Only in Blogs

I always used to hate it, years ago, when movie ads would end by saying, "only in theatres!" I was like, Geez, what else would it be? Movies open in theatres, then come out on video months later; that’s the way of the world. How hard is that to understand? But of course, you know they have to say that because there's that one person who would try going to Blockbuster expecting to rent the big movie that just came out that weekend.

I know that sounds weird, but we've all met that one person who just doesn't understand how the world works, even if they've lived in it all their lives. You know, the one who tries to order a Big Mac at Burger King, and is genuinely surprised and angry that they can’t get one.

It would be convenient if there was a name for such a person, like the way we decided that “Karen” would mean self-important complainers. That made it easy for all of us to have a simple name to refer to the concept, even if it did poison the name and lead to prejudice against thousands of innocent people. Maybe for this concept, we should choose a name that's already fallen out of favour. How about Millicent? It’s a rare name, so whatever anger they have over this will be offset by the fact that we're mentioning them.

Anyway, that's why the "only in theatres" line bothered me: the ignorance that it was coddling. I mean, I try to be patient of ignorance, but in this case it's a kind of wilful ignorance. To misunderstand the world so badly, you must be ignoring everything around you. And advertisers were just encouraging it. It would be like airlines placating Flat-Earthers by guaranteeing that none of their flights would go near the edges of the earth.

Though really, I suppose the “only in theatres” line wasn’t to protect the ignorant consumers from wasting their time at Blockbuster, so much as to protect the movie studio from irrational complaints from Millicents disappointed they couldn’t rent the movie hours after its release. And in the process, they’re also protecting that poor kid working for Blockbuster who would have to explain the logistics of the movie industry to angry customers. Customers who probably also thought they could use their Subway Club card to rent at Blockbuster.

But what really bugs me is that today the ads have to specify, "only in theatres," because they might actually be making a major release on streaming services. Sure, it’s convenient that there are so many ways to distribute movies today, but I feel like the simpletons won.

But another way of looking at this is that however complex the world of the 90’s used to seem to these people, that’s how complex the world has actually become. The world was inevitably bewildering to a person who thought they could buy something at Kmart and then return it for their money back at Sears. But now, that’s how complex the world is even to normal people. Today, we are all Millicent.

What A Show, Eh?

See, if the Blue Jays had succeeded in signing Shoehi Ohtani, then that headline is the pun we’d all be getting tired of. Aren’t you glad we dodged that bullet? No, me neither.

It's been a weird offseason for the Blue Jays. It started with a sense of doom:  The team has kind of painted itself into a corner: Several players have expiring contracts, and the team’s offence needs improvement, but this year there isn’t a lot of offence available in this year’s free-agent class. There was a sense that there was little to look forward to.

Then, unexpectedly, the Jays made a major push to sign Shohei Ohtani. This is a team that has rarely gone after the top free agents, and then they go after the biggest free agent ever. Even though the contract was expected to be at least three times the biggest contract the Jays had ever signed. Nevertheless, as the rumour mill’s list of suitors dwindled, and the Blue Jays slowly rose to the top of the list of potential destinations.

And then, suddenly, it was over. It was like reality reasserted itself, and Ohtani signed with the Dodgers just as everyone expected. Of course, it's entirely possible that the chances of his signing with the Jays was always remote, and it was exaggerated to drive the final price up. For Jays fans it was doubly a let down, missing out on Ohtani, and him signing with a super-rich team, as if to emphasize that fantasy time was over now. Okay, it was refreshing that it wasn’t a super-rich team in the Jays’ division for once. I heard some people suggest that Ohtani’s contract decision was a missed marketing opportunity for Major League Baseball, and they should have made it into a televised spectacle, like LeBron James' first free agency. But it seems to me that would be a disappointment, seeing as the result was so predictable.

(And fittingly, my first attempt to spell Shohei was autocorrected to "Sorry")

The whole experience was very strange, and I'm not sure how to describe it. It was like we jumped into an alternate universe, then got pulled back to reality. The effect was similar to watching this video, which hinges on the odd fact that Tom Brady was drafted by the Montreal Expos:

Unfortunately, the timelines of that alternate reality don't quite line up, since Larry Walker left as a free agent a few months before the Expos drafted Brady. But that's part of the experience I'm trying to describe: surreal dreaming, and now back to a dull reality where you realize that dream wasn’t really possible. But after being allowed to dream, it seems extra depressing. 

On a practical level, the Blue Jays are back in the predicament that began the offseason. But on an emotional level, this incident contributes to a long-running frustration for Jays fans: we'd just like to know what type of team we have. There are big-spending teams like the Yankees and Dodgers, cheap teams like the Rays or Royals; some teams spend strategically, like the Cardinals, and some spend wildly, like the Mets. The Jays, on the other hand, seem to jump between personalities. 

They spent big in the World Series years, then turned into a small-market team for a couple of decades. That was at least predictable. Since then, it's been a crap shoot. They might spend big, or not. They might try patiently building a team of talented youngsters. Or they might go after the biggest free agent in the history of sports. I just wish we could adjust our expectations.

Outback II: Electric Bugaboo

When the Outback Steakhouse started to get big, with its pseudo-Australian stylings, I wondered what a Canadian version of that would look like. And now I’ve stumbled across the fact that there was, indeed, an American chain of Canadian-themed steakhouses.

Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse appears to have been limited to the North East, but there were quite a few of them. The interiors modelled on a Canadian lodge, with log-cabin stylings. Unfortunately, they didn’t survive the Great Recession, so it’s nothing but memories and grainy YouTube videos now.

But wait, it wasn’t just Canadian symbols applied to the Outback formula, it was also a mashup with Chuck-E-Cheese. It had wall-mounted animal heads that spoke with animatronics, and a tree that would give you nuggets of Canadian trivia.

I’m kind of dumbfounded by all this. Partly that it existed at all, and partly that it isn't legendary in Canada. Usually we're obsessed with how Americans see us, and here's this very concrete artifact of their collective mental picture. You’d think this would be a part of our collective lore right up there with that car with skis on the roof and American plates that we all remember seeing that one time.

Bugaboo Creek was founded in the early nineties, and my family did a road trip through New England in the late-eighties, so we just missed it. I can’t imagine the shock we would have had if we had driven through a New Hampshire tourist-town, down that street with all the family restaurants on it, and seen this in between the Denny’s and the Ponderosa. I’m sure we would have run screaming as soon as the moose over our table started talking.

But surely some Canadians saw it — it’s not like it was sequestered in Nebraska, or some other part of the U.S. that Canadians are unlikely to go. You’d think some New Brunswicker looking for cheap beer and cigarettes in Maine would have wandered into the Bugaboo Creek in Bangor. He tells his friends, and the next thing you know, Rick Mercer is interviewing that tree for a “Talking To Americans” segment.

But when I Googled Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse, all I could find — in between pages on the real-life Bugaboo Provincial Park in British Columbia — were the reminiscences of Americans who missed going there, or were freaked out by the robots, or a bit of both. Even when I specifically Googled “what Canadians thought of Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse” I couldn’t find anything.

There are still a few menus left on line, but they’re just standard steakhouse stuff. Except for a few moose and snowbird references in the names, there was nothing to distinguish it. There were none of the bad Canadian puns I was hoping for. “Prime (Minister) Rib?” “Fill-Eh Mignon?” “Sir John A. Loin?” Also, no actual Canadian stuff like poutine or Nanaimo bars or milk served in bags. So in the end it’s a half-pound nothingburger, not arousing Canada’s indignation or appreciation. Plus creepy robots.

Protesting Proverbs

You know that proverb: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Is it though? When was the last hellish thing that started with good intentions? Sure, we can all come up with examples of trying to do something good and it went wrong. But the saying isn't, "The road to mild unpleasantness is paved with good intentions." — that's a statement I could get behind. No, it's the road to hell, where you're headed straight to Satan but you couldn't afford the same toll as AC/DC. How often do truly hellish things happen because of good intentions? There's a few, but probably not enough to act as a practical paving surface. 

The other problem with the saying is that it doesn't consider that the road to heaven is probably paved even more completely with good intentions. You know, not often that heavenly things begin with bad intentions. Okay, continuing the metaphor of second-rate versions of religious rock allegories, it would be the ladder to heaven because you couldn't find the stairway. See, even if good intentions sometimes result in a little satanic asphalt, it's far more likely to actually do some good.

Really, this saying just exists as an excuse to be an asshole. You know, i'd like to help, but this saying tells me that it would only result in our eternal damnation. Sorry, my hands are tied.

And good thing your hands are tied, because Idle Hands are the Devil's Plaything. Or the Devil’s Playground, though that sounds more like a documentary on pre-safety-code city parks. Either way, it’s another convenient-religious-excuse saying. First, have you seen idle hands? The fidgeting is annoying, but if that's what the devil is working on these days, then humanity has nothing to worry about. Secondly, if you have to keep your hands occupied to keep from doing evil, you're either in a really low-rent horror movie, or you're not that good to begin with. In that case I'd rather you stay idle. Just get yourself a nice fidget spinner.

