Assembled here, in this rather traditional art venue, the works come together in what looks like your typical gallery showing. Gracing the walls and plinths in an orderly fashion, the works are approachable and virtually pretense free. This is a show that, for the most part, seems to honestly want to show you a good time. However, there’s a disconnect that sets in about half-way through the exhibition. There’s something you can’t pin down that’s preventing you from really taking it in.

Jennie O'Keefe's suite of sculptural dolls.

It starts off just fine; visitors to the show are first greeted by Jennie O’Keefe’s series of wall-mounted dolls. These tongue-in-cheek mashups of fruits, animals, inanimate objects, and Ken doll–sized outfits bearing names like Miss Meringue and Roofin’ Rufis, set the playful and rather irreverent tone of the exhibit.

With the show concentrating heavily on drawings, the pieces you find next are inviting, graphic, and sometimes down-right hilarious.

There’s even a common thread to hang on to as you make your way through the exhibition; almost every single work in the show is figurative. It’s a unexpectedly traditional and narrow parameter for a collection of works from such a sizable group of young, progressive artists. Everything seems to either grow out of, or revert back to, the human form in one way or another. It could just be that any show focused on drawing will have this common figurative foundation; it seems to sit firmly at the core of contemporary illustration.

Seth Scriver and Shayne Ehman's air-brushed car hood.

Seth Scriver and Shayne Ehman contribute a video piece with accompanying paintings to the mix. Their video, Asphalt Watches, is a quirky cartoon in three episodes, projected on a large scale. On the opposite wall, Air Brushed Scenes from Asphalt Watches on Car Hoods is just that; characters from their movie painted on the disembodied hoods of hot-coloured cars. The video runs simultaneously with a second film on the other side of the main space, and each fills their half of the gallery with constant sound at a volume that demands your undivided attention. Whether or not this inescapable soundtrack adds to or detracts from your viewing experience is debatable, but who says art has to be viewed in silence?

The clear stand-outs of the show are Marc Bell and Peter Thompson; the two artists who seem to have best established their distinctive style. In “Pulp Fiction,” they exhibit both individually and collaboratively, displaying their separate dedication and combined intensity. Marc Bell shows a series of etchings, drawings, and paintings executed with a relentless precision that borders on compulsion. They are just so detailed and so dense that you can’t help but think about the length of time that it must have taken to create them. It almost seems like that piece of information should be posted on the wall alongside their titles and media. His works have a storybook quality to them. You investigate each of them as if you’re trying to follow a narrative and figure out the plot, but, ultimately, they’re too surreal and scattered to make any logical sense of.

Thompson’s suite of painted illustrations are surreal portraits of characters you only wish you could dream up. They’re layered with fine and subtle details that have to be taken in, one by one, as you try to add it all up into a singular impression. But it seems almost like too tall a task.

Marc Bell and Peter Thompson's The Hobbit Series.

Unexpectedly, it’s when these two incredibly talented artists come together in The Hobbit Series that you realize what’s keeping you locked out of “Pulp Fiction.” Executed in ink on paper, each one is rich and wondrous. Even the smallest objects in the background are personified, playing their part in the larger story. Nothing is unimportant and everything is worth your time. And after the first few, you wander away.

There’s a reason why this collective, collaborative movement of self-made creatives is a relative stranger to the traditional art gallery. It’s not the right venue. The works in this show are operating at an entirely different pace than the viewer. They each demand much more time than you can bear to give. Asphalt Watches alone is forty minutes long.

It’s by no means that they don’t deserve your time, or that you don’t want to spend it. It’s just almost impossible. A study of visitors to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston found that 90% of museum visitors stayed in that massive building for thirty minutes or less. According to art historian Sister Wendy Beckett, “sociologists, lurking inconspicuously with stopwatches, have discovered the average time museum visitors spend looking at a work of art: it is roughly two seconds.”

