Mike's Bloggity Blog

The results of the Canadian Blog Awards were announced on Saturday and I’m so excited…and a little confused, to announce that I won an award for Best Culture and Literature Blog!  I’m not saying that I’m confused to act like I’m being humble, I’m confused because Bloggity doesn’t really seem like a Culture and Literature blog to me, but hey, I guess it’s what the people want, so I will gladly accept it and say thank you very, very much!

The entire awards are volunteer run and all the voting is done by anyone that has a computer, that puts the decision process completely out of my hands, so I appreciate every single person that took even a second to send a vote my way.  It’s really incredible.

If you’re looking for new blogs to discover, now is the time.  There are a ton of amazing blogs that were nominated and eventually won some pretty cool awards and now they are just waiting for you to read them.

Take a look at all the winners and nominees here. 

So, how did I celebrate?  Well, I enjoyed my favourite snack (room temperature milk and popcorn) and watched The Lord of The Rings: The Return of The King, of course!  I mean what were you really expecting? After all, I am full of culture now.

Thanks again everyone!

In a couple of months, Alberta will be holding it’s first provincial election in a few years.  As always, the Conversatives are expected to win big, but that doesn’t mean the excitement of an election is any less.

While I don’t consider myself Aaron Sorkin, I do like to follow politics and find elections particularly interesting.  For this week’s Metro column, I wanted to talk about the a trend that I’ve noticed across the country, but in particular here in Calgary.  It always happens in an election year that tv personalities decide to leave their TV jobs in hopes of winning the elections, whether it be municipal, provincial or federal.

I’m not sure why they want to run, or even if they should be running in the first place.  With my small 400 word limit, I did the best to figure out why TV personalities like Sandra Jansen and Bruce McAllister want to be MLAs.   And yes, I’ve already gotten hate mail over this one.

Click here to read it. 

I’d actually never heard of James Struthers before today, but when his video showed up my inbox, I had to check it out.  Why?  Well, because it’s called “You, Me and Optimus Prime.”  How could you not click on that?  Even more surprising than the name of the song, was the fact that it not just a comedic song, it’s actually a really nice diddy (I can still use that, right?) about a man who has a special friendship with everyone’s favourite robot.

Haters of the Transformers movies will probably love this video much more the films because the leader of the Autobots is really, well, in his prime.

Struthers is a 22 year old singer from Winnipeg, who’s already toured the country 5 times, released 2 EPs, 4 music videos, and has cracked the Canadian AC charts with his festive single ‘Blue Christmas’ in under 2 years. You know it’s interesting, this is really the kind of world that we live in now, isn’t it?  For musicians to stick out, they have to be creative and how better to stick out than to write a great song and produce an even better video about Optimus Prime? (There’s an acoustic version of the song available too…where James is randomly singing in a bathtub!)

Hope you have as good of a time listening to the song as I did.

I’m sorta nervous that my fascination with Carly Rae Jepsen is reaching a sketchy level, but let’s ignore that for now and instead focus on the hugeness that is her new single. “Call Me Maybe,” the first single from her sophomore album, “Curiosity”.  This week, the catchy tuned  jumped five spots from 9 to4 on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 chart, and LEAPS 6-1 on the Digital Songs chart!

The song, which has already gone platinum, sold 21,000 downloads this week to take the top spot. Actually, it’s the first song by a Canadian artist to reach the top of the digital chart since Justin Bieber’s “Baby” in January 2010. Coincidently enough, Jepsen has to credit Bieber for helping her reach the top spot so quickly. Since he tweeted how addictive he found the song to be, the song has pretty much gone viral. His girlfriend, Selena Gomez, also tweeted her praises for the song, which she included with a photo of Justin, saying “This smile is because of Carly Rae Jepsen. We have not stopped listening your song girl!” A few days later, Justin Bieber’s best friend, Ryan Good and his girlfriend Ashley Bensen (Pretty Little Liars) posted a video of her singing the song 35,000 feet in the air.

I’ve never really been a Bieber fan, but I’ve always, and still do, admire him for using his social media power to do some pretty amazing things.

Fun Fact: Call Me Maybe is only the 11th song by aCanadian artist to reach No. 1 on the Digital Songs chart since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking digital download sales in 2005.

The video is also doing really well, it’s currently sitting just below a million views.  Not bad, consider her next most viewed topped out at 114,000!

Check it out below, not only is the song great, the video offers up a pretty hilarious twist.  But before you do, I just need to say that I’m not jumping on the Carly Rae Jepsen bandwagon, I’ve been writing about her awesomeness since all the way back in 2008.  Take that Bieber!

You’ve all seen the Honey Badger video right, right?

Okay, well there’s no point in going any further unless you’ve seen the insanely popular video that has already been viewed by more than 33 million people.

Hilarious, right?
Okay, well if you want more, get ready because the Honey Badger is coming to Canada…and he’ll be animated! A Canadian production company by the name ofSix Eleven Media, based in Halifax,  is hoping sell an animated/live actions series called Honey Badger U! The show will center around Randall, a professor of life sciences, and his students. The honey badger will be the school’s mascot. You know what, it sounds kinda awesome. And why not, the video has already inspired an iPhone game,a book and a clothing line. The Honey Badger really does not give a shit and I love it!

