Gas prices in Toronto are at $1.09 or more a litre today, reflecting all-time record oil prices of over US$108 per barrel. For all our driving readers, it might cheer you up to consider that it's still cheaper to fill up your car with gas than say, orange juice or Diet Pepsi. By the way, if you do decide to go with orange juice, remember that the pulp-free kind is less likely to gum up......

It's Canadian Music Week and that means there's an unusually large number of hip hop shows going on. KRS-One will be teachin' at The Opera House on Saturday as he continues his Stop the Violence movement. RZA dons his Bobby Digital mask on Sunday at the Phoenix. There's also grimy New York hip-hop (M.O.P. on Friday), French rap (DJ Orgasmic and Cuizinier on Thursday), and a strong showcase of local talent (Friday's Exclaim! event). Also......

This fjord is my fjord, this fjord is your fjord, From the valley Thörsmork to the geyser Strokkur, From Lake Lögurinn to Björk's house in Reykjaviík. Iceland was made for you and me. Our favourite Nordic country just got a little closer: Icelandair will launch direct flights between Toronto and Reykjaviík on May 2. To celebrate, Iceland Naturally is hosting a week-long Taste of Iceland festival from March 10–16 to promote modern Viking culture......

Photo by Darryl Scott. Danger! The Mothership descends onto the Phoenix this Monday, bringing George Clinton and his ace group of funkateers, Parliament Funkadelic, into town to tear the roof off the mutha sucka. Meer mortals are powerless to Dr. Funkenstein and his bop gun. All attempts to fake the funk are punishable with potential exile to the Zone of Zero Funkativity. Accept that it's one nation under a groove. (Note: resistance to groove......

Photo by Jeff Croft. Since The Beastie Boys dropped an album last year, their resident DJ Mix Master Mike has had some time to fill. The turntablism legend and three-time winner of the DMC World DJ Championships will be spinning a set at This is London on Wednesday night. Undoubtedly, he will bust out a crazy scratching display like this one from his appearance at Republik last September. Indie-electro dance nights are a dime......

Though there are only three new films on release this week, it would be unfair to bemoan the shortage when one film, Persepolis, is of a high enough quality that it might as well be the only film released. During TIFF 2007 Christopher Bird handed it a 5/5 and called it "a masterwork in every way that matters." Much like in our praise of There Will Be Blood, we do have to hesitate with......

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset. Two years ago, the Toronto Raptors were the laughing stock of the NBA. Vince Carter and his mom had......

It’s that time of year again: the time when ironic bloggers across the world post links to the Star Wars Holiday Special, quip about how terrible it is, and boast about not being able to watch it all the way through (usually linking to the five-minute-long version of it on YouTube). However! We here at Torontoist are bucking that trend. Yes, we can sneer at things as well as anyone, but we’re not going......

Over the past little while, Torontoist has been quietly absorbed in The Alphabet Game: a bpNichol reader. Edited by Darren Wershler-Henry and Lori Emerson, The Alphabet Game is an essential anthology for any reader of bpNichol, and is a great starting point for those who have yet to discover his work. Nichol, who is probably most well-known for his concrete and visual poetry, had achieved many things before dying at the age of 44. He......

Photo from Deko-ze. The holidays are normally a time for rest but nobody told that to Deko-ze. The man dubbed Canada's hardest working DJ has a doozy of a week. On top of the Christmas Bash he is throwing at Footwork on Friday, Deko-ze will be spinning a six hour extended set at CZ on Sunday for Mass and is a part of CZ's Christmas Come Get Your Fcukin Beats party. He's also at......

In what simultaneously has to be one of the most hilariously inspired and gut-wrenching punishments in the history of parental discipline, a local GTA father has set a new standard for puffing penalization. The man—an elementary school teacher known by the screen name "k_lid"—decided to sell his son’s Christmas present on eBay (a notoriously hard-to-find copy of the best-selling Guitar Hero 3 game) when he returned home from work early to find 15-year-old Isaac......

This weekend, resist the urge to do the same old bar hop and try a more sophisticated means of indulging your party ADD: the art show hop. Okay, so we just invented that term, but the city does have three rad art happenings going on almost simultaneously this Friday, November 30. And we say, why choose? To start your adventure, knock back a whiskey for warmth and head down to the Harbourfront, where the......

We don’t tend to post too often about video games here at Torontoist, what with basically the entire rest of the internet being devoted to it (well, that and anthropomorphic Star Trek slash fiction), but we do like to make special note when some pleasant news of local interest comes up, such as Toronto as a Half Life mod or the Toronto Indie Game Jam (Which we, er, forgot to mention this year. Our......

Bad news if you're a lacrosse fan: the 2008 National Lacrosse League season has been cancelled. Pick your joke: 1) "I'm sure all three of you are very disappointed"; 2) "Players are refusing to play until they get reimbursed for their bus tickets"; 3) "My God, this is the national sport we're talking about here! Why isn't Stephen Harper doing something, for the love of God?"; 4) "So, why are the Toronto Rock still......

This weekend, Toronto will be a rockin' city, as the 2007 World Rock Paper Scissors Championships cut into town. The game of Rock Paper Scissors has been settling scores on playgrounds since long before little brothers came into existence. In fact, some say it originates back to the year 200 BC in Japan, where it was referred to as "Jan-Ken." Others say it started as an early Scandinavian pastime, while others trace it back......

