A mere month (or so) ago, I had put “meet Oprah” as my Before I Die aspiration, thinking it would never, ever happen. Sure, I may have deluded myself into thinking that Oprah and I were totes going to become BFFs, or the next incarnation of a buddy cop comedy duo like Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, after she tweeted me back in October. But let’s be real, there’s us mere plebeians and there’s Oprah — these paths rarely cross.

But, the stars must have aligned because on April 13th, 2013, I did end up meeting Oprah-freakin’-Winfrey. Alas, this meeting didn’t result in her asking if she could adopt me or inviting me to a sleepover where we would braid each other’s hair and chat about cute boys (then eventually offering me a show on OWN to try out cupcakes, burgers and pizza all over the world). It was still a remarkable experience, one that I cannot put into words how awesome it was, but I will try to in this post. Weeks later, I am still in disbelief.

I saw Salt-n-Pepa perform at Toronto’s Festival of Beer a.k.a. Beerfest on July 27th, 2012. Years later, and frankly after seeing their episode on Oprah, I didn’t even know or think they were still touring and performing. Even though they are in their mid-late 40s, you really wouldn’t know it – they looked and sounded great, still as talented as ever!

DJ Spinderella wasn’t there though, it was just Cheryl ‘Salt’ James and Sandra ‘Pepa’ Denton from the original group.

Here are some photos and videos from their performance.

The Daily Show’s Samantha Bee has a new book out, a kind memoir of her childhood memories of growing up in Toronto. I’ll be updating this post as soon as I’ve finished reading the book and have coherently written out my thoughts of it (so far, it’s been an entertaining read with many literal “laugh out loud” moments) but for now, I’ll post my meet and greet story as well as some pictures taken from her book signing in Toronto on June 10th.

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire had its gala screening at the Toronto International Film Festival and in attendance was director Lee Daniels, actors Paula Patton, Sherri Shepherd, Mariah Carey and newcomer Gabby Sidibe, and of course, executive producers Tyler Perry and Oprah. Mary J. Blige, who wrote the song “I Can See In Color” on the movie’s soundtrack, and Sapphire, author of Push, were also in attendance for the screening. Lucky for me, I had the opportunity to not only see them on stage to introduce the film, but also watch this incredibly powerful movie before it was released into theatres nationwide. Now the winner of TIFF’s People’s Choice Award!

It’s hard to believe how fast time flies by. I can still remember the days of being a scrawny 7th grader, belting out the lyrics to “Don’t Speak” in the school’s corridor during recess with my friends. It was pretty much the only thing we could do to keep ourselves from freezing in the cold and entertained, as we had no playground and the schoolyard was bare. More than a decade later, I find myself, perhaps just as scrawny and off-tune as back then, singing loudly and happily along to “Don’t Speak” in unison with the rest of the crowd at the Air Canada Centre. And for those few moments, it was like I was 13 years old again.

March 18, 2009 — I went to the Britney Spears “Circus” concert at the Air Canada Centre. It was a visual spectacle. The production value was way up there, with elaborate sets and side-show acts to keep the audience entertained between costume changes. The stage was set as a three ring circus, with a larger middle ring above which numerous aerial acts involving wires and suspension were performed for certain numbers. For example, during the “Everytime” number, Britney sat on the handle of a giant umbrella as it was suspended above the arena. Due to the layout of the stage, any location within the arena provided a decent view of the show. However, and perhaps to the benefit of Britney, there was no jumbotron to show up-close shots of the stage. While there was a jumbotron there, that was circular and wrapped above the middle ring, it mostly served to show intro videos to performances, which were actually rather well done and reminiscent of an actual music video. One video shown right before “Freakshow” was played to the track of Marilyn Manson’s “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)” from his 1995 Smells Like Children album — which seemed somewhat out of place but fitting nonetheless. The side-show acts with circus folk (or carnies?), though sometimes drawn on for a bit too long, provided entertainment between the lulls and really made it a circus atmosphere. Could’ve done without the clowns though, not a fan of clowns.

Dear Zachary is a powerful documentary by Kurt Kuenne, whose sole intent for creating the film was to memorialize his murdered best friend. But as the story unfolds, the film evolves into so much more. At its premise, Dear Zachary is about how one man’s life was needlessly and viciously taken away from his loved ones, an act that we later on learn was entirely preventable, had the system been more stringent. There are moments of joy, moments of anger and moments that will leave you in tears. Word of advice: have a box of tissues handy. It’ll also make you wonder why. Why did the system fail, and so tremendously so, causing innocent lives to be lost?

Four years ago, our New York City foursome in Manolo Blahniks, Jimmy Choos and, well quite frankly, all the designer shoe labels that I can barely afford without leaving me in the poor house, left our television screens. Or at least left our screens in the new episodes sense, because I’m sure many of us have been watching reruns or re-watching episodes on DVD since then. Lo and behold, the Sex and the City feature film was announced, then filming started happening all around New York City, pictures started turning up all over the web, and I (along with the legion of other SaTC fans) began anxiously awaiting the release of the movie.

Gwen Stefani has released a new perfume line under her Harajuku Lovers brand and unlike the perfume released under her other popular line, L.A.M.B., this one has a cute and quirky flare that you’d expect a Harajuku Lovers product to have.

How is it different than other fragrances? Well, first of all, there’s the unconventional packaging. Each scent, five of them in all, has its own individual figurine atop the bottle. Actually, the hollowed out figurine itself makes up pretty much 90% of its volume and the glass bottle containing the perfume acts as a stand (so while the boxes for both sizes of Harajuku Lovers Fragrance seems large, that’s just indicative of the figurine size). This fact, that it comes in a set of five but can also be bought individually, makes them seem like collectibles a la the days when you were a kid and collected those McDonald’s Happy Meal toys in series. That is the main allure for the perfume line, it’s kind of campy yet endearingly so. And I’m sure a complete set of all the Harajuku Lovers fragrances would probably be a nice decoration for your dresser. And as any Gwen Stefani fan can easily deduce, the five figurines a.k.a. scents come in the form of her four “Harajuku Girls” (or as some ironically muse, Gwen’s “accessories”) plus Gwen. The five include G (The Leader Of The Pack), Love (Sweet Stuff), Lil’ Angel (Sassy, Sexy, Cool), Music (Tough Cookie), and Baby (Girlie and Sweet). Their respective scents also coincide with the names, or at least if you stretch your imagination a little bit.

So, first, what is The Secret?

I shall quote for you the summary from the book version of The Secret:

• It’s the Law of Attraction. Like attracts like — so when you think a thought, you are also attracting like thoughts to you.
• Thoughts have a frequency. When you think thoughts, they are sent out to the universe and they magnetically attract all like things that are on the same frequency.
• Everything sent out, returns to the source – YOU.
• If you want to change anything in your life, you need to change the frequency by changing your thoughts.
• Your current thoughts are creating your future life.
• What you think about the most or focus on the most will appear as your life.
• Your thoughts become things.

- Rhonda Byrne, The Secret