A lot going on Headlines
We miss your salty goodness already.
Oh, hello there, navel. Do you mind if I gaze at you awhile?
Jeff here, just checking in on you, Headliners. How are you doing, how’s life?
Great/I’m sure it will get better.
Anyway, I figure it’s a nice, cold day to stay by the warm computer monitor, which makes it a good day to ask a few questions of you about these here Headlines.
You still digging them?
What do you like? Hate?
Do you find yourself reading stories you wouldn’t have otherwise? Do you read stories from newsrooms you don’t usually seek out?
Do you read more of the stories I mention in conversational writing, or the ones under the actual news source?
Would you read more if I didn’t make it so obvious which newsroom it was from?
Anything else you can think of is more than welcome.
Now, let’s do some news! (more…)
In case you missed it…
…check out our video on demand of Saturday Night with Samsonow! The latest episode is from September 25, featuring a report on the Dawson Bridge from The Unknown Studio’s Adam Rozenhart, and School Board Trustee Candidate Sarah Hoffman!
Saturday Night with Samsonow
Because we never give ourselves enough work to do we’re attempting a live talk show.
Tonight. 9pm.
Come right back here. You might have to refresh this page (or the main page if that’s what you’re on) to get the live stream to kick in.
Tonight’s guest is local social media darling Adam Rozenhart. Plus, we’ve got Pepe Duenes as our band. We’ll also be crank-calling an actual local media celebritity. And eating the long-rumoured Samsonowich.
See you then!
(Although, we won’t be able to see you.)
If the website is hiccuping at all, you can try watching at our livestream.com account too.
Oh what a night!
This is the #YegSwap debrief and recap. So, if you were there (thanks for coming) let me know if I forget to mention something, please tell us your own thoughts about the night, and let me know if there are blog posts/photos/video out there I haven’t linked to. Also, tell us if you still love your new stuff or if you’ve already got swapper’s remorse.
Also, before I forget, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you to our volunteers (We love you!), our musicians, The ARTery (which we need to talk about more at a future date), and thanks from me to the other organizers.
I want it all! (Photo: Mack D. Male)
I’m going to say, even though it was said a bunch of times (including when Scott and Adam introduced our final act of the night, The Joe), that the 1st annual #YegSwap was a success.
This was an event put on by The League of Extraordinary Media, which (right now) includes this blog, the podcasts The Unknown Studio and User Created Content, and TrueBritl.com, a blog by iNews880′s Twitter star, Brittney Le Blanc. To quickly sum up what The League is all about: our blogs and podcasts have joined forces to take our Edmonton-related musings into the real world. Mayhaps there will be cross-posting of content too. Hey, we’ve got to compete with the “real” media, you know.
the edmontonian‘s co-founder, Sally, and Brittney thought a swap meet would be a good time. That this idea came about after an afternoon of home shopping channel viewing is somehow relevant.
I was, of course, on board right away. Not only could it be fun, it could be a way to join together some of Edmonton’s online “newsrooms.” And pay homage to a local community cable show so enjoyed by myself in my Toronto days.
We were fortunate enough to land some amazing musical talent for the night. I do not know where a lineup like this will be heard for a mere $2. (more…)
Can(‘t)spell
Ouch.
I didn’t think, after last week’s near death of Gordon Lightfoot, that I’d get to use the #canwestfail hashtag on Twitter again. Then Pepe sends along this gem.
You have to spell things correctly when you’re talking about a spelling contest.
Otherwise, jerks like me will point it out.
Maybe Canwest can offer the winning spellers a job proofing their on-air text.
Oh, hi Mike Sobel.
Oh Ray’s Sports Bar; The pipes, the pipes, they’re calling…
Oh Edmonton, I don’t know how to tell you this, but Ray’s Sports Bar and Grill is… well, it’s gone.
Pepe mourns the loss of Ray's.
For some time now, I have been in this band called the Mystery Ponies. We rehearse on Saturdays in the Westmount area, and we discovered Ray’s back in July, when it popped up in my GPS. On our first trip there, my friend Ryan ordered potato skins that took an hour and a half to arrive and instantly, we were all smitten.
Located on 152 St and 111 Ave, Ray’s was just a stone’s throw from Samsonow’s favorite haunt, the New West Hotel. It shared a strip mall with a convenience store, a liquor store and adult store The Passion Vault, the owner of which was driving a bobcat around the parking lot when we arrived to find Ray’s locked down on Saturday. He stopped long enough to break the bad news to my friend Pepe and I, and lament how much Ray’s had helped his business thrive (I honestly don’t even know what that means).
Oh Ray’s! We were still on our honeymoon! We still loved all those little quirks of yours! The food was really, shockingly good, and typically took so long to arrive that we eventually just accepted that anything we ordered was probably being brought over from the Boston Pizza at Westmount. Their jukebox was schizophrenic, and contained far more of Radiohead’s back catalogue than you would ever expect from a place with so much sports memorabilia on the walls. And they had the best serving staff ever, who even tried to take the sting out of room temperature beer by bringing it in an ice bath.
In the months that followed that first trip to Ray’s, every time we went there, it was special. There was the time my friend Justin had to help put out a car fire in the parking lot. The time Pepe and I realized they had a Chippendales themed VLT. The lady who kept asking me to unclog the toilet even though I told her repeatedly that I didn’t work there. On our last visit, we walked in to find a guy with a saxophone sitting at the bar, playing along with the jukebox. If I’d only known, Ray’s. If I’d only known.
Ray’s didn’t have a lot of friends on facebook; in fact, they only had me (I was also mayor on foursquare). But Ray’s was here, and it mattered. 01/23/10. Never forget.