Ink’s Awakening

You know what’s weird? I never got used to symmetrical nose piercings. See, as a kid in the seventies and eighties, piercings never strayed from the earlobe, unless you wanted to completely leave society behind. Then in the nineties, people started piercing the side of the nose. That was pretty unprecedented in western society, but I thought it looked good. Some time around the turn of the century they moved to piercing the middle part of the nose, and I never could get used to it. I’d like to think that there’s some aesthetic principle at work here, but more likely, it’s just the old fact that adults aren't able to accept new ideas that the kids come up with. If that is the case, it’s a strange example, since middle-nose-piercing became common only a few years after nose-side-piercing, which would imply that I went from open-minded free-thinking youngster to grumpy and intolerant adult in the short space between the two trends.

To be clear, this is just the gut reaction I have. I realize there’s no good reason that one type of piercing is acceptable and the other isn’t. I don't look down on people because of piercings, I'm just being honest about my emotional reaction, and hoping young people will understand that it's a nonsensical habit cast years ago, now continued unconsciously and with some regret. Same with putting two spaces between sentences. I know it makes no sense; but I had to learn to do it to pass typing in grade nine and now I can’t stop.

Tattoos had a similar story. In the nineties, tattoos started getting wider acceptance, but people were just getting small tattoos. Again, this was something I found easy to accept. And then tattooing went from a minor accent on the body to something you turn your entire body over to. Again, this came after I became an adult.

So there're still some aspects of tattoos that I  struggle with. First, tattoos don’t fit the person. I mean, the stereotype of the person. You know, everyone has a picture of what the heavily tattooed person looks like. And yet, so often it’s their polar opposite who has the full-back skull tattoo peaking over their neckline. I’m used to seeing large tattoos, but less-so when they’re peaking over the neckline of a conservative sweater, rather than a Slipknot T-shirt.

And this leads us to the odd fact that the need to conceal hasn’t gone away. In my previous post about tattoos, I referred to the nineties trend of small, easily-concealed tattoos to let people feel badass without anyone actually seeing that you have a tattoo. What’s weird is that people still place a value on the idea of tattoos you can cover up. The difference is that we’ve gone from a tiny tattoo on the ankle that can be covered with a boot or a sock, to a full-body tattoo up to the neck that can be covered by a full set of clothes. But the principle remains bizarrely the same. That's a commentary on today's society: we want to stick it to the man, as long as the man doesn't find out.

Of course, there are people who bravely cross that threshold and get a tattoo on the side of the neck or back of the neck, or maybe behind the ear. But  there’s still an aversion to tattoos around the face and front of the neck. Yes, there are a few who cross that line, but they're rare compared to the total number of people who have tattoos. Mostly, the parts of a person we interact with are off-limits. I’m sure there’s some cognitive scientists who could explain that because we see faces in a different way than we see others objects, we prefer to avoid artificial changes to that area. Or it could be that the face is the ultimate uncoverable place. If it's on your arm, a long sleeve will cover any embarrassing testament to an ex, or The Bloodhound Gang, or the Sega Saturn or something. But the face is the ultimate commitment.

And the fact is that people aren't really committed to anything that much. Another thing that hasn't changed is that people want a tattoo, not a tattoo of something. In another old post, I mentioned that a big reason I have no tattoos is that there is nothing I’m so dedicated to that I would want it permanently on my body. But that clearly doesn’t stop most people. There are so many tattoos of generic things that it’s clear that they want a tattoo, and the subject matter is less important to them. I suppose that's a strange commentary on our society too: people want to make a public, life-long commitment to something, but they aren't sure what.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #44

The theme music for Monday Night Football is a cover of “In The Air Tonight” performed by a country star and a rapper.

Winning (More) Time

How about this NBA in season tournament? It’s an idea borrowed from soccer and grafted on to a North American basketball league. It's a new and unprecedented idea in basketball <does some research> Oh, the WNBA has already done it three times? Well, I'm just going to blame their lack of Canadian teams for that, rather than examine my own latent sexism.

Anyway, I would have thought hockey was the sport where an extra tournament makes the most sense. As many have pointed out, hockey playoffs are infinitely more intense than any regular season game. So artificially creating even more playoff hockey would sound like a good idea. I mean, except for the whole hockey culture-hates-change thing.

But I actually like this idea of the NBA in-season tournament, and the biggest reason is that it gives some intrigue to the NBA's neglected middle. So many teams get trapped in that Catch-22 of not good enough to contend for a title, not bad enough to draft the superstar they need to contend for a title. So the only intrigue for fans of those teams is whether they'll just miss the playoffs, or get in and get smoked in the first round.

This tournament will offer them a bit of hope, and thus, more reason to pay attention. Yes, the favourites for the in season tourney will be the same as the favourites for NBA champion. But as a single-elimination tournament (after the brief round-robin) there's some randomness thrown in. With one game to decide who goes on, there's more chance of an upset, and those good-but-not-great teams can dream of riding a hot streak to glory.

It also addresses one of the big, but rarely-mentioned aspects of modern team sports: there are a lot of teams, but not much glory to go around. If your league has thirty or so teams, you’re going to be waiting a while for a championship. Unfortunately, our ideas of what to expect from team success were set in an era when there were half as many teams. We expect to win lots of championships, when really, we can expect to see just two to three in an average lifetime. Having more titles available is one way to make it more tolerable as you wait that couple of generations between championships. 

I know, lots of pundits will complain that it’s not a real title. There will be plenty of hot takes the first time a team raises an in-season tournament banner — especially if it goes to a team that’s never won a championship. There have been plenty of complaints when a team commits the sin of celebrating a win in the play-in games to get the final playoff seeds. But I don’t think there’s any danger of watering-down the importance of the overall championship — just look to European soccer to see that. And the in-season tournament will be worth something — I know those hot takes are even now looking for a way to compare it to a participation trophy, but it will be a difficult thing to win. You could make the argument that a single-game-elimination tournament has too much randomness to be a good test of merit, but that argument would invalidate March Madness, so I don’t think we’ll hear it too often. And having special courts with wild colours for the tournament, thus distracting all the hot takes, was a stroke of genius.

Say My Name, Say My Name

In the U.S., companies can advertise prescription drugs, but there are a lot of requirements, most notably the requirement of reading the list of side effects, however long and embarrassing. They can be kind of gross and scary, but I actually like hearing those lists. It’s refreshing for ads to have to present both sides of the story, and it’s amusing to think how much money was spent to tell you about all the humiliating shortcomings of their pill. But most of all, it reassures me about the structures of society. We often think of government as being a puppet of big business, but if a multi-billion-dollar pharma conglomerate still has to warn you that their product may cause 'anal leakage,' then it’s clear that regulations still have some teeth.

(Fun fact: The U.S. and New Zealand are the only countries that allow the advertising of prescription drugs.)

In contrast, here in Canada, we have pretty severe restrictions on these ads. You can advertise prescription drugs, but you can’t mention what the drug does. And I have to say, these ads are even worse than the fast talker trying to sneak anal leakage past us.

For one thing, if you can’t tell anyone what the drug does, there’s not much else you can do except repeat the name of the drug over and over, in an aggravating and blatant exercise in name recognition. In their defence, the advertisers do try to make a joke of it. And in their offence, even that is really annoying.

It’s the most insultingly cynical that advertising can get. I mean, advertising can, theoretically be a good thing: a business is making the case of how beneficial their product is. That’s how it should be, and — I assume — how it once was, when advertising first crawled out of the primordial goop. But we all know most ads are not really very useful; it’s mostly just psychological tricks, trying to associate the product with a catchy jingle, or sex, or a promise of restoring confidence in your masculinity. We know all this, but we tell ourselves advertising can be a good and useful thing to justify to ourselves that this is all acceptable.

But these prescription ads puncture that pretence, because they’re the purest form of anti-intellectual advertising. You can’t pretend they’re a useful service to the public, because they tell you literally nothing other than the product name. These ads are actually dumber than showing half-naked women in a beer ad; that ad is at least making the (ridiculous) case that the beer will make you attract women. Prescription ads don't even do that. There's no hiding the fact that it's pure repetition aimed straight at lodging the brand in your lizard brain.

And I have no idea how this regulation makes sense. As I said, it’s good to have some limitations on the advertising of prescription medication, but in this case it’s not helping. They’re telling us what is available, but not telling us anything else. Even the American ads warning us about anal leakage are at least giving the public some info. (And don’t worry, by the comic rule of three, I won’t bring that up again.)

It should also be noted that there is another kind of ad allowed in Canada, which is essentially the opposite. In this case you’re allowed to talk about the medical problem, and even tell people that there are one or more solutions available, you just can’t tell anyone what it is. So essentially it sounds like a non-profit public service announcement, except for the note at the end to talk to your doctor about prescription medications, hint-hint, nudge-nudge. For some reason, these kind of ads are mainly used to tell us about toenail fungus cures. Apparently there’s a lot of money in that: It's at the top of the list of things I can't believe are sold so hard, ahead of home-delivered mattresses and reverse mortgages.

