On the opening track of Pink Martini's latest album, lead singer China Forbes croons, "Everywhere I go, I see a world designed for you and me"—and every time you spin the record, you hear songs from all over the world. This Saturday, one lone performance at Massey Hall will echo in a mass of different languages, sung in a million more exquisite styles. Says founder and artistic director Thomas M. Lauderdale of the unique......

It’s almost time for the Toronto International Film Festival for Children, Sprockets (it runs this year from April 12th to 18th) and the complete line-up of films has been announced. Once again this year all film journalists will find it impossible to mention the festival without bringing up Mike Myers (after all, it’s was one of the best SNL sketches ever, really) but far more relevantly, this year Sprockets features 68 films from 26......

Attention residents of the tri-city area: much of the cast of SCTV is reuniting for a single live performance in Toronto on Monday, May 5 at 8 p.m. The occasion is a benefit for the Alumni Fund for Second City cast and crew facing financial or health difficulties. It's bound to be difficult for the talented troupe—Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, and Dave Thomas will all be there—to live......

Forget the snow, it's time to start planning your summer of cycling. The Toronto–Niagara Bike Train will be returning this year with an expanded schedule, more travel options, and some getaway package deals. Building on last summer's successful pilot program which saw dozens of cyclists and their bikes riding the train between Toronto and Niagara Falls on each of four weekends, the 2008 edition of the Bike Train spans eight weekends from late June......

Heads up on the hands-down coolest things at the Interior Design Show: most of them spring from our own backyard. And literally, too. There is a flourishing trend toward the incorporation of nature in contemporary design—a welcome wandering off from the hard lines and materials often associated with modernism—and local designers are embracing it wholeheartedly. Toronto installation artist Rob Southcott's "United We Stand" (pictured at right) is actually a seat of sorts, a grouping......

One day Pamela Anderson stood in the centre turn lane of a highway, clad only in a Canadian flag...picturing it? Welcome to the lead photo for the "Best of Canada" edition of SNAP!. Now in its seventh year, SNAP! combines a juried competition for established and emerging photographers with a gala fundraiser on March 2 at the National Ballet School. Organizers predict that the works offered in live and silent auctions will raise $140,000......

Photo of d’bi.young.anitafrika and her son, Moon, courtesy of Women’s Press. Last week’s literary listings featured a number of events celebrating one man (Michael Redhill, who is likely exhausted and has since gone back to Narbonne, France) and One Book (Consolation). This week the obvious literary picks are two very talented, very different women. Recent winner of the Toronto Arts Council Foundation Emerging Artist award and one of Canada’s most celebrated young performers, d’bi.young.anitafrika......

Have you been looking around for the perfect Valentine's Day gift for that special someone? Nothing says "I love you" like tickets to Star Trek: The Music. Yesterday, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra announced that their 2007/2008 season finale would be a performance of music from everyone's favourite sci-fi series (Battlestar Galactica be damned!). On June 20 & 21, the TSO will play a medley of Star Trek themes with conductor Erich Kunzel, and hosts......

Have you ever wondered what you could learn from a computer pioneer? You'll have your chance to find out when Michael Dell rolls into town for a free speaking engagement at Convocation Hall later this month. Okay, so Dell isn't exactly a pioneer: he's famous not for inventing anything, but merely for improving the process of assembling a bunch of parts into a serviceable computer, shipping it somewhere, and making a boatload of money while......

Strap on your tux or taffeta this Friday, February 1 and head down to WhipperSnapper Gallery (587A College Street) for Let's Get Hitched. The youth art collective throws notoriously awesome shindigs: "Whippersnapper openings are essentially hip house parties," we said in an article about their last exhibit Push It: "Think Pitchfork-approved background music, College kids in tortoise-shell glasses, and red wine in plastic cups." All the cool kids are going, so why aren't you?......

It's fight night at the Gladstone Hotel this Thursday as the Pillow Fight League rolls back into town. The homegrown product and first professional pillow fighting league of its kind is just six months away from its second anniversary. With a glowing write-up in ESPN Magazine, a potential TV deal, and an April gig at Miami's Exxxotica Festival, the PFL is looking to make 2008 their biggest year yet. At PFL 14, two hundred......

Andy Warhol's Factory parties were the ultimate hot spot for an elite cabal of celebrities, radicals, drag queens and porn stars. There has never been a better place to rock out while on an amphetamine high amid mass-produced silkscreen paintings and a fleet of floating silver balloons. Now, just replace Warhol's notorious gang of New York vagabonds with a bunch of over-stimulated children, and you have the idea behind Bunch's next edition of their popular......

While Newmindspace have organized subway parties in Toronto, SkyTrain parties in Vancouver, and métro parties in Montréal, sometimes nothing beats an old-fashioned streetcar party for a beat-bumping, track-turning, three hour party tour of the city. The TTC will rent a streetcar (PCC, CLRV or ALRV) for a minimum of three hours for a pretty steep fee to just about anybody. The customer can request a custom route, like Newmindspace has, that takes advantage of......

Have you wanted: dead or alive tickets to runaway to an amazing rock show, but a lack of funds have been giving love a bad name? Say it isn't so! It's your life, and we here at Torontoist think you should have a nice day, everyday. If you've always loved Bon Jovi, then you should keep the faith that we'll be there for you and your bouncin' needs, if that's what it takes. Bon Jovi......

Today is the first day of the Bali United Nations Climate Change Conference, which will continue until December 14. The purpose of the conference, which is being attended by over 20,000 delegates and observers from 180 countries, is to set out the framework of negotiations for the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol when it ends in 2012. There are several events taking place this week in Toronto to mark the occasion. The first......

