While I was out and about on Saturday before the concert, I managed to have my head on straight and took a couple of videos of the activity on Granville Street between Georgia and Robson. They're not awesome (I really need practice) but you get the idea of all the activity going on in this one block of the city. The energy is pretty awesome!

This is pretty funny. If you've been visiting for a short amount of time, you may not know that I'm a fan of "America's Next Top Model". I can't help myself. The cat-fights are priceless. But Tyra is being upstaged, this time by the BBC.

I was reading an article at AV in which they're discussing The BBC's new show "Britain's Missing Top Model" about models with physical disabilities - namely missing limbs. It's an odd sounding premise for a show and frankly, the video has me curious, if a little disturbed.

This would go nicely with Nick Stahl's new film Quid Pro Quo in which Stahl portrays a semi-paralyzed radio reporter who is sent out to investigate a story that leads him into an odd subculture. Check out the trailer to see for yourself what that odd subculture is:

We listen to 104.9 at the office and since I'm already here listening to it, I signed up for the Clear Rewards. They're currently running a special in conjunction with Science World's The Magic Behind the Music exhibit and every day, the station posts a tidbit of music trivia. Today's was "Who sings "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid?" Well, I've only seen that film hundreds of times so obviously, I knew that was Sebastian. From there, I headed right for YouTube to check out the great tune:

While there, I also recalled "Kiss the Girl", a song that made me all mushy when I was 11.


That's a great way to kill a little time.

I can't quite remember what I was looking for but I somehow ended up clicking around over at Amazon.ca and spotting a link to Sarah Brightman's new album "Symphony", I watched the little video they have posted and the first thing that came to mind is that Brightman looks a bit scary. How much plastic surgery has this woman had done?

This got me thinking of how it had been since I heard one of my favourite of Brightman' songs "Harem" from her 2004 album. I searched for that on YouTube, listened to it and then decided I also needed to find Dulce Pontes' "Canção Do Mar" which is heavily sampled in "Harem". All that work and you get to reap the benefits.

First up is Brightman's "Harem" and following that is Pontes'"Canção Do Mar". And have I mentioned how much I love/hate Amazon's "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" feature? Love it because I always find cool new stuff and hate it for that same reason.

Photo from Flickr care of Carlos Rojas.

If you're like me, banking is like German. I get the basics and compound interest and whatever else, none of it is really crystal clear. RRSP have always sounded like a bit of a confusing mess, especially when you listen to your parents talk about paying off debt before saving for the long term. This short clip from Canada's Citizen's Bank lays it out plain and simple. Check it out:

Thanks to Darren Barefoot for the link.

Unfortunately, it's not all that triumphant. The holidays came and went. The illness came and went as did the food, the sleep, the rest and the fun. I lived through another holiday, relatively unscathed and surprisingly debt free. It was a good, relaxing holiday and school's already started. Work has been trucking along nicely and the new website is going full swing. Essentially, life is pretty good right now.

It's been a pretty quiet day at the office so I've spent the last 20 minutes or so cruising YouTube. That's pretty dangerous all its own, I know but even more so now that I've kind of figured out how to properly search for stuff and navigate the masses of videos to find what I'm looking for. I'm feeling a little nostalgic today so I dug up a couple of pretty cool videos.

This first one is of one of my favorite fadistas, a woman I'm sure I've mentioned in the past - Mariza. This is a great video of one of my favorite songs "Barco Negro" (translates into "Black Boat") and she even explains the story before hand. Beautiful.

Watching this prompted a search for a version of "A Thousand Years" which appeared on the "Unity" CD which came out during the 2004 Olympic games and featured Sting and Mariza together. This is the only embeddable version of the song I could find but it's so fabulous, I had to include it - even with the crummy video that goes with it.