Movies, Movies, Movies!

This is basically a continuation of this post.  This is a very good time in Toronto for art films.  It may even slightly surpass the mid 90s, which was a good time indeed.  I still don't like TIFF policies (which did indeed shift post-COVID, and they were far more reasonable pre-COVID).  Nonetheless, I was able to see pretty much all the Naruse I wanted.  If it had been scheduled differently, I would have tried to watch Repast, but I guess I can watch it on DVD at some point this winter.

I guess there are a few SPOILERS here and there, so be warned...

TIFF also started a very compact Bunuel retrospective.  As it happens, I was seeing Belle de Jour at the Revue (last night incidentally, and I'll include a few thoughts about it down-thread).  Ages and ages ago, I saw Un chien andalou (the film he made with Dali) and don't really need to see it again.  Now the first time through, I was only able to book a ticket to the late film Viridiana.  I was frustrated with TIFF as usual, but just now I saw a few seats had opened up at most of the screenings, so I booked tickets for Diary of a Chambermaid, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel, which certainly covers all the major films.  I would have tried to see That Obscure Object of Desire (Bunuel's final film), but it only plays once, conflicting with Eric Rohmer's La Collectionneuse over at Paradise, and I expect I'll enjoy that more.

One of the more interesting things about the ending of Belle de Jour is that it is definitely a fantasy (not completely dissimilar to the "Love Conquers All" edit of Brazil, and I suspect that Bunuel was an important influence on Gilliam) but also that it could lead to a reading that the entire prostitution plot was a very elaborate fantasy (and none of it happened).  I mean probably not, but it's at least possible.  There are also two direct references to Godard's Breathless.  First there is the male New York Daily Herald paper hawker, who shows up right as the two thugs are introduced.  And then the shooting of Marcel is framed almost exactly as the shooting of Michel in Breathless, with the key exception that Marcel went out guns blazing and Michel is inadvertently caught up in his shooting death.  This can't possibly be accidental.

I think I mentioned that I did see Godard's Contempt at the Revue but didn't actually care that much for it.  I think I am basically immune to the charms of Godard...

It's possible that the single best movie I saw all month was Antonioni's La Notte.  It was over at the Fox, and I did break my semi-serious vow not to go over there again, but it was worth it.  And indeed hardly anyone showed up, so the shallow raked floor didn't matter.  This film came out one year after Fellini's La Dolce Vita, and I think there are strong parallels between the two movies, though it's hard to say how far along Antonioni was with La Notte by the time he would have been able to see La Dolce Vita.  Interestingly, apparently there was a version ready for the Italian censors in Nov. 1960, and La Dolce Vita was released in Feb. 1960.  Of course, Mastroianni is in both, automatically linking the two.  I think I actually like La Notte a bit better than La Dolce Vita, as it is just more focused.  It's one of the only Antonioni films I actually like.  After this screening, I stuck around and watched No Other Choice, a black comedy from South Korea about a fired factory foreman who kills off rivals for an opening at another paper company.  I think the director may have missed a trick in not having the AI machinery kill him off accidentally at the end, perhaps when he unnecessarily hit the paper rolls with his baton, setting off some chain reaction...

The funniest movie I saw was Bottoms as part of Queer Cinema Club at the Paradise.  This is basically Heathers mixed in with Mean Girls and of course Fight Club (though the point of starting the fight club is to get with hot cheerleaders, which is so Revenge of the Nerds...).  Even though the weather was truly horrendous, everyone showed up, and it was a sold out screening!  I'm certainly glad I made it.  The series has managed to show some incredible films (as well as a few I strongly avoided...).  I also enjoyed Mulholland Drive (which I barely got into), three or so Fassbinder movies, Zero Patience, 2 Almodovar films, and Touch of Pink.  Oh and Kajillionaire, which I almost certainly wouldn't have seen without the club, and I enjoyed this a lot.  (Same with Pat Mills's Guidance.)  