Look at how cute the cast of The Drawer Boy is! And yes, that is the much-ballyhooed inflatable cow in the background. Have you continued to miss your chance to catch this new Canadian classic? Well, somebody must keep seeing it, because it's already been extended a couple of times and now plays until December 2. But if that somebody wasn't you, don't despair! The lovely people at Passe Muraille have decided to give......

This what a bioterrorist looks like, according to the FBI. Dr. Steven Kurtz (right) is a Professor of Art at SUNY Buffalo and member of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), an art and theatre collective co-founded by Kurtz and his late wife, Hope. In May 2004, the Kurtzes were preparing a piece called Free Range Grains, which allowed participants to test food for the presence of genetically modified organisms, when Hope died of heart failure......

This Friday's Steam Whistle Unsigned is already the fourth in a series of independent music showcases at the Roundhouse, but it's the first we're really excited about. Really excited. Check out this lineup: The Carps are the best thing to come out of Scarborough since... er... hmm. Right. Anyway, the punk-soul duo recently opened for MIA at the Kool Haus, and if they're good enough for Maya, they're good enough for you. Opopo sound like......

Celebrating its fifth anniversary, the Toronto Japanese Short Film Festival opens its doors tonight and runs until Sunday at the Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Avenue). The theme of this year’s festival is “Life is short, work hard!” and is explored throughout the festival’s programming, beginning tonight at 6.30 p.m. with the Momo (Japanese for “peach”) program. The program begins with a couple of hilarious shorts from Japanese comedy duo the Rahmens, The Japanese......

Recalling an exciting time in Canadian indie rock when bands sounded less like accordion-totting balladeers and more like Dischord Records discography-totting caustic rockers, Republic of Safety are easily one of the most exciting bands currently making music in this city. Fronted by the charismatic (and Torontoist interviewed!) Maggie MacDonald, the band boasts the creative, angular guitar work of scene veteran Jonny Dovercourt, along with bassist Marlena Kaesler, saxophonist Martin Eckart, and former Quebexico drummer Steve......

Starting today and going until Sunday November 11 is the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair at The Direct Energy Centre at Exhibition Place. Tickets are $18, but $14 for seniors and youth (5-17) and free for kids under 5. It's a great place to take your kids to see horses and cows, and they can learn all about corporate sponsorship—I mean, agriculture!—with activities including the Toyota Dealers Royal Rodeo, the Toronto Star horse demonstrations, and the......

There's an old cliché that says everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day. It follows, then, that everyone is goth on Halloween . If you’re going to be exploring your inner goth anyway, you may as well go hog wild and get your little black-clad tuchus down to the fourth edition of EBM Fest at The Reverb (651 Queen Street West) on October 28, where the folks who live Halloween every day will be......

The Royal St. George's College "Focus on the Environment" speaker series continues with David Suzuki at the Bloor Cinema on Monday night. This year's series kicked off in September with Jane Goodall and continues through the rest of the school year with guest speakers ranging from writer Roy MacGregor to polar explorer Geoff Green. In contrast, the only guest speakers we remember from our high school years were actuaries and federal civil servants telling......

At Torontoist, we're so used to writing about certain niche genres of art—graffiti art, video art, comic art, participatory art, billboard liberation art, performance art, outdoor art, nocturnal art, transit art—that we tend to forget about the encompassing category of "fine art for the commercial market." Canadian and international contemporary art enthusiasts will descend upon the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (255 Front Street West) this weekend from October 25–29 for the Toronto International Art......

There's no arguing it: sex is everywhere. It's on tv, it's walking down the street, it's how each and every one of us came into existance. You might love it, you might hate it, but no matter what your thoughts on fornication, there's bound to be something for you at the Everything to Do With Sex Show. Now in its eighth year, the ETDWSS promotes itself as a non-threatening consumer affair. This year it features......

Photo by EIFF. Next week on October 17th, the International Festival of Authors will kick off its 28th year since its inception in 1980 at the Premiere Dance Theatre (207 Queens Quay West). Incorporating some of the best contemporary world literature, the festival is comprised of eleven days and nights of readings, interviews, round-table discussions, lectures, and book signings—not to mention special event readings by Scotiabank Giller Prize and Governor General’s Literary Awards finalists.......

If you’re one of the unfortunate souls who missed out on Helvetica way back in April—it was one of the big buzz films at Hot Docs this year—then mark October 16 on your calendar…maybe with a clean sans serif, in bold. Even italicized, depending on your level of excitement. Er, anyway, on October 16, the Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario (that’s RGD Ontario to their friends) will be hosting a screening of......

This weekend, the Ex is once again hosting Toronto's popular Clothing Show, the retail sales event offering "the unique, the unusual, and the handcrafted" to the citizenry. Currently celebrating its 30th anniversary, this event has been taking in greater numbers over the years because of its talented pool of local designers. And though there's an increasing amount of lazily silk-screened American Apparel T-shirts being touted as "alternative" fashion, it's still the best place to get......

All summer long, Toronto has been jam-packed with countless cultural festivities, and as the last weekend of the summer begins to dawn on us—with students gearing up for school and vacations coming to an unfortunate end—why not end the summer with some Ukrainian style? This year, what was formerly known as the Bloor West Village Ukrainian Festival is being renamed the Toronto Ukrainian Festival and will take place at Harbourfront Centre. From August 31......

Hopefully, you've already polished your tiara and ordered your orchid. You've probably spent every night this week at the sewing machine, cannibalizing several discarded pink dresses to create your own cotton candy monstrosity. Or maybe you've been spending all your time coaxing that "ugly" girl from your homeroom out of her glasses and ponytail as part of a troublingly chauvinistic bet. That's right, the fifth annual Fake Prom takes place this Saturday night at......