Nobody likes to be stranded during the holiday season due to car trouble. Whether it's a dead battery, unexpected snowfall, or executing a 180-degree spin into the ditch alongside the 401 on the way back to the city, inclement weather and Murphy's Law often combine to make this a busy time of the year for auto clubs like CAA. Even beloved weekend movie hosts occasionally require their assistance. Before gaining fame as a movie......

Wouldn't your friends appreciate it more if you were present for dinner? Unless you are rewarding them, do you trust your friends and clients enough not to blow your credit limit in a swanky establishment such as this restaurant? Toronto was one of several Canadian cities featured in this late 1970s American Express campaign. All of the ads feature models who look too eager to serve cardmembers (check out Vancouver's entry). It's hard to......

Pity Mr. Businessman, so lacking in colour. He may have secured a lovely office set for his coworkers from a venerable North Toronto furniture supplier, but his grey demeanor led to his dismissal during a round of belt-tightening at A.T. & Love in 1980. Note the pyramid, which plays into the "abstract mystery usually associated with office planning." The Pyramid Power fad reached its height in Toronto during the Maple Leafs' 1976 playoff run,......

Toronto had a violent weekend with nine people shot and four of them killed, including an 11-year-old boy at a birthday party. Two more people were stabbed. Cue relatives wailing, Police Chief Bill Blair saying "this is unacceptable," and headlines like "Saturday Night Bloodbath." We’ve seen all this before. Solutions, anyone? On Sunday, about 8,000 people attended the opening of the Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, a spectacular 94,000 square foot Hindu temple near Finch and......

Have you entered our Hot Rod competition yet, readers? It's still running. You probably should enter, as it’s the most exciting film you could see this week, in our humble opinion. We really like Andy Samberg, you see. It’s so rarely worth struggling through an episode of Saturday Night Live just to see him (he’s so often wasted) but Hot Rod could be good! It really could! Well, alright, maybe you have a stranger......

To borrow a line from an old Saturday Night Live parody of Talking Heads frontman David Byrne's fashion sense, you may ask yourself "why such a big suit?" Village by the Grange opened on McCaul St in the mid-1970s as a mixture of residential and retail spaces. Any secrets the complex held by the time this ad appeared were hidden in each model's shoulder or loose jacket. The toll of those stuck in narrow......

One of the first things aspiring journalists learn is to keep themselves out of the story, if not completely, then as much as possible. "No one cares about you," is how one editor once put it. But with only a small portion of questions posed and stories heard actually making it to print, journalists are often full of great anecdotes and hilarious insights that never get a proper audience. Also, they often like to......

June Callwood, the journalist and social activist dubbed by the CBC as "Canada's Conscience," succumbed to cancer this morning at 82. Callwood is entrenched in Toronto's history as one of our most important and powerful social crusaders. She co-founded AIDS hospice Casey House (named for her late son) and more than fifty other social organizations, including the Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, PEN Canada and Yorkville's Digger House youth hostel. Raised amidst early family instability and......

After rumours and speculation, Arcade Fire recently announced that they would perform at Massey Hall on May 15 & 16. Both shows sold-out in less than a minute. But hopefully those who missed-out on tickets (and are avoiding scalpers) caught their performance on Saturday Night Live this past weekend. The band performed two tracks from their new album Neon Bible (to be released on March 6), "Intervention" and "Keep The Car Running. They also appeared......

Next time you visit the library, take a look at the carpeting and furniture. Does it make you want to linger with a good book or run through the checkout as fast as possible? The Toronto Reference Library, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in November, was breaking itself in when today's ad appeared. Judging from the number of people seen sleeping there, the carpet colours may be too easy on some readers' eyes. Architect Raymond......

When it launched in April of 2003 by real estate developer Christopher Bratty, Toronto-based men's magazine Toro was a critical darling. The glossy won two Folio Awards for design almost immediately, followed with four National Magazine Awards in 2004 (48 NMA nominations in total), then accolades for investigative journalism and fashion photography. Today, news arrives that Toro will immediately suspend publication, with the March 2007 issue scheduled for release on February 20 remaining undistributed. Publisher......

You probably heard that Andy Samberg (the cute guy who does the funny videos on Saturday Night Live) was discovered online. As a member of the comedy group Lonely Island, Samberg and his cohorts were regulars at the video show-slash-website Channel 101, which eventually caught the attention of SNL’s Lorne Michaels. The rest is comedy history. Anyone can make a digital short and then use the interweb to distribute it around the world. It......