I found the relationship between the slightly butch lesbian and the artistic/theatrical gay male in Can You Ever Forgive Me? reminded me a lot of the lesbians in my mother's circle who ran the AIDS crisis line in Detroit, and I felt moved by that.  (Ah, memories...)   Once in a while I am not able to make a Queer Cinema Club showing but then catch the film later, which is what happened for Law of Desire and Tangerine.

Despite fighting off a cold that makes me miserable, stuffing myself with cough drops, I just saw Galaxy Quest, which is so terrific.  I'm going to make yet another trip out to the Revue on Friday to see Blake Edwards's Skin Deep, followed by Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.  After that, De Palma's Blow Out at the Revue and 2046 at Paradise.  But the somewhat obsessive desire to catch up with films may taper off a bit by April (and I end up seeing a lot more concerts and plays).  I guess we'll see...

More Snow

We're supposedly going to get about a foot of snow today.  I actually had planned to be out much of the day (and relying on transit), so this is a little worrying.  One option will be to skip the follow-up activities and just focus on going swimming and then to a 2 o'clock concert.  I already did grocery shopping and a somewhat shortened gym visit on Sat.  And I did cook chili for the week, even though I will be out most evenings (mostly trying to see various movies).  Still, I would like to see One Battle After Another at Carlton, and today is a fairly convenient time.  

On the other hand, I really need to finish writing up this play, and I keep falling asleep instead of doing that (or booking cultural events in Feb. and March, and time is getting tight!)  I also said I would take the first shift of shoveling, though there is only a dusting so far.  I will probably be out most of the rest of the time.  So maybe I will just come home instead.

It was certainly cold out yesterday, but actually not as cold as Friday was.  Friday was bone-chilling.  We were fortunate that we caught the 72 Pape bus right away as we were heading down to Queen to the Red Sandcastle to see short plays with a horror twist.  They were fun and not particularly scary, and indeed the first play about a girl who has a witch for a mother (and hangs out with a boy named Hansel) wasn't scary at all.

Sat. I was criss-crossing the city, so I was very glad there was no snow to totally mess my journey up.  I decided to go across on Line 2 to Dufferin rather than take the Queen streetcar the whole way (I think it is still diverting onto Dundas for a stretch!).  (I also dropped off a few books at the library.)  I was fortunate that I caught the Dufferin Express down to Queen.  For all my griping about the TTC, it wasn't too bad on Friday and Saturday.  Fingers crossed that it won't be too bad today, though once I am downtown, Line 1 shouldn't be too impacted by the snow.  Famous last words...

Anyway, I made it in time for Sondheim's Company at the Theatre Centre.  I thought they did a good job, though a local critic wasn't that impressed.  The problem is that this musical and indeed most musicals leave me pretty cold.  I'm not sure I've ever seen such a navel-gazing musical about straight New Yorkers (and indeed from a time when young married professionals with children still lived in Manhattan and not Brooklyn!).  About the only song that really captured my attention was "The Ladies Who Lunch."  I thought it was a terrific piece, though the critic didn't agree.  I did agree with the critic that the kiss between Robert and one of his male friend just confused things, and I imagine Sondheim would have pitched a fit over this, since he explicitly said that Bobby's problems weren't due to latent homosexuality.  Anyway, this piece should have been 60 or 90 minutes, since there was zero character development or plot arc, and thus didn't merit coming back for more after the interval.  (Reading some thoughts, it's pretty clear that some of the musical's defenders come across as so condescending.  Oh you'll understand it some day.  But I don't think getting older will rescue an extremely shallow plot and a cypher for the lead character!  That said, some of the music and songs are interesting.  But everyone has different tastes.  I was astounded at the number of people fleeing during Prokofiev's Symphony #5 on Thurs., whereas I was only there for that and could easily have skipped out on the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto #2.)

I decided I should swing by Robarts and drop off a DVD that was due, even though I could have done this today, as I'll be at Koerner, which is just around the corner...  This did mean a little backtracking and then having to cross back to Bloor-Yonge, since Line 1 was closed between St. George and St. Andrew this weekend, which is a drag.

Then I went and saw the final Naruse film over at TIFF: Daughters, Wives and a Mother.  I didn't realize this is a relatively late film (1960) and is in colour.  I enjoyed it a fair bit.  While I think it's relatively unlikely anyone will watch it anytime soon, I will discuss with SPOILERS...

