Posts tagged toronto
Fan Expo 2010: Nizzle nerds out [VIDEO]
Sep 1st
Hiya hooms.
Feel like watching a bunch of nerdlingers geek out over even bigger nerdlingers and related nerdcore merchandise?
I did. So I went to FanEX at the Metro Convention Centre on Sunday, despite the fact that I’d only slept a few hours and was living in a 90% un-packed house.
You know your girl isn’t going to pass up an opportunity to buy some kawaii new toys and Nintendo gear – or feel borderline stylish… even if only in comparison to obese Freddy Krueger.
Here’s the video. Enjeezy!
<3L
BB Blogging – MOVING DAY!
Aug 28th
Hi precious flowers,
Blackberry Blogging. Moving day. Internet comes to the new digs tomorrow.
If you see a blonde girl walking down the street with her blog face on, two hands to the BB, stunna specs in full effect, that’s totally me. Hi.
Oh Rogers man, how eagerly I await your visit. My peripheral metacarpals quiver in anticipation.
Last night’s parties were so good.
Got to play with a whole bunch of new friends and old friends and random coolbies. Just how I like it.
Nate and Corey and Andrew and Casie and Liz and other Corey and Sean and a whole bunch of Toronto Twitteraties and other media kids were at Zacky’s party. I would link them if I was on a COMPUTER. RAH.
Met up for a minute with Brodie & co. after that (HI!) and was going to swing by Fierce Fab’s soiree in the North but it was getting late so I cuddled with Groundskeeper Willy and crashed around 4 a.m. instead because I knew I had to be up early.
You see, today was MOVING DAY!
We got everything into my new room a few hours ago and then I treated my crew to sushi ’cause they deserved it for hauling my stuff up and down the stairs.
I love you all so much – Thankyou from the bottom of my weakling heart.
I’m on the subway right now, almost at St. George station. Going down to Yonge-Dundas square for the Livegreen Festival VIP meet and greet (Thanks @NotableTV!)
I’d skip it to unpack some more, but I really want to say what’s up to Divine Brown ’cause I’m a hyooooge fan.
All of the interview videos from last night will be posted this week. I talked to a bunch of cool peeps…
I can’t pick a favourite because they’re all sweet. Aleesia, Spenny, and Bachelorette boy top the list. That’s as far as I’ll go. Oh! And Lizzie and Casie, obvs, ’cause nothing is more fun than shoving a mic in your homegirl’s face for a recorded gab!
G2G now – at Yonge-Dundas square. Fourth time this week… Something keeps drawing me back 
Love you – and mother earth too.
-Reduce, Reuse, Recycle O’Nizzle
Tonight: Zack Taylor’s Big Celebrity Bash
Aug 27th
Hey there, hip friends.
What are you up to this evening, hmmm?
If you aren’t too repairing a bicycle or combing your righteous beardstache, I’d like to invite you to my buddy Zack Taylor’s birthday party/ webbiversary at the Roosevelt Room.
We’ll have punch, and pie, and a Spencer Pratt Pinata…
Maybe we’ll even have a Spencer Pratt.
Unfortunately, I can’t reveal exactly which celebrities will be at this event, but I will say that it’s going to be one star-studded clusterfrick of an awesome night.
They don’t call Zacky the Perez Hilton of Canada for no reason. Homeboy’s connected – and not like, Canada connected, but really connected, in an L.A. type of way.
I can safely reveal (without getting my skull chewed off by publicists and the like) that some Playboy cover models, Toronto Argonaut Cheerleaders, local entertainment reporters/ music hosts, recording artists and BLONDE BLOGGERS will be there.
Apparently, a bunch of coolbies are flying in from New York and Los Angeles too, but that’s all on the hush hush. You’ll find out who popped by the soiree tomorrow morning in newsland (or tonight, if you’re there.)
Also cool: Guest performances by Aleesia and French DJ (*swoon*) Monsieur Cedric.
Yours truly will be doing some red carpet interviews for ZackTaylor.ca and a bunch of other sponsors, so wave or punch me in the head or something if you see me. Maybe it’ll be caught on tape and go viral… We’ll both be FAMOUS!
