Flash Updates

I've been struggling to migrate bank accounts and make sure I could pay my taxes (so I could file without asking for an extension), and I just managed to do that.  Today was sunny if a bit chilly, and I ran up to the Danforth to mail them off.  That's a load off my mind.  I guess I have the rest of the week to try to get a different home insurance policy, as I am quite unhappy with my current insurance company.  

This weekend (really Saturday evening), I finally sat down and wrote out a short play I've been thinking about since last summer!  It's about a very lonely barista in an abandoned food court.  I guess I only write out these short plays when there is an audience, and SFYS has been on hiatus for a long time.  However, it is restarting on May 3!  Normally, we would have had up until the last weekend (i.e. the upcoming weekend) but there was such pent-up demand that they didn't need to wait.  I was already told that my piece is on the slate, which is great.  Details and the link to the event will eventually be posted here.  It's nice to not sweat the deadline for once, and maybe I can work on a few other pieces I have been toying with.  If I extended my Pandemic Diaries piece and wrote long piece on urban planners I might have enough to do a Zoom event.  Something I might target in May (about a year after the first one) or June.

I haven't really decided if I will start reviewing books formally or semi-formally again.  I probably could make up for lost time if I largely stuck to poetry, which is largely what I've been reading lately (aside from Don Quixote and now Under the Volcano).

I only just today learned that Talonbooks has published a major new collection by George Bowering, Taking Measures, which collects most of his book-length serial poems.  I have much but not all of this in an earlier Selected Poems.  They are also publishing Daphne Marlatt's early works, including Vancouver Poems, in Intertidal.  I'm definitely going to order the Bowering.  I'm less sure about the Marlatt collection.  The library has both, and I'll check them out, along with Marlatt's recent book, Then Now, to see how I feel about them.  Whichever I choose will be a bit of a belated birthday present to myself.  I was going to order them directly from Talonbooks, but the shipping is simply outrageous.  It looks like Queen Books can special order them all as well as pre-order Bowering's latest Could Be, so I'll do so and pick them up at a later time, since curbside pickup is still allowed.

I had hoped to watch a French comedy over the weekend (Tati or Etaix), but my son had a bit too much homework.  We watched an episode of Blackaddder IV instead.  I really don't think I've seen that much of this particular season, though I think I managed to see all or nearly all of the 2nd and 3rd seasons.  At this point I expect we'll watch the last episode tomorrow and then the Back and Forth special on Wed.  And then on to Fawlty Towers.

Krazy Kat Redux

As a short update to this post, I asked Fantagraphics again about their plans for George Herriman.  This time around, they actually responded.  They said that Stumble Inn was being shelved indefinitely.  That's a real shame.  It appears that it had a 4 year run as a Sunday strip and a six month run as a daily.  That could probably all be contained in one mega-volume or a 2 volume set (with slip cover, naturally).  It's hard to say from just a few on-line strips, but I think I'd enjoy it.  I would certainly buy it if Fantagraphics or some other publisher puts it out.  I think it is in the public domain at this point...

Fantagraphic did confirm that they are going to start in on the Krazy Kat dailies but not until 2023.  I'll have to think long and hard about that, seeing how many volumes they anticipate, what the cost would be and just how much space it will take up!

I am such a completist that I probably don't want to start unless I am fairly sure Fantagraphics will commit to the whole thing.  Anyway, it looks like I have some time to make up my mind...

Edit (4/26): I actually have two pretty decent examples of the dailies.  The Pacific Comics Club put out a small book with all the 1921 dailies, and then IDW did a focused "Tiger Tea" volume with most of the dailies from 1936-37.  The strips themselves have just the most basic plots, but the wordplay is sometimes quite unique, but what really stands out is that the backgrounds change from panel to panel (and in that sense the example above is not a good example at all).  It might be a stretch to call this surreal, but it is unusual, and maybe I will try to pick up the dailies starting in 2023 after all.  I did see that PCC issued two more volumes collecting 1922 and 1923.  While not in stock in stores, I should be able to pick them up directly from the club.