SPOILERS

This film, like every other Naruse film I've watched (with partial exception of Floating Clouds), is centered on a family (or just an older woman) going through a financial crisis, either caused by external forces like the supermarkets coming in in Yearning or due to death in the family (Scattered Clouds) or a male bread-winner more or less abandoning the family (The Sound of the Mountain).  In Daughters, Wives and a Mother, one of the sons is pressured by his wife into loaning huge sums of money to his wife's uncle, who then goes bankrupt, ruining them.  And as it turns out, he mortgaged the family home to do so (without telling his mother)!  At this point, the adult children begin to panic and try to figure out what to do with mother, and a few of them reluctantly agree to bring her to their smaller house.  One of the older sisters is pressured into a loveless marriage because her potential groom is willing to bring her mother to Kyoto.  The mother doesn't want this and is leaning towards moving into a retirement home, though it isn't clear if she actually will have the funds to do so.  (There are heavy echoes of Make Way for Tomorrow here, though I've never been able to make my way through this film, as it starts off with such appalling poor judgement on the part of the parents.  It is much easier to swallow here, as the financial crisis comes much later in the film and it is more plausible and the mother is taken unaware by all these financial transactions.)  The final scene is a bit of a cop-out where she plays with a neighbour's baby and doesn't actually reveal what she is doing next.  This reminds me of Umberto D.  (A very good film but one I probably can't bear to watch again...)  Anyway, it was really interesting watching a colour film made by Naruse, and this one holds up a bit better than Scattered Clouds.

I'm making my way through several poetry collections, as well as just launched into Gide's The Immoralist (which in some ways seems like an inversion of Camus's The Stranger).  It's very short, so I expect I will finish it today or tomorrow.  I haven't really decided what is next but one possible plan is Amis's The Information, Faulker's The Wild Palms and then Thien's The Book of Records.  I should have Russell Smith's Self Care in from the library soon, and will fit that in somewhere.

I've pretty much convinced myself to just go swimming and then to the concert and skip the movie.  I'll see if there is another time I can go see it, but I just need to finish my play (and also book Stratford/Shaw and some other upcoming concerts and plays).  I can't always be running around town, especially in this sort of weather, particularly while I have a cough I can't shake...

Edit (01/26): The day ended up being very different than I expected.  As I was getting ready to leave, I checked my email and saw that the concert at Koerner Hall had been postponed (to some undeclared date in late winter or even spring).  I decided that I didn't really want to go down to Jimmie Simpson and Matty Eckler had swimming in the late afternoon.  (This change of plans made me really glad I had dropped off my library materials at Robarts on Sat. despite the inconvenience!)  I decided to go see One Battle After Another at Carlton at 12:30.  I actually made it there without too much trouble, though the snow storm had already started.  I did not like this movie at all, mostly because I thought Perfidia was such a cartoonish character, oversexed and ultimately not actually committed to revolutionary goals but only in saving her own skin, and Leo's character devolved into such a useless parody of a burnt out stoner.  The only characters I liked (or even found somewhat believable) were the sensei (Del Toro) and the daughter.  And it was definitely too long.  I grabbed some cat litter and headed back.  Fortunately, the streetcar was still running, at least in the stretch I cared about.  I then attempted to shovel what was about two feet of drifting snow.  It was not particularly heavy, but there is just nowhere to put the snow.

Anyway, between the movie running long and the shoveling, I wasn't able to go swimming after all.  Maybe it is just as well, as my lungs are just not cooperating and I would hate to try to swim and then start coughing and swallow a lot of water.  That certainly wouldn't help things.  It feels like it is going to be a long, tough winter...

Quick Takes, Early 2026 Edition

Well, the Orange One is just determined to keep himself in the news at all costs, even if this leads to almost certain defeat in the House in the midterms (though obviously he will create so many crises that he will try to postpone the elections -- this is so clearly part of the madness).  (I'm talking about Greenland, but it really could be anything he gets up to...)  I can't even begin to list all the institutions that have completely let us down, but the Supreme Court is in a unique position to end a small part of the madness by ruling that tariffs can't be changed unilaterally by the President for clearly political reasons.  They have had two chances so far to issue their ruling and have punted both times.  Justice Roberts, such a pure specimen of political cowardice.