Gratuitous promo spot:
This all pops off at 10:00 p.m. ish tonight, so get to the Roosevelt Room fashionably whenever-the-heck-you-feel-like it.
Telling people to “be there early!” is lame. I never arrive early because I’ve got better things to do than bop around an empty club.
The truly cool never wait in line anyways. I often do wait in line, but that’s only because I’m a nerd. A late-rolling, too-cool-for-school noiiiid.
And on that note, I still have nothing to wear tonight.
If I don’t find something after work today, I’ll probably just go in last year’s Halloween costume. What do you think? Too cool?
[Note: The "punch, pie and Pratt pinata" was a literary device used for comedic effect. Unless somebody is inspired by this post to bake pies and paste a flesh toned beard and crazy eyes onto a Bob the Builder pinata from the Bulk Barn, you'll be more likely to see young William Shatner in outer space than the above mentioned things.]
(sorry John)
Love,
Lauren
LOL Digest: Patti Mayonaise, Kanye West and the Noche de Rábanos
Aug 25th
Hi friends.
This is what’s up in the mind of one female earthling sitting in Toronto on a rainy hump day night…
Some Angels were in town today because we’re (finally) getting Victoria’s Secret stores in Canada (a whole two of them! woohoo!). Can you believe this is Adriana Lima’s first visit to Canada – ever?! I heard she requested Polar Bear in her stirfry. And they gave it to her. Whatever. She’s Adriana frahking Lima. She can eat the shoes off of my feet if she wants to… think she’d want to?
I was going to try to ninja snipe an interview with Chanel Iman or something but I was worried that big huge bodyguards might pounce and I’d get punched out by a Green Mile look-a-like.
Totally kidding – I’m not afraid of Green Mile. I could take him out if I wanted to.
The reason I couldn’t go down to witness human perfection with mine own eyes is because I had to work today. WOMP WOMP.
Speaking of dope chicks who kick ass, I finally watched Kick Ass the other night and fell head over borderline homo pedophilic heels for Hit Girl just like everybody else.
Was a finer character this year portrayed in film? I think not.
When I grow up, I want to be a purple haired potty mouthed prepubescent killing MACHINE. Badass meets cute meets all of the awesome epic cool words combined right here.
McLovin’ was alright in this too (even though he’s a total douche IRL) and I was crushing hard on Kick Ass when he wasn’t being a mayjah lovey-dovey poes. I do love me a cute little anglofro.
I was validated in the best way Monday when I stumbled upon this video of Kesha’s Tik Tok and Katy Perry’s California Gurls (with some Miley Cyrus clone joint I’d never heard) mashed up and sounding like… pretty much the exact same song.
I’ve been ranting internally about these two songs and their striking similarity all summer – singing along with one when the other would be playing, just to prove my point.
I only wish now that I had voiced this groundbreaking discovery earlier so that I could have 64,000 hits on Youtube. Surely, we were the only ones who knew about this.
Pop music – FORMULAIC? As if.
I am so disillusioned.
Also cool this week: discovering that there is a festival JUST FOR RADISHES in Mexico – a weird one, too – on December 23rd (The night of the radishes). A tuna tossing festival, a baby-jumping festival and a monkey buffet festival – these things also exist. Thanks Buzzfeed!
Radishes remind me of beets and beets remind me of Doug, so I did some Googling and found a few episodes of my old favourite show to watch when I get a chance. Can’t wait for that. Doug’s right up there with Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Rugrats and Recess for the top viewed “rush home after school to watch” cartoons of Lauren time.
*Doo doo doo doo doo doooo dooo…* I’d whistle that if I could (I can’t) but you wouldn’t be able to hear me anyways.
PS – searching for Doug images showed me a side of Patti Mayonnaise I really never cared to see. Rule 34 on that one, big time. I was, however, lead to this hallucinatory revelation on Vice.com and love it very much:
I see Patti as more of a Carey Mulligan than an Agyness Deyn, personally.
Lest I be mistaken for a nostalgia blogger, I shall turn now to Kanye West.
Have you heard this remix of Power yet? Yeez is getting a lot of leverage off of the original, but it’s well deserved.