Short Kennedy interlude

As I was thinking over books that I really would like to get to in the next year or two, so as to enjoy them before I am completely over the hill, someone left a copy of Raymond Kennedy's Ride a Cockhorse (the NYRB edition) in the Little Free Library in the front yard.  While I actually own a different edition, I did pull this out and read the intro.  However, this copy clearly belonged to a smoker, so I put it back after I was done.  The novel seems like quite a romp, with as much manic energy as A Confederacy of Dunces.  So I will add it to my short-term list and see if I can get to it by the summer. 

There's no question that Ride a Cockhorse is Kennedy's masterpiece, though he actually wrote 8 novels, most set near Holyoke, Mass., though The Bitterest Age is a WWII novel set in Germany!

I vaguely remembered that another one of his novels had almost "broke through," so I did a bit of digging and found that Lulu Incognito was a Vintage Contemporary title.  

Oddly enough, this isn't at Robarts, though a few of his other novels are in the stacks, including Good Night, Jupiter, as well as Columbine, which apparently features a hapless WWII vet who gets entangled with a precocious 13 year old (Leaping Shades of Lolita, Batman!).  There is a copy of Lulu in the Toronto Public Library, but only a non-circulating reference copy.  I've already mentioned how silly I think this for fiction, so no point in repeating myself.  Because it was a Vintage book with a pretty cool cover, I went ahead and ordered an out-of-print copy, even though I don't expect it will be as good as Cockhorse.  Who knows, maybe it will make it here around my birthday.

What Am I Actually Reading?

I've basically given up on my main reading list and likely will not return to it for some time (maybe a year or more).  Looking over my current reading, it breaks into three categories: poetry, random short books I plan to give away and stone-cold classics.

I'm not sure if I ever will pull together an anthology revolving around transportation poetry, but it's not a terrible dream.  I do, however, need to find a place to keep track of the poems I stumble across, or this will just be too frustrating (when I forget where I located them...).  Anyway, at the moment I am alternating between reading Kenneth Rexroth, David Ignatow and John Berryman and more contemporary Canadian poets (generally published by Talonbooks, House of Anansi or Brick Books).  As it happens, Brick Books is running a sale on their ebooks, probably running through April, and I picked up Grey All Over by Andrea Actis and House Dreams by Deanna Young.

Mostly I am trying to get rid a lot of books; thinking of books as disposable probably unintentionally leads me to value them less.  A while back I read Hemingway's To Have and Have Not, which I didn't like at all.  In fact, it led to a bit of an internet spat, which I really don't engage in often, and I may or may not go into this at more length.  At any rate, I couldn't wait to get this out of the house.  I'm not really digging Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest that much either, as it is frankly so predictable and a bit too long.  I'm not as far along, but The House on Major Street is better, though arguably Leon Rooke was shamelessly cribbing from Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (though clearly one should only steal from the best...).  Other books on the stack are Tibor Fischer's The Collector Collector, Atwood's Payback, Risk and Culture, John Williams's Stoner, William Trevor's Mrs. Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel  and David Lodge's Therapy (though apparently I'll need to get familiar with Kierkegaard before tackling the Lodge (!)). But at least I am making some progress in getting books out of the house.*

Naturally, I rebel a bit at this and long for some "quality" reading.  I have finally returned to Don Quixote.  Not sure what will follow after, though lately I have been drawn to Lowry's Under the Volcano and Joyce Cary's 1st trilogy and the newish translation of Crime and Punishment.  Other books that fall into this category (but are so long I may hold off a bit) are Grossman's Stalingrad and Life and Fate, Tolstoy's War and Peace, Perec's Life: A User's Manual and rereading The Brothers Karamazov.**  I guess more than anything, I am trying not to put off these books indefinitely, but it is harder to find time than I would like, especially without reading on the train or while on a stationary bike at the gym.  

* While there is definitely less pressure, as there is no decluttering benefit, I probably should also come up with a list of my highest priority e-books.  I could create a folder on my Kindle, but I can list them here as well.

** I guess it is only half rereading if it is a different translation, right?  That is sort of my reasoning with Don Quixote, where the new translation is definitely better, even if I find the character wholly exasperating.