Anyway, let me try to rinse the foul taste out of my mouth....

I finished Mahfouz's The Beggar.  I have really liked most and been indifferent at worst to his many novels, but this is the first one I truly disliked.  Thank goodness it wasn't the first Mahfouz I ever read.  I've chatted a bit elsewhere why I dislike it so much, so I will refrain here.  I am just about finished with The Tale of the Missing Man, which I don't care much for either.  I think in both cases it is the fact that the main characters are having these deep existential-level mid-life crises that they simply surrender to, tearing apart their families in the process, which I object to so much.  Could they not at least try to pull themselves together a bit?  Of the two, The Tale of the Missing Man at least is more interesting, and I can relate to this man's agony when earlier in life he is horrified to find out that his beloved "sister" smokes (and later on he finds out she drinks as well, which is too much for him as a practicing Muslim (at this point in the story) and she suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her uncle).  I still remember that when I was a very, very young man at university, I saw one of the students at East Quad (whom I happened to have a crush on naturally) smoke a cigarette expertly in a student production.  At that point, I realized she operated at a different level than me and she was out of my league, and I never really tried to get to know her better after that.  Foolish me...  (Though I am sure she was out of my league.)

I also am nearly done with Heather O'Neill's Valentine in Montreal, which was written as a serial novel in the manner of Dickens, though Heather avoided having any really dark or troubling episodes in this book.  Each chapter takes place at a different Montreal metro stop.  It's more fun than the other two certainly, though it is a little too light, which is clearly by design.

At any rate, I'll need to decide what I am reading next.  It is somewhat inconvenient that most of the books I am considering next are in multi-novel anthologies, like Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow, Faulkner's The Wild Palms, O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find and even Joyce's Dubliners, which I am considering throwing into the mix.  But there are a few stand-alone novels, and maybe I should focus on the shorter ones, like Gide's The Immoralist, Offill's Weather and Russell Smith's Self-Care, which I can put a hold on at the library and see when it comes in.  I'm also reading a depressing book about energy use and climate change called More and More and More, though I am not sure I need to read this in full and can just skim it.  I also agreed to read and review a book about mega-projects, so I should start in on that soon as well.  And I have a ridiculous number of poetry books checked out, so I am working through those as well. 

I've had another look through the good folder that was recovered off of the bad hard drive.*  It looks like I do have all visits to 401 Richmond salvaged, which is great, and even the TPL reading that Souvankham Thammavongsa gave. (It turns out she is left-handed!)

My back is feeling better, though it is still far from ideal.  I've been able to keep up my visits to the gym and swimming, though I found the Regent Park pool overcrowded and completely intolerable on my last visit.  I only got in somewhere between 12-15 laps (I was so frustrated I lost count!) when my normal workout is 24-25.  The problem is when I have really overstuffed weekends, which is nearly every weekend, Regent Park has the best lane swim times and the others just don't work, esp. when the weather is such that I can't bike.  Still, I will need to figure something out, either get there the moment the lanes open or push my way into the fast lanes despite my issues with them.  And to the extent possible, try to make it work at Jimmie Simpson or Matty Eckler pools.  I perhaps can do swimming on Sunday and then head over to Koerner Hall this weekend.  Anyway, I'll figure something out.

I've been seeing a lot of movies lately.  I saw Pan's Labyrinth, which was good but very dark.  Broadcast News last night, which was quite good and had a somewhat surprising ending.  I thought it was a bit refreshing that the Bonnie Hunter stuck to her guns and her principles (even though I wouldn't have made the choices she made) and yet she wasn't made to regret this decision and found happiness and presumably fulfillment in her own way.  I'm off to see La Notte tonight and will probably stick around to see No Other Way after that, so it will be quite a long night.  Then I see one last Naruse film at TIFF on the weekend.  I have not sat down and figured out Feb. yet.  There are a few concerts at the UT New Music Festival and a few plays I haven't booked tickets to.  I've also figured out Stratford and Shaw, so I should book that, including a night at a BnB in Stratford.

