A cooking show I like

I like to cook, and I’ve been known to watch a little television, so people are sometimes puzzled that I don’t particularly like watching cooking shows. Some other people who like to cook, I’ve learned, love cooking cooking. In fact, they find themselves becoming somewhat “addicted” (their words) to the Food Network.

Me, not so much. For whatever reason, I don’t particular enjoy sitting there watching celebrity chefs prepare food (that I’m not going to get to eat). So since Food Detectives stopped making new episodes (far as I can tell), there is no Food Network program that I watch regularly.

But over on the W Network, I have recently discovered Anna and Kristina’s Grocery Bags. It’s basically a cooking show. And that one, I may be just a little addicted to.

Photo of Anna and KristinaI had seen their previous show (possibly still on), called Shopping Bags, in which they test various consumer products. It was definitely an entertaining approach to product testing, but the information always seems to whiz by so quickly it wasn’t that useful. Three types of five different products in one half-hour; how are you supposed to remember which to buy afterward?

Whereas each episode of Grocery Bag focuses on one (1) cookbook. That’s what they test: cookbooks. They do this by making a sampling of recipes from the book, within a time limit, to be judged by a chef. Interspersed in there, they do a little pre-taped product testing of both kitchen gadgets and ingredients, to be used on “cook day”.

I like it in part because I can relate to it. Anna and Kristina are competent cooks, but not trained chefs. As the stress mounts of trying to prepare five or more new recipes for a guest who is coming to judge your efforts, they make mistakes. They get annoyed with each other. They swear. They redo. They run off to the grocery store to buy more ingredients. They curse the poor instructions or weird ingredients of the book. They get grossed out trying to deal with octopus tentacles or squid ink.

Then when the food is done and the chef arrives with a bottle of wine, everything seems a little better. And the tasting begins… Will the dishes make the taste buds sing, or stimulate the gag reflex?

It’s drama, man. It’s highly entertaining every time.

Plus, it’s useful. As it’s a test, they try to be real sticklers for following the recipes—like manually chopping all the onions if the book says to, instead of what I would do, which is stick those suckers in the food processor. In the end, they come out with a recommendation to buy or not, but as you’ve seen how and why they came to that conclusion, you can decide if you agree. It’s made me consider cookbooks I otherwise never would have, like Gwyneth Paltrow”s (!)—turns out it’s not just the vegan, raw-food weirdness you might expect—and Gordon Ramsey’s.

Now what I want to know is whether those “addicted to the Food Network” people would (or do) like this show. Or is it just too real?

We paid $48 to watch someone do Pattycake

Last night, May 7, Lowest of the Low played Massey Hall the first time, the capper on their tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of “quite possibly the best Canadian debut album ever”, Shakespeare My Butt. I was not there. But I did see their sold-out show at the Starlight Club in Waterloo, on April 21.

The show itself, I have no complaints about. The opening act were Mick Thomas and Squeezebox Wally, an Australian duo so taken with Shakespeare My Butt  that they would play the entire album at their shows. They even made one of the songs—“Rosy and Grey”—a hit there. So there was much more collaboration between opening act and headliner than you normally get, with Lowest members joining in on Mick’s set, and Mick contributing to the Lowest set.

Lowest of the Low played the entirety of Shakespeare My Butt, in order, then came back to do various songs from their other two albums, including “Black Monday” and “The Last Recidivist”. It was fun being in a room full of people who also knew all the words to all the songs. And it was nice to hear, from singer and main songwriter Ron Hawkins, that both “Subversives” and the afore-mentioned “Black Monday” were as honest and beautiful as they were because each was inspired by women he really loved. (He explained it in a less mushy way, but that’s what it came down to.) Performances of both those songs, I found particularly powerful.

But the room? With the low ceiling and all, the music was painfully loud. I had to do the extremely cool “Kleenex in the ears thing” to survive. And with the full house, it was hot and crowded. Plus, way too many tall dudes. I had to keep moving around, trying to get a spot where I actually see the band, and not just the back of someone’s head. The crowd was very well-behaved—no smoke of any kind, and surprisingly little beer spilled. But still. I’d say I’m too old for this kind of show, but I didn’t really like them when I was younger, either.

