Sending typed letters, postcards, or small packages of treats via snail mail is sadly going the way of the dinosaur. It’s a rare surprise to find a handwritten letter in the mailbox among the pizza menus and flyers for the local gym. When it comes to mail art, the extra time and effort in composing the work is far more rewarding than attaching a .jpg and pressing send. For the receiver, opening a mailed masterpiece......

Tony Blair resigns as British Prime Minister, and Gordon Brown takes over. For those not familiar with British politics, an analogy: remember when Jean Chretien stepped down and Paul Martin took over as Prime Minister, and everybody agreed that although it was clearly time to go, wow, was Paul Martin boring or what? It's like that, except pretend that Paul Martin was even more boring. Looks like the Hamilton Predators will not be in Ontario's......

The nicer the weather gets, the busier we get across the Ist-A-Verse. But we like being busy. Here's a peek at what we've been up to since last week! Chicagoist had an interview with Audrey Niffenegger, whose popular book, The Time Traveler's Wife, was based in their fine city. They also had a heated discussion about Rush Limbaugh's controversial Barack Obama parody, talked about whether Uncle Julio's Hacienda is a good place to get......

Dethroned! Ed the Sock will no longer be serving as grand marshal of the Toronto Beaches Lions Club Easter Parade this weekend. After dozens of complaints that the bawdy sock was an inappropriate choice to host the children's parade, the Lions Club replaced Ed with the less-offensive Luba Goy and Craig Lauzon of CBC's Royal Canadian Air Farce. David Miller's 5 per cent city tax is hiking the price of your beer, your cigarettes, your......

In what we would consider a bit of a surprise, Stephen Frears' The Queen has swept the Toronto Film Critics Association awards, winning Best Picture, and picking up three other awards (and even sharing another). Helen Mirren won as Best Actress for playing Queen Elizabeth II; Michael Sheen won Best Supporting Actor for Tony Blair (who he looks basically exactly like and has played before, so that’s a bit of a cheat); Peter Morgan won......

Downtown hosted the annual Santa Claus Parade on Sunday, kicking off another season of gratuitous shopping. In related news, the Nintendo Wii was released and quickly sold out. B.C. slaughtered Montreal 25-14 to win the Grey Cup, and then promptly broke it. Pssht. Way to go, Lions. Today in War: Kissinger says a victory in Iraq is "not possible ", but Bush has no plans on bringing the troops home just yet, and Tony......

The Pet Shop Boys (Yes they're still around. They never left, actually) come to the Hummingbird Centre tonight, 8pm (some seats still available), bringing their campy, more politically-charged pop tunes to the colonies (who knew I'm With Stupid was about Tony Blair's love affair with GW Bush?). Judging by the various bootleg Youtube cell phone videos out there, the show is more militaristic and yet not as over the top as their "Very" tour. Neil......

Documentaries aren’t usually the most hotly anticipated titles at each year’s Toronto International Film Festival, with most people, even by September, still probably a bit burnt out from Hot Docs, but that’s not to say that the documentaries at TIFF are any less valid. This year they’ve announced 22 titles as part of their Real to Reel programme (in addition to the 5 already announced in other programmes). Our pick of the titles confirmed to......