Random news from the Strombo World!

There's a lot going on in the world of Strombo in the last couple weeks leading up to the launch of the fifth season of The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos, so here's a quick run down of a few things that have popped up...

Former Hour guest, Dr. Jane Goodall, will be honoured at a Tribute Dinner, at the Royal York in Toronto on November 16th. Hosted by former Hour guest, Michael Budman, and his Roots co-founder Don Green, the dinner will pay tribute to Ms. Goodall and help raise funds for the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada. The honorary dinner chair for the evening will be Dr. David Suzuki. George will play emcee for the evening. All proceeds from the evening will benefit three programs: the expansion of the "Roots and Shoots" program in Canada; to establish Jane Goodall scholarships in Environmental studies; and a "Roots and Shoots" program at the University of Haifa.

Heading out for a night on the town in Toronto? You may want to check out one of "Strombo's Top Five Toronto Bars", as seen in The Strand, the student newspaper of Victoria University in the University of Toronto. According to the article, the bars include:

The Communist's Daughter (1146 Dundas st w.)
Tuesdays at The Horseshoe Tavern (370 Queen st w.)
Wednesdays at The Dakota Tavern (249 Ossington ave.)

To find out which Toronto watering holes are in George's Top Two, make sure you check out the full article.

And finally, who could forget Margaret Cho's appearance on The Hour in season four?

Well, it appears that the message that Margaret Cho left on Kevin Drew's answering machine during that interview may have actually succeeded in getting her in the band. According to Rolling Stone, Broken Social Scene will be saving a space on stage for Cho sometime in the near future. According to Rolling Stone:

“Broken Social Scene is the best thing happening in modern music. Kevin Drew is a genius and I am so excited about joining them onstage,” she tells Rolling Stone (the collaboration hasn’t happened just yet, but is in the works). “I told him I wanted to just sneak my way into the band, like walking backwards onstage while playing the triangle. This is total proof that The Secret works because every time I would listen to their music, I would say to myself, ‘I wanna be be in this band. I must be in this band. I am gonna be in this band.’ And then it happened!”

And those are the latest snippets of news from the world of Strombo. Stay tuned later this week for another edition of Stroumboulopouli 2:20 and don't forget to book your tickets for The Hour's Toronto Film Festival pretapes. Some tickets are still available, but the tapings are selling out fast.

Cheers!

The Week of April 27 to May 3

Well, it's Week Three of the hockey induced hiatus. Do you have a nervous twitch yet from not getting your daily Hour fix? Have you caught a couple of the whackily scheduled "best of" shows after hockey? Or have you been stalking our blog for "Our Favourite Clips" to get your Hour fix? As always, make sure you check out The Hour website for the latest information on the show, and After The Hour for extra clips from the show and other random clips. Paul McGrath announced last week on The Hour's blog, that The Hour's YouTube channel has passed 5 Million views. So you've got a lot of outlets to get through the last week of the hiatus. Check a few out, you never know what you may find that you've never, ever seen before or that you'd totally forgotten about.

Check out The Hour's Ticket Page if you're in the Toronto area and want to experience The Hour in studio. Tickets are current available for most of May. Tickets tend to go fast so book quickly for the next couple of weeks. Remember, the ticket policy has changed, it's now only two tickets per person, not the previous four.

On the April 27th edition of The Strombo Show, George's guests will talk to the Canadian Indie Band Tokyo Police Club who kick off the Canadian leg of their tour in Toronto with two shows next weekend, May 3 and 4 at The Opera House. Other shows include Winnepeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, Kelowna, Vancouver and Victoria. Check out the band's webpage or their MySpace page for the full list of their tour dates.

George's in studio guest this week will be Canadian singer/songwriter Kevin Drew, who is probably best known for being one of the founding members and leader of Broken Social Scene. While in studio, Drew will play an acoustic set.

The Strombo Show airs in Vancouver (The Fox), Winnipeg (Power 97), Toronto (The Edge), Hamilton (Y108) and London (FM96) on the Corus Radio Network from 5-8 EDT (2-5 PDT). If you're not in radio range of those cities, you can stream the show from any of the radio stations listed above. Don't forget you can watch the Strombo Show on The Edge's Webcam. If you're not a member of The Strombo Show's Facebook Group, join today! Also, get in on the action and leave your comments during the show on the group page or on George's Myspace and Facebook pages. And don't forget, you can always call in to the show at 1-866-967-3343 or email the show george@strombo.com.

Make sure you head over to the Canon Canada Digital Photography website to check out a few of George's photographs. George was selected by Canon Canada as one of twelve Canadian celebrities to participate in their fourth annual "Other Side of the Lens" collection to celebrate the theme of "Red, White and Green". Other celebrities showcased this year include: Ronnie Hawkins, Stuart McLean, Robert Bateman, Meghan Follows, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Moses Znaimer, Laura Vandervoort, Michael Standtlander, Jacques Laguirand and Jian Ghomeshi. For their participation in the collection, Canon Canada has made a sizeable donation to Earth Day Canada.

And finally, in a Harris/Decima survey commissioned by the BBC Canada series Trinny and Susannah Undress the Nation, George has been named the best dressed man in Canada by 33% percent of respondents. Runners up include Canada AM's Seamus O'Regan with 29% with Don Cherry rounding out the top three with 21% of respondents. The survey explored Canadian women's attitudes regarding the importance of men's style... or lack of style.




Cheers!