Food Blog - Are You Gonna Eat That?

Ok, we might chalk this up to intense hunger, but I just found the best food blog ever - called Are you gonna eat that? Seems to be written by a girl from Calgary, but she travels a lot, so there are lots of posts about Toronto and other Canadian cities. Her photographs are fabulous and so are her descriptions of her dining experiences. And based on her reviews, if anyone wants to drop $100 for a seven course tasting menu at Susar, I'm in.

Polaris Music Prize

I know, I'm being super lazy these days and just cutting and pasting stuff, but here's Pitchfork's blurb about the Polaris Music Prize:

The votes are in, and the winner of this year's Polaris Music Prize-- along with $20,000 big ones and the respect and adulation of his Canadian countrypeople-- is...um... Patrick Watson's album Close to Paradise. Yeah.

Paradise beat Arcade Fire's Neon Bible, Feist's The Reminder, The Besnard Lakes' The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse, Junior Boys' So This Is Goodbye, Julie Doiron's Woke Myself Up, Chad VanGaalen's Skelliconnection, Miracle Fortress' Five Roses, The Dears' Gang of Losers, and Joel Plaskett Emergency's Ashtray Rock to claim the title of "BEST CANADIAN MUSIC OF 2007 EVER." Guess Canadians like this guy?

I think I have only heard one song by Patrick Watson and immediately thought "Jeff Buckley". His win kinda makes sense since the award is based on the votes of Canadian music journalists (with Liisa Ladouceur at the helm) and Jeff Buckley is the sacred cow of the music journalist crowd - no offense to Jeff Buckley, I am a huge fan.

Have I expressed my distaste for Canadian music journalists lately? I love the style of journalism found in Spin or Rolling Stone, the NME or even Q, putting musicians in context and giving them a story, but Canadian music journalists take themselves so fucking seriously, it's really sad. I honestly think that they believe they are our arbiters of taste, intellectualizing music, debating the merit of bands. The idea of being a "music expert" is just so completely wrong to me. Anyhow, I won't get started.

I heard the song "Sealion" by Feist yesterday, and on the basis of that song alone, she should have won, in my humble non-expert opinion.

Ontario Election October 10

It was announced yesterday that Native Canadians subjected to the ill-conceived church run residential school system can now apply for compensation under a federal government settlement worth about $1 Billion dollars.
Meanwhile, the leader of the Ontario Conservative party John Tory is campaigning on the issue of religious school funding. In an era where parents have to pay for boxes of Kleenex for their children's classrooms due to lack of funding, I find it hard to believe that there is public cash available for endless separate schools. Can somebody explain this to me? (my bias would be to eliminate all separate school funding)
While we're at it, can someone explain to me why the referendum on electoral reform in Ontario is so grossly under-reported? This is the first referendum on the Ontario ballot since 1921, and yet when I look up "Ontario referendum" on google news, the first option that shows up is an online newspaper that I have never heard of, and the second option is the Brockville Recorder and Times (no offense Brockville). This is actually a very important issue, and since it is somewhat complex, it would help if the media would help clarify it.
Here is the wiki version of the proposed change: The Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform has proposed a mixed member proportional representation system. In this system, a voter casts two votes - one for a candidate (or 'local member') and one for a political party. The local member is elected in a first-past-the-post style election and represents the electoral district, while the political party vote determines, in conjunction with the number of elected local members belonging to each party, how many list members a party receives. A list member is a candidate on an ordered list that a party issues before the election; if the MMP formula determines that a party can have more seats than it won locally, it receives a "top up" number of list seats. Under this new system, the Legislature would have 129 seats: 90 local members (70% of the Legislature) and 39 list members (30% of the Legislature).

New Buddyhead Gossip Post

So, there is a new buddyhead gossip entry up here . Yeah, I know, their posts have been pretty lame for the past couple of years, but I still find them funny. Here's a couple of the highlights:



And this entry about the Vanity Fair article on guys who date celebrity girls...

"There’s really nothing quite like sucking mad dong and not even being aware of it. It seems to happen quite often in our hometown though. There’s an article in the new Vanity Fair titled “I’m with her!” that would have been more appropriately titled “I’m a massive DOUCHE!” The article discusses the shallow and clueless lives of Kevin Federline, Pete Wentz, Steve Aoki, Benji Madden, Cisco Adler, and Joel Madden. If you’re in the above photo, how could you not feel like a giant tard while posing next to Kevin Federline… or the rest of those posers for that matter? Wouldn’t some sort of Dorkus-alarm go off inside yer head when you rolled onto that set and that geek-squad was there? Apparently not. Check out these dweebs make total assholes of themselves here: http://www.vanityfair.com"

End of Summer Update

Hello to my loyal readers! Sorry for the lack of updates lately, I just haven't felt that wordy, and also have been struggling with a cold for the past week.

The Labour Day weekend has come and gone and we are now in that end of summer period that marks the beginning of the Toronto International Film Festival. I read the coverage of the Fest with moderate enthusiasm. The drunken celebrity antics and the red carpet fashion can be fun. On the other hand, I have never been much of a joiner, and hate waiting in lines, so my actual film-going experience at the Festival has been pretty limited - I've never understood the whole process of pre-buying ticket options, rush lines, etc. that everyone seems to get so excited about. Not to mention the fact that here in Toronto most of the films will return in limited or wide-release, and I have no great desire be the first person in the city to see any particular film.

Is it me, or has the Festival celebrity-stalking coverage become sort of boring in the past couple of years? Maybe I'm just jaded, but when Post gossip columnist Shinan Govani declares that Paris Hilton is the Fest's "Celebrity Mascot", I just yawn. Asia Argento is in town with her father, famous horror director Dario (who was in town in late-August for the Festival of Fear), which is kinda neat.

There has been an onslaught of Film Festival "Celebrity DJs" in town. Check out the Pink Mafia lineup here. Two of our favourite reality show rockstars are here for our entertainment: Tommy Lee AND Dave Navarro! Not to mention Hyde from That 70s Show, and DJ AM aka Nicole Richie's ex-boyfriend from the celebrity gossip blogs. Again, yawn!

Tonight I am supposed to be going to Vice Magazine's Festival Ball at the Berkeley Church. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are supposed to be playing at this event which is RSVP-only, but basically anyone can RSVP, so it's really first come first served. I am starting to doubt that I will get in, but we'll see. Here's a pic of cool Karen O and her band:


Finally, I have been relistening to the My Chemical Romance album The Black Parade, and I love it even more now than I did before! This album is an oddity in the 00's in that you can actually listen to the entire thing from beginning to end...and it's a concept album! So far there have been four strong singles from this album, with four strong videos, but the rest of the album is great too. If you haven't heard it, you really must download or (horrors!) buy it.