Losing My Mind (Misplacing Things)

One of my more annoying habits is that I tend to get distracted when handling (or really listening to) a large stack of CDs and less frequently DVDs -- and don't always take the time to put them all back in the right cases.  Generally, I am able to fix them in the evening before crashing, but if I don't then it can be a real problem.  I am not generating nearly as many data DVDs as I used to (I guess finally trusting external hard drives a bit more), but the very worst is when I put music CD or DVD into a tall stack of data DVDs.  And then this is magnified about a hundredfold after a move.  There are a handful of missing music CDs that went missing in the last move (all the way back in 2015) and some that I haven't seen since we moved to Toronto from Vancouver in 2014. Even a relatively recent clearing out of the basement, and I am somehow missing a couple of Tragically Hip CDs (that I was listening to as I was working).  These are fairly likely to turn up soon, but it's still annoying.

Ironically, I have finally given up on getting any reasonable amount of money for my used CDs (and selling them on eBay or Amazon is just far too much of a hassle these days, and not worth it with the huge spike in mailing costs).  I was pulling together a big pile of CDs to sell off at the handful of remaining stores that still buy used CDs when the stay-at-home order came down again, spoiling my plans.  

I probably need to clear out enough space just to sort through everything and try to find what's misplaced.  This will be a fairly massive undertaking, and I have to be willing to actually toss the redundant data DVDs as well.  Now I did get rid of a box of cassette tapes, along with digitizing a box and a half of old paper, so I am very gradually becoming a bit less of a hoarder.  But it is hard going.

I'm on the lookout for The IT Crowd and Fawlty Towers (most likely in the master bedroom somewhere*).  A much, much harder task will be to find the 2nd disc of season 2 of Spaced (missing for quite some time) and the 2nd disc of season 8 (the final season) of Futurama.  I vaguely remember watching this with the kids in Vancouver, so it very likely is just in one of the Disney movie cases when I got careless about putting things away, but it's still not going to be easy to track down, sort of like a needle in a data haystack.

It would be nice to think that I have learned my lesson -- and at least I have cut way, way back on buying new things, having finally joined the streaming revolution.  But it seems I am a slow learner, given how many times this keeps happening to me.  Maybe this really can be the last time I am so careless, but given my history I probably shouldn't count on it.

* I did find Fawlty Towers and The IT Crowd in one semi-logical place, along with Father Ted -- and Black Books(!), which I also need to add to my list of must-rewatch sitcoms.  Red Dwarf and Futurama will just be bumped in the queue.  Interestingly, I did track down the Max Headroom set, which I own but haven't watched.  Not entirely sure how my son would react to such a blast of 80s nostalgia...

Mini Movie Update

We watched Some Like It Hot last night.  What a great movie.  It's been quite some time since I've seen the whole thing.  I've tentatively added The Apartment and The Sweet Smell of Success to the pile.  I've seen snatches of both, but I don't think I've seen either all the way through, which is something I clearly need to correct.  I'm guessing it will take 2-3 months to get through the movies, though some of the 90 minute movies may occasionally be snuck in on the random school night.  

Toward the end of the film noirs, I'll add Anatomy of a Murder, as it is a good link to Hitchcock, specifically Rear Window and Vertigo.  I'm thinking maybe I will turn to the Marx Brothers before Keaton and Chaplin, just because they appeal to me more.

It will likely take me another month or two to get through Don Quixote, as I am usually only reading a chapter or two a night (after a long layoff).  It looks like 2 years ago, I came close to checking out Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote but it had such a ridiculously short run in Toronto (literally two days only!) that I couldn't swing it.  I did pick up the DVD, however, and I'll make sure to watch it as I am wrapping up the book.  Most likely my son will be interested.

Depending on what else is going on, both at work and in cleaning up around the house, I may watch some of the Rohmer, Goddard, Varda, Bresson, Truffaut, Ray, Ozu, and Kurosawa films that I don't will grab him as much.  I've been collected DVDs for a really long time, and it's time that I actually try to watch the best of them! 

Negative!

I really didn't think I had caught Coronavirus, even though I was in the office (on the last day I was allowed in the office!) with a co-worker who indeed was infected.  As far as I know, he had a mild case and is recovering, and I certainly hope this remains so!  I realize some people have only mild symptoms and it can remain hidden for a while, but it was roughly 10 days since I had last seen my co-worker, and I didn't have any symptoms.

