Tale of Two Series

I meant to get around to this a few weeks ago when I was coming back from the last Toronto Cold Reads of 2019, but I suppose better late than never...

As frequent readers of this blog are aware, I am much more tied to the Sing-for-Your-Supper cold reading series, primarily because they accept my pieces!  I had a pretty good run with the previous editorial "team," getting a bit over a 60% acceptance rate, whereas with the current readers it is basically 95%!  On occasion, they give me an extra day to get my piece together or even create a bit of a slot for me.  As with most things, there is a bit of an ebb and flow, and right now there is a very solid core of writers, basically myself, David Preyde and Martin Heavyside, who contribute almost every month.  Sometimes, particularly during the summer, there are quite a few new voices, and other times it is just the core.  The same happens with the actors (and audience).  The last two or three times it has felt sparse, but there have been times when the place was quite packed.  I will say that it feels a bit like SFYS is running on fumes right now, with one of the co-hosts quitting and Lee the Mentalist rarely putting in an appearance, and even Marissa the chief reader moving on (to Ottawa!).  It probably will never feel like it was in the glory days at Storefront Theatre, when the place was packed every month.  (And apparently I missed out on the truly anarchic times, described by Preyde here, but I certainly saw it at a high point.)  While they seem to finally have a fairly stable home at Tarragon Theatre on the first Monday of each month, it doesn't feel like there is a critical mass, particularly in the sense of actors making contact with others, that was there when Storefront was so active.  I'll be very sorry if it does go away, though there isn't too much I can do aside from continue to submit pieces to them (and talk the series up on the blog from time to time).  I have a couple of good ideas at the front of my mind right now, and I'll try to get one of them down on paper tonight and tomorrow.  And from the Facebook page, it does seem like a relatively large number of people may come out in January, so I probably need to put a bit of extra effort into my piece this time around.

I was going to Toronto Cold Reads more often for a while, not too long after they switched format to add live music at the top of the line-up and right after the break.  While some people did (and continue to) grouse about how this effectively removes at least one or even two scripts per night, many of the musical guests have been outstanding.  I saw David Newberry (twice), Skye Wallace (twice) and Abigail Labell, along with some others.  Then I took a long hiatus from them, even though this series takes place at The Social Capital bar, which is considerably closer to my home.  Interestingly, the last time I went, the musical guest didn't actually turn up.  While there are slow nights from time to time (and on those times I often am pressed into reading a part, which isn't really my bag), usually the crowd is bigger and the networking is a little healthier.  I suspect that means that Toronto Cold Reads will outlast SFYS, but who really knows.  I have found it extremely hard to break in with them.  I did win the Writer's Challenge once and they read my piece (which went over well), and I was part of a group writing exercise as well.  But they've never taken one of the pieces I've directly submitted, though I do have one in that they are considering for next season.  Probably until they take one of my pieces, I will always feel a little frosty towards them.  In general, the emphasis is a bit more on longer pieces that might lead to film or television scripts, and I simply don't work in that vein.  More than anything, I write short sketches, usually with a humorous twist, and the fit is certainly much better with SFYS.  That said, I like quite a few of the actors that go to Toronto Cold Reads regularly, and maybe I should just drop in more often without any expectation of having my pieces read there.  (And while they probably will never get written, I do have two ideas that could be expanded into television pilots, and this is certainly the crowd to be in if I do decide to pursue them...)

It is pretty cool that Toronto can actually support two cold reading series, though one probably has its best days behind it.  If nothing else, I get some insight into what the truly independent theatres are up to.  It's not too much of a surprise that there appear to be a few cold reading groups in Chicago, though I wasn't aware of them while I lived there.

A Tale of Two Movies

I've been going back and forth most of the week to decide if I wanted to see After Hours today (New Year's Eve) as well as Bringing Out the Dead tomorrow (on New Year's Day).  This is part of a Martin Scorsese retrospective at TIFF.  If After Hours was at 8 or 8:30 or even 9, I think I would go, but it starts at 9:30.  The movie is slightly longer than 90 minutes, and I think the odds are extremely high that I would be stuck on the TTC at midnight, when I would prefer to be at home (celebrating the New Year with family obviously).  On top of that, I was pretty tired yesterday, so I skipped out on the gym.  My recollection is that while I like many parts of After Hours, it really does overstay its welcome a bit by the end, and I'm quite sure I would feel the same way tonight with one eye on the clock...

So I think I will probably go home at a normal time, probably go off to the gym a bit later and make sure I am home for the countdown.  I'll almost certainly go out to Bringing Out the Dead on Wed.  And I'll just keep my eyes open to see if any of the artsy theatres decides to bring back After Hours in the New Year.

Best Reads of 2019

Not so different from 2018, 2019 had lots of very long stretches where I was reading books more out of perceived obligation than actual enjoyment.  I finally managed to read all of Homer and Virgil's Aeneid, something that I would have done in my first year of university except I skipped out of the Great Books seminar (I was taking a different honors course, not simply bailing on class...), and as I explained, I ended up reading all three in dueling translations.  At times, this was quite a long slog.  The two volumes of Musil's The Man Without Qualities took up almost all of March and April.  While there were certainly some interesting passages, I can't say that this massive novel really spoke to me that much and I certainly shan't return to it a second time.  That said, I'm glad that I conquered it, mostly so that I can say I've actually read the three most challenging monuments of High Modernism (Ulysses, Remembrance of Lost Time and The Man Without Qualities).  It's sort of interesting that I have to dip into non-fiction in order to get to 10 honorable mentions for the year.

At any rate, the top 3 books from 2019 were:

Russell Hoban Turtle Diary
Anthony Marra The Tsar of Love and Techno
Loren Eiseley The Invisible Pyramid

The best book reread was
Ovid Metamorphoses

Honorable mention:
Homer The Odyssey
Elaine McCluskey The Most Heartless Town in Canada 
Constance Beresford-Howe The Book of Eve (very delayed review here)
Dawn Powell Turn, Magic Wheel
Salman Rushdie* Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
Paul Auster Leviathan
Teju Cole Known and Strange Things
Eiseley The Immense Journey
Thien Do Not Say We Have Nothing (though a ruthless editor would have helped)
Robert Stone A Hall of Mirrors (I liked the middle third quite a bit but not the ending)

Graham Swift's Waterland was a bit of a slow burn, but it got better as more family secrets were revealed until 1) he started going on long digressions including one about the mysteries of eels and their reproductive systems and 2) he introduced an incest subplot, which always icks me out to the point I really don't want to continue reading this book.  It's a shame, as Waterland otherwise would have made honorable mention (given that this has been another somewhat disappointing year).

However, the prize for the most horrible book of the year goes to Eugene Marten's Waste.  A very unpleasant book on so many levels.  I won't be reading any of his other books, none of which seem to be in the Toronto library system anyway.

* I thought up until last night that I would either split this slot with Rushdie's The Golden House or it would supplant Two Years..., but I did not care for the ending at all or rather one aspect of the ending that I found too incredible, as opposed to all the other fairly unbelievable events in the novel.  I was also disenheartened by the running commentary on Trump beating Clinton (here recast as the triumph of the Joker over Bat-Girl), and this surely didn't help either.  Maybe I am being too harsh, as I didn't like the ending of A Hall of Mirrors either, but this is my list, and I don't have to be completely consistent...

A Somewhat Disappointing Day

I should stress today wasn't all bad.  I did manage to get to the gym, though a lot later than I like on Sat. morning.  (I don't think I actually made it there until 10:45 or so; if I am going to make the effort to go in the morning, then I like wrapping up around 10 or 10:30.)  I'm still generally going to the gym 3 times a week (though only twice this week due to their shutting down on Christmas and Boxing Day) and swimming laps at Regent Park once or twice a week (though the spa pool is still closed down unfortunately). 

