Anthony Augustine

Uptown Magazine - February 11/10

Tyson Bodnarchuk
Although Winnipeg has a supportive, active and vibrant arts scene, not everyone sticks around. One successful Winnipeg expat has recently launched his long-awaited website. Although his work has been online in different forms (blogs, Flickr, Etsy), Tyson Bodnarchuk, who now lives in Montreal, has finally pulled everything together into one spot. Along with running the two-level hybrid gallery space/eclectic store Headquarters Galerie + Boutique with his partner, Angie Johnson, Tyson has been busy turning out colourful “monsters, robots, villains and evil creatures inspired by everyday people on the street, bus or subway.” He has also prepared installations for the Osheaga Music Festival, done a number of solo and group exhibitions, and he collaborates with artists from around the world on different projects. From his Star Wars-inspired pieces to his ultra-glossy acrylic paintings, Bodnarchuk’s work is playful, imaginative and fascinating to look at. 

Terry Richardson’s blog
Like a lot of people out there, gritty Vice Magazine contributor Terry Richardson has a photo blog. If you’re looking for low-fashion images, pics of weird people he encounters and some not-safe-for-work stuff, Richardson’s world should have you covered.

Quick Hits

Putting Weird Things in Coffee
A few years ago, MP3 blogs were all the rage. As Hot 103 morning man Ace Burpee recently declared, 2010 is the year of the food blog. Bored with the same old cream and sugar combo, this adventurous caffeine junkie has decided to experiment by putting weird things in his coffee. (And I mean weird: he has already put salmon, blue cheese and bananas in his favourite drink.)

MP3 of the Week: Grahmzilla Mix
Known for his dance-floor ready remixes and for being half of über-hip electronic duo Thunderheist, Grahmzilla will be in town Feb. 11 to spin at Republic. If the recent cold snap has got you down, Grahmzilla offers up a UK funky/kuduro/tropical mix that should help relieve your winter blahs.

Video of the Week: Lessons We’ve Learned from Gambling Movies
Before you put all your savings on that long-shot at the track that you got a tip on from your neighbour’s cousin or go all in with everything but the clothes on your back because you think your buddy is bluffing at your weekly poker game, here is Moviefone’s Lessons We’ve Learned from Gambling Movies.

Winnipeg Free Press - February 11/10

Foursquare Launches

AFTER waiting a couple of months longer than most major Canadian cities, Winnipeg has finally seen the much-anticipated launch of fledgling location-based friend finder/city guide/mobile game Foursquare.

While the first version of Foursquare was strategically rolled out in select cities, the mobile phone-based social-networking site can now be used anywhere you can get a cell signal.

Considering the use of Foursquare has skyrocketed in the past two months (user numbers have tripled) and the fact that your friends list from Facebook and people you follow on Twitter are easily cross-referenced for Foursquare accounts, you are probably going to start to get a bunch of invites to join.

“We had a lot of trouble explaining Dodgeball to people until Friendster came along. Then it was as simple as ‘like Friendster for your cellphone.’ With Foursquare, as much as I hate the comparison, it’s easy to explain it as ‘like Twitter for your social life,’” explains founder Dennis Crowley.

More than a social-networking community that lets you know what your friends are up to and the spots they’re visiting, it’s a crowdsourced city guide that encourages you to explore your town and visit places you haven’t been. It’s also is a mobile game that rewards you for getting involved by adding new locations, checking in at different spots and discovering your city. A big part of Crowley’s vision is that everyday activities — from your commute to work to buying groceries — unlocks “contextually relevant information,” tips, tricks and thoughts sourced directly from people you know. Crowley hopes that Foursquare will “make people more aware of the cities they live in and motivate you to do things you wouldn’t normally do.”

Oldmedianewtricks.com’s Daniel Honigman’s has put together an etiquette guide to help you navigate the ins and outs of location-based services like Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt. From helpful hints about crowdsourcing to more obvious tips — such as not getting obsessed with keeping up with other Squares (4S users) — this guide is a good place to start after you have set up your account to get the most of your Foursquare experience.

