It was an angry neighbour in France who pushed Plants and Animals to finish their new album. And we salute him. The End of That represents what the trio does best — an unbeatable combo of jam-band and folk rock. Clearly, with this third album, the guys were going through some heavy stuff. But drummer Matthew “Woody” Woodley says they tried not to take it too seriously.
Last night’s opening of the Toronto Youth Theatre’s presentation of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was a delightful affair, staged in a sweet little rented space of about 120 seats in the Lower Ossington Theatre.
Our round up of the best things to see and do in Toronto this weekend. In this edition: affordable art, Nikki Yanofsky and Canada’s Got Talent judge Measha Brueggergosman are in town for solo concerts, it’s time to clean up the city with Rob Ford, and we have some French theatre for you.
There will be playoff hockey taking place in the city of Toronto this spring, even involving players wearing blue-and-white, maple leaf-crested jerseys. Okay, so it’s only the Toronto Marlies, the Maple Leaf’s farm team, who’ll be chasing glory, but in this city, you’ve gotta take your winning teams where you can find them.
Back in the ‘60s, computers were so mysterious to people. Though we weren’t fully aware of their true capabilities, we did think they could do, well, pretty much everything and anything. That’s why this early IBM prototype was used to not only crack Soviet supercomputers, but to wash dishes at the exact same time! However, like most computers back then, it became self-aware and ordered its human users to remove the dishwashing component, noting, “I ain’t no busboy!”
Priscilla Lopes-Schliep’s second-place finish at an invitational race in Sherbrooke, Que., this past February easily could have been counted as just another routine achievement for the 29-year-old hurdling star. But running 8.33 seconds in a 60-metre hurdles final a mere five months after giving birth to her first child made the race nothing short of inspiring. The results were clear: Lopes-Schliep was back and determined to be a threat at the London 2012 Summer Olympics.
Riverdance, the high-energy celebration of Irish dancing, returns to the Sony Centre tomorrow — for the final time. The show that introduced the world to the art of dancing with weirdly straight arms will have four performances at the centre before disppearing from the Toronto stage forever.
We imagine that the ‘50s parlour game depicted here went something like this: the oldest man in the room was designated as “Old Man Money.” The others were known as “Two Bits.” The Two Bits would put up an ante and Old Man Money would decide who won all the money. He would be offered bribes (shoe shines, back rubs), but if he wasn’t appeased, he would keep the money. Let’s just say no one ever won the Old Man Money game.
Almost 9,000 people crammed into the Metro Toronto Convention Centre yesterday for the Toronto leg of Oprah Winfrey’s Lifeclass tour, and Lady O didn’t disappoint. A four hour wait preceded her second show of the day — a live taping of her forgiveness-themed Lifeclass episode — during which time speakers Bishop T.D. Jakes, Deepak Chopra, Iyanla Vanzant and Tony Robbins pumped up the crowd for the talk show queen’s imminent appearance.
North by Northeast and AOL Canada have just announced the headliners for this year’s music and film festival. Now in its 18th year, NXNE will feature 40 films and 650 bands, including free concerts at Yonge-Dundas Square from Bad Religion, Raekwon and Ghostface Killah, Matthew Good and three-time Grammy award winners The Flaming Lips. Other noteworthy acts include Of Montreal, No Use for a Name, Hollerado and more.
In The Game of Love and Chance, a betrothed couple who have never met trade places with their servants in order to spy on each other before they say “I do.”
Bluma Appel Theatre, 27 Front St. E., 416-368-3110. April 16-May 12.
For some of us, cutting grass as kids was a rite of passage. Certainly, these boys in 1909 proved their salt and then some. Armed with a creaky old ladder and a sickle from the local butcher shop, they carved the heck out of a slope on Davenport like it was a turkey on Thanksgiving. From the looks on their faces, it seems that their hard work was well worth that rewarding pack of smokes.
