Wrapping Up May Reading

I'm not even sure if I finished Joy Williams' State of Grace in early May or late April.  I have to say I didn't care for it all that much.  I am sure this is mostly because I was icked out over the relationship between the daughter and her father, a somewhat itinerant (and over-bearing) preacher.  I did find the scene where the mother crashes a car and kills her other daughter and then says to the narrator that she wishes it had been her (the narrator) that died instead to be grim and a bit gripping, but generally the book didn't move me, even with yet another car crash (this time caused by her fiancé).  I thought the periodic interjections by the Answer Man on the radio were interesting but worked better in the short story "The Lover" from Taking Care.  (Taking Care was definitely a more rewarding book for me with my favourite story being "Train.")

I am almost certain that I finished Dorothy Edwards' Winter Sonata in April.  This is one where just not enough happened to satisfy me at all.  In fact, if you read the blurbs on the back of the book, it makes it seem as if the tentative love affair started by the visiting cellist dies out as the seasons change, when in fact it doesn't seem as if the cellist even contemplated making any kind of move on his neighbour, not least because he spends over half the book sick in bed!  And then it turns out he is thinking of moving to the village permanently, so he may well have more opportunities to follow through.  Talk about false advertising.  I'm going to see if I can manage to donate this to a UT library, though a friend of mine may want to read it first.

Winter Sonata did, however, lead me back to the far superior A Month in the Country, and I reread this in just a few days.  I learned fairly recently that this was made into a movie, and I guess I will suggest it to the curator of Contours over at Paradise.

I think it was last week that I saw The Woman in the Dunes at the Fox.  (Somehow I left my spare biking gloves behind.  I tried to go right back inside, but the doors were locked.  I emailed them, but they haven't turned up so far.  Drat!)  This was quite useful, as there were a few points in the novel that I somehow overlooked (the fact that the villages wanted a sex show in exchange for letting the man out to see the sea and that he explicitly waited around to show the other villagers his water gathering mechanism instead of trying to escape).  I think I was kind of weary of the novel by this point and ready to return it.  So the movie brought out some elements of the novel that I had skated over, much like I did with Under the Volcano a few years back.  I will say that when I realized he decided not to escape for quite inexplicable reasons I really turned against the book and the movie to a lesser extent.  (I am glad that I didn't go to the book club talk on the book, as there was just a taste of this at the end of the movie, and one of the Torontonians kept going on and on, as he was so in love with his own voice.)

In terms of the book club at work, they are reading Murakami's What I Talk About What I Talk About Running.  I won't be in town, but just reading a few pages in, I found myself so alienated from Murakami.  He's like I just stumbled into running a successful jazz bar and then I decided on a lark to write a novel (after watching a baseball game), and then I submitted it and won this prize, and then I decided to sell the bar to focus on writing.  It may all be true, but it is completely insufferable, and I couldn't bear to read any more of his humble-bragging.  I didn't like the other possible book: Nigel Barley's Adventures in a Mud Hut, which is a somewhat snarky anthropological text.

It turns out it is next to impossible to borrow the Mud Hut book, so the club dropped it, and is going with Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go instead.  Interestingly, this is in very high demand at the library for some unclear reason.  I think tomorrow I am going to return the two books I didn't like to Robarts and then see if University College still has a copy I can borrow.  I also will check out the Hart House Art Museum, since it is open late on Wednesdays.

I just finished Dawn Powell's collection of short stories, Sunday, Monday and Always.  Sadly, I didn't like this much at all.  Most of the characters are quite unpleasant and not nearly as amusing as they can be in her novels.  I'm not quite sure why that is, but these stories just didn't work for me, with the single exception of "The Glads."  Interestingly, she was never able to sell "The Glads" to any magazine, probably because the ending is exceptionally dark.  I'm going to see if I can sell this and State of Grace to BMW or Seeker's Books.

In terms of what I am currently reading, I have just started The Book of Lamentations by Rosario Castellanos.  Fortunately, it isn't as long as I feared (a bit under 400 pages).  It is basically about a real-life uprising of the descendants of Mayan Indians against the Mexican elites, but it is set in the 1930s (decades after the actual uprising).

I'm not sure if I actually will read Huxley's The Devils of Loudun, though it seems like it would pair reasonably well with The Book of Lamentations.  As I said, I will likely be reading Never Let Me Go, and then on my trips to Ottawa and L.A., I think I'll bring along Dicken's Dombey and Son.  If I manage to get through all this, and there is any reading time left for June, I think I will turn to Lampedusa's The Leopard, Mavis Gallant's The Cost of Living and then Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow.  And perhaps Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem and Lord Vishnu's Love Handles.  After that, I'll just pick more from the top part of this list.

Edit (5/21): I was able to visit the Hart House Art Museum this evening.  The exhibits were basically UT art students' final projects.  I will say it has been quite a while since I've seen exhibits there that really wow me, but I do try to go two or three times each year to catch each new show.  I'm usually around campus for other reasons.  I was frustrated to find out that University College Library closed up on May 1 and won't reopen until the fall.  Had I known, I would have requested the book be sent to Robarts.  I'll go ahead and do that, but not until the middle of next week, as I won't be around to grab the book while I am traveling.

Transience (or The Flowering Trees of Riverdale)

This will be a bit more of a photo-essay.  As most people know, we went through cherry blossom season a couple of weeks ago.  It generally only lasts about a week.  I never go to High Park, since huge crowds turn up there with many people displaying poor behaviour (and it is a true wonder that more trees are not permanently damaged).  There is a very small grove of cherry trees at the northern end of Trinity-Bellwoods Park, but I only saw them in passing (coming back from MoCA actually).  I instead try to stop by the small cluster of trees just to the west of Robarts.  (Granted Robarts is nowhere near Riverdale, but these blossoms are even more transient than the apple blossoms and other flowering trees, so I wanted to kick things off with them...)  

