A few of my favourite things...

It's about that time. Season 3 is coming to a close and summer is here which means loads of fun in the sun and less time for things like blogging. With that in mind I decided to take a look back at the season and pick out some of my personal favourite moments, interviews and guests. There were many guests I was absolutely thrilled to see, many I found profoundly inspirational and some that surprised me. Going through the list of guests I discovered there were many more highlights than I expected. I'm not going to put links on everyone's names..mostly because I'm lazy.. partly because you can just go to The Hour's site and see them all there. As the man says.. limber up folks..

Favourite Interviews:
Billy Connolly - I don't know if there is a funnier person on the planet and the bit about the Scottish Presbyterians was spot on (speaking as a nonpracticing one myself)
Stephan Jones - one of the quotes that will always stick with me "religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell.. spirituality is for people who've alreayd been there"
Stephen Lewis - we should all follow this man's example
Tom Morello - surprised me

Favourite Guests:
Jim Cuddy - *sigh* that's all I'm sayin'
Jann Arden - SO funny
Michael Buble - love the dude
Sam Raimi
Ed Norton
Gene Simmons - ok so he hasn't aired yet and the best parts of this interview happened before the cameras were on and he was just himself and not in "character"
Gerard Butler - ladies.. his accent? need I really say more?
John Cusack - he's Cusack man.. what can you say?

Funniest & Favourite Moments:
During the James Cromwell interview.. the socks & the chairs (also one of my fave interviews)
Nile's lists - ok seriously CBC if you're listening (and I know you're not..lol) give the man his own day of the week.. Friday even during the best of shows.
Fainting goats
Track by Track with Noel.. the dinner/diner part
George very nearly losing his pants when about to tell the story of showering at the gym (it was funnier live)
Shaun Majumder's Best Story Ever
the piano playing (by the different guests and George too)
the Tragically Hip special
the Thought of the Day - almost every one has been awesome
I loved that February's Paris Hilton free month lasted the rest of the season

Most Inspirational Guests:
These people are truly amazing examples of humanity at its best and of overcoming absolutely anything. This is obviously not a complete list..
Muhammad Yunus
Erin Gruwell
Chris Gardner
Maggie Trudeau
Ishmael Beah

As much as all of these guests have touched me in some way, either through humour, emotion or intelligence, the best of Season 3 (and possibly all others) is June Callwood. The interview itself was a rare piece of journalism and June has no match. I'm not sure how many times I've watched it and I get something different from it each time. I've cried through it many times, I've laughed through it but mostly it's made me think.

I have a couple of wee suggestions for next year: #1 bring back the closer (this could be an entire blog post by itself), #2 the music for Portraits of Canadians.. ouch..

I very much enjoyed this season and can only think of one or two guests that truly set my teeth to grinding. Most were excellent. I hope to see more of Nile, Paul, Luce, Tim and Hilary next season. I'm quite certain I'm forgetting so many people I wanted to talk about but hopefully you'll all chime in with the parts you liked the best this year. I should really add that the best part of the show this year was discovering it in the first place, figuring out how to spell Stroumboulopoulos, seeing the show live several times and getting to hang out with some really awesome people (online and in person).