Oh Canada, our home and native land...

Canada has given us many delights throughout time. Mounties. Jim Carey. Hockey. A freaky kind of bacon. Free trade. And of course, Degrassi High.

This past weekend I went home for a family barbecue and Father's Day and in the midst of a very enjoyable time I developed a bit if an obsession with a new version of this show. Late Saturday night, I found myself on the living room couch unable to sleep. Luckily my parents recently purchased a 50" television that takes up most of the room- so much in fact it's all I can do not to climb into the picture. Growing up, my parents would never let me sit too close to the screen, but now that the screen is too close even if I am watching from the third floor, it only confirms my suspicions that their concern for my underdeveloped eyesight was actually concern for their unobscured line-of-sight.

Like all Americans in the grip of insomnia, I turned on what can only accurately referred to as the television appliance and began to flip. I watched some very unfunny Saturday Night Live and forced myself not to purchase fat lady clothes from Denim and Co. featured on QVC (they make everything seems so tempting). Finally I came across The-N, a cable channel for young teenagers and their thoughts and opinions. The reason I stopped? Degrassi: The Next Generation.

When I was growing up I from time to time I would watch Degrassi Junior High and later Degrassi High, a Canadian produced soap opera set in a Toronto school system, on PBS. Now a whole new generation of students are dating and partying at Degrassi and I found myself just as engrossed as ever. A little smarter and prettier, these kids are definitely of a different generation. I watched as Emma and her step-father dealt with his cancer, and her boyfriend Sean fell in with "the wrong crowd." I sat riveted as Marco was gay-bashed in the park and his friend Spinner refused to deal with the revelation about his sexuality. Meanwhile they all formed a garage band!

It was captivating. It was nostalgic. It was a FOUR HOUR MARATHON. And I watched it all, though I missed the extremely rough production values of the original series. I blamed my possesion on the sleep deprivation and the complete absence of any intelligent entertainment at that hour. But in the days since, I have had this nagging need to find out if Emma and Sean could pull through or if Spin and Marco could repair their broken friendship. I suppose watching four hours straight of anything would leave an impression, but I've been searching websites today trying to find out what happens to these characters. It would seem that there are about 20 some-odd characters on this show so their stories don't progress as fast as one would like. Normally I would keep this newfound teenybopper obsession to myself, but this show's Canadian, so I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that it's okay for a 23 year old man to be checking out the latest "Saved by Dawson's 90210" copycat now and then. We all have our guilty pleasures. I try to embrace mine as much as possible, since being Catholic, I have enough guilt in my life. Now when do this show come out on Dvd?