Jay-Z and Swizz Beatz feature on this remix, so it’s obviously amazing. Could you just picture the three of them in a room together?
Jay: Yo, I gotta get home to B…
Swizz: Yeah, Alicia be waitin’ up for me too…
Kanye: I’M KANYE WEST. KANYE. LOOK AT MY SHOES. I’M KANYE. KANYE WEST. LOOK AT ME.
jokes, jokes… you know I love me some Mr. West
Kanye West Ft. Jay Z – Power (Remix) by moneykillslove.blogspot
Um… outside of the internet I’ve been busy as heck. That’s why I’ve been blogging late nights at 1:00 a.m. Wonder how long before I finally crack from the sleep deprivation?
To give you the short and sweet of it…
- Sunday I went out for a nice charity Brunch with some lovely ladies:
- Then I went to Ikea and out for dinner with Frikshun and bought way, way, way too much Swedish goodness. Fell in love with this vanity station… will probably go back to buy it next week.
- Sean bought the hipstamatik filter for his iPhone. Loves it.
- I started a new gig on Monday. Top floor in an office building downtown with a gorgeous view of the water. Free coffee, ice-cream on Fridays and an arcade machine in the “games room”. The work is cool too… real cool Toronto’s been good to this kid.
- Monday night I hit up a gasmy Twitterific event at The Gladstone Hotel and that was fun. Met some more cool TO Tweeps and caught up with some I hadn’t seen in a minute. Paul McCartney made a video of me driving home and attempting to beat box after the event:
- Tuesday, I worked and then had some appointments – eyeball and hair. The latter of which was so, so awesome as always. Marisa is the queen of head massages and hand massages and listening to me bitch about life and, most importantly, DOING THE BLONDE. Fabulous colourist. So glad I found her
- Also Tuesday = a little bit of shopping, a solid run and some serious kitten cuddles. And I caught the pink cement truck with my Blackberry. FINALLY!
- Today was 9-fiver – with many an adventure up in that time – and then straight to the gym afterwards for some yoooogah and eliptical goodness. Read the H&M magazine on the machine and was filled with fashionable ideas, a list of things to buy. I guess that’s the point…
- Got caught in the rain afterwards when I walked to get groceries. Laaaame but sort of cool. Rain in general is sort of cool, don’t you think?
I’m rambling.
Tomorrow is another huge day and Friday is even huger… Saturday, also Huuuuge.
I’ll blog. You know I will
Love,
Leelee
PS – this is how you draw an owl.
Timas, Diplo, Monokini: the awesome & hilarious digest for july 25th 2010
Jul 26th
Me: *grumble grumble* Can I add “lame” to the awesomehilarious post today? Just this once?
You: “No you can’t, because the whole darn thing is about maintaining a positive attitude in the face of adverrrsity or something stupid and idealistic like that. Remember?”
*sigh* Frick.
Let’s start with “hilarious” then…
- Getting slapped with a $220 towing fee + a $60 ticket after my car mysteriously disappeared from the street. Apparently, I was partially obstructing some crochety old loosah’s driveway with the nose of my car. This would have been a “c’est la vie! live and learn! at least I still have legs!” moment had I not already been towed 3 times this year and running late for work.It’s not cute, it’s not funny, it’s not blonde - this stuff is expensive and it’s holding me back from doing better things with my hard-earned cash.I normally try not to refrain from using off-colour language on my blog, but my word am I angry! BEIGE Toronto’s lame parking rules, EGGSHELL the surly tow truck driver and TAUPE this overpopulated city’s lack of spaces to park.Adding insult to injury, when I got to work and tried to park in the lot that usually charges me $10, I was asked for THIRTY because there were “lot of special event in city today” – so I drove down the road and paid 20$ instead. *grumble grumble*
From this point on it’s mostly awesome. Outside of parking woes (and some surrious sleep deprivation) life’s been pretty gravy lately:
- Friday’s TIME Festival at Sound Academy. Y’all know I love me some dubstep, right? My week was already jam-booked but I could NOT pass up a chance to see Diplo spin in my backyard so I scored some last minute tix and danced my face off until 5a.m. I made a video, too… one of my buddies grabbed the camera at some point and shot me shaking my thang (thanks MP!). Please don’t mind the falling down shorts or the sweaty blonde mop on my head.
