3.5 Timeouts Tuesday

It's Tuesday, so it's time.

1.

Brother in Law is still in ICU, but is doing better.  Thank you for your prayers.  I will probably be asking for more when he has his next regularly scheduled near death experience.

2.

Last week was my birthday.  As I have reached an age where I am starting to feel the reaper's approach, I decided it was time to start work on the bucket list.  (It is not a prticularly long or exciting list, which is either great, because it means I am not too attached to earthly desires, or lousy, as it mean I've more or less given up on the really good stuff.)  I decided that, for my birthday, I would cross of a simple one, and go skating on the Rideau Canal, in our nation's capital of Ottawa.  It seemed like a no brainer, skating in the Canadian winter, in one of the coldest capitals in the world, except we have just had one of the warmest winters on record.  The skating season for the canal closed the day before my birthday, which just figures.  I then decided I would haul the family to Ottawa anyway, and tour the parliament buildings, which is also something I have never done.  However, what with delays and all, we arrived at the doors of the parliament buildings at exactly the time that they closed down the tours for the day, which also just figures.  Lastly, when we got to Ottawa, the temperature there could only be described "freaking cold", which really just figures.

3.

Canada's Got Talent has started.  Canadian television has decided to boldly go where the US, Britain, and a host of other countries have already gone.  I saw the Toronto episode.  It seems it should have more properly been called "Canadian Immigrants Got Talent."  The show was typically Canadian, and clearly showcases our national delusions of adequacy, with a has been and a few "who the heck are they?" (is in, huge and well known in the fields, unknown outside) as jugdes.  They were nice, which is ok, on the one hand, as I don't care too much watching people being humiliated, and not that good on the other hand, as most other viewers do tune in to watch people get humiliated.  The judges were fairly lacklustre, and the talent was so so.  No one really stood out as particularly great or particularly horrible, and there was only one moment where the judges approached real snark.  The woman whose talent was belching was, I admit, different, and the fire juggler who kept dropping his torches is someone I'd like to hire for a neighbour's kiddie party.  The final act of the show I watched, and the one who got the most praise from the judges, was a woman who had escaped the Chinese occupation of her homeland, and after working for the Chinese circus.  This is good for her, because it gives her a good story, and as we have seen with Paul Potts, and Susan Boyle, the most successful acts to come out of these shows are not necessarily the most talented, but the act that has the best narrative behind it, and this makes for a good, sympathetic narrative.  Her talent was a mixture of contortion and hula hoops.  It was interesting, but it was hula hoops.  Y'know, hoops, with sand.

I hope the other cities are better. 

The prize is also rather lacklustre.  The Americans get a miiiiillllllion bucks.  The Brits get a hundred thousand pounds and they perform in front of the Queen in what is one of the larger public broadcasts in Britain.  The Canadians winner(s) will be given a hundred thousand bucks- in real money, worth about half of the British prize- and they will perform in a show in- get this- Vegas.  The best prize the producers of the show could think of was a ticket out of the country.  They didn't say where in Vegas they would be performing (or they did and I missed it), so potentially the winner could be performing at Caesar's, or they could be performing in front of the Pawn Stars Shop.  The winner also gets a car, so they can drive around looking for a job. 

3.5

The one guy who gat a little jabbed on the show was ths guy, who called himself Canada's Mario Lanza, and announced in his interview prior to his act that he was tired of seeing people going farther than him with less talent than himself.  I can't find the audition on Yotube, but he has his own channel.  This will give you an idea of what the audition was like.



The audition was actually worse, as the man was wildly out of tune, on top of everything else.  Judge Martin Short's comment, the snarkiest in the show, was that this guy really should have sung "If I Were King Of The Forest".

Secretly, I am terrified that when I sing in public, I really sound like this.