So kind of glad I didn’t drag any friends with me to this, as I feel I would have just had to apologize. Instead, I suggest, just check out Lowest of the Low on record. That way you’ll thank me later. Maybe start with these ones:

  • “4 O’Clock Stop”, Shakespeare My Butt, the insanely catchy opening number. Lyrics may not cohere as a whole, but they sure feel right as they hurtle along.
  • “Black Monday”, Hallucigenia, as the singer regrets the effects of his depressive nature on the “sad and beautiful” Kate. “The way I am has never been too good for us.”
  • “Rosy & Grey”, Shakespeare My Butt, the most Canadian love song ever, where even “the smell of snow warms me today”.
  • “Gamble”, Hallucigenia, which sounds like it’s exactly about Buffy and Spike, Season 6, even though it was written before then.
  • “Henry Needs a New Pair of Shoes”, Shakespeare My Butt, a deceptively upbeat little ditty that, on closer listening, reveals the social conscience of the band, along with their sense of humour.

And now for something completely different….

A couple years ago I wrote about attending the Open Ears festival, and the organizers noticed. So the notified me about this year’s festival, “celebrating the art of listening”. It took place at a busy time for us, but we did manage to attend one concert: Toca Loca, on April 30.

Where Lowest gave me some unpleasant flashbacks to concerts of my youth, this was like nothing I’d ever seen or heard before. The opening number was “Temazcal”, a piece for maracas and tape. So recorded sounds were played, then a live percussionist joined in on maracas. That was followed by “AK-47”, a piano solo based on the assault rifle. It was both virtuosic, and pretty noisy.

Then there was “Pattycake”. Two performers sat facing each other clapping out the familiar childhood rhythm, but at increasingly dizzying speeds, and with some variation in the original words. It was riveting, as mistakes would be—if not disastrous—at least potentially quite painful. “Repetition is good. It builds trust. Soon you come to know what’s expected.”

In the next two pieces, all three members played along to pieces composed for them, one a fusion of New Wave, Synth-Punk, and No Wave (I don’t know what that means, either), the other a love song as expressed by an industrial machine.

And finally, the “Halo Ballet”. In this one, five gamers manipulated the Halo participants into a kind of dance pattern, instead of the usual trying to kill each other. They would shoot patterns into the sky, or be stacked on one other and twirl, or leap around in synchronicity. We watched all that projected on video. Meanwhile, of course, the band was supplying the soundtrack.

Afterward, Jean commented on how we had paid $48 to watch people do Pattycake. “Did you dislike the music?” “No, can’t say I disliked it.” “Were you bored?” “Absolutely wasn’t bored.”

Me either. $48 well spent. And looking forward to the next Open Ears, where I can hopefully experience more of the aurally novel.

Off my chest

When I say I found the election  results depressing, I mean it literally: when it was announced, I burst into tears.  Events that might otherwise have cheered me—the collapse of the Bloc Québecois, the election of Elizabeth May, even that entertaining bunch of new NDP MPs from Québec—were completely eclipsed by that Majority result. I had trouble sleeping, trouble eating, was given to random bursts of anger: The whole week has felt like a bad dream.

I’m only now starting to feel like I may be in recovery.

As with ScotchNeat, the thing I found most alarming in the result, and in the polling numbers throughout, was just how many Canadians were willing to vote Conservative at all. 25% of the population; 40% of the electorate: That’s a hell of a lot. Ultimately, you can’t blame this result on NDP vote splitting, or even the Liberals’ lacklustre campaign… Hate to be obvious, but the real problem here is the people who voted Conservative.

Because of those voters, will Canada remain as the worst Global Warming offender, not only doing nothing ourselves, but also trying to prevent other countries from making progress. Civil servants will continue to be fired if they dare to tell Canadians a truths the Conservatives don’t want us to hear. Aid to Africa will continue to decline, though it’s in Canada’s long-term economic interest that the continent prosper. More young men will go to jail longer, and learn to become better criminals. (And Conservatives will continue to hide how much that costs.) In this more dangerous Canada, police will no longer be able to rely on the long-gun registry information to help them solve crimes. The quality of Canadian social, scientific, and business research will continue to decline, not only because of funding cuts, but also because those groups no longer have reliable census data to work with. And so on, and on.

People who voted Conservative not only approved of all that, but asked for more, please. They watched all those horrible, negative ads and thought, “That’s for me! Those are my people!” I mean, I’d almost feel bad for them, and their dim view of humanity, if they weren’t dragging me down with them.

But, OK, fine, I’m in recovery. So, what the hell did happen in Québec? Damned if I know; I haven’t lived there in 20 years. But Chantal Hébert has an interesting and positive take on it.