- The Toronto Independent Music Awards were earlier that night, and that was fantastic as well. Got a chance to chat with so many sweet local bands / rappers / singers / rockstars. Still processing videos from the event for work (when I’m not at other work), but I dooo have this picture of yours truly interviewing m’boy Sean Ward – TIMA host / blogger / comic artist / vlogger extraordinaire:
- This article on the top 5 web pranks ever pulled by moot and the 4chan gang = also awesome.
- I ordered my new laptop last night Did I go Mac or PC? All will be revealed in due time my friend, but I WILL tell you this – my new baby has been custom engineered with an i7 processor, 6 Gigs of RAM and a whole TERABYTE of storage on the HD. She looks dammmmn good too
- hilarious: I’ve come close to buying this dress three times now, but after seeing no less than 5 girls rocking it around the city have decided that I just can’t do it.
As much as I adore it (and I do – so, so, so much) I just can’t stomach shelling out for something that everyone else has. I’m not one for uniforms. Jeez, you’d think Douglas Coupland could have designed more than ONE dress for his roots collection.
- awesome: The Cotton Candy T monokini by Zeugari. Actually, EVERYTHING by Zuegari. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll see me rocking one of these masterpieces at WakeStock…
Yummy. - Signing a lease for my shiny sweet apartment – FINALLY! I’ve been living in Toronto now for over 2 months – I figured it was time to put my name on a piece of paper and unpack my bags for good. The big move with all the furniture coming out of my storage locker in London goes down at the end of August. I hate moving (ie; watching my male relatives and friends move my stuff up and down stairs), but it’ll be so nice to have my entire wardrobe up here with me. And like, my bed and computer desk and stuff.
- Annnd finally, I can’t get this song out of my head which is awesome because I’m in love with it at the moment. So sassy!Hate Hate, Hate Hate Hate…
All eyes on me, I took the night…
Zef soooo fresh: Die Antwoord & Sleigh Bells in Toronto
Jul 21st
“When Ninja’s hypnotically vulgar pelvic thrusts collide with Vi$$er’s I’ll-cut-you grin and a techno beat so massive it can unite continents, cultures and every corner of those aforementioned “interwebs,” who needs more of an answer than that?” (fb)
Wat pomp, julle?
I just got home from one dope fooking show at the Phoenix.
Die Antwoord + Sleigh Bells = some seriously next level shit.
I’m not going to sit here and tell you all about how awesome Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er are because I already did that back in like, February.
What I will say is that after seeing the notoriously zef South African rap-ravers LIVE, I’m even deeper in love than ever before.
I didn’t expect Yo-Landi to be so tiny (or sexy, the little minx!), and Ninja was surprisingly polite with his stage banter (“jou ma se poes, means ‘your mum’s private parts!’” hahaha) but wicked nonetheless.
Their energy was off the chains, I mean that. I don’t know which of the world’s chains I’m referring to, but I like that turn of phrase and it feels appropriate here.
Die Antwoord straight killed it.
Brooklyn’s Sleigh Bells, a “noise-pop duo” as described by wiki, were just as insane.
I’d heard of the band, but never actually heard the band until tonight – and am I ever glad I did because their sound is very, very, very much the type of sound I dig.
Chatting with rockstar Alexis Krauss after the show was also a trip because she is very, very, very much the type of fiercely talented woman I look up to.
I’m just psyched as pie that I actually got into this concert. Like the supergenius that I am, I waited until the show was sold out before decided to get a ticket.
Figuring that I could grab a pair from scalpers, I went anyways annnnd lo-and-behold – scalpers a plenty… charging 80-100 bones a ticket. Five times the actual price!
“Come onnnn,” one grey-bearded old scalper dude yelled after I laughed in his face and started walking away. “You spend more than that on lipstick in a week!”
I was thisclose to kicking him in the balzzors, but I walked away and opened up UberTwitter on my BB instead.
A search for “die antwoord” revealed many an exciting tweet – one of which was particularly exciting to me:
@inspirationdate: Anyone need a Sleigh Bells + Die Antwoord ticket at cost? $20. I’ll be at the Phoenix in an hour or so.
