With the weather yesterday so beautiful, I decided to take a little bike trip through Toronto. I drove in my car with my bike to Sunnyside Beach, parked my car, and rode my bike along the Waterfront trail until I got to Bathurst St. I had already decided to head up Bathurst towards Soundscapes on College St., but along the way, decided to take sidestreets all the way up, which made for a lot more relaxed ride. At Soundscapes, I checked out the concert listings, deciding what tickets I should buy while I'm there. The Arcade Fire show was sold out, and I know Rotate This is already sold out as well, but the guy at counter said my best bet was to show up early at the venue the night of the show. I just might do that. Although in a sense, it's not that big of a deal as I saw The Arcade Fire at the Olympic Island Concert. Decided to get a ticket to the Interpol show instead. And the Rilo Kiley show will also be a possibility. Picked up the "A Girl Called Eddy" CD for $16.99. I like how the cardboard sleeve looks like a beat-up old record sleeve.
From the record store, I headed down College St., to Word on the Street. I had a good 50 minutes or so to check out the going-ons there. Bought 5 issues of Chart Magazine for a buck. Bought an issue of Hive magazine(featuring articles on Broken Social Scene and The Arcade Fire) for $2.00. Picked up some free Elliott Smith and Jolie Holland postcards at the Eye booth. The girl at the booth also stuck an Eye sticker on my t-shirt sleeve when I wasn't looking which was funny because I didn't know what happened for a second. :-) I hit the motherload at a booth down near the Museum where they were selling magazines. The original price during the day was a $1 per issue but then towards the end of the day when I had sauntered by, they started selling 4 issues for a $1 or 25 cents per issue. At that point, things got pretty hectic. I grabbed a bunch of good stuff right away. However, things got even more hectic when they decided to GIVE away the magazines for FREE because they hadn't planned to have anything at the end of the day. I was grabbing things left and right, even taking doubles of some and at the end of it all I had issues of No Depression, Grand Slam Magazine, some mountain-biking magazines, various other music magazines, and even a paintball magazine. The disadvantage was having to carry all that stuff in my backpack WHILE I rode my bike. Actually, it turned out to not be that bad as riding a bike from Queen's Park(where Word on The Street was taking Place) to the waterfront is pretty much all downhill.
Along the way, I stopped at Queen and Spadina to grab a bite, and happened to catch a street performance with this black guy with an Afro on guitar and vocals and his female companion on backup vocals and tambourine. They even had a mic and amp set up. I heard a song or two and I was surprised how much I liked it immediately. It was acoustic music that felt like soul music; in a lot of ways it reminded me of when Lauryn Hill picked up a guitar for her Unplugged album. I wrote my e-mail down for their mailing list so I hope they send out an e-mail because I forgot to get their name. They were selling CD's for $10.00 as well but I decided to pass for the moment and I just dropped a loonie in their guitar case. Hey, if anyone is down at Queen and Spadina and you see these artists, please stop and check them out. And maybe get their name for me as well. Thanks. ...Anyways, the ride back to my car was pleasant, but at that point it was getting dark and I don't have a light on my bike, so I rode back as fast as I could. Phew!
Caught the film Shattered Glass over the weekend on TMN on Demand. It was quite an efficient movie about a young journalist and associate editor for The New Republic and who was found to have made up many of the events and persons in his articles. The film stars Hayden Christensen as Stephen Glass as it depicts his rise and fall in the world of journalism. On one hand the film can be looked at as one man's personal journey and, on the other hand, as a bird's-eye view of the whole print journalistic process. It was interesting to see how many persons an article goes through, from the writer, to lawyers, to editors, to copywriters, etc. before the article gets printed in a magazine. At the end of all, it still is flabbergasting that Stephen Glass got away with it for so long. Hayden Christensen portrays a 
Also on the movie front, I went to see Resident Evil: Apocalypse last week. There are some interesting ideas floating around with regards to the scientific concepts. However, the acting and plot is every bit as over-the-top as you'd expect. There were some cool action sequences and special effects. Most interesting to Torontonians is that the movie was shot in and around Toronto and the film producers(or is that directors?) made no attempts to cover up the fact. I think that's a first, at least in my movie-watching experience. There are several distinct Toronto landmarks and locales in the movie. They didn't even bother to hide the CIBC symbol on the downtown CIBC building when they showed a shot of the Toronto skyline. I'm not saying they should have, I'm just saying that it's funny they didn't because Hollywood usually does. In any case, if Toronto ever gets overrun by zombies, I'll know not to go to City Hall. ;-)
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