tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-361637462024-03-07T21:11:44.957-08:00Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-78602075046831974832009-06-14T23:58:00.000-07:002009-06-15T11:35:26.344-07:00

"Yes, hello, Kettle + 8? This is the Octo-Pot calling. Stop sucking away at my 15 minutes of fame."I've never been a fan of TLC's "Jon and Kate Exploit Their Eight" (or whatever). Being party to their marital spats and exhausted parenting makes me feel uncomfortably like an 11th wheel. Most parents have, in front of friends, called their kid a brat or their spouse a hag, but everything

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-38675117510940866402009-05-25T05:03:00.000-07:002009-05-25T06:58:11.692-07:00

Reality shows: whether you love them, hate them, or feel aggressively indifferent towards them, they are rapidly overtaking sitcoms and dramedies and other such pre-written nonsense. Are they incredibly shallow? Usually. Do they make for excellent theme parties? Almost always. Are you an incredible lame-wad if you watch them alone? I'll let you be the judge (but the answer is "yes").With

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-84000776968227845322009-05-02T15:41:00.000-07:002009-05-02T22:49:44.808-07:00

The swine flu and overnight singing sensation Susan Boyle have a lot in common, and I don’t mean that in the most obvious (and insulting) sense, so shame on you. The swine flu worked its way into Canada from the south, and the video of the self-proclaimed 47-year old virgin worked its way through the internets and into Canadian hearts. And American hearts. And the hearts of all those who have

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-53645352041229441732009-04-02T02:31:00.001-07:002009-04-06T01:48:26.498-07:00

Remember when Joaquin Phoenix played Emperor Commodus and made being power-mad kind of sexy? Remember when Joaquin Phoenix played Johnny Cash and made being tormented and hopeless kind of sexy? Remember when Joaquin Phoenix stopped showering and made unwashed vagrancy the world’s most uninteresting controversy?Since his shock-seeking announcement last October that Phoenix is leaving a healthy

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-54346464735789090942009-03-20T05:30:00.000-07:002009-03-23T16:48:06.738-07:00

Recently, Jon Stewart, host of The Comedy Network's "The Daily Show," has been launching hilarious barbs at CNBC for faulty financial reporting. Coming under particularly heavy fire were Jim Cramer, the rambunctious host of "Mad Money," who has offered some blatantly bad advice, and Rick Santelli, who, in a recent video explosion, called unfortunate mortgage-holders "losers" and railed against a

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-85062879348433492912009-03-05T00:47:00.000-08:002009-03-05T14:55:28.044-08:00

Super-ultra-pop-star Rihanna is a lot of things: model, former beauty queen, Barbadian youth cultural ambassador (!), frequent Billboard presence, wackadoo fashion icon, and a scant "score-and-one" years old. After an alleged argument that ended in alleged violence with boyfriend-singer Chris Brown a few weeks ago, however, it seems the media would like to cram a new hat on the young songstress’

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-2562616953121212532009-01-28T13:39:00.000-08:002009-01-31T22:26:39.986-08:00

Since 2007, the company that brought us Beanie Babies has been steadily feeding the glutted toy market a line of new dolls, the Girlz. Not surprisingly, more than a few of Ty’s Girlz bear passing resemblances to famous femmes. The red-headed Lucky Lindsay is as dead a ringer for La Lohan as you can get in plush. Bubbly Britney (one 't,' just like a famous ex-Mouseketeer) is a pony-tailed

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-56337931942302930292009-01-08T01:32:00.000-08:002009-01-09T22:51:06.447-08:00

What with her three adopted children, recent birthing of twins, and husband Brad’s increasingly haggard mug, the rumors that Angelina Jolie is pregnant again have compounded an already drama-riffic life. Everyone is sick of hearing about this lippy femme and her do-gooding and her cat-fighting and her award-winning and her baby-making, but no one can stop talking about her. The woman collects

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-84609513547864153742008-12-23T23:53:00.000-08:002008-12-24T04:26:46.871-08:00

The Disney corporation is a piss-poor parent. While it may be responsible for some of the finest keep-your-kids-busy-for-an-hour films ever made, it has done a reprehensible job of raising up its own young stars. If any real-life parents had Disney’s track record, social services would be on their asses before you could holler "High School Musical 3: Senior Year!"While some former Disney

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-9603559004551894992008-12-05T18:12:00.000-08:002009-09-07T17:21:01.336-07:00

Can we take a second to talk about the newest lit-to-film fad corrupting our children? Enough with the darling wizards in plaid robes; we’re talking about vampires now. Sexy, sexy vampires. If you haven’t heard about Stephanie Meyer's Twilight saga by now, you obviously have no daughters/wives/friends. The story of Bella Swan, a rather underwhelming young woman, and the vampire who wants quite

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-81907726971030259622008-11-28T09:00:00.000-08:002008-11-28T14:03:58.357-08:00

News flash, kids: Paris Hilton is a space cadet. The real kind. That goes into space.When the first ragingly commercial shuttle craft, the Virgin (HA!) Enterprise, takes off next year, our very own Witless Wonder will be on it. True, she may be $200,000 US poorer for the experience. And true, she may have expressed fears that, "with the whole light years thing," whole eons will go by while

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-7076957797244087412008-10-23T02:01:00.000-07:002008-10-24T03:46:36.074-07:00

Can we give credit where credit is, if not due, then at least feasible? Britney Spears' recent single, "Womanizer," has jumped from #96 to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Given that a few months ago we might have given her back-pats just for putting on pants, and since no other song has ever made a leap this huge in one week, I think she deserves some sort of props.And sure, much of that

