Spice Girls 2020

Some Canadian night, in the years between 1996 and 1997, my family and I were watching Hockey Night in Canada when the transmission was punched through with a blinding burst of light and colour, sound and song and dance. In the middle of the hockey broadcast, a music video began to play.

Though nobody in our family knew it at the time, the band was the Spice Girls, and the song was Wannabe. I think the music video was being used to galvanize viewership during a lull or intermission, and would cut away to feature rock 'em-sock 'em hockey highlight images as a way to capture attention with an on-the-rise pop group.

Instead of capturing the attention of this two-channel-over-bunny-ears family, it was like having the signal scrambled. Chaos erupted. What's this? I imagine a parent rose to block the screen's content with their own physical form, though again, I can not confirm if that happened.

For me, back at Hockey Night, I didn't know what to make of it. A 10 or 11 year old Kevan saw it mo…