Anyway, if you’re like me, you’re hugely curious about what some of these commonly-advertised drugs are for, but you never actually look it up, because that would feel like you’re giving in, and you can’t let these ads win. Well, I figured I’ll take that on so you don’t have to. I looked up the drugs being advertised in name only in Canada right now: Ozempic, Rybelsus, Saxenda and Contrave. The answer is, they're all for weight management and diabetes. There are differences in how they're administered, and what specifically they're used for, but they're all after a similar market. I guess I should have guessed that, since these ads are among the few with actors of a variety of body types, a Sherlockian hint that came dangerously close to giving us real information.

Absolutely All Hallows’ Eve

Halloween is a strange holiday for a lot of reasons. One of the oddest is the many ways you can celebrate it. Compare it to Christmas, say. With Christmas, you can take your festivities and decorations in essentially two directions: hokey, or religious. Okay, you can try to be classy and elegant, but that just looks hokey, but expensively so.

Most holidays are similar, with a dichotomy of directions:

• Easter: cutesy vs. religious
• Thanksgiving : vaguely-religious vs. just-here-for-the-food
• Canada Day/Independence Day: “I wish I could be this patriotic all year round” vs. “I wish I could shoot off fireworks all year round”

But then Halloween offers you several choices:

Darkness vs. General pretending

Halloween is generally about spooky-scary stuff, but it can be about just generally pretending to be something you aren’t. As I mentioned in a previous post, Halloween’s vague requirement for scariness seemed a little restrictive as a child, at least when compared to the usual freedom kids are given to pretend. And a lot of adults want to throw off the oppressive sorta-scary-requirement. Maybe they want to return to the childhood freedom to make-believe. Maybe they find the adult world scary enough. Though many seem like they’re using their Halloween costume to push something about their personality, like, “Look everyone, I’m really funny and playful! I must be if I’m a 300-lb bearded man in a princess costume!” Or, “I must be cool, I’m dressed as a meme I saw last week!”

And of course, the pop culture-industrial complex gets involved too: lots of people just want to dress as the latest thing, and lots of companies are here to enable you. So that's how there will be countless Barbies this Halloween. (And I'm assuming, a small number of ironic Oppenheimers.) But on the scare scale, she doesn't register. Ironically, you'd be better off going with Oppenheimer for that.

Traditionally Occult vs. Genuine Horror

What's especially weird is that a lot of the scary aspects of Halloween aren't actually scary. Witches, Frankenstein-esque monsters, and sheet-based ghosts have long since ceased to be scary in our society. But there are still many genuinely scary things. Or at least, gory things. So you have some people being "scary" with symbolically scary things, or you can actually scare people. That’s made worse by the fact that “scary” is another one of those concepts where we vary wildly as a society. If slasher pics are your comfort zone, then your Halloween lawn display may worry your neighbour who went back to their tent before the campfire stories started.

Disturbingly Realistic vs. Comfortably Fake

If you’re staying on the traditional side, you can dial-up the authenticity to suit your tastes. It’s easy to find adorable little witch and ghost decorations that are about as threatening as your average Christmas decorations, or you can go for some more authentic darkness. And that goes if your idea of “authentic darkness” means Wicca or Bauhaus. It may not scare anyone, but it will have your friends asking if you actually practice this year-round and only come into the open during this one time that it’s socially acceptable.

But surprisingly, even if you’re on the horrific side, there's also an option for hokey, but gory: if you go to the dollar store, you can find bloody severed limbs that look incredibly fake. I'm struggling to understand the mentality behind that: you want to imply tremendous horror, but god forbid it should be realistic. I think the idea is to aim for a humourously over-the-top gruesome display. But as with so many attempts to be ironically excessive today, no one can agree on what is excessive.

Child vs. Adult

Halloween is a holiday centred around horror and children - which is a weird combo to begin with - but it begs the question: just how scary are we supposed to make it? On the one hand, a scare that an adult can withstand is probably not something you want to subject your kids to. And on the other hand, kids don’t always know what they’re supposed to be scared of; the whole world is new and strange to them, it’s all kind of scary. Getting ushered around the neighbourhood to get food they don’t know from people they’ve never met is pretty scary to them. The costumes and decorations don’t really make a difference.

And then there’s the issue that Halloween costumes for adults — at least, adult women — have fallen into a rut of being sexy-whatever. On the one hand, that's a funny commentary on humanity: as a child, everything is scary, but as an adult, everything is sexualized. On the other, it’s further pushing us towards our having two Halloweens: one for kids and one for adults.

What's really weird is that these different aspects of Halloween don't really conflict with each other. While the religious and secular Christmases stay at arm's length, everyone seems okay with mixing Halloweens. So it's like, "You'll have a terror-ific time watching the Paw Patrol Halloween Special!"

How The Meaty Have Fallen

Years ago, I wrote a post about how many ads use “It’s Your Thing” by the Isley Brothers. The point was that it’s really over-used, and worse, lazily used — by advertisers looking for a cheap expression of … I don’t know, individuality, or something? I was pointing out that it just keeps getting warmed-over by the ad industry, despite it already being associated with the last second-rate brand that used it, and also, in complete obliviousness to how cliched it is. 

(After the recent passing of Rudolph Isley, I should point out that I have nothing against the song itself, but it’s become generic ad music, about as fresh as 70s Muzak.)

So I was absolutely shocked when I saw McDonald’s latest ad campaign built around that most over-used song. It might not be a surprise for younger people: Today, McDonald’s is just another established brand casting about for something that will appeal to Gen Z and Gen Alpha. (Seriously, that’s what they’re calling it.) 

But when I was younger, Mickey-D’s were legendary for their marketing prowess. Among anyone with the self-awareness to realize that marketing was happening, they were the epitome of corporate Svengalis making the public dance to their choice of tune. Children loved them. Teens loved them even though children loved them. Parents hated them but let their children drag them there anyway.

To be honest, I always thought the legend of their gastronomic propaganda was a little exaggerated. After all, if they could control the general public’s tastes, wouldn’t they choose something easier to make than burgers? I mean, they are a fairly complex food; they do have all the food groups one way or another. Wouldn’t it be more profitable to command everyone to desire raw soy beans or something?

But even if they were never a burger collective controlling the American palate, they were the pinnacle of twentieth-century marketing. Yes, they had missteps like the Arch Deluxe or their foray into Pizza. But on the other hand, they built an empire with a clown and a big purple lump, convinced kids to have their birthdays there, got us to drink some kind of orange syrup at public events, made the McRib into a major event, and made a legend out of a burger that’s half-bread and has an unclassifiable-sauce.

So it was a shock to see them build an ad campaign around this cliched song that a regional chain of muffler shops would be embarrassed to use. On the one hand, it’s kind of refreshing; instead of marketing going after the youths, here they’re going after, I don’t know, the Boomers, I guess? But it’s also a bit sad. It’s like a TV show that came back for one season too many, an aging rock star dabbling in smooth jazz, or an athlete that doesn’t know when to quit. Wow, I saw communism fall, and somehow the fall of McDonald’s marketing is more shocking.

Swilce? Tayvis? Traylor?

I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but Taylor Swift is dating Travis Kelce, star tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs. You probably have heard this, because it’s created a perfect storm of American popular culture, combining the hype of football and the ubiquity of pop music. The Yin and Yang of American culture have been suddenly pushed together, and both sides are acting kind of awkward. 

As someone who watches football, but shies away from popular music, I’m only seeing part of it. But the football half is pretty embarrassing. On the one hand, a lot of people want to talk about it, but aren’t really sure how, so they just make a lot of bad puns on Swift’s songs. And that got old really fast. I don’t know if something similar is going on in the pop world. Oh God, I just realized, they must be making endless “tight end” jokes. My condolences.

It’s also embarrassing the way the football world is acting like a nerdy kid who gets a chance to sit at the cool kids’ table. That’s a bit surprising, given the grip that football seems to have on American culture. But even football has room to grow, and suddenly getting exposure with a young and female demographic has them seeing dollar signs. So now the NFL is passing notes in class asking if the cool kids have said anything about it.

But more than anything, this incident shows how we, as a society, still haven’t figured out how to handle the current culture. The celebrity industry wants to make this the story of the century, but many of us have got the message that obsessing over people we don't know is a bad idea, even when we are fans of them. The fact is, there isn’t much for any of us to say about two people dating, when we personally don’t know either one. Whether you’re a fan of one or both or neither, there’s not much of a reaction you can have, other than wishing them luck. Again, the football world is demonstrating this well, with football analysts suddenly being asked to say something about the couple, but not really having anything to add, and instead just making the umpteenth "Blank Space" joke.

Part of the problem is that we just don't have universal touchstones in society anymore. There are few things that everyone cares about, but the media keeps excitedly hoping it will find one. Even Swift on her own is a good example of it. Her fame has reached a level where the media is assuming she is a universal obsession. But we don't really have universal obsessions in a world where we're so free to choose our personal culture. The most anyone can hope for is fandom from a dedicated and large minority, like Swift has. (Or, for that matter, football has.) But that still means that most people don't have a strong connection. So although you’ll see some examples of fans crossing over into both cultural worlds — like those who famously flooded retailers with orders for Kelce’s jersey — more people are just aggravated with the expectations to suddenly care about the other side of American culture. 