Speaking of this (and really burying the lede) I had my number pulled in the satellite Fringe lottery, and my play, "At Home with the Bards," is going to be at Alumnae Theatre during the Toronto Fringe this summer!  So exciting and a bit terrifying.  I really need to just sit down and get the rest transcribed.  If it is a good enough script, I have a potential lead on an actor to play the main part and then a director.  But none of this will happen if I can't get it down on paper and cleaned up a bit.  Also, they have agreed to put on the first part at the successor to Toronto Cold Reads** in Feb.!  So lots of good things happening if I could just focus...

Other things on my mind are that I finally got Toby over to the vet to be neutered.  He is so sad in his cone, which comes off on Monday.  He actually managed to get it off and was not happy when I found the cone and wrestled it back on.

I actually managed to get his sister, Rho, to the vet yesterday, which is always an ordeal, as it is just so hard to catch her.  The idea that I will need to catch her 3 times when she is spayed (for the surgery and then two follow-up visits) is a bit upsetting, though I do imagine it will be easier to catch her with the cone on...

The weather is really getting me down, though it is not going to be nearly as cold today, though it will probably snow.  The deep chill settles back in this weekend when I am going to be all over the city with my various cultural activities.  Anyway, I should break now and back to work and then get this play transcribed.

 

* I think what is missing is confined to Gary Shteyngart's TPL visit, a trip to The Power Plant (this can be skipped but I do want to take photos of the murals just north of The Power Plant, and trips to MoCA (already well covered) and the new exhibit at the AGO.  I can recreate the AGO trip, though not the photos of my son in front of a few paintings.  And probably two nights at The Rex.  And then 1.5 shows of Robyn Hitchcock playing at home.  So it's certainly frustrating that this is gone, but it definitely could have been much worse.

** After talking with several people at the cold reads thing on Sun., it's pretty clear that very few people read the email and signed up for the satellite lottery, which helps explain why I got in.  Well, it's their loss.  But more seriously, this may be the last time there is so little competition, so I definitely need to make the most of my opportunity, which means I really need to get this down on paper.  (And double-check deadlines for paying rental fees, etc.)

Rescuing the Writing

One thing that I have been diligent about is copying the scans of all my hand-written notes (written mostly while at the Rex or Jazz Bistro or Hirut*) into several locations.  However, I still keep coming across notebooks that I haven't scanned, and I think the plan this week is to pull all the notebooks together and see what has been scanned and what hasn't.  (On the whole this is a good thing, though more effort...)

I recently came across the pages for The Trip (the bus ride from hell from Atlanta to Detroit), and I definitely want to type that up.  I do wonder if I wrote the ending out somewhere else, as it doesn't seem to be a proper ending.  But certainly the majority is scanned.  I also found the hand-written notes for Dharma Donuts, but this I probably won't bother with, as I have typed that up (and then decided it needed a severe overhaul anyway).  One of the more annoying things is I had typed up something (I think I called it Parkdale Queens or something), and I sent it off to SFYS but at a time they were using Google submission form, rather than me just emailing a PDF.  And I simply cannot find the file, which is so incredibly weird.  And then the folks at Assembly just gave up on running SFYS and stopped returning my emails (where I was just asking if they could flip that file back to me).  Given that this piece (about a band that broke up) is something I wanted to share with Skye Wallace, it is perhaps my top "missing" piece.  

I had thought I had scanned some of the early, early pieces of my planner epic, but I think beyond the very first scene, I hadn't done that.  So I scanned that again (almost 20 pages of dialogue and notes!).  Clearly, compiling this and putting it into some kind of order is a high priority.  It's almost like a puzzle piece now, just going through what is scanned and how it is all supposed to fit together.

