Oliver’s uncles Johnny and Steve were, for a period of their youth, comic book kids. Which is to say that every Saturday after going to the YMCA and before catching the Canada Coachlines bus home, they would stop at Silver Snail on James St. and load up on New Teen Titans, Justice League of America, etc. While I wouldn’t go as far as saying they were full-on geeky comic kids, I believe they did have acid free plastic bags for their comics, which is certainly an indication of something. And even now I have heard them both emit the phrase “low-level tachion pulse.”

This was all great for me and mid-level brother Mike, as we got to enjoy the fruits of the comic book purchasing and delivery systems without having to bear any of the expense or the shame.

Today wee Oliver and I (who in truth is getting less and less wee everyday) went to the Formosa Tea House for iced tea, stuffed buns and sushi. It was our first Big Trip together without the benefit of stroller, and although there were a couple of “I think I’ll just sit down now in the middle of Kent Street” episodes, he performed remarkably well.

One of the things that being bipedal affords Oliver over being wheeled around is some voice in the direction that our travels take. Often a louder and larger voice than my own. Which is how, post Formosa Tea House, we found ourselves inside Comic Hunter, the “gaming, comics and anime” store that is just down the street.

Now I have been walking by this store for as long as it’s been there, and I’ve never set foot inside the door. This is mostly due to latent fear that I will emerge to find one of my teenage bully arch nemeses outside, and I will get beaten up and have my knapsack thrown all over the schoolyard.

But, with Oliver’s help, I managed to get over this fear and while I don’t think I’m going to become a regular customer, I must say I was intriged by the breadth of the merchandise in the store, much of which, beyond comic books, I had no idea existed. I was intrigued to find, for example, that the have a “super cool lounge/gaming area” where they host a schedule of events for the geeky community.

If this sort of thing keeps up, Oliver’s going to have be inside the Sport Page Club and J. Redshoes before long…

At long last, Island Tel has turned on the SMS features — short message service — for digital cell phones on their network. In traditional Island Tel fashion, they couldn’t just call it SMS like the rest of the world, the had to have the marketing department come up with a catchy name, so we have CH@T with Two-Way Text Messaging.

Goofy name aside, it’s pretty cool: from a digital cell phone you can send short text messages to anyone else with a digital cell phone, and that anyone can have a phone on the Aliant, Microcell, Rogers AT&T, Telus, or Bell Mobility networks.

This means, for example, that I can SMS my brother Johnny in Vancouver for the standard 10 cents per message. Cool.

Messages to SMS-enabled phones can also be sent from any PC email client (to the unfortunately complex address style number@wirefree.informe.ca, where ‘number’ is the 10-digit cell phone number of the recipient), or from the Aliant web-SMS gateway.

It’s a long time coming, but it looks like they’ve done it right.

You probably recognize the name Charles H. Joffe, even if you can’t remember where from. So I will remind you: he has been the producer or executive producer of almost every one of Woody Allen’s films, starting with Take the Money and Run in 1969. You see his name, along withat of Jack Rollins, in the opening credits.

Few of us — myself included — know what most of the people credited on a movie actually do. We’re pretty clear on the actors, and know (or think we know) that the Director is nominally in charge. We may have heard about grips, and know about gaffers from the tape they’ve named after them, but deeper down into the list I know I lose focus pretty quick. Young Dave Moses, the closest thing Charlottetown has to a movie mogul, tried to explain all of these positions to me in the Delta Airlines lounge in Boston in July, but I soon forgot everything he told me.

But this is all tangential to my main point.

When we Rukavina boys were wee, we spent a lot of time on Saturday mornings getting shuttled (and, later, shuttling ourselves) back and forth between our country home in Carlisle and the Big City of Hamilton were were devotees of the YMCA’s Saturday morning programs.

During these trips back and forth, Mom and Dad’s radio was inevitably tuned to the CBC (it was just called “the CBC” then). And on Saturday morning, that meant that it was tuned first to Fresh Air, with Sy Strange and Bill Macneill, and then, in later years and later in the morning, to Basic Black with Arthur Black.

We knew of Arthur when Basic Black came along, of course, because he was “Arthur Black in Thunder Bay” in guest spots on the Fresh Air show. I think we actually thought that was his real name — Arthur Black in Thunder Bay.