I learned this on Monday and went in for the test as soon as the walk-in clinic opened on Tuesday.  It took slightly over an hour to be seen.  The test results were supposed to be ready in 3 days (Friday late afternoon) but in fact I found out Sat. morning.  The long wait itself becomes a bit unnerving.  Fortunately, the test came back negative.  (So I guess I'm helping drive down the positivity rate.  Given that it is over 10% in most of Toronto, almost certainly someone in line on Tuesday had it...  Obviously the very worse case scenario would be getting infected at the test site and not knowing it for a while, and of course feeling a bit invulnerable because of the negative test result.)

While I do try to give people space and am avoiding transit -- and elevators -- I'm probably just lucky (not smart) so far.  I do a bit more in-person shopping than is really necessary.  I assume if the gyms were open, I would likely be going, and to some extent it would just be a matter of time before I had more significant exposure.  I absolutely would be biking in to work.  While the office itself is almost entirely deserted, I did go to the food court more than was truly wise (trying to help these places stay somewhat afloat).

At any rate, it looks like they are dropping the age limit on the AZ vaccine to 40, and perhaps I can attempt to navigate the system starting on Tuesday, though I think it might be a bit hard to get through for the first few days at any rate.*  I still think the spring and early summer are pretty much a lost cause, and certainly major concerts are all going to be pushed off one more year, maybe art galleries and limited capacity and/or outdoor theatre may be allowed towards the end of summer (and perhaps I will have had at least one shot by then most likely).  I guess we'll see.  Not a lot of light in the tunnel, but the vaccination campaign is still happening faster (though far more chaotically) than I would have expected roughly a year ago.  I mean it's still going to be a lousy lockdown birthday, but on the other hand no one in the family is actually sick and I'm still employed, so some perspective is in order.  

And with that, it's time for me to sign off.

* Actually, my wife was able to book an appointment for a couple of weeks from now for the AZ vaccine!  She's quite excited.  I'll probably wait another week or two for the fuss to die down and then try to book something (perhaps even at a downtown clinic).  Anyway, finally some positive movement.

To Stream or Not to Stream

It can be quite the question in these times.

I seem to keep missing the small, very short-run productions that some of the actors I know from SFYS are in.  This is unfortunate, but clearly tied to the fact SFYS has been on hiatus for months and months and months, and so I don't check the website and of course I don't have the interaction with the actors to flag these short-run streams.  However, it looks like we are back in business for May 3, so I had better stat writing!

Anyway, I've enjoyed a few of these on-line productions, but not universally.  I bailed on something that UMichigan pulled together as it seemed to basically be lazy sitcom writing (as exciting as it was to see people interacting in real time was, i.e. it wasn't just a Zoom call production).  In general, I am tired of Zoom conference calls and can't muster up much enthusiasm for Zoom-based drama.  That's a major problem facing theatre-goers and theatre companies these days.

As it turns out, Tarragon is trying to go forward with radio plays.  I listened in on Forever Yours, Marie-Lou by Michel Tremblay, but I just don't think it worked well at all.   Without the visual cues, I personally found it too hard to follow what was going on as the dialogue bounced back and forth between the adult sisters and their parents (before the tragic automobile crash).  To be honest right now I couldn't tell you if the sisters also play themselves as children when talking to the parents or if the two sets of actors don't directly interact.  I really liked Albertine in Five Times (when I saw it live) but I think this would be even worse.  Maybe Hosanna would work as a radio play but so few of his other plays would (in my view).

I wasn't that grabbed by the rest of the series (there are currently 4 left), but I was debating tuning in to the incendiary Scorched by Wajdi Mouawad.  But now I am just not convinced they would handle the various reveals well in an audio format, so I am going to pass after all.

I wonder if Soulpepper will deal with the audio play format better, as basically all of its productions in its Around the World in 80 Plays series are audio plays.  I have grave doubts that The Seagull would work, and I was going to give this a miss anyway.  I suspect Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author would translate reasonably well, and I might check that one out in early May.  I think perhaps also The Parliament of the Birds and She Mami Wata & The PxssyWitch Hunt (which is actually a solo storytelling outing so video should in fact be fine) would work.  Now I am not all that interested in these plays anyway, and the rest of the batch seem to me to be problematic in audio play format, so I don't think I will end up supporting Soulpepper much until 2022 at the earliest.