I had been pretty sure I was going to see a 70 mm print of Lawrence of Arabia at TIFF, but then I looked up the running time, and it is 3 hours, 45 minutes.  With the intermission, that is going to be 4 hours!  That just seems extremely long (and self-indulgent) to me, and I decided I would pass entirely.  I probably will never get around to watching the film (now that I am aware of this), but if I do, it will certainly be watching at home in smaller chunks.

I was a bit too late to try to make it to Knives Out at Scotiabank, but I had time to catch the 2:15 showing at Yonge-Dundas Square.  However, when I strolled in, it turned out that every one of their screenings (of this particular film) was some ridiculous VIP lounge screening (with wine bar and oversized chairs).  I'm not willing to pay extra for such indulgences.  While I could have gone back over to Scotiabank and waited for the next showing, the moment has passed.  I'm not that interested any more, and I'll see if and when it makes it to Netflix...

I dropped in at the BMV store, and I was very surprised to see Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain (in the newish Woods translation that is supposed to be vastly superior to the previous translation).  This was quite annoying, as I had looked around a bit and then finally ordered a copy on-line (and obviously with the shipping it will cost more and it still hasn't turned up).  BMV is a pretty good chain, but they absolutely refuse to list their stock on-line, so it becomes impossible to track what is actually in the various stores.  I would have picked up a copy of Buddenbrooks (in the Woods' translation), but that wasn't in stock.  Presumably, I'll go ahead and order that one of these days, only for it show up locally.

About the only thing that did go according to plan is that I went to A & C Games on Spadina and picked up a refurbished Nintendo 3DS for my daughter.  Interestingly, she is starting to get into video games, and I guess I can indulge her just a bit.

I'm taking a bit of a break, but will probably do some more reading tonight (I'm pretty close to wrapping up Rushdie's The Golden House) and possibly some work on the quilt.  What I really ought to do is go through another box or two in the basement, but I'm not really feeling it at the moment.  Maybe later.

A Close Call

Fortunately, I'm not talking about a medical close call, though I probably have dodged a few bullets from time to time.  I am referring to some computer-related close calls.  I was working on cleaning up some PDFs, and I noticed that one of the larger files was quite corrupted.  I tried all sorts of things to split it, to copy it over using xcopy, etc.  Nothing worked, and I started getting the cyclical redundancy error, which is pretty serious.

I finally shut down the computer and moved the external hard drive to my laptop (where I have an upgraded version of Abode Reader).  I was able to see the majority of the PDF, though the last few pages were a bit garbled.  It allowed me to split the document towards the end, though the last pages were still garbage.  Then when I moved it back to my main computer, there was still an error (so I thought I might have accidentally copied over the bad file again).  But when I moved the external drive back again, the laptop couldn't recognize it at all!  A very bad scene, which was multiplied ten-fold when the main computer wouldn't recognize the drive either!

I'm reasonably good about backing up photos (they pretty much are all on two external drives, plus burned to DVDs), and most of my music (at least the stuff I listen to frequently) is in two places (and of course nearly all of it can be streamed now).  And taxes are in two or three locations plus typically a hard copy back-up.  But a lot of the files I have been digitizing are only in one location.

After some major panicking and some internet sleuthing, I was finally able to use the chkdsk /f command, and it actually worked.  The external drive seems to be back in working order.

However, I don't really trust it any longer.  Fortunately, I recently bought another external drive, and I am copying over 50% or so of the old drive's folders to the new one.*  After this, I think I'll unplug the drive that is starting to act up and let it rest for a while, and use the new one as the work horse for a while.  When I am ready to deal with the files I can't copy over now (mostly due to space issues), I'll plug the old one back in.

So not a perfect solution, but things could have been so much worse for me last night.  Take my advice that it really is critical to back up core files in two or three locations when feasible.  (Personally I don't really trust that "the cloud" is going to be around when I really need it, but I suppose that's another option as well.)


* During this process, I found two or three other PDFs that had been badly corrupted, plus one photo that wouldn't copy over and 3 photos that copied over but without their information (presumably when I took the photo).  That's not too bad in the grand scheme of things, particularly when I think of a few of the other things (mostly music) that I have lost over the years when a hard drive failed.

Best Theatre of 2019

At this point, there is no more theatre scheduled for 2019 (though maybe a film or two before the end of the year...).  So here is my list of productions I enjoyed (either enjoyed thoroughly or I felt there were significant redeeming features).

Jan.
1979 by Michael Healey -- Canadian Stage
In the Next Room by Sara Ruhl  -- RedWit @ Tarragon

Feb.
Fine China/A Perfect Bowl of Pho -- Fu-Gen @ Factory Theatre
You Never Can Tell by GB Shaw -- George Brown @ Young Centre
Othello -- Shakespeare BASH'd
Little Menace by Harold Pinter -- Soulpepper (solid evening of shorts except for The Basement, which was weak)

March
Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies -- East Side Players
Kiss of the Spider Woman -- Eclipse @ The Don Jail
Betrayal by Harold Pinter -- Red Sandcastle
Retreat by Kat Sandler -- Hart House
Entrances & Exits -- Howland Company @ Crowsnest
Rear Window -- Theatre Passe Muraille

April
Copenhagen by Frayn -- Soulpepper
As You Like It -- Shakespeare BASH'd (excellent production)
Bigre -- Canadian Stage (had its moments but was about 45 minutes too long)

May
Too Good to Be True -- Video Cabaret (interesting experiment in their new theatre space taking VideoCab style and applying it to a non-history play)
Hand to God -- Coal Mine

June
Bloomsday by Stephen Dietz -- Chicago
The Memo by Vaclav Havel -- Chicago

July
The Tape Escape -- Outside the March (a guided escape room experience with full-blown audience participation)
The Taming of the Shrew -- Toronto Fringe
The Commandment -- Toronto Fringe
Three Men and a Bike -- Toronto Fringe (a little baggy but overall quite fun)
Tita Jokes -- Toronto Fringe
Molly Bloom -- Toronto Fringe
The Huns -- Toronto Fringe
Midsummer's Night's Dream -- Bard's Bus Tour (back in Withrow Park!)

August
Greenland -- Summerworks

September
The Glass Menagerie -- Bloor Village West Players
Yaga by Kat Sandler -- Tarragon

October
The Flick by Annie Baker -- Outside the March @ Crow's Nest
Jungle -- Tarragon
Cantatrice Chauve (with subtitles!) -- Theatre francais de Toronto
Henry VII -- Stratford (a well-done production of a very minor, non-essential (co-written) Shakespeare history play)

November
Trout Stanley by Claudia Dey -- Factory Theatre
The Learned Ladies, adapted from Moliere -- George Brown

December
Buffoon -- Tarragon (the acting was first-rate, though the storyline was unrelentingly grim.  Also, it was disrespectful to hold the curtain a full 15 minutes for late-comers...)
Between Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Guirgis -- Coal Mine Theatre
Christmas Carol -- Three Ships Collective @ Campbell House

It was a pretty good year, theatre-wise, though in several cases these were near-great performances. While I certainly saw more things at the Toronto Fringe in 2018, this was a more relaxed year for me, and I probably did enjoy it a bit more overall.

