GIGGLE CITY: Privy People have captive audience at street fest
Posted on July 12, 2011 By Albert Smith Comedy, Culture, Front Slider, Theatre
Aside from props, the only difference between stand-up comedians and street performers is that one works inside and the other works outside. What could possibly go wrong? Rick Kunst is spending his summer outdoors. At the Edmonton International Street Performers Festival through July 17, the Florida-born comedian and his Canadian partner Dana Fadkin have an […]
WHO NAMED THE BAND? Idyl Tea returns
Posted on July 12, 2011 By Mike Ross Culture, Front Slider, Music
There was only one downside to a band name like Idyl Tea – no one could spell it right. Idol T, Idle Tee, Idyll Twee, the permutations and combinations of nomenclatural mangling were numerous, if not endless, as was a low-level confusion among Canadian rock fans at the time thinking they were going to see […]
They come to praise hipsters in new web comic
Posted on July 11, 2011 By Rob Drinkwater Front Slider, Lit, Visual Arts
Jeremy Die and Gregg Beever’s new webcomic “Inglorious Hipsters” isn’t like other webcomics and online sites that depict young people with ironic mustaches, tight jeans and V-neck T-shirts that display hairy chests. That’s because the Edmonton duo’s comic, which launched this month, isn’t about mocking hipsters. Die and Beever admit they may even be hipsters […]
SOS Fest to close down Whyte for Indie band street party
Posted on July 9, 2011 By Andrea Scharner Front Slider, Music
There are people who will argue that the point of any communal gathering – this Sunday’s SOS Fest included – is the sense of community itself. And let’s face it – it’s hard to dispute when you see a few blocks of Whyte Avenue blocked off so that folk of all ages can boogie to […]
FULL DISCLOSURE: Colleen Brown vs. Ezra Levant heats up arts funding debate
Posted on July 8, 2011 By Mike Ross Culture, Front Slider, Music, TV and Radio
Well, this is awkward. I’m at a fancy dinner party for the Royal Newlyweds and I’ve got Ezra Levant sitting to the left of me and and Colleen Brown to the right. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Ezra is a Sun TV commentator who criticizes government arts funding. Colleen is a local recording […]
GIGGLE CITY: Ken Valgardson purges himself
Posted on July 7, 2011 By Mike Ross Comedy, Front Slider
When Ken Valgardson isn’t teaching Grades 6-12 in a rural Alberta school, he’s hanging out in comedy clubs cutting loose with the sort of language that would get any of his students instantly expelled were they to utter such filth in the classroom. He performs tonight through Saturday (July 7-9) at the Laugh Shop in […]
CIRQUE or SQUARE: Street performers take over Edmonton!
Posted on July 6, 2011 By Mike Ross Comedy, Culture, Family, Front Slider, Theatre
Jugglers! Tricksters! Clowns! Fools! But enough about the Harper government – the Edmonton International Street Performers Festival opens tomorrow! By fantastic coincidence, Cirque du Soleil’s Dralion plays through Sunday (July 10) at Rexall Place. This is the famous French-Canadian acrobatic circus that was started by – you guessed it – a street performer. What are […]
SOS Fest an easy sell for Vancouver’s The Pack AD
Posted on July 6, 2011 By Chad Huculak Front Slider, Music
It didn’t take much convincing for Vancouver garage-rock duo The Pack A.D. to take the time out of its busy schedule for Edmonton’s Sounds of Old Strathcona Festival (SOS Fest). The band is not officially on tour at the moment, and has three videos to shoot before unleashing a new album, Unpersons, in September. “I […]
Stewart Lemoine’s pulp fiction for the stage – now in book form!
Posted on July 5, 2011 By Mike Ross Culture, Front Slider, Lit, Theatre
New York in the ’50s, Switzerland in the ’30s, Monte Carlo in the ’20s, tea with a vaudeville star, champagne with the ambassador, a conga line at a wedding, a murder mystery at the symphony, a discussion of green peppers during a cocktail party – don’t ever accuse Stewart Lemoine of being stuck in the […]
GIGGLE CITY: Felicia Michaels battles back from mom-onymity
Posted on July 2, 2011 By Mike Ross Comedy, Front Slider
Besides sexual bias, there is another reason you don’t see as many female comics as male ones: Female comics tend to have babies, from time to time, which is not conductive to being on the road performing nasty jokes for drunks. Performing July 6-10 at the Comic Strip, Felicia Michaels says she has had two […]
HAPPY CANADA DAY – pick your celebration
Posted on July 1, 2011 By Staff Family, Front Slider, Music, Theatre
When your entire town turns into one big party and choice paralysis turns to decision exhaustion, where do you turn for guidance? Right here, reader! It is our job as modern Internet journalists to be the proverbial “BS filters,” or to at least try to distil the vast clumps of Canada Day events happening throughout […]
Boonstock mainstage fires up tonight
Posted on June 29, 2011 By Andrea Scharner Front Slider, Music
Consider, for a moment, how far the world of outdoor festivals has come over the last four decades, since the diametrically opposed heyday of peace-and-love Woodstock and death-on-cement Altamont. At Woodstock, 32 acts powered the “Three Days of Peace and Harmony.” Kids’ stuff, that Woodstock. Boonstock – now underway in Gibbons, Alberta through Saturday – […]