While the cherry trees outside Robarts are a poorly kept secret, there weren't too many people there that morning, though there were definitely more people in the late afternoon when I stopped by again.  (I believe I was off to see Tafelmusik that evening.)

 
Basically the same view, but with crowds...

Then this tree is just to the north of Campbell House.

And then on to Riverdale itself.  I don't know what sort of tree this is, though possibly some sort of flowering apple or even crab apple tree.

 

 

And ending with a pretty tree on my block.

A week or two after the cherry trees start to lose their petals, then lilacs bloom (and last much longer).  I am not sure I actually have any recent photos of lilacs, but I'll try to snap one soon and post it here.  I actually have a small lilac in the back yard, but because it is largely shaded, it blooms quite a bit later.

 

These bushes are actually just across the street from a construction site for the Ontario Line, which will be my next photo-essay to follow shortly.

 

 

Mail Strike Redux

It's going to happen.  Canada Post workers are going back on strike this Friday, barring any last minute legal intervention (or an even longer shot settlement).  Not only are the union and Canada Post management very far apart, the most recent study of the situation indicates that Canada Post will never be solvent again and recommends a whole host of recommendations that would really gut the postal service, perhaps leading to almost no mail service in rural areas and vastly cut back service in urban areas (where the service at least comes close to breaking even).  As you can imagine, the union completely rejects this, and if the government accept these findings as the basis of any new deal, I don't think there will be any deal at all, and, in fact, the government may be forced to dissolve Canada Post (and break the union completely) and then set up something new that is non-unionized.  Hard to imagine that happening, but not completely inconceivable.  I suppose it is much more likely in the States, where they are very close to breaking their post office as well.

I still have one more CD in the mail from Japan, which might get caught in the crossfire.  Also, there is a package on the way from Dusty Groove in Chicago.  I may luck out and this gets in just under the wire, but most likely not, esp. as I probably have to pay customs duties on the package.  (Another compelling reason why I decided to stop having anything from Chicago shipped up here...)

I have switched almost entirely to digital delivery, certainly of bills and so forth, but TSO is in this really weird place where they want to force you to get tickets on the app (rather than emailing tickets) and if you refuse that, then they mail you the tickets.  They will have to change their practice if the strike has such long-lasting ramifications.  I will have to go through my recent mail to see what else can be switched over to digital delivery, which if adopted more broadly by more Canadians of course just further puts Canada Post on a death spiral.  It is sad of course to see how many institutions that have lasted generations are dying before our eyes.  This won't be the last, of course.

Thoughts on Brecht

This is not intended to be a truly all-encompassing post.  My thoughts on Brecht are not particularly profound.  But I wanted to pull together a few disparate threads on Bertold Brecht.  I did manage to see Three Penny Opera on Sat. over at Video Cabaret.  This was actually a student production from UT Mississauga, and they decided it was worth bringing the whole show/ensemble for a short run in Toronto.  This review seems fair.  It is definitely quite a bit updated from the original.  Now I had seen Three Penny Opera in Ann Arbor way back in the day (probably 1988 or 1989!), but I didn't really remember much of it.  And while I remembered the entire thing was pretty sordid, I had somehow thought that after Jenny grasses on MacHeath that she is murdered (which would make a lot of sense), and I totally forgot the weird, artificial ending where MacHeath is pardoned at the very end.  (I have to wonder if Brecht was nodding towards the ending of Tartuffe, which I find so objectionable; it sort of works better here, as Brecht was usually one to point out the artificiality of theatre.)  Even though the singing wasn't amazing, it was definitely an interesting night out, and I'm glad I saw it.

As it happens, I was sitting next to a mature student who had absolutely fallen in love with this show, and had seen it six times in Mississauga and six times in Toronto.  Wow.  Talk about obsessive.  I have certainly seen the same show in different stagings.  Though sometimes I really don't want an inferior staging to mess with an iconic version, which happened to me with a fairly blah version of Heiner Müller's Hamletmachine out at UBC (somewhat threatening to overwrite in my mind a fascinating production from UM in the late 80s).  It's one reason I don't think I will ever go see another version of Letts' August: Osage County, and even moreso with Spamalot where I saw Tim Curry, David Hyde Pierce and Hank Azaria!  But I don't think I've doubled up on the same production, with one exception of The Trojan Girls & The Outhouse of Atreus over at Factory, where you saw half indoors and half outdoors, and I wanted to see if switching the order of the inside and outside acts made a difference.  Also, I guess I have seen a couple of musicals twice where the touring version wasn't substantially different (Crazy for You and Come From Away).  But it is still very, very rare for me to think I need to see the same production of a play or musical twice.*  At any rate, I was babbling on about the tragic nature of Three Penny Opera to this student, who must have known that really nothing particularly tragic happens (on stage at least) in this production, but he didn't bother to correct me.

I'll see if I can track down the various programs to prove which Brecht plays I have seen.  I've seen almost all his major works (or at least the ones I care about) with one exception - The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.  I missed a fairly solid production in Chicago (I can't remember if I had been living away from Chicago or just returned and hadn't plugged back into the theatre scene, but, either way, annoying).  Then apparently there was a production in Toronto in 2013, right before I returned to Toronto.  (The list of things I just missed out on in Toronto in 2012 or 2013 is quite long and frustrating - Angels in America at Soulpepper, Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests, Lobby Hero (in what was probably a better production than the one I finally saw in Hamilton), Shanley's Savage in Limbo and a couple of others that escape me at the moment.  Interestingly, there was a 2 day workshop production of this at Canadian Stage in 2022 (that I completely missed!).  I do think after I finally manage to catch this, this will be the last Brecht that I actively seek out, but if some of the big ones crop up again, I will definitely go.

