Burning Ears for Wednesday
It’s an embarrassing day to be Haligonian. The two best mentions the city got today reveal provincial tourism minister Len Goucher to be a blowhard who’s perhaps never used a computer, and give props to a global warming denier at Dal. How totally awesome. Full links below. WILL SAY ANYTHING FOR MONEYfrom VancouverThe provincial government…
Burning Ears for Tuesday
Despite a whole internet at my fingertips, and plenty of special Journalist-Approved search tools in my utility belt, I can turn up only one non-local Halifax mention of note. And it’s kinda not even a full one. According to a powerful search tool that will not be named, the website of the Toronto trucking mag…
This is the kind of sequel I’m talking about
Two summers ago I had a really great teen-movie weekend with a double-header of the disappointing-but-fun Lords of Dogtown and the heartfelt, terrifically acted The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, starring two of my favourite TV transplants, Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) and Joan Girardi (Amber Tamblyn, then and now the best young actress in America).…
My arrested Arrested Development development
After I raved one too many times about how good 30 Rock is, my peeps asked if I’ve ever seen the late great Fox show Arrested Development. I never bothered to catch that train, I said. Bother, they replied, handing over all three seasons on DVD. For weeks now, my nights have been filled with…
Burning Ears for Monday
You give me a paragraph, I give you the wwworld. In Charlottetown, The Guardian is raving about teenaged piano star Kathryn Ledwell, who kicked ass in Halifax at the recent Canadian Music Competition (buggy link here). In Boston, Halifax’s Tom Shanks is quoted by the Globe saying “The pine trees — they’re humongous,” after the…
Burning Ears for Friday
Continuing in the vein of very little going on for Halifax’s weputation except hockey, today’s only story of even passing interest is from the Ottawa Sun, where Don Wilcox wrote a piece that rounds up various tidbits of hockey news. The final item — yes, last but not necessarily least — tells us “The major…
Opportunity knocks
Welcome to Halifax, land of opportunity. This week, the year-old HRM by Design forums shifted into phase four of seven, and focused on four major opportunity sites in the downtown Halifax and Dartmouth areas: Quinpool, Gottingen, Dartmouth Cove and the Dartmouth Shopping Centre (roughly, downtown Dartmouth). If you happen to live in an “opportunity site,”…
The Glorious Life of Joel
To illuminate the story of a friendship between two young bandmates that is threaded through The Emergency’s new record Ashtray Rock— released April 17—Joel Plaskett found himself referring to material from his beginnings as a singer-songwriter. “I worked a few lyrics to kind of make them work into the theme of the record. “Snowed In’…
Everybody must get Stone’d
Since opening in mid-March, Stonehaven Restaurant has received a great response. It seems they’ve found the secret formula for attracting Halifax diners: seafood and cheesecake, and lots of it. Co-owner Catherine MacDonald explains that they wanted to embrace the history of the Blowers Street location, which was the former home of La Cave. The good…
Burning Ears for Thursday
It’s gray and cold in the city today, and there’s not much activity on the streets. Which is basically the situation for the city’s virtual identity. We made the oil industry trades again, and a local hockey team is on the verge of making good. Full links to these stories below. PS: Sorry I skipped…
Bonjour film festivals
Two very different but compelling film festivals kick off this week. (Dear Halifax arts people, Please start sharing schedules with one another so everybody stops doing everything all at once, leaving weeks of empty nights at a stretch, followed by action-packed, conflict-filled weekends every other month. With mad respect, The Dope Show.) The Atlantic Film…
One good turn…
To the editor, Tim Roberts’s letter (“Axles of evil”) in the April 12 issue of The Coast probably echoed the feelings of many HRM residents starting to wonder why sensible and sustainable tranportation options don’t seem to be taken more seriously by our city planners in 2007. As both an employee of, and volunteer with,…
Neighbourhood watch
To the editor, I was both glad and a bit saddened by your recent article on the gentrification of the north end. I was glad to see this area of the city getting some attention and that there is some acknowledgement that we need to talk about the development going on in the area. The…
Neighbourhood watch
To the editor, Regarding “Where goes the neighbourhood?” your cover story on gentrification in the April 12 issue of The Coast, perhaps this article should have been titled, “Is there a problem with gentrification on Agricola and Gottingen Streets?” What about the middle- class, second- and third-generation families living and owning businesses in what is…
Hot fuss
At first, it seemed that the geeks were going to inherit the cinemas. But while Grindhouse, with its excessive homage to a cultish genre, did disappointing business in general, the experience proved to be Mecca for those seeking their fill of insider jokes and genre satire. Enter Hot Fuzz and its director Edgar Wright. Hot…
Quiet offences
Have you heard about the University of Western Ontario Gazette’s annual spoof issue and its mock news coverage of a fake “Take Back the Nightie” protest? I’ll save you the degradation of having to read it with a run-down of the low points: The writer illustrates some tiresome stereotypes of women, disparages the work of…
A Family affair
When Zorba the Greek moved down the highway from Bedford to Sackville to become Tom’s Family Restaurant, it left behind the small, dated white-and-blue dining room and the stigma of being a motel restaurant. I wonder if they remembered to pack the important stuff: the great food and friendly service that makes you feel like…
Her winning heart
Listen to “So sorry” off the new album From the Photographs. Laura Peek and The Winning Hearts’ first full-length album, From the Photographs, took almost two years to complete, but as the saying goes, it’s worth the wait: charming, smart, beautifully orchestrated, the kitten-loving, piano-pop singer’s debut is a delight. Accompanying other Just Friends label…
Disturbia
“You’re a writer. You work from home,” Kale (Shia LaBeouf) tells his father when he says that fishing beats working. Because working from home sometimes feels like being under house arrest, that’s a sly exchange to begin a movie about a kid sentenced to not leave his house for three months. The set-up allows Disturbia…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
It’s time to get a li’l bit crazy, Cancer, says Rob Brezsny.
SAVAGE LOVE
Dan Savage advocates preventative freak-outs.
Bow down
Prodigy isn’t a label with which Celeste Williams is terribly comfortable. But she has heard it ascribed to her. “Usually people who use a word like that don’t even know what it means,” she says, laughing. The violinist, 18 as of last Saturday, has a confidence in her speech and grace in her limbs that…
A change in the air
When Emily McMillan started the Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club of Canada back in 2000, she didn’t have an office on Barrington Street, she was the only full-time staff member and she didn’t have any volunteers. Basically, she had herself. “Back then, it was just me,” she says. “I think we’ve really become an…
Channelling God
When Ahmed Assal and his family were emigrating to Halifax from Egypt, they learned a lot about their new home at the airport. “I didn’t know anything about Canadian rules,” recalled Assal during testimony at his recent human rights inquiry. Then an airline employee approached him at the gate to say “because you have small…
Year of the dog
Listen to “Oh Dead Life” off the new album Night Group. True to its name, Area 52 hides itself well—in plain sight, as it goes. The average passerby likely never considers the massive space, with all its various compartments, lying just beyond the banal, barely marked entrance off Gottingen Street. Unless they’re hauling gear—an amp,…
