I live.

Kitson used to play their mediocre version of Bruce Cockburn's Lovers in a Dangerous Time on his old radio shows, which annoyed me every time. Not because he played it - it's not a bad cover (mediocre doesn't mean the same as bad) - but because he never acknowledged that it was a cover. He'd always called it "Lovers in a Dangerous Time by The Barenaked Ladies" (he also said "The" even though the band is just called "Barenaked Ladies", but that's a different issue), even though when he played cover versions of other songs, he'd back announce them as "[song], sung by [artist], but originally by [other artist]".

In his 2023 Resonance FM run, he finally played the Bruce Cockburn version, but announced it as by "Bruce Cock-burn - or Co-burn" and said he didn't know which, which proves that all those previous years when he was playing Barenaked Ladies' version, he was not aware that it was a cover. I know that because pronouncing Bruce Cockburn's name the way it's spelled (it's actually pronounced "Co-burn") is only funny for a year or so after you first discover him. If that was still funny to Kitson in 2023, he hadn't known him for long. I also had a year of finding it funny to say "Bruce Cock-burn", but that year for me was between ages 10 and 11.

Anyway, Kitson also did a show in 2014 that featured Gavin Osborn reading out sleeve notes from mixed tapes that John Oliver had made for him, and one of the notes he read talked about how great the band Barenaked Ladies are. That struck me as odd - Kitson, Osborn, and Oliver all into that band, despite the fact that Daniel Kitson seems to mostly know fuck all about Canadian music (he hadn't heard of Bruce Cockburn until about 2023, in a show he did when he was almost 30 he didn't know Leonard Cohen, he is one of the many British comedians who keeps weighing in on whether the best musician in a family is Rufus or Loudon Wainwright, as though the answer isn't clearly the Canadian Kate McGarrigle). For some reason, Barenaked Ladies was the one exception.

That made some amount of sense, that Kitson and Osborn and Oliver would all be into the same thing, as there were lots of pop culture things that clearly spread through the Chocolate Milk Gang because they were all friends/all cribbed their taste off Daniel Kitson for a while. But I've now heard Ray Peacock talk about being a fan of the band Barenaked Ladies too. He's not Chocolate Milk Gang, he got that from somewhere else.

So, I have the same question about Barenaked Ladies as I have about darts, and snooker, and private schools, and WhatsApp. Is that actually a big thing in Britain that everyone's into over there? Or is it something that seems to me like it's big in Britain, just because there are a disproportionate number of comedians who are into it, and the perspective from which I see Britain is hearing from their comedians?

To be clear, I like that band. Everything to Everyone is a great album, it's been in my music collection for 20 years and I still throw on songs from it once in a while. I have never owned a car, but whenever I borrow my parents' car because I need to do a road trip and end up driving alone, I blast Testing 1 2 3 and loudly sing along:

And then I always put on For You because that is solid fucking CanCon:

Second Best is a great anthem:

And their good stuff isn't limited to that one album (though to be honest, that's the only full album I have by them). Pinch Me was a fun song to come on at parties in the 00s:

I am sharing my favourite Barenaked Ladies songs to make the point that I have favourite Barenaked Ladies songs, I like them, I'm not saying they're bad. They're not a bad band. But... they're a pretty good pop/rock band. Their pretty good pop/rock cover of Lovers in a Dangerous Time cannot hold a candle to the haunting and beautiful musically complex original. Why are they the one Canadian band that apparently made it big among British comedians?

[spectrumtacular]

🎶 1-3? :-)

1. A song you like with a colour in the title

In my psychadelic rock era rn so I'm gonna go with Eskimo Blue Day by Jefferson Airplane. Really great guitar in this one, plus I always love Grace Slick's vocals.

2. A song you like with a number in the title

My favourite track off Power in the Darkness by Tom Robinson Band, 2-4-6-8 Motorway!!! Very catchy + VERY fun to sing along to :)

3. A song Songs that reminds you of summertime

Summertime means roadtrips means I'm listening to Boom 97.3 FM means I'm hearing Summer of '69 by Bryan Adams + American Woman by The Guess Who + You Could Have Been a Lady by April Wine + Working for the Weekend by Loverboy + Bobcaygeon by The Tragically Hip roughly 18 million times. Also that one Kim Mitchell song I hate, on my hands and knees begging Canadian radio stations to play literally anything else to hit their cancon quota.

