NAFTA Please: 2008 in Review

You know you're getting old when the coolest band in your hometown is led by your friend's kid. True, Marshall Burns of Rah Rah's dad Mike is, like, way older than me. And y'know what? I'm fine with being old, cuz I was young long enough.

I try to think of Regina with nothing but affection, but sometimes I can't shake the feeling that it really is the cultural wasteland it pretends to be sometimes. Putting aside the question of whether or not there was any real merit to spending $18-million so that a handful of privileged kids could vie for glory while a dozen or so blocks away hundreds of kids live in abominable squalor, the most annoying thing about the Big Dig was the unimaginative and tiresome name. Nobody asked, in commemoration of the Big Dig's fifth anniversary, here are five better names for the megaproject:

5. The Excavation Proclamation
4. Shakes on the Plain
3. The Behemoth Burrow
2. The Fiacco-Goodale Canal
1. The Tunnels of Moose Jaw

As easy as it is to laugh at Regina from afar, there's no denying the musical renaissance underway right now led by Rah Rah and the Polymaths and who knows who else?! Rah Rah released their debut long-player in 2008 called Going Steady. It's a heady mix of pop, politics and pah-rump-a-pah-pum-pum hapless romance and it's worth mentioning again.

mp3: "F--- NAFTA" by Rah Rah