No, I have not forgotten Dobie Gillis, Amos! True, we had no TV at the time, but I heard about Dobie Gillis and Maynard G. Krebs constantly from my American schoolmates in New York State, and I assume that people in Canada were, like, watching them too, eh? Yes....I know that those guys used the word "like" a lot. I think, actually, that the overuse of the word "like" to grease the wheels and cogs of 'cool' conversation really took off in the, like, Beatnik era of the 1950s. It was, like, the way to talk if you were, like, part of the coffeehouse crowd and the cool cats who, like, hung around the poetry readings and the abstract art gallerys. Then it, like, migrated to the hippies. Then it, like, migrated to the Valley Girls. Then it, like, spread everywhere sort like a, like, plague, you know?

Gawd. Sometimes Shane McBride almost starts to seem intelligent when I compare his monologues to those I hear the young Paris Hilton-wannabbe girls engaging in at the mall here. Holy flippin' vapidity, Batman!!!!!!!!

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Peter, I must say that I find your gloomy and pessimistic attitude about Canada's rapid slide into cultural pablum to be quite overwrought and unhelpful.

Good God, man! We have Don Cherry and his dog! Match that, America! Match that, Europe and Asia! You can't and you know it. As long as Don Cherry is here to represent Canada we can all hold our heads high, knowing that WE ARE CANADIAN, EH?

And if that fails....we drop the BIG ONE.

You know what I mean by that, don't you?

Worldwide Shatnerization.