In the gallery, you can only stand there looking for so long, and for this overwhelmingly dense exhibition, it’s not long enough. This disparity leaves you feeling like you’ve glossed over the real content and are constantly missing the punch line. As much as you may like the work, you may not like the experience.

Fortunately, MOCCA has invited comics and novel store The Beguiling to host a satellite retail location in the entrance of the gallery. With everything from zines for less than three dollars to high-production artist monograms, it’s a relief to have the option of taking something with you to look over later and give its due time.

“Pulp Fiction” runs until August 23.

Photos by Michael Chrisman/Torontoist.

Heidi Ackerman: I love knitwear because it allows you to design and experiment with both the textile and the garment. The options for graphics, texture, and volume are limitless!

Who or what's influencing you right now?

While studying in Belgium last summer, I went to an amazing design museum in Ghent and discovered the craziness of Memphis. Dali's museum in Spain and the amazing architecture of Berlin are all swirling around in my head at the moment.

Your designs probably get the "futuristic" tag a lot. Do you agree
or disagree?

This season turned very futuristic in a very organic way. Suddenly it seemed that surreal and bizarre space creatures had taken over my studio. I am really interested in creating sleek, exaggerated, and bizarre clothing that is also sustainable because I think those things combined are our future.

To get really difficult here, what will "futuristic" design look like... in the future?

Design in the future will be a combination of smart technology, sustainability, and re-purposing old materials. It will be more thoughtful, wiser, while at the same time pushing and stretching our boundaries further.

What do you think Toronto will look like in 2020? What will people
be wearing? How will the city look?

I think the arrival of the new Frank Gehry buildings in Toronto signifies an exciting new chapter and the future of our cityscape. Something I loved about Berlin was their use of public space—I would love to see the Toronto landscape engage the public by creating more stimulating public spaces, parks, and squats. Toronto in 2020 combines refined design, green technologies, and our many Canadian identities.
,
Do you think that, in order to make it internationally, fashion designers have to leave Toronto for New York or London?

Unfortunately, I do think it's necessary to leave Toronto in order to become an international name in fashion. The industry is more valued and appreciated outside of Canada.

What about you? Would you leave?

I will eventually leave Toronto to find the right market for my line and become part of the international design community.

Where would you go and why?

There are a million different places I would love to live and work. Berlin, Antwerp, Copenhagen, and London are top on my list. But how to choose?

What kind of cool customer do you envision being able to wear your extreme shapes?

I definitely envision [women] like Peaches, Karen O, or Feist wearing some of my pieces. They have such amazing, strong styles and personalities; they could pull off the extreme shapes effortlessly. The less extreme shapes and pieces are great for women looking for
something original and a bit bizarre.

Does that kind of "cool customer" base exist here?

I am able to sell some of the more basic items here in Toronto, but the extreme shapes and prints are not an easy sell in Canada—actually an impossible sell. Although I am not able to sell those pieces here, they have been quite popular with stylists looking for editorial pieces.

I think I would find the type of customers I am looking for more in the European market—countries such as Belgium, Germany, U.K., the Netherlands, and Sweden. I would also love to sell my line in Japan.

Because my pieces are sustainable, it opens a different market that can be found in Toronto and Montreal. There are many Canadian women looking for sustainable clothing that is fashion forward.

Will it ever?

I am not sure if Toronto or Canada will ever really regard fashion in the same sensibility as Europeans or the Japanese. Toronto has many great fashion identities but values more vintage, do-it-yourself, and mixing and matching pieces—not [as] interested in investing in long-term pieces.

You showed at both LG Fashion Week and FAT (alternative fashion week). How
did the experiences differ?

Both experiences were amazing and totally different. I have done FAT for the last two years and have gotten so much from it each year—great people and great exposure. I love being tapped into and part of that culture. FAT is really bringing something new to the Toronto fashion scene—it's more experimental, more courageous, and more accessible.

Showing at LG Fashion Week was really exciting and part of a different world in the fashion industry... Being in contact with Robin Kay and the FDCC has really helped me to think about my line in a production and business sense.

