Archive for May 2010

At the Boutique | Photos brought to you by the Cheese Boutique I have said it before and I will say it again: the Cheese Boutique boasts stellar cuisine at every opportunity. A veritable cheese palace complete with ceremonial throne lording over the boutique from a position atop the stairs – glory be. This month →

“The self-image of Modernity that is rooted in bodily experience cannot wholly be grasped in this current preoccupation with the emblematic character of the body as a kind of social advertisement. In fact, the quality of embodiment is almost entirely lacking from this perspective. We might argue that this is rightly so; that Modernity is →

Russell Smith writes for the Globe and Mail. He just released a new novel called Girl Crazy. It is a sexy and fantastic novel that should be added to your summer reading list without delay. “Never underestimate the importance of a good pair of shoes. Go out and get yourself a funky pair of sneakers.” →

Shoebox Terror: NOBED A shoebox experiment by Marshall Lau Toronto, 2009 Click here to view the film. →

Don’t you hate it when an article begins with a line like, “Let’s be honest here…”? What does such a statement even mean? First of all, it presumes the author and reader are in agreement on whatever it is that follows. Kind of arrogant. Second of all, it attempts to establish the article as somehow →

Commonplace A Super 8 film by Marshall Lau Toronto, 2009 Click here to view the film. →

This much we know: Dan Snaith of Caribou makes groovy-as-hell music. Yet, more often than not when discussing Caribou records it’s easy to get caught up in comparisons between his dance music output and his more pop-driven work (such as his second-to-most-recent record, Andorra). The latest release from Caribou, Swim, overflows with many of dance →

Thank dog I have long-since shirked the common attitude that it can’t happen here and it won’t happen to me. Whenever life is good, I remind myself that living means suffering, and some ugly misfortune is surely laying dormant in a nearby corner. I had been having myself a lucky run. My life was filled →

When you register a new Myspace page as a musical act, there is a point at which you are asked to describe what your music sounds like in three short descriptors chosen from drop-down menus. The end result can be seen at the top of every band’s Myspace page: “folk/acoustic/ambient” or “grunge/noise rock/experimental” are decent →

“It always rains on the Weed March” says my brother as we look out the door. But I’m not heading out the door to get blasted by the smoke monster anyways (not saying I wouldn’t, just saying that’s not why I left). It’s yet another annual scouting outing marred by mother nature. It seems when →

Let’s be honest here, when I gush sweet nothings about a given work of literature, it’s because I want you to drop everything immediately and rush to the nearest bookstore or library to purchase or borrow said work of literature and devour it in a single sitting. Will this happen? Likely not. But I keep →

Recently I was asked by a friend for input into the cover art for his band’s record, which is set to be re-released with, you guessed it, a new cover. It had been discussed and decided that a new look might be just what the doctor ordered to get the most additional mileage out of →

(NOTE: I was also set to review ‘If We Were Birds’ by Erin Shields and directed by Alan Dilworth, on now at the Tarragon Mainspace through May 23rd. Every time I tried to get tickets, however, the show was completely sold out. Encouraging, considering the workshop version I saw two years ago at the SummerWorks →

An acronym for the term “do it yourself” that came into use during the 1950s when home improvement became a cultural focus – you know, in a life before the condo boom when people were willing to do things themselves… Often associated with messy and unprofessional fixes, DIY gets a bad rep for being cheesy →

Due to last month’s interview with local cycling advocate queenpin Yvonne Bambrick, I was unable to comment on the outrage that was the now infamous budget cuts that have basically rendered Transit City a David Miller vanity project at best. Fortunately, or unfortunately, for me, this past month has been pretty slow on transit-related news, →

Canadian mastermind director Guy Maddin, behind the autobiographical “me trilogy” consisting of Cowards Bend the Knee (2003), Brand Upon the Brain! (2006) and My Winnipeg (2007), continues to explore the meaning of home with his latest feature film project Keyhole, an indoor odyssey exploring the surrealistic underworld of unbridled emotions, as well as the intimacy →

Born and raised up and down the west coast of the Americas, acorn is a self taught sloth mimic and representative of the “skate-jutsu” methods. After a long stint of collecting seeds throughout Europe over the course of a couple years, acorn is now living in the bat-infested community of Melbourne, Australia. This particular seed →

“Banksy came to Toronto!” Ah ha (I think, too groggy for an exclamation point) so I didn’t leave my cellphone set to “loud”— I merely dreamed the obnoxious ring-tone, and now for the surreal conversation. No doubt the scene shall soon shift without warning to a seaside resort or Santa’s underground lair or somesuch. “… →

Webcomics have become part of the internet trifecta. Or to put that in terms webcomic nerds would understand, now part of the tri-force. It’s an immense and thick scene of marvelous gems and embarrassing haunts. Thankfully the good always outweigh the bad. KC Green? He’s very good. His blend of indie comic inks, internet anguish →

May 15, 2010 Well my darlings, summer is frightfully nigh! Now that university classes are out, it seems like we can all get out and enjoy some of that newfangled sunshine everyone keeps talking about. Unfortunately, I’ve been made to understand that the city of Toronto has some kind of prohibition going on as far →

I’m sorry, classes have ended and my brain has more or less shut down so my attempts at rewording the title were futile. In fact, many of my failed titles were “things that seem like that they would be funny but aren’t really” which is ironicly amusing the-opposite-of-ironic. I remember accidentally coming across Japanese schoolgirl →