Photo: "Swimming with ColorCheckers" by Daifuku Sensei, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.

What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):

Toronto managed to evade a winter storm this weekend, but a few of our prominent local politicians have become embroiled in a storm of epic proportions. The Prime Minister's Office sent out a recording made by the Conservatives of an NDP caucus teleconference that reveals Jack Layton leading coalition-related discussions. I'm pretty sure I have an opinion on what's worse - that these discussions were held well before the insane economic plan was delivered by the Conservatives, or that the talks were infiltrated, taped, and shared by the Conservatives. It's believed that a deal to form a Liberal-NDP coalition, with support of the Bloq is in the works, and coalition action in the form of a stimulus package is being planned.

Total mayhem and horror erupted at a child's birthday party in Oshawa this weekend, leading to the stabbing death of a mother, injury to a few others (including two kids), and the assailant being shot dead by intervening police. What a horrific tragedy.

Something about this story just doesn't seem right. Five fires broke out in five different TTC subway stations within half an hour of each other - due to heaters used by the TTC to prevent switches from freezing? Ummmm. Does this happen often? Even Fire Marshall Bill wouldn't approve!

Many people might not realize that Toronto once had a monorail. It wasn't where you'd expect it - at the airport, on the islands or zipping around the Metro Convention Centre. Instead, it was east of the city and part of the Toronto Zoo. It was called the Canadian Domain Ride and opened in 1976 to shuttle visitors to remote areas of the zoo where they could see animals that weren't confined to the typical entrapments.

While some tickets are still left for next weekend's Bills-Dolphins game at the Rogers Centre, entrance to the tailgate party before hand is open to anyone regardless whether they're ponying up for seats or not. The biggest - and official - tailgate is being put on by Budweiser (Facebook event here) and features everything from the Syracuse University marching band (I guess UofT's wasn't available) to 24x24 foot barbecues grilling up bison ribs, burgers and pulled pork sandwiches. Prices for food and drinks will range from $2-$8 - or way cheaper than what it will cost for the crappy food inside the dome.

Things have been a bit slow and wonky around here the past week. Truth is, we're undergoing an upgrade and a modest redesign of the site. Watch out for the new look sometime tomorrow. But until then, please excuse the lower than average number of posts as well as some annoying glitches that are affecting the site's comment functionality.

We promise (or at least hope) it will be worth it though. Stay tuned for a new look and some fun new stuff coming to the site very soon.

Montreal band October Sky rocked The Annex WreckRoom Wednesday night, in association with Indie Can radio showcase.

After being featured on the Plus Sur Commande (the Musique Plus version of Much on Demand) for their video of Hit the Ground off their Hell Isn't My Home album, October Sky started gaining momentum.

"Next we were featured on Much Loud and then radio started picking us up more," said keyboardist Yanik Rouleau before they took the stage. "Toronto is our second home.

"But our studio is in Montreal. We went back there to practice and do the album in a home studio, keeping our costs down. We're trying to build a really big fan base in Toronto."

TIM #84 is proudly sponsored by Zune by Microsoft.

The Toronto Independent Music Podcast is back! Woo ha! (Note: We had a small technical problem that prevented us from publishing this two days ago when it was recorded but watch out for future TIM podcasts weekly every Wednesday from now on)

Featuring:

Corner Phone by Land Of Talk
The Electricity In Your House by I Am Robot And Proud
Your Song by Shawn Jurek
Spinny by The Maynards
Two Ways Out by Darker My Love



Other ways to get the podcast:

Listen | Download the podcast
iTunes | Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes
RSS | Add the TIM Podcast feed to your RSS Reader
Search | Search the audio on Podzinger

Submit your music to the Toronto Independent Music podcast.