The single highest priority, however, is to find all the pieces of the Stratford BnB piece.  I believe that is all scanned, just not labelled very well.  I have even transcribed the 2nd part (and the 1st part is cleaned up and typed out, which is great).  So I probably just need to transcribe the ending and get this whole thing into shape.  I find out tomorrow evening if I am going to the Fringe or not.  Then I will see if I can locate and finish the Parkdale Queens piece, and then maybe quickly pound out The Trip, then go back to the planner epic.  If I ever finish this, I might go back to the piece about living in Toronto in the 90s and the immigration struggles my character had (in a parallel life where I did decide to try to stay on in Canada by marrying a lesbian...).  It feels like this is all a lot of work, but at least it is generally emotionally rewarding doing this creative writing (and now trying to actually do something with it now that Toronto Cold Reads has returned).

 

* Last Sat. I had planned on seeing Pat LaBarbara at Hirut.  I was there about 15 minutes early (the TTC was actually somewhat smooth for once), but the place was completely full.  I thought I saw a spot at the back table where I usually sit, but the guy at the door claimed that the only thing I could do was grab a stool and sit by the door.  I mean I am not that worried about comfort (and had a pretty uncomfortable spot at the Rex the week before for the Mike Murley gig), but I had wanted to eat the Ethiopian food and put my phone down someplace and try to write.  I didn't see how I could do any of that sitting at a stool by the door, so I didn't bother.  I ate at Thai Room and went home, feeling pretty deflated.  (I guess I would have taken the stool if Neil Swainson had been on bass, but it was someone else.)  There is a small chance I would come by on Jan 21 after La Notte at The Fox, though I could only catch the second set.  I'm not entirely sure that is worth it, but I'll see how I feel at the time.  Then there is a Mike Murley show with Reg Schawger and Neil Swainson in mid Feb.  I guess for that one I will show up at 7 (an hour early) to make sure I get in!

I actually probably do need to book my ticket for Le Notte at least.  I just found out that Mulholland Drive at Paradise tomorrow is sold out(!), but I will probably drop by anyway to see if they have a rush line like the Revue does.

Bad Hard Drive Results

I've been feeling a lot of ups and downs about the recovery process.  Originally, they thought that most of the drive would be recovered, i.e. something around 95%.  In the end, it was 92% recovered, but the damage is time-specific with the most recent files the most damaged, which of course are the ones that are top of mind and the ones that are most painful that they haven't been recovered...

Anyway, I paid the (very high) fee and received a detailed report on what was recovered entirely and what was damaged.  I guess I'll start with the bad news.  There was a folder called Xmas2025 that had all the pictures and videos from my cell phone from pretty much all of Dec.  None of this was recovered at all.  This means that a couple of jazz shows at the Rex are just gone, including a 2 guitar show featuring Lorne Lofsky and probably a Dave Young show.  I believe the most recent Mike Murley show is still on my phone, though it cut off a bit early for some absurd reason.  Either I could have left the files on the phone longer (as storage space isn't quite as serious a problem as before) or I could have left the entire folder Xmas2025 on the laptop longer, and I remember debating copying vs. moving the files at the time.  I bitterly regret not copying that folder over, but how was I to know that a nearly brand new drive would fail so badly...  Never again.  I can't really remember the photos I took, though this includes a recent trip to the AGO.  So I can go again and replicate a lot of those, though not the couple of photos I took of my son in front of some of the art.  Sigh.  I didn't really care for the art at my last trip to the Power Plant, but I might take a few replacement photos of the art in the plaza just north of the Power Plant.  I probably am also missing a few photos of my last trip to 401 Richmond, but hopefully I have the visits prior to that, though I will have to probe once I have the data sent back.

However, most of the other folders (with phone pictures and videos) seem to have survived, including several shows out at Budweiser Stage and 54-40 at Danforth Music Hall.  I was freaking out a bit because there were two or three shows that I had started transferring over from phone video to mp3 (a somewhat tedious process).  It turns out that the entire Lowest of the Low show files survived and all but one or two of the GoGo Penguin files, so that was unexpected good news (I mean relative to the fact I had thought I had lost it all...).

Now some PDFs (of art monographs) were completely corrupted, but in a freak positive twist, I had copied these over so my son could take a look, and I was able to copy them back.  Too bad I hadn't also copied over a few more of the photos of our trip to the AGO...  Some poetry books survived, though these are ones I could have reconstructed from files still in my mailbox's deleted folder (which I hadn't emptied yet).  I'm sure it helps that the file size is an order of magnitude smaller than the art monographs.

