Its crazy tonight with the amount of things going on downtown.  So if you are in the city, hope to see some of you there!

Martin Cleaver has complied a great little listing of what’s going on where.

Two forgotton things from the 80’s looking for a comeback.  Dr.  Pepper apparently is so interested in getting Axl Rose to release a new Guns n’ Roses cd that they have offered to give the incentive of passing out free Dr. Pepper’s to the population of the US.  Well that’s unsusal. 

 Saw british phenom Adele live in concert at the Rivoli where she promptly broke my heart with an accustic version of Make You Feel My Love.  The concert itself was a bit too short for my taste, but no complaints were heard from the crowd leaving because every minute that she did perform was fantastic.  With her cute banter between songs she seems like someone you want to have a pint with or keep her in a little box where you take her out sometimes and hug and pinch her cheeks.  I know.  I am a bit weird.

Keep an eye open for fashion label Desperately Different designed by Katya Revenko. This line of quality women’s wear will soon release its Spring 08 collection to your favourite local boutiques such as Pho Pa and Model Citizen.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone and I hope that everyone is having a good ole time.  This day of the year something always comes to mind… Guinness.  After all I met my husband because of Guinness (long and not a very bad story) and one of my favorite companies to keep an eye on is Diageo.  They are the brewers of the number one selling stout in the world and overall one of the top recognizable alcohol brands in the world.

And for one day of the year, most of the population of beer drinkers around the world have at least one pint of it. 

I can only imagine what their corporate offices look like today.  It must be like Christmas morning with everyone waiting at their desks for all the final numbers to come in.

Its an image that is as olde school as they get - the State Farm Insurance logo.  Whithout doing an official poll, I feel comfortable in saying/concluding  that it is one of the un-sexiest logos out there.  Their new marketing campaign, which you may have seen in recent print publications is an evokative urban image of various situations.  The one I see most often, is a bike locked to one bike wheel hanging lonley at a downtown street corner.  The only text is that of nowwhat.ca

I love that this new campaign of State Farm attempts to connect to a new audience that are not so interested in insuring the family car and adding new drivers.  But instead are looking for insurance for their laptop while on the go as well as learning the insides and outs of content insurance when you are renting.

One of the fantastic things that I got addicted to at Podcamp Toronto last week has to be Twitter.  If you are already on - feel free to add me @michellejose. Now with the great plugin for Wordpress made at Twitter Updater I can keep everything up to date.

You know you are going to do it, even though you say you’re not. You will watch portions of the Oscar’s tonight. Somehow mystically your remote will land on it at some point - and you will be at least for some point in time mesmorized by the bright colours and big hair. So since you are anyway…might as well watch it somewhere fun right?

I hope you all can make it down tonight to The Rivoli on Queen West tonight for cocktails and scarcastic commentary.

The festivities start at 7pm. I especially hope that some of the wonderful people at Podcamp Toronto 2008 where I’ve spent my weekend make it down as well. For further info email me

More to come about Podcamp Toronto tomorrow.

It would be an owner’s worst nightmare.  An above the fold picture of rats frolicking in your kitchen in the local paper.  Kudos to Dumpling House’s manager who handled this PR situation well.  The National Post profiled the story of the restaurant that is now temporally closed by the Health Board while the situation can be remedied.  This sort of story has happened in the past and in most times resulted with horrific responses by the owners.  Lots of “No Comments”, “Get out of my face”, and doors banging shut. 

 This has resulted in many occasions with these restaurants closing or an entire slow-down of business.  With the forthright response given by the spokesperson, Dumpling House may re-open to further success and perhaps even a further investigation of the main problem itself - many downtown pockets are full of vermin infestations that need to be addressed by the city as a whole.

Over the past two years, we have seen the expansion - especially in urban centers such as Toronto, of ad spaces being in the least expected areas.  Washroom stalls, gym change rooms, the back of your cab, even your local grocery-store shelf all have been seem as new advertising opportunities.  In his article for The Star this weekend - Andrew Chung explores where these trends are heading.

Tune into Daytime where Ambiance Chocolat will be talking about the sweet stuff on their special Valentine’s Day edition.