Sunday Music | Tracy Chapman | 1988 |
Most Auspicious Début

Arriving with little fanfare in the spring of 1988, Tracy Chapman’s eponymous début album emerged as one of the most important and top-selling records of the late 1980s, providing a touchstone for an entire progressive movement of change, while reviving the singer / songwriter tradition.

As with most promising singer-songwriters, comparisons are prone to discussion, and Tracy Chapman’s début garnered mass amounts of media attention.

Of course, Joan Armatrading’s name is frequently mentioned (Tracy Chapman, however, shares little more than race and gender). Her vocal delivery is reminiscent of Joni Mitchell’s folk period; her sensitivity parallels that of Suzanne Vega. Yet Tracy Chapman is not quite so detached from her listener as these influential forebearers were and are (even today).


Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs playing to a rapturous audience at the 2024 Grammy Awards

Tracy Chapman is a fascinating storyteller, her world unlittered by pretense or façade. Consequently, much of the journey often overwhelms with sheer fidelity.

On June 11th 1988, a concert was held for Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday who was still imprisoned at the time for his anti-apartheid beliefs and activism.

Tracy Chapman, a largely unknown artist who had just released an album, and prior to playing on the stage at Wembley Stadium had played only clubs holding no more than 40 patrons, or as a street musician had performed in front of crowds of no more than 200 hundred, was asked to play Wembley as a “fill in” artist.

Stevie Wonder was scheduled to perform, too, despite not being officially announced, with the Superstition superstar arriving in London early in the morning of the concert. Heading straight to Wembley Stadium after his plane landed, his band were already rehearsing for his set which was due to take place after UB40 had finished their set. But disaster struck, with Stevie refusing to come on stage, leaving the organizers in panic — Wonder realized a crucial piece of his equipment was missing as he walked up the ramp to take the stage.

Although Tracy Chapman had already performed a brief set earlier in the day to a relatively sparse audience, with concert organizers pleading with her to fill the gap left by Stevie Wonder’s absence, a legend was born.

Behind the Wall was the second of what was supposed to be a three-song set.

As the legend goes, serendipity gave the world another glimpse of this commanding artist when Stevie Wonder’s team took their time to ready the stage for his concert, extending Chapman’s set to include almost the entirety of her début album.

With the crew setting up behind her for Stevie Wonder, alone on the massive stage at Wembley Stadium, guitar in hand, she allowed the echoing mic and the screaming of the initially inattentive crowd to amplify the quiet of the song. At first, a little insecure on the biggest stage of her career, as she sang with magnetic calm she built an atmosphere as intimate as each listener’s childhood bedroom, by the end of her first song, Fast Car, the entire crowd was listening in rapt attention.

The low verses mix bleak recognition with quiet hope before building to a chorus so wistful, so joyfully tender it can transport you to a time in your life when you were younger and maybe a little less scared. Most of the people watching her performance at Wembley did not arrive knowing Chapman’s power, and most likely had never heard of her before. But they experienced in real time her ability to lift hearts into people’s throats. She performed her songs the same way she had on the streets for years: alone and brilliantly exposed.

Not only was the Wembley crowd gobsmacked with Tracy Chapman’s performance — with the noisy crowd quietened by Chapman’s compelling presence on stage, and the strength of the songs she played — but playing two sets on the day offered her far more exposure, with an estimated global audience of 600 million for her second performance watching the concert on their televisions at home.

Over the years, we’ve witnessed the worst this world can throw our way, Chapman suggests on her début, at times through her working-class characters. But her music creates a world where no force exists without a counter. The worst of what we’ve endured, she also offers, makes righteous justice inevitable. It’s a worldview that many could appreciate.

By the end of the summer of 1988, a few months after the Nelson Mandela tribute, Tracy Chapman had a platinum selling album, and the singer was a major star.

Before the Wembley Stadium concert, Chapman had sold roughly 250,000 albums. In the two weeks following her performances, she had sold over two million.