The Future Names Of London

Here in Canada, there are a lot of places named after other places. London, Ontario, is probably the most famous, but also within a short drive of my home, you can visit Paris, Stratford, New Hamburg, Vienna, Cambridge, and Delhi. I’ve always found these weird. First, from a standpoint of culture: a borrowed name means that the identity of your place is tangled up in some other place. And secondly, from a standpoint of convenience: you’re forever saying, “I’m from London…no, not that London.”

But of course, that’s looking at it from my perspective in a country where many people live in settlements named for other, much older and more famous settlements elsewhere. It occurred to me recently to wonder at the mentality of those people who gave these sites their names in the first place. For each of those places, somebody thought it was a good idea to give it an already-used, already-famous name. I can’t really imagine what would make a person think that’s a good idea.

First of all, what inspired the names? Some British settler came across a small encampment in the middle of a forest and said, “You know what this reminds me of? London!” I suppose you could say that the name is more of an inspiration: they’re not saying it’s like London, but that it aspires to be like London. But still, that’s kind of setting it up for disappointment. Surely they’d give it a more attainable goal. I don't know, Sheffield? 

It seems a little odd today to call a city of half-a-million by the name of one of Europe’s largest cities, but how did folks in the early years call this collection of houses, “London,” with a straight face? As an early English settler in southern Ontario, you know London as this huge city, and now you’re using the name to refer to a little hamlet. “I will journey to London on the morrow. By Jove, I would that there existed some manor of hand-gesture to indicate that one uses a name of such ridiculousness with a sense of reluctance, as if it were in quotes.”

Secondly, why do they reuse the name exactly, without any changes? I mean, I can understand calling it “New” something. You know, don't confuse us with York; this is New York. Then you’re paying tribute while giving it individuality, and you’re explicitly saying it’s a new version of that old place. The Americans have plenty of “New” places, but Canada doesn’t have many, we prefer just reusing names. So in addition to not understanding why that old explorer decided to associate the rudimentary settlement with the grandest city of his homeland, I also don’t understand why he felt no need to distinguish it from its namesake. 

I guess there's a parallel with people's names: we often name people with the same name as a parent. But then we invented the word, “junior” to avoid confusion. Reusing place names is like naming a kid after his father but insisting that you not call him junior. Who would do that? 

“I’m Frank, and this is my son, Frank.”

“Ah! Frank Junior.”

“No! Frank!”

Then, years later, the kid introduces himself, "I'm Frank, no, not that Frank."

But here's another way of looking at this: To better get inside the head of those early place-namers, let’s say we Canadians were exploring space. We’re colonizing a new planet, and we’ve just established a settlement. It’s only three habitation pods and a greenhouse, but we then say, “And we’ll call it, Toronto.” Okay, that’s a bad example, Canadians wouldn’t feel right naming things after ourselves — we’d probably just name that settlement, “London.” 

So let’s say it’s the Americans establishing a space colony, and they have to come up with a name. They wouldn’t use New York, since that’s already a borrowed name. But would they call their new settlement something like, “Los Angeles” or, “Chicago?” I can’t imagine that, since those names have — for both good and bad — a lot of emotional connotations. They wouldn't feel right calling a place “Chicago” when it doesn’t have L trains, disappointing baseball teams and ketchup-less hot dogs. They’d either fall back on generic American names (Columbia, Freedom, Liberty) or name it after a person. Which brings up the question: how could you journey across the Atlantic and half of North America — in the eighteenth century — without anyone in your party doing something that deserved getting a small town named after them?

"So I'm from London...No, not that London. How about you? "

"I'm from Pickles The Ship's Cat. It's a long story."

I’m Gonna Mess Your Mind

Congratulations to Spain on winning the women’s World Cup. They now join Germany as the only countries to win both World Cups. Meanwhile everyone’s world has been turned upside-down by the jump in parity in women’s soccer, leading to plenty of upsets and Cinderella teams.

Here in Canada, we’re in mourning; we won gold at the Olympics - in our greatest soccer achievement ever - but followed that up with not getting out of the opening round here. If you’re not familiar with it, in men’s soccer, the Olympics are limited to under 23, but for women, there’s no limit, so it’s like smaller a World Cup. So you’d think it would be harder to advance in the Olympics, where you’re playing higher quality teams sooner. And yet, Canada has gone to the Olympic semi-finals three times in a row, but only made the World Cup semis once, back in 2003.

But for much of the world, the big news is the early exit for the two-time defending champion Americans. If you watch the men’s World Cup, you know that favoured teams having an embarrassing run and going home early is a regular occurrence. But now supporters of the U.S. Women are in existential panic.

Years ago, I noted that it was weird but refreshing to watch the fans of American men’s soccer, because it was one of the few places where the United States was regarded as just another country. What was especially weird was that American fans seemed to be okay with that. To be fair, we’re only talking about a subset of Americans, since the majority don’t really follow soccer even when the U.S. is involved, but there is a subculture within the U.S. that cares about its team, even on the men’s side, and it’s remarkable what an internationally-reasonable attitude they have.

All that’s happening right now is that the U.S. Women’s team is going to have to take on that same attitude. While watching the hype surrounding the Americans going for a Women’s World Cup three-peat, I realized that the truly unusual thing about the Men’s team fandom is that it’s one of the only places where you’ll see Americans being patriotic, but not buying into American Exceptionalism. They’re proud of their country, they support their team, but they don’t think their country is inherently better or apart from the others. The women’s team will have to adopt that attitude. In their case, they’re a great team, but just a team. So it’s a subtle change, but they’ll have to go from thinking of themselves as the Harlem Globetrotters to merely the New York Yankees.

Watching Americans watch their Women’s team, it’s been more like business as usual for Americans in international sports, with even well-meaning Americans seeing their team as above everything else. Take advertising, for instance. Even here in Canada, we’re subjected to ads for American brands that glorify the American women, oblivious to the fact that they’re our chief rivals, and thus, not really who we want to see celebrated in every commercial break. It’s reminiscent of that one American you see on lists of the dumbest things said on the internet, asking a British person if they celebrate the Fourth of July. 

Partly, this is because their Women’s team has been a boon for those looking for female role models. And finding role models for our kids is a universal thing, so they’re just assuming the whole world will join in on glorifying the stars of their team. It hasn’t occurred to them that if my daughter’s role model was just knocked out of the tournament by your daughter’s role model, then I won’t want to join in on the adulation.

And that brings us to the goodish news: you can look at this as another example of women’s soccer hitting the mainstream. When a sport starts out and creeps along in the margins of the sports world, there tends to be a communal feeling, like it’s all of us against the world, looking for acceptance of our sport. But once you’re in the mainstream, we can all think of it in competitive terms. This sport has finally made the big time, now that I hate your daughter’s role model.

Merry Mac’s

Where I grew up, the nearest store was a Mac's convenience store. Back then, they went by the name, "Mac's Milk," I suppose because in those days milk was the big draw for convenience stores. My dad would always call it, "Mac's the Milk," in reference to the song, Mack the Knife, famously recorded by Bobby Darrin in the 50's, but — and I didn't know this — written in 1928. Not the greatest pun, but, well, it's a dad joke. I wonder if I inherited that need to make misunderstood pop-cultural puns. (looks at blog post titles) Sigh.

Anyway, I — being a youngster — didn't understand the reference, and thus also referred to the store as "Mac's the Milk," thinking that was the actual name. My friends thought there was something wrong with me, since they also didn't get the joke, and of course, when you hear a young person saying something so nonsensical, you assume he's a little slow, not that he's the victim of a corny joke about music from a couple of decades back. And I should clarify that, in my childhood's memory, my dad 'always' said that. He probably did the joke like, twice, but in my early perception of time, it seemed like a lot.

My reason for going through this awkward, possibly deformed memory, is that the Mac's convenience store chain is mostly gone now, having been bought, and then rebranded out of existence. As the picture illustrates, they’ve all become Circle K. A brand that, fittingly, sounds like an old west cattle brand.

Of course, bygone brands are hardly news: I've already written about disappearing brands. But what's interesting is that brands disappear for different reasons. They might simply go out of business, or they might be bought out by a rival. But it gets a little more complicated when you find that the same company might operate in different places under different names. Perhaps they bought a local company and decided to operate with the name that locals already knew. For instance, the European food delivery firm Just Eat has bought some local services and used their names in those markets. So it goes by "Just Eat" in Europe, but it's known as "Skip The Dishes" in Canada, and "Menulog" in Australia & New Zealand. Yes, local branding is so important to them that they seriously made Katy Perry sing that jingle three times for the European, Canadian, and Australian & New Zealander markets.

(How much do I care about this blog? Enough to watch that commercial three times. Well, two-and-a-half.)

