April 14th, 2009 Plantains! There's something so awesomely badass about waking up with the sun on your face. My new apartment has an east-facing window and every morning for the last month of sunshine I've been waking up early in an awesomely bright warmth. A close friend of mine dared to call me a tropical plant for the sunny heat of my abode, but this sense of heat is exactly what Spring is all about. Lighter jackets, permeable communal warmth. Canadian communities enliven. This issue of Steel Bananas has come out of this new sense of movement. People are moving around, stretching, fearing ...Read More
Mom jokes are the longest lasting jokes from childhood I can recall; well after the “in your faces” and “I know you are, but what am Is,” people were still making fun of each other’s mom. I still remember as a kid when these first started to permeate into common usage, and what a stir they created: “Hey Ted, next time you see your mom say to her: ‘Mom may I,’ then spell ‘cup.’ ” (During the time it takes me to figure it out my friends giggle uncontrollably). “My mom… what?! Oh, shut up!” I don’t know about you but the weaker kids ...Read More
A lone girl walks to the front of the stage. She climbs down softly, into the audience. She takes out a compact, and with a neutral face, applies makeup. She then digs in the other pocket, removes a single bullet, and gently places it at the front of the stage. It is this bullet that remains constant in the first act of Native Earth’s production of Almighty Voice and His Wife, now on at Theatre Passe Muraille’s mainspace. The bullet is a symbol of White Girl (Cara Gee)’s recollection of the death of her husband, Almighty Voice (Derek Garza), which haunts ...Read More
Fear is a funny stupid thing. Most spinetinglers should logically be trumped by logic, but no matter how many monsters you try to debunk or sounds you try to explain there’s always some shadow looming over you that just unsettles your skin and leaves you pulsing. Oh me? I’m a badass motherfucker whose very foot stomp makes hell tremble. I ain’t scared of anything. Anything aside from the dark, knives, people with eye patches, people without eye patches who should have one, that part in Look Who’s Talking Too where the toilet talks, the feeling of rubbing rocks together, Freddy ...Read More
I’m not a music critic. When I look at a lot of music reviews I so often feel they’re speaking some different language, about progression, qualities and if it’s “the time”. Me? I like music I can get wasted to, fist pump and bash my face into something. I like things that make me feel good. Meet Japanther, a rock and roll band from NYC. Let me put on my music critic hat. Alright. Aherm. Japanther is the evolution in fun. There I said it, band members Matt and Ian rock out with more enthusiasm and style than your ego ...Read More
ACME Burger Company A little place called ACME Burger Company exists just west of Bathurst along Bloor street, and with thoughts of Road Runner and Coyote running through my head, I look above me to check for the requisite anvil drop. The coast looks clear so I stop to grab a burger. An unusually peppy worker greets me, so I return her genuine smile and check out the menu. Looks like a fairly standard burger joint upon first glance, jazzing up their menu with salads, wraps and the always noticeable milkshake… oh so tempting, but with only ten dollars in my wallet ...Read More
Do you ever find that when you try to do anything productive in your house, you always just end up reading arbitrary Wikipedia pages and back-articles from Pitchfork? Does the combination of rumbling roommates, a cat that's always doing something weird and having all of your personal belongings in one spot make accomplishing things a grotesque ordeal? Do you ever just need to get the fuck out of your pad? Well, if you live in a shit-hole in North York, this would definitely ring true. Living downtown, on the other hand, is a whole new bushel of apples, with all ...Read More
DotA Allstars is a custom-mapped Warcraft III modification that has been around for quite some time, cited as one of the most popular non-supported game mods on the market. Dota is a strategy game such as none that I’ve ever played, supporting 93 heroes and 107 different items/item combinations, which are upper level items created by mixing basic items and purchasing recipes. Gold is mined and experience is gained by lopping of the heads off of little AI critters affectionately named ‘creeps,’ which are small trees for the Sentinel (the good guys) and tiny monsters for the Scourge (the bad ...Read More
Yeah well it happens to the best of us. Guy just has to lift up his head, take a deep breath, slow the heart, relax, think aboaaaaaaaaauuuuuuu UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU AGGHHHHHHHHHHHAHGHSHHHHHH FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU UUUUUUUUUC MadWorld (Wii, Pub: Sega, Dev: Platinum Games, Rated M and HOW) Lowdown: What’s black and white and red all over? +++ YEAAAAH I think this game was just the sort of unchained therapeutic carnage I needed right now. The game doesn’t hold too many punches, and gets away with the sort of murder you just don’t see on any of the “not known for family play” systems. Disembowl, rip apart, slash, dice, ...Read More
Shakespeare is so elitist. It is so canonized that it has become a subject of political critique. English departments do still teach the Bard, but it is received as an example of high culture, rather than an actual art. Most of us today would rather read Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill than subject ourselves to the language found in ol’ Bill’s plays. Most of us even think that Shakespeare is pretty much irrelevant to the 21st century. What could Shakespeare teach us today other than how poetic his writing was? What use is there for Shakespeare? I intend to briefly ...Read More
