Something terrible happened to channel 43 this summer.
Sometime, when I wasn’t paying attention, my tied-for-favourite PBS channel, WTVS-Detroit, vanished from my Shaw Cable lineup. And in its place was some cruddy kiddy TV station showing idiotic baby-oriented cartoons with primary colours, shrieking voices, and loud, clunky soundtracks.
It took me a few weeks to realize what [...]
Archive for August, 2009
What happened to WTVS-Detroit?
Posted in British Columbia, Exiled in Suburbia, Movies, music and pop culture, News, politics and current events, tagged customer service, Detroit, Digital Cable, entertainment, Frontline, KCTS-9, migration to digital, Nova, PBS, PBS Video, Seattle, Shaw Cable, TV, WTVS-Detroit on August 13, 2009 | 3 Comments »
R.I.P. John Hughes, sincerely, The Breakfast Club
Posted in Exiled in Suburbia, tagged Brat Pack, Breakfast Club, entertainment, film, John Hughes, Molly Ringwald, movies on August 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I blinked – hard – when I read the subject line in my email: John Hughes is dead.
“Stay tuned for multiple repeats of The Breakfast Club,” my main squeeze wrote. When someone you love dies, someone who loves you should be the one to break the news.
And I loved John Hughes.
Reporters in peril: A tale of two kidnappings
Posted in News, politics and current events, tagged Amanda Lindhout, Euna Lee, freelance journalists, kidnapped reporters, Laura Ling, News, North Korea, Somalia on August 5, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
It’s a story-book ending for former detainees Laura Ling and Euna Lee, two American journalists who’ve spent more than four months imprisoned in North Korea.
Yesterday, after an unannounced meeting in Pyongyang between former U.S. president Bill Clinton and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the two women were pardoned and freed. They had been sentenced to 12 years hard labour for illegally entering the country.
For family, friends and supporters of a Canadian woman held captive in Somalia for the past year, today’s news headlines and footage of the two jubilant women returning to the States must have provided a painful contrast indeed.



