Mike's Bloggity Blog

Once in a blue moon, I get sick of hearing me go on and on about what I think about thinks.  So I’d love to know what you guys think about this song by Vancouver’s Dirty Radio.  It’s called ‘My Heart‘ (or ‘My <3′).  It seems to be quite doing well here in Canada, it’s currently being played by 20+ top radio stations across Canada, it’s also received almost 50,000 plays on YouTube in only 3 week of its release and best of all it’s 100% Independent.

So have a listen and let me know what you think?  And would you look at that, I figured how to embed a poll and everything! Ten years after high school and I still got it!

Hey Taylor,

How’s it going! It’s me, Mike. Congrats on your new album. I’m really enjoying it!
Anyway, I was just going over your tour dates and I noticed that there was a mistake. It’s no big deal, I mean I know you’re busy but you’re definitely going to want to fix it before people start getting the wrong idea.

I just noticed that you left Calgary off your tour schedule. It’s weird cause you were two years ago and you sold out the stadium months in advance. Is it cause you forgot?  Here’s a recap, just in case. The crowd was crazy for you! I’m not sure how it happened but I think your planners booked two dates in Edmonton by accident! Surely that can’t be right?

So if you could just take a second to fix it, that would be great. I know that I’m not necessarily your demographic, but I guess I’m speaking on behalf of all the 14 year old girls who are! Wait…that sounds bad.

Let me know when you get the dates fixed and I’ll be sure to let everyone know!

All the best!
Mike

Taylor Swift 2011 Canadian Tour Dates:
July 14: Montreal, Quebec
July 15 & 16: Toronto, Ontario
August 18 & 19: Edmonton, Alberta
September 10 & 11: Vancouver, British Columbia

It’s not very often that the Cookie Monster makes sense, but hey, if Betty White can host Saturday Night Live, why not the Cookie Monster?

Let’s make this happen!

Just found a locally grown Iphone game and thought I’d take a moment to share it with you guys!

Since we are all in the middle of deep-freeze, why not check out the game.  I think you’ll like it!

A couple of weeks ago, I was approached by Panasonic about shaving my beard.  I don’t know if it had anything to do with this article, but I’m assuming it did.  That or my mom called the the giant company and asked if they would try to fix her biggest pet peeve: my facial hair.

Either way, when the Panasonic ES8249 Arc showed up in my mailbox, I’ll admit.  I panicked.  Was I ready to finally part the facial hair I’ve had for the past four years?  Would I be able to go 100% hairless?  Turns out, I couldn’t.  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I chickened out.  I just couldn’t do it.  At least not yet.  Maybe, I’ll do it for my mom for Christmas or just after my high school reunion.  But unless you’ve been bald since high school, you wouldn’t understand how important it is to keep any hair that you got!

I’ve actually never used an electrical razor before, so I decided I would at least use it to clean up my facial hair around my neck (ew…why does that sound so gross) and trim up the beard.  The Arc took a while to charge but once it did, it was really fun to use and really efficient.  Because I can be considered a really lazy guy, I really enjoyed the whole self-cleaning element, afterall it was my lazyness that had me grow the beard in the first place.  Once you use the razor, you simply place it into the cleaner and leave it.  The next time you need to shave, you have clean blades and a fully charged razor.  Pretty neat!

So since I got to use such a great razor, I figured, Why not give one away?  Don’t worry, it’s not the brand new one.  If you win, you get a brand new  Panasonic ES8249 Arc – 4 Self Cleaning Shaver with a deluxe model hydra cleaning/charging system (valued at $299.99) It uses a nano-technology which provides an extremely fast and comfortable shave. This shaver also has a new four blade system which makes it easier to tackles those areas that most men find difficult to maintain.

Just in time in to shave that mustache for Movember!

So how do you win?
There a couple of ways, each of them will get you an entry to a maximum of three entries:

1) In the comments section, post a link to your favourite 2010 Movember page.
2) In the comments section, let me know if you’ve made a Movember donation, with a link to the page.
3) Tweet the following message: “I wanna win a Panasonic Arc razor from @mikesbloggity: Cancer sucks, #Movember doesn’t. http://ow.ly/3e1h8”

Contest will close next Tuesday, November 30th.  Last day of Movember!
Good luck!

It’s another cold day in Calgary, so why not warm up with my newest column in Metro. And no, I don’t mean lite it on fire. Sheesh.

This week’s column, I try to break through Calgary’s secret high society and their uber-exclusive parties.  Mostly because I’m jealous and I want to be invited.

