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THE VANCOUVER COURIER WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2013
arts&entertainment
Living off the gridiron KUDOS& KVETCHES
sight so traumatizing we vowed never to watch again. It’s not as if the good parts aren’t all available online shortly afterward, anyway.
L
ast Sunday, as most of you probably know, was Super Bowl XLVII and the fairweather sports enthusiasts of K&K once again continued our annual tradition of not bothering to watch. It’s not just our innate aversion to large Roman numerals or grotesque American consumerism. While we can appreciate the spectacle value of juiced-up millionaires doing their best to injure each other and invoking the Good Lord’s name while doing it, we just don’t see the appeal of a game with so much stoppage in play that the constant commercial breaks are considered the actual highlight. It seems even stranger that an estimated eight million Canadians tuned in to the event given those crowd-pleasing new ads, which cost around $4 million a pop, weren’t even available north of the border. So instead of, say, watching an Israeli supermodel French kiss a chubby nerd for GoDaddy.com, Oprah Winfrey salute the troops on behalf of Chrysler or a PR disaster unfold in real time with Volkswagen’s inexplicable decision to launch Black History Month by making a white actor imitate Jamaicans, Vancouver viewers were instead treated to the usual CTV ads such as Cenovus extolling the virtues of Alberta’s oil sands, B.C. Liberals attack ads and repeated promos for the network’s locally shot new cop show Motive. The last Super Bowl we actually sat through start to finish was 12 years ago when, oddly enough, alleged non-murderer Ray Lewis again led the Baltimore Ravens to football’s Holy Land. The half-time show featured sinewy senior Steven Tyler of Aerosmith dirty dancing with a thenteenaged Britney Spears while butchering the classic song “Walk This Way.” It was a
LAYAR IS IN THE HOUSE If you’ve ever wanted a more intimate and interactive experience with K&K — only without the potential shame of your friends spotting you or the risk of getting stuck with a hefty bar tab — there’s now an app for that. The Courier is rolling out a new app called Layar that is a bit like adding hyperlinks onto the actual pages. After downloading the free app at layar.com, simply point your smartphone or tricorder at anything with the Layar icon attached to it and you’ll instantly be able to do such things as watch online videos, like us on Facebook or see reporters’ Twitter feeds and Plenty of Fish profiles. While things are still in the beta phase, we are excited about the creative possibilities and are looking forward to the day when the technology advances so that a crack about our youth spent on the mean streets of Nanaimo might transport readers to the city’s often hilarious police blotter itself, or a joke at city council’s expense could perhaps lead to a streaming in camera council meeting of them bickering with each other in real time. An offhand reference to the ’80s sci-fi cult classic TRON (or its recent sequel) might someday even be able to whisk readers off to a digital grid-world where they will be forced into gladiatorial combat involving ridiculous glowing outfits, nifty motorcycles and deadly exploding Frisbees. Just like Nanaimo in the ’80s. At the very least, we’re hoping that uploading an MP3 laugh track might fool some people into thinking our jokes here are funnier than they actually are. k&k@vancourier.com twitter.com/kudoskvetches
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