In a dramatic attempt to combine father and sonliness with a thorough defrosting of the car, Oliver and I drove over the causeway to Cornwall tonight and had dinner at the new Pizza Delight.

My experiences with Pizza Delight until today had been limited to (a) the insanity of the Pizza Delight at the Cavendish Boardwalk on a rainy midsummer day, (b) the ghoulish experience of eating pizza in the Pizza Delight in the old 1911 jail in Charlottetown (I’ve never understood how “last state execution on PEI” and “tasty food” go together) and (c) the lukewarm cardboard pizza from the Confederation Court Mall location.

In other words “not good.”

I was pleasantly surprised.

Outside of Mcdonalds, restaurants that cater to families with kids are few and far between. And Mcdonalds exacts the heavy dual price of sappy character addiction and moribund food.

Pizza Delight in Cornwall, I’m happy to report, is an exception to this rule. And they pull it off without the use of magic characters named Pizzi and Roni.

Pizza Delight’s kid goodness starts with a kid menu that has more than chicken fingers and french fries: they make pizza shaped like dogs and cats. That was enough to rope in Oliver for life. Then there’s the bread bar — choose bread, spread gloop, grill. It’s a clone of the Piazza Joes one, but they serve better bread.

They’ve got crayons and colouring paper at the ready, juice served in spill-proof cups, and really friendly staff. To top it off, they bring around a “treasure chest” at the end of the meal from which kids are allowed to extract a lovely parting gift — and the gifts run the gamut from books to bouncy balls.

None of these things is revolutionary or unique. But weaving them all together as they do in Cornwall, and in a clean, well-lit, colourful room, well that’s rare indeed.

We’ll be back.

Over in the England and Wales the baby name Oliver is on the march. In 2000 it was the 14th most popular boy name; in 2001 it rose to 12th, in 2002 it was 10th, in 2003 it was 6th and in 2004 it was 7th (okay, that’s a slight dip, perhaps a small backlash).

That makes Oliver, in 2004, behind only Jack, Joshua, Thomas, James, Daniel, and Samuel in popularity.

Meanwhile, over in the U.S.A. Oliver is also on the rise, albeit with a higher mountain to climb: 305th most popular in 2000, rising to 243rd in 2003.

Here in Canada, a nation of regions, there doesn’t appear to be a central source for countrywide popularity information. However in British Columbia, Oliver was 54th in 2003, 31st in 2002, 36th in 2001 and 28th in 2000, which reflects a weakening Oliver trend on the west coast.

Obviously Canada is not leading the world in this regard. We’re happy to try and do our small part.

Although the CBC has links to its InSite system sprinkled through its website, they don’t make a point of revealing that there’s a very useful front door to the system.

Although not all CBC Radio programs use the system, many of them do, and through the InSite web system you can search back into the past (way, way back: here’s the Vinyl Cafe from September 1997 for example) and find the show rundown including all of the music, often including very detailed information like players, composer, record label and so on. Here’s After Hours from January 4, 2005, for example, which tells you everything you’d ever want to know about all the tracks played that night.

This is web + radio at its best; kudos to the CBC for making the resource public.

The Washington Post says “Hershey’s milk chocolate contains about 11 percent cacao.” Our friends at Scharffen Berger have a new 82% Extra Dark Chocolate. Once you’ve gone over to the dark side, you can never go back.

If you’re Canadian, you may never have heard of the Showtime network. Indeed if you’re Canadian, don’t bother clicking on that link because all you’ll see is this:

Fortunately, the Wikipedia can tell us more, including:

Showtime is a US cable TV network that primarily shows motion pictures as well as some original programming and occasional boxing matches… As of 2004, Showtime is owned by Showtime Networks Inc., which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Viacom Inc.

Part of the “some original programming” on Showtime is Huff, a series produced by Hank Azaria (The Simpsons, Friends, The Birdcage, Shattered Glass). And it’s stunningly good television.

Huff concerns the life of Dr. Craig ‘Huff’ Huffstodt (Azaria), his wife Beth (Paget Brewster), son (Anton Yelchin), mother (Blythe Danner), brother (Andy Comeau) and best friend (Oliver Platt). It’s a stellar cast, with no holes: when they’re flying — and that’s almost all of the time — it’s some of the best television you’ll ever see.

Because Showtime isn’t available in Canada, you’ll have to find a helpful friends who will let you borrow their copy. It’s worth the effort. Update: turns out (thanks Derek!) that The Movie Network (aka “pay TV”) carries the show in Canada. Here’s their Huff schedule: the first episode airs Feb 1.

Jan Egeland, the United Nations Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, was on Charlie Rose tonight. He said that the situation in the Congo deserves the world’s attention, that it is the worst humanitarian disaster over the last 10 years, and that the “one disaster at a time” western focus on the tsunami damage will only make this worse.

UNICEF says:

In less than five years, an estimated 3.3 million people are thought to have been killed, the vast majority of them civilians.

I had no idea there was “a situation in the Congo.” Do I care about southeast Asia — and I do — because “there but for the grace of God go I,” whereas what’s happening in the Congo bears no relation to my life? Is it natural disaster vs. human disaster? I don’t know.