Then, I wake up and thank god for the CBC.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is one of the best public broadcasters in the world, and they’re also one of the most important bastions of Canadian content on television, radio, and the web.

It’s no surprise that CBC Television shines because of its amazing news programs, and stands out equally for some of the best documentary programming on television anywhere in the world.

What many people don’t realize is that CBC Radio, an oft-forgotten part of the broadcaster’s arsenal, is a shining example of the variety, breadth, depth, and quality of CanCon and equally represents the diversity of the Canadian population.

Saving Canadian Content

There is no shortage of amazing shows on CBC Radio, appealing to people with varying interests: contemporary and classical music, technology, literature, current events, humor, and more. CBC podcasts are among the most downloaded episodes in the entire iTunes catalog.

So why is the Canadian government even considering cutting funding to one of the most interesting and valuable parts of Canadian culture?

In a time where the CRTC is increasingly concerned about new media and the preservation of Canadian content, why would the government choose to cut funding to a broadcaster that is actively using new media to push quality Canadian programming — and one that has already proven successful at using the web to engage people around the world with Canadian issues and debates?

Listening to Quality

I’ll leave you with those questions — to be honest, I don’t have much of an answer. In the meantime, if you’re not already listening to CBC podcasts, here’s a few that I particularly enjoy:

• Search Engine: All about the internet. And stuff related to the internet. Which is almost everything.
• Spark: Technology, culture and everything in between. Including some recent awesome guest spots by Merlin Mann.
• Radio 3 Sessions: Live recordings by Canada’s busiest and best independent artists.
• Best of Ideas: A podcast about ideas. Because people ideas can change the world, and perhaps, are the only ones that ever have.
• Best of The Current: If it’s relevant and current and affects you and your daily life, it’s going to be on this podcast.

That’s just a small sampler of all the amazing programming available on the CBC.

Do you have any particular CBC shows, podcasts, or memories that stand out for you?

But I never knew Isaac Hayes. I never shared a moment with him like I did with Heath Ledger. I have no interesting stories or anecdotes to share that haven’t already been told.

What I do have is the memory of watching Shaft at the age of 12 and singing the theme song at school and having all my friends look at me in confusion. What I do have is the Black Moses album playing while I sit here and have lunch in my apartment. What I can share is this short video that commemorates the passing of a very talented, soulful man.

You see, this cat Hayes is a bad mother—
Shut your mouth!
But I’m talkin’ about Isaac Hayes.

When I explained to them that I only used my iPod to listen to podcasts, they were perplexed: who doesn’t have music on their iPod?

I don’t.

I do have a lot of podcasts, however, and because they asked me to share my playlist, here’s a quick list of what’s playing in my headphones today:

Tech: CBC Search Engine, CBC Spark, This Week in Tech, net@nite, Macbreak Weekly, commandN.

Sports: Pardon the Interruption, Around the Horn, Best of Mike and Mike, Football Today, Tirico and Van Pelt.

Film: mamo! *, The /Filmcast, Cinemaslave.

Culture: Do Right!, Indiefeed Performance Poetry, Mahalo Daily, NPR Pop Culture, This American Life.

Humor: Ask a Ninja, Russell Brand, You Look Nice Today.

* mamo! is my favorite podcast of all time. Seriously. If you’re just starting out with it, go back a few episodes and learn more about the dynamic between Matt and Matt — they’re great.

Do you have any favorite podcasts I’m not listening to? Let me know!

First, a limerick with a political slant:

Regarding the coming election,
I have carefully weighed my selection,
Mrs. Clinton’s too old
And McCain leaves me cold,
But Obama gives me an erection.

Now, a hat tip to one of the best television shows of the 1990s:

There once was a boy from Eau Claire
Who had given his mother a scare
“I see what you’re doing,”
She said, “and you’re moving
With your auntie and uncle in Bel Air.”

And finally, perhaps one of the best limericks I have ever read:

There once was a man named Bertold
Who drank beer when the weather grew cold
As he reached for his cup…
“NEEEEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP!!!”
Oh, snap! You just got limerickrolled!

If you don’t get it, read this. And then watch the awesome video by Rick Astley.

Just like Andy, “I tend to associate specific events in my life with specific songs” and there have been several events this year that have come with their own appropriate theme song. This doesn’t mean that they are my favorite songs, or that I listen to them regularly; all it does mean is that I have come to associate certain parts of my life with certain songs, and this is that list for 2007:

January: “Shut Your Eyes” by Snow Patrol
January was a weird month: I was preparing for my new gig in Europe and was also dealing with a few things on the personal front. Sometimes, I just felt like shutting my eyes and disappearing, but still wanted to be surrounded by the snow around me that kept me calm.

