Lazy Sunday # 347: Deep Fried Tequila

It’s said there are two kinds of people --- those who drink Tequila and those who start to dry heave at the sound of the word. And I’ve been in both camps.

My first experience with Tequila was almost my last. I was on tour in some remote Canadian city where there was virtually nothing to do on your day off.

Another member of the cast and I found a movie theatre playing some Peckinpah film that featured the salt, shot and lemon ritual which made Tequila famous.

Only we’d never seen it before and it looked like fun. Certainly a lot more fun than we’d been able to find in our current locale.

So after the movie we found a liquor store and after searching the back, the clerk found a single dusty bottle of Jose Cuervo.  Did I mention we were in the middle of friggin’ nowhere?

We had less trouble finding lemons and salt and returned to our hotel to teach the rest of the cast what we’d learned.

I mostly don’t remember much after that. Save for the part where I hugged a toilet for what seemed like forever.

For years after that, whenever I caught even a whiff of the evil brew, my stomach would go into contractions and I had to hang onto something until the cold sweat abated.

And then somebody got me to try a Tequila Sunrise and the healing began.

I’m still careful with Tequila, as any sane person should be. But if you’re on any beach, primed to party or just need to unwind after a particularly rough day –- Tequila’s a fine place to start.

And now you can deep fry it.

I mean – why wouldn’t you…

What follows is the perfect snack to hurry your Halloween, Grey Cup, So-Long Indian Summer, American Thanksgiving or any other holiday season party into action.

I offer two recipe videos. Although the recipe is incredibly simple and the same in both. The first catches the mood Deep Fried Tequila inspires, while the second offers a more sensible approach.

Either way, you are in for a treat.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

Why Isn’t The CRTC Regulating Movie Theatres?

Until not too long ago, movies were delivered to theatres in heavy metal cans. They arrived on planes, trucks, trains or buses to be carted up to the projection booth and threaded onto the movie house projector.

But that doesn’t happen anymore.

Now, virtually every motion picture theatre in Canada (and indeed around the world) has been converted to digital. Kodak even recently announced that it will stop manufacturing movie film altogether next year.

The movies you pay to see at your neighborhood multiplex now arrive either on a hard drive or –- most often -- they are streamed to the theatre over the Internet -- you know, just like Netflix sends their movies into your home.

Over the last while, Canada’s Broadcast Delivery Units (BDUs) have lobbied our Federal regulator, the CRTC, to regulate Netflix and force it and other OTT services to carry a prescribed percentage of Cancon while at the same time paying into the Canadian Media Fund.

They argue that Netflix, by producing its own original content, and arriving on TV screens by way of the same cable their shows do, is operating as a broadcaster.

But if the CRTC wants to decide that Netflix’s online delivery system means they must adhere to Cancon rules, why are they not applying the same logic to feature film distribution and requiring Canadian theatre owners and/or the studios who supply them to meet the same Cancon rules and pay into the same production fund?

Because the arguments that our BDUs are using to define Netflix just as accurately define every single American, British, Australian, French (and so on) studio.

Via their 300Mb/sec secure streams, these studios or their distributors are sending content into Canada while taking huge profits from the country and returning nothing to the domestic production industry.

Every single charge levelled by those who support regulating Netflix applies to every single new feature film being beamed into the country by Warner Brothers, Paramount, Disney and every other studio or distributor with a movie in a Canadian theatre.

Why do they get a pass while the CRTC browbeats Google and Netflix on behalf of the BDUs?

Why are these OTTs called “parasites” while Disney (which uses exactly the same tech to service Canadian theatres) uses its CRTC appearances to fear monger -- threatening to pull out of the country rather than see its content unbundled?

Either the CRTC is playing favorites, doesn’t fully understand how new media functions or has revealed itself once again as looking out for the interests of Canadian BDUs and broadcasters over the consumers (and film creatives) they are mandated to protect.

Lazy Sunday #346: Something From Nothing

As most Canadian networks tread the safe and narrow with their new season’s programming or once again find a way to imitate what’s been done before, HBO continues to break new ground.

Friday saw the debut of the 8 part series “Sonic Highways” featuring the band “The Foo Fighters” tracing America’s musical roots and using that exploration to inspire new music.

Each week the band visits a different city and during one week of interviews and jam sessions with local notables constructs a new song which is recorded in an iconic studio.

It’s a remarkable concept executed brilliantly. If you don’t subscribe to HBO, find a way to steal it. This is one series worth being sent to video pirate jail.

Given this week’s announcement that HBO will soon begin offering an online streaming version of its service, it’s also a reminder of how those who intend to remain leaders in the industry use creative innovation to drive their continued prosperity.

And -- how those who continue to copy rather than try something new will find themselves left even further behind.

“Sonic Highways” first episode is set in Chicago, tracing that city’s connection to the Blues through Classic Rock bands like “Cheap Trick” and punk pioneers “Naked Raygun” examining how their music reflected the city and how the city in turn evolved the musicians who made it their home.

It makes engaging connections between the generations that have come and gone in the Windy City from Muddy Waters to Grunge, climaxing with a song whose lyrics reprise the highlights of what has been revealed in the previous hour.