In 1989 at that year’s Grammy Awards, Tracy Chapman won Best New Artist, Best Contemporary Folk Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and had been nominated — and perhaps should have won — for Album of the Year and Record of the Year for Fast Car, which was nominated as Song of the Year, as well.

In time, Tracy Chapman added a backup band. By then, however, Tracy Chapman was on her way to becoming a global phenomenon. The rest is history.


The wondrous Tracy Chapman and Eric ‘slow hand’ Clapton, 1999, performing Give Me One Reason

Stories of a Life | Redux |
A Mexican Adventure

Simon Fraser University in the 1970s

I loved university. In the 1970s, I loved attending classes at Simon Fraser University, talking hours on end with classmates sharing obscure insights into arcane literature, or why anarchism is the most humanist political philosophy, or spending hours in the library, or finding some quiet corner to type out the dozens of essays that were due each semester.

I was so curious about the world around me, so committed to learning everything I could on any given subject presented to me by my various approachable and erudite professors and radicalized teaching assistants, in the books I was reading or from folks in the pub at whatever stage of their university career, who over a beer would good-naturedly engage with me in philosophical arguments, whatever the topic of the moment.


Louis Riel House family student residence at Simon Fraser University on Burnaby Mountain, circa 1972

Attending classes and living at Louis Riel House — sometimes not leaving Burnaby Mountain for months on end — attending Simon Fraser University was for me the happiest and most rewarding time of my life.

Not so much for Cathy, my long-suffering wife.

Cathy made no secret of the fact that she wanted to get away, to explore new lands, to be adventurous and anonymous thousands of miles away.

In February 1972, I was enrolled in my 5th consecutive semester at SFU, having identified my areas of interest for my studies — political science, sociology and anthropology, part of SFU’s radical PSA department — as well as English literature.

Much to my astonishment, I was achieving straight A’s in school, my grade point average past my first year 4.0, and in this fifth semester I was on a roll, most of my course work completed by early February, as I prepared to ready myself with the reward of five more A’s, bursaries and scholarships, and further down the academic road enrollment in a Master’s programme.

Arriving home mid-afternoon Tuesday, February 8th, 1972, opening the door and walking into our student apartment, Cathy standing in the living room, rather than approaching me to give me a kiss, she stood stock still, looking down, then looking up and directly at me, and said,

We’re leaving for Mexico next Monday, for two months.

Get your head around it.”

Cathy and I traveling along the Oregon coast on our way to Los Angeles, and then Mexico
Cathy and I traveling along the Oregon coast, headed to California, and then Mexico

I knew there was no arguing with her about her dictum. Cathy had sacrificed so much for me that it was quite clear: it was her turn now.

The next Monday morning we jumped into our 1970 Datsun 510 — a wedding gift from her mother. Hours later we found ourselves barrelling down the coast of Oregon heading towards Los Angeles, where arrangements had been made to stay with our friend, Bachi — with whom I had attended almost all my classes my first four semesters, and who was my best friend, Manuel Vittorio Esquivel, handsome, swarthy, adventuresome, and the best friend anyone could wish for.


While in Los Angeles, Cathy  and I listened to KRLA, southern California’s rock ‘n roll giant

Cathy didn’t like driving, so I drove the entire 1500 miles (I love driving!) to our L.A. destination, arriving two days after we’d left our Burnaby Mountain home, as we found our way to the Chicano area of Los Angeles, a Latino and Latina East L.A. of boom boxes and low-riders, a vibrant Mexican community with which we fell in love, as we did Bachi’s mother’s cooking — eating mole chicken and lime-cilantro rice for the first time while consuming gallons of fresh-squeezed orange juice available at farmer’s markets in two quart containers, for only a dollar, driving along the freeways in the jasmine-scented night air, KRLA radio at full volume blasting into the warm night air, free and in love, and enjoying the time of our young lives.

Santa Monica, California
The sunny open air shopping mall located in wealthy, beach-fronted Santa Monica

All was not perfect, though.

