The T. stumbled onto You Tube the other day and what was his first search?  Van Halen. (Mais bien sur!)

What is You Tube?  What is Van Halen?  You Tube, started in Feb 2005, is a site where you can up load video clips, tag them and they become search able for others.  Van Halen is re contextualized vaudevillian cocaine-driven heavy rock with a touch of late 70's punk for abrasive good measure. 

There is a lot of junk on You Tube (read: videos of cats) but there are also a tonne of old Van Halen videos, on demand.  I was so surprised to see this service since only just over a year ago I was looking for something like it in Copenhagen (when I lived abroad and had no access to TV) and I couldn't really find it. 

           


So is YouTube a product of the availability of iPod et al. Video players?  Or is it the growth of broadband?  It was funny to see how the streaming quality declined at night (Prime-time).  At first I was not into watching stuff off You Tube but I soon became a little hooked.  We started searching for more stuff and there are alot of good music video clips.

This is a type of Napster for video though there are differences of course.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out since there is already a paid video download model in place.

I have to say I am really tired of hearing about Canadian Men's Hockey at the Olympics.  Yesterday morning as I was eating breakfast, I heard on the radio that Chandra Crawford won a surprise Gold Medal for Canada in Women's Cross Country Sprint.  Awesome!

But the streetcar driver on the way to work stopped to ask the TTC Supervisor at Spadina and King, if Canada's men's hockey team would win that day.

So of course the Men's team lost and it was all over the news.  Even though Canada won FOUR other medals yesterday. 

Our national newspapers did better than I expected today.  I assumed the cover page picture would be yet another picture of a morose Wayne Gretzky. 

But instead most of them split their cover page pictures between Men's Hockey and either Chandra Crawford (Toronto Sun: Can she play hockey?  Clever!) or Cindy Klassen (Four Medals and a Funeral)

Personally, I blame Stephen Harper for the loss and hope that this is something his government can fix in time for the 2010 Olympics.

Onezan recommend the novel Somecomes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow.  This science fiction novel is nicely set agains the backdrop of Toronto's Kensington Market.  I really appreciate Doctorow's use of this neighbourhood in the novel, its the perfect place for this story to take place.  And true to Toronto life, the characters barely leave the 15 city blocks of their 'hood.

The story is engaging and interesting.  Its great to read a story that considers the political and social potential of Wifi and Internet access without coming across as cheesey (as have most books about the 'Net).

I will be reading more books by Doctorow!

So the T. went out for a walk the other day and noticed that 'Ed's Record World' at Yonge and Eglinton is closed.  I'm not too surprised.  During my regular cut through HMV at Y & E to get to the library I've noticed how they barely sell music anymore.

The HMV near me has mainly a stock of DVDs and then there are a few shelves of CDs.  They did a small renovation on the interior layout of the store about 6 months ago and the result was basically to put in more DVDs for sale.  There is a whole wall of TV show DVDs.

I assume that the executives at HMV have decided to try to earn as much money off of DVD sales in short term since they will never recover on CD sales.  The DVD sales have probably not started to erode yet from downloading although that can only be a few years away.

So how long before a place to buy CDs is as much a piece of history as the term 'Record Store'?

Yesterday we had a good laugh remembering the Calgary Winter Olympics and how exciting it was at the time, since we were all in grade school.

We had a big map of Canada in our school hallway following the torch and its journey across the country.

I could not find a clip of the Olympic Theme written by David Foster but I have had it running in my head all day long!

Here are those awesome uniforms the Canadian atheletes wore in the Opening and Closing ceremonies.  Yee haw!  Prime  Minister Harper may want to resurrect them for the opening of Parliament!




That's the great Brian Orser in front.  Remember the infamous Battle of the Brians: Orser vs. Boitano.  You can see a clip on the Battle from the cbc archives. 

And here is one of the big heros of those Games, Elizabeth Manley who wasn't even expected to do well and she won the Silver Medal!  That was exciting. 

Also, you can see here how they used to present the winners with medals right away back then because Elizabeth Manley is biting her Silver Medal while still in her skating costume from her winning performance.

Speaking of the hipsters, check out this spoof video on the hipsters of Queen St. West. 

This came to me via Spacing Blog, one of my favourite blogs.