What follows is a sampling of the series, followed by “Something From Nothing”, the song inspired by Chicago’s musicians.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

Pirate Radio

By now, virtually every Canadian is aware of the stare-down going on between Netflix and our broadcast regulators, the CRTC.

But there’s a similar confrontation concurrently flying under most of our media’s radar between the self-same CRTC and a group of radio stations in Vancouver.

These stations, unlike Netflix, have their offices, control rooms and the boardroom where they meet with their accountant to sign their business and income tax checks in Vancouver. They have dozens of Canadian employees and spend most of their airtime covering Canadian issues.

But the transmitters sending their signals to audiences in BC’s lower mainland are across the border in Washington State, so they don’t have broadcast licenses.

And the CRTC has a problem with that.

Because it seems these radio stations are providing content to their Canadian audiences without an approved broadcast license.

Now what’s different about these Canadian stations is that they are all broadcasting to South Asian audiences in their native tongues.

So we’ve got yet another group who consider themselves underserved by our traditional broadcasters.

And the CRTC appears to need to bring them to heel like Netflix.

The Commission claims its main problem is that other broadcasters are losing Ad revenue to these Punjabi stations.

Kind of the same argument that’s been put forward for years by Canada’s private broadcasters with regard to the CBC. And yet we don’t see the CRTC acting on any of those beefs.

So what’s this really all about?

If you ask me, it directly parallels the Netflix situation. Broadcasters annoyed that somebody else is competing for an audience they’ve either ignored or undervalued.

While this once again exemplifies how the CRTC ignores its mandate of consumer protection to support the needs of the broadcast hegemony; it also reveals that like government bureaucrats past, they’ve realized that unless they pull on the jackboots, their power will be eroded.

Take for example, England in 1964…

Broadcasting there was tightly regulated. Whether or not they owned a radio or TV, citizens were required to pay a broadcast tax. A tax, they were assured, spent to provide them home-grown content. 

Vans with a rotating antennae on their roofs roamed the streets of British cities and towns, searching for those who were receiving radio and TV signals but had neglected to pay their tax.

Then, as now, artists were under the impression that this was how their jobs were created, nurtured and protected.

Except…

This was also the era of “The British Invasion”. An explosion of creativity in the form of “The Beatles”, “The Rolling Stones”, “The Yardbirds”, “The Kinks” and hundreds more.

But the government ran the BBC, almost the only radio and TV available, and BBC Radio allotted a mere two hours a week to Pop music.

And refused to change.

The greatest era in British musical history was virtually unavailable in its own country.

The powers in British broadcasting and government had decided that they knew better what was right for the country than the people to whom they answered.

And then –- along came “Radio Caroline”.

It’s name inspired by a Life magazine photograph of JFK dancing with his daughter Caroline in the oval office, symbolizing a playful disruption of government; Radio Caroline was a radio station aboard a ship anchored in International waters off the British coast.

Unlicensed and unregulated, it broadcast Pop music to an audience that averaged 22 million listeners per day.

The government was outraged, doing all it could to bring the ship and its backers to heel. And even though the ship was finally silenced in 1968, it changed British broadcasting and benefitted a group of artists with a level of income and notoriety they wouldn’t have had if the government had its way.

Like Netflix and BC’s Punjabi stations, Radio Caroline simply stood up for the belief that the consumer has the right to enjoy the content they want when and wherever they want it.

And if the audience and the content provider are happy with their arrangement, Government has no right to stand in their way.

Its time for the CRTC to be mothballed, so more of us can serve the audience we’re part of instead of having bureaucrats decide what we really should see and hear.

Lazy Sunday # 345: All About That Bass

Paul Revere died last week. No, not the one from the famous ride. He would’ve been well over 200. This guy’s real name was Paul Dick (and yeah, if that was my name I’d have changed it too).

Mr. Dick was a restaurateur in Idaho, who played piano and dreamt of being a rock star. A dream he shared one night while picking up burger buns from the local bakery. A bakery which employed another aspiring rock star named Mark Lindsay.

The two hit it off, called up some garage band pals and went to LA where they became “Paul Revere and The Raiders”, dressed up in American Colonial duds and ready to fend off the latest British Invasion with a string of huge hit songs.

During my teen years I spent a couple of weeks on the road with “Paul Revere and The Raiders”. It wasn’t an “Almost Famous” thing. But it was fun.

Paul’s death brought back a lot of memories and I spent a couple of hours on Youtube re-listening to the songs they had made famous.

I don’t know what it is about Pop. But for all the great Classic Rock and Country that has become my soundtrack, a great Pop song still gets me right where I live.

What constitutes a great Pop song for my money is simply a song that sounds fresh and new –- and happy. Sometimes there’s a great riff or a lyric. But mostly it’s just a distillation of pure creative joy.

Somebody just going for it and having fun, not caring whether anybody else gets it or not.

But a lot of people do get it. Usually millions of them.

In the last few weeks there’s been a lot of controversy about one of this Summer’s great Pop songs “All About The Bass”.

