While you were at work yesterday, maybe feeling a little guilty about that $5 latte you just bought, a man named Ash Prakash was down on King St., spending almost $2 million on a painting. This painting pictured, in fact - Tom Thomson's Pine Trees At Sunset.

You've probably come across this story already, because it's smashed Canadian art auction records. Estimated to go for $900,000 to $1 million, by the time all was said and done, the final price tag was $1,957,000.

But the thing that gets me is a little detail dropped into CTV's story: that 12 years ago, this very same painting went up for auction at $65,000, and didn't sell.

(You'll have to watch the video to hear that fact; it's not mentioned in the write-up.)

What causes a painting to skyrocket in value like that? Some are citing Thomson's mysterious death, but that was in 1917, so you'd think this would have caught our attention sometime before today.

Narrowing down Toronto's best baked treats is hard. I mean, really hard. I doubt there's a neighbourhood in this city that doesn't have something delicious to offer. Buttery croissants, crumbly scones, chewy brownies, gooey danishes - there's no shortage of sweet treats out there.

Salivating already? The list below is just a starting point to discover Toronto's best cakes, cookies and pies - oh my!

The AGO has a new logo, and this ... is it. Done by Toronto design overlord Bruce Mau, the new logo is -- well, to be honest, looking at it on the computer monitor like this is kind of giving me a headache. Or making me feel like I'm wearing those red and blue 3D glasses. I'm curious to see how it'll look when it's 100x this size.

Other than the cross-eyed feeling though, I kind of like this -- I think it's simple, but still interesting. Plus, in a year it's going to be so ubiquitous that we won't even remember what the old logo looked like. (Though if you're interested, here's a kind of neat logo retrospective that the AGO put together. I'm really liking the classiness of the 70s. (There's a sentence I never thought I'd type.))

We've been talking a bit about zoos this week, and we always love a good plastic bag discussion, and now here's something that combines both: a new art show at the Toronto Zoo that uses plastic bags to bring attention to the environmental issues facing the moon jellyfish.

Toronto Noir, which launched last night at the Gladstone, is exactly what I've been waiting for. It's a book of short stories set in Toronto, but the stories are plot-based and non-boring, and the Toronto is dark and dangerous -- but familiar too.

These are stories of murder, passion, betrayal, (and a little necrophilia, just for good measure. What up, George Elliott Clarke?) and they're grounded very firmly and specifically in Toronto -- Dundas Square, The Beach, Dufferin Mall, Yorkville, etc.

I remember once Bert Archer, a Toronto journalist writing in uTOpia: Towards A New Toronto, described Toronto as "a city which exists in no one's imagination". To which I would like to say: Bullshit.

I admit, it was the name 'Domestic Science' that made me want to see this multimedia show, on now at the Pentimento Fine Art Gallery in Leslieville.

Although it takes inspiration from many things, it's partly a tribute to Nikola Tesla, the Serbian-American inventor responsible for incandescent lightbulbs, AC power, and wireless (radio) technology. Today, partly because of Tesla, electricity is everywhere -- animating, communicating, and radiating in every part of our lives. This neat little show aims to illustrate that, in the words of Tesla himself, ""Whoever wishes to get a true appreciation of the greatness of our age should study the history of electrical development."