According to Doug Flavelle, "there are a lot of women with guitars in their closets." His studio, Guitar Girl, aims to get them out. The studio, which opened its doors in a loft-like space at Queen and Greenwood in September 2006, offers guitar lessons solely for girls and women. The focus is on six-week group courses, though they do some private lessons and have held Rock 'n' Roll camps during March Break and summer......

Torontoist finished Book 7 last night, and we're feeling a little down about the Harry Potter saga being over. Sure, everything turned out alright (and Mrs. Weasley said the B-word!) but we can't help feeling like the wizarding world no longer needs our support. Under normal circumstances, we would be binge eating and watching Prisoner of Azkaban on repeat. Thankfully, Toronto will be flooded with Harry Potter fans this weekend, keeping the wizarding spirit......

Photo of In-Flight Safety courtesy of Craig Norris of CBC Radio 3. There are those who snidely believe the Hillside Music Festival is all politically-motivated tie-dye and body odour, but that’s a cursory dismissal. The 2007 version of the festival brought together the indie-kids and the hippies, the families and the staunch loners, and the musicians and the fans into a community of solar-powered folk and rock music that blistered throughout the weekend. Toronto......

Photo of delighted fans by Carrie Musgrave. It's a curious bit of magic that can connect eighties synth-pop, Bob Marley, and bouncing castles with a seventeen-year-old boy wizard. It's even more curious to see how far that wizard and his multi-billionaire creator have come in just a few short years. Last night, magic and wonder invaded the typically staunch and business-like intersection of Bay and Bloor. To celebrate the release of Harry Potter and......

Photo of Cadence Weapon by David Topping. Earlier this afternoon in the Drake Sky Yard, the shortlist for this year's Polaris Prize was announced. Established by Steve Jordan last year, the $20,000 prize "annually honours, celebrates and rewards creativity and diversity in Canadian recorded music by recognizing, then marketing the albums of the highest artistic integrity, without regard to musical genre, professional affiliation, or sales history, as judged by a panel of selected critics......

For those of you with Rock Star ambitions but who were cursed with about as much musical talent as a pile of dirt, you are in luck. It's time for the Canadian Air Guitar Championships, and you know you're going to want to check this out for yourself. If you've never heard of air guitar, then you have lived a sheltered life. Air guitar is the combination of rock and roll and mime, as......

Last night at the beautiful Winter Garden Theatre, the winners of the 28th Annual Dora Awards were announced in a ceremony hosted by the hilarious Rick Miller (of MacHomer and Bigger Than Jesus fame). The Doras are basically Canada's version of the Tonies, except you can't watch them on TV and see Molly Ringwald and John Stamos jazz-hand their way through a radical new interpretation of Hello, Dolly! As one might expect, the whole......

This summer, Toronto will attempt "to probe the causes of panhandling and seek solutions" after business owners launched a complaint at City Hall yesterday. A Tim Hortons owner alleges that one beggar slapped her hard enough to draw blood after she asked him to leave her store. Restaurant owners complain that the homeless steal money and food off of patios and harass the patrons. Is it time Toronto did something about the panhandlers that......

We have good news for fans of Joel Plaskett Emergency. Tomorrow (Wednesday, May 2), Joel's going to be shooting a video for "Fashionable People," the first video from his latest album, Ashtray Rock, and everyone's invited to take part. All you've gotta do is show up from 5-8 p.m. at St. Joseph's Catholic School (at 50 Curzon Street, near Queen and Leslie; here's a Google Map). It's all-ages, and you have to wear black,......

When people first hear the words "Professional Pillow Fight League," they often conjure images of jello-wrestling and hair pulling. However, if you've ever been to a Pillow Fight League event, you know that the fights are real, they're violent, and they're bloody entertaining. The Pillow Fight League, also known as the PFL, has been performing around Toronto since last year. They gained international attention in January when they fought for two nights in New York......

Remember how lame grade nine science class was? Sure, we got to use Bunsen burners and there was a unit about sex, but the rest of the year consisted of really boring stuff like balancing equations and memorizing the periodic table. Too bad OSC.TV wasn’t around when we were 14. Memorizing the periodic table would have been a dream (speaking of dreamy, like, OMG, how totally cute is the scientist singer?)—after watching The Periodic Table......

Spring is when we get busy here in the Ist-A-Verse. Very busy. But, after staying bundled-up indoors all winter, it's nice for us to be out, about, and collecting things to write about for you. Here's a glimpse at what's been keeping your favorite citybloggers busily away from home and out of bed. For LAist, strong winds attacked LA on the same day the Feds raided the Crips. Not to fear, though: the Japanese version......

Years spent on the Indie Rock scene should be measured in dog years: if a band manages to maintain its original line up for an entire trip around the sun, it should count as seven. Toronto’s Talladega has featured many members over the years, but the original core-duo of Stewart Whitehead (ex-Grace Babies) and Sean Bettam (ex-Chicklet) guides its flight path with endurance. Tonight, with new members Mark Buffone and Dave Cyr, they launch their......

There are milestones in every band's life, like appearing on the cover of a local weekly. http://www.rockplazacentral.com/">Rock Plaza Central did not only that this week but contemplated their first van purchase as well. Torontoist went along to document it all. Rock Plaza Central plays Lee's Palace tonight at 10 PM. Tickets are $12 at the door. Videos after the jump.......

Playing at the Tranzac this evening is Harry and the Potters, a band that inspired a new genre of music called Wizard Rock. While brothers Paul and Joe DeGeorge started playing their Harry Potter-inspired songs just to friends, they developed a massive fan base online and began touring around North America. Pitchfork named their appearance at the New York Public Library one of the top live shows of 2005, and now there are over......