Avoiding the Conversation

It's not often that I avoid the conversation, but in the case of The Soprano's series finale (don't worry...no spoilers HERE) this was exactly the case.

I flew out to Toronto on Sunday and thought I'd be able to watch the finale later that night.

Turns out however, that HBO is not available in Canada. Huh? WTF? It takes me less time to fly from LGA to Toronto than it does for me to fly to Chicago and yet no HBO?

So now I have a challenge....try and wait it out until Tuesday evening and watch the finale back at home, thanks to my TiVo and the joys of time-shifting.

The challenge begins...

1. No newspapers. Not much of a problem there. I don't read newspapers anymore, except ironically on the road. In any event, I did not receive the newspaper this morning in my hotel room in Deerhust.
2. No radio. Again, no problem there as I don't listen to the radio anymore either, unless of course if you're counting Sirius or a selection of ESPN podcasts (which are delayed by a day anyway)
3. No TV. A trickier task as commercial-avoiding-channel-surfing can often lead to spoiler flashes. This is what happened to me last year with the World Series of Poker. Turns out that watching Canadian-flavored Sportcenter, interspersed with Supernanny (She IS good)
4. No websites. Difficult. Certainly avoided all blogs and podcasts and with the exception of checking sports scores, online was in fact offline.
5. No Twitter. I'm shaking now with classic withdrawal symptoms. Pretty sure this was a safe (but painful) bet...
6. No word-of-mouth. Yeah, right! Not too much of a challenge given the fact I was at an NFL Canada event in Deerhurst (about 150 miles outside of Toronto) and talking about more important things like New Marketing, Experimentation and Marketing Transformation.
7. No e-mail. Impossible! Nevertheless, I found a solution: I removed the "preview message" pane on my Outlook window and then shortened the subject header to remove any unnecessary headlines. Turns out this was a good move as several messages and threads (one from an e-mail group called The OldTimers List) came in with the phrase, "Soprano's" in the header.
8. No Blackberry mails. Not a problem as the subject header already comes cropped.

So here I am....about to find out if Tony Soprano got whacked or not (I'm going to say...NOT)and I guess I made it through my detox period after all. The world is still turning (I think) and life goes on.

My learnings?

• Firstly that "The Sopranos event" wasn't as big a deal as I thought. Not one person I spoke with from the US brought it up with me in our conversations. Makes you wonder about how much "hype" is artificially created through the newspaper, magazine (e.g. People) and TV (Talk shows, variety etc) machine.

• Secondly, the most active conversation (which almost ruined my surprise) was the human one, NOT the media one.

• Thirdly, I can in fact live "unplugged" although I still will choose not to.

• Finally, I need Slingbox. 

It's 7 1/2 hours later than scheduled due to what is now normal delays at LGA. It's 11.30pm, so should I throw in the towel and go to sleep? Fuggeddaboutit! I'm watching! Good luck Tony...I'm rooting for you (I think)