Archive for July 2009

I haven’t seen the movies that I am about to review. For the most part, I do not really plan to. Part of the reason is the cost of the ticket is far too much for my poor wallet to endure every week. However for the most part it is the principle that I shouldn’t →

Bionic Commando (PS3/XB360, Dev: GRIN, Pub: Capcom, Rated M) Lowdown: Bionic Comando is back, and all the RAD and BAD is just MAD. REALLY REALLY MAD. – God I Hate Nathan Spencer As Much As Nathan Spencer Hates Everything RAD is now Nathan Spencer. Nathan Spencer is a total dick. Just looking at GRIN’s logo →

I told the kid manning his post. My right arm leaning on the table, elbow pressing into a flakey laminated sale flyer. The kid twirled a pen in his jaw, eyes fished by the ending light of the display window. “Excuse me,” he said, “pardon my low wage distraction, how can I disappoint you today?” →

Canadians live in a culture of subscription. We constantly dole out incredible amounts of money for season tickets to watch our favourite local sports teams not make the playoffs… again. We subscribe to ideologies, to political theories. We subscribe, if we are slightly left, to the Toronto Star; if we are slightly right, to the →

Taste of Little Italy | Photos by Matthew Filipowich A Taste of Little Italy: so easy to say that it rolls off the tongue, so enjoyable to taste that it rolls down the tongue and leaves me yearning for more. Luckily getting more is hardly a challenge as all food comes at low prices right →

John O’Regan; every time I’ve seen the unreasonably tall musician and artist in person, he’s been wearing a vintage basketball jersey. I don’t know what the deal with this is. I’m not sure if he really just likes basketball, really just likes irony or really just has a thing for sports swag. Perhaps some things →

The Book is not dead, nor can it die. The future of the book is its continuous present, its ability to change, adapt, expand, and move with the people who sustain it, the communities who foster it, the lovers of literature. The book is not dead, nor can you place this lack of creative vision →

These are a few of my favourite things, all of which find their happy home inside surrealism. Surrealism is ultimately indebted to Freud, which the group [the Surrealists] credits solely for enlightening people of the unconscious mind; Surrealists love psychoanalysis, which posits that the conscious mind does not merit the primary position that the layman →

Canadian cinema: the very mention of such a phrase is liable to make some gag with terror as images of Paul Gross, mountains, mounties and bad jokes about Anglo/Franco relations stream violently through their heads. Indeed, when Men With Brooms and Bon Cop Bad Cop are the most prevalent Canadian films to be released in →

If you want to tell the truth, the best way to do it is through comedy. If you want to make people laugh, the best way to do it is through comedy. If you want to write a play titled after psychotic genitalia, the best way to do that is through Fringe. And thus we →

One of the best parts of Fringe is the opportunities it creates for emerging artists, particularly for the playwrights who might otherwise write for years with nowhere to stage their new scripts. Katie Alguire is one of many young artists taking advantage of this in Toronto’s 2009 Fringe festival. As writer and producer of The →

Ah, the paradox of Fringe: on one hand we are finally given a willing audience for all our absurd experimental theatre (albeit for only two weeks); on the other hand, there is never enough time, money, or experience to produce these experimental pieces well. And then, what is supposed to be a quirky, intelligent show →

By the time father tries to fuck son, Icarus Redux has already left its lasting impression on you. From the image of the fabled wings top-lit in eerie blue inside a cupboard up-centre stage, to Daedalus relentlessly searching the stage for his fallen son with a lantern just before the final blackout, the best of →

Two years ago I was at a party with a close bundle of buds. Three of them, despite the nicest of atmospheres, where slouching and had gestures that showed a great deal of sore bodies and wearing muscles. I had to ask, “Dear hombres, why so bogged down?” But instead of a reaction of guilt, →

[Photos/Matthew Filipowich] Jason Ball, the man behind the lush sixties-pop throwback project, Hopeful Monster, has just put more sugar in his coffee than I ever thought was possible. Has he recently spliced his DNA with that of a fly and I’m Geena Davis? It strikes me that this would be a perfect opportunity to compare →

It’s hard to off the cuff drop a noise rock band when asked for a a new sound suggestion by a bored pal. The mere sound of the genre can permafreeze a padawan to the ground. So the fact that LA noise rock group HEALTH has made so much crossover to whippy dance kids that →

Well, it’s finally the most romantic season of the year and with all the chocolate, flowers, and vacation flings comes hormones and lots of passionate lovemaking. In celebration, this instalment of Weird News is sex-themed. Though, be warned that by the end of this article, you’ll all be so traumatized that celibacy doesn’t seem so →

I’ve said this on the SB blog and I’ve probably said it a bunch of times in other places, but Fox Jaws totally saved my fucking Friday that one time. We were wandering around Little Italy and Kensington for hours looking for a decent band, but alas, all we caught were generic indie-rockers, tasteless girl-punks →

Lined up along Whyte Avenue – essentially Edmonton, Alberta’s equivalent to Queen West – for the weekend of July 10-12, over 230 E-Town-area visual artists set up shop in front of the many pubs and stores along the strip to sell their wares and get a little work done in the unseasonably cold weather. November’s →

“I’m kind of cooking dinner while I talk to you, I hope that’s Okay?” I’m informed midway through my telephone interview with Annie Clifford, banjo-player and co-frontperson of Kingston’s twelve-piece bluegrass band, The Gertrudes, whom I recently saw tear down the Rivoli on the last night of this year’s NXNE. It strikes me as somewhat →

The United Steel Workers of Montreal (Montreal, PQ) I didn’t expect to be so blown away by a band I had been so unfamiliar with, nevermind an “alt country” one, but once this rugged posse took to the stage I was pretty much transfixed. Their stage presence was practically intoxicating, from a Canadian southern rose →

TOM sits USC, nursing a bloody nose. There are a few other bruises and scratches on his face – nothing too bad. His back pack is tossed to one side. A small stack of Tim Hortons-branded napkins lay at his side. He is holding one against his nose. He pulls it away to see if →

Here lies the chronicle of pretty much the best thing I’ve ever done. Despite haphazard tents, lost reservations and the constant fear that my job might discover that I wasn’t attending an “academic workshop” (although I maintain that I could make a pretty good argument that I did end up doing that), Bonnaroo 2009 was →

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 →

I am not a feminist. Can I say that? Well, I’m not. I’m an equal opportunist – I don’t burn bras or hate men. In fact, I like my breasts well supported and I enjoy hetero sex on a regular basis. I also don’t believe that there is anything inherently special about being a woman; →

July 15, 2009 So with The Chief out and about busy working on her thesis, this month’s installment of everyone’s favorite Post-Pomo Variety Show was left in the hands of this guy. Apart from the minor nervous breakdown and several bouts of tears, I had a lot of fun doing it. But damn, I need →