Stevie Wonder - Superstition live on Sesame Street

The title says it all...the dancing kid in the red sweater sells this for me. G'damn.

20 odd things about Toronto

The Toronto Star's Adam Mayers lists 20 odd things about our city, in his Looking Back column.
Some odd facts about Toronto's history include:

Lord Stanley, of Cup fame, came to the Ex (CNE) in the summer of 1888 when he was Governor-General. The buzz that year was Thomas Edison's phonograph. Stanley recorded a short greeting to U.S. president Grover Cleveland, which was the first recording made in Canada.

The St. Lawrence market was the centre of town during the early part of the 19th century and market day was the highlight of the week, a place to buy, sell and trade and meet friends. For about 30 years, petty criminals were strung up there along with sides of beef. Some were put in stocks or pillories on market day, where being pelted with refuse and heckled by passersby was part of the humiliation of their sentence.

In the 1850s you didn't take the kids to the Island for a good time. It was home to a rough crowd who frequented the seedy bars, brothels and gambling joints. Toronto's first racetrack ran between Ward's and Centre Islands.

Read the whole story.

SCTV reunion!

SCTV alum and comedy legends Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Harold Ramis, Andrea Martin, Catherine O'Hara and Martin Short will be reuniting for two days at the Second City Theatre on Mercer St. to perform together for the first time in 24 years.

100% of the proceeds from the event benefit The Alumni Fund – helping the people that helped us make you laugh. The Alumni Fund raises funds to help veteran artistic and support personnel from SCTV and The Second City that are facing health or financial hardship.

The reunion will be May 5 and 6.

Read the Toronto Star story.

Smile of the Week

Man arrested in Texas for trying to cash $360 billion check. That's fuckin' brilliant!


This image taken from video provided Thursday, May 1, 2008 by KXAS-TV in Fort Worth, Texas,


Read the Denver Post story

The Toronto Star's 10 Things We Learned This Week

Some of the things we learned this week, according to the Toronto Star's weekly feature "10 Things We Learned This Week" includes:

You can use cricket chirps to calculate the temperature (in Celsius): Count the number of chirps in 25 seconds. Divide by 3. Add 4


Ronald Reagan is the first and only presidential candidate to be endorsed by TV Guide.



China, which has the world's largest weather-modification program – with 30,000 employees and a yearly budget of about $100 million – hopes to provide sunshine for the August Olympics by "seeding" clouds with rain-inducing particles beforehand.


Read the story here.

Avery in Hospital

New York Rangers super-pest Sean Avery is now in stable condition after lacerating his spleen during a playoff loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins. Original reports had Avery arriving at St. Vincent's Medical Center after suffering cardiac arrest very early April 30, but he apparently walked into the hospital under his own power.

The Rangers trail the Penguins 3 games to 0 in their best of 7 second-round series.

Avery will be out for the remainder of the season, the Rangers said, but is expected to make a full recovery.

Now, I don't wish ill health upon anybody, but I only can think one word...karma.


Read the si.com update.

Getting Jimmy Carter

Former American President and current cool-as-shit badass Jimmy Carter has pissed off both Israeli and American administrations after meeting with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal while on his trip to Syria on April 13. Carter also broke with US policy by laying a wreath on the grave of former PLO leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah.

Carter, who has long worked on the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, and throughout the Middle East, has now been made to look like a bad guy by Israel and the United States. This because he wants to bring peace.

Read the Opinion piece by Patrick Seale at Middle-East-Online.com

Just going with the FLOW

When FLOW 93.5 initially hit Toronto airwaves in 2001 as Canada's first urban music station (25 years overdue if you ask me), the on-air fare was mainly hip-hop and R&B -- neither of which, by the way, are musical genres, but we can save that for music marketing class 101.

However, seven years later, the station has found itself going in a different direction, choosing to opt for a Contemporary Hits Radio format, a format that boasts a more accessible playlist and broader reach of listeners.

How do urban music listeners, critics and journalists feel about the re-positoning of the station?
Read Ashante Infantry's story in the Toronto Star to hear both sides of the arguement.

PJ Harvey - Naked Cousin

I heard this song for the first time on my little shitty clock radio in 1995 listening to CFNY 102.1FM in Toronto and it blew me away. It certainly concreted Polly Jean Harvey as one of my favourite guitar players.

I tried to find a recording of "Naked Cousin" everywhere, asking all the DJs, record store reps, music writers and rock geeks I knew, to no avail.

Then I saw this Glastonbury Festival 1995 footage while living in Vancouver and I lost my shit! Polly Jean in the hot-pink jump suit, the hips, the heels, the sneer, the up-stroke tambourine... g'damn!

Once again my search continued, eventually finding the track a short time later back in Toronto on The Crow soundtrack.