The combination of FAT and LG Fashion Week is the perfect balance between experimental and commercial. Both have been really supportive.

What do you think Toronto's fashion industry needs to do in order to compete with New York, London, Paris, and Milan as the fifth style capital?

More support from customers would really push Toronto to new levels in terms of the fashion industry. If customers were more willing and able to take risks with their clothing, I think we would be better able to compete with the big fashion power houses.

I would really love to help put Canada and Toronto on the fashion map.

All photos by Sai Sivanesan.

To oh, snaps:

And some heartfelt inspiration:

Emilio Estevez and his Mighty Ducks get a shout out, but apparently this person didn't catch that part:

But people are catching onto (aka, making up) a potential Yeezy vs. Drake beef.

It's a good thing our fair city is out representing strong:

But, according to the internet, the real star of the video isn't Drake or Kanye. It's the can't-be-anything-but comically gratuitous you-know-whats:

With piles of exploitation accusations sure to come his way, maybe Drake should have consulted the Degrassi bible and taken these precious fifteen minutes to ask, What Would Caitlin Ryan Do?

According to the synopsis on IMDb, Canadian-made Gooby is about an eleven-year-old boy named Willy who is "terrified" to move into a new home with his family. Terrified! "He's convinced it's filled with evil space aliens out to get him." We could go into depth about how wrong that part alone is, but let's move on. Naturally the only thing that could help Willy get over his terror is his stuffed bear, which horrifyingly comes to life and takes him on a series of wacky adventures.

The infamous "stash-the-body-in-a-leaf-pile" scene.

Now, we certainly would never judge a film based on the trailer alone, which is why we contacted the Toronto-based production company, Coneybeare Stories, to request a screener. They never responded, which means the trailer is all we have to go on.

So, back to the trailer: what sucks about it? Oh, man, where to begin? The jarring changes in music; the way it shows characters speaking with no sound; the jokes that aren't really jokes; the use of the same grocery store scene, like, twenty times. And then there's the unforgivable use of the Comic Sans font.

And before you devil's advocate types get all uppity, we get that this is a kids' movie, all right? But we're pretty sure any kid out of kindergarten will hate it. How can we tell? How about the fact that Gooby looks terrifying? How about that Willy doesn't even look like he's having fun at any point?

Yeah, the kid pretty much has this look of fear on his face the entire time.

The horror remix that has already popped up on YouTube seems more convincing than the actual trailer. Even if Gooby was intended as a parody of pretty much every kid-forms-friendship-with-weird-creature family film ever made (it even rips off the bike scene from E.T. ), the parody's not obvious enough for people to know it's supposed to be a parody. And, no, this trailer isn't a joke either—we checked: the movie's been reviewed in the Star and is currently playing at the AMC in Woodbridge.

Oh, and it co-stars Eugene Levy as a character named Mr. Nerdlinger. Mr. Nerdlinger. What, Eugene, you couldn't get cast in Cheaper by the Dozen 3 or something?

Note the Our Compliments products.

The ironic musical has become an increasingly popular genre of Fringe show, and it doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon. While not every entry is necessarily going to be Gershwin-quality, some shows surprise you with their wit as well as their musicality. This year, our pick is Just East of Broadway, a new show from Nick Hune-Brown and Ben King, the team behind 2007's LOTR: The Musical: The Musical (Nick is also the keyboardist for Hooded Fang). Inspired by Andrew Lloyd Webber's current push to sell watered-down versions of his musicals in China, this show is likely to be smart, funny, and full of catchy tunes.

Then, of course, there are the shows you see simply because of the title. This year, My Mother's Lesbian Jewish-Wiccan Wedding takes the proverbial cake on that front. Also a musical, this show is directed by the talented Andrew Lamb, and is based on the true story of writer David Hein's, you guessed it, mother's lesbian Jewish-Wiccan wedding. How can you go wrong?