One afternoon while awaiting dinner and sitting in the living room, Bachi’s 18-year-old sister, Maria — one of the most beautiful and self-possessed young women I’d ever met, who was enrolled in her second semester at a nearby college, and who worked as a sales clerk at a department store in a mall in the wealthy Santa Monica neighbourhood to help pay for her tuition — came home crying, sobbing, inconsolable, wracked with pain, broken and disconsolate, collapsing onto the sofa, curled up into a heaving ball of sobs and pain, bereft of hope, for the moment not of this world, not of any world, alone and withdrawn.

Maria worked in the shoe department at Macy’s. Earlier that afternoon, a wealthy woman in her early 30s had arrived at the shoe department, miserable, abusive, racist, on the attack and demanding service — pointing at Maria — to “that dirty Chicana over there, who oughta be sent back to where she came from, but if she’s gonna be here, she damn well better serve me, and get her ass over here. Now!

The manager stood nearby, but didn’t come to Maria’s aid, instead directing the abusive woman over to where Maria stood, now quivering, saying to the irate-for-no-good-reason shopper, “Of course, ma’am. Maria is here to serve you. She will find you anything you need. Now hop to it, Maria.”

The situation devolved from there, with Maria finding one pair of shoes after another for this abusive woman, responding to the demands of the woman to …

“Get down on your knees, don’t look at me, put those shoes onto my feet now, don’t look up, and you better be careful when fitting those shoes, or I’ll have your job.”

The woman remained in the shoe department for an hour, loudly and abusively making Maria’s life a hell on earth, before finally leaving the department store harrumphing, having made no purchase. Maria finished her shift, and drove home.

Once home, after her mother intervened, Maria spent the rest of the evening in her bedroom, while Bachi, Cathy and I left his home, leaving Maria — whose young life had been a litany of the kind of abuse she had suffered that afternoon — in the care of her mother, as the three of us drove to a nearby drive-in for a burger and fries, staying away until late.

That evening, Cathy and I decided we would leave for Mexico the next day.

After an early breakfast of heuvos rancheros prepared by Bachi’s mom, Maria still in her bedroom, not wishing to join us at the kitchen table, leaving our car in the garage attached to Bachi’s home, Bachi drove us in his own vehicle to the Mexican border, just north of Tijuana.

Cathy had mapped out our journey, which involved us taking a bus to Mexicali, where we would board a train for the 2,000 kilometre journey to Guadalajara.

Train travel in Mexico, in the 1970s, a rickety old wooden car
The above, very much like the train Cathy and I traveled on throughout Mexico

Both Cathy and I, once we’d boarded the train in Mexicali for the first leg of our Mexican adventure — we were planning on staying in Guadalajara for a few days, then planned to make our way over to the west coast, and come back to Guadalajara before heading to Mexico City.

Ours was, though, a largely unplanned adventure, where we both felt secure that we’d meet good folks, and learn something about a country about which knew little — were surprised that there were 20 young Americans traveling in the same car as us, hippies who’d shorn there hair, as I had, in order to get a visa, the men letting their hair and beards grow once we’d made it across the border.

As is almost always the case when traveling in a group — not that any one of us knew one another, or anyone else in our car — one of our 20 ‘fellow travelers’, in this case a gaunt young man with an adventurous spirit who had traveled to Mexico previously, suggested to us all that upon arriving in Guadalajara, we immediately make our way over to La Peñita, along the coast, 72 kilometres north of Puerto Vallarta, where we could stay for a dollar a day, swim, get to know the townspeople, and enjoy ourselves away from the hubbub of Puerto Villarta.

Sounded good to all of us — we now had a destination.

Now, traveling as a financially itinerant train and bus traveler in the 1970s was fraught with adventure. Why fraught?

Well, because revolution was the order of the day, throughout Europe, throughout central and South America, and most certainly in Mexico, where guerilla groups fought with the Mexican army, farmers led by ex-teacher Lucio Cabañas fighting against landholder impunity and oppressive police practices in rural Mexico, the guerillas carrying out ambushes of the army and security forces, and blowing up train tracks throughout northern Mexico — as proved to be the case on the first leg of our collective journey into the heart of Mexico.