When I was at University of Michigan, there was a company called the RC (Residential College) Brecht Company, which is sadly now defunct.  I saw them do Drums in the Night and Three Penny Opera, as well as The Breadshop and the Brecht-adjacent Devil's Disciple by G.B. Shaw.  It sounds like they were losing steam by 1989 in terms of their big productions, though there were a few one-off productions that followed until 1993 or so, which sounded like they were quite interesting, and I would have enjoyed them had I still been in town.  At any rate, I was introduced to Brecht fairly early in my theatre-going "career."

Baal
Drums in the Night (Ann Arbor, 1988)
The Breadshop (Ann Arbor, 1990?)
In the Jungle of Cities (Chicago)
Three Penny Opera (Ann Arbor, 1989 & Toronto, 2025)
Fear and Misery of the Third Reich (Toronto, 2018)
Life of Galileo (Chicago, 2016**)
Mother Courage and Her Children (Cambridge, UK, 2006)
Good Person of Szechwan (NYC, 1994 & Chicago, 2007)
Caucasian Chalk Circle (Chicago, 2011 & Toronto, 2018)
The Wedding (Chicago, 2011)

I know for certain I saw In the Jungle of Cities in Chicago, even though I can't dig up my theatre program.  I'm less sure about Baal.  There was a production at Trap Door in 2000, right before I left Chicago, and I would likely have seen that.  There was also one in 2009, though this was in Pilsen, and I didn't get to that part of Chicago often, so I don't think I went then.  Very curiously, Tuta Theatre (in Chicago) also did Baal in 2010.  I saw a few of their productions, including The Wedding, so it seems fairly likely I would have gone to their Baal, but the photos are not stirring up any memories, whereas the photos from The Wedding are bringing back memories of the show -- and I even found my scanned program from The Wedding, so that settles the matter.  Maybe I have not seen Baal after all, though that seems a seems a bit unlikely frankly.

Anyway, I have seen quite a lot of Brecht, all things considered, though not many (any?) of his shorter one-act plays.  Aside from Arturo Ui, I would probably most like to see another production of Mother Courage and perhaps his version of Antigone.  Sadly there was a very good production of Mother Courage at Trap Door in Jan. 2024 (when I was still willing to travel to Chicago for pleasure), but I didn't go.

 

* That said, I would probably see Something Rotten! again if the Mirvish picked up the production that was at Stratford last year, though it doesn't appear they are doing so.  I am toying with the idea of seeing Some Like It Hot at Mirvish in 2026, though I don't know if any of the cast would be carried over from the Broadway version and indeed what other changes might be made for the touring production.  And perhaps the next time The Book of Mormon swings through Toronto, I'll see that again.  I remember when that was such the hot ticket.

** I actually made a special theatre trip to Chicago, where I saw this production by Remy Bumppo and Annie Baker's The Flick at Steppenwolf.  While theatre in Toronto is at a good level, it just does not compare to the quality and breadth of what was (and surely still is) available in Chicago.  Sigh.

Longer, long-distance reads

As I just explained, I really don't want to be making the trip between Toronto and L.A. often, and I probably will quit my job if this becomes a regular trip I am expected to make.  I don't mind going to the West Coast in general (in moderation), and I do hope that we win some work in Metro Vancouver -- and that I can make a trip to Vancouver, perhaps in late July or August.

Nonetheless, I probably should make a list of the books I would be reading on really long flights (or indeed the train to Ottawa or Montreal, which I am likely to be taking in late May and then June).

I was looking over this post (about my reading gaps) and seeing which really long books I still need to read, which is now slightly different from what I was thinking here.  It seems as if I only could read two more novels by Dickens, I think it should be David Copperfield and Great Expectations.  Great Expectations is not actually all that long, but David Copperfield is.  However, I think I would probably read Dombey and Son next.

Followed by:
The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies (reread)
David Copperfield
Terra Nostra by Fuentes
The Golden Notebook by Lessing (reread)
Emma by Austen
The Bride of Texas by Skvorecky
He Knew He Was Right by Trollope
Larva by Rios
The Brothers Karamazov (reread)
Divine Days by Leon Forrest
Buddenbrooks by Mann
Bleak House (reread)
The Recognitions by Gaddis
Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon (reread)
The Power Broker by Caro
Women and Men by McElroy

I don't really think I will stick to this order, but it helps organize my thoughts on reading or rereading really long books.  As I said, I think I would quit long before I made 15 or so flights out to L.A.  

It may well take me through retirement to get to all of these really long books (as it is not comfortable to fit them into my regular reading cycle).  At that point, I would probably read Fontane's After the Storm, Tolstoy's War and Peace (and perhaps reread Anna Karenina) and then Grossman's Stalingrad and Life and Fate.

Needing a Break

I'm just super frustrated by so many things right now, including that my email provider completely swallowed an email to a friend, despite my having tried to save it as a draft a few times.  I just don't feel like going back and retyping it, even though the note wasn't especially long.

I'm really frustrated by everything going on south of the border and wondering why the Dems just seem so completely feckless and disorganized.  I'm really unhappy about hearing all the issues people are facing crossing the border.  While I am expecting no issues on my upcoming trip to L.A., I am at the point where if I need to make this trip on a frequent basis (due to work), then I will find a new job.  I probably should find a whole new line of work, but it's a little late for that unfortunately.

I also just read an article about how Doug Ford is going to be ripping out even more bike lanes and telling cyclists to fuck off and go use the side streets (ignoring the fact that Toronto doesn't actually have parallel side streets to its main roads).  Unfortunately, this is a case where the institutional power is all concentrated at the Provincial level, and the courts have told dissenting municipalities to go fuck off as well.  I'm feeling we are at the the point where all civil, democratic means of changing the situation for the better have failed, and we shall see what comes next.  I personally cannot defend or support "the system" any longer, even though what comes next will likely be even worse. 