That’s a song written by Meghan Trainor, a kid from Nantucket who dreamt of being a rock star, but figured she didn’t have the looks.

She wrote country songs for a while and then hooked up with a record producer who thought she should stretch a little.

So she wrote a song that made the rounds of hot female vocalists from Rhianna to Beyonce. But nobody bit, so Trainor and her producer pal decided to record it themselves.

Just another kid from nowhere with rock star dreams –- and like Paul Revere and Mark Lindsay –- a keen ear for what was fresh and new and happy.

Although all of that doesn’t fit with what is hip and cool and all that these days, it’s a formula that still works. Because fresh and new and happy touches something deep inside all of us.

And always will.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

And for a taste of “Paul Revere and the Raiders” try here.

Lazy Sunday # 344: The Talking Dead

One of the best series on television, certainly the best at delivering suspense and horror, returns next Sunday. And this season, “The Walking Dead” promises to reveal where and how the Walker phenomenon began.

The secret of any successful series rests in either never changing anything (“Two and a Half Men”) or continually upping the stakes.

And when you make a major revelation such as the one “The Walking Dead” promises, the fan boys will inevitably be all over you if the explanation offered doesn’t fit with some obscure moment back in Episode One.

For me, that’s the reason “Lost” and “Twin Peaks” climaxed to such mass disappointment. Both had gone so far to hide what they were up to that ultimately no solution could satisfy those paying attention.

I’m betting the writers on “The Walking Dead” are smarter than that. Unless of course, their reveal is something like what follows…

Enjoy Your Sunday.

Betting On Canadian TV

Now and then, I wander into a Casino. Since I mostly live in Canada, where wagering is government run, I don’t stay long.

That’s partly because our politically correct casinos seriously dial back the fun factor, designating where you can drink and how noisy you’re allowed to be.

In addition, there are stickers and signs all over the place reminding you that there are better ways to spend your money, you might not know when to quit and you’re marginally irresponsible just by being in the place.

But my short durations are mostly because, as with all state bureaucracies, Canadian gaming locations are structured to separate you from your money as quickly as possible.

Unlike Las Vegas, you seldom see big winners in a Canadian Casino. Even people walking out carrying more cash than they came in with are hard to come by.

A Vegas Casino Manager once explained to me that this is because when the House regulates itself, it can decide how little it’s going to pay out based on its current needs.

And as we all know, our governments are constantly “in need”.

Plus -- as our Provincial Lottery and Gaming Corporations constantly remind us, their profits fund hospitals and schools and kid’s sports, so you should actually feel good about losing.

But one thing I noticed on a recent trip to my local den of iniquity was how many of the slot machines were based on well-known TV series.

Some replicate TV game shows like “Deal or No Deal”, “Jeopardy”, or “The Price Is Right”. Apparently, “Wheel of Fortune” just became the highest earning slot machine of all time.

But there are also games using images, film clips and motifs familiar to all of us from “I Dream of Jeannie”, “The Munsters”, “Sex and The City”, “Cheers” and even “Judge Judy”. And it’s easy to see the appeal.

For most players, sitting in front of those spinning reels is not far removed from watching television. And it’s not a stretch to presume they pick those machines based on both an affection for the show and the belief that Herman Munster or Jeannie wouldn’t actually try to hurt them by taking all their money.

And of course, Judge Judy always plays fair…

But it got me wondering about the other gambling industry that Canadian governments control –- the TV business.

It’s just as risky as Casino wagering, hardly anybody wins and those that do don’t usually walk out the door with much. And in some locales, lottery profits even find their way into production budgets.

So why aren’t Canadian shows on Canadian Casino slot machines? Is their no quota on Cancon there? Given how much money these places vacuum from Canadian pockets, shouldn’t there be?

Has J-P Blais not looked into this? Isn’t there a casino in Gatineau not far from the very offices of the CRTC?

A few years back, I put up a post about all the money our Lottery corporations were paying out in royalties to US studios so that they could issue scratch and sniff tickets based on well known movies.

Does anyone know how much MORE money is leaving Canada so the nice folks from the care home can be bussed in to turn over their pension cheques to “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “CSI: Miami”?

Couldn’t those royalties be going to CBC or CTV to be recycled into new Canadian shows?

Why not a slot based on “The National” where Peter Mansbridge simultaneously charms or lulls people into plugging in quarters to cover his six-figure stipend as well as re-open some foreign news offices?

If people don’t think the kids from “Happy Days” are out to empty their wallets, wouldn’t they feel the same about the folks from “Corner Gas”?

And who better to set off those flashing lights than the gang from “Flashpoint” or those whacky “Trailer Park Boys” ?

Casinos could even appeal to regional sentiments by featuring a local show. I mean, “The Republic of Doyle” could be bringing money to The Rock forever.

Everybody wants to know how we’re going to finance TV shows once most of us cut the cord and turn to Netflix. And this is the perfect solution.

Less government money going to Hollywood and a new way for Canadians to give their nickels to home-grown talent instead of routing it through Mr. Rogers and Mr. Shaw first.