Missing Teds

While it isn't that surprising that I missed an episode or two of Monty Python, it's a bit harder to fathom how I might have skipped over The Anniversary on the Fawlty Towers set, but that seems to be the case. As for Father Ted, I don't recall him and Douglas boxing themselves up at the end of Chirpy Burpy Cheap Sheep.  More surprisingly I don't recall anything of The Mainland or even Speed 3 (one of the more famous episodes).  I think I would absolutely have remembered Father Ted giving mass on a moving float!  Anyway, we have 3 episodes left, which we should wrap up next week.

I was watching some of the extras this time around, and the writers were saying they would have resisted making a fourth series, even if Dermot Morgan hadn't died immediately at the end of filming season 3, saying that they thought they would have started repeating themselves.  I can respect that.  It's not as if the characters really grew in any way.  I found that I grew pretty weary of Ardal O'Hanlon's man-child antics in My Hero and bailed on that long before that series limped to an end (with O'Hanlon himself getting bored and leaving his own show!). 

I have never gotten to about half of Black Books season 2 and none of season 3, so we'll start in on Black Books next, followed by The IT Crowd where I have viewing gaps in seasons 3 and 4 (and then just maybe Slings and Arrows).  So plenty to look forward to still! 

So Slow Recovery

While I am pleased to hear that Ontario is moving closer to Stage 3 (and may in fact open a few days early), that won't make much of a difference in terms of the things I am really hoping to do and see.  It's not like it won't make any difference.  I'll be able to get to the AGO soon.  And I am almost certainly going to try to get to Hamilton (now that the Hamilton express bus has been restored) and also to Ottawa in August to see the Rembrandt exhibit.  Interestingly, there is a small sale on the catalogue while the museum is closed, which basically works out to free shipping, so you have about a week to jump on that.

I was somewhat surprised that the art exhibits in Chicago aren't very interesting at all to me this year (as I have little interest in the Obama portraits simply because I find conventional portrait paintings to be quite boring).  The Warhol and Picasso exhibits at the AGO and the Rembrandts in Ottawa are a much better bet.  

But theatre is still in a very weird limbo with unclear rules about outdoor performances and no useful guidance on indoor theatre or concerts (combined with fact this looks to be an extremely wet July).  Even the big mainstage festivals have cancelled for one more summer in Toronto at least, whereas life is starting to look more like normal in the States.  Whether they regret this opening up and pretending coronavirus is gone in the States and even moreso in the UK is a huge question.  This nonchalance is certainly one factor in Canada dragging its feet and not coming up with new rules on reopening the border, which is starting to be a huge issue for ordinary Canadians. 

The Hall & Oates/Squeeze tour was finally cancelled completely with no indication of whether it will be rebooked, though probably not.  Barenaked Ladies and Toad the Wet Sprocket are currently expecting to be coming through in the summer of 2022, which is quite a delay.

Erasure is playing at Meridian Hall in Jan. 2022.

Cowboy Junkies will be at Massey Hall in April 2022.

Pet Shop Boys and New Order plan on playing Toronto in Sept. 2022.

And that's pretty much it in terms of groups I want to see.  Now I do see that Skye Wallace is the opening act for the Julian Taylor Band, and they are going to attempt to have some in person attendees at their July 24 gig at the Horseshoe Tavern, though most people will be streaming from home.  I guess that is sort of tempting, but the pressure of needing to book 2 or 4 tickets at a time is off-putting for me, so I doubt I would try to go in person.  Perhaps more things will open up this fall, but realistically I'm not likely to see anything live until 2022, which is a drag.

Winding Down (Ventures)

I don't believe I had seen more than a few scattered episodes of Seasons 1 and 2 of the Venture Brothers, until I finally corrected this, starting a month or so ago.  At this point I only have 3 episodes of Season 7 left to go.*  So I deprived myself of the show (for years!), but on the other hand I didn't have long, long stretches between seasons, as I've been able to watch them in one extended period of time.  

It is interesting how the writers/producers of the show kept spinning out in weird directions, which is itself a bit of a parody of comic book sagas that have to keep coming up with more ridiculous reversals in order to simultaneously give the fans something new (and top old adventures and keep raising the stakes) and reassure them that no harm will ultimately come to their favourite characters.  The number of characters that have lost and regain their powers or even been resurrected is laughable.  Now whether they would have bothered coming up with yet one more super-villain splinter group if they knew they weren't doing a Season 8 is unclear.  It's actually a bit hard to say how much they can resolve in one movie (presumably 2 hours or so), but I suppose they can do a fair bit if they focus on the core characters.