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-15035436710215125262008-10-09T00:56:00.000-07:002008-10-09T02:07:56.221-07:00

O.J. Simpson is guilty again!! Or for the first time, depending on which way your 1994 vote swung. After successfully evading all kinds of prison for the alleged murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman, O.J. is now headed to the slammer for reclaiming some of his old football junk from a pair of collectors. At gunpoint.Let's wallow for a necessary minute in the glory

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-20426526876467940502008-09-28T15:01:00.000-07:002008-09-28T22:57:13.847-07:00

Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of the late Kurt Cobain, recently decided to throw herself a "Suicidal Sixteen" birthday party. Now look, I’m all for themed parties, and if any other teenage girl planned this macabre festivus, I suppose we'd just shake our heads and mutter something about kids today before returning to our "Murder She Wrote" marathons. My first instinct, though, isn't to shake my

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-62136481634700566002008-09-09T03:03:00.000-07:002009-07-21T03:05:12.120-07:00

When my first college boyfriend asserted one lazy Saturday night that hockey needed cheerleaders, I knew then and there that we would not be trawling the aisles 80 years hence, hand in wrinkled hand, looking for a better denture adhesive. Less because of the "cheerleaders" and more because of the "hockey needs." Hockey does not, in fact, need cheerleaders. Hockey is just fine on its own.As are

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-26409226798499993242008-08-01T07:09:00.000-07:002008-09-09T04:36:05.242-07:00

By guest blogger Catherine NutterTuesday July 29 -- "Black Tuesday" to the half a million or so active daily users of Facebook's monster popular application known as Scrabulous. Office workers and computer nerds all over North America sat quivering and bewildered staring at a screen bearing the error message "Scrabulous is disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-2180066969926995782008-06-01T20:04:00.000-07:002008-06-13T21:56:39.578-07:00

Buying breakfast for a pregnant woman at your local Tim Hortons seems like the polite, Canadian thing to do -- unless of course, that pregnant woman happens to be homeless.Teresa Lee, an investment manager in Toronto, made the mistake of purchasing breakfast for such a woman and was promptly scolded by a Tim Hortons employee for allowing her new acquaintance to eat inside the store. According to

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-8170081659009205592008-05-17T02:29:00.000-07:002008-05-17T17:38:54.284-07:00

Recently I met a mom who's had enough. I was in a mall washroom when I noticed the media-awareness.ca sticker on the tote bag of the woman next to me at the counter. I asked her about it, and got a quick lesson in what it's like to raise children in a media environment that's about as conducive to parenting as a strip club. Thirty-four years old, Debbie has three kids. Earler this year she found

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-19863877110870588202008-04-09T20:41:00.000-07:002008-05-06T01:10:24.952-07:00

It must be spring. It's not so much the extended sunlight, the warmer weather, or even the greening grass that's brought the new season to my attention, as it is the talk of cleaning. I've even been invited a spring cleaning party. Rather, a series of parties: a group of women are all banding together, and each week they tackle one house. It's an effective and sociable strategy for diving

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-63815384736476947932008-03-21T04:11:00.000-07:002008-03-23T02:05:39.032-07:00

On March 21, 1960 in Sharpeville, South Africa, police opened fire on a group of protestors, injuring somewhere between 150 and 300 people and killing 69 others. The demonstrators were protesting apartheid, a legalized system of racial classification and segregation. Enforced by the South African government, inhabitants were classified into racial groups, with black South Africans being

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-80309069207946457322008-03-07T04:47:00.000-08:002008-03-07T07:12:00.800-08:00

Misha Defonseca, a Belgian writer, has come out of a very dark closet. The 71 year-old author of Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years, admitted last week that her memoir was not really a memoir, but a fantasy. I was appalled when James Frey confessed that his book, A Million Little Pieces, was a fabrication and deceived millions of readers -- and Oprah, for that matter -- but Defonseca has

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-25755470129322798762008-02-21T22:27:00.000-08:002008-02-22T00:14:55.527-08:00

For over a month the trunk of my car has been crammed full of mixed plastics. I have scoured the city's recycling depots for one that accepts mixed plastics, to no avail. It's a touch ironic: my attempts to reduce my environmental impact include driving all over the city, polluting.In Victoria, I enjoyed curbside pickup every second Wednesday. I was pleased when I was able to recycle most of

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-35842285145595449542008-01-24T02:15:00.000-08:002008-08-24T16:35:39.251-07:00

From The Calgary Herald, December 28, 2007: "One in five women (aged 16 to 24) never use condoms."Call me a cynic, but I'm pretty sure most if-not-all women are missing the anatomy required for wearing condoms.Why is it that women are always handed the responsibility to police sex? The article in question is a case in point: it discusses current sex education programs and their failure to

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-83883496335781736722008-01-08T16:28:00.000-08:002008-01-08T20:22:34.758-08:00

Leave Britney Alone!I think Chris Crocker, in his infamous You Tube video defending Britney Spears, was onto something. (I'm not going to post it. If you haven't seen it yet, I suggest you sell the rock you're living under. But here's the Trance remix:) Spears' three-hour stand off with police, prompted by her refusal to release her children to her ex-husband as court-ordered, and her

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36163746.post-85160281235995612112007-12-12T03:26:00.000-08:002007-12-18T13:08:12.136-08:00

What if universities imposed a minimum age for enrollment? It came up over drinks with some friends, and I've been thinking about it ever since. The idea was that at 18 years of age, one has little to no life experience, and might make a better, more fulfilling decision about education by taking a few years after high school to work, travel, and grow up. Jessica*, a 23-year old student at the

Single Lane Medianoreply@blogger.com3