I'm awfully depressed about everything, and it is hard to stay motivated.  And then my will power slips (because nothing really matters), and I get frustrated that I am gaining weight instead of losing it.  I am about 5 pounds worse off than when I really started to watch what I was eating (back in the fall I guess).  I briefly made some progress, and then winter hit and work got really terrible, and I gained about 10 pounds.  I think I have lost about 5 of that, but I need to lose 15 pounds in the next two months.  That is unlikely to happen, but being back on the bike does help.  And this week I will make it to the swimming pool twice and the gym once.  Maybe I'll actually get to the point where I made it to the gym twice and the pool twice, though that will likely be a challenge, given how often I am working late or going to plays or concerts or indeed just being away from home (and finding hotel exercise rooms to be quite pitiful). 

It's interesting because I have been at least considering whether I should try Ozempic or one of the other wonder drugs.  There is so much stigma around them -- because of course "if you had the will power," you could lose the weight on your own.  But that's likely not the case for genetic reasons, as well as the fact that junk food is cheaper than proper food, and we are all over-stressed these days.  Someone (not me) started a thread about this on a bulletin board, and within minutes someone came on to basically say that once they buckled down, they were able to lose all this weight and that the drugs were essentially cheating.  It was such a confirmation of this article.  Indeed, the guy circled back another time to do even more fat shaming, and I would have blocked him, but the board's software is so out of date, I can't do that any longer.  Sigh.  But I do wonder about the long-term impacts of taking these drugs, and in fact there was a very recent study saying that the drugs were incredible, but once you start, you are essentially locked into taking them forever, as the minute you stop, the weight comes back incredibly fast.  Super depressing...

While I have stayed super busy and engaged in the arts scene, I missed out on two events that I really wanted to see.  In one case it was totally my fault, whereas in the other case it was 10% (at max) my fault and basically the fault of the theatre company for completely failing to advertise their event.  The DSO was going to play Shostakovitch's 10th Symphony, and I had pencilled in on my calendar forever, but I think I got very busy due to getting ready for a conference and somehow I never ordered my digital ticket in time.  I probably thought there was a Sunday concert, and I could stream it after that, but it was gone.  I emailed immediately afterward asking if it was possible to buy into the stream for another day or two, but I never got a response.  There is still a chance that the concert or part of it will turn up in their digital archives, but it is still really frustrating, and I just don't know how I let this slip.

The other one is even more frustrating because if you miss a live theatre event, it can be years or even decades before there is another chance to see it (and it is even harder now that I pretty much am ruling out traveling to the States for 3+ years unless I absolutely must for work).  I had been checking out the upcoming productions at DPS and Concord Theatricals (formerly Samuel French), and I had noticed a few plays of interest coming up in Toronto, including Posner's Life Sucks and a student production of Arcadia.  I have seen Life Sucks in Chicago but really wanted to see it a second time.  I forgot to get my blog post up in time, and then got busy.  So that was on me.  But then I never heard anything about it.  It was a two week run that was completely under the radar  No emails from Theatre Centre or prompting from any of my actor friends.  And SFYS is defunct where I might have heard about it.  No reviews in the papers (since only one or two plays get reviewed each month these days, and pretty much only Coal Mine, Soulpepper and Crow's get ink -- Tarragon has been completely shut out this season).  Mooney's closed down, and there just is not a decent site that gathers up all the plays in a timely fashion.  I finally saw Slotkin review it but it was basically the last day, and I simply couldn't rearrange my schedule to go.  I am truly pissed.  And it doesn't help that I went back to DPS to see if it was playing somewhere else, and they seem to have revamped the website to eliminate the Current Production search feature, which sucks beyond belief.

I had stumbled across a poster about Three Penny Opera over at Video Cabaret, but lost track of dates and then I found out it was closing this weekend.  I went to buy tickets but it was completely sold out, except Thurs. when I am off to The Fox to see Woman in the Dunes.  I did put myself on the wait list for Friday and Sat. evening.  If that doesn't pan out, I might go back over to The Fox on Sat. to see Cronenberg's The Shrouds, as this date works a bit better for me than the late May dates at the Revue.  (I was thinking it might turn up at Market Square, but so far no.)  I mean I did end up scoring a ticket from the wait list for Lowest of the Low, so it might happen, but I can't count on that.  I think this is a case where it is 50/50 my fault for dropping the ball but equally their generally poor promotion (outside their circle of friends and fellow students who have managed to sell out three shows, so more power to them but sad for me...).

Anyway, just a few more things to be disgruntled about.  I guess it could be worse.  I could be a Leafs fan...

Edit (05/16): I think I am going to be extremely sore for a while about missing Life Sucks.  It really wouldn't have taken more than one email notice from Theatre Centre.  I would have been able to squeeze it in somehow, even if it meant rescheduling A Strange Loop and paying the $8 charge this time around.  In fact, I wouldn't say I'm sorry I saw A Strange Loop, but I didn't like it very much, and I would absolutely have preferred going to see Life Sucks instead.  I did manage to get off the wait list for Three Penny Opera, so that's at least one fewer regrets.  And I managed to score a couple of free tickets to some plays in development over at Canadian Stage in a few weeks (again coming off the wait list for a piece by Erin Shields).  So that helps a bit.  Also, when I am extremely grouchy, sometimes donating to charity puts me in a slightly better mood.  So far I have donated to the Canadian Red Cross and the Heart and Lung Foundation.  I'll likely give to the Toronto Star Fresh Air Fund this afternoon, and that may also help a bit.