And what the hell happened to the Liberals in Ontario? Don’t know either, but here’s a clue, maybe, in Glen Pearson’s report. He was a popular Liberal MP, expected to win his seat. In the end, he lost it to the Conservatives. But as he notes, the loss wasn’t completely a surprise.

Yet I’d had something of a premonition of the outcome during the last few days of the contest. At doors I canvassed I kept hearing certain stories about how I spent too much time in Africa, or that my voting presence in the House wasn’t too impressive. When I informed them that I only spent one week a year on that continent (Sudan), and that I take it on my holiday time over New Years and on my own dime, I could sense the hesitation in their voice. “Oh … that’s not what we heard when the Conservatives phoned us last night.”

….

It was frustrating, but I didn’t know who to talk to. It was only when the election was over that a good Conservative friend informed me that they had actually been utilizing a central office for phone calls and that none of them emanated from London itself. They had poured big money from afar into influencing my riding.

I’ll paraphrase for Mr. Pearson. In his riding, the Conservatives ran a centralized campaign to call people up and lie about him.

But, probably only in that one riding, right? Surely their central office didn’t call up other Ontarians and tell them “creative truths” about their Liberal MPs? Nah. I’m sure that had nothing to do with it…

Election positivity

At times, this election campaign has made me really cranky. With politicians. With the media. With other Canadians.

But it hasn’t had all been bad. To my surprise, some things have actually been inspiring. Who would have expected that?

Votes mobs: The enthusiasm of youth

Inspired by a Rick Mercer rant, vote mobs are groups of young people who swarm political functions or other public spaces, encouraging people to vote.Will they actually turn around the typically dismal showing of voters under 25? I don’t know, especially that the timing couldn’t be worse for university and college students.

But regardless, they’ve left behind a nice YouTube legacy, like this one from McMaster:

Civil online debates: Yes, we can

The typical comments section on most political articles (or YouTube videos) tends to make you despair for humanity as a whole. But under this article in an American online publication (decent in itself) is a bunch of really well-informed, civil, intelligent comments from what seems to be across the political spectrum. (Until a spammer joins in at the end. Ah well, better that than a troll.)

And though I’m biased from knowing the blogger, the non-partisan Procedure and politics has been a nice oasis of rationality, showing that you can calmly dissect how politicians and the media sometimes get it wrong, all without calling anyone a “stupidhead”. (Also a great place to learn about Britain’s upcoming referendum, if you were wondering about that. Or maybe you didn’t even know they were having one?)

The return of oratory

I’m a sucker for a great orator. Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kennedy… I don’t know if these guys were great leaders. But they sure talked nice. I loved listening to all of them.

In Canada, we haven’t  had a great federal orator since… What… Pierre Trudeau, I think?

Or so I thought. Until I actually started listening to Michael Ignatieff speak. It started at their platform announcement, part of which I watched online. This was in the midst of all the commentary about Harper’s “bubble” — not taking questions, hiding from the public. So to see Ignatieff speaking so easily, so clearly, sans notes or teleprompters, answering questions from everyone, at such a strategic juncture—I was kind of impressed.

But it was only after coming back from vacation, having missed the debates (where, I hear, Ignatieff didn’t do that well), I found this YouTube video getting a lot of play:

That I became really really impressed. I liked what he said. And how he said it. And apparently, that wasn’t even him at his best.

I started to wonder if I was just in some weird Liberal spell here, when Rick Mercer (him again!) commented on a similar experience:

And then there was Prince Edward Island, where, in a curling club, Ignatieff showed off a set of skills I had no idea that he possessed. From a pure showbiz perspective he killed. Speaking without a teleprompter or notes he gave perhaps the best speech I have heard since watching Gen. Rick Hillier address the troops in Kandahar.

His speech also inspired this non-partisan song on voting for what you believe in–“Rise Up Canada!” (A song for Canada’s 2011 Federal Election):

Of course, people like Blair, Clinton, Obama, and Kennedy all had such personal charisma, their elocutionary skills were just icing on the cake. With Ignatieff, it’s the whole cake. In this day and age, that seems to not be enough. But damn, it’s nice to hear anyway.

Creative protest: Hanging with the cool kids

I like civil debate, and I like neutral calls to vote, but I have picked a side. So, I’ve also appreciated the many people, much more creative and eloquent than I, who have to the same conclusion about who they are voting for, and produced online materials as to why. There’s tons of it, but I’ll just mention a few. I’ve already tweeted about Shane Koycan’s powerful “Wasted Votes” video. (He’s the spoken-word poet who appeared at the Olympics by the way: the “We Are More” poem.) I also enjoyed Margaret Atwood’s comparison of the Conservatives to a vaccum salesman who insists you buy his product, but won’t tell you the cost.

