The Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) is once again set to take over the Reference Library. Since 2003, TCAF has drawn in scores of artists and craftsmen, casual fans and avid enthusiasts. What used to be an event held every two years is now becoming an annual affair as its popularity continues to grow. Speaking from experience, TCAF is a lot of fun because its scale is smaller than most of the cons in Toronto, giving fans the chance to meet, greet, and hyperventilate in front of their favourite artists without having to line up for hours. Here's what to expect.

I don't care if you have to beg, borrow, steal, finance, lean, or leverage...just do it, because The Seinfeld has arrived. Follow me as I prepare for this auspicious event by sacrificing my best goat in This Week In Comedy.

One of the more rewarding posts that I've put together for our historical Toronto series highlighted vintage signage around the city. A hodgepodge of fonts and styles, these signs exemplified the more mom and pop nature of the city's business scene at the turn of the 20th century and into the 1970s. But, as photographers like Patrick Cummins have demonstrated so clearly, it's not as if such signage has just faded into oblivion altogether over the years. Much has been lost, to be sure, but if you care to look for it, there's plenty of unique signage that adorns the Toronto streetscape.

The 2012 CONTACT Photography Festival is just around the corner, and in the wake of recently announced cuts to other cultural institutions, one is reminded of the success the month-long event has enjoyed over the years. Not only is it, as is requisite to mention, the largest photography festival in the world, the talent on display just gets better and better. Now in its 16th year, the festival that reaches nearly every gallery, museum, café, and blank wall in Toronto is again gearing up to display the best of local and international photographers to the city.

At the media preview at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCCA) on Wednesday, the festival's directors laid out their hopes for this year's incarnation, which includes variations on the theme of "Public." Conceived as a response to the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements, which made one's presence in a public space an explicitly political act, the festival has included a number of international photographers who explore the blurred line between individual and group.

The Urban Symphony took over Airship 37 in the Distillery last night for a showcase from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, The People's Wine, and the Society. The event was meant to remove the TSO from the stodgy, and sometimes intimidating, confines of the Roy Thomson Hall and make them more accessible to a younger group, while perhaps also generating a new generation of patrons. Aussie-inspired appetizers like pavlova and poached lobster spoons circulated, and were provided by catering company Lindsey Shaw, while the two pinots on offer quickly flowed into empty glasses.

Despite the somewhat daunting name of The Society--a moniker well-suited to caped disciples performing secret rites--the event was a glowing success. Here's a rundown of what this was all about.

Hot on the heels of their acclaimed Abstract Expressionist exhibit, the Art Gallery of Ontario has chosen an even grander figure of 20th century art to draw in the crowds this summer: Pablo Picasso. Come May 1st, the AGO will host the only Canadian stop of the touring Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris.