If your Facebook “friends” somehow forgot to wish you a Happy Birthday this year, and you ended up spending the evening alone writing vindictive messages on their walls, sketching crappy drawings of your foot (because you had nothing better to draw), and indulging in bland McCain’s Deep ‘n’ Delicious Cake (TM) instead of a decadent Dufflet chocolate mousse cake…

Then it sounds like you need one more chance to do it right!

Tonight, the Whipper Snapper Gallery, is hosting a party – just for you.

Aww… Finally, someone who cares.

When: 8pm.
Where: Whipper Snapper Gallery (587A College Street)
Details: $10. You get a personal cupcake to blow out on your birthday (at midnight), and a bunch of friends who will actually show up for once.

Opening tonight is One Reed Theatre’s play Nor the Cavaliers Who Come With Us, for which they have received The SummerWorks Spotlight Award for outstanding achievement, in addition to being crowned Best Young Ensemble in Now Magazine’s Best of Toronto. The play, produced in association with the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama here at U of T, is opening tonight and running until April 6th at Studio Theatre.

I caught up with the cast, consisting of Evan Webber, Marc Tellez, Megan Flynn and Frank Cox-O’Connell, and they filled me in on the details.

Q: What is the play about?

The play has two stories that interweave throughout the performance: one is the historical story of the conquest of Mexico with Cortés, his native lover and translator La Malincine, and his captain. The other is the fictional present-day story of a Canadian tourist who, unsatisfied with the political discourse in his community, goes on a quest to Mexico to find “an intelligent source of evil in the world.”

Frank: The tourist goes to Mexico to learn about this original story, to learn about the roots of his power as a white guy, and ends up realizing that things aren’t all that different, that this isn’t really a different story, and that the conquest he feels is a very distant thing is actually very alive and well.

When: Wednesday to Saturday, 8 p.m. Sunday 2 p.m. (until April 6th).
Where: Studio Theatre (4 Glen Morris Street). Click for map.
Details: Student tickets are $15 (Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday), $20 (Friday and Saturday) available at TOTix or The Studio Theatre (on campus). You can see the show multiple times with the purchase of a ticket! Thursday nights feature a question and answer period at the end of the show.

More questions and answers after the break!

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“Maple Organics is family owned and operated,” boasts a banner hanging from the ceiling on a recent visit to Whole Foods. This is one of several adorning the store, profiling farmers and manufacturers of the products they sell. As I continue studying the Maple Organics story, I learn that the family makes and markets their organic ice cream and frozen yoghurt themselves, in addition to milking the cows and growing their feed.

Oh, and I almost forgot: you’re even invited to visit their farm, located just West of Elora.

My only concern is that a 500 mL container of their ice cream retails for $6.39, a hefty premium when you compare it to the cost of an equivalent non-organic, non-local, industrially produced brand. Considering OSAP money doesn’t exactly grow on trees, why pay the premium?

My question was answered last Saturday when I had the pleasure of attending The Real Dirt on Food at Hart House, a full-day conference on food sustainability organized by a group of Environmental Policy and Practice students. As part of their second semester project for ENV320, they took the advice of their professor and, instead of writing an essay, decided to do something that would truly make a difference. The conference, aimed to raise awareness of the controversies surrounding food production, was extremely successful. The tickets were priced to ensure that the event was accessible to all – provided, of course, that they were snatched up early enough; due to popularity, they sold out weeks ahead of time.

More photos after the break.

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As part of the 6th Annual Hart House Lecture, McGill University Professor Darin Barney will be examining the relationship between technology and citizenship- specifically, the challenges technology imposes on the practice of citizenship in a democracy. Darin Barney’s research aims to help Canadians balance the benefits of technological innovation and the requirements of democratic citizenship. He is also the Canada Research Chair in Technology and Citizenship.

There’s a video teaser available here to get you thinking about the topic. The host of the video approaches Torontonians and asks them if they think technology affects the practice of citizenship in a democracy. A man comments before responding that, “you can’t ask anyone a question like that on the street because it’s a loaded question”. I agree with him; it’s a substantial question, and it’s hard to give an in-depth response on ths spot. Nevertheless, there are some interesting responses that will get those gears turnings for the lecture.

When: March 22, 2007, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Great Hall, Hart House
Details: Tickets are FREE and available at UofTtix. Get them fast; it is likely that the lecture will sell-out.

When is the last time you wrote a letter?

No, not an email, text message, facebook wall posting, or equivalent.

Chances are it’s been a while.

Now, when is the last time you wrote a letter to … The Universe?!

Well, here’s your chance!

Join the The Rothko Institute this Friday night at The Gladstone Hotel and write to your favourite (or least-favourite) aspect of existence. Here’s your chance to praise Justice, or to direct your rage therapeutically towards Rejection. The letters will be stamped, addressed and mailed just like real letters! No one knows where they’ll end up, but that’s all part of the excitement.

From the Facebook event page, a sample letter:

Dear Universe,
How have you been? I’ve seen you around constantly since I came in to existence and I gotta say, you are pretty cool. I especially like your karmic balance stuff, it’s fantastic. Lately, alternate realities that are a product of my imagination have been trying to move in on your territory but I think you are holding your own….Otherwise, things are going great; definitely continue this mono-directional passage of time business. The 3 dimensions are working well and are keeping me busy moving in every direction. Keep it up!
Peace,
Craig
P.S. Looking forward to tonight’s lunar eclipse!

When: Friday March 9th, 9pm-12am
Where: The Gladstone Hotel, Melody Bar
P.S. Don’t forget to bring a pen!

Ok, so you probably don’t need ANOTHER musical event to attend tonight, considering we have already posted about The Zoobombs, David Myles, and of course, the million-and-one CMW concerts, but hey!, we’re huge music lovers here at BlogUT, so we thought we’d spice it up a little for those Jazz fans! Former U of T vocal jazz student, Sarah Jerrom, will be having her CD release tonight at The Lula Lounge. Cheer on your U of T alumni! More info and song clips on her myspace page.

When: Tonight, 7:00 p.m.
Where: The Lula Lounge (1585 Dundas St. W.)
Details: $12

Last year during the annual “clubs” fair I won a nifty ball-point pen from the University of Toronto Bookstore kiosk for answering the following trivia question: When were women first granted access to Hart House?

What shocked me most was not the exceptional quality of the pen (or the fact that I still received it even after answering the question incorrectly). It was, instead, the astonishing answer to the trivia question: Women were not granted full access to Hart House until 1972!

With International Women’s Day approaching, celebrate 35 years of women in Hart House by to attending an evening here appreciating phenomenal women alongside delicious complementary desserts.

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