Mike's Bloggity Blog

So it is supposed to snow in Calgary this weekend. Not exactly summer weather, but it doesn’t mean you can’t start drinking your favourite summer drink now!  (Plus, I hear the rest of Canada is having quite the heat wave right now!)

Motts Clamato has just launched a contest to find Canada’s most passionate Caesar lover!

Here’s the deal: They are looking for the most passionate Caesar lover in the country who will rally around the Caesar to make it Canada’s National Cocktail. (Fact: Did you know the Caesar was invented at the Westin in Calgary!?) According to polling, 71% of Canadians support the motion to make the Caesar Canada’s National Cocktail and the party is looking for a strong leader to help make it official.  Of course, as soon as the Liberal party heard that someone else was looking for a strong leader, they immediately became interested in the movement.

Nominations for the party’s leader will remain upon until June 11^th. Caesar-loving Canadians can do their part by visiting www.facebook.com/CanadasCocktail where they can:

• Register to become a candidate and launch their own campaign
• Support a candidate of Canada’s National Cocktail Party

Contest:

To celebrate making the Caesar Canada’s National Drink, I’m giving away THREE  Motts Clamato Caesar’s Kits!!!

Two ways to enter:

1. Tweet the following message:  ”I’m going to win a Motts Clamato Caesar’s Kit from @mikesbloggity http://ow.ly/1QJzM ”
2. Leave a comment (with your email) telling me where is your favourite spot to enjoy a Caesar!

Contest closes next Wednesday June 2nd, 11:59pm MST.

Good luck!

Ohhhh I do love risk-takers, especially when it is uber-conservative alberta.

A controversial parody of High School Music is about to open in Red Deer and I can’t wait to see it!  The show is called Zanna Don’t! and it is about a parallel universe where homosexuality is the norm in high school, while the students look-down on the heterosexual couple! Did I mention it is a musical.

It’s like Lost meets Glee!

Now in a bigger city, this show might not be as interesting.  But the musical is being produced in Red Deer, Alberta-one of the provinces most conservative areas.

You gotta admire the actors for having (excuse the pun), the balls to do the show!

After the show’s run in Red Deer (May 27th-June 5th), it moves to Calgary (June 11th to June 20th)

More information is available online at www.atticplayers.com

One of Canada’s most inventive bands in recent years has to be The Arcade Fire.  (I still remember the day they were name-checked on Gilmore Girls.)

Anyway, for years now they have been coming up with creative and different ways to share their music with their fans.  But their most recent endeavor is probably my favourite.

In order to listen to the band’s two new songs The Suburbs and Month of May, you’ll have to spin it yourself, literally.

If you go on over to Arcade Fire’s website, you’ll see a record.  Use your mouse to spin it clock-wise and you’ll hear the songs, if you don’t spin fast enough, the song will play slowly, it really plays just like an old record.  If you are really bored, you can start spinning the record backwards to hear the song in a completely new way.

Such an awesome way to share music.

Check it out yourself!

Bad news for all of you Being Erica fans south of the border.   Disney announced today that SoapNet is closing it’s doors by January 2012.  This is obviously stressful news for fans the time-travelling series since SoapNet is the american home of Being Erica.

I have no freaking idea what happens to a series when the network shuts down, but I’m guessing someone will have to pick up the rights.  While Being Erica has found a nice home on cable, maybe this will be the push a network like ABC needs to pick it up as a summer series?!  And what about NBC?  It is not like they have anything better on the air!

And what does this mean for Being Erica here in Canada?  The series got a ton of buzz in the USA and if there isn’t a network willing to air it anymore, CBC might have  a hard time thinking past season 3, which is currently filming!

Good news for those who still haven’t bought their tickets to Lilith Fair!

Until Friday, you can get your tickets two for one!

The promotion is being sponsored by Starbucks, so you gotta enter the purchase password, which is coffee. (Offer ends Friday, May 28, 2010 at 10 AM local time.)

Click here to get your tickets!

U2 and Christina Aguilera have both just announced that their summer north american tours have been canceled.  U2 pulled out because of Bono’s bad back and Aguilera pulled out due to scheduling conflicts, though lack of sales is probably to blame.