A contemporary photo of Benjamin Hill, in the in the Mexican state of Sonora
Above, a contemporary photo of Benjamin Hill, in the northern Sonora state of Mexico

Upon arriving in Benjamin Hill, in the northern Mexico state of Sonora, approximately 714 kilometres south of Mexicali, the train conductor informed us that there would be a day or two layover in Benjamin Hill, as the tracks 30 kilometres to the south had been blown up by guerillas. When we arrived in Benjamin Hill, midday, the sun was bright, the day sweltering.

We all alighted from the train to take a look around at the dusty little village.

We debated whether or not we’d each rent a room in one of the mud shacks off the main street. One of our companions, who had kept a close watch on me since we’d boarded the train in Mexicali, a ‘sexual freedom leaguer’ traveling with her boyfriend, she a stunningly gorgeous young Asian woman, her boyfriend a nerdy-looking, quiet guy, looked at me and looked at Cathy, and then set about to announce to everyone gathered around in the boldest possible fashion …

“I want to fuck him,” then looking at me said, “I want to fuck you. Let’s go find a room in that building over there.”

I looked over at Cathy, who was rolling her eyes, looking heavenward, then looking at me, exclaiming …

“You want to fuck her, go ahead.

I’m not fucking her boyfriend, though.”

Me, I’m not good in situations such as the one I was now being confronted with.

Would I liked to have gone off with this beautiful young woman for a sweaty afternoon of sexual frolic?

Sure — but that would mean leaving Cathy behind, and I wasn’t prepared to do that, so I just said, “You’re invitation is very kind, and I appreciate it, but I’m going to stay with Cathy,” at which statement the young sexual freedom leaguer grabbed her boyfriend’s hand, marching off to rent a room in a sun-baked mud building.

As it happens, the twenty-two of us remained in Benjamin Hill for only about six hours, as the authorities had identified an alternative route to get around the tracks that had been destroyed. By late evening, we were all on our way again, the night chill, Cathy wrapped securely in my arms, under a blanket we’d purchased in town for about three dollars.

Two days later, we arrived in Guadalajara, the twenty-two of us alighting from the train, seeking food and drink. “No water,” our appointed leader told us — “Stay with Coke, you’ll be better off. You can trust it because it’s bottled by Americans under strict standards. Drink the water, or anything washed in local water, and you’re going to find yourself in trouble.”

So, we found a street food cart — all along the way from Mexicali to Guadalajara, we’d fed ourselves from the food carts at stops along our journey south.

We looked for, and found the bus station, all of us purchasing tickets to La Peñita for the five-hour, 262 kilometre pilgrimage to our coastal village destination, arriving around 7pm,  night and dark, although the near full moon above shone bright.

Once in La Peñita, we secured our accommodation — spacious houses about 200 yards back from the beachfront water, several of us staying in each of three houses we rented for what would be our one-week stay in the rural village, our new home.

Having left our pack sacks in our new domiciles we all went back into town, where we were accosted by a group of 6, 7, 8 and 9-year-old boys who wanted us to play foosball with them, for a peso a game — if they won, we gave them a peso (equivalent to about one cent), the game free to play.

The first game I played was with one of the 6-year-old boys, who wasn’t tall enough to even see the top of the foosball table. “This is gonna be easy,” I thought to myself, “Poor kid.” I meant to win, and show this boy how it’s done — although I’d never played foosball before. Five minutes in, the game was over, I hadn’t scored once, the boy’s facing beaming, looking up at me saying, “De nuevo, señor, de nuevo.” Over the course of the next hour, I played each of the boys, as did the men in our group, losing each game successively more quickly, as was the case with each of my companions, now 20 pesos poorer than when I’d begun the night, the women standing nearby by shaking their heads, going off to look at the “shops” nearby (stalls, really), the young boys now gleeful.