SCORE!
Luck of the Irish + Magic of social media = me inside the venue 30 minutes later flanked by cute boys & sweet girls, drink in hand, smile on face.
In concloooojeeyon – I am once again grateful to the universe for an excellent night.
The bands were sick, the weather was hot, I got the chance to catch up with some of my good peeps and I met some new ones too.
Toronto shows are so very different from Detroit shows… it’s a much tighter scene. A little bit more pretentious, but a lot more Canadian. I love it
Can’t wait for the next one !
L.
Everything is (SO NOT) terrible
Jul 16th
I don’t know how to begin describing what I saw at the Drake Underground Monday night.
I seriously can’t think of an appropriate adjective.
“Weird” is too tame. “Awesome” is too lame. “Hilarious” is thrown around way too loosely in my everyday vocabulary to be used on something that literally made my face ache from laughing so hard for two hours straight. My cheeks are quivering just thinking about it.
I’m sure there’s a word somewhere within the English language to describe Everything is Terrible’s Quest for the Magick Crystal Tour… If not in English, then surely in Mandarin, and if not Mandarin, then SURELY in Newspeak. “doubleplusgood“, perhaps?
Whatever the most appropriate adjective is, it should most definitely be used with an emphatic “fucking” in front of it.
As promised, EIT’s new film (2Everything2Terrible2: Tokyo Drift) pretty much melted my face off just like everything else on their genius flucking website.
If you like post-postmodernist psychadellic pseudo-vintage pop culture remixes, or are a hypersatirical millenial neo-nerd who tries to use schmancy terms in big run-on sentences like me *BREATH*, you’ll love this film.
Also, if you have eyeballs you’ll love this film.
If you didn’t already know, Everything is Terrible = Seven internet monsters who scour the seven seas (but like, on land) for old VHS tapes with so-weird-it’s-pee-your-pants-hilarious stuff on them that isn’t actually supposed to be hilarious but IS hilarious – know what I mean?
Stuff like Educational Christian videos, Cat massage tutorials from the 80s, and the creepiest/BEST yoga workout video for children in the history of yoga, workout videos and children:
EIT takes said VHS tapes, digitize them and puts them online for you to watch at work while you’re supposed to be doing something less awesome.
THEN, they take these fabulous clips and re-mix them into insanely entertaining feature-length films like the one I saw on Monday night during their show at The Drake.
I think I fell legitimately in love with these monsters after seeing them do their thing in person – and by “do their thing” i mean dance around the room, make witty quips in funny voices and teach the audience about shade tippage.
Did I mention that they’re monsters from the internet? Monsters. From THE INTERNET.
(image by Ashley Macknica)
*sigh*
I used to think I was quirky and unique for loving weird shit like this. Not to sound like a hipster who gets all pissy when their favourite obscure underground band starts to get popular but like… well you know where I’m going with this.
To fetch my dinner from the microwave, that’s where – ’cause that little black tray of sodium saturated goodness certainly isn’t going to walk into my belly on its own, now is it?
yup.
Love always,
Lauren O’Gilgamesh.
Party on, Teens – Party on, McNizz…
Jul 4th
Today, I woke up with a throbbing migraine headache. It felt like there was a little caveman inside my head with one of those caveman bats beating the crap out of the inside of my head like “WRAHHHHH!”
Yeah, that guy. What a deck.
This, after spending almost all of Friday curled up in bed trying to recover from the worst bug I’ve had in years. What’s up with THAT?
I somehow managed to stumble into the kitchen for a glass of water and some Advil without vomiting all over myself (win!), and then it was back to pseudo-sleep… which at some point turned into actual sleep.
I woke up at 4:00 p.m. like “OH MY SNAP!” and jumped into the shower, feeling only slightly less yucky than a rotting heap of cabbages in the sun.
Cabbages? wth… no idea where that reference came from.
Anyhoo, I busted my butt downtown to shoot some stuff at PrideTO, got distracted by a sale at Zara on the way, and barely ended up making it to the non-pride-related interview I was booked for at 7. But I did.
Nate and Cory came too, and that just made it triple good.