Now, normally I do err on the side of including plays on my list, so long as I liked one aspect of the show (the acting typically) even if I don't like the staging or occasionally the plot (though plot seems to weigh the most heavily with me).  However, I really didn't like the direction of Soulpepper's Streetcar Named Desire.  There were these musical interludes that stretched an already long play past the three hour mark!  I also thought that Stanley and Blanche started at such a high level of antagonism (and the play was done in a fairly realistic manner) that I simply couldn't believe that Stanley wouldn't have murdered her after week two, let alone let her stay the entire summer.  In other words, the production annoyed me so much that it actually made me reassess the play itself negatively!  The only reason I bring this up is that Glenn Sumi put this production in his top ten list of the decade(!), and I find it more than a little astonishing at how profoundly I disagree with him.

From within this list, I suppose my very favourites were 1979, Time Stands Still, Kiss of the Spider Woman (despite being on a metal stool for the whole show!), Betrayal (the Red Sandcastle production), Shakespeare BASH'd doing As You Like It, Hand to God, Yaga and Christmas Carol.

It looks like 2020 will get off to good start with Sweat at Canadian Stage and a few things I might check out from the Toronto Fringe Winterfest and then Shakespeare Bash'd doing Cymbeline.  I'm a bit on the fence for Kushner's Caroline or Change, but maybe I'll go this time around.  I'll report back in a year what I liked.

Another darker mood

It definitely seems at the end of the year, something happens, and I completely lose patience with humanity.  Just like clockwork, the black mood is back, though in this case it is even a bit earlier and maybe darker, and it will probably ruin my mood throughout Christmas and into Boxing Day.

This year, I worked a bit too long today, well after everyone else had split.  Then the bus was quite late in turning up, so I walked home instead.  I definitely wasn't thrilled by this, though at least the weather is fairly mild and all the snow and ice are off the sidewalks (for now).  I was about to turn the corner to my block, when I saw a milkweed pod with lots of seeds ready to go.  I had tried unsuccessfully to plant milkweed this year, so I thought I would try again.  I grabbed a couple of seeds (actually the wind-borne fluff with a seed attached) and started off.  Suddenly a car pulled over and the guy inside shouted that it was his flower and I had to put it back.  This seemed like pure insanity to me, but another guy in the car threatened me.  So I said, sure and brushed the seeds back onto the fence.  It wasn't worth trying to reason with them, despite the fact I am quite sure they don't live at that house...

Obviously, they just thought it was amusing to fuck with me.  Anyone who actually grows milkweed would know that the seeds want to spread and that it is a good thing to plant more of it to help keep the monarch butterfly population up.  I suppose having an unpleasant experience with a bunch of jerks is hardly the end of the world (and had this been Chicago I might well have been mugged again), but it does piss me off.  I'd say it is probably more than 80% likely these are residents of the Pocket (a fairly low-income neighbourhood just north of my neighbourhood).  I never had much use for the Pocket, given that kids from this area made school extremely difficult for my son (they were incredibly disruptive), and right now I am feeling incredibly antagonistic towards the Pocket.  Fine, you want more class war, let's bring it on...  I am so looking forward to the class war that will crush the Pocket out of existence.  I had been trying to fight an alignment of the Ontario Line that would be incredibly disruptive, particularly to the Pocket, and now I look forward to it tearing up their street and forcing their school to close.

But at a deeper level, I really do not like (and actually basically detest*) the majority of humanity, and I think they do deserve pretty much everything they have coming to them.  It sucks that global warming and everything else will impact the people that I can tolerate, but I guess them's the breaks.  There are simply far too many people on the planet and the vast majority of them consume too much.  It's the Tragedy of the Commons at a truly global scale, and there is no way to convince enough people to change direction until the suffering reaches near apocalyptic levels.  Of course, it didn't have to be this way,** but we've had at least 20-25 years of knowing there were serious problems but we persisted in electing leaders who at best kicked the can down the road, and in many cases (particularly Australia and now the U.S.) deliberately made things worse.  So really humanity can just look at itself in the mirror when the shit really hits the fan and know who really is to blame.  (Oh so many mixed metaphors.)  I guess on that cheery note, I should take a break and wrap the last of my Xmas presents.  Ho ho humbug...


* I did find this article partly amusing but mostly just depressing proving that people are more than willing to let on how terrible they are when they can confess anonymously to any number of things.

** There's no point in pretending it would be easy, and certainly in the short to medium term it would mean massive disruption to our society as we decarbonize, and likely high unemployment in perpetuity thereafter, as our consumption has to go way, way down.  But there were certainly a number of baby steps that could have been taken well before now that would have positioned us to transition to a lower-carbon society with less pain than we face now.  But most humans are very short-sighted and really don't like to change, which is largely why I have so little use for the masses.

Another Mixed-up Weekend

I'm in a curious mental space, since I actually just had a few vacation days (Thurs. and Fri.), though I did work more than I should have.  I did manage to get at least a bit of stuff done that I would normally do on the weekend, so now it's like I already had my weekend off, and now what do I do now that it is actually the weekend.

This may be more of a problem next week when I am taking another two days off, and then Christmas week when I am only in the office on Dec 24!  There are certainly a few projects that I could and probably should focus on -- restarting the quilt (while I have made progress on it, it is clear it won't be ready for Christmas) and finishing this puzzle (which has been on the floor of my study since the summer!) and reading a few of the books in my book box and posting a few book reviews on the blog.  And of course going through about a dozen boxes in the basement and throwing out more stuff.  I will say it is getting harder and harder to sell used things, particularly CDs.  I took a whole stack to a used book/CD store, and the guy would only accept one.  I'll probably try two more stores, then give up in despair.  I've probably passed the time when I can get money for DVDs, even kids' DVDs, since people just want to stream nowadays.  Basically, my entire collection, particularly the DVDs and CDs, will just end up in a landfill thirty or so years from now.  What an incredibly depressing thought...  I'm not saying it was ever easy finding a place for collections after the owner had passed on, but at least there was a meaningful market for used books and CDs ten years ago.  That era has simply passed away.

But back to my weekend plans.  I had originally thought that I would see the Nelson Mandela exhibit up in North York on Sat. and then go see the caravan exhibit at the Aga Khan on Sun., followed by a matinee performance of Between Riverside and Crazy at Coal Mine.  However, my wife is very under the weather today, so I think I will change the plans to focus on putting up the Christmas tree today (and seeing Mandela next week).  I do have all the boxes of ornaments upstairs, but I still need to bring the tree up.  My goal is that when we put everything away in early January, we can consolidate the boxes and get rid of several.  I'll still plan on taking my son to the caravan exhibit tomorrow, unless he gets sick as well.  There is a moderate chance that I will go see The Lowest of the Low at Lee's Palace tonight.  (Apparently, they sold out the Horseshoe last night, but as far as I can tell, there are still tickets to Lee's Palace.)  So I think this will end up being a fairly busy and not very restful weekend, but I do have a fair bit of time off coming up next week, and I can look forward to that.

One thing that did pass me by is that the deadline to get discounts at the Shaw Festival has already passed (Friday at midnight).  There was a very small chance that I was going to see both parts of The Mahabharata and possibly Synge's Playboy of the Western World.  And while I am sure The Mahabharata is going to be quite the spectacle, I just am not feeling it right now.  I'm also not sure I want to see Playboy at Shaw rates (I read it quite a while ago and it didn't really grab me).  If it transfers to Toronto in a year or two I'll go, but I think I'll pass otherwise.  Interestingly, it's not even possible to buy tickets at Stratford (if you aren't a member) until early January, so I have a few more weeks to go there.

Update: We did manage to get the tree up.  I was getting increasingly annoyed at how many of the boxes were fairly close to empty.  We should definitely be able to get rid of at least 4 or maybe even 5 boxes, even if we hang onto basically all of the ornaments.