Going for a naked night swim under a near full moon in the tiny village of La Peñita, in Mexico

Our leader, the gaunt young American man, rounded us all up, and said, “Let’s go for a swim,” and we did, some of the women going back to our new homes to find blankets to lay on the sand, but not swim suits, as this was to be a naked swim in the ocean, all twenty-two of us running toward and splashing in the warm, sparking water, the moon above glistening in the purple night sky, the light of the moon reflecting off the gentle waves of the ocean water.

Sundance 2024 | Nostalgia Loomed Large in Park City

There were a smattering of big sales and buzzy premières at this year’s 40th edition of the Sundance Film Festival, held each January since 1984 in Park City, Utah.

Even so, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the independent film business Sundance has so long championed is suffering from an identity crisis.

The box office for art-house movies has yet to regain its pre-COVID stride.

Desperate for content, streaming services once paid inflated prices for films débuting at Sundance . Now they’re conservative in their spending.

In this era of economizing, the all-night bidding wars that made Sundance sizzle are a thing of the past, not a great sign of the financial health of the industry.

Yet there was still plenty to celebrate.

Movies like Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story and Will & Harper received emotional standing ovations, while A Real Pain and It’s What’s Inside defied the odds to score multimillion-dollar deals.

As it enters its fifth decade, Sundance hasn’t lost its ability to excite audiences.

But, clearly, Sundance needs to make adjustments to the way it conducts itself in order to keep up with the changing times, if the indie festival is going to survive.

Actor / Oscar nominee, first time director Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin star in A Real Pain

A Real Pain, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin as cousins who travel to their grandmother’s native Poland to partake in a Holocaust tour, scored rave reviews and won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for Eisenberg, the film picked up by Searchlight for a whopping $10 million early on in the Festival. A Real Pain will receive a theatrical release later this year, and may be Oscar bound next year.

Focus Features snatched up Sundance favourite Dìdi, directed by Academy Award nominee Sean Wang, the film telling the story of a 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy (Izaac Wang) who spends his last summer before high school learning how to flirt, skate, and get along with his mom (Joan Chen). Dìdi, set in 2008, won Sundance’s Audience Award and the Special Jury Prize drama award.

Richard Roundtree and June Squibb star in director Josh Margolin’s ode to his grandma, Thelma

Magnolia Pictures snagged the elderly-buddy comedy Thelma, the tale of a 93-year-old grandma (June Squibb) who endures a harrowing journey across Los Angeles after she’s conned by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson (Fred Hechinger). The film also stars Richard Roundtree as her companion, as the two seeking retribution. Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, and Malcolm McDowell co-star.

The documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, which sold for $15 million to Warner Bros. Discovery, follows Christopher Reeve on how he found his life’s purpose after he suffered from an equestrian accident that left him paralyzed.

Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza star in Canadian director Megan Park’s new film, My Old Ass

Director Megan Park’s My Old Ass will head directly to Amazon’s Prime Video this spring, the film telling the story of high-school senior (Maisy Stella), who meets the adult version of herself (Aubrey Plaza) right before she heads off to college.

Skywalkers: A Love Story, directed by Jeff Zimbalist, was acquired by Netflix. The documentary follows Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus, a couple from Moscow, who saved their careers and relationship by climbing really tall buildings, specifically the world’s last super skyscraper, to perform an acrobatic stunt.

The Will Ferrell documentary Will & Harper was also picked up by Netflix, the road trip film about two Saturday Night Live alumni, Ferrell and former SNL head writer Harper Steele, who reconnect after Steele comes out as a trans woman. The duo set out together for a cross-country trip, during which they talk in depth about their friendship and the experience of being trans in America.

Sundance hasn’t been a Festival that’s been synonymous with Academy Awards attention, though recent iterations have churned out Oscar favourites like Best Picture winner CODA, Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical Minari, and Korean-Canadian director Celine Song’s wistful dramatic début, Past Lives.

Although A Real Pain and Super/Man were critically embraced, there’s a question as to whether they have enough buzz to stay in the conversation until next year.

What Sundance may have lacked in stature this year, it made up for in scares.

Steven Soderbergh’s twisty thriller Presence, which Vulture critic Bilge Ebiri wrote is “the best thing Soderbergh’s done in ages,” is a haunted-house movie seen through the eyes of the ghost. Neon picked up the film’s distribution rights.