But in our globalized world, it often doesn't make sense to have different brands in different places anymore. After all, it's expensive to make specialized advertising, and people see advertising from different countries through the Internet, or international sports events, or movie product placements. And here in Canada, we're used to seeing our brands replaced by American ones, like Circle K. What's frustrating is that in this case, it's a Canadian company doing it. Quebec's Couche-Tard (or, "night owl") is a convenience store behemoth, owning lots of brands around the world, including Mac's. But Circle K is the most numerous, so when they decided to use one brand for all their English-language stores, they went with Circle K. I can understand the logic behind it, but it still feels like in Canada, even when we win, we lose.

Small Town Slow Down

Apparently, small villages are really concerned about people speeding through town. I'm seeing more and more of those speed readouts that tell you your speed, using colours and flashing appropriate to how much you've exceeded the limit. Those things are an interesting piece of psychology: they don't tell you anything you don't already know from your own speedometer, but telling it to you in public, you'll react differently, even though there's probably no one around to see how fast you're going; after all, this is a village with fifty people and no sidewalks.

I also find it amusing when a village has that sign as you enter, asking you to keep to the speed limit. Around here, that sign is usually in quotes. I’m not sure why they do that, but it makes it sound like it's the village motto or something. So it's like:

Paris: "The City of Lights" 
Las Vegas: “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas”
Wheatville: "Please Drive at 50 km/h Speed Limit."

It's better if they go another step, and post a sign saying, "The Children of Wheatville Ask You To Drive at the 50km/h Speed Limit." Nice guilt trip, but I have to say:

1. There's like ten houses here and I've never seen anyone but seniors in this village.
2. Am I really supposed to believe that kids living by a highway want the cars to slow down?

If anything, it should be, "The Children of Wheatville ask you to really floor it past their place." or, "The Children of Wheatville Ask Semis to Blow the Horn on the Way By."

And now a few towns are even putting up signs with life-size cut-outs of kids asking you to slow down. Again, interesting psychology, since it's not telling you anything you didn't already know; it’s just making you confront the reality of your actions. But it makes me wonder how far this is going. An electronic signboard showing kids about to dart into traffic maybe? Holographic kids popping up in the street? Maybe on your way out of town a sign tells you how many virtual kids you hit?

It’s one thing when it's a village on a long, straight, smooth road. But I don't understand Haysville, near KW, which has one of those our-children-ask-you-to-slow-down signs, but the road through it is not only hilly and twisty, but it doesn't appear to have been repaved in my lifetime. Why do you need the sign? I'd need a Group B Rally Car just to get to the speed limit.

I have to point out that I don't blame anyone for their speeding concerns; lots of people barely slow down passing through a little hamlet, particularly if there's no stop sign or traffic light. It’s just unfortunate that you go through these little communities so fast that they only have time to show you one thing that distinguishes them from other villages. It’s a shame if that one thing they communicate to you is, “we hate you for speeding.” And since so many of them just give you that same message, it makes you feel like that’s the only thing rural people care about. That one village where one guy carved a statue of Iron Man out of the dead tree on his lawn seems full of personality by comparison, even if they do have weird priorities.

Fairweather Cynicism

Social media algorithms are a big part of our lives, and determine a lot of what we see. Often, they do a good job — my Facebook feed has long been dominated by Star Wars memes and baby animals. Though it occasionally makes inexplicable choices. Facebook has gone through phases of trying to get me interested in Polish history, the Miami Dolphins, and radical pan-Africanism. (Not jokes, actual examples.) In times like that, I wish I could just tell it that it’s got the wrong idea, and it would be best for it, me, and the company’s bottom line, if it just realized that I’m not interested in, say, Tennessee Williams quotes, so stop showing them to me. (Again, actual example.)

Lately, the thing I’d like to tell the algorithm is that yes, I’m a left-leaning person, but I don’t lean far enough to rejoice in the deaths of billionaires, however extravagant and symbolic their deaths may be. So no, I’d rather not see memes of gleeful schadenfreude at imminent and unpleasant death of wealthy people.

Here’s the thing I don’t get about this situation: If you’re the sort of person who won’t buy coffee without personally negotiating the fair-trade contract, then fine, I’m not surprised that your hatred of the economic order is so great that you would celebrate the death of the rich. But if your idea of supporting worker rights is hitting the 18% tip button on the debit machine at Subway, then I have a hard time reconciling that with your sudden bloodlust for the elites. 

I had a similar reaction last year when the Queen died. Again, I’m not a fan of the idea of royalty, but I wasn’t about to celebrate the death of someone because they occupy a position I don’t think should exist. But I was surprised at how many people suddenly developed deep passions about the crimes of the British Empire. I mean, the United Kingdom still plays a big part in the world’s culture, so you’d think that such a deep hatred would have come out by now. I’m not demanding a boycott of all things British, I’m just saying I would think you would occasionally mention such anger. Go ahead and love The Beatles, but sometimes mention that it’s too bad their success was enabled by national wealth built on the ashes of a world-spanning empire.

In both cases, pretending to have a radical stance on the issue is just a convenient excuse for behaviour. It’s easier to temporarily adopt a radical opinion than it is to show compassion. And it’s definitely easier than wrestling with the philosophical dilemmas brought on by the death of someone you have negative feelings towards. And there’s the bonus that your radical position will win you credibility with some people, as long as they don’t notice that your commitment to the cause just intermittent.

I covered something like this a few years ago, when I noticed the weirdness of people who thought McDonald’s steals from their Ronald McDonald House charity. These people still felt safe eating at McDonald’s, seemingly proving that they had far more confidence in the Golden Arches’ morality than they claimed. To be clear, I’m not saying that you aren’t allowed to criticize a system you participate in — a point of view ridiculed in a popular meme — just don’t pretend to be the nihilistic rebel that you clearly aren’t.

At The Prime Meridian

Britain has produced a lot of world-renowned musicians over the years. That often leads people to assume that we (people outside the country) know all the famous British musicians. But no: there are some artists that make it big in the UK but not in the rest of the world.

I’ve always been amused by the fact that the British themselves are kind of oblivious about this. You might see reporters on BBC World breathlessly reporting that Robbie Williams has hinted at a Take That reunion, unaware that much of the world has no idea who that is.

In most cases, the explanation of British-only stars is that there was an American substitute. For instance, Take That were around in the glory days of boy bands, so it’s not too surprising that they couldn’t pry Americans’ attention away from Backstreet Boys and NSYNC. But there are also situations where a British artist’s work just doesn’t translate well to outside audiences.

Which brings us to Blur. Music news sites have been buzzing that they have a new album coming out.

If you’re not familiar with the story, in the Britpop era of the nineties, Blur and Oasis were the two leading bands, sort of like, well, Backstreet Boys and NSYNC. Oasis made it big world-wide — like much of the western world, I still have “Wonderwall” going faintly through my head — while Blur scored a minor hit on the North American alternative charts with. “Girls & Boys.” Then, to make the story even weirder, Blur made a tongue-in-cheek fast rock song — "Song 2," probably better known as the “Woo-Hoo” song — and scored a transcendent, world-wide hit. So now most people around the world think they’re a grunge band, even though their music was largely a reaction to grunge, and this sort of odd band who would have been named, “Seymour” if the record execs hadn’t insisted on something more marketable, will forever be played in stadiums and included on lists of the best Jock-Jams.

If you listen to their music, it’s not hard to see why it didn’t translate outside the UK. It’s rather terribly British. Not British in the commemorative-royal-family-tea-set way, but in the dryly satirizing everyday life sense.

Of course, whenever I see something like this in another country, I naturally ask myself if there is any Canadian equivalent: If there can be a band so British that only the British really “get” it, can there be a band so Canadian that only we “get” it. Of course, we do have that: The Tragically Hip. Which then leads to the shocking revelation: The Tragically Hip is Canada’s answer to Blur? (Okay, The Hip started a few years earlier, so Blur is the U.K.‘s answer to The Tragically Hip, but still, the point is that it’s a weird comparison.) Really, they're bands that take very different styles to their music, with Blur's irony and satire and The Hip's cryptic can-lit and history references. It would be interesting to see someone take Blur's playful approach to life and focus it on Canadian culture. Although, arguably, those different levels of irony are themselves a reflection of the national identities of the respective bands. Okay, now my head hurts.

This leads me to wonder how many other countries are sitting on something like this: a band they love that never made it with the outsiders. Obviously, many countries have a language barrier that keeps local musicians from making it big world-wide. But this phenomenon even keeps some English-speaking performers local, even from countries that have produced world-famous musicians.  So I googled, “Australian bands that weren’t popular outside Australia” and found a list of the best Australian bands as voted by Australian musicians. In among the usual suspects, AC/DC, INXS, Midnight Oil, and Crowded House, there was Cold Chisel, whom I had never heard of. They’re described as a "pub band" who leaned in to the wild rock lifestyle of the 70’s-early-80’s and known for wild live shows. 

Reading the comments, Australians showed a feeling of nostalgia for their music that seemed reminiscent of The Hip, that they speak to the experience of growing up and living in the country. I guess every country does have that band that couldn’t be exported, even if they vary wildly stylistically. 

My Cup Runneth Away From Me

People make a big deal about the Maple Leafs’ half-century-plus since their last Stanley Cup win. While that’s bad, I have to point out that in a league that had 20+ teams for most of that time, not winning the championship in 56 years isn’t that embarrassing. You know what is embarrassing? It’s now been thirty years since a Canadian team has won the cup. 

