It snowed again last night, so if you're going anywhere, it'll probably take you a long time. However, we're getting another storm on the weekend so you might as well wait before you start shovelling. Actually, it'll be spring in a couple of weeks anyway so if you have enough cans of SpaghettiO's, it's probably best to just stay home til then. The Bank of Canada slashed interest rates by fifty basis points yesterday,......

Toronto Zoo to go green. The Zoo will now focus on biodiversity and sustainability while presenting animals from around the world in small, depressing, joke-like habitats that offer a crude mockery of how the animals would prefer to live, focusing on the fact that while their lives in the zoo might suck, at least nobody is killing these animals for fun, as would frequently happen in the wild. Prince Harry being withdrawn from Afghanistan. It......

For some magically ridiculous reason, CBC Radio 3's weekly countdown, the R3-30, is broadcasting from a skating rink this week in a move that's heavily dividing the hipster set after the announcement of another free—and markedly less active—event that same night: Tokyo Police Club at Nathan Phillips Square. But host Craig Norris offers this pitch in their favour: "If you've ever listened to The R3-30 in the comfort of your warm, cozy home and......

Many of us developed an affection for opera early in life through Looney Tunes versions of Rossini and Wagner. For some, having Elmer Fudd chant “Kill the Wabbit” to the tune of “Ride of the Valkyries” in Chuck Jones's animated masterpiece taught us everything we wanted to know about opera. But if your ambition to appreciate the finer things in life extends beyond Bugs Bunny, real opera could be an intimidating world of old rich......

It’s not been a week since the Toronto International Film Festival left us, and this week’s new releases make it hard for us to move on despite a couple of TIFF premieres leading the way. We’ll start with Paul Haggis’ In The Valley of Elah, because he’s a good Canadian boy…or is he? It’s interesting to note that in the interviews with him in the weeklies about this film (a "murder mystery" about a......

A lot happens in and around Toronto, but we can only write about so much in a week. Here's the best of the rest, in a new weekly feature we're calling Superfluist. Superfluist will appear every Friday night. First a monkey escaped. Then, elephants did. And now, a bear has! Animals are apparently not big fans of being captive. Weird, right?The semi-famous Enrique Inglesias was at MuchMusic.This weekend (starting tomorrow morning at 11 a.m.) is......

If today’s column title gets Rachel Sweet’s Hairspray stuck in your head for the rest of the day, good! Because then we’ll have made our point that the version of Hairspray hitting this weekend isn’t as good as the John Waters original. Though the music not being as good is only part of it. There’s also the inherent irony about making a musical in which one of the central themes is integration through a......

Chances are if you are a pervert, an intellectual, or a writer, then you are very familiar with the works of Chuck Palahniuk. The author of "Invisible Monsters", "Choke", and the cult classic "Fight Club" will be in town tonight to sign copies of his new book, "Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey." Palahniuk has earned a reputation as being an eccentric, a nihilist, and a genius. Playboy has refused to publish some of......

Welcome to Torontoist's new weekly Lit. Listings of all things bookish, wordy, and between the covers. We want to highlight the "lit" in Toronto's literary scene: as you, dear reader, may have noticed, a lot of writing about writing is dull, and could be improved with a bit of light. We are living in a time when major newspapers are folding their books sections, and even alternative weeklies forget their literary pages once in......

This is what you won't be mistaking for a dime in your pocket anymore: the TTC's new token. While the old token was incredibly easy to counterfeit and felt of a lesser quality than a Chuck E. Cheese coin, the new one looks a little more official and is virtually impossible to counterfeit, according to the TTC. The Commission won't tell us exact details about the token's constitution, but since the coin is recognized electronically......

Even as the stores sport back to school sales (which depress us, even now), summer lingers on your friends the -ists. This week's collection of links provides some of the best, worst, and oddest bits of summer fun. So, bring your laptop up onto the roof, make yourself an umbrella drink or ten, and enjoy this week's choice posts from across the Gothamist network. Torontoist (where it's 75 degrees F as of this writing)......

Phillyist notes a fistfight between local pols that leaves one man down for the count. Jehovah's Witnesses get a Philly contributor out of bed, things get a little geeky with a film festival and geeky gets taken to a whole new galaxy when they talk with the Dragon Queen of the Dark Kingdom. Shanghaist gets all excited this week over a new nightclub in the city unfortunately named "Snatch" and Mike Tyson is scheduled to......

-Paul Martin pulls out the old "But Mo-om, he DOES have a stupid face - you can't get mad at me for telling the truth!" excuse to defend the Liberal attack ads. -At FishbowlNY, Rachel debunks the debunking of James Frey and the Random House refund rumours (try saying that ten times fast). We're glad that's all cleared up, but if we never hear James Frey's name again it will be far too soon. -The......

On this day last year, Torontoist received the "How to Post" email message, detailing posting, linking and all sorts of other neat blogging essentials. Exactly one year later, we still have the email. So this isn't our birthday, but more so the night our parents conceived us. In the more literal sense of the word 'birthday,' it is our actual birthday today. For the occasion, we threw quite the barn-burner at the Boat on......

Hey long time no speak, Justice Gomery. What's shaking? How are the Gomery's? Have you seen Broken Flowers yet? It was very good. Bill Murray barely even speaks throughout the whole movie...just like a silent actor! So subtle, yet so powerful at the same time. Anyway, just had a few questions regarding this whole inquiry thing. Basically, we'd like to know how much credence you're giving the testimony of suspected criminal low-life's Jean Brault......

Tall Poppy Interview: Chuck Klosterman ...

Fight Clubbiest author Chuck Palahniuk reads from his latest, Haunted, at the Yonge and Eg Indigo this evening. You should know that the charismatic Mr. Palahniuk does, on occasion, like to "pelt the audience with artificial limbs, wrestling masks and plastic vomit, but better artificial limbs than boredom, TOist always says. 7 pm.......

Torontoist will take some time off from long-weekend drinking and head to church. Not to atone for his sins, of which there are plenty, but to check out what the independent literary artists of Toronto have been cooking up while squirelled away in their basement apartments, lofts and bedrooms over the winter at the Small Press Book Fair. Publishers such as Coach House, No Media Kings and Porcupine's Quill will be there and journals/zines and......

Sorry, Torontoist got so wrapped up in that Gomery affair we totally forgot our Mercredi Mixtape obligations last week! Expect another blip in the Mixtape delivery when Chuck Guite gets all up in it. Other than that, here's the downloadables: 1. Sufjan Stevens - Illionoise Clever play on the state name, Suf. Fun song too! 2. The Coral - "In the Morning" video Scandalous! 3. The Russian Futurists - "Paul Simon" They can call you......

Even before the great Chuck D warned us not to believe the hype, there was an air of skepticism around the ME-dia's recommendations. The problems surrounding media hype, especially during festivals like CMW, is that most media outlets make it very clear which acts are worth seeing - and most people believe it. It doesn't sound like a problem, that is until no one can actually get in to see the bands that receive hype.......

The match making business will never be the same after gay marriage is introduced into Canadian culture. When the capital "L" liberals vote to change the definition of marriage from the union of a man and woman to the union of two people, the definition of match making will change with it. Will Chuck Guité and John Gomery get together? Could Chris Murphy of Sloan and George Stroumboulopoulos be an item? Torontoist columnists Paige and......