Don’t let the fact that you don’t yet have a GPS-enabled cellphone keep you from signing up. You can still check in at locations around the city using your phone’s web browser and entering the address of where you are into Foursquare’s mobile site.

The Chef at Home Challenge

DESPITE a poor showing on Iron Chef recently, Michael Smith is still one of Canada’s best-known celebrity chefs. From his free-wheeling Chef at Home series to his Anthony Bourdain-inspired Chef Abroad, Smith is a constant on Food Network Canada.

Inspired by the blog/book/film Julie & Julia, Genevieve Epp decided to cook her way through Smith’s The Best of Chef at Home and document the ups and downs online. During the early part of the challenge, Epp has already tackled a brined turkey, molten chocolate cakes and other culinary delights. She recently met up with Smith in Toronto to make the only recipe that appears in all four of his cook books, a potato bacon cheddar tart.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 11, 2010 E3

Winnipeg Free Press - February 4/10

Jerzify Yourself
Jersey Shore Name Generator
AFTER a couple of weeks of speculation, threats and uncertainty, the cast (minus Ronnie, who apparently slept in) of MTV’s breakout show Jersey Shore recently announced on the Today Show that they will be back for a second season. After tense negotiations with the network where money seemed to be the sticking point, all seven stuck together “Friends-style” to ensure the hit show would continue and they would be paid equally.

Although the cast will start filming within a couple of months, details of where the reality show will be located have yet to be confirmed. In the meantime, using the Jerzify Yourself tool, you can upload your photo and create your own Jersey Shore character. You can also use the Jersey Shore Name Generator to find out what nickname The Situation, Pauly D, JWoWW or Snooki might give you.

If you need your Jersey Shore fix and on-demand reruns on MTV.ca just aren’t cutting it, DJ Pauly D will be spinning at Republic Nightclub on Feb. 15, The Situation will be at the same venue the next night and fellow Shore castmates Ronnie Ortiz-Magro and Sammi (Sweetheart) Giancola will be at the club on Feb. 21. Tickets are available at Republic, Shopgirl and The Urban Bakery. Owing to demand, advance tickets expire at midnight.

Considering JWoWW’s appearance at Republic last weekend was sold out and the line to get in snaked around the block, get to the club early to avoid disappointment.

The 100 Questions Lost Better Answer

THE final season of ABC’s Lost started off with a bang on Tuesday and loyal viewers should be in for a wild ride as J.J. Abrams and his team try to wrap up all the storylines in just 18 hours of programming. Considering there are probably more theories surrounding the show than any TV series that has ever aired, we can only hope the final season will start connected some of the dots.

Hoping to shed some light on some of the theories that have been raised over the past five seasons, Scifiwire.com has put together The 100 Questions Lost Better Answer.

8 Things That Suck About the iPad

IN case you haven’t turned on the TV or read the newspaper since last week, Apple’s Steve Jobs recently unveiled the company’s much anticipated tablet computer, the iPad. Describing it as the missing link between laptops and smart phones, Apple is hoping its new product will excite consumers and change the way they interact with the web, music, video and games in the way the iMac, iPhone and iPod have done.

Although the Internet was buzzing after Jobs’ presentation, not all pundits are sold on the device. From the lack of support for multitasking (a basic function that most people would agree needs to be a part of the device) to the absence of a camera(s) that would have allowed for video chatting and the fact that the iPad doesn’t have an HDMI out that would allow you to connect the device to a high-definition television, the gadget gurus at Gizmodo outline the 8 Things That Suck About the iPad.

