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This installment of my "Retro T.O." column for The Grid was originally published on May 8, 2012. Shortly after becoming mayor of Toronto, Mel Lastman was asked if he worried about his wife Marilyn’s verbal snafus. “All the time,” he said. “But I find it cute and if people don’t like it, too bad.” The same could be said of Mel’s odd outbursts, yet few found it cute when Lastman uttered a death threat against CBC reporter (and current city councillor) Adam Vaughan in May 1999. Thanks to a police leak, it was an open secret among City Hall reporters that Marilyn Lastman was caught shoplifting a $155 pair of designer pants at the Promenade Mall Eaton’s on April 19, 1999. According to the police report no charges were laid “due to her age as well as no outstanding offences on her record.” Sources close to Marilyn believed the pressures of Mel’s job had resulted in depression and prescription drug use. The incident was kept quiet until the satirical magazine Frank published a ...

Source: the Toronto Star , April 13, 1964. To mark Oscar night, we're heading back 50 years to check the reaction from Toronto's TV critics regarding the 36th annual Academy Awards ceremony on April 13, 1964. Among the milestones that night were the first black performer to win Best Actor (Sidney Poitier in Lilies of the Field ) and the first film to place three nominees in the Best Supporting Actress category (Diane Cilento, Edith Evans, and Joyce Redman in Tom Jones, all of whom lost to Margaret Rutherford from The V.I.P.s ).

Another month, another freebie newspaper. Today's entry into the newsbox sweepstakes is Dose , CanWest Global's attempt to hook twentysomethings. I fell out of my chair looking at the paper's " About Us " page, which neatly sums up everything wrong with it. Tell me this doesn't sound like a cry against the man written by somebody funded by him: There is a lot of crap out there and we realiuzed there was nothing that was relevant so we said screw it, we are going to create a new source of information for our peers. Or at least severely dumbed-down information for their peers. Forced hipness is a rare beast to pull off well - we'll see if CanWest can do it. (I should fess up that I've spent most of the weekend listening to the CD version of Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them , so my media crap-detector is running higher than usual). Design-wise, it resembles a messy headline-news channel, down to the "ticker" (in ...

Busy weekend, the last one... Spent Friday night and most of Saturday cooking up a storm. The kitchen smelled heavenly from all the spices needed for the Indian feast. It was the first test of the cookbook series I've bought on the last few trips to Borders. They passed with flying colours, judging from the reactions of friends and the yummy, if scant, leftovers. The sole flop did not come from this series, a rosewater pudding devoid of taste that met its fate in the bathroom sink Saturday afternoon. The first dish out of the gate was a mixed success. Made some paneer, but when I tried to mix it in a mushroom curry, it fell apart (guess I needed to put a weight on it). Wasn't a loss - it added a nice flavour. The paneer itself had a taste and texture closer to ricotta than paneer I've eaten. Bet it would make a great lasagne. Everything else was easy and tasty. Tandoori chicken, dhal, channa (though this was made with a pre-bought spice mix), raita, chutneys...

Looks like Wal-Mart is attempting to reintroduce the concept of the plain brown wrapper for magazines it sells - only it's for such mainstream women's publications as Cosmo and Glamour, following a decision to remove several men's mags entirely. As the Associated Press reports, FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will begin obscuring the covers of some women's magazines stocked in checkout lanes, shortly after a decision to stop selling some men's magazines over their racy content. The company has begun testing "U-shaped blinders" that will cover the photos and language on the covers of Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Marie Claire and Redbook, spokesman Tom Williams said at the company's annual shareholders meeting Friday. "That's to accommodate those customers who are uncomfortable with the language on some of the magazine covers," Williams said. If that's the case, I can think of several other mags they could extend this co...