One play (in Zoom-type format) that I will take a chance on is an adaptation of Chekhov's The Three Sisters by George Brown.  Note that this will be performed in real-time so each performance will be slightly different.  Three Sisters runs through this Sat. with showtimes at 7:30.  Performances are free, though donations are greatly welcomed.

Factory apparently is doing some audio plays, and Glenn Sumi was impressed by the latest one.  I may give them a trial this weekend as there is so little to do otherwise.

Another time limited performance is the TSO's performance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, which disappears tonight (Thurs. evening).  Tickets are $17.  Presumably this was recorded a while back when small ensembles could still perform in one space.

The current rules in Ontario still allow for the tv/film industry to shoot but blocks musicians from recording, even to put a live-streaming performance together.  No question this seems arbitrary and unfair, like so much of living under COVID.

I was wondering whether the livestreamed Barenaked Ladies concert scheduled for this weekend would be cancelled, but apparently they shot this at Danforth Music Hall in March or even before (so obviously it is not remotely live).  I'll probably watch the Sat. show.  I would have sworn when I was checking yesterday they had summer concert plans (mostly in the States) for this summer, but right now the dates have all been "flipped" to 2022.  Sigh...

I need to wrap this up pretty soon, but it is interesting how differently the Shaw and Stratford Festivals are handling summer planning.  While the theatre capacities are going to be lower at Shaw, it basically looks like they are just taking their 2020 season and dropping it into 2021.  They are even planning on running a bus down from Toronto!  I have to say this seems completely unrealistic and more than a little negligent.  Basically the only acknowledgement that things are "different" is that they have cancelled all the musicals.

The contrast with Stratford couldn't be greater.  As far as I can tell, the bus is completely kiboshed, which is understandable but unfortunate.  They are planning some smaller musical cabarets in place of the big musicals.  They also expect to do all the plays outdoors and are keeping audiences well spaced out with no more than 100 guests.  Plays will be kept to 90 minutes with no intermissions (and no mingling)*.  I do wonder if they will go to the extreme of just Porta-potties like Bard on the Beach in Vancouver.  Part of me thinks this would be a really interesting and memorable experience, but the other part worries about rain and just how hard it would be to arrange to drive there.  So I probably will pass for one more summer.  They also seem to recognize that some people still won't want to (or be able to) come (particularly without the bus) and they will be filming some performances for in-home streaming.  I suspect this is how I will watch Tomson Highway's The Rez Sisters, which I had so wanted to see last summer.  That said, I will at least consider going in person, but I think it is unlikely.

It's just too early to tell if there will be outdoor theatre in Toronto proper this summer, but I expect a lot of companies will try, so that is something I will keep an eye out for, as it is, in almost all cases, a step up from streaming.  However, the Toronto Fringe has already decided to not try for outdoor performances but will be digital, so that naturally dampens my enthusiasm.  Oh well.

* This cuts deeply into how much Shakespeare they can put on!  It will only be Midsummer's Night's Dream and an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet this summer.  That said, they are doing Albee's Three Tall Women and you have to come back for the second act at a later time the same day, which doesn't seem to be to make any sense at all.  I think this probably should have been pushed to 2022.

Blasts from the Past

I don't think I'll ever have the time to truly keep up with this blog the way I would like, in part because it isn't quite a journal, and I find that I have to second-guess myself on whether I really do want to write something that will in all likelihood be taken the wrong way and held against me at some point (and this just bogs me down).  Indeed, there is basically nothing so innocuous that someone won't take offense.  The latest stupidity is that Hawaiian shirts are making a come back, and the Twitterati are warning that this may be offensive because it reminds people of the forced colonization of Hawaii.  I'm so glad I never joined Facebook or Twitter.  There just isn't enough time in the day for that much outrage.  That said, it was interesting looking a year back at my posts where it was becoming clear that this was going to be much more serious than SARS, though I don't think it had really sunk in just how much this would upend our lives.