More music asks here!

[laresearchette]

Sunday, November 03, 2024 Canadian TV Listings (Times Eastern)

WHERE CAN I FIND THOSE PREMIERES?: HOLIDAY MISMATCH (W Network) 8:00pm HOLIDAY WARS (Food Network Canada) 9:00pm

WHAT IS NOT PREMIERING IN CANADA TONIGHT?: BEFORE THEY KILL AGAIN (Premiering on November 10 on Investigation Discovery at 9:00pm)

NFL FOOTBALL (TSN) 1:00pm: Cowboys vs. Falcons (TSN) 4:00pm: Jaguars vs. Eagles (TSN/TSN3/TSN4/TSN5) 8:20pm: Colts vs. Vikings

NHL HOCKEY (SN) 1:00pm: Islanders vs. Rangers (SN/SN1) 5:00pm: Kraken vs. Bruins (TSN3) 3:00pm: Lightning vs. Jets (SNOntario) 6:00pm: Leafs vs. Wild (SN/SN1) 8:00pm: Oilers vs. Flames (TSN5) 9:00pm: Sens vs. Avalanche

NWSL SOCCER (TSN2) 3:00pm: Chicago Red Stars vs. Kansas City Current (TSN2) 5:30pm: San Diego Wave vs. Racing Louisville

HEARTLAND (CBC) 7:00pm: The whole family heads to the Hudson Rodeo; emotions run high at the barn dance after Amy helps Nathan deal with a family emergency…OH NO! NOT THE HORSIES!

NBA BASKETBALL (TSN2) 7:30pm: Magic vs. Mavericks

A UNICORN FOR CHRISTMAS (Crave) 7:30pm: A young girl discovers a real-life unicorn at a Christmas carnival and must protect it from a greedy fair owner.

THE GREAT CANADIAN BAKING SHOW (CBC) 8:00pm: Six bakers remain and will channel their inner artist to create bakes using traditional arts and crafts styles and techniques.

COCO (CTV2) 8:01pm: Accompanied by a charming trickster, a young musician embarks on an extraordinary journey through the colorful Land of the Dead to unlock the real story behind his family's history.

COLIN JOST & MICHAEL CHE PRESENT: NEW YORK AFTER DARK (Showcase) 9:00pm: A live stand-up special featuring a mix of up-and-coming and established comics hand-selected and curated by the pair.

THE CHRISTMAS CHOCOLATIER (W Network) 10:00pm: Chocolatier meets an entrepreneur at a magical Christmas market in Québec and falls in love until Charlotte learns that Henry owns a development company intent on destroying the market where Charlotte works to grow her family business.

THE OFFICE MOVERS (Crave) 10:00pm/10:30pm: The Shazam crew splits up to get it all done; while Everett pursues info on a hot new contract from Telegen, Eric and co. take on a bunch of quick jobs that turn out to be more complicated than anticipated. In Episode Two, Everett attempts to impress Trisha and secure Shazam's role in any of her future contracts (specifically the Telegen contract) but first he and his crew must face off with their moving company nemesis, Trini-T Moving.

[unfavorableinstigation]

#cancon. where's that post about all great Canadian literature being 'the empty landscape of [insert Canadian landscape here] is a metaphor for my relationship with [insert entity here but only Quebecers get to use God]

[jasonparis]

The Junior Boys aren’t so junior anymore with a recent 20th anniversary Toronto show to end their North American tour. • • • #igerstoronto #toronto #ontario #canada #westqueenwest #torontophotography #concert #juniorboys #livemusicto #cancon #thegreathall #electro (at The Great Hall Toronto) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpeYMFPNc8V/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[airchexx]

When The Big 8 Still Served Detroit - Scott Miller, 800 CKLW Windsor | April, 1980

Billing itself as “The Great Entertainer”, here’s a bit more subdued CKLW in the cold Spring of 1980. This is quite fascinating, as between the CanCon songs (they stick out like a sore thumb) and the tempo, it sounds pretty clearly as if the station had already moved to a more Adult-Contemporary sound. Or, perhaps its just the time of day in which this was recorded. It does sound good, however,…

[talenlee]

For Love Of Novelty

There’s this idea in board game discourse of ‘the cult of the new.’ I’m sure it exists elsewhere, but I can see it very much in the culture of spaces like BoardgameGeek, and I always like making fun of that site, so I shall do so. The idea is that new things get more attention and are considered more worthy than old things, and this is true even if the old things aren’t actually all that old. At the time of writing, the oldest game in the BoardgameGeek top 10 is War of the Ring: Second Edition, which is from 2011. While sure, 2011 is 13 years ago, it is pretty interesting that this is a hobby with important representatives from the 1960s, 1920s, 1880s, and then we get into things like Chess and everything gets weird.