After the tree was up, I did run over to Union Station and took care of a few things at work.  Then I took a couple of books over to BMV and actually got some money for them!  I also asked at Seekers to see if they would be interested in the Musil set, but I need to call later when the buyer is in.  Then I went over to Lee's Palace.  The Lowest of the Low was playing with Skye Wallace as the opening act.  I wasn't sure if there were still tickets, but I thought so, and in fact I was able to get in by just paying the cover (and not all the Ticketmaster surcharges).  It was a long wait, however, as I was behind two guys who were deeply invested in the Sterling Institute (which is a bit of a cult not completely dissimilar to Scientology).  I managed to stay well clear of them when the doors finally opened.  Because I was so early, I actually managed to get a seat along the wall where I stayed for the entire concert.  I'll try to discuss this in a separate post, but it was a good, but long, concert.  They finally wrapped up the 4th encore at 12:30, and I didn't get home until just about 1 am.  Definitely later than I am used to staying out...

Hot Ticket (Buffoon and Other Plays)

It's certainly not the end of the world, but perhaps I should have tried harder to get to Buffoon at Tarragon last Wed.  On Friday, I ran up there about an hour before curtain, but the show was sold out.  (They tried to get me to go to Copy That instead, but the reviews have just been brutal, and I had no intention of going.)  Interestingly, there was a movie shoot going on nearby, and it was definitely a drag for me to scoot past it (even on foot) to get to the theatre, and this was before they actually started rolling.  It looked like it would be impossible to get through the intersection by cab or Uber, which will definitely cause problems for most of the Tarragon patrons coming to Buffoon.

Then I thought I would try for the Sunday matinee, but it is sold out tomorrow (and the following Sunday)!  Still, I'm glad I know this now, and I don't waste my time heading over.  I think the most likely time I will make it is next Wed.  I actually am leaving work a bit early for a physio appointment to have my knee looked at.  Then there is a bit of a holiday party thrown by my former manager, and then I'll run up to Tarragon.  I expect I'll probably be able to get a seat for a mid-week performance, but if not, so be it.

Between Riverside and Crazy (at Coal Mine) is another hot property (and probably slightly more deservedly so).  While they have added a couple of shows, most of the shows are sold out.  I decided I was interested enough to go ahead and book a regular ticket, and I managed to get a matinee performance, so I'll be checking that out fairly soon.

Finally, last year A Christmas Carol at the Campbell House Museum was sold out right away.  It was about 80% sold out when I finally got around to booking this year.  Unfortunately, all the matinee performances and even the 7 pm shows are sold out, but I managed to get tickets for myself, my wife and my son for a 9 pm show.  I'm definitely looking forward to that, as I know one of the actors casually and another actor fairly well.  This will likely be the last play I see in 2019, so hopefully it will live up to the buzz.

Book Diversion

It's no secret that I don't always follow my reading list in any precise order, though usually the main thrust of my reading is determined by the list with occasional forays into my library holds list (to keep the inactive holds from expiring).

Currently, I am about halfway through the LOA volumes of William Maxwell and Dawn Powell.  It was starting to feel a bit too much of the same reading through them in a short space of time, so I decided on a minor diversion to read three somewhat thematically linked books: The Book of Eve, Basic Black with Pearls and Sandra Beck.  All three are by Canadian authors, and I'll try to get to the reviews fairly soon before too much time has passed and my first impressions are lost.  (As a bit of an aside, I just didn't like Sandra Beck all that much.  A while ago I had thought I scored a signed copy from House of Anansi Press, though in the end they were sold out.  If I had gotten the signed copy, I would have been very loathe to part with it, but since I didn't, I will put it out in my Little Free Library and see if anyone else appreciates this novel more than I did.  So another way I was saved from myself...)

I think the diversion might last a little bit longer than I originally anticipated, however.  First off, I want to read Salman Rushdie's last 3 volumes.  None of them are particularly long (300-400 pages), but it will still take a while to get through them.  In addition, I have sort of hinted that I needed to clear out a lot of books in the basement as part of a general clearing out down there.  While most books were pretty clearly in the keep or discard category, I ended up putting together a box of books that I expect I would want to read once (or even just skim in the case of non-fiction).  I am going to make a concerted effort to get through this box before I return to my regular list (probably a small number are actually on the list, but I don't have the time to check right now).

I already knew that I was very unlikely to tackle Fontane's Before the Storm and Tolstoy's War and Peace this winter, and this diversion makes it impossible.  I guess I will pencil them in for the end of 2020.  While I probably won't read a long book to wrap up 2019, if I do (mostly because I do have some vacation time to burn up), the two contenders are Perec's Life: a User's Manual and Mann's The Magic Mountain.  But mostly I have to get through the books in the box...

Edit: It sounds like The Magic Mountain is probably the most appropriate to read in the winter time, especially when fighting off a lingering cold.  That said, I'm not sure I will actually tackle it this winter.  I've heard that the Woods translation, which emerged in 1995, is vastly superior to the older translation (that I owned during high school(!) but never actually got around to reading and ultimately discarded prior to one of my many moves).  Once in a while it actually pays off to be a bit of a laggard, at least in terms of improved translations.

Saving Me from Myself

Once in the while something doesn't go quite according to plan.  While this is always annoying, sometimes it does work out in the end.  I am thinking of a couple of minor examples from this week.

First, I had been very tempted to buy the 2nd edition of an academic book called Metropolitan Governance.  The 1st edition is at Robarts, but it took a while for me to actually borrow it (last night actually).  In the meantime, the low cost version of the 2nd edition jumped from $12 to $37!  Now I could still order a relatively inexpensive version and have it shipped to the States, but I am getting a little weary of waiting for someone to be able to deliver it to me.  In addition, this is really within a line of research I am unlikely to pursue, so that I can take this as a message to just drop it (that old line of research).  And I have been struggling to get rid of dozens of academic books, so adding another one to the pile seems perverse.  The final consideration is that it is incredibly difficult these days to donate books to libraries and have them added to their collection (and here I am speaking specifically of books that the library doesn't own).  Robarts has completely paused its donation program and the Toronto Public Library never had much of a donation program to begin with (everything just goes into the library book sale!).  If either accepted donations, then my decision would be different.

As it happens I ordered a book (or really a catalog) on Romare Bearden and his lesser known abstract work .  While it is ok, I don't love it and I'd prefer it go into a library.  I think my best case for making a donation is the AGO library, and I'll touch base with them later.

But back to the Metropolitan Governance book.  There are a few copies of the edition I want in academic libraries in Canada, though sadly not in Toronto.  I'll go ahead and see if I can get it through inter-library loan, but, if not, then that is also a bit of a sign, I suppose.

The second thing is that I had quite the adventure planned out for tonight: first dropping in at a work holiday party (yes, it seems much too early to me too!), then going swimming in Regent Park, then back-tracking to Tarragon to see if I could get rush tickets for Buffoon.  I thought about it, and how much trouble I've been having with transit these days (with only a small amount of snow) and decided I couldn't count on the TTC getting me there.  Instead I would just go swimming and then head over to the mall instead for a few last minute gifts.  I'll see about rush tickets on Friday when I won't be running around so much.  I still have one more week to try to rush the show if Friday doesn't work out.  I think I'll be a lot happier not trying to cram quite so much stuff into one evening.

