Cove Cliff: the Ballad of Sean Hosein

There is a man named Sean Hosein who works behind the scenes in the music industry, penning hits, mixing tracks and generally manning the ones and twos. His illustrious career includes a string of notable compositions, and he has written music for and worked with artists like 98 Degrees, Jessica Simpson, Color Me Badd, Stacie Orrico, All for One, M2M, The Corrs, Kelly Rowland, Amy Grant, and everyone's favourite actual-one-hit-wonder-boy-band-from-a-reality-show, O-Town. I also have it on good authority that he wrote the commercial jingle for the United Buy & Sell Furniture Warehouse, which any person on the Canadian westcoast or the Pacific Northwest could sing for you without hesitation.

However, there is one group he worked with that is strangely absent from his musical resumé, a group that I have a very close connection to, and a group that he would maybe rather forget.

Sean Hosein wrote the theme song for my elementary school.

My early alma mater, Cove Cliff Elementary, apparently needed a song for the children and faculty to rally around and proudly sing together, and the principal at the time, Lois Hosein, chose her son to get it done.

It was a stirring ballad, a powerful anthem, and a moving tribute to a school. It was also recorded by a local chanteuse and put onto two tapes, one vocal and one instrumental. Legend has it that when the music teacher was fired from her job, she took the instrumental version along with her. Thus, we now have all too clear memories of awkward children, standing in an assembly, singing along with a pre-recorded and overdone vocal performance.

The one benefit to this repetitive and educationally enforced singing was that I still know the song, word for word and off by heart, to this very day. So without further adieu, I present to you, the aptly titled "Cove Cliff Song".

There's a place, that I keep in my heart,
For things that are special to me.
There's a voice, when we all sing along,
A voice that will carry to the top of the trees.

We are sharing, with each other.
We are learning that we all can belong.
We will care for, one another.
Together we're going to be the best we can be.

Oh Cove Cliff.
Cove Cliff.
We'll sing to the mountains,
And out to the sea.
Oh Cove Cliff.
Cove Cliff.
Together the best we can be.

There's a place, that I keep in my heart,
For things that are special to me.

For things that are special,
To me.

You can check out more of Sean's work at his company's website, and if anyone can get me a copy of the actual song, I will personally mail them a cheque for five dollars.

T yra Mail

After 6 seasons of America's Next Top Model, am I the only one still annoyed at the lack of kerning in the Tyra Mail? Or am I the only graphic designerd who still watches America's Next Top Model?

I could maybe understand if they had quickly typed this out for the first season (or cycle, as it were), but it's been 3 years now and it consistently gets camera time. You could load the entire cast into their stretch SUV and drive right between that T and Y.

More like America's Next Typographical Mistake.

Clint Eastwood in the Bathroom

Every time I use the bathroom at work, he is there. He escaped from Alcatraz, crossed the Bridges of Madison County, and now Dirty Harry is on the floor of Opacity's washroom.

It's a true crime that no one else knows about it here at the office, but I'm sure that if a rookie like me told the guys in absolute power, then a joke like that would go unforgiven for years. Maybe I should remove the tile myself and sell it on eBay for a million dollar, baby.

If you're standing up and in the line of fire, his face is not visible, but when you sit down it's pretty hard for him to rawhide from view. Tell me you can't miss that familiar face in this full view from the perspective of someone sitting on the toilet. If not, he's even harder to mystic river in this close up.

After over 3 years of working here, you might say that he "makes my day" every day. You might also say midnight in the garden of good and evil.

Or space cowboys.

Archie McPhee and YOU

Without exaggeration, Archie McPhee is the greatest store in the entire world. They sell all sorts of stuff, including the Tiny Fez seen here on my creepy baby doll that kinda resembles Andy Richter.

In my daily life, I don't know how I could get by without spending some time with my Jesus Action Figure, or sitting down on the couch and watching some good Dogs on Television, or even having a lively conversation with my pair of Fighting Nuns, which upon further investigation are actually old Margaret Thatcher dolls dressed in habits. However, the point remains that I am not only the president of the Loving Archie McPhee fan club, I'm also a toy-carrying member.

Coincidentally, the company has announced a contest where anyone who blogs about them will be entered to win a $100 gift certificate to their store. If I win, I promise that any one of my readers who writes in the comments of this post will get up to $5 to spend on whatever the heck they want, until I run out of money and providing that either they live in the Greater Vancouver area and I can drop it off at their home, or that they don't mind paying the shipping themselves. Although I actually love the store and would post about them anyway, I want to make sure that if I'm going to run a big 'ol ad for them that you, the reader, profits as well. It's just a token of my appreciation for reading over 8 wonderfully wordy and highly irreverent posts so far.

So what will it be, the classic Rubber Chicken or some neato Nerd Glasses? Perhaps you've always wanted a pair of Windup Hopping Lederhosen, or after looking at this 2-for-1 deal you could use an Internet Urinal? Trust me, any store that has categories like Hula, Cowboy, Unicorns & Ninjas, Office Supplies, and Bacon/Meat is worth your time.

So without further adieu, and slightly shamelessly, I present to you:

CANstruction: Ladies & Gentlemen...

Sunday! Sunday! SUNDAY! And also the rest of this week! Come on down to Vancouver's Canada Place to experience MONSTER MADNESS as you witness a MONSTER TRUCK ON A MISSION TO CRUSH HUNGER! Custom built with over 7200 CANS OF POWER and more than 2000 POUNDS OF TORQUE, it's a gut-twisting, heart-pumping, BATTLE ROYALE where only one CANstruction competitor will emerge with HONOURABLE MENTION! Hurry and see it BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE! Or click on the pictures to see them BIGGER AND BETTER THAN EVER! You pay for the whole seat, but you'll only use THE EDGE!

CANstruction Vancouver: CAN We Do It Again?

The annual CANstruction Vancouver event is on, and this year Team Richmond is back at it again and bigger than ever. Since I've been on the team, we've built a giant British Columbia Spirit Bear primarily out of tuna cans, and a 10-foot, free-standing, 50th anniversary-celebrating Gumby & Pokey made out of gum-beans and pork-ey. A bunch of teams from all over Vancouver compete, and after being displayed downtown at Canada Place for the week, all the food eventually goes to the food bank. So if you are looking for a neat event and live in the Greater Vancouver area, come on down with a food donation and you'll get in for free.

As for what we'll be building, I'm not at liberty to say, but a recent Personal Project I did might give you a clue.

We "Lost" the Font

The show Lost has a great opening sequence where the title comes drifting out of foggy blackness, spinning slightly as it moves towards the viewer before blurring and fading away as mysteriously as it came. It does an awesome job of setting the tone for the rest of the show without cheezy credits, a theme by the Rembrandts, or shots of people doing something unconvincingly and turning towards the camera and smiling.

However, at the height of each week's inevitable cliffhanger, this logo here inexplicably appears with a final BOOM, and suddenly it is all over. After a "you-have-to-watch-the-rest-of-the-show-now" C.S.I. style start, that moody 3D spinning opening, 44 minutes of uninterruptedted mystery, flashbacks, and pretty people trying to figure out their collective destiny, we get blown away by an ugly font.

I'm not kidding, whenever I'm caught up in a good episode – BOOM – I jump up out of my seat. From those weird letterforms to the slight slant of a semi-serif in the "S" and from the badly-rendered Photoshop bevel & emboss effect to the fact that they just could have used the same cool font from the start, it gets me every time.

We've discovered what was in the hatch, we've met many of "the others", we've even kind of seen what the monster looks like; now I think it's time we figured out the mystery of the ugly font from the ending of Lost!