February: “Way Back Into Love” by Hugh Grant and Haley Bennett
The highlight of February was definitely my trip to Montreal, where I got to hang out with some of my favorite people, play in the snow, sing karaoke in a mall, and watch Music & Lyrics on Valentine’s Day.

March: “One Word” by Elliott Yamin
I’ll admit it, I was a little addicted to American Idol earlier this year. I promise I’ll do better to fight my Idol addiction in 2008, but with the WGA strike going on, it might be tough to find alternatives.

April: “French Tattoo” by The Fugitives
In April, I saw The Fugitives perform, I met a lovely French woman while I was in Brussels, and was in a very artistic mood. And I slept in a lot.

May: “Fragile Wind” by Nitin Sawhney
My grandmother was diagnosed with gastric cancer in May and subsequently spent over 14 weeks in the hospital following her surgery, reminding me just how fragile life can be, but how strong my grandmother really is.

June: “Here (In Your Arms)” by Hellogoodbye
I’m not going to say much about June, because it was a special month, and the person that made it special knows who they are and what they did. So thanks. That’s all.

July: “Extraordinary” by Mandy Moore
July was a month was my month of exploration: I tried new activities, and I actually excelled at several of them. I launched new projects, I took on new work, I lost eight pounds. I felt unstoppable.

August: “Umbrella” by Rihanna
I think I heard the words “ella ella eh eh” more than the word “hello” in August. Some things just stick in your head — and in the head of the collective consciousness — and never really become dislodged.

September: “Anyone Else But You” by The Moldy Peaches
The highlight of every September is clearly the Toronto International Film Festival. There, I had the chance to see the phenomenal film Juno — which also had a fantastic soundtrack — and make some new friends.

October: “Julia” by Taken by Trees
I traveled to Halifax in October for the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and not only got to meet some of the best poets in the entire country, but had the chance to eat lobster and brave a rainstorm with an amazing friend. Thanks for letting me crash at your place!

November: “Get It On Tonite” by Montell Jordan
I had the chance to travel to Uganda with one of the nicest people I have ever met, and many an evening this month were spent partying and dancing in the Pearl of Africa.

December: “I Made A Resolution” by Sea Wolf
December is a month of resolution-making. For me, December has also been a month where I have been reevaluating a few of my career, relationship, and life choices.

So that’s my list. Funny enough, they were all easy choices except for August. I really struggled with August, mainly because I don’t remember most of it for some reason.

Not sure what the list says about me other than the fact that I love cheesy love songs. Going through this exercise was a great way to recollect some of the high points and low points of the year, and I highly recommend you all do it as well. Thanks again to Andy for the inspiration.

A few weeks ago, I flew out to Halifax, Nova Scotia in order to attend the 2007 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. Most of you are aware of the love I have for the performance poetry scene here in Toronto, so it was my distinct pleasure to accompany the two Toronto teams to Halifax in order to watch them compete in the National Slam Poetry Championship as part of the festival.

I wrote extensively on blogTO about and during the festival, so if you’re looking for some insight as to what happened out in Halifax, here are a few posts to check out:

• Poet Profile: LEVIATHAN
• Poet Profile: Truth Is…
• Poet Profile: Dwayne Morgan
• Poet Profile: Tomy Bewick
• Poet Profile: White Noise Machine
• Poet Profile: Boonaa
• CFSW07: It All Starts Tomorrow
• CFSW07: Round One
• CFSW07: Round Two
• CFSW07: The Finals

To be honest, I’m not much of a photographer and I wasn’t carrying a video camera with me, so the photos and video you see on blogTO are not of the best quality. Luckily, there were professionals at the festival who managed to grab some fantastic videos at the festival, as well as tons of poets and spectators who have uploaded a ton of photos from the festival onto Facebook. A quick FB or Google search should help you find some good stuff.

My favorite poem of the entire festival was a second-round piece by Radar from Victoria, and unTV.ca managed to grab video of the performance. Just search for Radar and CFSW when you’re at their site.

Not surprisingly, her performance garnered the largest and most enthusiastic standing ovation of the entire festival; you don’t have to agree with what she said in order to appreciate her lyrical mastery.

In case I didn’t say it already: Halifax won the National Slam Championship. And if this post piqued your interest in spoken word even just a little, drop me a line and I’ll get you connected with the people that run the slam scene in your city — and hopefully I’ll see you at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in Calgary next year.

Presenting digital reproductions of photos in Ryerson’s Black Star Historical Black & White Photography Collection, The Celebrity Persona showcases images of famous icons throughout history that are unmediated and natural. In a society where celebrity is ‘constructed’ through premeditated photo-ops and unquestioned airbrushing, the exhibit is refreshing in the way it captures celebrities in an unprocessed and genuine manner.