A large number of wav files from material I recorded off the internet are also gone.  In many cases, I can just record this again, so annoying and time-consuming, but not "fatal."  However, there were two shows of Robyn Hitchcock performed at home (called Live from Tubby's House), and these are time-limited and cannot be replayed now.  Two other shows that I thought were lost were actually copied over to a different hard drive, so that's positive.  I only wish I had had more free space on the other hard drives (that didn't fail), but that just wasn't the case.  I asked them to copy over bad wav files, just in case portions can still be read, but I am not sure if they will do that.  I guess I'll find out in a couple of days.

So there are probably something on the order of 10 shows (either at the Rex or over the internet including two Hitchcock shows) that are just completely gone and the photos documenting my last trip to the AGO and 401 Richmond, but I believe most other files have been recovered, so I will try to focus on that rather than the loss.  (I mean 92% is very good just not quite as high as I would have liked...)  It's hard, however, as it is just not in my nature to focus on positives, particularly given I am in pretty constant low-level pain from my back.  But I'll try in this case.

Edit (9 pm): So the recovery technician said he had copied it all over to a blank drive, even the damaged files, so I'll see if any of the damaged wav files have usable chunks, and I guess I'll do the same for a few mp4 files.  He also said he was going to take one more stab at recovering some of the data a different way, which is cool unless he charges me another huge fee, and I told him just to focus on the Xmas2025 folder and a small handful of damaged wav files and just let the rest go.  No point holding out any hope here, but it would be terrific if something does emerge out of this.  I'm actually pretty excited about listening to the Lowest of the Low show and the GoGo Penguin show, which I had assumed were completely lost but were recovered.  It should just be another day or two before this drive shows up.

Edit (01-14): When I got back from seeing Mulholland Drive at the Paradise (I got in after all -- what a strange, strange movie!), there was a package on the doorstep.  It was the drive back from Recovery Force.  As feared, nothing in the Xmas2025 folder is recoverable at all.  Some of the damaged wav files are readable, though it is very hit or miss.  I have about 30 minutes from one of the Live at Tubby's House shows, but not the other ones, which is really too bad.  (With a little more digging, it turns out that I do still have the Dec. 17 show that kicked off with "Goodnight Oslo," but not the next one which was a mini-tribute to Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding album.  Honestly, I would rather have Dec. 17, so that sort of worked out.  And of course I've love to get back the rest of their New Year's Eve show.)  Maybe this guy will manage to recover a few more files, but I'm not going to lose any more sleep over this.

Bad Back

I've been dealing with back spasms over the past few days (since last Friday I think), and then it felt like I had a pinched nerve or something in my lower back, so it has been extremely painful to change positions from sitting to standing, though walking around isn't too painful.  Even getting out of bed generally means rolling out of bed.  This happened to me back around 2010, and then I had a flare-up while living in Vancouver.  In both cases, I did end up going to a chiropractor, and that seemed to solve things, though obviously temporarily.  I actually biked past a chiropractor's office on Queen East on the weekend, and I wonder if I will end up going there or see if there is a place closer to me.  

Somewhat surprisingly, I was able to go swimming on Sat., and then at the gym I tried to use the back extension machine and then the equipment that helps stretch the spine.  In the short term, it just felt worse.  Anyway, we'll just see how things develop, but it's definitely worrying.  

Interestingly, biking doesn't seem to impact me too much, and in my mind at least the minor stretching you need to do (to keep vigilant and look left and right to avoid being hit by a car!) loosens things up a bit.  At any rate, I was able to bike last Thurs. through Sat. (including a trip downtown to see Marty Supreme at Market Square), and it looks like I might be able to bike to work on Tuesday, before the weather gets bad again.  I probably would not consider biking to work in Jan. or Feb. if the TTC wasn't so unreliable.  And maybe 10 or 20 years from now with climate change, biking in winter won't be abnormal, though I am not sure I plan on going to work, particularly to a downtown location, on a daily basis 20 years from now.  (And I definitely wouldn't if I am still having occasional, but severe, back pain.)  I guess I'll see how it all unfolds...