And with Lilth Fair not selling that well (yet), this is apparently not the summer for concerts?

Luckily, you can still catch Bon Jovi on tour, you know if you are willing to spend $169.50 plus $12.50 in fees!!!!

On last night’s flight back to Calgary from Vancouver, I got to thinking about Air Canada’s entertainment system.  I’ve talked about it before, but before I went to bed, I needed to get some thoughts out about it.

Why I love it: If you go to the TV section of the system, then hit the ‘next page’, there is a Classic TV button.  You would think this was probably going to have a bunch of shows from the 50s, but actually it always has a random assortment of semi-modern shows.  On tonight’s flight, there was an episode of Perfect Strangers, the first Wonder Woman, the pilot of Joey and the debut episode of Pushing Daisies. Until I watched it tonight, I had totally forgotten how amazing Daisies was.  It was colourful, hilarious, mysterious and most of all original.  Thanks to Glee and if it had debuted today, the show might have been able to avoid being cut short, but for now, seeing the pilot reminded me to finally pick up the show’s two seasons on BluRay.  I only wish the flight had been longer so I could have watched that Perfect Strangers episode too.  (Did you know Family Matters was a spin-off of PS?  Harriet and Carl Winslow lived in the same apartment building as Larry and Balki!)

Why I hate it: There are certain movies that I always wanted to see in theatres, but I never got the chance.  So I patiently wait for them to show up on Bluray, so I can enjoy them from the comfort of my own home.  On Tuesday night’s flight there was both Shutter Island and The Lovely Bones.   So while I, myself, am not tempted to watch these blockbusters on a small screen, I can understand the other people around me might be.  Them watching these movies, combined with me being the world’s biggest pop-culture masochist, usually results in me watching snippets of  allthe movies all around me, mostly just enough to ruin the experience for when I have time to actually watch the movie myself.  So while I’m glad we no longer all have to watch the same movies on one big screen, I sorta wish I could control what everyone else was watching, just so I don’t actually have to watch it.

I’ve decided to use this sweet picture of my mom and her four boyfriends in high school to remind you that today is the last day, to enter my contest to win a one year membership to Ancestry.ca!

Whether you want to track down your mom’s old boyfriends.
Find out if you have any rich (and maybe dying) relatives.
Or if you are actually interested in genealogy, then this is the prize for you!

Contest closes tonight, click here to enter!

A couple of months ago CBC Radio 3 held a search for Canada’s best music festival, the results were close, but in the end Evolve  was named Best Festival in Canada.

One of the festivals that made the top five was Calgary’s relatively new Sled Island.  Not to bad for a a festival that is only four years old!

Every year, Sled Island has been getting bigger and bigger.  Of the 231 acts scheduled to perform at Sled Island 2010, 77 are based in Calgary and 107 from within Alberta.

Some of those bands are: Women (pictured above), The Posies, Golden Triangle, Cave, Chain and The Gang, Dinosaur Jr., The Thermals, The Bronx, Built to Spill, Girl Talk, King Khan & BBQ, the Almighty Defenders, Quintron and Miss Pussycat, Fucked Up, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Hot Water Music, Why?, Les Savy Fav, The Melvins, No Means No, Deerhoof,

I’ll be honest, I haven’t heard of most of the bands, but it doesn’t mean that I’m not excited to discover new music, which has always been one of the best parts about Sled Islands.

Tickets and passes are on sale now!

Sooooooo when did the Banff World Television Festival become the coolest festival in Canada?

With the four day event only a couple of weeks away, organizers are still adding to the growing list of celebrities who will be in attendance.

We already knew that William Shatner, Ricky Gervais, Nigel Lythgoe and Illeana Douglas would be speaking at the festival.  Now comes word that Erik McCormack and Ian Brennan will now be there too! Don’t know who Ian Brennan is?  Well he c0-created Glee with Ryan Murphy!  Bet that is ringing a few bells for ya!

I’m not embarrassed to say that that this event is turning into a big giant wet-dream for television lovers like myself.