Update: I definitely made the right call tonight.  I only stayed at the holiday party for 30 minutes.  Then it took quite a while just to catch a bus to take me north from Front to Dundas.  I ended up walking from Sherbourne to the pool and no bus turned up at all in that time (going east anyway).  I was able to get my laps in (though unfortunately the warm water spa is closed for repairs), and then I got a few things at the mall.  I would never have made it back to Tarragon in time.

Also, as I was going through some files, I realized that in my grad student heyday, I actually copied several chapters out of the Metropolitan Governance book, so I won't even need to ask about inter-library loan.  This came as a bit of a surprise, as I don't think this particular edition was in the Northwestern Library, though I suppose I had borrowing privileges at University of Chicago (which did have the volume) and I might have gotten it there.  At any rate, I am even more glad I didn't attempt to order the book!

Toronto Biennial of Art winding down

In addition to this being Black Friday, it is also the last weekend of the Toronto Biennial of Art.  I truly had meant to blog about this much sooner, but I guess better late than never.  (Actually, I had briefly considered signing up to volunteer for this, but life intervened as it always does.)

There has been a small exhibition of photos by Luis Jacob in Union Station since the beginning of the Biennial, but it took me a while to go out to some of the other exhibition sites (and I just never had any intention of going much beyond the urban core, like out to Mississauga).

Luis Jacob, Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto City Hall, 2017

I did make a bit of an effort to get out to MOCA to see the Age of You exhibition curated by Douglas Coupland.  This wasn't technically part of the Biennial (since it wasn't free), but it was reasonably thought provoking, even if the artistic element of the show was on the thin side.  This show seemed to be designed specifically for people with short attention spans, even more than Coupland's previous retrospective.)

This exhibit runs through Jan. 5, so there is still over a month left to see it.  One video installation by Shezad Dawood (actually three parts of the Leviathan series) were on view, though that stopped running in early November.  However, part 5 is still on view at the main Biennial Hub (259 Lakeshore Blvd East) through tomorrow.

It took me quite a while to get to the Biennial Hub, and in the end I tried to bike there.  I did make it in the end, but it felt incredibly dangerous, particularly with the heavy truck traffic on Lakeshore and the construction at the Biennial site itself!  I would not recommend trying to get their via bike (or really even by transit), but if you do attempt it, it is probably safer to stick to Queens Quay and the Martin Goodman Trail, and then cutting north on Bonnycastle.  Nonetheless, this felt like a terrible, terrible location for the hub of the Biennial.

I'll just post a few things I found of interest at the hub, and circle back around and caption them tonight.

Curtis Talwst Santiago, from the Infinity Series, 2012-2019

Shezad Dawood, The Trouble with Lichen 3, 2019

Luis Jacob, Regent Park Boulevard, 2018

Adrian Stimson, Guess who's coming to dinner?, 2019

At this point, I am debating whether to go out to Ontario Place to catch part of The Drowned World installation.  I probably will, since this is the last day (it doesn't run tomorrow), but I definitely find getting over there to be a chore.  I suppose I might take the GO Train one stop to Exhibition.  I already can't make the opening (J.G. Ballard reading from his novel The Drowned World) but I can make some of the intermediate and end sections if I decide I really want to make the effort.  I'll decide shortly.

Update: I did go to Ontario Place.  It was actually an enormous hassle, since the train doors didn't open at Exhibition!  And we were hijacked to Mimico and had to take an Uber to get back.  Believe me, I am going to take this up with many people at GO and Metrolinx on Monday!  I was in an incredibly foul mood by this point, but I decided to head over to Ontario Place anyway (across the seas of parking lots).  It was vaguely amusing to see the long lines to get into Cirque du Soleil's new show, Alegria, and then the lack of lines to get into the Cinesphere for The Drowned World.  That's not to say that there were not people there.  It was moderately full of people who had settled in for the long haul (5+ hours of various video pieces).  Unfortunately, I arrived just as a one-hour piece on saving seeds from ecological devastation started, and this just didn't interest me at all.  I think if I hadn't been waylaid by GO, it would have been more to my taste, and the pieces in the previous half hour looked a bit more interesting.  However, it was pretty clear that this was just not my day, so I turned around and left.  I actually would have taken the streetcar back, but I just missed one, and it was only a 4 minute wait for the next GO train, which did open its doors at Union Station at least.  I will ask the organizers if any of the video from The Drowned World will go on-line or if a DVD will be produced, but the likely answer is no.  So I have to say the way the Biennial wound down for me was fairly disappointing, and I probably won't fondly remember this event, even with the passage of time.  C'est la vie.

High-Pressure Weekend

There are some stories from the business section of the paper showing that Black Friday sales have come to Canada (whereas previously it had been more of a Boxing Day thing, i.e. discounting products only after the holiday rush).  While I will probably go downtown this weekend, I am going to avoid the Eaton Centre and pretty much all shopping districts.  That's not to say I am completely done with Xmas shopping, but I just can't be bothered, especially when the crowds are so large.  I'm also making a semi-conscious effort to reduce the amount of stuff in our lives, moving more to digital delivery as well as "sharing experiences" instead of consumer goods.  (That's not to say that the children are completely on board, though it is true they are much less interested in toys than they used to be.)

What is interesting to me is that in addition to Porter Airlines trying to get in on the Black Friday madness (and I may in the end end up booking a flight), quite a few theatres and musical organizations (like the TSO) are having Black Friday sales.  I probably won't add any more January concerts to an already very full month, but I was happy to take advantage of a sale for Lynn Nottage's Sweat at Canadian Stage.  I've had my eye on this play for a while, and I had held off buying tickets to see if a sale would come along.  I didn't see any sales at Mirvish that particularly interested me (at this point I'm probably only interested in catching Come From Away a second time).  While there are plays at Crow's Nest that I plan to check out next year, they weren't included in any promotions this weekend, though I'll take one more look tonight.

Anyway, it's an interesting strategy, and I'll try to remember next year that if there is something I want to see in the first quarter of the year, then there will likely be a Black Friday sale covering it.  Happy shopping...

Competing (4) Seasons

It's generally not that hard to see Vivaldi's The Four Seasons live.  It's such a popular piece that it pops up generally once a year somewhere in Toronto.  A less common (but still not uncommon pairing) is The Four Seasons and Piazzolla's The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.  I saw that combo in Vancouver, but unfortunately didn't make it to a Toronto concert of the same, probably a year ago.

This week has the distinction of having two competing versions of Vivaldi's Four Seasons at two separate venues.  I have to admit, somewhat sheepishly, that I am going to both, so I should be able to make direct comparisons.  Fortunately, the rest of the programs are different!

As it happens, Daniel Hope came through with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra at Koerner Hall in Toronto last Sunday.  They played Vivaldi's Four Seasons for strings and harpsichord but accompanied by guitar or lute, depending on the "season."  That was an interesting twist that didn't overwhelm the rest of the performers.

They opened with a very fine Bach Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, BWV 104.  By the end of the concert, they had earned (or at least performed) three encores.  No question there is a bit difference in Europe and North America towards the encore at a classical concert.  Generally, I find encores extremely rare, unless it is a European orchestra on tour here.  The first encore was the last movement of a different Vivaldi concerto, then Gershwin's I Got Rhythm! and finally Weill's September Song.  An interesting change of pace.  Sadly, if you didn't already go, you'll have to settle for listening to his recording of the piece with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra.

However, there are two dates remaining for the TSO's performance of Vivaldi's and Copland's Appalachian Spring: tonight and Thurs.  More details (and some limited tickets) here.  I'm going to the Thurs. performance, which I expect will be very nice as well.  Maybe the music will help clear up some of these early winter blahs, as we seem to have skipped most of autumn this year...