And this mock ad—Too Smart for Canada—made me laugh out loud. So close to the actual ones, some people think it’s real.

The NDP surge

Of course, we don’t yet know if this will stick and have a real effect in the end. All we can know for sure, is that among those that were polled, there has been a shift. In Quebec, the NDP has risen considerably; that has been spreading to other regions. And why does this please me?

  • It’s thwarting the ambitions of both the Conservatives and the Bloc, my two least favourite parties. Although I don’t believe it will turn out that way, one poll actually had the NDP + Liberal seat count at greater than the Conservative–without the Bloc at all. That would be good for Canada.
  • It shows that many Canadians will respond to a positive message. (Even the NPD “attack” ads were kind of chirpy positive.)
  • It shows what a political leader can achieve when not hobbled by two years of personal political attack ads run by the party in power. (Why is it even legal to run election ads between elections, by way?)
  • They’re the only major party talking about electoral reform, one of my pet issues.

I’m not afraid of NDP policies or what them having more power might mean. All evidence shows that the NDP becomes very pragmatic once handed power. And if you look closely at what they’re proposing, it’s full of caveats that gives them plenty of wiggle room to ensure Canada does not become a deficit-ridden, high-tax, socialist mess.

But this is in no way changes how I plan to vote. The conditions, for me, remain the same. Local polls show no evidence of an NDP surge. Plus, my local NDP candidate is a 27-year-old with no political experience at all, whereas the Liberal one is a past MP with a record for actually going with his conscience against his own party, which is a rare thing indeed. And another thing I view positively.

Movie review – Capitalism: A Love Story

Catching up here, since we watched this weeks ago…

*** Capitalism, a Love Story (March 2010) – Rental
Michael Moore documentary looks at the recent financial collapse and questions the economic system that made it possible.

She says: This is Moore’s most radical film to date. Where previous had fairly uncontroversial (to Canadians) arguments that guns are bad, George Bush wasn’t a great President, and America’s health system needs fixing, this one questions the capitalist economic system itself. I couldn’t as easily get on board. And yet, I couldn’t poke that many holes into his arguments, either. Why couldn’t more companies be run as cooperatives? Why do we allow such enormous wage disparities between executives and workers? It definitely made me think, and that’s a good thing.
He says: So he’s like Fox News, at the other end of spectrum.

Vacation stats

We’re back from a really lovely vacation, a river cruise on the Danube. In advance of the full report, a few comments.

Days away: 9

But they seemed to go by in a flash.

Number of cities visited: 8

  • Budapest, Hungary
  • Bratislava, Slovakia
  • Vienna, Austria
  • Melk, Austria
  • Linz, Austria
  • Passau, Germany
  • Regensburg, Germany
  • Kelheim, Germany

Plus the airports of Munich, Germany and Amsterdam, Holland.

Temperature range: 3c to 20C

It started out quite warm and sunny in Budapest, then cool and sunny, then cloudy, rainy, back to cloudy, and finally around to cool sunny, then warm and sunny again. Typical spring. No snow, at least.

Number of off-boat meals: 1

(Not counting airport and airplane meals.)  That one was a fantastic lunch at the beautiful Cafe Centrale in Vienna. Otherwise, we partook of our included onboard meals. And fortunately, except for a few failed efforts here and there, those were pretty good. And sometimes very good—the roast duck, roast lamb, and grilled prawns on risotto were highlights.

Number of countries’ wines we tried: 4

  • In Hungary, we visited a wine store, learned quite a bit about their industry, and my parents purchased a wonderful pinot noir that they opened on-board.
  • In Bratislava, Jean and I visited a wine bar for Slovakian wine, which we enjoyed. But most impressive was the price: 1 Euro a glass (about $1.40). In a restaurant.
  • Onboard, they served Austrian wine, red and white, in quite generous amounts. We also tried a few other varieties in Melk.

That’s 3 of the 4. The last is Chile, as that’s what KLM serves on their flights. (It was pretty good, too.)

Most surprising highlight: Melk

Pretty well everywhere we visited had something worthwhile, and certainly a number of places we wished we had more time for (notably Budapest and Linz), but I have to say the Melk exceeded all expectations. It’s a very small town, and had one tourist attraction that I knew of: The Abbey. So, we went to see the Abbey. We figured it would be some old building with a few interesting artifacts.

But it just blew us away. One of the most interesting, original sites I’ve ever visited. I’ll describe more when I have pictures to go along with it, but here’s an idea (a Wikipedia photo):

Melk Abbey library

That’s the library. And it’s not even the best part.

Number of photos taken: 0

By me, at least.

Jean took about a million-billion, though, so I’m not too worried about lacking visual memories of our journey.

Our on-board claim to fame: Dancing

There was a live band nightly. There was a small dance floor. We took advantage. People noticed (apparently in a positive way). Can’t let those dance lessons go to waste.

Number of books read: 3.5

  • The High Road by Terry Fallis (so I could read a novel about a Canadian federal election while being away from the actual one)
  • E A Novel  by Matt Beaumont (so I could read a novel entirely written in emails while having no access to my own)
  • What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell (that’s the half)
  • Journey to the Edge of the World by Billy Connolly (the book that kept Jean engaged while “stuck” on board)

Look better naked!

Cover of DVDI’m not entirely sure what to make of the marketing of this DVD. Six weeks to my leanest, hottest body ever—really? Even though I’m now in my 40s, and when in my 20s, apart from having 20 years fewer gravity effects to combat, I worked out something an hour or two a day? Still, this DVD’s going to make me look better than that?

I’m skeptical.

Also, it looks a little porn-y. But in case you’re wondering, the fitness instructors are in fact clothed during the workout, in fairly standard (not especially slutty) workout gear.

And, I assume the title is meant to evoke that Showtime series, How to Look Good Naked. Although the whole point of that show was not that fitness and better diet were necessary, but mostly improved self-esteem. (And maybe a more supportive bra.) It was all about making women feel better about their current size, not trying to change it.

So, it seems I should be sort of offended by this thing. But in fact… It’s a really good DVD workout. What I like is that in a compressed 30 minutes, you get a really good workout. One 30-minute option is called “Metabolic”; the other “Strength”. But with both of them, you actually get a combination of aerobics and muscle training. So covering a lot of fitness needs in a short amount of time. (You can also do the whole thing in 50 minutes.)

The queuing is excellent, with a visual appearing before each new move giving the name and number of reps, along with verbal queuing by the instructor. And she’s quite appealing, motivating without being irritating. Two other women do the workout with her, one modifying some of the moves for beginners.

And I’ve been feeling it. The metabolic one has this interval training approach that is a good addition for me, because you do get to some pretty intense moves, but only for a reasonable number of reps, then followed by an easier set of moves. The strength requires one set of dumbbells, and moves you through the items before any get tedious.

And you know, it may even be possible that my abdominals looks slightly more defined now. Though it hasn’t been six weeks yet.

So what can I say. Despite the dubious packaging, I do recommend this DVD if you are looking for an aerobic/strength training workout. (I also recommend Collage Video in general for fitness DVDs.)

And don’t discount the fun of having a reason to entitle a blog post, Look better naked!

Two more reasons to like Arcade Fire

Currently offering their amazing The Suburbs album for a mere $3.50 for high-quality download. Wow.

Their exceedingly polite blog post encouraging Canadians to vote. Only, maybe not Conservative...

Stephen Harper is afraid to meet me

In this election, it seems to me that the Liberals are campaigning relatively well. And that the Conservatives are campaigning relatively poorly.

The first week was all about “reckless coalitions”, which has been debunked and declared a distraction and makes them look a bit stupid, especially when quotes such as this are located:

… what will be the test is whether there’s then any party in opposition that’s able to form a coalition or working alliance with the others. And I think we have a political system that’s going to continue to have three or four different parties, or five different parties, and so I think parties that want to form government are going to eventually have to learn to work together.

— Stephen Harper (1991)

(Source TVO, via Procedure and Politics)

So why try that? Well, apart from their peek popularity having occurred when the other parties threatened to make the unpopular Stephane Dion prime minister by coalition, I also think they don’t want Canadians to remember what made the other parties do that.

For whatever reason, the Conservatives have a good reputation on the economy. They are especially proud of the stimulus package, Canada’s Action Plan. So proud they spent $26 million taxpayer dollars telling us it was wonderful. After the program was over. (More proof of their great fiscal management, of course.)