My money is on them wrapping up the Peril Partnership subplot with some kind of freak science accident that wipes them all out.  Then they can figure out how to restore the relationship between Hank and Dean.  I'm guessing they won't bother trying to wrap up the Brock/Molotov Cocktease thread.  Not sure whether the Order of the Triad will get any more screen time, but they'll probably make an appearance.  Will one or more of them die heroically?  Your guess is as good as mine.  Given how many Daddy issues both Dr. Venture and the Monarch have, they'll have to deal with that as well.  My cynical take is that all 4 of them (Jonas, Rusty, Venturion and the Monarch) end up as living heads in jars (a la Futurama).  I certainly think that's the most elegant or at least symmetrical solution.  It's not at all clear when this movie will hit, but hopefully sometime in 2022 or 2023 at the latest.

I haven't decided if I will pick up another TV series (in addition to the Britcoms I'm watching with my son), though one option would be to alternate Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.  Maybe I'll just go back to reading a bit more in the evening or even get back to the quilt I was working on.

* I probably should have stretched it out one more day, but was so curious how Season 7 ended.  Some of it was quite odd (the coma-land), and I'm not quite sure how the Monarch jumped all the way from a 5 or 6 level villain to a 10 when all the errands he did for the Guild probably only raised him to an 8.  I'm glad that he found out he was related to Dr. Venture at the end.  Definitely going to be a mindfuck for him.  I think the focus of the movie quite rightfully will be on the Monarch and Dr. Venture and their Daddy issues.  One thing that just crossed my mind is that maybe there is a 50 year old Hank floating around that the young Hank uncovers on his quest to find himself.  I assume this would have been a running thread through Season 8, but maybe this has to be a montage in the movie.  I guess we'll see.  I would imagine the Peril Partnership sidebar stuff will be curtailed, and we'll probably never find out about how Dr. Venture solves time travel, but who knows.

More Movies (Truffaut)

I'm probably forgetting a couple, but I watched The Lady from Shanghai and Tati's Trafic with my son.*  That takes us through the Criterion Tati Blu-ray set.

I just started in on the Antoine Doinel set (apparently out of print, though not too hard to find used), which has four full length films and the Antoine and Collete short and lots and lots of extras.  (This is the type of thing I've been hoarding for ages and am just now starting to watch!)

My instincts were that he wouldn't like The 400 Blows, as it is far too depressing, and that Stolen Kisses sounded the most amusing and probably was the best stand-alone film.  I think I was probably correct, though if he ever becomes a film buff, he can watch the others.  I'll try to get through the later films on my own, as they are about crumbling marriages and certainly aren't as carefree.

While there were some interesting moments in The 400 Blows, esp. when seeing Antoine's mother and step-father interact, I basically have no stomach for films that makes heroes of truants and "bad students" in general.**  To this day, I have trouble appreciating Ferris Bueller...

We both watched Shoot the Piano Player, which I thought was pretty good.

I watched Day for Night by myself, which I think may be my favourite Truffaut film, though Stolen Kisses was pretty close.  Looking over the rest of the movies in my collection, after the remaining two Doinel films, I'll circle back to Jules and Jim, and then The Soft Skin and The Man Who Loved Women.  When I get to The Last Metro, I'll see if my son wants to watch that.

* Also, we saw The Sweet Smell of Success.  The first time ever for me!  A cookie full of arsenic, indeed.

** While I generally like R.K. Narayan's novels a lot, I strongly disliked his first novel, Swami and Friends, as Swami skips class as much as possible.  Fortunately, I pressed on with the others.

Two shows at 401 Richmond

This weekend, 401 Richmond was finally open to the public.  The Spacing Store was allowing people in, though at very, very low levels (I believe 4 in the store at any one time).  I thought a few more galleries would have reopened, but as far as I can tell, only Yumart and Abbozzo are open.  (Bau-Xi has been open a bit longer, but they are between shows and will reopen on the 10th.  I probably should check out if any of the galleries in the Distillery are open now.)  Weather-permitting, I'll be back at 401 Richmond on the 10th and see if  Red Head or some other galleries have reopened.  Little by little, I guess, and it shouldn't be too much longer before the AGO and The Power Plant are back up and running.

Anyway, I enjoyed the Tim Deverell show at Yumart.  Most his pieces are very busy; they look completely abstract from a distance, but closer in you can see glyphs and small images.  This recent piece, Grant Street, also had a few echoes of Jim Flora.

Tim Deverell, Grant Street, 2016

Abbozzo was featuring woodcut prints by Naoko Matsubara.  Many of these reminded me a lot of Ben Shahn's work, though the resemblance was not so strong in my favourite piece in the show, Magician.

Naoko Matsubara, Magician, 1974

I also liked this piece just called Circus (on the website but not on view in the show), though not quite enough actually enquire about the price...

