Mayor Hazel and Rick Mercer

Mayor Hazel is the oldest mayor I know. She has been the mayor of Mississauga since the late seventies. Mississauga is the city to the west of Metropolitan Toronto while Scarborough is on the east side. Next Monday is the Toronto elections. Hazel McCallion is hoping to get reelected for mayor. In 2006, Hazel won 92% of the vote.

Rick Mercer is from the television program, Rick Mercer Report. He interviews Mayor Hazel on television on February 26, 2009. In 2009, Hazel McCallion was 88 years old. Watch her play hockey, go bowling and star in a music video. I think Rick Mercer and Mayor Hazel have a lot of fun together. Enjoy their time together.

Watch the video again. This is an interview, so Rick Mercer asks lots of questions. Here are some of the questions. Listen to Mayor Hazel's answers.

1. You have been elected two or three times?

2. How do you stay in office for 31 years?

3. Your debt is?

4. How many mayors have bobble heads?

5. Have you ever been injured? What happened to the truck?

6. Are you someone who doesn't campaign or someone who never stops campaigning?

7. What is this? (He is looking at a miniature city.)

8. Why haven't you retired?

9. What is your approval rating? (She talks about votes.)

10. Any regrets?

Lie to Me Game

If you have been following this blog, you know Lie to Me is a popular American TV show. Also, did you know Candians watch a lot of American TV? There are probably more American television stations than Canadian stations. Anyways, a game started on the internet where you can post three stories about yourself. One is a lie. Then the viewer is to guess what one of the three stories is untrue.


Can Canadians lie well? Let's watch Nadine from the west coast of Canada tell her three stories.




So, which one is the lie?

Now watch the next video. Stacey thinks she knows which story is untrue. Watch Stacey's video. She explains her answer. Do you agree with her answer?

Then Stacey tells her three stories. Which story is untrue?





Maybe you find it difficult to spot Nadine's lie and Stacey's lie. For more help, go to "How to Spot a Liar". See the related links below.


Related Posts:

• How to Spot Liars
  Lie to Me

The post, Lie to Me Game: The Update,will give you the correct answer. Which of Nadine's stories is untrue? Is it story number one, two or three?

Lie to Me

Lie to Me is an American TV program that started in January 2009. This show has returned this fall for a second TV season. On the show is a man who can read faces. He is able to read a person's emotions. Moreover, he is able to see if someone is lying or not. He is like a human lie detector test.

Watch this video. It is a promotion for Lie to Me. It's kind of fun! See if you can read the emotions on these faces. You may like to watch it more than once. If you look carefully, you will see white words beside each photo. There are words like surprise, excitement and disgust. Are you good at reading people's feelings? Are you good at reading people you know well? Strangers?

Music Monday: Feist

Many popular musicians and actors have performed on the American television show, Sesame Street. It's an educational children's series that has been a favourite for years. The puppets, called muppets, have educated more than one generation of kids. The Canadian singer, Feist, joined the muppets in their 39th season in 2008. She taught children to count and sang with the muppets. Feist sings her song, 1,2,3,4. She uses the same music, but changes the words a bit.




Feist is a Canadian singer-songwriter and was the big winner in 2008 at the Canadian Juno Awards. She won 5 awards including Song of the Year and Album of the Year. Feist's last album was The Reminder in 2007. Leslie Feist was born in 1976 in the one of maritime provinces, Nova Scotia. Both her parents are artists. She later moved west to Calgary and eventually to Toronto. Since the 90s, Feist has been recording pop rock and indie music. Indie music is alternative rock. Indie musicians like to be independent and don't want to create main stream or commercial music.*

Below is one of Feist's songs called My Moon My Man. Under the video is also the words. It is often hard to hear the words to songs, so I have included the lyrics. Songs have verses just like poems have verses. Like poems, the meaning of songs are not always clear. Just enjoy songs. Don't try to analyse every line. I think its a love song.

My moon, my man
So changeable and
Such a lovable lamb to me

My care, my coat
Leave on a high note
There's nowhere to go but on

Heart on my sleeve
Not where it should be
The song's out of key again

My moon's white face
What day and what phase
It's the calendar page again

Take it slow
Take it easy on me
And shed some light
Shed some light on me please
Take it slow
And shed some light
Shed some light on me please

My moon and me
Not as good as we've been
It's the dirtiest clean I know

My care, my coat
Leave on a high note
There's nowhere to go
There's nowhere to go

Take it slow
Take it easy on me
And shed some light
Shed some light on me please
Take it slow
And shed some light
Shed some light on me please

My moon my moon my man
My moon my moon my man
My moon my moon my man
My moon my moon my man



Feist has her own website. To listen to more of Feist's songs press here and then look for 'video' at the top of the page.


*Biography source: Wikipedia



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• Music Monday
• Music Monday: Disney Nature "Earth"
• Music Monday: Susan Boyle
• A Change is Gonna Come

Talk Show Tuesday: Oprah

A lot of people tuned in to watch The Oprah Winfrey Show last week. Oprah's topic was Twitter and her guest was the movie and T.V. star, Ashton Kutcher. Why Kutcher? He just got 1 million people to follow him by asking people to join his Twitter site, twitter.com/aplusk. Kutcher had a public competition with the News station, CNN. This T.V. station also reached 1 million, but Kutcher got there about a half an hour earlier. He became the first to have 1 million members!