At the end of every Basic Black, Arthur would, with much vigor, read the names of the “behind the scenes” people on the show. And in these credits, no name was read more forcefully, and thus burned more inextricably into our young minds, than that of David Joseph Malahoff.

Although we didn’t know what David Joseph Malahoff did, we imagined — or at least I did — that his role was something like that of Perry White on the Superman cartoons. That is to say a loveable but crusty taskmaster that kept the enterprise afloat.

Fast forward many years. I am walking along scenic Victoria Row in downtown Charlottetown and spy my newfound friend Ann Thurlow sitting out on the patio at the Black Forest Cafe. Sitting beside her is a mysterious tall man. I stop to say hello, and Ann introduces her tablemate as David Malahoff. “Not DAVID JOSEPH Malahoff?” I exclaim. “Yes,” says Ann, “David Joseph Malahoff.” The shock of the situation being too much for my swirling mind, I quickly made haste.

Fast forward several more years. Basic Black has moved west, and David Joseph Malahoff has stayed in Toronto. He is working on an ill-fated project with one of the Richler boys for Newsworld. I believe it was called either “Big Life” or “Big Hair.” Aforementioned Ann Thurlow puts me in touch with David to see if my wacky Internet ideas can bear fruit inside this show. Shortly thereafter either the show implodes or David does or both. No fruit born. Probably best for all concerned.

And finally, fast forward to the present day. The Black Forest Cafe lunch obviously worked its magic, as David Joseph Malahoff is now co-resident with Ann Thurlow in her spacious mansion in the NoHo district of Charlottetown, has been usurped into the Campbell Webster Entertainment empire, and can regularly be spotted walking the streets of Charlottetown, newspaper in hand, making his way from home to GrabbaJabba to work and back.

So the next time you see the sandy-haired tall guy with sun glasses and an aubergine windbreaker walking the Queen - Kent - University route with a copy of the Globe and Mail in hand, realize that you are walking among one of Canada’s cultural treasures, the Charles Joffe of our national morning show.

Gods walk among us.

The next thing you know, Catherine Hennessey is going to start dating Lister Sinclair.

Charlottetown lawyer turned web chaperon Alan McLeod writes:

Subject: Sarah Harmer

Saw the show as did at least Anne Thurlow. She is going to be huge. I am poking you with a digital stick to start a thread on her show.

I will insert one corrective point: Thurlow, A is Ann without an E.

Since the notice went out about the Community Radio Meeting (see below) last night, along with some email to people I thought might be interested, I’ve received nothing but positive responses: it appears as though there are 4 or 5 groups of Islanders who have been batting this idea around for a while, and the meeting will be a good chance to get everyone around the same table.

One small point of clarification: the meeting’s being held in the CBC Board Room due to the kindness of Craig Mackie, CBC Radio Program Manager for PEI, but isn’t a meeting about the CBC, or about community radio on the CBC, nor is the meeting in any way officially connected with the CBC.

Earlier in the year there was some discussion in this space about community radio on Prince Edward Island. Some people went off and discussed the idea further in a Yahoo! discussion group. My sense from all of this is that there might be enough community energy and community skills to create some sort of community radio enterprise here on the Island.

To this end, a small group of us have decided to jump in and plan a meeting of interested people. Scheduled for Tuesday, October 29 at 7:30 p.m., the meeting will take place in the Board Room at CBC Prince Edward Island.

We intend the meeting to be an exploratory session — a way to gauge just what interests and skills and passions could be assembled, and into what. Watch this space for more details; in the meantime, please spread the word that anyone, young or old, experienced in radio or not, is welcome to attend and contribute to the meeting.

All through high school my little brothers had to endure the question “so, you’re Peter’s brother.” Not that I was acclaimed — I simply had the virtue of coming first.

Brother Steve is exacting his revenge these days, though: a spate of national stories on CBC Radio (for whom he’s a news report in Saskatoon) have people asking me “so, you any relation to that Steve Rukavina?”.