Well, after what could be considered a bit of a drought, there’s enough movies to choke a horse on release in Toronto this week; and that’s a horse which had previously won speed movie-eating competitions. First, the long awaited arrival of the new Cinematheque Ontario season. Lars Von Trier’s new comedy The Boss of It All hits tonight at 8:30pm (and the website claims there are still limited tickets available, if you’re interested) with the......

Let's look back at a week in which no site in the -ist network adopted anyone from Africa... -Austinist reveled in the dumb antics of some U.T. law students and posted some great audio from former New Orleans natives who've decided to stay in Austin. But the best news for Austinist? They were voted Best Local Entertainment Web Site by the local Austin alt-weekly. Congrats, Austinist. -DCist gloried in being told their musical tastes made......

This week’s listings come at you one day late but better than ever. Ok, maybe not better than ever. More like as adequate as before. The Super Pen Pals Secret Reading Society gathers tonight at the Victory Café – 581 Markham – but it’s not a secret anymore as I’ve just told you it’s happening. I might get in trouble for spilling the beans but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. There are some......

Sarah Teitel is a woman, who on first introduction, is a dizzying whirlwind of talent and to say she wears more than one hat would be an extravagent understatement. As Torontoist has just become acquainted with her we'll let you in on a few key bits of information: -She has just released a new album named "Stories and Music for the Mildly Suicidal". -She is a sometime journalist, having written for The Globe & Mail......

The only major release particularly worth recounting this week is the Wachowski brothers' V for Vendetta, and though it comes so shortly (you’d almost think they planned it!) after Natalie Portman’s sweary rap from Saturday Night Live went viral, the current reaction seems to be that even dudes who like bald chicks with dodgy English accents should just save up for a trip to Camden instead. The New York Times has a particularly nice......

- Curiously, recording artists Jamie Lidell (take a blue cd and multiply?), James Blunt (yuck.) and Bluth family member Tobias Funke all have an affinity for blue. - It's Mozart's birthday today. That guy was hilarious at the end of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. - $25000 to anyone who finds the stolen slippers. Or, anyone who can create a reasonable facsimile using cheap slipper material and a bedazzler. - Cubano hip hop! Revolution......

- The St. Clair streetcar issue is back on track. Or derailed, depending on your point of view. Two judges said Justice Matlow exhibited an "appearance of bias," and they weren't talking about the pirate hem dress he was sporting. - What are the grossest things you have seen people eat on the subway (while reading poetry)? - Mayor Miller 'won't back down.' - George Stroumboyouknow hosts a chat and free screening of Born......

Just in time for Halloween, St. Joseph Media has driven the stake through the heart of Saturday Night magazine. Back in 2001, the mag was killed off by then owner CanWest Global but like the undead it takes more than pissed off owners to kill a magazine that's been around since 1887. It was bought by St. Joseph Media who has been running the magazine until today. The reason for shutting the mag down, lack......

This weekend was brought to you by Kensington and the number 5. Okay, we made up the bit about the number 5, but Kensington was the august August weekend theme. From a long and endearing piece about Kensington kids in the Sunday Star to Pedestrian Sundays to Saturday Night in the market, Kensington was the word. So let's proceed with a short wrap up of the newly crazy Saturday Night scene. We began the......

- We've had too much of a popcorn summer - too much mugging Murray, and prattling Pitt and dervishy Depp. It's time for something slow, meandering and altogether beautiful. It's time we got to seeing the Wong Kar Wai epic we've been hearing about for years now. Thank goodness it has finally crawled into the theatre. 2046 takes us back to the world of Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) of In the Mood for Love.......

Saturday, April 2, Gypsy Co-Op (817 Queen Street West): Celebrate the launch of Entrepôt, the proud brainchild of Saturday Night editor Benjamin Leszcz and Neil Rogachevsky. The Spring 2005 issue juxtaposes discussion of politics, polygamy, and a few too many Dylan references, but the combination of Leszcz's pragmatism and Rogachevsky's literary erudition is pleasing at very least. Michael Budd spins house, breaks, and hip-hop till you don't stop. We all know these media-kids do......

Why does everyone always call Avril Lavigne the "Canadian pop-punk princess?" Well, maybe because she dressed up like a Hooters girl for Halloween and covered Outkast's "Hey Ya" in Philadelphia. Or, maybe it's because she's not afraid to diss Hillary Duff and/or Ashlee Simpson for not singing live. In a three question interview with the New York Post, the Canadian pop-punk princess commented on Ashlee Simpson's Saturday Night Live lip-synching debacle, saying that "[i]t's a......