Finally, the Fringe is always a cool place to see theatre in non-traditional venues. This year, the Bloor Cinema gets in on the action with an interesting project called The Silver Stage. Rocky Horror aficionados have been attending midnight screenings with "shadow casts" for decades; a group of actors perform the film, with a few key alterations, in front of the screen as it's being projected. Hot on the heels of last year's special screening of Pee Wee's Big Adventure, the Bloor will be presenting shadow casts screenings during the Fringe of not only Rocky Horror, but REPO! The Genetic Opera, Blue Velvet, a Joss Whedon double-bill of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog with Buffy the Vampire Slayer's musical episode "Once More With Feeling," and, perhaps most bizarrely, Jurassic Park.

If those picks don't sound like your cup of tea, worry not. This week, Drama Club is providing you with a second opinion (and a third, and a fourth). Continue reading for tips from the Torontoist Fringe team: Hamutal Dotan, Kaori Furue, and Jamie Bradburn.

Hamutal Dotan's Fringe Advice

Things get Shavian in Candida. Photo by Jona Stuart.

So, like over-scheduled young urbanites everywhere we decided to come by our opinions dishonestly, which is to say, we are stealing them from reviews we otherwise pretend not to have read. Forthwith, some of the Fringe shows for which we'll be making time, culled solely on the basis of gushy, star-strewn word of mouth…

Candida (Burning Passions Theatre): Shaw + love triangle + troupe with pedigree = an automatic slot at the top of our list. The classics are always a bit of a crapshoot at Fringe, but Burning Passions's sold-out run of Mrs. Warren's Profession from a couple of years back is a reassuring bit of precedent.

Like a Virgin (Jimmy Hogg): Hogg is a longstanding favourite on the circuit [and occasional Torontoist foe, ed.], with several Best of Fringe awards to his name. This year he will spend sixty minutes on the subject of virginity and the loss thereof, which is about as close to a comedic sure thing as you can get.

MC Jabber & Friends: a Solo Show (Eyes Glaze Over Productions): We don't really understand what this show will entail, but anyone who can simultaneously win the UK National Poetry Slam and the hearts of Elle Magazine's editors seems like someone we should get to know.

Killing Kevin Spacey (Wolf Productions): A five-star favourite of the Edmonton and Winnipeg installments of Fringe last year, Killing Kevin Spacey will apparently allow us to exorcise our inner wimp and become the Al Pacino we've always secretly suspected we could be, which is a fairly good evening's work.

Shadows in Bloom (Gemma Wilcox): Wilcox's one-woman, multi-personality tale of what it's like to rebuild your life after a devastating loss has been impressing critics and Fringe-goers since 2006. We haven't seen it yet, and it's about time we figured out what all the fuss was about.

Kaori Furue's Top Five

This paramedic will tend to your Emergency Monologues. Photo courtesy of Drinking Well.

BAGS: Obsessions of a Hoardaholic (Lee Michael Buchman): How appropriate that this story of hoarding and OCD is brought to us via New York City, former home of the famous Collyer brothers (The two kept so much junk they eventually died as a result—the younger, crushed by piles of possessions, could not tend to his invalid sibling). Veteran actor, comedian, and Gothamist Lee Michael Buckman brings these impulses to life in BAGS, playing at the Glen Morris Theatre.

Bert and I (Maine Event Productions): Bert and I is more than a play; it's an homage to Maine's Down East storytelling traditions. Back in the '50s, two Yale students wrote a collection of comedic stories—mostly centred on the lobster fishery—that have been adapted so many times that the "Bert and I" story has become its own genre. We look forward to drinking our fill of laughs and east coast accents at St. Vladimir's Theatre.

The Emergency Monologues (Drinking Well): This one-man show is both written and performed by one of our city's own hard-working paramedics, Morgan Jones Phillips. Even though it's his first solo play, it was named winner of the 2008 NOW Audience Choice Award at SummerWorks. The Emergency Monologues screams into Fringe on Friday at the George Ignatieff Theatre.

