Edmonton Expo a Magical Place

Edmonton Expo a Magical Place

For one weekend, the streets of Edmonton were barren of nerds. Did they get beamed up into some Star Trekian rapture? No. Did they all move to Vulcan and start coffee shops and grow ops? No (not all). Did they decide en masse to go underground into a series of catacomb based lairs where video […]

COMICS: Heart of Wonderdick in Edmonton

COMICS: Heart of Wonderdick in Edmonton

A Torontonian taking the piss out of Edmonton? Break out the machetes! Relax, it’s just cartoonist Mike Winters, who may call the Centre of Canada home now, but his heart clearly resides in Dirt City. Winters’ weekly comic strip Cartoon Machine offers up caustic views on millennials, toxic relationships and … Edmonton Oilers draft picks? […]

Wunderbar: Dead Bar Walking

Wunderbar: Dead Bar Walking

On the morning of Wednesday, July 15, Craig Martellica, owner of the beloved Wunderbar Hofbrauhaus off Whyte Avenue, made one last plea for clemency. He launched a Go Fund Me campaign called Keep Wundi Alive for a Bit, asking for help in paying rent by the end of the day – without which, despite a […]

McGowans rediscover True Spirit of 420

McGowans rediscover True Spirit of 420

420 has to be the most redundant, ridiculous holiday ever invented. Every hour of every day is 420 for its most chronic celebrants. Why bother? “I guess it’s kind of like how people have Christmas in their hearts all year round, but still celebrate on that one day,” says Mark McGowan of the McGowan Family […]

Ask a Mormon about The Book of Mormon

Ask a Mormon about The Book of Mormon

Ask a Mormon about The Book of Mormon and you’ll discover they’re not exactly falling all over themselves to see the satirical musical by the creators of South Park (update: returning to the Jubilee Auditorium Sept. 13-18) They say it makes a mockery of their religion. They say it’s disrespectful. They say it misses the […]

Edmonton musicians in tune with beer

Edmonton musicians in tune with beer

Beer. The word itself is a musical note. It has helped write more songs than GarageBand and puberty combined. If it were a mountain, it would be named Mount St. Inspirational Liquid. Edmonton bands are no stranger to this Mesopotamian concoction. Loved by both the refined and the rowdy, beer has a special place in […]

Birthday for Art sakes

Birthday for Art sakes

  What do you get art for its birthday? Aside from a bitchin’ tea infuser, you probably get it some art. The Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society (BEAMS) will do just that, with a little help from some friends. Art’s Birthday is an annual event first proposed in 1963 by French artist Robert Filliou. The artist chose […]

Anderson to preview short ahead of Sundance premiere

Anderson to preview short ahead of Sundance premiere

Trevor Anderson’s return to the Sundance Film Festival will bring festival goers face to face with his short film The Little Deputy. The nine minute documentary/Western film focuses on Anderson’s quest to have his photo taken with his father. The photo, which hung in his family’s home as he grew up, was something that he […]

Inside the End of the Earth

Inside the End of the Earth

Editor’s note: Politicians, corporations, the media, employers, employees, advertisers, friends and family, your dog, even Stephen Colbert, for God’s sake – everybody lies! It’s getting the point where the only place to find honesty in this world is in a cartoon. In the year and a half since we’ve run Chad Huculak’s comic strip End […]

Street camera gang fights the good fight

Street camera gang fights the good fight

“We are out there to fight crime,” says Hugh Lee, co-founder of Hobos With Nikons, a group of Edmonton photography enthusiasts some may mistake for a homeless camera club. “That crime, of course, being people taking bad photographs.” Lee, a Edmonton apartment building manager, talks about the time he gave unsolicited tips to tourists in […]

Remember who gave us freedom to be artists

Remember who gave us freedom to be artists

In Flanders Fields The Poppies blow Between the Crosses, Row on Row In 1933, one of the first political moves Adolf Hitler took to solidify his control over the population of Germany was to control the media. He nationalized newspapers so that he could sow propaganda , then begin a pogrom against the Jewish community, […]

INTERVIEW: The Unstoppable Shawn Bernard

INTERVIEW: The Unstoppable Shawn Bernard

Shawn Bernard survived losing both of his parents and his sister to drug overdoses. He survived poverty, living on streets, becoming a drug dealer, gang leader and drug addict himself. He survived jail. In an inspirational story he’s told to youngsters across Canada countless times since, he prevailed over all these trials to break the […]