Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Loreena, Canada, and the weather

The weather here is rotten, again. Sleet last night, snow on top of it today, and below-freezing temps until Friday or so. Windchill tonight in the -10 (F) region. So, while I catch up on Zoom surveys, I will regale the Internet with the Tale of How I Discovered Loreena.

How I Discovered the Music of Loreena McKennitt: An Essay (of sorts)

Back in my younger days, in college, I was a big fan of a show called Highlander: The Series (something of a sequel to the Highlander movies starring Christopher Lambert). For the 4th season, the series opened with an awesome episode called "Homeland" which featured enough Scottish scenery to make me drool, on top of one of my favorite storylines. The episode featured a song called "Bonny Portmore" as part of the background music. It was a beautiful song, so I started trying to track it down. I never found the version used in the episode, but a friend in my dorm loaned me a CD called The Visit, by Loreena McKennitt, that had her version of the song. And that's how I became a Loreena fan. Later on, her songs were also used in various episodes of Due South and EZ Streets, which was an added bonus.

As far as Highlander, I was a fan until the last season, when things went soooo wrong. I'm still in denial over certain events that happened at the end. But Highlander may have been the beginning of my addiction to Canadian TV shows. I get a kick out of watching Canuck shows and spotting actors that I've seen in other series. While watching DaVinci's Inquest at lunch today, I saw Ian Tracey (who had a steady role in Fly By Night), as well as Ben Bass (Vachon in Forever Knight), I believe the actor who plays Cottle on Battlestar Galactica, and an actress who was a Tok'ra on Stargate for at least one episode. Plus, the actress who plays DaVinci's daughter (I believe) was one of the main characters on Firefly. It turns into a bizarre "Six Degrees of Canada" game, with bonus points if I recognize a location from our trip to Vancouver.

Thanks to a fussy-gus El Burrito, it's taken me 5 hours to finish writing this. So I'd better post it before I get sidetracked yet again.

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