Let’s hope this takes off, I could definitely do with some more Randall and Honey Badger in my life

Good news for those in work in the Alberta film industry!

AMC has officially renewed Hell on Wheels, which is filmed on the outskirts of Calgary, for a second season.

The show wrapped up it’s first season this past weekend with about 3.8 millions viewers, making it AMC’s second highest rated series behind The Walking Dead.  Yup, Hell on Wheels really does rake in the ratings, especially when compared to award favourite Mad Men. The ratings for the series were high from the start, thanks to being on after The Walking Dead, but for the second half of its season, Hell on Wheels was on its own, and for the show to only dip to the three million range is really impressive!

Truth be told, I was a little nervous about Hell on Wheels because there was hardly any buzz for the show, and we’ve all seen networks, with shows that have okay ratings, get canned because people simply weren’t talking about it.

Hell on Wheels tells the story of a Confederate soldier who works on the railroad while taking revenge on the Union Soldiers who raped and killed his wife. It stars Anson Mount, Common and Colm Meaney. Besides the film industry being excited, I know that a lot of Calgarians will be pumped to have the cast back in our city filming the show. Last year was fun because you just never knew when you were going to see Common or Mount strollin’ the aisles of the farmers market!

Fans of the show can likely expect new episodes later this year.

Oh happy Tuesday indeed!

If you’re like me, you still have some iTunes gift cards that you’ve been hanging on to from Christmas, just waiting to buy the perfect album, well guess what, today is that day.  One of my favourite musicians, Kathleen Edwards, released her newest album today and je suis en amour!  That’s right, I brought out the french.  I know I shouldn’t admit to this, but I only discovered Edwards a few years ago when one of her singles was the Single of The Week on iTunes, so it’s totally okay that you may not have heard of her.  Since then, well, you don’t want me to speak French again, but she’s absolutely great.

If the word of a short bald blogger, that you’ve never met is not enough for you, have a listen to one of the songs off of Kathleen’s newest album, Voyageur.  The song is called For The Record and even though it’s over seven minutes long, I promise you won’t even notice.  Actually, you’ll probably find yourself hitting the play button again without even realizing it.

Kathleen Edwards Fun Fact:  According to Wikpedia (24 RIP) she is dating the lead singer of Bon Iver.  I know it would be weird, but if there is somehow that I could be their child, adoptive or biological, that’d be awesome.

Click here to download.

Let’s do this winter!

A few weeks ago, the future of CBC Television wasn’t in question, but people were certainly not in love with it.  After weeks and weeks of lackluster ratings for their shows, CBC was struggling to find an audience for any of its shows that didn’t take place on ice.

Well all of that changed this week, when CBC kicked off the New Year with a bang and didn’t look back.   In fact, last week, the Canadian network had its most successful season premiere week ever, with a number of new and returning CBC comedy, drama, unscripted and current affairs programs winning their time blocks – and several with audiences of more than one million viewers!  (For those who aren’t too familiar with ratings, anything over a million viewers is considered a success.)

Here are some of the highlights:

Artic Air had the largest audience for a premiere of a new drama series in 20 years, with total viewership of 1.05 million!

Mr. D. stars popular comedian Gerry Dee and it premiered to 1.23 million viewers – the largest for a comedy since the debut of  Little Mosque on the Prairie in January, 2007!

Marketplace, Dragons’ Den and Republic of Doyle all topped one million viewers too!

So what do you think, did you check out CBC for the first time in a long time.  I know that I did.  Mr. D. is hilarious, let’s all hope that for the sake of Canadian content, these numbers stick.

Welcome back to the game CBC.

(Photo via Toronto Star)

Have you ever used your Canadian Tire money?  It’s sorta how are parents collected points to get free stuff, before all of the rewards and membership clubs started collecting points for us.  I know for a fact that I’ve never used a single penny of Canadian Tire money, as I’m sure you  haven’t either.

Well, meet Corin Raymond.  He’s a Toronto musician who is hoping to collect enough Canadian Tire money to fund his next album!  Now that is a LOT of money!

Believe it or not, the singer/songwriter found a studio in Toronto that will except Canadian Tire for par!  Yes, seriously. Who knew there was such a thing.  Apparently the owner of the recording studio thinks that you can always buy supplies from the giant Canadian department store, so why not except it for cash. WOW.  I wish universities were like that!

So three weeks ago Raymond launched a Facebook page and website in an effort to collect as much money as possible. This weekend, he’ll be recording his new album at a series of live gigs and would like to have enough CT bucks to cover the huge expense. I actually really enjoy his website, because he’s been documenting all the donations and who they came from. It’s really impressive to see that so many people still hold on to Canadian Tire money and yet are so willing to give it up to a complete stranger!  So far the musician has raised more than $300 and hopes to have $1,000 by this weekend!

Do you think he can do it?  Have some money you’d like to see be put to good use?

Click here to donate!