Here’s a screen capture from Ici Radio-Canada Télé, the French version of CBC Television, the big public TV broadcaster in Canada. The title in the “lower third”, Améliorer le sommeil, means “Improving sleep”.
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Florida of the day: You had one job
Here’s a newly-painted “SCOHOL” crossing in Deltona, Florida. I was always under the impression that those crossings were painted using a single stencil containing the complete word, but it would appear that they’re done by laying out single-letter stencils side by side. Still, it’s nice to see that they lined up the letters properly.
Photo via The Smoking Gun. Click to see the source.
On July 26, 1991, Paul Reubens — better known to the world as Pee-Wee Herman, and at the time, host of a popular (and surreal) Saturday morning children’s show — was arrested for partaking in a form of onanism in a pornographic cinema in Sarasota County, Florida, a 90-minute drive south of my place.
For you younger readers: in the days before home internet, never mind home broadband internet and wifi, there were generally two ways to watch porn in 1991:
- By renting or buying a videotape (DVDs were still 4 years away in 1991) from an adult video store
- Going to a movie theatre that showed porn
That’s right, kids, once upon a time, the only way you could watch porn — and perform any ancillary activity — was in a public place. This started to change in the 1980s with the rise of video playback devices (first VCRs, then DVD players) and speciality cable TV channels, but even in 1991, XXX theatres were still a viable option for porn consumption.
The incident provided comedians of all stripes with lots of material. David Letterman remarked “Hey, Pee-Wee, have you never heard of a VCR?” and I remember the alt-rock station in Toronto dedicated this song to Pee-Wee every time they played it:
I also remember his appearance on the 1991 MTV video music awards after the incident, where he asked a very forgiving audience “Heard any good jokes lately?”
The Smoking Gun has commemorated this event today. In an age when all the porn you can eat is available on a device that fits in your free hand, the Pee-Wee Herman incident wouldn’t even have happened, and my 2016 sensibility is leading me to wonder why the cops would even bother looking for a non-crime like masturbating in an adults-only legal business that showed films specifically made for that sort of thing.
My 13 year-old self would’ve thought “Advertising GENIUS!”.
“In Canada lesbians are considered hot!” says the promotion that appeared on social media channels yesterday. “In Saudi Arabia if you’re a lesbian YOU DIE!“
The ad then switches to all caps: “WHY ARE WE GETTING OUR OIL FROM COUNTRIES THAT DON’T THINK LESBIANS ARE HOT?!“
You may be surprised to learn that this ad is not the creation of a horny, heterosexual 13 year-old boy, but a purported adult named Robbie Picard, who also happens to be gay.
Many of my American readers, if asked where the U.S. imports most of its oil from would answer “Saudi Arabia”. They’d be wrong: the country from which the U.S. imports the most oil is its neighbor, Canada. In fact, Canadians provide Americans with almost 4 times the oil as the Saudis.
Most of Canada’s oil is in the Canadian province of Alberta, which sometimes gets called “the Texas of Canada”. The oil is contained in the Oil Sands, one of the world’s largest deposits of bitumen, a molasses-like form of petroleum, which is stuck in a lot of sandstone that’s been broken up to varying degrees.
The Oil Sands are a great source of energy, profit, and jobs as well as a great source of environmental destruction. For the former, check out these then-and-now photos of Calgary, Alberta’s largest city. If you want to see the latter, just do a Google image search for “oil sands canada”.
Faced with growing concerns about the environmental effects of oil and oil production, conservative political activist, right-wing crank, and failed low-budget Roger Ailes wannabe Ezra Levant helped popularize the term “ethical oil” as a way to refocus the debate away from environmentalism and towards human rights. This is odd, considering Levant’s own battles with the Alberta Human Rights Commission and gleeful willingness to publish false stories about Muslims.
Like Levant, Robbie Picard is also a promoter of the Oil Sands who uses the ideas behind “ethical oil”. Picard is an openly gay, Métis (having both European and First Nations ancestry) man who’s considered to be the unofficial ambassador for Fort McMurray, a city located in the heart of the Oil Sands (it’s also been recently devastated by an incredibly huge forest fire). Like many people who live there, he came seeking his fortune in the oil industry. He was profiled just earlier this month in Alberta Oil.
Picard used to be associated with the I Love Oilsands campaign, but split off from that group to become independent, and now promotes the Oil Sands in the Canada Oil Sands Community Facebook group, which has about 14,000 followers.
When interviewed about the controversial promotion, Picard said:
“When I say lesbians are hot, I don’t think there is anything wrong about saying that,” he said.
“I think all lesbians are hot and I’m not opposed to putting a picture of two guys up there. It was just to strike up a conversation. I find anybody is hot. I think two women kissing is hot. I think that something that is part of the fabric of our city — that we can do whatever we want in our country — that is hot.”
Geez, not even Paris Hilton uses the word “hot” that much:
The National Post article on the matter ends with this quote from Picard:
“Some people really love it, some people are very upset. A lot of middle-aged white guys are the most upset, girls are laughing. It had a bigger response than I anticipated, but my intention was never to offend or objectify anyone. I’m going to have to think about what I’m going to do next.”
Yeah, you might just want to do that, Robbie. There’s an argument to be made for spending oil money that enriches a place like Canada rather than Saudi Arabia, but the horny frat-bro man-child approach isn’t the right way to go about it.
If their motto is “Make America great again”, it stands to reason that there was a time when America was great. So The Daily Show sent out people to ask Republican National Convention-goers a simple question: When was that time? The answers are both illuminating, and unintentionally high-larious. Especially the last one — make sure you watch the video to the end:
Hey, that candy had to be made from something, right?