Nickled and Dimed to Death

I guess these are all small things, but oh so annoying.

I am heading over to see A Strange Loop at Soulpepper on Sat.  I think I'll find it interesting, though I am definitely not the target audience, and indeed I generally am not that big on musicals in the first place, with a few key exceptions.  Anyway, what was not made clear (or at least I definitely missed it) is this is such a challenging role that the lead is taking off every Wed. and Sat. matinee!  (Honestly, that feels a bit extreme.)  Of course, I had already booked a ticket for a Sat. matinee and thought, well I really ought to switch that.  There was a bit of a hassle, and I had to downgrade my seats a bit, but I managed to get this done.  And then after I thought everything was settled, a different person from the Box Office wrote me back saying that there was an $8 ticket transfer fee.  I wrote back a pretty salty email, saying that this was part of a subscription, as well as I thought it was misleading to not have the lead actually in every performance, and I would never have booked that date in the first place, etc.  I guess I just really was annoyed by the constant nickle and diming, esp. as the original person I was talking with did not mention an extra fee.  They ended up just sending me the ticket without collecting the extra fee, though maybe I used up all of my karma for the week.

I had recently put in an order from Dusty Groove.  It's quite a decent jazz store in Chicago, and they do a good job with shipping items, even internationally.  I definitely miss dropping in on the store, which I used to do all the time while living in Chicago.  At any rate, I ended up putting in an order.  Normally I ship to a friend still living in Chicago, but I won't be going back to Chicago any time soon, so I investigated the cost to ship up to Toronto.  It definitely cost more but not a ridiculous amount more, and this was offset by not paying Illinois sales tax.  However, when the package arrived, it was over the de minimus limit (which was supposed to be raised in any event), and I ended up paying $20 extra dollars in GST.  Which makes it that much less likely I'll be ordering again from them in the near future.  Darn it...

But the most annoying has to be this poster I was working on for a conference that was in town.  First off, I was never granted permission to go, even though I had the poster accepted and it was just down the street.  So that really dampened my enthusiasm.  Then my hours supporting the other conference activities were cut substantially, and I ended up having to do the research for the poster on my own time, which understandably started to drag...  I did finally pull all the data and putting the poster together (pretty late at night), but I was also disheartened by the fact that the data didn't line up with what I was expecting to see, which made it particularly hard to come up with any punchy findings.  So generally it was a disappointment all the way around.  Anyway, I finally got it done, though far too close to the conference deadline, but then I needed to actually print the poster.  I uploaded it to the Staples website after asking someone who said it would be ready the next day.  Well, they definitely gave me bad advice.  The next day I waited quite some time and then finally started calling in the afternoon, but I never managed to talk with anyone in the print shop.  The conference had already started by this point!  

This morning I decided enough was enough, and I biked over in the morning, only to find that the poster still wasn't done.  However, if I forked over another $20, they would turn it into a rush job, and I would have it in about 30 minutes.  So I did that, though with very poor grace.  I think next time I will just go to The Printing House instead, which is just a bit further up University Ave.

So just a few of the many interactions leaving me annoyed these days...

 

A Busy, Busy April

As April comes to a close (with more unseasonably cold weather and even a hail storm, though one that seems to have bypassed Toronto), I thought I should write down the highlights of what I got up to.  As I have been moaning, I spent an awful lot of late nights on my US and Canadian taxes, though, in the end, everything got mailed in with one day to spare in both cases.

I saw Esprit Orchestra three times(!) with several highlights including Vivier's Lonely Child.  And I saw Amici perform, primarily pieces off of their Armenian Chamber Music CD, along with a few other "Hidden Treasures."  I saw Logan's Red up at the Theatre Centre.  It was a solid performance (and I'm glad I went), though I did see the original production in New York, and that is awfully hard to beat... 

I saw Godard's Une Femme est une Femme at the Fox, though I didn't care much for it at all.  I saw Certified Copy at the Paradise and was somewhat dissatisfied with the way information was withheld from the audience, though I certainly liked it more than the Godard film.  I followed that up the following day with Kurosawa's Yojimbo at the Revue, and that film I did enjoy a fair bit.

I was misled and didn't see a couple of David Lynch films on Good Friday as planned, though I did make it to the gym and then that evening I saw A Public Display of Affection at Crow's.  On Sat., I saw both parts of The Mahabharata at Canadian Stage, as well as hit a few art galleries in Yorkville and even went swimming.  That made for a very long day.  On Easter itself, I helped out with the neighbourhood Easter egg hunt (planting eggs not searching for them...) and then saw Pochsy Part IV at Video Cabaret.

Somewhere in there I ended up seeing The Little Prince at Theatre Passe Muraille.  I didn't care much for this at all, because I hadn't realized there would be no dialogue at all.  I had assumed there would be some dialogue (though interpreted in ASL).  I found it just too difficult to follow along -- and the story seemed to have been altered and stretched out beyond what I remember from French class.  Speaking of French, I received a free ticket to a different production at TPM called Cispersonnages en quête d'auteurice, which was indeed in French (though with super titles, so it wasn't that hard to follow).  This is a spin-off of the Pirandello play.  It's a bit hard to describe.  I didn't love it, but it was interesting.  I don't regret going at least.

