Mozo, Hozo, Bozo, and Snide

Mitzi's On College is the 3rd restaurant in the Mitzi franchise. It offers only a menu until 4 pm. Located on a busy stretch of College, blessed with a large side patio, and offering hipster cred: cool waitstaff, local artists' showcases, etc., it has taken over Boom as the place to eat. Although it opened several months ago, this was my first visit.

If I was shocked at Grapefruit Moon's prices, I was flabbergasted by Mitzi's. $13.75 for some eggs, toast, and home fries?! Add in a small orange juice + tax and tip, and the bill came to about $20. So that mother and her 2 elementary school-aged daughters at the table next to me just plopped down $60 for brunch. My mom and grandma would be appalled. As an aside, I just noticed that the menu listed on the website contains a fair selection of choices for under $10. However, the menu given to me, and everybody else, had only the pricey weekly specials.

On the plus side, it was quite good prosciutto stuffed inside my omelette but I could do without the sweet potato mush. The eggs were nicely done into even, professional layers. I also enjoyed the fried sage as garnish. The home fries were fried lightly spiced with some onions. My tasty sourdough bread was generously buttered. A selection of fresh fruit slices finished off the plate.

Oddly, for a brunch menu, it wasn't that filling. My conclusion: for $20/person, unless I'm showing off how lively my neighbourhood is to a visitor, I'd rather spend about that money on a thali platter at Banjara or some dim sum at Rolsan.

Horizon Alternative School is a junior high school located in the College and Bathurst area. It's unclear to me what pull (e.g., social capital) the parents/teachers have, but their fund-raising "garage sale" is a cut above the rest. Outside you can find your typical used bike, hockey sticks, and so on as well as pizza slices, home-made muffins and cookies, and various beverages. Inside, there's used board games, old shoes, and other garage knick-knacks. It's not until you enter into the main room where the silent auction as well as a live auction is taking place that you see the difference: wine collection, ski trips, spa vacations, art work, and much pricier items are up for sale.

Last year, I was able to win a 10-class gift certificate to Downward Dog Yoga studio for $70. That's 50% cheaper than usual. Unfortunately, for this year, the selection of silent auction items were not as nice. There were no Yoga items for sale. I was tempted by a collection of signed Cowboy Junkies CDs/DVDs but decided against it. Voice lessons, messenger bags, iPod nanos, and such didn't interest me. The live auction had some nice items, but much pricier than I wanted to spend.

This is the 2nd time I've joined the Circus In the Park people at Dufferin Grove. You can learn some trapeze tricks, maybe climb the silk rope, try to walk the slack-line, or do some partner acro-yoga. They're all harder than you think. I still can't seem to go up those silk sheets, I guess I would have flunked gym back in high school if they had rope climbing. I don't think I lasted 2 seconds on the slack-line without a shoulder to hold on to. Random adults do also join in, but it's mostly the kids who are most fearless about trying out these new activities.

I'm not usually into improv comedy as I find they are, in fact, not that funny. But the Comedy Bar promised a night of improvised musical theatre satirizing the show Glee called Gleeks. It was quite amusing with some laugh out loud moments. It was obvious that while some scenes and songs were set pieces, other scenes and some song lyrics try to incorporate suggestions from the audience into a recurring theme. Based on the initial responses, the running gag was that the glee club members suffered from major acne and hair loss. The latter was due to a nefarious plot by Drew, coach of the Shreddies (as opposed to Sue Sylvester of the Cheerios) to secretly exposed them to Nair. The singing was adequate and the lyrics were unexceptional. Though they try for variety, for example responding to the audience's suggestions of show tunes and disco, all the songs were solidly in the Rent genre of pop musical. But all in all, a fun way to spend 1 hour or so on a Saturday night.