Nomination for best headline of the year: From Cardigan to the Taliban. Appeared on the CBC Charlottetown website today.

I’ve just realized, both from reading their channel guide and by confirming with an operator, that if we upgrade to digital cable from regular “full meal deal” analog cable with Eastlink, we’ll actually save about $5.00 per month, and get more channels to boot. You’d think they’d make a bigger deal about this in their advertising.

In the spirit of this note from my Sask brother, a summary of my recent movie encounters:

• Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Heaven Can Wait, Down to Earth — Three movies all based on the same Harry Segall play. I’ve watched each of the three over the past month. Down to Earth is so bad as to be watchable the entire way through only by devoted fans of the genre, and even that was a stretch; it stinks. Heaven Can Wait, the 1978 Warren Beatty version, is the best of the three, mostly for the stellar cast (James Mason, Buck Henry, Charles Grodin, Dyan Cannon and Julie Christie among them). Here Comes Mr. Jordan is also well done, and an interesting watch for we fans of the Beatty film, as they are close in many details. So watch the first two, and leave off the last.

• Time Code — A weird movie with the screen split into four for the duration, shot in real time with four converging plots. If you are interested in seeing the experiment, get it on DVD, as there are some really neat options, including one which allows you to select which of the quadrants you hear audio from. Otherwise quite confusing, and a stretch to say its entertaining.

• American Buffalo — As a diehard David Mamet fan, I’m surprised I’d never seen this 1996 version of Mamet’s play. Stars Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz, who are both brilliant (slight edge goes to Hoffman). Classic Mamet-style dialogue. Classic Mamet-style plot.

• Hurly Burly — A pretentious and confusing movie starring Sean Penn, Robin Wright, Kevin Spacey, Gary Shandling and Chazz Palminteri. Excellent performance from Penn. Is Gary Shandling really an actor? Not sure about Palminteri. Too cerebral to be truly entertaining, but worth a watch.

• Sabrina — The modern one, with Han Solo in the lead. Worth watching again. Well constructed romantic comedy. Of course it’s missing Audrey Hepburn, for which you need to turn to the original.

• Groundhog Day — Ironically, given the plot, the movie can be watched time and time again, and wears very well. Bill Murray is under-rated. Andie Macdowell is not under-rated, but she performs well.

• The Gift — We rarely abandon movies, but Cate Blanchett chanelling Sissy Spacek, Keanu Reeves as an abusive drunk, Hilary Swank doing whatever she does and finally Katie Holmes. It was all enough to get us to stop the DVD and occupy ourselves with more interesting pursuits. Maybe it’s a good movie, but we’ll never know.

The Republic of Tea is a funny company. In their book The Republic of Tea, which details in letters the founding of the company, the company’s founders establish the conceit of the company’s organization — Minister of Leaves, Minister of Information, Minister of Health and so on — from which they do not appear to have departed since. You have to give them credit for committment if not for goofiness.

That said, they do sell damn good tea. As I write this, I am sipping a cup of their Earl Greyer Decaf which is about the best Earl Grey from a bag I’ve ever found.

You used to be able to buy their unique canisters of tea at the Second Cup in Charlottetown before the local franchisee opted out of the chain and became the oddly named Crema Coffee. Now the closest you can come, I think, is the Barnes & Noble in Augusta, ME or possibly the Borders in Bangor. Or you can request a catalogue and order by mail. You will be happy you did.

Scholastic, says the company’s website “is a $2 billion multimedia company with 10,000 employees operating globally in education, entertainment and publishing businesses marketing to children, parents and teachers.”

When I was in elementary school there was some sort of program whereby we students could acquire various Scholastic books through the school (the website calls this the “company’s unique school and community-based distribution channels”). I guess I’d always assumed that Scholastic was some sort of benevolent society, like The Gideons; I never imagined it had more in common with Random House than the United Way.

I know all this now because wee Oliver and I have become fans of Clifford the Big Red Dog, which airs every day on PBS. That I can abide watching this show every day amazes me. Not because of the show itself, which is actually quite interesting. But because Clifford is voiced by John Ritter for whom I have latent ill feelings after watching endless episodes of Three’s Company. To say nothing of his day-glo condom antics in the 1989 movie Skin Deep. Oliver, of course, has no such hang-ups.

Which brings me to the issues of SRA Tests. Does anybody else remember these? These tests first appeared in grade 7 or 8, I think, and were a series of brightly-coloured cards that came in a special box. In my faded memory each card contained some sort of MENSA-like brain test. SRA stood for Science Research Associates and, again, I always assumed this was some sort of educational organization attached to the CIA or the Pentagon. It turns out that SRA is “is a division of McGraw-Hill Education, the largest pre-K through 12 educational publisher in the nation, and a unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies.”

I was only partially wrong: SRA used to be owned by IBM and their instructional model, the “Distar System” was “the only instructional model that the federal government tested in a $500-million, nine-year project that produced significant overall gains in basic skills, cognitive areas and self-concept.” I think the SRA products I remember are still around as Performance Based Assessment Tasks.

The next thing you know I’m going to discover that Nestle, who sponsored the large wall maps in the classrooms of my youth, is a profit-making corporation.

After a four month absence from the web, the oft-distracted Catherine Hennessey is back writing on her website.

Remind me again my we choose to live in a place where it is cold, snowy and wet for 5 months of the year….

Here’s what appears on the botton of the CBC Charlottetown home page:

What I am wondering is: couldn’t all come to some general consensus that we’re all not responsible for the contents of the sites we link to. I mean, doesn’t this just make common sense? Who would assume that if the CBC links to www.Evil.com that the CBC has come out in favour of evil?

And, while we’re at it, can we also come to an agreement that if coats and other personal belongings hung on a restaurant coat rack are stolen, it’s not the restaurant’s fault?

And that you can’t park in somebody’s driveway unless they have a sign that says “it’s okay to park here?”

We might put some sign painters out of work, but we would relieve the world of a lot of visual pollution.