Last Saturday, I went swimming, then went to Bau-Xi over on Dufferin.  The transit ride to get there was pretty bad, and I was not impressed with the new exhibits.  I made it back over to Tarragon, though I was about 10 minutes late to meet my friend.  We were there to watch Feast.  I thought individual scenes and characters were interesting, but did not find the ending remotely plausible for all kinds of reasons.  And there was absolutely no reason to make this a 2 hour play with no intermission!   I went back south with my friend to Osgoode.  I thought I would find something to eat on Queen Street.  I settled on Queen Mother Cafe, but it really was a not very appealing Thai-inspired dish.  I kind of doubt I'll go back.  Anyway, I went in to work (and work on taxes) for a couple of hours, and then back out to TPM to see the French play, as I mentioned.  At least I didn't get rained on, as I had feared.*

Sunday, I did not get up as early as I hoped, but I still made it to the gym and did the grocery shopping.  I made it to Union Station to catch the 12:30 bus out to Hamilton.  I was there to see the Helen McNicoll exhibit.  It was pretty good with a lot of paintings that are in a private collection and aren't displayed frequently at all.  I thought the exhibit only ran for another month, though perhaps it was extended through the end of August?  At any rate, it is worth checking out this spring.  I'll add a few shots from my visit later.  It was unfortunate that the Farmers Market at Jackson Square was closed on Sundays (I keep forgetting that detail), but I ended up catching the bus back and not having to wait too long.  It was probably the 3:50 bus, and we got in around 5:30.  (Traffic on the Gardiner was pretty slammed in both directions...)  I was able to finally wrap up Soseki's I am a Cat and started in a bit on Joy Williams's State of Grace.** 

I grabbed a bite at Kibo at Union, then went over to the office for the last plunge into taxes.  It was so late when I finished that the subway was no longer running!  I debated catching a cab, but in the end I waited for the King Streetcar and then walked home from Queen and Carlaw, since the overnight bus wasn't going to show up for ages.  I had kind of thought I would take Monday easy, but that didn't happen.  I put in essentially a full day at work, though I had to leave at 5:30 in order to pick up my bike from the bike shop before it closed.  Then I voted.  Then I turned in a library book.  Ideally I would have gone swimming, but I really was wiped out.

And I probably bit off a bit too much on Tues. as well.  I ended up working until 7:25 (partly on a bid for new work, as well as on the first draft of a conference deck) and then took the subway round the loop to Yonge & Dundas.  I walked over to Massey Hall with 10 minutes to spare and saw a huge line.  I almost gave up, but then the line started moving quickly, and I was able to get to the box office and scored a ticket to the Max Richter show.  It was a very hot ticket and had been sold out forever...  Indeed, there were quite a few people who bought standing room only tickets, which I thought was just absurd.  It was an obstructed view seat but on the main floor, and really the view wasn't too bad.  I had a very clear view of Richter himself and the first violin (and then the vocalist in the second half).  They decided to play not one, but two complete albums/compositions.  In the first half, it was In a Landscape.  After the break, they played The Blue Notebooks.  I enjoyed The Blue Notebooks more, particularly the ending of the piece.  But it did remind me of electronic mood music more than a contemporary classic concert.  It was worth seeing, but I wasn't really knocked out the way I was during the Steve Reich celebration a few years back.

I don't have much planned for the 30th, though I may try to go swimming after work.  I do have a pretty full agenda from May 1-4, however, so I guess I need to gear up for that.  And with that, I really do need to get some sleep.

 

* Somehow I totally forgot that after the French play on Sat., I took the Queen streetcar over to the Rex.  It was just after 9 (and the show had started at 8:30, so I hadn't missed all that much).  It was supposedly sold out, but they managed to find me an open seat (and in the front section even!).  The line-up was unusual: 2 guitars (Peter Bernstein and Lorne Lofsky), Neil Swainson on bass and a drummer.  I had actually stopped by on Friday at 6, but they were sold out for the evening sets and even the early set was pretty full, and I would have had to sit in the back, which I try to avoid.  I ended up taking the subway to College and seeing In the Mood for Love.  (I had tentatively pencilled it in for Sunday afternoon, and that would not have worked at all...)  So I was glad that I managed to see this group on Sat. as sort of a last minute add-on to an already busy day.

** I may have mentioned that I finished rereading Tim O'Brien's America Fantastica (for a book club at work!), which is quite dark and full of largely unredeemable characters and other characters that make terrible decisions.  It was clearly written as a response to Trump being in power, and frankly isn't as funny now that he is back in power and even worse than before.  There are some interesting parallels to Timothy Findley's Headhunter (another dark, flawed work).  I finished Abe's The Woman in the Dunes.  I'll still go see the movie at the Fox in a couple of weeks, but I don't think I'll bother with the book lecture.  I'm midway through rereading Carr's A Month in the Country, and thankfully this novel does stand up to a second reading.

 

A Dog's Breakfast

I think the first time I ever heard this term (or at least the first time it stuck with me) was 1993 when someone was predicting the federal election would result in a "dog's breakfast" with no party able to govern effectively.  As it happens, that didn't happen, and the Liberals under Jean Chrétien wiped out the Conservatives and had a stable majority government.  While it is a bit too early to tell, I worry a bit that last night's result will result in a weak minority government.  I mean there is no question that the Liberals cannot believe their luck (and will gladly take this result).  Not only did they avoid being wiped out, which clearly was going to happen under Trudeau, but Poilievre lost his seat!  I'm sure he'll be around carping for quite some time, but if the Conservatives were smart, they would dump him now and find someone less grating.  If the current projections hold, then the Liberals will come up 4 or 5 seats short of a majority, but the (very weakened) NDP will have 7 seats and could enter into a Supply and Confidence arrangement.  I think this could probably work, rather than the Liberals having to rely on the Bloc or hiving off a few Conservative votes now and again.  But if the math doesn't work after all the votes are counted, then we are looking at a really precarious government that would likely only last a year or two before going back to the polls.  So fingers crossed.