The Importance of Being Earnest (Manchester Central Theatre Company): In a sea of new scripts, the Importance of Being Earnest is a familiar friend, but with a twist: all parts are played by women. You can grab your capacious handbag and see Earnest tonight at 8:15 p.m. in the Factory Theatre Mainspace.

Jamie Bradburn Decodes the Fringe Program

Rob Salerno gets busy with the PM in Fucking Stephen Harper. Photo by Jenna Wakani.

While waiting for your show to begin, you may be handed a variety of flyers by performers eager to promote their show. Not sure what to do with them once you’ve amassed a backpack full? Depending on the venue, they may serve as a cooling instrument if the mercury rises and you’re in a theatre that has minimal-to-no climate control (we’re looking at you Glen Morris, where past Fringes have seen flyers made into fans and handed out at the door). And if sitting in a standard performance space doesn’t thrill you, there are a handful of oddball venues. While sports fields and automobiles aren’t being utilized this year, you will be able to catch performances designed for travel agencies, community centre bathrooms, and the grocery department of Honest Ed’s.

For those looking for a relaxing way to wind down the day or who have spent their daily allowance at the beer tent, Late Night at the Fringe offers free entertainment at 10 p.m. at the Tranzac. Pop by and you may see works by playwrights barely in their double digits, an open mic contest to find the most interesting person in the world, improv, and one-night stands by past hosts.

Even after it was known that Starbucks wouldn't be taking over the property, Pick's signs still hung outside the vacant 234 Augusta storefront. There remained a possibility that a national or international corporate lessor would try to move in.

About two weeks ago, the controversy gained an undramatic coda. Pick's signs were quietly removed from the windows and were replaced by those of Robert Escoe, of the brokerage City Commercial, who says that he's considering local businesses exclusively ("to keep people happy"). Phil Pick no longer has anything to do with the property that earned him his shiny black helmet and breathing apparatus.

"I presented offers to the landlord that were unacceptable," said Pick. "His expectations are high." Asked if these unacceptable offers included Starbucks, Pick said yes, but that he'd also tried to interest the owners in local tenants, some of whom are now settled elsewhere in the Kensington Market, at storefronts Pick manages for other landlords.

This turn of events has two implications, seemingly at odds with one another.

234 Augusta as it used to be. Photo by gbalogh, from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

First of all, it demonstrates that a property's realtor can influence rental outcomes. The only element that has changed here is Pick himself. Even 234 Augusta's listed price remains the same: a whopping five thousand dollars per month for an increasingly run-down former fruit stand that only came on the market after its previous occupant was shut down by Toronto Public Health.

But the situation also demonstrates the falsity of the notion that Pick is in a position to single-handedly remake or ruin Kensington Market. Landlords have final right of refusal on any rental decisions relating to their properties.

Pick has become an easy target for contempt in cases where these decisions seem as though they aren't being made with the necessary degree of sensitivity. This has much to do with the fact that his name is hanging in windows all over the neighbourhood. In reality, if a Starbucks did one day open somewhere in Kensington, the act of pointing fingers would defy human physiology. A person would have to be built like Krishna.

At least one of those fingers would have to point to Ontario's retail rental market, which, by Statistics Canada's reckoning (as of December 2008), has been buoyed along by record consumer spending throughout the decade.

And there's also the fact that many of the businesses leaving empty spaces in the Market have had long, full lives. Max and Son's butcher shop on Baldwin Street, for instance, where the owner still sprinkles sawdust on the wood floors every single day, is now for sale. (The business, that is—not the property.) The agent is Phil Pick.

The reign of Phil. Photo by Steve Kupferman/Torontoist.

The reason Pick's signs keep appearing on more and more properties in Kensington is that he's good at what he does. He's not villainous; he's adhering single-mindedly to a solid business plan: make landlords happy (most of them, anyway) by renting old properties to stable new tenants, who will make repairs, build clientele, and then leave those properties more desirable than they found them.