In March I was mostly writing about toilet roll shortages and how many things had already been cancelled (and indeed how many of these I had bought tickets for and in almost no cases did I get a refund!) whereas in April I was writing how the summer and fall were already called off (and how I was slowly pivoting to ebooks at the library).  I have generally been writing less because there has been so little change - gyms open, gyms close, patios are allowed before they are forbidden, etc.  I generally am not that interested in on-line arts events, though I am listening to the TSO play Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and I'll touch on that in the next post.  The biggest change for me really was whether I could go in to work or not, and that also got a bit tedious to detail.  The issues surrounding the school closings are even more distressing to me, and right now I am in such a funk that it's better just to avoid  going into my real feelings about life in general and humanity specifically.

One of the last things I did in the office before it was shut down (or rather second last when counting preparing my taxes...) was to scan a lot of old journals and emails from my past that I had printed out.  And I do mean old! 

The oldest hand-written journals were from 1984, continuing to about 1988, while the printed out emails were mostly from 1993-4 (as my initial adventures in academia were coming to an end).  It's just as well that I went the hard copy route because none of the electronic media from that time would still be readable.  As it happens I have scanned them back to PDFs, which probably has another 10 years (?) before it too will be obsolete and need to be upgraded to something else.  I'm not going to go into great detail today on these old journals, but I will say that I have forgotten a lot that mattered a great deal to me at the time.  Usually reading the journals is enough to help restore my memory, but there was a note about a high-school crush I had (Karen), and the name means absolutely nothing to me any longer...

Probably as I go through the files to make sure no pages were dropped during the scanning process, I'll pull out a few interesting threads.  Maybe my thoughts on Desert Storm 1 and how I marched in an anti-war parade through campus or perhaps my trials and tribulations as a high school teacher fresh out of university.  There certainly is a lot of raw material, though I am not sure whether it really is compelling enough to do anything with it all.  I simply never became famous enough for anyone to care, which is putting it mildly...

And with that, I think it is time to turn back to the timeless Vivaldi.

Back to Square One

Well, the great loosening lasted just about 3 weeks before the cases, particularly serious ones that landed people in hospital ICUs, spiraled out of control, leading to a Province-wide stay-at-home order (and naturally the promise of going back to the barber/spa was taken off the table).  I'm certainly very disappointed by this.  I stayed quite late on the last day before the order took effect, making the first pass through our Canadian taxes (with the US ones having been done about a week before that).  

As it turns out yesterday we heard that an employee in my division had caught COVID and had been in that day.  I did see him from afar though didn't talk to him (and he stayed behind a glass office door).  I think my exposure risk is extremely low, but I agreed to get tested today.  So I biked over and stood in line for a bit over an hour at the East York Community Centre for a drop-in test.  One of the more amusing moments was when a minivan pulled into the parking lot and 6 high school basketball players got out, not too dissimilar from a clown car emptying out.  I hope for their sake that no one has it, because I'd say the whole team is likely to have it if anyone does.

This was my first time taking the test (and it was certainly uncomfortable), though everyone else in the household had been tested before.  I'll probably have the results tomorrow, but I would be very, very surprised if I actually had caught COVID as it has been about twelve days since I saw that co-worker who did get it, and I have had no symptoms, in particular no loss of smell or taste.

What this does mean is it will be particularly challenging to stay in shape, as I don't like riding around for no reason (and the office is closed unless you have an extremely good reason to go in).  I did agree to drop by the office if any of the modelling machines need to be restarted, but I likely won't be going back until May.  It's a shame as I was starting to fit into those snug jeans a bit better...

I can tell it's going to be another lousy lockdown birthday, and I'm not going to even pretend to have any fun.  Most of all, I just don't see how the musicians and theatre artists can keep going with one more lost year.  (I guess in the States there is some return to normalcy, but here it's looking more and more like very late fall before things get back on track.)  I haven't done a very good job in terms of staying on top of digital performances (and I honestly haven't been blown away by the ones I have seen with a few exceptions).  But I'll try to pull together a post with the things I probably will get around to watching.

I'm kind of bringing myself down, so I think I'll just stop now.  Ciao.