I'm still recovering from being up nearly all night doing taxes.  Last week I finished my son's, only to find that his T4 was completely incorrect.  He did have provincial taxes withheld but this wasn't indicated anywhere on the T4, so he will need to get that corrected and then refile them.  So infuriating and unfair.  I did get a modest refund, though I was expecting a much larger one.  As always, the issue ends up being the large bite that Ontario takes.  I think what continues to grate on me the most is that the marginal tax rate is pretty high in Ontario, but then they hide it.  So you calculate taxes and then have to pay not one but two surtaxes, i.e. tax on your tax, which brings you incredibly close to 50% marginal tax (and indeed 53% for anyone earning over $250K), and it just seems completely dishonest to me.  So I'm feeling very surly today.  It isn't just the tax (not that I enjoy paying these sneaky surtaxes), but that I am paying to support a bunch of provincial politicians that I despise and are making life worse most of the time for progressives in Toronto, by ripping out our bike lanes and weakening environmental laws and just being stupid and generally corrupt.  And we seem to have no way to get rid of them, as the voters are still punishing the provincial Liberals for the sins of the 2010s.  Sigh.

I did manage to do a few fun things over the weekend, and maybe tonight or tomorrow I can account for the time I was not doing taxes.  I'm actually going to run over to Massey Hall to see if any tickets opened up for Max Richter, but I think that's fairly unlikely, so I will probably have this evening to work on this, as well as a few other outstanding issues on my plate. 

Edit (11 pm): While there are two or three extremely tight ridings that will go to recounts, the unofficial count shows the Liberals at 169.  So very, very close to 172.  (Again, in their wildest dreams, the Liberals couldn't have expected this outcome, even a month or so ago.)  If I were Carney, I would probably cut a deal with the NDP to allow them to keep official party status (and not much more) in exchange for a Supply and Confidence arrangement (and just let the Conservatives' complaints about "corruption" roll off his back).  I think that is probably the stablest of any of the options, but I guess we'll find out what they decide to do.  I would definitely hope we don't go back to the polls for at least two more years.

So long, Cinemaclock

I've been more than a little annoyed at Cinemaclock for some time now, not least because whenever I get around to turning on Adblock (which I really should reinstate on the new computer), it completely blocks me from the service.  While I am not 100% against ad-revenue on principle, most of the time these ad-happy websites don't do any meaningful screening, and you can end up with some really annoying computer infections, so it doesn't seem reasonable to me to over-react when people try to keep their computers clean.  Nonetheless, that isn't really the issue.  The issue is the several times now that I have been given bad information from Cinemaclock, including the wrong time for Mickey 17 out at the Beaches, and then on Friday I had planned what would have been an incredible twofer of David Lynch movies at the cinema kitty-corner to the Eaton Centre.

I actually made an extra effort to get over to the gym early on Friday so that I could leave in time to make it to the 12:30 show.  For once, transit went super smoothly, and I made it there by 12:15.  Then I went up the many escalators, only to find that Mulholland Drive wasn't playing at all that day, and Lost Highway wasn't playing until the late evening.  They had nothing on at 12:30, and only Eraserhead at 1 (a film I didn't care for and have no intention of revisiting).  I was very clear on putting the schedule together, so someone screwed up, and I am not sure if it was the cinema itself or Cinemaclock, but I was beyond pissed to the point that I am going to make a conscious effort to block Cinemaclock from all my devices.  In addition, I don't plan on going back to the theatre at Yonge and Dundas (just as I am avoiding Beach Cinema).

So I went home in an incredibly foul mood.  This even spread to the point that I decided I didn't want to see Memento at Carlton Cinema, even though this had nothing to do with them.  I just decided this was a movie that I wasn't sure I really wanted to see, and I wanted the opportunity to stop the film if I didn't like it (as I generally don't care for gritty crime films, no matter how novel).  I will still see In the Mood for Love next week, though I will go straight to the Carlton website.

I took a nap and did a couple of other things (though I didn't make any appreciable headway on Canadian taxes), and then I saw A Public Display of Affection over at Crow's.  It wasn't the worst way to end the day (and in fact it is a very thoughtful piece on growing into a "gay elder" in Toronto), though I had such higher hopes for the day...

Taxes and Other Certainties

I wouldn't say I exactly procrastinated on the taxes, though it is true I didn't get too far on them on the weekend of the 5th-6th.  I was still pulling together lots of materials at this point, especially the small gifts to charity.  The only positive is that I need almost all the same material and even a bit more for CRA, so it won't take nearly as long to get started on them, though they do take twice as long, since I need to file completely separately from my wife.  Sigh.  Also I am mostly but not 100% finished with pulling together medical expenses.  This is likely going to be another year where this will be treated as a non-refundable credit, so I am not likely to owe too much to CRA, though I guess I'll know in a few more days.  (I am definitely not leaving it to the last minute like I usually do with the IRS.)

I'm struggling a bit to remember what I did on the previous weekend, though I remember I did bike around a fair bit, even though it was wet.  On Sat., I had tried to fit in a swimming session (since the Regent Park pool was closed).  I found a pool near Corktown, though I didn't actually get there until the pool hours were over.  They strongly warned me to not leave anything in the lockers, as there were massive security issues there.  The pool itself looks pretty nice, and I may go one of these days, though it isn't a free pool (like Regent Park and Jimmie Simpson).  I did hit the galleries in the Distillery, and a small gallery on Richmond near Jarvis, then went to Gallery Gevik in Yorkville.  I honestly can't remember if I did anything else that afternoon or evening, but I think it was mostly spent on taxes, esp. starting my son's.  I did spend a lot of time pulling bank statements together, but some were missing, and it took forever to try to track down some health expenses, though fortunately they don't matter for US taxes only Canadian taxes.  That Sunday I saw Esprit's concert, which featured a solo percussion piece, as well as a Vivier piece.