That’s quite unlikely statistically, given that the Canadian teams have made up between a fifth and a third of teams during that time. We have a tendency to focus on the Leafs’ drought because we love piling on the misery for Leaf fans. But consider this: the last Canadian cup win (Montreal, 1993) is now closer in time to the Leafs' last Cup win than the present. And since the last Leaf cup win was also the last season of the Original Six, the 1993 cup win is now also closer in time to the Original Six era than the present. For that matter, the Canadian cup drought (30 years) is now longer than the Original Six era itself (25 years.)

But wait, I’ve got lots of these: How long is the Canadian Cup Drought?

• It's more than one quarter of the NHL's existence.
• When Montreal won that cup, they had to beat the Quebec Nordiques in the first round.
• Long-time coach Randy Carlyle was in the league in 1993 — as a player.
• He was one of five players without helmets.
• That season, there were a bunch of neutral-site games. They included games in Dallas, Phoenix and Miami.
• Gary Bettman had been on the job four months.
• Martin St. Louis, Paul Kariya, Chris Pronger, Marian Hossa, Daniel Alfredsson, Roberto Luongo, and Daniel and Henrik Sedin had not played in the NHL in 1993, and Jayna Hefford, Angela Ruggiero, Hayley Wickenheiser, and Kim St-Pierre had not played for their national teams yet. They're all in the Hall of Fame now.
• Speaking of the Women’s national teams, the Women’s World Championship had only been held twice. The Americans still hadn’t come close to winning it.
• Only two NHL arenas from that season are still in use.
• Fourteen American teams have won the cup since 1993. That includes four cities that didn't have teams in 1993. Regardless of who wins this year, Las Vegas or Miami will become the fifteenth and fifth such city, respectively.
• Worse, during the drought, both Colorado and Tampa Bay won a cup, rebuilt, and then won another cup with a totally different team.
• Since 1993, Canadian teams have won championships in the NBA and MLS, despite the fact that in 1993 there were no Canadian teams in the NBA, and the MLS did not exist.

For the first ten years of the drought, you could explain it through economics. Between a low Canadian dollar and the lack of a salary cap, most of the Canadian teams could barely stay in business, nevermind create or keep a winner. And two of the teams that had the money to compete — Montreal and Toronto — seemed content to shuffle along with mediocre teams and hope for the best. 

After the 2004-05 Lockout, the salary cap was installed, and the Canadian dollar recovered, putting teams on an even footing. And somehow that still didn't help. The salary cap is now 18 years old, the economics will even support a competitive team in Winnipeg, and we still can’t win a cup.

For a while I thought Canadian teams' lack of success was due to their tendency to tweak a mediocre team rather than go into rebuild mode. Canadians have a belief that hockey is all about heart so you just need to squeak into one of the last playoff positions then rely on the players' character to win the day. So there's always pressure to trade a draft pick for that one gritty winger. The result was that Canadian teams stayed in the good-but-not-great level. 

I'd also heard the explanation that the lack of media oversight of American teams was an advantage here. The General Manager of a Canadian team is constantly being asked about how they're going to make the team better right now. Whereas an American GM has to answer maybe three media questions a year, so if they want to undergo a thorough rebuild, there won't be much complaining. Once again, Americans have just the right amount of enthusiasm for hockey. 

But no, that's not it either. Toronto went through a complete rebuild, and to some extent most of the other teams have rebuilt, and the new highly-skilled teams have been no more successful than any hastily-thrown-together team of gritty veterans.

Another explanation you often hear is the difficulty of getting free agents to come to, or stay in, Canada. The reason being: your choice of weather, taxes, or the media fishbowl. But I don't buy that. For the most part, Canadian teams have been able to keep their stars together for several cup runs. Yes, there are nightmare examples like Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk leaving Calgary, but that probably had more to do with Coach Darryl Sutter's toxic culture. As for signing big-name free agents from elsewhere, that's not usually a route to success in the NHL. Even successful American teams are mostly home-grown and traded-for players. 

So I'm running out of ideas. One explanation I've heard is that even when a team like Toronto commits to skill, they still hedge their bets by complimenting the skilled core with traditional big old slow guys who hold the team back. So, let’s go with that for now.

It may well be that we're just cursed. That sounds reasonable - we've surely disrespected the game as much or more than the Red Sox selling Babe Ruth. And whoever the gods of hockey are, I suspect they are truly vengeful. 

We All Live In One Of Fifteen Submarines

Subway is really emphasizing new, pre-designed subs, instead of their traditional you-choose-the-toppings approach. You walk in, look at the list of "Subway Series" selections, hold up the line for ten minutes while you read through all the possibilities, then pick a number and order it. And then remember that you still have to choose a size and bread type. The point is, it's different from the way it always has been, where you select every individual thing that goes on your sub. It's the biggest change since they did away with the U-gouge bun slicing.

First up, I'm not really sure why. The ads I've seen are playing up the convenience of just giving a number and letting the sandwich artist do their thing. But I wonder if that was really a big problem for Subway. The choosing of the toppings has never been real time-consuming or mentally-taxing.

The other odd part of this is that the individual Subway restaurants don't seem too keen on the change. The first time I tried ordering numerically, the employee had to turn and look at the menu to know which sub I meant. The second time (at a different location) she rolled her eyes a little when I gave the number — and she was wearing a t-shirt that said, just order by the number. And every time I've gone with one of the designed subs, they nevertheless keep asking what I want on it, no matter how many times I assure them I just want the standard construction. Oh, and apparently, they call them the "recommended" toppings. They didn't like it so much when I called them "standard" like I was ordering a Buick Riviera.

Of course, this isn't totally new, this format of preset subs which I guess you can change if you really insist. That's what the pretenders to the sub throne Firehouse and Jersey Mike's have done. But hey, the number one in the market copying their competitors, throwing away the formula that made them successful in the first place? It has a New Coke stench to me. 

And now that I think about it, people have speculated that New Coke was a cover to switch from cane sugar to the cheaper corn syrup. And I have noticed that once commonality of the numbered subs is that the prices have crept up. So I wonder if this is a bit of corporate sleight-of-hand to hide higher prices. Unfortunately, a lot of companies think that raising the prices and moving up-market and overusing words like “premium” is an easy way to greater profits. But the fact is that it's quite difficult to convince the public that you have become a higher-price-higher-quality option, and not just the same cheap company with higher prices. I don't think the public's perception of Subway meshes with the idea of pricey designer food.

Electric Cars Infinity War

I recently asked what the future of SUV's is. Will be. Whatever. And it turned out to be intertwined with the future of electric cars. That's a bit of a complication, since our electric future isn't clear either.

It's been generally assumed that electric vehicles are the future. And car companies are preparing for it, investing huge sums in the technology and infrastructure. But at the same time, turning our back on internal combustion is the sort of huge revolution that doesn't happen without some turbulence. I figure there's still a few roadblocks to a complete electric takeover.

Range

Electric car costs have come down, and performance has been great, But range is still a problem. It’s improved, but not really enough to change anyone’s attitude. This problem isn’t new: for a long time now, we've been able to build electric cars that will easily have enough range for what the average person drives in a day. But, part of the reason for buying a car/truck/SUV is the freedom it gives you, so even if you rarely drive great distances (say, on vacation) you'll likely be reluctant to buy a vehicle that doesn't give you the option to driver greater distances when you want to.

So electric vehicles are fine, if you only ever drive within an hour of your home. But if you want to use your vehicle for anything more than a day trip, you’re out of luck. And don’t even ask about towing something while driving a long distance. Range has increased over the years, but the problem is that the vacation requirement is another order of magnitude farther than the daily-driving requirement. Even a big increase in range only takes a dent out of the vacation range problem. So we need either a huge range increase, or a huge charging-speed increase, to let people believe they can travel greater distances. Until that changes, there's a whole lot of people who won't consider an electric car.

Charging Infrastructure

The speed of charging has long been a stumbling block for electric vehicles. That's improved a lot too, but there's still the problem of where are we going to charge all these cars? If you live in a house, you can charge at home, but an increasing number of people live in apartments or condos, where charging isn't as easy. Yes, we can set up chargers in parking lots and garages of apartment and condo buildings, but that's a lot of infrastructure that still needs to be built, and it will be built by the landlords who won't (directly) make money off it.

And there has to be a solution for charging away from home. There are a fair number of public charging places, but they're mostly set up by either the car companies or public businesses like malls and stores . Those are both loss-leaders: the car company is swallowing the cost to make electric cars more appealing, or the business is swallowing the cost to attract customers. Either way, it's hard to imagine that scaling-up to being a solution for all of us charging our vehicles. I mean, I can't imagine GM — or Tesla, or whoever ends up on top — building a network of chargers big enough for all the cars in society.

The thing that makes me skeptical is that no one is making any significant money off of charging, and that’s usually what’s needed to get a big change like that happening in our society. Note that it doesn’t have to be switching our gas stations to charging stations. It’s entirely possible that the charging business of the future operates with small charging outlets here and there around a city. But they’ve got to make money off it or no one is going to go to all that trouble and expense to build the infrastructure.