Watching Movies Together

Trying not to be too maudlin (or to rip off  Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays too much), but I do wish I had started watching movies with my son a bit earlier.  I am working on getting through a lot of classics, giving him a good grounding, but I probably could have started a couple of years ago with some of the Chaplin and Keaton silents and some of the more G-rated movies (Casablanca, The African Queen and Some Like It Hot, for example).  Now I did take my son and often my daughter to Pixar movies, starting with Wall-E and I guess ending with The Incredibles 2.  I also took him to Black Panther, which he adored, and the final Star Wars trilogy and 2001 (when a 70 mm print was being screened).  And we did venture out during the pandemic to see Inception and Tenet.  As it happens, I did make more of an effort to take him to live theatre, pre-pandemic, but it's just going to be going through my stockpile of DVDs for the foreseeable future...

Part of the problem is there are just so many great movies to try to get too (balancing French films vs. Japanese films vs. the "classic" 80s films from my youth), and during the school year, I can pretty much only squeeze in a full-length feature or two on the weekend -- and only an episode of a Britcom on a typical school night...

In terms of British television comedies, we did get through the whole run of Monty Python and are 4/6ths through Blackadder III.  So we'll finish all of Blackadder, even the specials, then most likely Fawlty Towers, followed by Father Ted.  I'm thinking probably The IT Crowd next, then Black Books, then perhaps Red Dwarf, though that will take quite a while if I go through all the episodes that originally aired on Dave!  I have no idea what would follow, either Futurama and maybe even back to Get Smart, which we stooped somewhere in the middle of Season 3 I think (several years back now).  Maybe I'd consider The Young Ones, assuming he's mature enough for that, at that point.  Or indeed if he hasn't moved away for university!

On to the movies we've seen starting this year.  I won't go into too much detail on Bond or the Pink Panther movies, which I discuss here.  They're sort of in the mix, but not really that high on my priority list anymore.

This year, we've seen:

• Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail
• Monty Python's Life of Brian
• Monty Python and the Meaning of Life
• Gilliam's Brazil
• Juzo Itami's The Funeral
• Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight
• Fellini's 8 1/2
• Satyajit Ray's The Hero 
• Satyajit Ray's Mahapurush (The Holy Man)
• Tati's Jour de Fete
• Tati's Monsieur Hulot's Holiday
• Etaix's The Suitor
• Etaix's Yoyo
• Huston's The Night of the Iguana
• Huston's The Maltese Falcon

I'm sure I'm missing a few, but this is what I can recall.  I did watch Truffaut's Day for Night by myself when he was quite tied up.

The Pierre Etaix set from Criterion is a major discovery for me.  It really is like watching Keaton filtered through Tati's sensibility.  I also really liked The Hero a lot; while clearly inspired by 8 1/2, it felt more focused.

In terms of immediate next steps, I think it will be to finish off Tati (Mon Oncle, Playtime and Traffic) and Etaix (As Long As You've Got Your Health and Le Grand Amour). And then Casablanca and a few of the truly classic film noirs: The Big Sleep, The Third Man, Out of the Past, The Lady From Shanghai, Laura and Gilda.  

Based on his reactions and general preference for comedies, I think I'll probably watch most of the French New Wave classics by myself, maybe making an exception for Shoot the Piano Player (not a comedy) and Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.  I know that much of Eric Rohmer's work is comic, but I'm still not sure it would be something that would grab him.

I don't think there are too many Satyajit Ray comedies left, so I'll likely watch these on my own as well.  (It is somewhat shameful to admit I've never gotten around to The Apu Trilogy, but think I'll correct that this summer.)

While I am not entirely sure he would really be up for La Dolce Vita (not least because it conveys such a jaded world view and is so long), I think he might be more interested in Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits and Amarcord.

I think most Ozu films are a bit too "interior" for him.  I'm not as sure about Naruse, many of which I've not seen all the way through myself.  However, I probably will screen him Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs and Ozu's Good Morning and just possibly Mizoguchi's Street of Shame.

Which brings me in an indirect way to Kurosawa.  I actually own a massive box set of his work but stalled out after getting through his very early work.  I don't think my son is too interested in samurai movies in general, though Ran and Rashomon are kind of unskippable.  And of course, he should watch Ikiru, and I have been meaning to rewatch that as well for a while.

This program should easily last through the end of the year, especially if I sprinkle in some 80s films, and after that I can think about circling back to pick up some early silent films or Hitchcock, especially Rear Window, Vertigo and North by Northwest.  Maybe he will be ready for Bergman by that point.