More on hotness mcgee another day… It’s late and I’ve got to be up hecka early tomorrow because GUESS WHAT? My C-town babies are coming into town! eeee!!! I haven’t “eeee”d with so much enthusiasm since I saw Sister Act in my TV Listings yesterday! (What can I say? I’m easily enthused.)
I’m just itching to write about 20zillion long, thoughtful blog posts. I wish each day had 32 hours… but it does not.
On the plus side, Wayne’s World is on now so I’ve REALLY got to go. Watching movies until 5 a.m. counts as sleep if they’re really awesome movies, right?
(Halloween 2007 w/ Kari and Martina)
I just got tears in my eyes looking at that picture. I miss you guys, that city, those bars, that life, that family… so f*cking much. <3
- Lauren Algar
fuck yeah laubots!
Jul 2nd
I built these little guys at my parents’ house a few months ago while I was watching my shows. Since I’m incapable of sitting still and just watching TV and I was on one of my “no laptop after 9 p.m.” digital cleanses (I never last more than two days), I needed something to do with my hands.
Feeling creative and fixin’ to paint, I went down to the basement to dig out some old acrylics and a canvas.
I found the Lego first and it was like “F*CK YEAH LEGO!”
Is it cool that I didn’t even need to Google that term before knowing that a tumblog would already exist for it? That should totally be added to the rules.
“Rule 48: If it holds a spot on the “mildly cool to super awesome” continuum or inspires feelings of nostalgia among millennial hipsters, there will be a “fuck yeah” tumblr blog created for it.
Today is my one day off before it’s back to go-go-going for a zillion days straight. I must use this time wisely to a) get groceries, do laundry, clean apartment, etc. b) recuperate from gross summer cold c) run in the sun ’cause there’s nothin’ more fun and d) SHOP. I haven’t been back to my parents’ house (where 90% of my wardrobe still ives) in almost a month now, and I’m running out of basics. American Apparel, ahoy! And I mean that in a most UNhipstery way.
(this photo was a jest… please belieb!)
I figure Poopmerican Pooparel will have some great sales this week (I’m not above picking glass shards out of a deeply discounted denim romper).
Speakkking of which – I finally posted my G20 riot viddy. It’s only about 5 years late in news time. Like I said, life’s been… life.
Love Always,
L.
Gee, 20…30? how many hours have I been awake?
Jun 28th
(PHOTO: STEVE RUSSELL)
“They marched in the thousands at the G-20 summit in Toronto. They marched angrily, but after walking with them, I’m not really sure what they were marching for.
(PHOTO: LUCAS OLENIUK)
Some of the demonstrators promoted socialism. Some promoted anarchy and I guess everything else falls somewhere between those two causes. Palestinian sympathizers danced and chanted with women’s rights activists as they passed a poster shaming Canada for the seal harvest. Hooded young men hid behind goggles, facemasks and a banner that said borders were prisons. They gave the finger and shouted something at my producer that you could never repeat to a priest. One woman held up a sign promoting rights for sex workers.
One young woman asked me if I wanted to buy her socialist newsletter. I responded, “But if I buy it, isn’t that capitalism?” She wasn’t amused and said her organization needed to cover their printing costs in this capitalist society.. . .
(PHOTO: LUCAS OLENIUK)
In the end it seems like a bunch of young people with a lot of anger, a desire for mischief and no solutions.”
-From “Free Speech without focus” by Michael Tobin, Fox News
(PHOTOL CARLOS OSORIO )
Tobin’s words are quite poignant, but I think I can safely say that this is the first and last time you will see me quote Fox News on my blog.
I’ll be posting about the insanity that was my weekend tomorrow, complete with videos and photos of protesters behaving badly. Kicking the windows out of cop cars, badly. I felt like I was living in a video game this weekend. I’m not even exaggerating.
(PHOTO: STEVE RUSSELL)
But now, I must sleep. With the exception of a few 3 hour naps, I’ve been awake and working on all things G20 for the past 30 hours or something.
I haven’t had a shower in three days and I am exhausted.
I hope you’re all okay
(PHOTO: RICHARD LAUTENS)
*all images from the Toronto Star’s G20 photoblog