Edit: We saw Jonathan Crow lead the TSO last night.  It was a fine performance, but I am going to give the node to Daniel Hope, partly because I was intrigued by the guitar/lute accompaniment, but also the coughing was so out of control last night.  (I realize this is outside of the control of the musicians, but it is just a regular epidemic at Roy Thompson Hall.)  I did think the TSO did something a bit innovative with vibrato at the start of Winter, but it is a little hard to describe, so I won't try.

Wrapping Up Many Books

While I still feel like I am drowning in books most days (definitely exacerbated by a pressing need to clear out a lot of space in the basement!), I have been getting through books at a faster clip these days.  Surely part of that is due to being on transit more (than biking), but also that I am reading somewhat shorter books in the 200-300 page range.  I've been alternating William Maxwell and Dawn Powell novels from their respective Library of America volumes, and the earlier novels all top out at about 250-300 pages.

I am finding that a little Dawn Powell goes a long way.  I thought Turn, Magic Wheel was a real blast of fresh air, and there were some very amusing moments (particularly dinner parties that go wrong) in A Time to Be Born and The Locusts Have No King.  However, I liked the main characters less and less as the novels progressed.  I particularly had trouble maintaining any interest in Frederick, the male lead in Locusts, who makes a complete fool of himself over a poppet.  Of course this happens, particularly to over-intellectual people, but I definitely lost interest whenever he was pining away after Dodo.

I have about 30 pages left in Loren Eiseley's The Night Country.  While there are some interesting bits here as well, I don't really like how autobiographical these sketches are (nor the creeping in of his religious precepts).  I vastly preferred his articles that are more grounded in science, with the personal restricted to just a few minor asides.  That is not to say that many people wouldn't prefer The Night Country to The Invisible Pyramid or The Immense Journey, both of which I really liked, but this isn't really up my alley.  My general impression is that most of his books are more science-based, but that The Star Thrower (his final book) reverts back to the personal, so I'll probably want to make sure that isn't the book that I read last.  I'll probably want to end my journey through his work with The Unexpected Universe.

While I have a better understanding of what Toni Morrison was doing, after reading quite a few interviews (collected in Conversations), it doesn't mean that I actually like the work any better.  When I do like a Toni Morrison novel, such as Song of Solomon, I really like it, but the ones I don't care for as much (Sula, Tar Baby and Beloved), then I just don't care for them at all.  I finally abandoned Tar Baby after finding the plot (literally a reworking of the tar baby folk tale mixed in with Bodou Saved from Drowning) to be completely unbelievable.  I have about 40 pages left in Sula, and I figure I'll press on at this point.  I honestly don't know if I will reread Beloved, but perhaps I shall.  I probably should save Song of Solomon for last, just to make sure I end this journey on an upbeat note.

And with that, I need to get back to work.

Edit (11/22): I have made it through both works.  Now I'm launching into two relatively short novels: The Book of Eve by Constance Beresford-Howe and The Organ Builder by Robert Cohen.  This was Cohen's first novel, and it is one that caught my eye many, many years ago, as the cover reminded me a bit of a Robinson Davies' novel.

Obscure Author No More!

At least within Canada, Ian Williams, winner of the 2019 Giller Prize, will no longer simply be an obscure poet and novelist.  He will be a known commodity among the literati.  I thought his acceptance speech (embedded here) was touching.

I am not terribly likely to read his novel, Reproduction, though I will say the report from the Giller Prize jury ("It's a pointed and often playful plotting out of individual and shared stories in the close spaces of hospital rooms, garages, mansions and apartments, and a symphonic performance of resonant and dissonant voices...") does sound at least a little bit interesting.  Maybe I'll put it at the bottom of my TBR list and see how I am feeling about it in 2025.

Anyhow, best of luck to Mr Williams on writing a worthy follow-up!

Obscure author rescued from oblivion

I enjoyed this article in Slate about John M. Ford.  He was primarily a SF writer, who also occasionally wrote fantasy novels, and apparently was a big hit at conventions, as well as made a bit of a splash in the gaming community (pre-video games).  I have to admit I have never heard about him or read any of his works, but I am glad to hear than an arrangement has been made with his family to republish most of his novels and even bring out some unpublished work, including an unfinished novel called Aspects, which Neil Gaiman raved about. 

It has been a very long time since I have read SF extensively, not since my teens really, though there are a few authors or at least series that I reread from time to time (mostly Roger Zelazny, George Alec Effinger and Ian McDonald), but I think I will try to make time for The Dragon Waiting and then Aspects when they are published (or republished) by Tor, starting in the fall of 2020.

Trip to Hamilton

I don't make that many trips out to Hamilton, probably less than once a year.  My first trip to see the Cezanne's at the Art Gallery of Hamilton is probably still the best.  I generally find Hamilton a little depressing and more than a little disorganized.  I still smart a bit over the fact that I missed a pretty decent concert out there because I could not get any information on whether the box office would actually be open to sell same day tickets...

Today I made pretty decent time on the express bus to Hamilton and had a bit of time to kill before the AGH opened.  I found wandering downtown Hamilton was even more depressing on a Sunday, since an awful lot of shops were closed.

There is this large mall (Hamilton Place?) with an indoor farmer's market that I often visit.  Parts of it were completely closed off or permanently closed down and looked like a ghost town (the way so much of Buffalo does) but I did find an open food court with a decent fast food curry place (this is one area where Vancouver was better than Toronto, at least to date).  I was running a bit late by this point, so I skipped the trek over to the farmer's market.

The show at the AGH was ok, but not mind-blowing.  It was an exhibit on cartoonists from Canada, with a focus on independent cartoonists.  The most famous (to me) was Seth.  The catalogue is fairly reasonable at $25, but I didn't want to just pick it up (and I didn't have time to properly browse it).  At the moment, it still isn't in any of the local libraries, and apparently it won't be offered up on Amazon until mid April(!), so the best way to get one is to trek over to Hamilton.  (Though I will see if the AGO happens to have any on my next trip there.)  They had a smaller exhibit on some pieces they have added to the collection recently.  Probably the highlight was a Colville piece donated in 2014.

Alex Colville, Traveller, 1992

From my perspective, the pieces upstairs in the permanent collection were generally the best.  They had a reasonable mix of the Group of Seven (and Emily Carr) as well as the Painters Eleven.

Tom Thomson, The Birch Grove, Autumn, 1915-6

 

Tom Hodgson, Vertical Construction, 1957

It was 1 by the time I wrapped up, and I was starting to get a bit antsy about getting over to McMaster.  I think this probably is my first time going over to McMaster, though I've been to the Queens campus (in Kingston) a couple of times.  I needed to get there by 2 for a Kronos Quartet concert.

It looks like the 47 GO Bus goes out there, as well as several variants of the 5 bus (run by HSR).  I managed to get on a 5C, and after asking the driver if he was going to McMaster, settled in for the ride.  I kept checking my phone to make sure we were broadly in the right direction.  Now after I got to campus, I got a bit lost, but I finally found the place with about half an hour to spare.

There's no point in sugar coating it.  I didn't really care for the piece (Terry Riley's Sun Rings), as it was just too long (80 minutes) and frankly inane in many places.  I still admire the Kronos Quartet for their dedication to new music and really committing themselves to the piece, but this was a dud of a concert for me.  They didn't even do any of their often raucous encores.

I also find McMaster a pretty ugly campus and probably won't be back anytime soon.  (I was hoping to check out the McMaster Museum of Art, but it is never open on Sundays and not until noon on Saturdays, which really makes it a drag to get to, and basically something I will ignore in terms of regional cultural attractions.)

