WTF, SNL and the CMHC

WTF

Yesterday I was listening to Marc Maron’s WTF podcast of Saturday Night Live’s Lorne Michaels. Marc wanted to talk about himself and his devastating meeting with Michaels twenty years ago. For Maron, meeting Michaels was like meeting a demigod. Michaels remembers the meeting but not really, or just barely. (I think his staff coached him). For Michaels, meeting Maron was like ordering room service.

SNL

I mention it because we live our lives on a granular level. Everything is important, especially when we are young. What someone said, what someone did or didn’t do is a big deal. We don’t often enough step back and gain perspective. The big picture is what’s important. Michaels did not hire Maron because SNL was under fire and he could not risk hiring Maron. Michaels always plays to Middle America, he says in the interview. In the interview, they talked about how SNL is structured. There are different kinds of acts and different kinds of comedy. What is funny to some isn’t to others, but Lorne Michaels is always trying to appeal to the broadest audience possible, middle America again.

CMHC

At the CMHC’s conference yesterday, we learned that housing starts would fall next year from their near-record levels seen here in Waterloo in recent years. We learned that about 5,500 homes get sold in the region every year and that that is predicted to stay about the same. A lot of people are moving here. We learned what we already know; the retiring baby boomers are not suddenly going to move into 1,000 square foot high-rise condos. Nope. They are going to renovate and stay in their present homes. Millennials are going to stay at home longer too because they have been priced out of the market. The rest are going to continue buying condos and townhouses, which are a cheaper alternative to single detected homes.

This is the big picture.