Kyra Sedgwick picked up a Golden Globe a couple of weeks ago for her performance as Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson in The Closer. I expect her to also win an Emmy later this year.

W Network is showing the series starting from the beginning, which gave me the excuse to write about it in this week’s Channel Changer.

Had a great chat with Owen Pallett, the violinist who performs complex pop music infused with orchestral arrangements under the name Final Fantasy. Pallett won the first-ever Polaris Music Prize last year, for the best Canadian album based on artistic merit.

Pallett was a dark horse, as he was shortlisted with the likes of Broken Social Scene, Cadence Weapon, the Deadly Snakes, Sarah Harmer, K’naan, Malajube, Metric, The New Pornographers, and Wolf Parade.

I first heard Final Fantasy while listening to the excellent CBC Radio 3 podcast hosted by Grant Lawrence.

The fact that Pallett named his band after the video-game, Final Fantasy, gave me the excuse I needed to combine my love of video-games and Canadian independent music into a column. Catch my conversation with Pallett in this week’s Trigger Happy column, over here.

Also in this week’s Georgia Straight are my capsule reviews of Viva Pinata and Tony Hawk’s Project 8.

Since the announcement last week of The Police reunion, I’ve been bingeing on their music. As I’m sure half the western world is.

The thought of seeing the Police live is exciting for me. I came to the band later than some, because I had no formative influence to introduce me to pop music. I’m an oldest child, and my parents, bless them, listened to John Denver and Nana Mouskouri.

It was Synchronicity that broke into my consciousness. I was in grade 10 and was filled not only with the energy of the music, but more importantly the clarity of Sting’s lyrics.

Even then I was into words more than anything. A few weeks ago I found an essay I wrote for grade 11 English analyzing the lyric to “King of Pain.” I thought I was a genius, coming up with the idea that pop music was contemporary poetry.

Synchronicity led me to the band’s back catalogue, but I barely remember what song comes from what album anymore. Since I got rid of those cassettes, I don’t listen to the actual albums, I listen to the music in the order of the box set, Message in a Box: The Complete Recordings (which came from cousin T, and is one of the best Christmas gifts I’ve ever received).

The Police have been on everyone’s mind lately, because of the media attention surrounding the rumours – now confirmed – that they have been in Vancouver, rehearsing at North Shore Studios.

In his office the other day, J mentioned that there was one Police song that was the soundtrack to every nightmare he experienced as a child, and that to this day even the name of the song filled him with dread. I got him to admit that the song was from Zenyatta Mondatta, but he wouldn’t go further than that.

The thing about a band such as the Police is that their voice – their sound and tone – is so strong, that even thinking about one of their songs can trigger a cascade of their music in my mind. So while I haven’t actively listened to “Bombs Away” very much, just hearing “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” can trigger the former into play-and-repeat on the internal soundtrack.

I suspect that “Bombs Away” is the song that J can’t hear, at the risk of flashbacks to childhood trauma. While I’ve never found the song to be troubling or depressing, it is about armageddon. It’s the kind of song that would scare a youngster in the ’80s when all any of us could think about was the coming nuclear disaster.

Am I the only one that wasn’t surprised that Grossman was a liability for the Bears? Surely not.

The CBC has a hit on its hands with Little Mosque on the Prairie. While I do believe it will be highly regarded, though, I can’t see it having the tenure of, say, Beachcombers. But for what it is – a humerous take at the quirky, hyphenated existence that is reality for so many Canadians – this is a fun, entertaining program.

And the cast, great talents all, are charming enough to make you look right past the often clunky script.

More of my opinion on this in the latest edition of Channel Changer.