BUK STOPS HERE: Birds, bees put heat on Diotte
The liberal vote will get split between Don Iveson and Karen Leibovici, which means Kerry Diotte will be the next Mayor of Edmonton – but not if the fair food community has anything to say about it. Those who raise chickens and bees illegally within city limits maintain that the city government has no business […]
Nerds to rule at Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo
It’s that time of year again. You can feel it in the air – a radiant mass nerdliness as we head into the annual autumnal weekend of the Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo! Don’t judge us. Geek is the new chic, don’t you know. Seriously, why wait for Halloween to dress as your favourite fantasy-sci-fi-comic-book […]
Does public art improve life for Edmonton’s homeless?
Answering a simple question – what do homeless people think of public art? – was fraught with difficult and humbling emotions. I recently interviewed a number of Edmonton street people who turned out to be so sharp that the question should’ve been: Why in God’s name are you homeless?! The stories vary: Poverty, alcoholism, mental […]
War Horse a masterful display of equine puppetry
The fake horse was so real that even the real horses were fooled. They wouldn’t get near the thing. And these were trained military steeds from the Strathcona Mounted Troop, no less, a bit freaked out during Tuesday’s photo op for “War Horse,” leading to the play’s run through Sept. 22 at the Jubilee Auditorium. […]
TV PERSONALITY: Ryan Jespersen and the Lake of Fire
Talk turns to gay rights within the first two minutes of a recent interview with Ryan Jespersen. Raised Christian in Calgary, the chatty Breakfast Television host got his journalism training at Trinity Western University in Langley, B.C., a Christian college that required its students to sign abstinence pledges that included a specific clause pertaining to […]
SOAP-A-THON: Inside the Improvisers Studio
When Die-Nasty workshop leader Patti Stiles asked if there was anybody who had never improvised, I was the only one who raised my hand. Everyone else applauded! Some 30 actors, many of them professional, gathered on the Varscona Theatre stage Tuesday night for the first of two preparatory “workshops” leading into this weekend’s 21st annual […]
MUSIC: Alterra sticks to its Guns, Crue
Not every local band gets to work with a pole dancer who once performed with Motley Crue. There’s always a little bit of temporal vertigo that comes from hearing young rock musicians inspired by music that was made before they were born. Edmonton’s Alterra – not to be confused with the power company or a […]
Kaleido balloons into major Edmonton festival
If you were driving down 118th Avenue on Monday afternoon, you might have spotted clowns, mimes and tin foil robots, a Renaissance flautist in full regalia, along with Ukrainian dancers and Cuban dancers and belly dancers and ballet dancers and God knows what else. It could be only one thing, of course: The annual media […]
Garage sale a big story during Country Music Week
What a load of crap. Edmonton is hosting the biggest Canadian country music event of the decade and all the cool kids can talk about is Corb Lund’s garage sale. See, he’s moving to Calgary, so he has a bunch of odds and ends to unload, T-shirts, promotional hockey pucks, custom comic books, you name […]
MUSIC: His name is trouble
Ben Sures has a lot of family lore to draw from. It starts at conception – said to be in Japan following a Beatles concert in 1966, “but I have never been able to confirm that,” he says. His name translates from Yiddish as “Son of Trouble” – which he chose for the the title […]
Cartoon Machine thrives in Torontonian urbanity
Stand-up comedians and cartoonists are the only people in the world who can be counted on to tell us the brutal truth – no matter what. We’re lied to on a daily basis by the government, the media, corporations, even our neighbours and loved ones. Someone’s got to do the dirty job of being honest. […]
Foreign Musician Fee Fracas: It’s not the end of the world
What’s a guy gotta do to get an LMO exemption around here?! There’s a good pick up line next time you’re in your favourite local bar or coffee shop – where you probably be seeing a lot more true blue Canadian live music now that sneaky government fees on foreign workers have been imposed. Employers […]