There were two things that resonated with me while experiencing the exhibit: the first, obviously, was the raw nature of the photographs. While all the photos were well-taken and professionally crafted, there was a sense of genuineness and unpretentiousness that permeated from the exhibit. Instead of standard biographical excerpts about each celebrity, the blurbs that accompanied the photos reflected the content of the photo itself and told me a bit about the personality of each of the pictured icons.

The second thing that piqued my interest was how the exhibit dealt with the concept of celebrity itself. Instead of simply putting forward photos of the Lindsay Lohans and Paris Hiltons of the time, the exhibit meshed together scientists, politicians, actors, singers, royalty, inventors, dancers, painters, and authors from various time periods over the past century. Names like Janis Joplin and Erno Rubik sat next to Ernest Hemingway and Jacques Cousteau, making the conception of celebrity one that is fluid and diverse; The Celebrity Persona not only recognizes the difficulty in identifying what exactly makes a famous person, but forces the viewer to consider the question as well.

Next time you’re heading for a quick dinner at Richtree Market Restaurant or just passing through the district to visit your bank, be sure to check out the exhibit.

The Celebrity Persona
Allen Lambert Galleria at BCE Place
181 Bay Street, Toronto
April 30 - May 25, 2007
Daily 8AM - 10PM

Speaking about cover design to Torontoist editor Marc Lostracco, Hegan said:

We believed the cover was our single biggest opportunity to introduce new readers to Dose. It needed to reach out to people walking past the box, and that is hard to do with a busy front page full of stories. We thought the best approach was to focus on a single issue/idea and find a smart and visually interesting way to communicate it.

Hegan gets it right: while more and more newspapers are trying to crowd more and more stories onto their front pages, Dose realized that people’s attention spans don’t have the time to digest all that text. Instead, people want a front page that speaks to them, that speaks to the issues that are on their mind, and that appeals to their visual tastes.

Of course, great cover design needs to be backed up by great content, and that may have been the cause of Dose’s demise. One newspaper I have been following quite regularly (other than The Guardian, The Toronto Star, and The New York Times, of course) has been the The Independent out in the UK. Ever since they ran that absolutely stunning infographic about a Middle East ceasefire last year, I’ve been completely enthralled by the way they present cutting news and pressing information on their front pages. Unlike Dose, however, The Independent has done a great job of marrying fantastic design with insightful content inside the newspaper. While it may not have the journalistic cachet as a paper like The Guardian, for example, The Independent still stands out as a premier newspaper available in the United Kingdom because of the issues it addresses, but mainly because of of the way it stands out in the newsstands by its design.

I’ve written about cover design before on this weblog, but most of my insight on the topic has been limited to the crafting of book covers. While I will admit that good cover design might be a bit more important for books which don’t have serial subscribers in order to buoy their sales, it is undeniable that periodicals need to embrace the importance of front page design in a world where people don’t have time to examine before they make the decision to purchase. Malcolm Gladwell said it in Blink, and he was absolutely correct: the decision to pick up that newspaper or that magazine is made in your first glance. And while it is clear that some publishers realize this and put the necessary resources into styling their covers, I have yet to see any kind of periodical achieve the kind of brilliance that George Lois created for Esquire in the 1960s.

I put a quick message up on Twitter yesterday asking for suggestions of other newspapers that have great cover design, and here’s a quick list of a few that were recommended to me: Chicago Sun-Times, Hamilton Spectator, Houston Chronicle, Publico Lisboa and Rocky Mountain News. I haven’t been following all those papers regularly, so I can’t vouch for their quality, but if you’re interested in seeing what kinds of newspapers my Twitter friends like to read, check out their websites or search for them at the Newseum.

And of course, you can’t forget the excellent sites Newsdesigner and Best Front Design. They say everything I’ve said here with examples, every day.

Along with the online presence, blogTO has also organized an exhibit at Brassai for the whole month of May, featuring some of the best photobloggers in the city. The opening party for the exhibit at Brassai will be held in conjunction with the opening reception for the festival this Friday night. I definitely hope to see many of you there.

Also, if some of you may have noticed, that’s a photo of mine there in the promotional postcard above!

So when my friend Nav pointed me to this video of Talib Kweli, one of my favorite rappers, throwing it down at the Def Poetry Jam, I just had to share it with you all. The man speaks the truth in this video.

Kweli’s not the only star that has appeared on Def Poetry Jam — be sure to check out Alicia Keys, Lauryn Hill, Malcolm Jamal-Warner and others — but the true stars of the spoken word scene are the celebrities that are made through their words in performances in places like the Toronto Poetry Slam, The Roots Lounge, and coffee houses near you.

And if you’re in Toronto and interested in finding out more about the spoken word scene, drop me a line and we’ll hit up an open mic night.