However. When last elected, as the recession was taking hold, the Conservatives presented a fiscal update that cut spending, and provide no stimulus whatsoever. Only after and because of the coalition “crisis” did we get a new budget, containing Canada’s Action Plan (with a segue through the proroguing of Parliament).

But how can the NDP and Liberals remind Canadians of that without playing into Harper’s talking points on their “secret coalition plans”? Best to say nothing.

So, maybe Harper isn’t really campaigning that badly. Maybe he’s achieved exactly what he wanted here, in poisoning  another perfect valid idea to the point it can’t even mentioned. Last election carbon taxes (still a toxic subject), this election governance by coalition.

Of course, this week we’ve moved on to the Conservatives’ excesses in shutting out those who disagree with them:

This last young woman, Joanna MacDonald from Guelph, is the one planning to start on online campaign called Stephen Harper is afraid to meet me, which I think is hilarious. And so I’m borrowing her line, since I also think something should be done to combat global warming, so I ought to be equally frightening.

Also fun? Rick Mercer’s Mr. Harper, are you on your meds? from Macleans, which takes pokes at all parties, starting with this:

The government was defeated on a confidence motion because they were in contempt of the Canadian Parliament—a vote that Stephen Harper immediately claimed did not occur. He didn’t argue about the semantics of the vote; he simply denied it happened at all, preferring instead to believe his government was defeated on the budget. There is evidence to the contrary: he was there and it was on TV, but still, as far as he is concerned, it didn’t happen.

 

Surrounded by sound

I tried to watch TV just now and found myself listening to Richard Gere’s Robin Hood while watching an old episode of Saturday Night Live, featuring a faux Kim Jong-il. It was interesting juxtaposition, but not what I was after.

Yesterday we’d been happily watching Moulin Rouge on DVD on this same TV when the picture simply disappeared.

It shouldn’t be so hard to do something as lazy as watching television.

It seems especially wrong to be churlish, though, when these troubles are all the result of really nice work anniversary gift Jean got, of a BluRay DVD player and surround sound system. Since the only place we currently have an LCD television is in the living room, it made sense to set up the BluRay there. This is also provided surround in that room, where previous we merely had stereo sound.

Plus, then we were able to move our older sound system into the kitchen, which we will also, eventually, have surround sound. In the meantime, I have better stereo sound, and can now hook up the iPod in that room, rather then from the bedroom.  Particularly handy when it decides to randomly play a song that is a complete mystery to me (I have a lot of songs), compelling me to look at the iPod screen to see what it is. That task no longer involves stairs.

All nice things. Except that it really is bloody complicated watching television now. You have to turn on the three devices: PVR, TV, sound system. No big deal, right? Except that every one of three remotes tries to control all the devices—sort of. So you turn on one, and then you grab a second remote to turn on the next, and that one turns off the first while turning on the second, and so on… Then they’re finally all on and you accidentally press some Power button again, and oops! They all go off again.

It’s enough to make you think maybe you should just read a book.

Then, the settings. Of course, the sound system needs to be set to right option–Sat / Cable,  not TV, and of course not DVD, FM, Audio, or any otheir subsettings… One day, the only way I could find to get sound from my record player was to turn the TV on and change its source input. What?

Yes, the TV also needs to be set to be on the right source. Now is it HDMI1 or HDMI3? Or maybe BD (BluRay disc) system?

If things still are synching up correctly at this point, it may be because of the switches. We do still have a TV downstairs, but only one PVR now (the older having collapsed and died a few weeks ago). We’re kind of proud we figured out how to hook up two TVs to one PVR, but it does mean setting various switches to the right position depending on what you want to do (watch upstairs or downstairs, watch live or recorded). Not to mention the strange kind of voodoo dance you have to do downstairs in front the remote control signal, trying to successfully get the signal wirelessly upstairs. But when you finally hit that sweet spot, it’s exciting!

Sigh. But I will say that high-definition picture really is very pretty. And, it really is great to have both the pretty picture and surround sound available in one room, instead of having to choose one or the other.

What we still haven’t achieved? Hooking up the computer to make it easier to watching streaming video. We tried with our really old computer (which had been in the kitchen), but it frankly could not handle being projected onto such a big screen. So despite Toronto Life’s interesting article called “Honour among thieves”, which made it sound like practically a patriotic duty to steal your content from the Internet, we can still only do that by downloading, putting that content on a USB, and popping that into one of the DVD players or the TV.

Which remains slightly more onerous task than turning on and watching the TV. But only a just.