If you are in Calgary, you can pick up your copy of Metro pretty much anywhere, or you can click here and read it online!

You may have missed this story but late on Friday afternoon, FOX announced that when American Idol returns in 2011 there will more changes than just the hosts.  The show will now have it’s performance episode on Wednesday, with an hour long results show on THURSDAY, one of TV’s most competitive nights.   This is especially bad for cult shows like Community and Vampire Diaries, which are now in direct competition with the singing behemoeth.

But you know who the scheduling change is even worse for? CTV.  The network now has to figure out a way of scheduling Big Bang Theory, Shit My Dad Says,  Grey’s Anatomy, CSI, The Mentalist and still make room for American Idol.  Yikes.  Talk about overcrowding!  The problem would be easy if there was a weak link in CTV’s line up but all of these shows regularly pull in more than two million viewers and that’s not really a number that the network wants to mess with.

CTV does have the /A\ in its back pocket which allows for some wiggle room but not everyone in Canada gets the specialty network.  What do you when when the number one show in Canada goes up against the number one show in the States?

It should definitely be interesting to find out!

Well it’s bound to happen once and a while, I gotta talk about sports.

No…where are you going?  It’s actually a cool sports story and if I’m saying it’s cool, you have to know that it is at least worth the read, right?

It’s just been announced that CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada will be available to Canadians ni 3D this upcoming season!  The first game will be Montreal versus Toronto on Saturday, December 11th and the Heritage Classic from McMahon Stadium in Calgary Sunday, February 20, 2011.

No word yet on how or where you’ll be able to get your 3D glasses but earlier this year when CBC showed The Queen in 3D, glasses were available from Canada Post, you can probably expect the same this time around.

The second I hear something, i’ll let you know.

There, I talked about sports.  Are you happy Michael Landsberg?

Gosh!  You get busted for cocaine one time and it’s like you can’t ever catch a break again!

Steven Page just announced that he will be canceling his Canadian tour with little to no explanation. Although I’m guessing the fact that his show in Regina last week to a total of 400 fans has something to do with it.

The former Barenaked Lady posted on his website:
“Steven will instead be touring the country in February 2011, with details to follow early next week.”

Special review written by Dan Meades

On Saturday night,  Jeremy Fisher and his four-piece band took the stage at The Gateway on the SAIT Campus in Calgary in front of a well-lubed college crowd.  The show was posted online as having the doors open at 6:30 but the headliner did not take the stage until nearly 11:00, certainly this wait contributed to level of drunkenness of the crowd. Fisher is touring his album Flood which was released less than a month ago; this, his fourth full length album is his most mature and complete offering to date by far.

The set started with “Shine a Light” followed by “Naked Girl” and I was starting to wonder if we were going to hear the entire album in order.  People were out of their seats and crowding in front of the stage dancing and clapping along to the straightforward rock beat that drove the action in the early part of the set.

After about seven songs in succession the band left the stage leaving Fisher alone with his acoustic guitar and loop pedal which he was using sparsely to make up for the fact that he was lone guitar player on stage. Now alone, Fisher started to play “Left Behind”, a slow love lament from his 2007 album Goodbye Blue Monday. The mostly young party crowd wanted nothing to do with this slower tempo, more thoughtful melody and actually started clapping out of time with the quiet song until Fisher capitulated to their mood and broke into an ironic acoustic cover of C+C Music Factory’s “Everybody Dance Now”. Fisher hid his frustration only slightly and tried to appease the crowd saying “come on guys, I am trying to sing a love song here”.

From that point on Fisher only played songs that could be easily danced to, he even (by request) played a spirited cover of Hank William’s “Jambalaya” complete with harmonica solo.

Everyone at The Gateway had fun tonight, including the band, but I cannot help but think that we all missed out on what could have been a better show had we communally been willing to let Jeremy Fisher show us that he has moved past the obvious double entendre in 2004’s “Lemon Meringue Pie” and graduated to the thoughtful lyrics in 2010’a “Mornings Broke”, a song that is too slow and melancholy to get any air time this evening.

Dan Meades always gets pop culture trivia questions wrong; he finds himself politely laughing along when others make jokes about TV Celebs and it took him months to realize that Brangelina is actually two separate people. In fact he had to lie through his teeth just to get Bloggity to let him write music reviews. Some of the lies he told were that he was born and raised in St. John’s Newfoundland and made a living as a George St. Musician through University. In fact Dan is almost completely tone deaf which makes it all the more remarkable that he can review concerts at all.
You can reach Dan at danmeades@gmail.com