Culture War

It's still relatively low-key, but a few people have targeted electric vehicles as a symbol of everything they hate. I don’t really see that going away. Some of the biggest hot-button issues for conservatives in recent years has been asking people to change behaviour. When you see the fury at being told to put on a mask or learn about slavery, it’s hard to imagine people just accepting that their cars are going to totally change whether they like it or not. 

Right now, that’s not an immediate issue: although buyers have ever-increasing choices for electric cars, there still aren’t any segments of the market where the internal-combustion options are disappearing. When we get to that point, there’ll be a lot more anger, and people taking “never electric” stances.

Big Oil

We're about at that point in the movie where it looks like the heroes will succeed, but you're watching, thinking it can’t be over yet, there's still a half hour left before the credits roll. And then the bad guy that you thought was dead reappears, and says, "You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?" Well, I’m still waiting for that from the oil industry.

Eventually, they've got to make a move against it. I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen much of a campaign against electric vehicles yet. Yes, they're only a small segment of the market so far, but car companies keep positioning themselves to be ready to move to mostly electric production. Surely Big Oil isn't just going to fold up and go home.

When I went looking for stories about the Oil Industry fighting electric vehicles, pretty much all I found was a lot of waffling about how they still make lots of money elsewhere, they'll invest in renewables to make money of the change, they'll sell more stuff at gas station convenience stores to compensate, etc.

Okay, fine, there are ways they can still stay in business and make tidy profits even after electric vehicles take over. But come on people, there's no way large corporations are just going to quietly give up a huge part of their customer base, or retool their entire business, when there's a chance that they can fight to keep things as they are.

They do fund the American Petroleum Institute, which publishes propaganda on their behalf, but most of its actions are just generic government lobbying; not the dirty tricks you'd expect from an industry fighting for trillions.

I've seen the odd story sowing suspicions about electric cars, like the recent one that the extra weight of electric cars will cause aging parking garages to collapse, but that just sounds like desperate casting about for anything that might gain traction. I probably did more damage earlier when I mentioned the problems using electric vehicles for towing.

But then, if they're trying to put together a major campaign to derail electric vehicles, it could be that they are going to get it stuck in the aforementioned culture war. If they can get a significant portion of the population committing to being personally against electric vehicles, adopting that as a part of their identity and world view, it will ensure that fossil fuels can have a foot in the door, preventing the electric domination tipping point for years to come. In that case, their campaigns would target the media of those most likely to buy into the anti-electric position. So it may just be something I haven't personally seen yet.

The McFlurry Is A Lie

I had a weird experience recently when I saw an ad on Facebook looking for McDonald's employees. That's odd to begin with: I'm a bit old for their employee demographic, and in general, Facebook is not a place to go looking for that demographic. But what was really surreal was that this ad came with a game. Click on the link, and you could play a game. What kind of game, you ask? Why, a game of working at McDonald's. It's a drive in Canada to hire 25,000 new employees with a game called Crush the Rush Crew.

In the game, you're looking down at a McDonald's kitchen, as new orders come in at the drive through. You then click/tap on the appropriate employees to have them make an item. And try to keep up. It was a bit dull, since you can only work on the next item in the order queue; you can't strategize by having the burger maker work on a Big Mac for the next order, while the drink maker works on the coffee for the next car in line instead of just twiddling thumbs.

But let's back up here. Depending on your experience with video games, this might seem like a bizarre game idea. But there's actually quite a history with these time management games. If you're my age, you may remember seeing Tapper in the 80's, and not believing that was a real game next to all its contemporaries. So let me shock you again: that genre has kept right on going, and there are now lots of people playing games based on seemingly stressful situations. So the idea of a McDonald's drive through management game is actually the least unexpected part of this scenario. But I would have thought McDonald's wouldn't like the idea of representing their work as a game.

So now I'm trying to wrap my head around this: we've created a genre of game about doing minimum-wage manual labor, and now a company is using one of those games to convince people to do those minimum-wage manual labor jobs. I don't know which surprises me more, that McDonald's embraced the concept to sell people on working for them, or that potential employees haven't just laughed at the concept. I looked at the comments under the Facebook ad expecting lots of vitriol, but there wasn't much. Some people complained about the difficulty of the game, and a few made jokes about how they already played the game in real life. But there was no how-dare-you-make-a-game-of-overworking-your-underpaid-employees. I didn't even see any comments about how unrealistic it was that the game's ice cream machine worked.

It all seems like something from a semi-humorous sci-fi dystopia like Ready Player One or Snow Crash. Though speaking of sci-fi, the idea of gamifying more serious things is not new. Perhaps McDonald's could specifically recruit those who do well in the game, like in The Last Starfighter. Of course, the next level would be if the game were the job; when you play it, your instructions are actually being sent out to some random McDonald’s somewhere in the world, like some kind of banal version of Ender's Game. Actually, that could be good: you do your part running a McDonald’s, and if you do a good enough job, you get a discount on your next purchase. Don’t have enough for a Big Mac Meal? Just take a few minutes to run up a new high score on the Decatur, Georgia drive-through.

Once again, it’s part of our weird future, where work is play, and play is work. I just wish they could find a way to make supermarket self-serve checkouts into a game.

SUV Endgame

A question people sometimes ask in the car world is, what is the SUV endgame?  That is, are we stuck with them forever? Will future generations just have SUV’s, with cars consigned to the history books? Or is the pendulum going to swing back, and we'll look back on the SUV era like the car industry's answer to bell bottoms.

See, the CEO of Citroen said that the days of the SUV are numbered. His reasoning was that in the coming age of electric vehicles, aerodynamics will be important in order to extend range, and that isn't exactly the forte for SUVs. 

I asked the SUV question a few years ago, and the answer I gave was that SUV's would get smaller and sleeker while cars would get taller, and we'd end up with this sort of in-between vehicle. At the time, I used examples like the Toyota C-HR. But since then, Toyota has introduced the Corolla Cross, and announced the C-HR will be discontinued in North America. 

The Corolla Cross is — as the name implies — just a Corolla stretched into an SUV. That's quite common; I hope you’re sitting down for this, but most SUV's these days are just adapted car designs. But usually they don't tell anyone, because they want SUV buyers to have the illusion that they have a rugged and wild off-road vehicle, not just a tall station wagon.

But by putting the name of that car in the name of the SUV, Toyota has shown us a rare moment of honesty from SUV marketing. So you'd think that if the car industry was going to start evolving a middle ground between cars and SUV's, this vehicle would be where it starts. 

And yet, the Corolla Cross is a boxy, stereotypical SUV, just smaller. It looks like the designers went out of their way to convince everyone that it's a big-boy SUV, even if that makes it look a little silly. So it seems that catering to the masculinity reinforcement needs of America overrules any other car priorities, and that doesn't look good for anyone expecting a non-SUV future. 

But there is one reason that Citroen CEO could be right, and electric cars could change the shape of SUV's. It starts with the little-known fact that there are a few reasons why manufacturers like SUV's, besides the obvious fact that consumers like them. One is that they are legally considered off-road vehicles in the United States, which means they are not subject to the same mileage requirements as cars. But to officially qualify for that off-road designation, they have to meet certain regulations, such as ground clearance, and the shape of body work around the wheels. 

But electric cars don't have to worry about mileage regulations. So there's no need to meet those design requirements, and the designers of electric SUV's have greater freedom in shaping the vehicles.  So far, electric SUV's and crossovers have been going away (a little) from the traditional SUV shape. Looking at models like the Jaguar I-Pace and Hyundai Ioniq 5, they're still taller than average cars, but also lower and less boxy than SUV's. So there does appear to be some effort to squeeze more aerodynamics out of them.

Of course, electric SUV's also give designers more freedom because unlike their gas-powered brethren, no one is buying one as an affirmation of masculinity — I assume that's part of the reason that they are a lot less angular and big-looking. They don’t look much like off-road vehicles. And is it just me, or do the Tesla model X and Y even look a bit like <gasp> Minivans.

If we get to the point that electric cars are completely taking over, this may change. In that case, electric cars will have to start appealing to everyone, not just people on the rich and green side of things.  We might even see electric vehicles get more masculine than conventional cars if electric vehicles have to work harder to convince mainstream buyers that they're not emasculating beta-mobiles. Arguably, the Tesla Cybertruck is already an example of this.  But for now, they're showing us a possible way forward into a future of more practical, only-sort-of SUV future.

There's A Swingin' Town I Know Called... Capital City

Looking back at some of my old posts, I came across one from 2015 about how Egypt was planning to build a new capital to replace Cairo. Well, to replace it as capital: I mean, Cairo would still be there, it just wouldn't be capital anymore. I was curious what became of that idea; the whole thing had seemed like a pipe dream, so I was kind of assuming that I'd find the project had been canceled years ago, or pushed to the back burner.

