Results tagged “northamerican”

Torontoist is ahead of the game for previewing some of the best music choices this week (Queen West fire benefit, Forest City Lovers' CD release) but Musicologist will give you one more recommendation—just for kicks.

Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman has caused a furor with his comment that he'd be willing to test-drive an adult diaper to see if being left in soiled diapers for hours on end is really all that bad. Critics say he isn't taking the issue of sub-standard care in nursing homes seriously, which seems a bit harsh, since there can't be too many politicians who'd be willing to spend a day crouched in their own excrement on behalf of their constituents. Brings a tear to the eye, it does.

Your reaction to snow depends on the circumstances. The frequency of dumps the city has received so far this year has caused grumbling about blocked streets, dirty mounds higher than the average citizen and many a wish for spring to speed up its arrival. Conversely, as long as the roads outside the city are passable, lovebirds, families and outdoor enthusiasts looking for an escape from the city have headed up to Muskoka resorts like Hidden Valley to enjoy activities made possible by the white stuff.

There are tons of great shows for all you concertgoers this week, including a particularly time-sensitive one tonight. Apparently a sold-out Wrong Bar for Crystal Castles last Thursday was not enough for the electro-punk duo. A last-minute show has been booked at the Wrong Bar tonight (alongside LA’s Health) before they continue on with their extensive North American tour. With no tickets to be purchased in advance, you better drop what you’re doing and immediately line up to secure a spot inside. Similar high-energy performances will come this week from Montreal’s Think About Life (includes Graham Van Pelt of Miracle Fortress and Magic Weapon’s Jordan Robson-Cramer), who are playing the Drake on Friday, February 29, and MEN (JD Samon and Johanna Fateman of Le Tigre), who are playing Lee’s Palace on Saturday, March 1—both shows will definitely not disappoint.

Photo by Darryl Scott.

A brief stint of Radiohead concert rumours spread like wildfires last week. Ticketmaster had announced that the band would play two shows on May 26 and 27 at the Air Canada Centre, but mentioned neither the date for the tickets to go on sale nor the price of the tickets themselves—the announcement was quickly removed from the site. This is not the first time Ticketmaster has announced a Radiohead show that did not exist, and most knew the ticket-selling mongrels were wrong, as both Greenplastic and W.A.S.T.E. (the two most reliable Radiohead news sources) announced a small batch of US dates to come in May with the remainder of (unannounced) North American dates to follow Radiohead’s summer tour of the UK and Europe. With accurate Canadian dates sure to be released any day now, Musicologist recommends relying on both Greenplastic and W.A.S.T.E. for pre-sale opportunities.

If you're like most snow-hating Torontonians, your weekend plans are changing with the weather. Suddenly, the thought of spending Friday night in high heels and club lineups has all the appeal of an ice bath. Forget new outfits or dinner spots, you're looking for new releases instead.

Most should be very excited by the wide gamut of shows announced this week; Musicologist is excited, but distracted by the concept of a $30.75 Hedley ticket. But yes, excitement: Rick White and The Luyas (one third Jessie Stein of Miracle Fortress and SS Cardiacs, two thirds Bell Orchestre’s Pietro Amato and Stefan Schneider) play the Music Gallery on February 9. Gogol Bordello returns on March 2, shortly after their over-the-top performance last October. New York’s Vampire Weekend evidently can’t get enough of Toronto coming back for the third time since last summer on February 11. Basia Bulat (with Musicologist-loving Katie Stelmanis) is headlining her own show after a heavy North American, Hayden-supporting tour on March 29. Finally, Thee Silver Mt. Zion play on June 7 and 8 as per their (sometimes) annual Toronto visit—sadly, both shows will be Patti Smith-less.

We wanted to start off this challenge with a proclamation, in Japanese, of our deep love of sushi. Unfortunately, all the online translators we tried just came up with a bunch of squares. We're pretty sure the Japanese language has evolved past this, so we're going to have to blame it on our inferior translator-finding skills and move on.

A longtime staple of the holiday season is a special visit from jolly old St. Nick to the nearest shopping mall or department store. Kids relish the opportunity to tell Santa that they want the latest hot toy, peace on Earth or an official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model air rifle, while retailers hope these gift lists translate into sales. If the establishment has hired their Santa carefully, kids will not need to...

Transformation AGO will soon be entering the final stages of its expansion project, estimated to finish sometime in mid-2008. But before the AGO closes its doors in order to begin reinstalling over 5,000 pieces of art into 110 galleries, they will be offering free admission to the public for its closing weekend this October 6 and 7.

Beginning this Thursday, the fifteenth annual Junction Arts Festival will be swarming the streets with an entourage of innovative musicians, performers, and visual artists hailing from Canada, Denmark, Brussels, and the United States.

