A Few Random Observations, Part Two

July 24, 2011

Once again, I bring you a few random things that don't quite make up a full post on their own.

There is a chain of restaurants here called "Boston Pizza."  Now, regardless of where you are from, the common knowledge is that there are only 2 places from whence "real" pizza comes:  Chicago and New York City - though I am inclined to believe there is but one, and that place is my hometown of Chicago.  There will be a perpetual battle over which city lays claim to the title of best pizza in the world, but at least the battle is recognized as being between these two cities (and those misguided enough to suggest that LA has great pizza should be reminded that the artsy crap they serve there is nothing more than fancy bruscetta/flatbread, and does not qualify as "pizza" (send your angry emails stating otherwise and I will  be happy to ignore them, much as I ignore the concept of "LA pizza")).

So the question becomes, why the hell would anyone name a restaurant "BOSTON Pizza"?  Now I know that Canadians are not THAT ignorant of American culture.  Lisa says the founder was from Boston - but still, if you're going to entice people to come into a pizza joint, and you are going to lay claim to honoring a great American pizza city, you DON'T pick Beantown.  Seriously, wtf?  Or as the Canucks would say:  EH!?

Of course, things got ugly during this last Stanley Cup final when the Vancouver Canucks faced the Boston Bruins in a bid to win their first Cup ever.  During that time, the folks at Boston Pizza hung banners over the word 'Boston' on all their restaurants and changed their menus to read "Vancouver Pizza."  While the Canucks lost the best-of-7 series, Boston Pizza reverted to it's original name and were spared from the destructive violence of the post-loss riots.  Though they should have taken advantage of the situation to get rid of the Boston stigma right then and there, the chain went right back to being named after the now-most-hated-American-city-not-known-for-its-pizza.  And from the commercials, the pizza looks no better than what I can get from Dominos in 30 minutes or less (though I have yet to determine if there is a Dominos here in The Okanagan).

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American hottie, not Canadian buffalo

There is a Canadian version of "American Pickers" on History Channel.  And, yes, it's called "Canadian Pickers".  But unlike the American version, these pickers do not look like two sexually ambiguous motel hoppers who like to antique (and who employ a total Suicide Girl hottie back at the home office).  Instead, the Canadian pickers look like Wild Bill Hickok understudies from HBO's "Deadwood" that would rather be bow-hunting.  They employ what looks like a buffalo with mange back at their home office, and carry all the charisma of Janice, the hyena-like pre-Monica love interest of Chandler Bing on "Friends".

In other words, the Canadian version kind of sucks, eh.

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There is a Canadian E-Harmony and Match.com to help Canucks find love.  I'm curious to know if the compatibility questions include ones aboot favorite hockey team, brand of maple syrup, and whether they prefer Molson over LaBatts.
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We don't get Comedy Central, instead we get The Comedy Channel.
We don't get Cartoon Network, instead we get Toon Central.

We DO get things called "time shift" channels.  These allow us to watch programming shown in any time-zone across the country, including the US.  So if we want to watch, say, "Castle" on Monday nights, we don't have to wait until 10pm here on the west coast, but can watch it at 7pm when it airs on the east coast, say, in Halifax.  While this is good for being able to catch programming at more convenient times, and if you want to watch 2 different programs that are usually on at the same time, instead of bothering with the DVR, you can just watch one at an earlier time - it is also a bad thing, because while it appears that you have hundreds of different channels as you surf the guide, you soon notice that the same program pops up on every 7th channel.  There is not just one east coast channel, one central, one mountain, and one pacific - no, there are aboot 10 of each.  So we get "Castle" at 7pm on a channel from Halifax, St Johns, Fredrickton, Moncton,  and every other major Canadian city in the eastern time zone, plus American cities like Buffalo.  Plus all of the CTV (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation stations) that operate in every city in Canada with more than 100 people &/or moose, meaning that at 7pm, you can watch "Castle" on aboot 34 different channels (plus the sight-impared channel where all the action is narrated ("She turns her head and looks at him.  He looks up from the newpaper and looks back at her.  She is frowning.  He turns back to his newspaper....."  and so on, throughout the whole program (or movie - I caught this channel playing "Gone With The Wind" the other day, and when Scarlet is narrated, and you close your eyes, she's described as if she were a Kardashian.))) (wow, that's a lot of parenthesis...), and then will be on a different 34 channels once the central time zone starts the next hour, where we now get channels out of Detroit, London (Ontario, not England), Toronto, Montreal, Windsor (Ontario, not England), and so on and so forth.  For the next 2 hours as we creep across the continent.

And let us not forget the French language channels that do the same.  Yes, the Quebecois in Canada get both the benefits and horrors (or should I say avantages et horreurs?) of the time shift system.

Though seeing Beckett on 34 channels for 4 hours straight is A-OK with me (wink wink).
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The Canadian Football League (the CFL) plays during the summer instead of the winter.  Probably because hockey takes up all the attention in the winter, and besides about 200 people in Toronto who actually go to Blue Jay games, baseball holds absolutely no cache here.

The rules are a bit different in the CFL.  There are only 3 downs instead of 4 and the field is 110 yards long (plus 9 feet wider).  The largest sporting event in Canada is their version of the Super Bowl, called the Grey Cup, which is the Canadian version of the Lombardi Trophy.

Our team here in British Columbia are the BC Lions.  And like all football teams named after lions, they are winless this season (just as they were last season).  There are some great team names oot there:  The Montreal Alouttes, the Toronto Argonauts, the Saskatchewan Rough Riders - and the team I feel obliged to follow now, as they are in Green Bay Packer green and gold - the Edmonton Eskimos (so it seems that naming sports teams at the expense of indiginous peoples is not limited to American sports teams).
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You had better have the recipe for Rice Krispie treats memorized because the recipe printed on the boxes here are in metric measurements.  Cooking in units of 10 is harder than you think.  Luckily, Lisa knows the recipe by heart.
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There is a beer here called Sleemans.  The commercial says at the end of the day, nothing tastes better than Sleemans.  For over a hundred years, Canadian men have been proudly enjoying Sleemans.  

Ironically, their mascot is the beaver.  Look closely at the gold emblem above the name on the beer bottle to the right.  It's actually a beaver against a maple leaf.

Seriously.  It's all just too good to be true, but it is.  Seriously.
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"Entourage" is just as douchey here as in the States.  Seriously, when the hell is the Pivster going to drop off the face of the earth?



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