I was a bit stressed trying to figure out the bus route back, but I finally managed it, so if I have to go back to McMaster, the next time around will be simpler.  I did struggle a bit trying to figure out where the GO bus would pick me up (having not done this in well over a year), so I walked over to the GO bus terminal, where at least I would be assured of getting on the bus.  I was a little surprised that the next 16 leaving was a double-decker bus, but that was fine, and I had some extra space to myself on the upper deck.

So it was a moderately successful trip to Hamilton, though not one I will likely be repeating anytime soon.

Wall Falls Down

It looks like the Guardian jumped the gun a bit on its various features on the Berlin Wall (technically the 30th anniversary of the wall coming down is tomorrow).  I did like this piece focusing on German writers and their response to the fall of the wall.

I do remember watching the events (on TV) during my junior year of university.  I hadn't really expected the collapse of the Iron Curtain to be nearly as sudden or as far-reaching as it was.  I was correct in that this was hardly the "end of history" as Francis Fukuyama put it, in his stunningly wrong-headed assessment.

Many, many years later I had the opportunity to visit Berlin on a work trip.  I had to make the obligatory visit to Checkpoint Charlie.

 
I also picked up a very small fragment of the Berlin Wall from the Berlin Wall Museum. 

Obviously, it's possible that it's a fake, but, given it's provenance from the museum, odds are it's the real deal.

I likely won't do a whole lot to memorialize the fall tomorrow, though I am hoping to watch the movie Good Bye Berlin fairly soon, where an East Berlin woman emerges from a coma (after the fall of the wall); her family tries to hide the momentous events from her, to avoid her having a relapse from the shock.  It's supposed to be a good comedy, but I've never gotten through the whole movie.

No Hamlet

I'm sure I am just being an old fuddy-duddy, but I am quite disappointed in the casting of Hamlet at Stratford to the point that I won't go after all.  First off, I can't tell if they are going for a gender-bent Hamlet or just an extremely androgynous one, but either way it doesn't work for me.  Second, I have very strong doubts about the Othello-like vibe when casting Andre Sills as Hamlet's father yet then a white actor as Claudius, his brother.

They are already doing an unconventional take on Hamlet next season (Hamlet-911), so I don't see why they can't do a more traditional Hamlet in the Festival Theatre.  In any case, I won't be going, and I'll just take my son to a different production one of these days.  I guess that is enough ranting for one day.

Edit: I did go and see this, and I didn't like it at all, though at least they weren't playing Hamlet as a female character.  I only just realized that I had heard about this production in 2019, but it was pushed all the way to 2022 due to COVID!

SFYS - Shut Down in November

Well, I hadn't heard anything about the Sing-for-Your-Supper and whether my very tardy piece had been accepted or not, so I decided to go up to Tarragon anyway.  I figured I would leave at intermission if my piece hadn't been taken.  Well, it turns out that the event had been cancelled.  Back at home, my wife managed to find one Facebook posting that said November was cancelled (on fairly short notice I believe), though I still didn't find it in my searching, so there is no question their main Facebook page leaves a lot to be desired (and it wouldn't have been remiss to at least email me and tell me the theatre would be dark).  At any rate, the main person who reads the scripts is moving on (to Ottawa of all places) and is hoping to recruit someone else.  I don't really think I have the time to take that on, and even if I did, then I would no longer be able to have my pieces read at SFYS, so that definitely wouldn't work!  Maybe one of the actors has a bit more time and can pitch in.

In the short term, this means that I will probably pull my piece from consideration, tighten it up a bit more and add the coda.  Just last night I thought of a fairly saucy punchline, though it only works if enough people are in on the joke.  It runs "Just another American Juliette looking for her Canadian Romeo.  Except for the bloody ending, of course.  (Beat.)  I mean unless you're really into that kind of thing."

Almost any phrase can be given sexual connotations, so I think most people (with a moderately dirty mind) would get what she is talking about.  But just to underline the point, I added a definition of "bloody ending" to the Urban Dictionary, and we'll see if it spreads.  It's not my finest moment as a writer, but I thought it was funny enough.

I'll send the piece to Toronto Cold Reads instead, even though I have never had much success there.  Then I'll work on one or two more pieces for the Dec. meeting of SFYS.  One piece is about a man who can be guilted into just about anything, so he ends up with one homeless guy living in his living room and he'll probably have another before the piece ends.  This could be interesting, but I'm not quite sure how dark to go.  The other is a piece, inspired by Pinter's Betrayal, about the unravelling of an affair.  I hope to have both pieces ready in time, though that is more of an aspirational goal, given my recent history.

I very briefly considered entering the Fringe lottery, which closes on Nov 10.  If I won, this would definitely force me to finish the rewrites and extensions of my SF piece about a couple and their two AI units.  But I realized 1) I'm not entirely sure it will work as a full-length piece and 2) I'd like to travel this summer and I don't want to be responsible for whipping a troupe into shape for Fringe.  So I'll pass this year at least.  Maybe the following year I will finally have recovered enough to give it another go.

That's pretty much it.  I've been seeing a lot of good shows, and I'm going to see Trout Stanley at Factory this week (with good reviews so far, so fingers crossed), and I'll try to check out Night Watch most likely next week.  Some info here.  If I do go, it will probably be next week.

Under-the-Weather Weekend

I've been fighting off a cold or something these past two weeks, and I finally gave in on Sat.  (I'm sure it didn't help that I finally ran out of antihistamine tablets.)  I cancelled my plans for the day and mostly slept in.  Now it isn't that I did absolutely nothing on Sat.  I finished a playlet on a student that comes to live with her aunt and uncle to study at UT.  It probably won't get taken for SFYS, since it was appallingly late, and it is a bit too long.  Also, I decided I didn't like the ending, as it was too pat.  I'm going to add a 3-4 page coda that I think will liven it up a bit.  I should be able to get to that today.  I also went and got the groceries in the evening, but otherwise I tried to rest.  I even skipped the gym, so I'm feeling somewhat guilty about that.  Maybe it is just as well that my daughter's glasses didn't come in after all, even though at the time I was quite annoyed.

I'm feeling a bit better today and will try to get through some of my abandoned tasks today.  I probably will make it downtown for a while.  I'll likely take my daughter to Matty Eckler for a short pool session, and then I'll probably hit the gym after that.

One thing that is, mercifully, still on track is the installation of the downstairs bathroom.  It was framed on Thurs., then the drywall went up Friday and then yesterday they started prepping to do the painting and installation of the fixtures.

It looks like it will be a good-sized shower, which is pretty nice, though it will definitely take some getting use to in terms of getting in there, since there is a heating duct that runs right along side of it.  Also, it will be a tight squeeze to access the spare refrigerator, though I think over time we'll come to terms with the space.

The plan is to be finished with the construction on Friday, and I presume they will clean up the inside and outside spaces Friday and Saturday.  It will certainly be nice not having so much junk in the backyard, as it made it very challenging to put out the garbage, and I've pretty much given up on cycling for the time being.  (To be fair, I am so much more gun shy about riding in inclement weather that I had already unofficially stopped biking to work.)

The main issue after that will be to continue clearing out more of the boxes of storage and to figure out to do with essentially 5-6 boxes of books that are very, very low on my reading list.  There's only so much room in my Little Free Library after all... 

Well, I had better run if I am going to get anything done today.

13th Canadian Challenge - 5th Review - Amusement Park of Constant Sorrow

There is no question that I was drawn to this short novel by the title - Amusement Park of Constant Sorrow* by Jason Heroux.  I briefly debated combining this review with my discussion of Ionesco and the theatre of the absurd, but this novel is really a piece of surrealism (though the line between the two can certainly be thin).