Zombie slasher movie In a Violent Nature and other movies about things that go bump in the night were all the rage in Park City.

It’s What’s Inside, a horror story about a pre-wedding party from hell, landed at Netflix in a massive $17 million sale. Along with the haunted psychodrama I Saw the TV Glow — which arrived at Sundance having secured theatrical distribution from A24 — both films became this year’s conversation starters on Main Street.


Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine star in writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow

Nothing beats a good fright.

In the Summers, an independent film about two sisters navigating fraught summer visits with their father, won the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Festival, as well as Best Director for Alessandra Lacorazza.

Shuchi Talati’s début feature, Girls Will Be Girls, about a mother’s intervention in her teenage daughter’s budding romance that creates an unexpected emotional love triangle, landed the Audience Award for World Cinema, as well as the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting, for Preeti Panigrahi.

Porcelain War landed the award for U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize for Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev, the film an intimate reflection on making art in wartime Ukraine.

The U.S. Documentary directing award was awarded to Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie for Sugarcane, an enlightening and infuriating look into systematic abuse at an Indian Residential School.

The World Cinema Documentary directing award went to Benjamin Ree for Ibelin, which focuses on Norwegian gamer Mats Steen. Steen’s parents mourned what they thought had been a lonely and isolated life after their son died of a rare, degenerative muscular disease at age 25. They later received messages from online friends all around the world who knew Steen for his beloved World of Warcraft avatar, Ibelin Redmoore.


All the films mentioned in today’s VanRamblings column will find their way onto your local multiplex screen at some point this year, or are scheduled to air on Netflix, Prime Video or another streamer.

#Tech | CES 2024 | Cutting-Edge Products, TVs, Rabbit R1, and More


Top left: Rabbit R1 | Bottom: 2024’s LG OLED TV are transparent TV sets you can see — and see through.

Year after year, the annual Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas each January brings with it all sorts of amazing demos, gizmos and hi-tech concepts that you won’t be available to buy for years, if ever.

But if you’re looking to snag some fabulous and futuristic products from CES 2024, don’t fret. In today’s Tech column, VanRamblings has gathered a few cool gadgets you can purchase right now, or put a dent in your bank balance very soon.

CES 2024 Best in Show | Best TV | LG OLED M4 | $3400

When it comes to innovative or life-changing new tech, it takes a lot to be the best of the best. Today we’ll provide some insight into the products that emerged out of CES we think have the power to improve everyday life.

LG’s 2024 OLED TVs come with upgraded AI upscaling utilizing precise pixel-level image analysis, that effectively sharpen objects that may appear blurry.

All driven by the discerning judgment of the AI itself, LG’s signature OLED M4 TV delivers a clearer, more vibrant viewing experience. An ingenious artificial intelligence (AI) processor adeptly refines colours by analyzing frequently used shades that best convey the mood and emotional elements intended by filmmakers and content creators. Dynamic Tone Mapping Pro splits pictures into blocks and fine-tunes brightness and contrast by analyzing variations in brightness where light enters the scene, creating images that look more three-dimensional.

In addition to its 97″, 83″ and 77″ models there’s a more normal-size 65-inch LG OLED M4 version that could actually fit into your home — and cost less, too.

VanRamblings bought CES 2023’s Best in Show Samsung NeoQLED Tizen Smart TV on Black Friday. Priced at $2999 last March, we picked it up for only $1250!

CES 2024 Best in Show | Best Gadget | Rabbit R1 | $199

Set to become all the rage among the tech-forward crowd later this year, and predicted to catch on with the tech-oriented general public soon after, the Rabbit R1 is a lot like a phone in terms of its looks, and in some of its features: it has a camera and a SIM card slot, and it supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. What’s different, and what makes the Rabbit R1 special, is the interface: instead of a grid of apps, you get an AI assistant that talks to your favorite apps and does everything for you.

