Author Archive

REVIEW: 30 Rock Season 2

By Nicole Villeneuve • Dec 1st, 2008 • Category: DVD, Featured!, Hits & Misses

30 Rock: Season 2 doesn’t even need a review, because it is a fact that every single person (sources pending) in the world loves it now. And rightfully so.
The writers strike put the kibosh on a third of the planned episodes for Season 2. This allows the short season an easy three rotations in your [...]



REVIEW: Kanye West - 808s and Heartbreak (Roc-A-Fella)

By Nicole Villeneuve • Nov 28th, 2008 • Category: Featured!, Hits & Misses, Music

Man. Kanye West is really bummed out.
His mom died then he dumped his fiancée and then T-Pain gave him the keys to the Auto-Tune and friends, there you have 808s and Heartbreak.
TAKE HEED. This is not a hip hop record. This is a pop record. It is an eerie, angry documentation of a very specific [...]



JUICEBOX REMEMBERS: You Can’t Do That on Television

By Nicole Villeneuve • Nov 26th, 2008 • Category: Juiceblog

Today we reminisce about the most charmingly low-budget, shamelessly non-educational children’s programming there ever was. And it was all ours! Good job, Canada.

As you probably know, the internet is really good for bringing crazies who love things like long-defunct potentially offensive sketch comedy together. Enter SlimeCon, the YCDTOTV (sweet acronym) fan-organized convention which has–up until [...]



THIS WEEK IN WIKIVANDALISM: Tom Gabel of Against Me!

By Nicole Villeneuve • Nov 11th, 2008 • Category: Juiceblog

I found this in a thread about a Jimmy Eat World tour on Punknews.org, which 1) Somehow makes this even better, and 2) Is very telling about how I choose to spend my lonely evenings.

It just shows that Tom Gabel has really made it. Big shiny expensive albums, power ballads with the laziest videos ever, [...]



REVIEW: Mother Mother - O My Heart (Last Gang)

By Nicole Villeneuve • Nov 2nd, 2008 • Category: Featured!, Hits & Misses, Music

This record is a perfect reminder of what a jerk I can be sometimes. Because it’s really good, and everyone “buzzed” about them last time around, but I couldn’t be bothered. I just ignored them and every good thing every one of my friends said about them.
If you skip past the few slower tracks, O [...]



Chinese DemoCRAZY!!!11

By Nicole Villeneuve • Oct 22nd, 2008 • Category: Juiceblog

In the most anti-climactic music news basically ever, Guns N’ Roses released the first official single from Chinese Democracy today. It is called Chinese Democracy, and you can stream it here.
Fifteen years, guys. It only took took 15 years. And a reported $13 million. And one fantastic hoax that I wish happened for real.
I [...]



REVIEW: NKOTB - Live in Toronto, Sept. 18, 2008

By Nicole Villeneuve • Sep 23rd, 2008 • Category: Featured!, Hits & Misses, Live, Music

Dear haters,
Step off.

The rest of you can carry on.
I guess you could say that part of me has been waiting 20 years for what happened Thursday night.
Without a trace of irony, myself and 8,999 of my closest friends packed the Air Canada Centre for the first stop on the New Kids on the Block North [...]



BEST FRIDAYS: with Girl Talk

By Nicole Villeneuve • Sep 18th, 2008 • Category: Worst Mondays/Best Fridays

What’s Worst Mondays without a dark and villainous foil? That’s the kind of thinking that forced us to create Best Fridays. So for all our weekend warrior brethren: Wooooo, T-G-I-F, right? Herein we hope to bookend your awful week by quizzing our previous Worst Mondays candidate about slightly more encouraging things. Every Friday!

So how does [...]



WORST MONDAYS: with Girl Talk

By Nicole Villeneuve • Sep 15th, 2008 • Category: Juiceblog

At JUICEBOX HQ, we’ve never really had a case of the Mondays because we don’t have real-people jobs. But for those feeling a bit garfield this A.M., feel free to wallow in other people’s most hated things. Every Monday!

What do you get when you combine Top 40 pop hooks and super science engineering brains? [...]



North By Northeast East (East)

By Nicole Villeneuve • Jun 19th, 2008 • Category: Featured!, Hits & Misses, Live

Most have already forgotten, but this past weekend saw the 14th annual NXNE music/film festival and conference shove into Toronto, bringing with it hordes of industry geeks, regular people, and oh yeah, bands. I scored two wristbands and though I wasn’t stoked on too much this year, I do enjoy scouring data and making lists, [...]



REVIEW: Sloan - Parallel Play

By Nicole Villeneuve • Jun 12th, 2008 • Category: Hits & Misses, Music

It’s hard to pretend I’m still excited about Sloan when even the band sounds bored.
Sounding at best like a decent b-sides collection and at worst like wallpaper AM radio tunes, Sloan’s eighth studio album Parallel Play fails to follow the promise of last year’s reckoning, the 30-track grand slam Never Hear The End Of It. [...]



REVIEW: Kanye West - Live in Toronto, May 21, 2008

By Nicole Villeneuve • May 23rd, 2008 • Category: Featured!, Hits & Misses, Live

Playing the part of space cowboy, Kanye West hauled his Glow In the Dark circus into the Molson Amphitheatre Wednesday night. And in true Kanye fashion, the futuristic theme of his set was hinged on him being needed to save the planet as, naturally, the best and brightest star in the galaxy. These are actual [...]



REVIEW: Rock On: An Office Power Ballad, by Dan Kennedy

By Nicole Villeneuve • May 13th, 2008 • Category: Bookz, Featured!, Hits & Misses

You know when there’s something in life you’ve always at least partially wanted to do, but due to circumstances or laziness or paralyzing fear of failure, you just don’t? It’s nice when someone else does it instead and it turns out to be a bust. Saves you the upset. Instead you sit and listen to [...]