Very early on we find that the narrator, Owen, used to be a dog, and that his father (oddly enough a human) is turning into a bicycle.  I'm not sure this was directly inspired by Bioy Casares's Asleep in the Sun, but there do seem to be a few similarities.  I think you'll know fairly quickly if this sounds intriguing or just silly.  (I tend to be very plot-oriented, and generally surrealism isn't that interesting to me, since it typically means stakes are necessarily low, since almost anything could happen at any time.)

What is a bit different about this is that there is a second plot strand about a company selling home security systems that comes by and installs a system in Owen and Lila's home, with a guarantee that they can cancel within 5 days.  Obviously, nothing could go awry...  Given that this is a much more naturalistic (and a somewhat common yet creepy) plot thread, it does seem to be a bit awkward to try to fit the two plots together, when in fact they are almost like chalk and cheese.

One thing I did like about the book is that there are six or so prose poems scattered throughout the novel.  (Heroux is a published poet as well as a novelist.)  A few of the poems comment directly on the novel, while others are more about the nature of transformation in a novel that features a lot of odd transformations.  In any event, it's a quick read (roughly an hour-long), so dive right in if you want to find out about some of the other transformations that occur throughout the novel.


* I typed "constant sorry" instead of "constant sorrow."  Perhaps I was trying to make this even more Canadian than it already is (with its name dropping No Frills and the double double from Tims).

13th Canadian Challenge - 4th Review - Frying Plantain

Frying Plantain by Zalika Reid-Benta was long-listed for the 2019 Giller Award, though it didn't make the short list.  Nonetheless, this is a fairly remarkable achievement because #1) this is actually a collection of short stories (which often get short shrift) and #2) this is the author's first published book.  However, it is true that this should rightly be considered a novel-in-stories.  One reviewer quipped that this really should be titled Lives of Black Girls and Women, and there are strong ties to Munro's classic novel-in-stories.

The stories focus on Kara, a young girl of Jamaican heritage as she grows up in Toronto.  The very first story "Pig Head" introduces her while she and her mother are staying with relatives in Jamaica.  She is viewed by her cousins as "soft," and her mother generally agrees with this assessment.  Viewing a severed pig head in the icebox is fairly traumatizing (though not as bad as watching her relatives kill chickens for soup), but she then uses the story to build up street cred at her school, back in Toronto.

Her mother, Eloise, had Kara when she was around 17, i.e. just a girl herself.  Kara's father is not present in the household, and Kara has very limited interactions with him.  Kara spends her time either with a group of school friends, mostly from the Caribbean, but also with her grandmother, Nana, and grandfather, George.

The relationship between Eloise and Kara's grandmother is incredibly tense.  They have very different outlooks on life, starting from Nana's attachment to her church and her devotion to house keeping.  Eloise and her mother get in a number of raging arguments during the various times that she and Kara have to move in with her mother.  In one instance, Nana throws Eloise out, and only lets them back for one week (while Eloise finds a new apartment) when Kara is asked to be the go-between.

Eloise is largely driven by a desire to improve her own lot -- and to make sure that her daughter doesn't make the same mistakes she did.  Incidentally, one of the reasons Eloise and Kara have to move back with Nana is that Eloise is a full-time grad student (in a PhD program* no less!).  Eloise does push Kara in school, and in fact relocates a few times to enroll Kara in "better" schools, with the result that she is cut off from her main group of friends, who are mostly second-generation immigrants from the Caribbean.

Minor SPOILER alert:

One refreshing aspect of this book is that, while Kara certainly struggles with math, she never completely ditches school in favour of her friends (at most skipping school a couple of times), and she graduates from high school with several offers from good universities.  Perhaps even more shocking (and in sharp contrast to Munro's Lives of Girls and Women), Kara does not throw her chance at university away, despite fooling around a bit with boys.  She only "goes the distance" with boys who use protection, unlike her mother...

Where Frying Plantain does seem similar to other immigrant narratives is that Kara never quite knows where she fits into Canadian culture.  Most of her friends, even after the move(s), are Caribbean.  On the other hand, Kara decides she wants to go into the humanities (media studies) rather than a more "practical" profession.  She does love her mother -- and her grandmother (in her own way) -- but she doesn't always see things the same way.  She is particularly aggravated by the way her grandfather cheats on Nana, and yet always has a home to come back to.  Kara doesn't want any part of these "country ways."  It's harder to say what the bonds between Eloise and Nana are, but they certainly seem frayed most of the time.  There doesn't seem to be any easy resolution to Kara's dilemmas (and the last stories are somewhat open-ended), but the reader generally supposes that she will go to university and probably ultimately see things more like her mother does. 


* I would say that this feels like a slight mis-step in the plot in the sense that the vast majority of people in Eloise's position (and certainly most immigrants) would pursue a professional degree or stop at a Master's degree.  PhDs actually have a negative earning potential for longer (than a Master's or most professional degrees), and in many cases individuals who stop at a Master's earn more than those with PhDs.  This is not true for Associate or Full professors, but the number of these slots has shriveled up since the 1990s; generally under 25% of PhD holders will become tenure-track professors (and in some fields it is more like 5%).  This article may actually be too rosy, and this piece from the Economist feels a bit more reflective of the reality.  This is a long digression, but I found it a very odd artistic choice to have Eloise pursue a PhD.

Fall Hits and Low-Key Halloween

It took a while, but we've finally gotten the fall leaves to turn.  There is an austere beauty in the plants that manage to stick it out into mid-autumn, though maybe austere isn't quite the right word for some of the brilliant colours we get.

The second photo is from my front yard.  In the lower right corner is a burning bush I put in last year.  It has frankly been a big disappointment in that the leaves don't turn bright red, but sort of a dark dusky purple.

Of course, it isn't too long after we get the leaves to turn that they all fall off the trees, and have to be swept/raked up.  In my case, I can put most of them in the back of the yard for composting.

As predicted, it was a fairly rainy Halloween last night.  (It rains most Halloweens, though last year was nice and dry.)  There were a few stretches between 6 and 7 where the rain slowed down to a light drizzle or even a misting, and a few parents brought their kids out, but then around 7 the rain came down pretty heavily again, and the trick-or-treating was effectively over.

My daughter wanted to go out, and she put on a cat costume, but got bored after a few houses.  So we came back in, and she handed out candy for a while.  We switched off the lights at 7:30.  I have some candy left over, but not a ridiculous pile.  (If so, I would have just taken it to work, but I don't think I'll bother.)

We don't put out a lot of decorations, but a couple of posters on the front of the house, and I recently bought some orange outdoor lights.

This year, for the first time in many years, I did carve a pumpkin, under the direction of my daughter.  She wanted it to look like the pumpkin was vomiting out its insides.  Mission accomplished, I think.

Then we set it outside on the bench, and the squirrels made it even a bit grosser.

All in all, a somewhat disappointing Halloween, but it could certainly have been worse.  Incredibly, it was snowing in Chicago* (the snow in our forecast fizzled out a day or two ago, though we'll probably get snow fairly soon).  In Montreal and other parts of Quebec, the heavy rain and winds led to the mayor asking parents to reschedule Halloween to Nov. 1!  I'm sure that went over well, and fortunately there was no rescheduling of Halloween in Toronto.

* I'm still sort of processing just how awful it must be to live in those parts of Chicago where gang-bangers will openly shoot across the street when there are kids around trick-or-treating.  I hope that this terrible event will be too much for some, and that the no-snitch code frays and someone turns them in.