For example, you could get the R1 to research a holiday destination & book flights to it, or queue up a playlist of your favourite music, or book you an Uber. In theory, you can do almost anything you can already do on your phone, just by asking.

We’ve seen next-gen personal assistants depicted in movies like Her, and the R1 is trying to make that a reality — leveraging the latest AI capabilities to replace the traditional smartphone interface with something a lot more intuitive.

CES 2024 Best in Show | Gaming Device | XREAL Air 2 AR glasses | $489

 

The XREAL Air 2 Ultra AR glasses offer the most advanced augmented reality wearable experience from the brand to date with hand and head tracking meeting spatial anchoring across a full 6DoF (six degrees of freedom).

Augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), extended-reality (XR), whatever you want to call it, 2024 is lining up to be a big year for this tech with the popularity of the Meta Quest 3 expanding and Apple’s release of its Vision Pro headset.

CES 2024 Best in Show | Bemis BB-1200 Bidet Toilet | $399

If you’re less about TVs and AI, and more about something weird (and potentially practical), then there’s always the new Bemis BB-1200 Bidet Toilet. That’s right, it’s a smart toilet seat, capable of supplying unlimited warm water, a heated seat, air dryer alongside a remote and smartphone app to control it all.

You can really control everything from nozzle position to water pressure and seat temperature. There are even two user pre-sets so your preferences are saved and ready to go when you need it most. It sounds silly, but if it makes your bathroom experience a little more comfortable (especially in the cold winter months), then you shouldn’t dismiss it quite so easily.

The BB-1200 will be available this spring, and will set you back $399. Just make sure your bathroom has an outlet near the toilet to power everything.

CES 2024 Best in Show | Best Home Product | Family Hub+ | $2499

Samsung has gone all-in on artificial intelligence across its phones and home appliances. This includes a new AI Family Hub+ technology that is designed to bring together different appliances.

It is initially being built into the new Bespoke 4-door flex refrigerator, unveiled at CES 2024. This includes internal cameras and AI vision capable of identifying individual food items. It can then suggest recipes based on what you have in stock.

CES 2024 Best in Show | Roborock Zeo One | $1699

The Roborock Zeo One is an all-in-one washer / dryer combo machine that pulls double duty. It’s part of a relatively new breed of laundry combo machines that are just beginning to proliferate. Needless to say, the concept is compelling: you pile a load of laundry into a single machine where it’s washed and dried. But the Zeo One adds even more innovation to the mix.

A favourite feature: smart dosing. Instead of adding detergent and fabric softener with each load, you can fill the reservoirs and go for months without worrying about adding anything to your laundry.

The Zeo One also dries clothes using much less heat than a conventional dryer.
The Zeo-cycle drying system uses a large honeycomb-shaped disc with more than 20,000 holes to absorb moisture, using sensors and an AI algorithm to monitor the drying system more than 100 times per minute. By keeping the heat low, the Roborock Zeo One prevents damage to delicate garments like wool sweaters.

The Zeo One even collects lint and disposes of it automatically through a water line, so you never have to clear a lint trap.

CES 2024 Best in Show | Health Device | BeamO | $249

Withings’ BeamO might be the only health checkup device you need in your home, a first-of-its-kind 4-in-1 health checkup device meant to replace four essentials that should be in every home, combining an ECG, pulse oximeter, stethoscope, and thermometer into a single compact device. With it, you can monitor your heart and lung health, as well as your temperature.

There are those in the medical profession who believe the BeamO will revolutionize the measurement of the core vitals carried out during medical visits from the comfort of one’s own home. This crucial data will provide a vital overview of overall health or warning signs of potential areas of concern. Instead of measuring these stats a couple of times a year in a clinical setting, it will be possible to assess them every day. BeamO will be the thermometer of the future, providing the ability to assess temperature and observe the state of the heart and lungs.

Of course, a parent can also use the device to perform a checkup on a child.

In the future, the company says the BeamO will detect signs of infection and even possible cardiovascular issues such as atrial fibrillation (AfiB).

The Withings BeamO will be released this coming June, and will retail for $249.