After reading today's ad, Torontoist is certain of one thing—modesty was not a key element of the "Yorkville style," especially when it came to attracting dancing queens and boogie kings looking for a place to strut their stuff. The neighbourhood had a cluster of disco floors waiting for John Travolta wannabes to demonstrate their dance skills and soak in the attitude. One might have been lucky enough to see celebrities like Sonny Bono indulge......

Toronto seems to get its annual dose of legendary outsider filmmaker John Waters around this time. A couple of years back he was hosting the TIFF gala of his latest film, A Dirty Shame, then in late 2006, he could be found gallivanting around Roncesvalles overseeing the transformation—for good or ill—of his 1988 comedy, Hairspray, into this year's hit family-friendly musical starring John Travolta (based more on the 2002 Broadway remake than on its original......

It's not entirely clear how or when R. Kelly's hip-hop opera "Trapped in the Closet" became a Zeitgeist. Part music video, part soap opera, it—while verging on self-parody throughout—has spawned parodies by everyone from South Park (which used it to make fun of Tom Cruise and John Travolta, among others) to Weird Al (who used it to make fun of fast food. Oh Weird Al!). What is clear is why it's been embraced by seemingly......

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......

Sound poetry is not really cool. Oh sure, maybe it was cool. In the Da-Da salons of Paris, it was avant-garde. And in a bedroom at bpNicol's cottage, spouting out sound poems between long drags on the hookah was probably genuinely far-out, man. But somewhere along the way, sound poetry became hokey. As much a hippy-relic as Patchouli and beaded vests. And then, The Four Horsemen Project happened. Now, sound poetry is not only......

Sure, we all know John Travolta's in town after the notorious man-kissing episode at Hamilton Airport two weeks ago. But he's not here for the film fest. Instead, he joins Queen Latifah, Christopher Walken, Amanda Bynes, and Michelle Pfeiffer as part of the cast of Hairspray, a 2007 remake of the 2002 Broadway musical remake of the original 1988 film comedy. (Whew! We recycle the past quickly, don't we?) Torontoist went to see the......

Toronto steps in for Baltimore, as Hairspray returns to the big screen. We suppose this was inevitable (where was this musical resurgence 10 years ago, when Torontoist was a junior high theatre nerd who cared about such things? Oh well, we've always been ahead of our time). We are simultaneously completely mystified and oddly intrigued at the prospect of a cross-dressing John Travolta as the beloved Edna Turnblad. In fact, there is a strangely......

Restaurants: J'Adore Taco El Asador...

If the New York Times were John Travolta, they would be in the Look Who's Talking stage of their careers. But, seriously. Let's not go too far with the Ad Hominem Tu Quoque jokes (even though those are the best jokes ever). Instead, let's look at yesterday's "Was Canada Too Good To Be True?" article in THE newspaper of record. With the help of former Ryerson Journalism Ethics Chair Robert Fulford and Super historian......