The CNE adds "you are here" stickers to its guide maps. No, really. Apparently this is a news story. And you thought journalism was hard and required a degree or something.

Out of respect for the funeral of Richard Bradshaw, the Toronto International Film Festival Group chose not to hold their traditional big final press conference in Nathan Phillips Square yesterday, and so with slightly less fanfare than usual we received a massive lump of press releases from the Festival announcing that they’ve announced absolutely everything about the festival there is to announce, pretty much.

The Canadian National Exhibition opens this week, bringing with it nearly 130 years of tradition, from its beginnings as an industrial showcase to its current role as a signal that summer is drawing to a close. Today's pair of ads provide a glimpse of what the Ex was like on the cusp of World War II, before it was closed for wartime activities.

This is precisely the idea behind MyBikeLane Toronto. A North American network of blogs launched in 2006, MyBikeLane is dedicated to outing the road hogs and other boobs blocking the way. All cyclists who have experienced lane blocking are invited to post photographic evidence and license plate numbers, track re-offenders, and use Google geotags to record the scene of the crime.

Toronto legend Edwin "Honest Ed" Mirvish has died. He was 92.

Pandas is an odd name for anything, and more than a little disconcerting if you're a fan of large, bamboo-eating quadripeds who don't like to breed.

Every weekday, we pick an image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve!

It's the last day of Inside Out, and this afternoon, the gay and lesbian film fest presented a pretty exciting Q&A session with director Laurie Lynd. Lynd directed, among other things, gay-friendly fare like the film version of Torontoist-fave Daniel MacIvor's House as well as episodes of Queer As Folk, Degrassi: The Next Generation and Noah's Arc. But it was his latest project that brought him to the immediate attention of Inside Out. Lynd directed the upcoming film Breakfast With Scot, which is that "gay Maple Leafs movie" you may have been hearing so much about. The afternoon began, however, with a screening of two of Lynd's earlier short films, RSVP and The Fairy Who Didn't Want to be a Fairy. The former is a sad short about a man grieving for his partner who has died of AIDS and the latter is a musical fantasy with Holly Cole about (literally) a fairy who decides that he wants to have his wings surgically removed. Both star Daniel MacIvor, at his loveable, charming best. Torontoist gives him a hug!

The Canada Goose Branta Canadensis is a native North American species of waterfowl. There are up to 11 subspecies of the Canada Goose, but they all have handsome markings—black head, white cheek patches, and long black neck—and fly together in a "V" formation when migrating.

The Tories unveiled their plan to fight climate change, which broadly speaking involves polluters paying, although not very soon or very much. Cue predictable environmentalist outrage, and Environment Minister John Baird pointing out that the Liberals didn’t even have a fake plan. Buzz Hargrove is pleased, though.

With Toronto FC's home opener drawing near, today's trip in the wayback machine stops at an earlier point in the city's professional soccer history, offering "super summer nights" for a pair of twenties.

Supporting their recently-released second album Yours Truly, Angry Mob, England’s Kaiser Chiefs played a storming, triumphant set at the Kool Haus on Wednesday night. Their story isn’t new: having sold millions of albums in the UK and Europe, British band attempts to crack North America. For every Coldplay, there’s countless Pulps. But as so-called difficult second albums go, Yours Truly, Angry Mob seems to fare much better than average. Writing short-but-catchy pop-punk songs is never an easy proposition, but Angry Mob surely delivers at least a potential half-dozen radio-friendly singles, including current staple “Ruby.” And it takes a certain amount of bravado to title a song “Everything Is Average Nowadays,” especially if said song isn’t any good (It is). And so playing to 2,000 people in a sweaty nightclub in Toronto might not be quite the rush compared with a European festival gig to legions of adoring fans, but it certainly didn’t show in any lack of enthusiasm from the band.

It was one of the wildest final weekends in NHL history. The Toronto Maple Leafs delivered a knockout blow to the Montreal Canadiens in one of the most electric matches in recent memory, only to have the New York Islanders break our hearts and take the final playoff spot in a shootout against the New Jersey Devils the following day.

While North American documentaries are becoming increasingly political and divisive, Souvenirs, Iraeli filmmaker Shahar Cohen’s directorial debut doc, is the very human story of a father and son trying to understand where they came from so they might to understand who they are.

If you're a red-blooded Toronto sports fan you probably already have your Toronto FC season tickets in hand, waiting for the big kick-off against the Kansas City Wizards and the day Beckham arrives.

Ontario to raise minimum wage to $10.25 by 2010 in new budget. NDP critic predictably says "no, we want it NOW," but Torontoist feels this is one instance where Dalton McGuinty's tendency to take as middling a road as possible has produced just about the best possible result. A twenty-five percent raise in the minimum wage over three years (and what will be a sixty-six percent raise since the Liberals took office in 2003) ain't nothing, not even close.