I feel like I’ve fallen into a kind of formula with my interview pieces lately. I dunno… it sort of seems like they all fit into a pretty strict format and personally, I don’t condone this repetition; it's boring. Typically, when I set to writing out a piece after doing an interview, the result seems to turn out more or less as follows: vaguely-related personal anecdote + overview of the subject in question and their various artistic and/or general virtues + a series of musings by me interspersed with the occasional quote from the actual interview + a conclusion that neatly ...Read More
“We want the death of rock and roll. This is the music of the minions. This sound is a terminal condition.” -Constantines, from “Arizona” (2001) Typically, or at least, from what I’ve gathered, the venerable Postmodern Stamp of Intensity, when it comes to music only seems to pertain to that most discerning of musics: the avant-garde. Primal Scream lunacy, screeching, clicking tape loops and minimalist mindbenders tend to more or less dominate the extremely ambiguous and relatively undefined realm of postmodern music. In both literature and philosophy, the postmodern umbrella is tremendously specific and outlined with almost fanatical attention to detail and ...Read More
"How did froth-head and barm evolve clouds overcast with winter's brume, moulding Man to primordial word-slime. Man the word-mime, jellied in woolpacks - gummed in hazes, scuds. Man the glue, cooked egg-white of hoots and cuckoo calls." ///Meredith Quartermain: Matter I love Bookthug, not only because their catalog absolutely rocks, but because they've introduced me to amazing poets like Meredith Quartermain. When her most recent collection of poems, Matter, came into my possession, I became obsessed with her poetic voice; reading her poetry aloud on the subway, looking up the schemas she used, reading and re-reading in different configurations to explore her intricate perceptual fragments of being. ...Read More
I think if Edgar Wright was any less friendly and I any more creepy, my weeks of pressing to get a few questions out of him could have ended in police sirens and tears. But so sue me I wanted to speak to Edgar Wright. They guy’s done some hi-holarious films like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, along with his TV show “Spaced” the guy’s got quite a lot of pretty feathers on his cap and you all totally know this already. D’oooh and who am I kidding, I’m a total fan. To make it even sweeter, and ...Read More
Comic books are fun. And in an age where the most household comic scribe names are usually known for creating the most demolished and grit riddled interpretations of once smiling heroes, we, the comic geek ilk, know there will always be one writer waiting on the side lines always ready to knock them off their pedestals. His name is Keith Giffen, and he is responsible for so many different classic runs of so many different classic titles it’d be easier to list things he hadn’t touched. But it would be even easier than that to just name, like, just one ...Read More
Jakub Tywoniuk is a 20 year old graphic design student with masculine features and a feminine grace. He resides in Toronto where he draws bizarre comic books with the intention of corrupting everyone. For him, drawing is not a pleasant process, but a stressful pastime fraught with self-loathing and criticism. This biography is terribly sarcastic and he is aware of this. [caption id="attachment_1216" align="alignnone" width="375" caption="© Jakub Tywoniuk"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_1217" align="alignnone" width="375" caption="© Jakub Tywoniuk"][/caption] Check out our Photo Gallery for more examples of Jakub's work. Read More
The Bewitched was once described to me as “A syphilis-ridden carnival of death”… that alone should entice a modern (er, I mean, postmodern, or post-postmodern) audience. The fact that this show is of excellent caliber, with conservatory actors making their debut under the direction of Dora Award-winning Nigel Shawn Wiliams, is just icing on the proverbial cake. Peter Barnes’ epic play The Bewitched is a show you will not want to miss. York University’s theatre department is tackling this horrifically absurd play, running publicly from April 19th – April 25th. Set in 17th century Spain, The Bewitched is the story of the ...Read More
Finally! Here we are in the middle of April and it's only now that we are starting to see some movies that are more than just the leftovers from the previous year. In fact as we get closer and closer to the summer months (Still a long way away, I know) we should start to see more of the high budget blockbusters that the major studios love so much. For me it is a welcome change. I am tired of the sappy dramas and cheap family crap. Mostly I am exhausted from eating the award show leftovers and I am ready ...Read More
Being at the top of the food chain doesn’t seem to exclude our species from ending up in absurdist “how did this even happen?!” situations. In fact, I think our superior cognitive abilities are sometimes the reason our lives are often so full of disappointment. How many times have you had a brilliant idea that, in hindsight, was executed terribly and really not a brilliant idea at all? How many times have you started to help an old lady across the street only to trip over your own feet and land in a puddle? Good intentions, poor results! This is ...Read More
