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 – […]
Neon museum to light up downtown Edmonton
Posted on June 29, 2011 By Rob Drinkwater Culture, Front Slider
Edmonton appears close to inking a deal with Telus for use of its building on 104 Street and 104 Avenue to display the city’s collection of vintage neon signs, several sources close to the project say. Duncan Fraser, a senior planner with the city’s department of sustainable development, said this week that a deal is […]
GIGGLE CITY: Jon Charles protected by magic
Posted on June 28, 2011 By Mike Ross Comedy, Front Slider
News scoop! Neil Hamburger was fake! He’s actually some former punk rock musician named Gregg Turkington, who was only pretending to be an old school Catskills-style comedian, using the form to explore the concept of the “anti-joke.” Of course the problem with making a joke about jokes that aren’t funny is that the joke can […]
REVIEW: Brian Wilson ‘reimagines’ Gershwin, Beach Boys
Posted on June 27, 2011 By Mike McDonald Front Slider, Music
I’ve read the books and reviews that say Brian Wilson is a weird guy, but Sunday night at the Jubilee Auditorium, he wasn’t any weirder than anyone I know. Here is a man who is quite comfortable calling his own material good without seeming arrogant or like a braggart. It’s just a fact. He seemed […]
Brian Wilson brings Gershwin to the Jube
Posted on June 26, 2011 By LH Thomson Front Slider, Music
At his Regina show on Friday night, legendary Beach Boys impresario Brian Wilson – he who once lay in bed for three years — reportedly took to the stage in sweatpants and a dress shirt. He played, he talked, he rambled and mumbled a bit disconnectedly. Fans loved it. But that’s the nature of fandom. […]