Nope, it's still happening. In fact, it's under construction as we speak. You can even see it on Google Earth.  It still doesn't have a name yet, so it's just the New Administrative Capital. It's also not really far from Cairo. When combined with some other new developments going on, they're going to end up with a really big continuous urban area. Egypt already looks pretty unusual from the aerial perspective, with the contrast between the desert and the irrigated area around the Nile, and now it’s also going to have a huge urban smear across it.

The other surprising thing I learned is that it's not even the only replacement capital under construction. Both Indonesia and South Korea have new capitals on the go.

South Korea has been moving government institutions from Seoul to the planned city of Sejong for years. It was only founded in 2007, but already has 350,000 people. It seems the idea of officially moving the capital is still controversial and may never completely happen, but even as it is, they've put a lot of work into it. 

Indonesia is building Nusantara to replace Jakarta. It's still early in the process, having only started last year. But they're being bolder, building it on a totally different island from current capital and largest city, Jakarta. 

So what's the reason behind these new capitals? In my previous post, I assumed that if a country is going to build an entirely new city to be the capital, it must be a case of vanity, or some kind of national mid-life-crisis. There may be some of that, but in each of these cases, there is a practical purpose too: a very large and over-crowded capital. Moving the government out will drag some of the people out and into another part of the country. I - the resident of a country where the capital is not the largest city - didn't think of that. Oh, and Jakarta is slowly sinking. And Seoul is uncomfortably close to North Korea. 

So maybe we'll see more of them in the future. There are plenty of over-stuffed capital cities in the world; starting over on cheap land somewhere else must be pretty tempting. Even if it does make geography quizzes harder worldwide.

Take My 5G, Please

Have you ever seen something that just seemed to contradict its own existence? I mean there are so many different aspects that it seems impossible that anyone could have created it. I’m thinking of something like this:

I took this photo almost a year ago, but I recently noticed that the graffiti is still there. And it’s still puzzling me.

First of all, it's got a 1950’s sense of humour. That's not something you usually see in graffiti. Henny Youngman must be <checks Wikipedia> rolling in his grave. Maybe graffiti was like that in the 1950's, but even then, I doubt you had graffiti written from the perspective of a married man.

On top of that, this is an anachronistic joke with a reference to modern technology in it. Even if it were in a less-strange context, that's weird. It's the joke Benny Hill would do if he'd made it to the twenty-first century. Is Andy Capp still going? Maybe it does jokes like this.

And now it's at least a year old, and neither the owner of the wall, nor other graffiti artists have covered it up in all that time. And did I mention that this is the parking lot for a sushi place? Lots of people have been staring at this, confused, for months. Probably feeling like they should blame a generation, but they have no idea which one.

Was it done by an abnormally young-at-heart Boomer, or an abnormally sexist Millennial? I'm wracking my brain to figure it out. At least, using whatever part of my brain is not currently trying to pun Banksy with an old comedian's name. Whatever Sherlock instincts I have left say that it was done by a Baby Boomer. Yes, it mentions Wi-fi, but it has that joke-refering-to-something-I've-heard-of-but-don't-understand style that launched a thousand late-night routines. So I feel safe blaming them. I'll just add it to the list.

A Place To Rebuild

One story during my blog interregnum was the new plans for Ontario Place. I’m reminded of that now because some of the nostalgia accounts I follow on social media have run pictures from its beginnings in the early seventies.

Ontario Place redevelopment wasn’t a big deal to me; I don’t really have a personal connection with it. My experience is the same as many in southern Ontario; I’ve been there a few times as an adjunct to a trip to the CNE, and that’s about it. But the announcements of the new plans for the site stuck in my mind for a very notable reason: It made me feel sorry for Doug Ford.

Yes, I detest our premier, but I couldn’t help but have sympathy for him for the same reason I feel sorry for all politicians in office: they have to work in reality, while the rest of us compare that to faulty memories of the past or unrealistic imaginings of the future.

This was a great example of that pattern. His government announced an uninspiring but reasonable plan to revitalize the park, and that was greeted by howls of complaints about how he had ruined one of the great amusement parks of the world. People, we’re talking about a park that’s been closed for a decade. It was closed because it was losing money so fast that a Liberal government thought it wasn't worth keeping open. So when people wax nostalgic about the park, I have to wonder where they've been recently. Or more specifically, if people were so happy with how the park was, how come it wasn't more popular.

I have at least learned a bit about the history of Ontario Place. It always seemed like an oddity in the entertainment world I grew up in, with low-fear rides and semi-intellectual attractions in a world where most amusement parks were competing to have the scariest roller coasters and as many licensed-characters as possible. 

Fun fact: Ontario Place opened less than four months before Disney World.

I just assumed that Ontario Place was what happened when the theme park concept was filtered through government. But no, it turns out Ontario Place was an attempt to recreate Montreal’s Expo 67. I guess it should have been obvious: artificial islands with a geodesic dome as the crown jewel; sounds familiar.  Rides have been added over the years to bring in more visitors, but it never truly became a ride-oriented park like Canada's Wonderland. 

Fun fact: Canada's Wonderland has 17 roller coasters, which is tied for second most in the world. 

Personally, I was cautiously optimistic about the new plans for the park. Like I say, the plan wasn’t that great. It was sort of like when Ford announced new license plates: “A Place to Grow” wasn’t the greatest plate motto ever, but it seemed like Shakespeare given that we were bracing for something like, “Open for Business.” With Ontario Place, the proposed assortment of attractions announced was a bit uninspiring, but because we were expecting casinos and condos, the plan came as a relief.

I have to be honest, if we look at this realistically, I doubt there’s any saving Ontario Place, and it’s all because of the location. Driving there means going through some very busy thoroughfares. It’s not well-served by public transit. Putting up condos on the land would be disappointing and boring, but at least it would be successful.

Hold This Thread As I Walk Away

Scotiabank has been promoting a new book they're sponsoring, called The Hockey Jersey. The commercials make the point that it's to promote inclusion and tolerance. That's something everyone in hockey agrees is important,  but isn't too good at actually doing. And although Scotiabank are selling physical copies of the book, you can also download a digital copy for free from their website, which is the nicest thing a bank has done since, well, ever. 

It's about a bunch of young girls who come together as a team after they get their own hockey jerseys, which somehow look better than at least half of NHL uniforms. Of course, that title is similar to The Hockey Sweater, the classic story by Roch Carrier, about a boy in Quebec who is mistakenly given a sweater of the hated rival Toronto Maple Leafs, not the Montreal Canadiens sweater he wanted. There is also an animated version from the National Film Board available for streaming.

(As an aside, I love that in the middle of the Wikipedia synopsis of the story, they point out the plot hole: the fateful sweater was ordered from Eaton’s, and Eaton’s pioneered the money-back guarantee, so the mother could easily have returned or exchanged the sweater. Don’t ever change, Wikipedia.)

This being hockey, a lot of people will surely resent something new piggybacking on something old. But I think it gives us an opportunity. Can we finally give The Hockey Sweater a rest? When I was a kid it was really over-used in school. The story was drilled into us so much, one time in junior high, when the teacher announced that we’d be reading a wonderful new story called The Hockey Sweater, the whole class groaned. She was honestly surprised we had not only heard of it but were already sick of it. Now, I find out it was only written in 1979, and thus was a little less than a decade old at the time, so I can understand her not realizing how fast it had saturated the school system.

But it's easy to get why teachers were eager to use it: it's a perfect storm of sports, Canadiana, and situations relatable to kids. Also, looking back, I can appreciate how much of mid-twentieth-century Quebec life he squeezed in: People forced to do business in English, the towering authority of the church, the place of Maurice Richard as a hero. In the eternal quest to find things that will engage students, it sounds like quite a find. 

But there's a problem with The Hockey Sweater that really bugged me - I mean besides it being overused. I've been carrying this around with me ever since, so get comfortable.

It's not really a kids' story. Yes, I know, it's about children, but that doesn't mean they're the target audience. A story can be about children or through the eyes of children without being intended for them. To Kill a Mockingbird, Angela’s Ashes, Lord of the Flies, etc.

Like those books, The Hockey Sweater is pretty dark, when you look at it. The main character doesn't do anything wrong, but ends up a social pariah. His mother doesn't care about his situation. His religion blames him for his problems. And then there's the subtext that his people are trapped in a system rigged against them. Add a murder and it would be hailed as a classic of existentialism. 

An adult can appreciate a story of frustration and futility, but at the time, I found it really depressing. At a young age, children are still expecting stories to have a moral, or at least, to not be a nihilistic commentary of on the futility of life. 

That recounting of unfair situations is also the kind of thing that is best appreciated with a buffer of a few decades to protect you from the raw reality. Sure, now I can read a story about a kid ostracized for wearing the wrong clothes. That’s a common trope of stories about young people. But back then, it was your average weekday. Seeing that happen in a story, with no comeuppance for the bullies or actions by the adults in charge was, well, again: your average weekday. When his only hope for justice is divine-intervention moths, and that’s presented as the punchline, it just seemed hopeless.

So let's retire the Hockey Sweater. Print it on a Syl Apps jersey and lift it into the Bell Centre rafters beside Richard's number 9. That girl in the Scotiabank book can annoy future generations.