Although it will begin shipping the device in two months, there’s no word yet on when Apple’s latest innovation will be available in Canada or what mobile data provider they will partner up with. Hopefully Canadian early adopters won’t have to wait as long as they did with the iPhone.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 4, 2010 E3

Uptown Magazine - February 4/10

Before

After - Chick-sat-A (Fancy Chick-fil-A)

Fancy Fast Food
Sick of getting your dinner handed to you through a drive-thru window but love fast food more than life itself? Fancy Fast Food shows you how to transform everyday items from your favourite restaurants into gourmet meals. From Honey Apple Glazed Christmas Holiday Ham(-burger), made from Burker King’s Quad Stackers, to Seared Pollock Cake with Southwest Ramalan Sauce from McDonald’s, this fascinating blog takes fast food to a whole other level. 

Explain This
Currently in beta testing, Explain This is an new online experiment that hopes to provide a forum for tough-to-answer questions “that cannot be answered by a simple, or even a sophisticated search. Or by the amateur expert who’s been reading Popular Mechanics since 1964,” writes Jay Rosen. Looking to utilize crowd-sourced information from journalists, Explain This is currently gathering questions in order to prove that the idea behind the site is going to work.

TwitAlbums
Hoping to add an extra level of privacy to social networking, TwitAlbums is a new online service that lets you upload photos, video and music, and share them only with a select group of approved people. While the concept behind this tool is interesting, the fact that the service is not entirely free is a huge drawback. Using a system of credits, users are given some space for free but must reload their account after they’ve burned through their ‘seeds.’ While some people with huge friends lists on Facebook and a lot of followers on Twitter may see some value in TwitAlbums, the bulk of everyday users probably won’t gravitate to this service. 

Quick Hits

MP3 of the Week: Nacho Lovers
Known for their tightly wound DJ sets that connect the dots between old-school Chicago house, disco, Detroit techno and future-forward post-rave beats, Toronto’s Nacho Lovers (Fool’s Gold Records) recently offered up a stellar mix for The Curb Crawlers blog. Featuring cuts from 6th Borough Project, Shimmy Sham Sham and Hunee, this is one mix that you’ll want to add to your collection.

Video of the Week: Nirvana Live at The Reading Festival
Taken from the recently released Live at Reading DVD, these videos capture Nirvana’s headlining performance at the prestigious Reading Festival in 1992. Cuts include Territorial Pissings, Stay Away, Tourettes, Been a Son and Breed.

Winnipeg Free Press - December 17/09

Dexter Finale

Season 4 of Showtime’s vigilant serial killer drama Dexter wrapped up last week with a shocking finale that will have actor Michael C. Hall’s character questioning the path that he has taken and what his quests for justice have cost him. While Dexter may have been able to put an end to the Trinity killings, his wife Rita was caught up in the crossfire. Despite Dexter’s best efforts, he wasn’t able to protect his family and keep his two worlds separate. Not only did Trinity show up at Dexter’s work, he managed to kill one of his loved ones. Was it purely revenge or part of another cycle of Trinity killings?

“It’s complicated. We left it that way so everyone, based on their own life and their own experiences, would interpret it so it made sense for them,” executive producer Sara Colleton said in a recent TVGuide.com interview. “One way to interpret it is that in some bizarre way, Dexter gave Trinity a finality in his situation, that he does this in a bizarre way to trigger Dexter to deal with who he really is. You can only fake it for so long.” Not only will there be questions on why Rita was killed, Dexter will never be able to truly get revenge on Trinity. The fifth season (and possibly final season) will not only examine how Dexter reacts to Rita’s death, but also how he tries to contain his demons. Will Dexter embrace his new life or will her death make him more bloodthirsty? “That’s an instinct he may have, but he may not. Hopefully it will be in what we call the ‘Dexterous response,’ which is based in human behaviour, but uniquely put through the prism of Dexter’s special needs,” suggests Colleton. “The fact is that he has children now that he is the sole parent of, and how that affects what he does and the choices he makes.”

