I wasn't going answer this Open Call.  For some reason there was just nobody  coming to mind this year.  But then Salon picked Levi Johnston as their 11th sexiest man of 2009.  And as I was cringeing watching Levi and Kathy Griffin flirting away on Larry King,… Read full post »

The  saga  of Canadian folk musician Dave Carroll just never seems to end. 

Three months ago Carroll became famous for the viral  hit song "United Breaks Guitars," a song he composed after United Airlines destroyed his beloved $3500 Taylor guitar on the runway, while he watched f… Read full post »

Yesterday Condé Nast shocked the media world with the announcement it would be closing Gourmet Magazine.   In 2006 I  interviewed editor-in-chief, Ruth Reichl. While we were talking about “Consider The Lobster” the  famous essay she commissioned from Da… Read full post »

Poor Wisconsin.  In the last year its various tourism boards have really taken a beating in the schoolyard of the Internet.

First, there was This Is My Milwaukee,  an alternate reality game which hinged on this  hilarous parody of a tourism board video. 

From Rebus Charivariques, A French Alphabet book published in 1840

Lately I’ve been experiencing a bout of blogger’s block. I went on vacation in early August, to a place where internet access involved fighting other family members for the one working computer.  I deci… Read full post »

A little over a month ago, on my birthday, I opened the New Yorker and found an intimate, in depth review by Nicholson Baker  of  e-readers currently on the market.  He hated his Kindle 2. Mostly he hated the e-ink, the technological “innovation” that is supp… Read full post »

If nothing else, season 5 of So You Think You Can Dance has been a fascinating mystery. All season I've been like Hugh Laurie on House, busting my snark addicted brain trying to decode the inexplicable symptom that just keeps returning week after week, no matter what my team of judges… Read full post »

Tonight's result show marks the 100th episode of So You Think You Can Dance. And it sounds like it’s going to be a great show. They’ll be repeating some of the favorite routines of the entire five seasons. Katie Holmes will dance, If I understood correctly, we’ll the see the incompa… Read full post »

In his book Emotion: The Science of Sentiment, British evolutionary psychologist Dylan Evans argues that one of the things that distinguishes us from animals is that we are the only species that has invented artificial technologies to alter our moods. The first of these was language. &… Read full post »

One of the great things about being a Canadian fan of So You Think You Can Dance is that I get to see the same choreography performed on both the Canadian and American versions of the show.

Last season American choreographers Tony Meredith and Melanie LaPatin put together a Paso Doble… Read full post »

   www.karaokehitnmiss

Keep an eye out any day now for a new app called Google Karaoke. Word in yesterday's Globe & Mail Business section is that Google has just teamed up with a Montreal digital media group to bring free karaoke to the internet. 

We're "Democratizin… Read full post »

I'm trying to stay away from the BBC pet stories.  Really I am.  But, man,  those Brits really know how to spin the fluff cycle.

It's the most popular news story right now, right after Goldman Sachs bumper profits. Yes, it's true, what you may have only suspected… Read full post »

One snowy evening in Chicago, Davy Rothbart found this note on his windshield.  It wasn't intended for him. He didn't know Mario or Amber, but something about the vulnerable mix of paranoia and desperation struck a chord with him and his friends.  And so this note became the origina… Read full post »

Last night I noticed that my 11 year old Jack Russell, Blitzen, had lost her i.d. tag.  She's a bit of an escape artist, so I'm really happy I noticed.  I plan to get her a new tag a.s.a.p. so that I don't have to resort to this.

This being… Read full post »

First a word of advice to anyone who ever decides to share recap duties: PLAN things out way ahead.  Or at least don’t decide half way through the show that this would be a good time to write your partner an e-mail that reads “you’re doing the… Read full post »

Bigfoot: Now on Twitter

If you haven't read either of Graham Roumieu's brilliant graphic novels based on the life of Bigfoot then you're seriously depraved deprived. But if you've read either Bigfoot: I not Dead, or Me Write Book then you're already up to date on Bigfoot's… Read full post »

I love So You Think You Can Dance, lame camera work aside, but last week I discovered there was something else missing. After reading Knightwriter's top 20 recap , I realized that I would love it even more if I were drunk. 

Unfortunately I only remembered this ten minutes before… Read full post »

He's been called the greatest dancer ever produced in America. He's considered one of the country's premier choreographers. He is the only American to have ever been asked to dance an encore at the Bolshoi theatre in Moscow. 

But today he is the most hated man among Canadian… Read full post »

Vegas, Babies.

First up, from Vancouver, Canada, Alex Wong. I'm guessing he is eligible to compete on the American show because he's in the Miami City Ballet.

Judges are sworn to silence during the solo rounds.  But Alex has them squirming in pantomime.  Mia Michaels gets censored twice fo… Read full post »

It's not the dancing.  I love the dancing. And I love the idea of this show, bringing dancers together from every culture and class, from hip hop to ballroom to ballet, forcing them to discover their weaknesses and stretch their skills.

It's not the judging.  It's hard for newcomers to… Read full post »

When I first read, this week, that New York's Second Circuit Court of Appeals was in the process of deciding  Arar v. Ashcroft, I immediately surfed over to  C-Span to check out Sonia Sotomayor's performance in the two hours of oral arguments presented by both sides.

What I… Read full post »

Hey Everyone.  Welcome to the first meet of Open Salon Celebrity Feed bowling.

The goal: to see if we can knock  knudge Kaysong's somewhat stale (for us anyways)  sexiest men post off the most viewed feed by replicating the keywords and images that may be proping… Read full post »