Random Cultural Thoughts on the New Year

It's been a pretty good start to the year, reading-wise at least.  I have reread Narayan's The Financial Expert and read The Painter of Signs.  His novels are generally fairly short, and these ones have a bit of a fable-like quality to them, with the characters sort of returning to where they started but having learned something about themselves (or just the bitter teachings of "life") along the way.  I wouldn't say I loved either of them, though I enjoyed The Painter of Signs more.  I think my favourite of all his novels is The English Teacher with my least favourite (and one I will never reread) being The Man-Eater of Malgudi, closely followed by Swami and Friends.  I'm about 2/3rds of the way in reading through all of his novels, and now that I am back on track, I may well be finished by 2027.  I also reread Zelazny's Roadmarks, which I enjoyed but doesn't stand up as much (today) as some of his other work.  Next, I'm going to alternate between Mahfouz's The Beggar and The Tale of the Missing Man next.  I'm more like 1/2 through Mahfouz's novels, and I guess I will step that up a bit.  Then probably O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find.

I've seen 8 of the 9 Naruse films that I have tickets for at TIFF.  I completely forgot that I had watched several of his silent films that Criterion/Eclipse put out years ago.  The only film that I have on DVD I haven't watched is Repast, and I will probably watch this at some point this winter.  I mentioned that I saw Winter Light with my son.  If he comes home at Reading Week in Feb., I think I'll try to watch the other two in Bergman's Winter Trilogy, but if not I'll just watch them while it is still winter.

I also have borrowed a few Godard films from the library, and I should be able to get through Breathless and Masculin Feminin this weekend.  I saw The Truman Show at Paradise, as part of their Toonie Tues. and the theatre was packed.  I finally went ahead and got the membership at Paradise, as they have finally started showing enough films to justify it.  And then last night I saw Network at Carlton.  This is my first time seeing it.  I think maybe there were a few too many plot contrivances, almost more as if this were a TV series with a large cast rather than a movie...  (I wonder if there was any consideration to spinning this off as a TV show, just as MASH had done a few years previously.  Though it would have been a bit of a challenge as one of the more compelling characters ended up dead at the end...)  I am probably going to check out The Thing tonight, though it means going out to The Fox.  (I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but one of the only Antonioni films that I actually like, La Notte, is playing at The Fox, and I do plan to go to that.)

I was travelling back from The Truman Show, finishing up The Painter of Signs, and I saw someone reading a book with a huge Max Beckmann painting on the cover.  I did some sleuthing and realized this was the central panel from his Departure triptych, and from there learned that the young woman was reading Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy.  

I suspect I must have read this back in the day, but I don't remember anything about it.  I haven't decided if I like the cover enough to pick up a copy just for the cover.  Perhaps...

As part of this search, I ran across two Beckmann paintings I don't recall seeing before, which is odd, as I have gone through a lot of Beckmann monographs.

Max Beckmann, Odysseus and the Siren, 1933

Max Beckmann, Transporting the Sphinxes, 1945

I like both, though the one with the sphinxes a bit more.  The second one happens to be in a museum in Brussels, not that I am particularly likely to see it.  I guess I should see if it happened to be at the big MoMA show years ago, but I don't think it was.

I'm running a bit late for work.  I actually am going to bike in today and probably tomorrow, which is good, as I have not been very good with my diet lately, and I need the extra exercise.  I might even have a bit more energy when I get to the office, which I desperately need.  Ciao.

Edit (9 pm): Between being a bit depressed by biking around in the damp and dark, and the fact that I don't really like The Fox much, and the even more compelling fact that I have work still to do to hit some deadlines tomorrow, and I ended up bailing on The Thing.  I'm sure I'll see it some day.  I think they program it every so often at Carlton. 

Edit (01/09): I have confirmed that neither of these Beckmann paintings was in the MoMA show out in Queens, which is a missed opportunity, particularly for Odysseus and the Siren, as it is in a private collection housed somewhere in New York.