Flags Unlimited on Breakfast Television

This Friday is Flag Day! Make sure to tune in to Breakfast Television on Friday, February 15th between 6:00am and 9:00am. Kevin Frankish was with us Tuesday and we gave him a tour of the building and showed him how we make our flags! There's a very cool surprise that will take place as well during the show - so make sure you tune in!

Thanks to Kevin Frankish for being so kind and great to work with! For more information on Flag Day you can visit the Government of Canada website.

Also, take a few moments to head over to the Canadian Heritage website. It has all kinds of useful information about our flag and the history tied to it.

Super - Pancake - Tuesday

It's Tuesday, February the 5th, 2008 and it's Super - Pancake - Tuesday!

Today is a special day for two reasons. There may be more, but the biggest two reasons are:

1) Super Tuesday in the US. American Citizens have to vote on who they want to vote for a year and a half from now. Then, after they vote for who they want to vote for, they tally the votes for the votables and calculate who was voted votable in the next vote.

2) PANCAKES!!!
Since about the 1700s, and beginning in England, people made pancakes 47 days before easter. Who knows why - but the thing is - we get to eat pancakes! We had pancakes here at Flags Unlimited for lunch today. And I'll be having them again for dinner at home. I'd like to say thank you to both England and the 1700s for starting this fantastic tradition. There's rumblings that the British aren't as committed to Pancake Tuesday, and that the celebration may be dying off. I hope that isn't true. Save Pancake Tuesday, England!

Nobody's Perfect...

There are a lot of very happy people in New York City this morning. There are also a lot of happy people who (in my opinion foolishly) gambled on the underdogs to win. At the same time, literally millions of fans who wanted Captain America (Tom Brady) and his army to complete the perfect season are at their desks or workplaces this morning feeling a range of emotions, mostly sad ones.

Last night, in a largely defensive game, the New York Giants pulled off a major upset to stop the New England Patriot's bid at a perfect 19-0 season. The game had a low score, due largely to the fact that the Giant's defense was unbelievable at getting to Tom Brady.

There was one move that I absolutely loved by Osi Umenyiora, one of the defensive ends for the Giants. Right after Brady snapped the ball, Osi turned away from Brady and appeared to give chase to a Patriot receiver. The O-lineman who was paired with Umenyiora then left his assignment and moved out of the way. Instantly, Umenyiora pivoted 180 degrees and charged through an open hole in the pocket and sacked Tom Brady at full steam. Wow. I was impressed to say the least. Incidentally, as was revealed during the 7 hours of pre-game content, when his name is played in a game of Scrabble, Osi Umenyiora can be worth over 100 points!

On a quick side note: I'm considerably disappointed with the behavior of Bill Belichick who walked off the field when the game wasn't officially finished. With one second left on the game clock, the Patriot head coach ran onto the field to shake the hand of New York Skipper Tom Coughlin. Then a hoard of camera men, fans, and team officials stormed the field. The referees wouldn't allow the game to end like this with time still on the clock so they had to shuffle everyone off the field to play the remaining one second. Belichick then turned and left the field for his locker room before the official end of the game. It was in poor taste and showed that he was a poor sport.

Tom Petty played for the halftime show. I'm not a huge fan of Tom Petty. I might be a little young, but he's just one of those guys that has three or four songs that everyone knows and that's about it. He sounded good and all. Some people are suggesting he recorded his set earlier in a studio and lip synced his performance. I have to tell you, I have absolutely no problem with doing that. It would be pretty impossible to perform at a high standard with 100,000 people screaming and only 3 minutes to set up your entire stage. Overall, a good job by Mr. Petty.

Catherine Vaugh, our purchasing guru here at Flags Unlimited couldn't be happier with the results of last night's game. She was more than happy to come into work today to an office almost entirely full of Patriots fans. Congratulations to Catherine for sticking to her guns and proving us all wrong!

Lastly, perhaps one of the most exciting parts of the Super Bowl is always the commercials which companies pay as much as three million dollars for thirty seconds of air time during the most watched television program world-wide. Being in Canada, most of the ads were blocked and we saw CTV's promos for boring TV shows like Jericho and the Terminator TV show over and over again. We did manage to see a few funny ones up across the 49th parallel.

My winner was for E-trade.com with a little baby talking about how he regularly trades stocks online. The talking baby thing isn't unique at all, it's been done before, and I bet most critics will complain about just that fact. But this one made me laugh and I remembered it more than any other ad I saw. That's the point of advertising, isn't it? You can see all of the American commercials by searching on Google or simply see them all by clicking here.

Have a great day!