Naoko Matsubara, Circus, 1977

Anyway, it's so nice that anything even remotely cultural is coming back this summer.  The Matsubara will only run through July11th, while the Deverell show runs through the 24th, so there's a bit more time to get over to see it.

15th Canadian Challenge - Vancouver: A Poem

Depending on how you count Bowering's Kerrisdale Elegies, there are two or three book-length poems on Vancouver that were published before George Stanley's Vancouver: A Poem.  I quite liked W.H. New's YVR, though I was less gripped by Marlatt's Vancouver Poems (revised and reissued as Liquidities), as I so rarely understood what Marlatt was getting at.  Stanley's poem is certainly easier to follow than Marlatt's, though I rate Kerrisdale Elegies and YVR higher.

Vancouver: A Poem has 12 sections.  The first two apparently first appeared in At Andy's, which I still haven't read.  What's somewhat interesting is that they both cover the same basic territory, pointing out the large W (the Woodward's Beacon) that serves as a local landmark in downtown Vancouver, though seemingly fewer and fewer people know its history.  Then the second part recapitulates this in more poetic terms and has less stream-of-consciousness journaling that I wasn't so crazy about in so many of Stanley's longer poems found in North of California Street.  While I assume it isn't as iconic as a giant spinning W in Vancouver, every time I end up at the Newark Airport, I end up looking for the Anheuser-Busch logo (with its glowing A at dusk) to try to orient myself.

The first part also includes a shout-out to W.C. Williams's Paterson, indicating that Stanley is using Paterson as a bit of a template, though I'd say Vancouver: A Poem is more self-indulgent.  (He also name-checks T.S. Eliot while riding on the SkyTrain, though it seems a bit of a stretch honestly.)  Stanley puts his finger on it when he says this poem will be "a catalogue of moments" or disconnected glimpses, mostly seen while on the bus or the Sea Bus (a ferry between Vancouver and North Vancouver).  This approach isn't so different in principle from New in YVR, but the sections are longer and less self-contained and generally harder to follow the train of thought.

Here's Bowering getting on the bus, but apparently getting stuck and not finding anything profound to write about: "The pleasure of getting on the 7 / in the chill morning / & something must follow / something non-reciprocal / stuck stuck stuck stuck stuck".

There are a few times Stanley brings up transition, and by the 1990s Vancouver's transition to becoming Canada's entranceway to Asia was well-underway and the downtown was full of glass skyscrapers (also noted by Douglas Coupland).  Stanley mentions that Sears took over the downtown Eaton's store location though didn't live up to its promise to retain the Eaton name, while I lived through a later era when all the Sears stores in Canada closed (as well as the ill-fated transition from Zellers to Target), which arguably left Vancouver in worse shape than Toronto as even more storefronts went vacant.

Section 7 is all about Stanley wandering around the older parts of Vancouver (Gastown mostly) and thinking about the old industries giving rise to the modern economy.  He writes about the Devonshire Hotel blown up and replaced with a HSBC branch.  But not all plans come to fruition.  "I'm glad Victoria screwed up the convention centre deal.  It means I won't have to walk another 200 m to the Sea Bus."

Section 8 opens with Stanley considering the many times he's crossed the Burrard Inlet on the ferry: "the sun prismatic on the water -- on the eye, / unable to see the page -- a blue glow, dazzle / follow the pen."

There are many references to being on the bus, being slightly buzzed, but then a bit upset because nothing of interest occurs to Stanley to write down.  "Sitting on the 210 at Phibbs, waiting for it to start up, & cross the bridge.  And an hour ago, sitting at the desk while the students wrote an in-class essay, reading a critical work on Williams & thinking, yeah, economics, I should have something in here about economics..."  No question there an immediacy here, and Stanley is trying to get his thoughts, even the self-reflective ones, down immediately, but here and in his other long journal poems, I would have liked an editor to come through and say maybe first thoughts aren't best thoughts...  (Apologies to Allen Ginsberg, who incidentally Stanley also name-checks in this poem.)

One relatively polished stand-alone section that I did like (and could potentially anthologize) is called "Verlaine's Ride on the 99 B-Line": "The Broadway streetscape framed in the bus window / reels backward, halts, recedes again, / turning shop signs to stuttering banners, /  as solitary walkers retrogress. / Phone wires & trolley wires loop & cross / with the strange allure of a signature."  I would certainly have preferred more in this vein.