James Cameron Interview

It has been 12 years since his last feature and director James Cameron returns to theatres this weekend with Avatar, the most expensive movie ever made with a reported budget of over $400 million. Although some critics have pointed out the huge budget may make the film hard to be profitable, judging by the buzz, the studio shouldn’t have to worry about recouping their money. The director sits down with Vanity Fair to talk about developing the concept behind Avatar, how blockbuster movies are keeping Hollywood alive and why he doesn’t use Twitter. “I don’t Tweet because I can’t think of anything I’d want to discuss with somebody that I could explain in 25 words or less, 140 characters or whatever it is, nor would I be particularly interested in their answer,” Cameron says. “And I think it’s forcing people to think in these kinds of sound bytes, and you can’t think in sound bytes.”

Vevo

LAUNCHED last week in a partnership among heavyweights in the music industry including Universal, Sony and EMI, and backed up by Google and its YouTube brand, Vevo has been called a cross between Hulu (the much-hyped online TV site not available to Canadians) and MTV. The companies are hoping to create the No. 1 destination on the web for music videos.

Although YouTube has been the go-to spot and MySpace has some videos, Vevo should be able to position itself near the top with more music labels pulling their content from YouTube and moving it over to this new portal.

Uptown Magazine - December 17/09

Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky?
If you have logged onto Facebook in the past week, you will have noticed that the No. 1 social-networking site has revamped its privacy settings. Despite the Book’s claim it was turning over more control to users, the changes are potentially opening up even more personal content than ever before. Few people have taken the time to see how these changes impact the type of information they share with the world. “In this case, if you simply click through the windows, you’ve exposed all of your private Facebook information, including comments, friends, pictures and status updates, to ‘everyone,’” writes tech-guru Jason Calacanis in a recent article that was posted through his Twitter account. “In other words, clicking through changes everything in Facebook terms - unlike every other license or update screen you’ve experienced in your life.” In an effort to go head-to-head with social-networking rival Twitter, Facebook is opening up even more profile information to be crawled for search results that will hopefully generate more page views for Facebook. While it’s obvious to everyone who signs up for Twitter that your information will be made public (that’s the point of the site), with Facebook most people sign up thinking/believing their information will stay private. This bait-and-switch technique isn’t going to sit well with most users once they realize what has happened. “Facebook is trying to dupe hundreds of millions of users they’ve spent years attracting into exposing their data for Facebook’s personal gain: page views,” claims Calacanis. “Yes, Facebook is tricking us into exposing all our items so that those personal items get indexed in search engines - including Facebook’s - in order to drive more traffic to Facebook.” While it’s too early to see what impact these changes will have, you can bet protest groups will pop up and a bunch of users will claim they are deleting their profile (only to reappear in a few months).

Homemade Versions of Things We Love
The recession may not have hit Winnipeg as hard as other cities in North America, but we’ve always been known as bargain hunters. If you aren’t afraid of some basic DIY projects, Lifehacker has a list of the Top 10 Homemade Versions of Things We Love, from a wire-and-wood DTV antenna to pick up free HD signals to a homemade version of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Quick Hits

MP3 of the Week: The XX - Crystalised (Grandtheft Remix)
Team Canada’s Grandtheft continues his stellar run of must-have releases with a dancefloor-ready reworking of the The XX’s Crystalised.

Video of the Week: For the Whole World to See trailer
In 1975, three brothers from Detroit recorded an album for Columbia Records that was never released, but will eventually go on to rewrite the history books. For the Whole World to See is an upcoming documentary about Detroit protopunk band Death and its genre-defining album, finally released this year by Drag City.

Stylus Magazine - Top 5 Shows of 2009

1. Sunny Day Real Estate - First Avenue (Minneapolis) - September 23
2. Japandroids - Lo Pub - September 11/ Monotonix - The Pyramid - May 21/ The Famines - The Albert - August 13/ These Arms Are Snakes - The Albert - September 18 (tie)
3. The Rural Alberta Advantage - The Albert - June 23
4. nomeansno - Park Theatre - April 12/ The Albert - April 13/ The Albert - October 30 (tie)
5. Pezzner - The Academy - November 13

Honorable mentions: Propagandhi (March 20/21), Sonic Youth (Minneapolis/July 21), TV on the Radio (May 30) and Dinosaur Jr (November 17).

Originally appeared in Stylus Magazine.