This is for anyone who's ever had a crush on a cousin.

Bill Maher's New Rules for April 25

HBO television show Real Time with Bill Maher's New Rules segment for April 25. This week: Gas prices, picture books for plastic surgery, rednecks and Muslims, Hillary Clinton's chances.

Final Real Time episode until late August.

TTC Workers Walk off the Job

Toronto Transit Commission union workers failed to ratify the contract settlement agreed upon with the TTC last Sunday, April 20. With 65% of the union voting against the settlement, all TTC buses, streetcars and subways halted service at midnight on Saturday morning, stranding many people out on the town on Friday night. The shutdown occurred after being made public at 11:30pm, leaving many Torontoians and TTC workers in vulnerable positions.

Toronto Mayor David Miller requested that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's government introduce a back-to-work legislation as soon as possible.


Read the 680News story.

CTV.ca Streams New Episodes of Lost

CTV announced that they would stream complete episodes of the hit ABC shows Lost and Grey's Anatomy starting with episodes airing Thursday, April 24, the first post-Writers strike episodes.
Along with Desperate Housewives, these are the first ABC Studios-produced series are being streamed on a free, ad-supported basis in Canada.

Read the CTV media release

Earthday Becoming Another Commerical Opportunity

April 22 is Earthday, which is intended "to inspire awareness of and appreciation for the Earth's environment" as quoted from Wikipedia.

Sheldon Rampton from the Center for Media and Democracy comments on how Earthday has become a hideous display PR hype and misleading marketing campaigns

Read the Common Dreams posting.

The Toronto Star's 10 Things We Learned This Week

Some of the things we learned this week, according to the Toronto Star's weekly feature "10 Things We Learned This Week" includes:

Today is the unofficial holiday of potheads. "Four twenty" became an emblematic number for dopers in the 1970s, reportedly after a group of California high school kids began meeting regularly at that time to get high. Now many tokers celebrate on April 20, preferably at 4.20 p.m.

Sign-language interpreting is among the most high-risk jobs for work-related injury, causing more stress to the extremities than assembly-line labour.



In 2007, Mexicans devoted 8 per cent of their family income to bribes for a total of $2.58 billion, 42 per cent more than in 2006.


Read the story here.

TTC Strike Averted

A Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) strike was averted at around 6:00 pm on Sunday, April 20 when an agreement was reached between the union and the TTC. iT appears the union workers will receive a 3% pay increase over a three year span. This spells relief for 1.5 million daily commuters in and around Toronto who depend on the TTC to get to work and school.

Read the Blog T.O posting.

Read the Spacing.ca posting.

You Learn Something New Everyday.

In the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock thriller Psycho, the color of Mrs. Bates' dress was periwinkle blue.

The Beatles song "Dear Prudence" was written about Mia Farrow's sister, Prudence, when she wouldn't come out and play with Mia and the Beatles at a religious retreat in India.

The dial tone of a normal telephone is in the key of "F"

Months that begin with a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."

Pope: Sex Scandals "Very Badly Handled."

For filing under the category "Well, no shit, Sherlock!"

Pope Benedict XVI told hundreds of American bishops at a national shrine in Washington on April 16 that the U.S. clergy sex abuse scandal was sometimes "very badly handled."

His remarks came toward the end of his first full day of his five-day tour of the United States

In 2004, U.S. bishops released a statistical review that found 4,392 priests had been accused of molesting children in 10,667 cases between 1950 and 2002. The accusations have devastated the Roman Catholic church and forced the payout of nearly $2 billion in settlements.

Read the CBC story.

Bill Maher's New Rules for April 18

HBO television show Real Time with Bill Maher's New Rules segment for April 18. This week: The IRS, the Catholic church, company takeovers, bitter American voters.

Margaret Cho on the Hour.

The self-proclaimed "Korean-American, fag-hag, shit-starter, girl comic, trash talker" was on the CBC's The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos.

During the interview, George calls Kevin Drew from Broken Social Scene because Margaret wants to join the band.

Watch the interview

The Toronto Star's 10 Things We Learned This Week

Some of the things we learned this week, according to the Toronto Star's weekly feature "10 Things We Learned This Week" includes:

In the 1800s, the "scent molecules" produced by flowers could travel roughly 1,000 metres. In today's polluted atmosphere, that distance has been cut to about 200 metres, making it difficult for bees to find the nectar they need to survive.


Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" was not named for the Maple leaf or Canada but for the Maple Leaf Club in Sedalia, Mo. (americanheritage.com)


Among the 10 most unusual excuses employees offered for being late for work: i) My ex-husband stole my car so I couldn't drive to work. ii) I had to go audition for American Idol. iii) I wasn't thinking and accidentally went to my old job.

Read the story here.