There is a section titled just Seniors with Stanley's thoughts on being a senior citizen in Vancouver.  It is probably for the best that his thoughts about the shriveling of desire are all hived off into his collection After Desire.  Then Stanley is back on the theme of transition when one of his favourite watering holes, Sausi's, is being replaced by a Banana Leaf restaurant.  (I so rarely ate out in Vancouver, but I do remember meeting a co-worker and his girlfriend at a Banana Leaf.  It would be more than a liitle ironic if it was the one that displaced Stanley.)  The poem includes some comments on urban planning and how city staff approved plans that would involve cutting down trees, and citizens are agitating against these plans.  

Stanley ends on a metaphor that any given street in a city is in a state of continual transition (or at least has the potential for such change), much like the way memories are stored in the mind but are occasionally over-written: "a territory we will keep until someone has / some other use for it / ... /  The mind is this street / only the interiors / around it / arranged / differently."   

Canada Day Reflections

Today is definitely a somber holiday without a lot of overt celebration.  The weather isn't nice enough for a cook-out (though I did manage to get outside and read for a bit before it started raining).  While Canada is doing much much better on the vaccination front and may well catch up to and even surpass the blue states, it is still deemed too risky to have large crowds gathering, so there weren't any major fireworks displays planned in most cities.  A handful of cities have cancelled their events in response to the many unmarked graves recently found at former residential schools.  The Catholic Church, which ran many but by no means all of these schools, is seen as foot-dragging in terms of apologizing for its role in this as well as refusing to hand over records.  In response, activists are setting fire to Catholic churches throughout Canada.  It looks like it will be a long, hot summer (figuratively and literally), and the mood isn't great.  While not really a popular theory, I find it a positive that Toronto is still under Treaty 13, and while I am sure that this treaty is often strained to the breaking point, the people living here and in other parts of the GTHA have less to be ashamed about than virtually all Americans (where treaty breaking is a way of life), though this isn't much help for the people living in Ottawa or Vancouver where the land is unceded and technically stolen.  I have absolutely no idea how this will play out, since one would imagine following through on Reconciliation means regularizing the status of these cities, which would likely require reparation payments in the billions. 

Personally, I will still celebrate Canada in a low-key way.  It has never been as amazing a place as it thinks, but it is better than so many of the alternatives.  The hard core right-wing probably make up no more than 15% or so of the population, as opposed to well over 30% in the U.S. (and more damningly having taken over the Republican Party).  I mean if the Liberals would get over their fear of coalition governments and change the electoral system to a proportional one or even one with instant run-offs to ensure no politician was elected with less than 50% of first-place or second-place votes, then the Liberals and NDP would basically run Canada forever (maybe the Greens too, though they look like they are completely imploding this year).

Where Canada really disappoints is in its environmental policy.  Bill C-12 which was just passed is a good first step towards getting serious about reducing our emissions, but the reality is that Canada has always had a colonial mentality and is built around resource extraction and will only follow other countries' lead.  It will likely be one of the last to actually stop extracting fossil fuels (and I don't have that much faith in any other advanced economies actually following through on their commitments).  But that is an on-going issue where it seems that humans are going to fail the test.  I  would be most glad if I am wrong and the optimists are right, but not only do I think we are far past the tipping point but things will just keep accelerating.  I was going to go on, but I'm just getting myself down.  They'll be plenty of time for morose posts about the climate emergency later.

What will I actually do today?  My son is actually off visiting some friends in Scarborough.  I'm not 100% comfortable with this, but he's been fully vaccinated and his friends are either fully or partially vaccinated.  I guess there is only so long you can keep the young folk from gathering, as they have been so deprived of all the social activities that they need along the way towards adulthood.  (I'm so glad that he has one more year left in high school and may be able to go to a dance or two and will get an in-person graduation.)  Since he's not around, I'll watch one of the movies that I don't think he'd be into.  I was thinking maybe the first film in Ray's Apu Trilogy, but decided that The 400 Blows (which is also somewhat downbeat) is shorter at least.  

I was going to catch up on a streamed Tafelmusik concert but the ticket sales had ended.  If I hadn't been quite so obsessed with getting those reviews in over the last few days, I probably could have swung it.  C'est la vie...

I'll probably read a bit more of Don Quixote.  I am getting close to the end now.  It's been a long time coming.  I read Ralph Gustafson's Impromptus (before it started raining), and I may read a few of his other later collections, as I am gearing up for a review of his final works.  I'll probably put up a review of Stanley's Vancouver, though that might wait one more day.

I actually did a bit of weeding a few days back, and the front yard still looks ok, so that's one thing I don't have to do today.

The other day I was scanning some of my very first creative writing efforts.  Sadly, they are quite terrible SF stories written by a teenager, but I am thinking of taking one silly idea from one story and using as the seed of an absurd playlet for SFYS (as that deadline is creeping up).  I can probably knock  that off in an hour or two.

Anyway, enjoy the rest of the day whether you are celebrating or boycotting Canada Day this year!