PREVIEW REVIEW: Fringe plays get one minute of fame

Imagine you’re a big time movie director alone on an elevator with a mime for one minute. Better yet, imagine you’re a big time movie director stuck in an elevator with a horde of actors, comics, dancers, singers, musicians and don’t forget mimes, each of whom have an amazing story pitch. You will be rescued […]

ANNOUNCING: Jeff Dunham, Wintersleep, The Wiggles

One of the biggest stand-up comics who gets away with murder because he can blame it all on his racist puppets is returning to Edmonton. You guessed it: Jeff Dunham – along with Walter, Peanut, Jose Jalapeno on a Stick, Melvin the Superhero Guy and the ever-loving Achmed the Dead Terrorist, and many more! – […]

BRING MONEY: Heritage Festival running hot and heavy all weekend

The Servus Heritage Festival, Edmonton’s most delicious festival, is going hot and heavy at Hawrelak Park all weekend – and judging from the madding crowds on opening day Saturday, this could be a record breaker. Attendees are advised to bring: – More money than you think you need, which is converted into “Heritage Euros,” better […]

Heritage Festival to be a backyard BBQ for 340,000

Jack Little has a lot on his plate right about now. He’s getting ready to host a party, which requires food and drink, some music and a whole lot of dancing. This is no backyard BBQ. Little is the executive director of the much-loved Edmonton institution, the Servus Heritage Festival. If the weather holds, he’s […]

NEW FESTIVAL NAME: K stands for Klondike, you nitwits

The most anti-climactic, waste-of-money contest in city history has wrapped up and we have a new fair name. The winner? No one, really. When Northlands announced a couple of months back that they’d be looking for a new name for Capital Ex, the collective yell for a return to the silly-but-lovely tradition that was K-Days […]

WHO NAMED THE BAND: Shout Out Out Out Out a spacey echo

Edmonton’s Shout Out Out Out Out is another band that displays the rare phenomenon known as “rockonomatopoeia.” The band sounds like its name. Shout Out Out Out Out member Whitey Houston, aka Lyle Bell, asks us to imagine using a Space Echo – one of several pieces of vintage musical equipment this band uses (and […]

FOOD: A ‘taste’ of Edmonton is about right

FOOD: A ‘taste’ of Edmonton is about right

Some, not me, have seen fit in the past to deride A Taste of Edmonton as the River City’s Festival of Small Portions, a pay-to-play agglomeration of lean-to food factories cranking out small bites for ticket-wielding foodies clogging up a Sir Winston Churchill Square desperately in need of shade. But of course, that’s the point—to […]

BOOKS: Win insight into the world of Paul Bellini

People of a certain age know the name Bellini. He’s the towel wearing guy that would appear in the odd episode of Kids in the Hall. But Bellini (Paul Bellini is his full name) is more than just that towel wearing guy or the second most famous person from Timmins (Shania Twain is #1). He’s […]

Journey, Night Ranger, Loverboy bring classics to Edmonton

It’s time for everyone’s favorite game show…. It’s “Name the Classic Rock Band with the Most Original Members!” This year’s edition, coming to Edmonton Nov. 27th at Rexall, features Journey, Night Ranger and Loverboy – or, reasonable facsimiles thereof. Journey is headlining due to its recent revived popularity at the hands of Glee, we assume. […]

Local man hijacks Mir space station in new Minister Faust novel

Minister Faust is a man of many hats. He’s a radio personality and political activist. He’s published his own magazine (the now defunct Africentric Magazine), written for the video game industry (EA Games Darkspore, the sequel to award-winning Spore), plus he’s an award-winning novelist, known for such books as “The Coyote Kings,” “The Space-Age Bachelor […]

Street Fest costs money – what good festival doesn’t?

The health of a good festival, like any good tourist attraction, can be measured on how fast it sucks the money out of your wallet – and it looks like the Edmonton International Street Performers Festival is in the pink. This is not a complaint. It’s a compliment. This venerable busker’s fest has long been […]

Live at the Winspear announces worldly line-up

They don’t call it “World at Winspear” anymore, but they might as well. The annual winter concert series – now named Live at the Winspear – is all over the map in more ways than one. It starts with on Wednesday, October 10, at the Winspear Centre, naturally, with Angelique Kidjo, the outspoken African singer […]