Twitter is a free social network service on the Internet. Twitter just turned three years old on March 21st and has been growing like crazy. At the beginning of 2009, Twitter had 6 million followers and by the end of February, it had 10 million*. It has hit mainstream! I joined it, but at first I snubbed it. I didn't understand. How could people spend their time sending and reading one or two sentence messages? It's suppose to be at the moment and answer the question, "What are you doing?" But it's not that simple.

It's about sharing thoughts and ideas. Join famous people's sites like Ashton Kutcher or Oprah. Join up with ordinary people who share one of your interests such as photography or just living in Toronto. Look up professionals or companies related to your work. Join news sites, blog sites, music sites...... Don't forget your relatives and friends. They can join your site.

First, view Ashton Kutcher talking about wanting to get 1 million followers. Then the second video shows The Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah talks about Twitter and being a a new user of Twitter. Also, she interviews Ashton Kutcher.





My Twitter site for Real Canadian English is at the side of this page. Some of my entries or posts have links. If you press on the underlined words, you will go to more information.

To truly understand Twitter, you need to join and use Twitter for awhile. You need a user name and a password. The URL is http://twitter.com Not everyone likes it. If you do join, you might find these tips useful. Press here.


*source:comScore media Metrix, 2009



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Music Monday: Susan Boyle

Whose Susan Boyle? About a week ago, she was an unknown woman who lived in a village in Scotland. Then she came to the auditions for a popular British television show, Britains Got Talent, 2009. Susan was interviewed before the show. This is what she said.

My name is Susan Boyle. I'm nearly 48. Presently unemployed, but still looking. I'm going to sing on Britains Got Talent...I live alone with my cat, Pebbles.....Never been married. Never been kissed....Shame.

She's been singing since she was 12 and always wanted to perform in front of a large audience.

When you watch Ms. Boyle on T.V., be sure to observe the audience and judges body language before, during and after her performance. To go to Susan"s Boyle's performance, press here. Then come back. There's more.



Thank you Susan Boyle! You have warmed hearts and put a smile on so many faces. In the last week, millions of people from around the world have been wowed by her song. Here's a couple of sincere responses from ordinary people.






I'd like to leave you with one more video. This time you will see a family watching Susan's performance.(Sorry, it was disabled today.) It was the same in our house. Sharing the moment is a really positive experience. My son and husband shared it with me. Then I enjoyed sharing the video with my daughter and watching her reaction. Some people have said they cried. Others said the performance gave them goosebumps.

The song is "I Dream a Dream" from the musical, Les Miserables. The lyrics or the words for the song are under this last video. Susan said she would like to be as successful as the famous singer, Elaine Page. Here's Page's version. Which do you prefer? You can listen and follow the words if you like.

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used
And wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung
No wine untasted.

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
As they turn your dream to shame.

And still
I dream he'll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms
We cannot weather...

I had a dream my life would be
So different form this hell I'm living
so different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed
The dream I dreamed.

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Related Post:

• Music Monday

Talk Show Tuesday: Ellen Degeneres

Watching television is a great way to learn English. It trains your ear to listen to the faster paced English. It keeps vocabulary alive. Real conversations teach social conventions, slang and pronunciation.

Choose a talk show you enjoy.

Take a look on television and watch about three different talk shows. You can find them in the T.V. guide. Take a look at each and choose your favourite. That's the one you can watch regularly. Two or three times a week is good if you have the time.

But I don't understand?!

Give it some time. After about five or six times, you will get comfortable with your talk host. You'll start to understand her routine, her body language and her personality. Some students like to tape shows and watch them again.

I wish I could hear all the words.

No, you won't understand every word, but do you need to hear every word? I often half listen to people on T.V. and don't worry what I miss. Pick up clues from the body language as well. Be satisfied with parts of conversations. If you can laugh at the following talk show, then you enjoyed it and you were socially engaged in English.

I'm not learning.

Yes, you are. Communicating is not just words. It's understanding behaviour, predicting what will happen next and reading cultural clues. People are generally very social and polite on talk shows, so talk show hosts can be good role models.

Also, the guests are sometimes famous Americans. So the next time someone talks about that person, you won't be lost. You will know who they are, what they look like and little bit about them. Culture adds a lot of vocabulary to the English language.

Most important, talk show hosts find topics of interest and talk about current events. Some are able to find the unusual to perk our interests. Ellen Degeneres has a lot of fun with her Hawaii chairs. You'll enjoy it too.



Now, that makes me laugh! Ellen can be really funny:)

According to TV.com, the five most popular talk shows are:

1. The Tyra Banks Show
2. The Oprah Winfrey Show
3. The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
4. Friday Night with Jonathan Ross
5. The Ellen Degeneres Show

The American list should help you get started, but there are lots more. In Canada, you can catch some talk shows on CBC. Add a comment if you have found a talk show you enjoy. Others will appreciate your help. Do you know any of the top five talk shows?




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