Although Steve’s website has been dark of late, leaving the reading public without the insightful “behind the scenes of a young journo” pieces that were so interesting, we in the family do get to hear news from the horse’s mouth now and again, and one of the stories Steve related recently was of a sort of broadcaster boot camp held by the CBC in Winnipeg. Part of what went on there was a series of role plays, where the participants would read news stories and then be critiqued on them, and Steve says he got a lot out of this.

And I have to agree: if you listen to this recent piece, you’ll hear a much more affable, relaxed Journalist Steve.

It’s a wonderful experience to be able to watch one of your kid brothers mature into his career from afar; if Steve was a construction worker or a shop clerk we wouldn’t have this opportunity, but as he’s choosen the public airwaves as his medium, we’re lucky enough to be able to tune in.

After the launch of the new YankeeMagazine.com website in June, our time working with our colleagues on the web team at Yankee Publishing in New Hampshire has been consumed with a gradual redesign of Almanac.com, the website of The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

You can see the beginnings of the fruits of this work on the front page of Almanac.com this week. The new design on that page coincides with the release of the 2003 edition of the The Old Farmer’s Almanac (order yours today online or find copies at a bookstore or newsstand near you).

The new design is the work of the masterful Steve Muskie. Steve took the best parts of the old design and created a new presentation that has more content presented more clearly. Our contribution to the effort was the engines that drive the personalization features on the front page — weather, tides, sunrise and so on — and the databases behind them.

There’s lots more in store in the days and weeks to come. Stay tuned.

By the way, the sun is going to rise at 7:04 a.m. tomorrow morning.

Last night’s Big Premiere was The West Wing.

I originally sought solace in the arms of The West Wing after the cancellation of Sports Night: they share Aaron Sorkin as creator and writer and share Sorkin’s Mametesque “faster and more thrilling than life” approach to dialog. After watching Sports Night and early episodes of The West Wing I was left with an odd, pleasant after taste: I wanted my life to be that breezy.

Alas, if Wednesday’s premiere is any guide, the writing on The West Wing has gone from compelling and breezy to confusing and muddled. There were entire sequences in the two-hour opener that simply passed me by.

Perhaps I’m simply too stupid, or not in tune enough with the US politcal situation, but chunks of plot like “Toby and Josh get lost in America,” while perhaps interesting in some abstract metaphorical way, were unintelligible and tired.

Combine this nonesense with the whole “how many times can there be some horrible crisis in some country with a made-up name that causes everyone to get stressed out” and I worry for the health of the show.

The final blow may be the departure of Rob Lowe from the series. He’s obviously already in the process of being ushered out, as his role in last night’s episode was minor and of no consequence. I always thought that The West Wing was about Rob Lowe’s character Sam Seaborn, in the same way the WKRP was about Andy and M*A*S*H was about Hawkeye Pierce. While I wouldn’t go as far as saying he’s as much of a linchpin as either of those characters, he was the archtypical snappy talker, and every other characters bravado seemed descended from his.

That all said, there are some reasons for hope: Dule Hill as the President’s assistant Charlie is taking on a larger role in the show, and I really enjoyed his performance last night. Lily Tomlin (bias: I am a big Lily Tomlin fan) is going to do wonderful things too, I think. And Allison Janney really, really deserved the Emmy she received last week: she’s a great actor.

I’ll keep watching, but some of the magic is gone.

On Tuesday was the return of NYPD Blue to the fall season, after airing in the winter and spring for the past two years.

The season opener was preceded by a special, inexplicably hosted by Joe Mantegna, that took us “inside the world of NYPD Blue.” While there were several interesting parts to this preview, it was mostly gloss and fluff and left me wishing it was produced by more interesting people and was three times as long.

Whereas in shows like Law & Order and CSI it is the plot that drives the show, and shows like ER are more character driven (and I use that term loosely with ER), I realized on Tuesday that NYPD Blue is neither: it’s simply a compelling, well-punctuated visual ballet. The show has neither strong plots nor particularly strong actors (although Dennis Franz does have his charms, I admit): it’s something you have to eat as a whole, and be broadly brushed by. And I have a hunch that you either like that or you don’t, but I’d be hard pressed to suggest how you tell the difference. In a sense this makes the show perfect for the modern television viewer: you can go to the bathroom in the middle of the show and not really miss anything. You can even miss entire episodes or entire seasons, and not feel as though you’re being left behind.