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SXSW Day 1: children by the millions weep for Alex Chilton

2010/03/18

The sun was shining bright on the opening day of the South by Southwest music conference but, just hours into the festival's 24th edition, a black cloud appeared in the form of news that one of SXSW's most distinguished and anticipated guests, Alex Chilton, passed away Wednesday evening of an apparent heart attack at age 59. Chilton's death came a mere three days before his scheduled Saturday-night set with power-pop pioneers Big Star.

Kids on TV

2010/03/17

Like ’em or not, subcultures like those seen on Jersey Shore deserve airtime too. Just because these subjects are stereotypical doesn’t mean they’re not real — or that the subcultures, no matter how mookish, should be shunned because they embarrass people. Hell, that’s practically prerequisite for any youth subculture.

Harlem Underground

2010/03/17

Hep is the perfect word to describe the jazzy new Queen West revamp of Carl Cassel and Anthony Mair’s long-standing soul-food joint, Irie

Tony Romano: “a fist full of flies”

2010/03/17

Getting what Tony Romano does isn’t so much a matter of effort as a matter of caring. Romano, who also runs local art-magazine Hunter and Cook with painter Jay Isaac, has a new show at Diaz Contemporary that, like so much work by young hip white male urbanites, recalls Rodney Graham.

Sex, Bombs and Burgers

2010/03/17

Our society is the product of its technology. And our technology is largely the product of war, porn and fast food, as shown by award-winning tech journalist Peter Nowak in his new book.

Buried treasure

2010/03/17

Brooklyn rockers A Place to Bury Strangers dial back the fuzz to reveal the songs behind the squall

When hecklers have lawyers

2010/03/17

Call it cold comfort, but when Guy Earle appears before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal later this month he will at least be able to imagine that Lenny Bruce and George Carlin are standing next to him. Because if there's an upside to the Toronto comic's legal woes — stemming from a 2007 incident at a Vancouver comedy spot — it's that they put him in the rare company of comics who have gone to court (or something like it) over their material.

Cooking With Stella

2010/03/17

Torontonian Dilip Mehta’s first feature navigates diplomacy in and out of the kitchen

The Runaways

2010/03/17

Floria Sigismondi’s biopic tribute to rock 'n' roll's original queens of noise — starring Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie — packs a bleak and beautiful exhilaration.

As close as it gets

2010/03/17

I’m So Close It’s Not Even Funny brings a taste of Stephen Hawking to the Free Fall Festival

Fleabags

2010/03/17

I like a cool and unusual brand name, and I like it even better when said brand — yuppie as it may be — embraces scummy associations. Voila, Fleabags! Designed by BFFs and Brown's grads Shira Entis and Alex Bell, the elegant, eco-friendly totes were derived from obsessive trips to flea markets.

The land of OZ

2010/03/17

Designer Evan Biddell's new OZ Studio Boutique opens in the heart of, you guessed it, Ossington

Required Reading: March 17

2010/03/17

Don't leave your computer without reading about: baby dictator; Bea Arthur is the new Tom Sellick; Pentagon suggestion box; US health care reform; weird drugs + bad music = good times.

Womb temperature

2010/03/17

Since forever, I’ve felt the clenching somewhere in my womb when the right point of my hormonal cycle meets up with a non-screaming baby in the aisle at the grocery store. The impulse is easy biology: the babyless and mommy-aged female getting weird around small children is more evolutionarily obvious than boners. Never, though, has it been so acute and so constant for me.

Going underground (and staying there)

2010/03/17

Every day, more than 100,000 people travel through Toronto’s vast network of underground passageways, the PATH system. Arguably, the PATH is both useful and convenient, especially when we’re dealt a proper serving of winter. But what does it say about us as Torontonians that we have invested such money and design into tunnels? Has our mall-happy hangover from the 1980s continued to dictate a give-me-shelter-or-give-me-death approach to public space?

Inside Gonzales' Ivory Tower

2010/03/17

After setting a Guinness World Record for longest solo-piano performance last year, what's there left for Chilly Gonzales to do? Why, make a feature film, of course — and hire non-actors like Peaches, Feist and Tiga to star in it. We visit the Yorkville penthouse set of Gonzales' directorial debut, Ivory Tower.

Joan Jett

2010/03/16

Joan Jett was the dark rock ’n’ roll heart of The Runaways, the band she formed with the help of svengali Kim Fowley when she was 16. Now 52, she’s the patron saint of riot grrrls everywhere, having kick-started a women-in-rock revolution with a single power chord. EYE WEEKLY spoke to the icon about Floria Sigismondi's new Runaways biopic, her relationship with her bandmates and teaching star Kristen Stewart how to "fuck her guitar."

The T.O. Do List: March 16

2010/03/16

Today: veteran improv comic Colin Mochrie ponders the meaning of art in Yasmina Reza's aptly titled play, Art. Plus: clown duo Morro and Jasp do puberty; the Revue screens David Christensen's unheralded and extremely eerie drama Six Figures.

The T.O. Do List: March 17

2010/03/16

Today: yes, it's St. Patrick's Day, but you can also celebrate the culture of another European nation that starts with the letter I at The Drake Hotel's Taste of Iceland festival. Plus: Alice in Chains break free of their trouble past, Scout Niblett transcends blog trends and Harbourfront Reading Series hosts a mystery night.

Sparks flies at pre-Fashion Week teaser

2010/03/16

At last week's unofficial Toronto Fashion Week kick-off, Philip Sparks — apparently the only man alive to have actually read Moby Dick all the way through — spun Melvillian inspiration into his halest outerwear and sharpest suiting yet, all in a navy and oil-slick palette.

Required Reading: March 16

2010/03/16

Don't leave your computer without reading about: the plan to save the Twilight series from terminal suckage; John Edwards campaign-killer Rielle Hunter finally going public; Thai protesters' plan to douse government offices in their own blood; Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes splitting up; Amazon versus Canadian booksellers.

Grohl call

2010/03/16

Will Them Crooked Vultures be flying into the ACC this spring? Also: Tokyo Police Club's Graham Wright delves into new Novels.

Get yer Irish on!

2010/03/15

EYE WEEKLY Food critic Sean Kelly Keenan recommends the best places to eat, drink and dance the night away this St. Patrick's Day.

Biz Markie

2010/03/15

Nobody beats the Biz, but even he’s looking over his shoulder at the kids. In Biz Markie's recurring role giving beatboxing lessons on TV kids show and pop-cult phenomenon Yo Gabba Gabba!, the hip-hop originator has become a beloved part of the cast. Now he’s joining them on tour, and while the MC, DJ and beatboxer won’t tell us exactly what his part of the show involves, he assures us that it’s “incredible.”

Leave it to Beavers

2010/03/15

Once a month for the past year, the city’s experimental-film devotees have gathered in the Gladstone Hotel Art Bar for rare screenings of seminal works by James Benning, Joyce Wieland, Bruce Baillie, Warren Sonbert and other great artists who occupied the medium’s furthest fringes. This Tuesday (March 16), Early Monthly Segments celebrates its first anniversary with a program devoted to American ex-pat Robert Beavers, including the film that inspired the series’ title.