That's wise, and it's safe—and therein lies Phil Pick's image problem. Kensington Market is neither of those things. The neighbourhood as it exists today relies on a mesh of somewhat questionable business plans that work out beautifully almost in spite of themselves. Say, running your father's small butcher shop well into the age of the megamart, for example. Or opening a French restaurant on a limited budget in a grungy neighbourhood, like Augusta Avenue mainstay La Palette's owner, Shamez Amlani.

"The market value has gone up, for sure," said Amlani. "I've been here for nine years, and my rent has tripled. We had certain rent locked in as part of the lease, and now it's kind of wide open. And, increasingly, more out-of-shape, derelict properties are going for higher and higher rent."

"Certainly, the business I started for twenty grand nine years ago…I couldn't do that today."

We asked Amlani if he thought the spate of new businesses opening in Kensington Market would ultimately improve the neighbourhood. "I think any new businesses starting up are welcome," he said. "As long as it's not a car dealership."

234 Augusta's new realtor has no plans to rent to anyone who would turn the property into a BMW showroom. Escoe told us that all his potential lessors are food-related businesses and that he hopes to bring in one that is already established somewhere else in the city and looking to expand into Kensington's (trendy, pedestrian-friendly) core.

But no coffee shops, he said. The neighbourhood has enough of those already.

Lex Vaughn, artist: "My friend Andrew Harwood had his unauthorized biography and said, 'You have to read this.' It was so fascinating and crazy and disturbing. We decided to curate an art show and ask twenty-five other artists to submit work of their interpretation of what Michael meant to them. What we got was an incredible range of submissions, from whole screenprinted bedsheets and pillowcases to a beautiful painting of a young Jackson Five-era Michael with vitiligo."

Pete Carmichael, the Diableros: “When I turned seven, I had a Michael Jackson-themed birthday party. My mom even made me a glove. I wore it to school for days afterwards. A few kids asked me ‘Why are you wearing one glove?’ and I would respond by doing the moonwalk.”

Joshua Reichmann, Josh Reichmann Oracle Band: “I saw the Jackson Five when I was young, during their reunion tour. A giant druid-like creature opened the show, spewing light from its mouth. That, and the nonstop hysterics coming from all around, screaming, high energy disbelief, almost frightened me out of my mom’s tight hippy red leather jacket. The show was at Exhibition Stadium. A real spectacle.”

Sara D'Amato, Four Seasons sommelier: “As a little kid I remember listening to Thriller on my Fisher-Price record player. I loved to dance and wanted to get into dance because of him. In high school, everyone knew I was a huge fan because I had the T-shirts and the glove, and recently I’ve been getting all these emails from people I went to high school sending their condolences. It’s been really neat getting in touch with all these people. I remember in history class, my teacher said he would give me an A on a paper if I did the moonwalk. So someone brought in a ghetto blaster and played ‘Billie Jean’ and I did the moonwalk.”

Joseph Shabason, Loving in the Name Of DJ/musician: "I was at my bubbie's condo in Florida and I saw the 'Black or White' video on MTV. Since I didn't even have cable at the time and had never seen MTV before, I completely lost my shit. It really couldn't have been a more perfect video for ten-year-old me. It had Macaulay Culkin, Norm from Cheers, Slash, and all those dances and changing faces (they had me at Macaulay Culkin). Anyway, after I saw that I went out and bought the tape and listened to it non-stop. I also got my friend who had cable to tape the video off of Much Music and we promptly started learning the dances whilst singing along. I learned the whole album off by heart and belted out 'Will You Be There' in my room alone...a lot."

Chris Locke, comedian: "When I was six, I was a freak for Thriller just like everyone else and my parents took me to the concert at Exhibition Stadium. I had my own little white shiny glove on my right hand. I'm pretty sure it was a glove my mom used to wear for figure skating. When it came time for the actual 'Thriller' song, I'm pretty sure there were zombies on stage or some sort of monsters, but I can hardly remember because I was cowering in my mom's arms with so much fear. I got really scared and started crying a lot. My parents tried to calm me down, probably thinking, "Geez, we have a stupid, sensitive son.'"