And it isn’t just that these older games like Uno and Scrabble aren’t considered part of the ranking system on BoardgameGeek, that the site is categorically unrelated. They absolutely are, and you can see their place in the rating system that they have. It’s a funny thing that I’ve spoken about called the tail of spite, and a smarter scientist than I have written about it.

With Cancon behind me, I have been thinking about this vision of new things. Board games are a fascinating media space where I think it’s reasonable to say unless you have a position in the distribution and transport side of the industry, people do not appreciate the scope or scale of the available products. In 2023, more board games released than I could reasonably play in my lifetime. I don’t want to, of course – a lot of them are games that just don’t interest me, and some of them are just continuations of existing games. Even if I just looked at every game that released in 2023, BoardgameGeek tells me that’s something in the order of fifty thousand games to then sift through.

Working CanCon is an interesting balance point because it’s also the home of the Good Games ding-and-dent pit. It’s a huge collection of games in varying stages of damage, priced down to clear out the warehouse of a big game company in the country. It’s a place I want, so bad, to spend a lot of money, because my brain reacts to heavy discounts with that poor-person brain problem of ‘well, I’m wasting money by not taking advantage of the deals.’ Despite this deep love of the discounts — And we’re talking about some ridiculous discounts, like Seafall for $5 AUD — in 2023 and 2024, I didn’t buy myself anything in those pits. I did use the pit to get some presents this year, but that was very pointedly getting things for other people. The thing that keeps me constrained in this way is the material needs to transport goods from CanCon (in Canberra) to my home (four hours away) in a small vehicle. I did get some gifts this year, and Fox got some stuff from her wishlist, but what I mostly did was see a lot of cool game ideas that may or may not be well-executed across a host of interesting themes.

God, I love checking out the Pit.

I don’t have much time to spend in the Pit, really. I do little five minute walks when I’m taking break every hour from my time at the booth. And in the Pit, I find games all the time, games I’ve never heard of, and games that look interesting. They’re often heavily discounted, and in many cases they’re really good when I get them home. That’s how I found Purrlock Holmes, a game I wholly love, and Ghosts Love Candy, which I also think is great. The economic system of success or failure doesn’t necessarily produce good games.

One of my favourite examples of this is the game Wise Guys, which I have a copy of, which is, literally, the same game as Sons Of Anarchy. The license ran out, the company redid the game with different images and a different flavour. The game is 100% the same, and it seems that, based on the sales of Sons of Anarchy, Wise Guys got heavily produced and warehoused. But Sons of Anarchy sold amazingly well, and Wise Guys has been in stacks for years – regularly, marked down to the $30 to $5 range, just trying to move units of it.

It’s the same game! It’s even newer than Sons of Anarchy! But somehow, when this game gets judged on identical merits, this one is considered a bit of a meh game and the other is a big best seller.

The success or failure of a game doesn’t really relate to its actual quality, it seems. It’s just pretty much rolling dice and on the one hand that’s pretty cool, it means that board games (and its cousin the TTRPG) space are this vibrant ecosystem full of so many different choices where you might find your absolute favourite thing at exactly your right vibe, it does have the unfortunate asterisk that there are still some big trends that are driven by capitalism. There are train games that sell to Train Game people and that means that anything Train Game Like that tries to explore similar but not the same space eventually gets pushed by publishers into being Another Train Game. If you make board games, you pretty much have to make it modestly on services like Print on Demand tools, release it as a print-and-play, or hope against hope that kickstarter catches fire for you, and kickstarter,

well, Kickstarter brings its own novelty problems.

Kickstarter is a space with biases. Kickstarter will generally favour game projects that have a specific look and vibe. Kickstarter also likes things like stretch goals and of course, lots of plastic. Famously, kickstarter is a place to make game projects into big projects, where a game that might have been great as a $40 experience that lasts an hour instead needs to bloat up into a campaign and miniatures project just to make enough money to justify the creation of that core game.

And these problems

aren’t new.

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