I’m a pretty big fan of supporting local events and groups, as I hope you would know by now. But did you know that are key individuals in our communities who actually spend their hard earned “free” time, sharing the catalogue of current local events for us Edmontonians on a regular basis and a lot of us who claim to crave this information don’t even know this content exists?!?!

It’s a shame really.

What do you mean by that Tim, you ask? Well, I will gladly elaborate for you dear readers.

What I mean is that there are legitimate resources in Edmonton that will hook YOU up, with the content YOU want, in order to see the arts YOU care about.

To illustrate this exact point I am going to share with you a very specific resource I learned about over this past summer and have been using to great effect since then.

Word of mouth is an amazing thing.

And I’m going to stop you before you point out a fallacy here. Yes, technically this could qualify as a Wisdom Wednesday post, but I think you will agree with me by the end the story that it makes more way more sense as a Timely Thursday post,. I mention this because you will now know about events happening in the city of Edmonton, this weekend, before we’re done. Anyway, I learned about this resource through a friend of mine who is relatively hooked up in the arts scene himself, but admits, as I do (I probably sound like a broken record at this point, especially to close friends) that it can be incredibly difficult to figure out what to do with your evenings and weekends, in Edmonton, because of the way our organizers organize events.

Without further ado, I present to you How To Douglas.

How To Douglas is a weekly arts events newsletter put together by a gentleman by the name of Douglas Dollars (Stewart).

Before I outline in detail how this wildly useful weekly information station works, I’m going to theorize a bit on the origin of the chosen name How To Douglas, because in doing research for this post I stumbled upon some pretty funny content and I would love to interview Douglas himself to find out if I’m correctly seeing the connection.

Did you know that the Dougie is a style of hip hop dancing that was invented by a rapper of the name Lil’ Wil with the video of his 2007 hit “My Dougie”? Lil’ Wil took his now popular dance name from another rapper by the name of Doug E. Fresh, who had a signature move he used in the 1980s.

Look at the chorus from My Dougie below for more implications.

My Dougie-My Dougie-My Dougie-My Dougie
My Dougie-My Dougie-My Dougie
She Say She Like My Dougie, I’m Fresh
My Dougie, I’m Fresh-My Dougie, I’m Fresh
Yep Flyer Then A Mothafucker

I see what you did there, Douglas. You took something a signifier of cool to represent your newsletter which is about being involved in cool things, and your name is Doug. Clever girl, err I mean boy.

You should check out this link put together by Know Your Meme for more information on the Dougie.

Having shared that tidbit and had some fun, I will admit that Douglas is something of an enigma to me personally, but a number of cool people I know also know him and have him as a friend on Facebook, so I know he is real and not simply a representation of a business model. Though this article might tell you otherwise.

As I mentioned earlier, the How To Douglas newsletter comes out weekly. Every Thursday, like clockwork, it starts with a little note about how Douglas is feeling, his thoughts on the time of year, and an anecdote or two. It’s usually clever, sometimes insightful, and just a little bit silly. The content feels like a loveletter to the arts whenever I read it, which I hope is the intended effect.

And because it comes out on Thursday, the newsletter focuses on events taking place over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday which makes sense given the half life and nature of the content.

If you want to see music, film, art or anything other than a hockey game, inside of a cineplex or a restaurant, How To Douglas feels incredibly refreshing.

But don’t take my word for it. Subscribe and check it out yourself. You just might like it. Comments? Questions? Leave them!

Tim!