Over last week, I was mostly overwhelmed by work, but I did continue to pull receipts together.  As I mentioned, I finally managed to get to see Mickey 17.  I had been debating going to see The Little Prince at Theatre Passe Muraille (and they offered me free tickets!), but in the end I passed.  I may go this week possibly, depending on my mood.  Friday, I managed to see Godard's Une Femme est une Femme (literally catching the Lakeshore East train with one or two minutes to spare!  I didn't care much for it at all, and I feel you can already sense the contempt Godard has for conventions and certainly audiences that like movie conventions.  Also, I strongly disliked all the characters who were very unappealing to me.  I wish I had known how much I would have not liked this movie, but live and learn I guess.  

Then Sat. I did manage to get some swimming in, though only about half my normal laps.  Then I went to Gallery Gevik to look again at a small painting that is calling to me, along with a Yorkville gallery that had quite a few Letendre paintings, including a watercolor that is also calling to me (and somewhat blocked my interest in the painting at Gevik).  Then I ran into the AGO to see a new exhibit I missed last time.  (It really wasn't worth my time...)  Then I swung through Richmond 401 and used the cheque that I thought I was going to use at Gevik to pay for the framing of a piece I bought at Abbozzo.  

Then I finally started in on the taxes, and it took pretty much all night.  The worst was I started with the FBAR, which has the worst consequences if you don't file it.  I somehow put it in for the 2023 tax year and used the wrong file name as well!  I wasn't even that tired, so that was an extremely bad sign.  Over the next couple of days, I tried to tell the system to delete it, and that this was not an attempt to amend my 2023 filing, which was on time a year back.  I finally got a note from the government saying that they couldn't delete the improper filing, but that they had noted my comments.  I guess because I then filed the FBAR again with the same info but correct year and file name, that's the best I can do.

I took the forms home for my wife to sign.  I thought I would sleep in, but in the end, I did go to the gym for 25 minutes and picked up a small number of groceries.  I'm glad I didn't completely give up this weekend on staying active (and I had biked everywhere on Sat.), even though taxes were pretty overwhelming.

I still had a few minor tweaks to the taxes (mostly filling in Forms 8938, which are a total pain and simply repeat the same information on the FBAR!).  I think I probably could have/should have amended my Form 2225 and Schedule 1, but it wouldn't have actually changed the tax consequences, and it just wasn't worth it.  (If the IRS asks for any other amendments, I will do it at that time.)  I will read up on the topic and make changes for next year if it is still relevant.  While I haven't decided definitely to renounce or not, the ridiculous extra burden of all the extra forms for having investments in two countries makes the idea of renouncing very appealing, on top of the fact I wouldn't be connected to a country that seems determined to be run into the ground by the Worst and the Stupidest (to say nothing of the most Corrupt and Venal)...

Sun. was at least a little more fun to make up for the last gasp of the taxes.  I saw an Amici concert where they focused mostly on Armenian music.  Then I went out west to Ossington (luckily that was the last stop before a weekend subway closure!) and had Ethiopian food and watched Kiarostami's Certified Copy.  There are many parallels to Before Sunset, and personally I found Before Sunset to be a lot more satisfying.  Kiarostami refuses to let the audience know whether the couple are actually married or not.  Perhaps the one (fan) theory that makes the most sense is that the two are in a long-term affair and that Binoche's character decides to just play along that they are married (after a woman in a cafe assumes they are married) as a "copy" of marriage that has its own intrinsic value.  That still doesn't quite square up with the beginning of the movie where the author seems to have no idea about Binoche's family life, including her sister's name.  So a movie that is being intentionally obscure in a lot of ways, which frankly I don't appreciate.

Anyway, the important thing is that taxes are done, and I mailed them off on Monday.  I don't think I will be quite so late with Canadian taxes, since I have everything pulled together now.  I should be able to get them wrapped up this weekend.  Fingers crossed.  (And perhaps if I don't owe anything or even get some money back from CRA, I will more seriously consider buying the artwork I saw on Sat.  And while I don't buy art as an investment, it wouldn't be a bad idea to track down what I did pay for these other pieces and just note it down somewhere, since "collectables" are taxed at a different rate, and I probably have two or three pieces that should have at least held their value whenever I die or otherwise decide to give them up.  Such a cheery thought for a somewhat dreary day...)

 

 

Mickey 17

After 3 failed attempts, I finally managed to see Mickey 17 on Tues. after work.  It actually snowed on Tues., which was a real kick in the teeth.  (On Wed. I did bike in, despite it being on the cold side, particularly in the morning, but it warmed up a bit in the late afternoon.)  I had just enough time to get to No Frills and then march back to Market Square to see the movies, dropping in a few minutes into the previews.  (Somehow I got the row numbers wrong and was in someone else's seat, which was embarrassing.)  I have a few reservations, particularly Mark Ruffalo's impression of Trump.  Both he and his wife, who was totally obsessed with sauces, wore out their welcome really quickly.  It certainly wasn't a subtle movie, but overall I enjoyed it a lot.  That said, being beaten over the head repeatedly over how humans were the terrible colonizers and the so-called Christian leader who repeatedly called for the aliens to be doused with nerve gas was definitely unnecessary.  

It is interesting to see how polarizing this film is, with almost equal numbers giving it a 5 stars or 1 star!  I was definitely far more interested in life on the ship and some of those subplots than in the conquest of the aliens subplot.  I hear that the director shot enough for a 4 hour movie, so who knows how much of that might show up some day in a director's cut.  I think what I would have wanted to see more of was the love quadrangle, perhaps with Mickey 18 pretending to be Mickey 17 and then to make a move on Kai.

In general, I thought Nasha was a bit too much of a loose cannon to have kept her job as security officer, including pulling guns on fellow crew members any time they messed with Mickey, which was all the time as he was the lowest ranking individual on the ship by a long shot (and basically not even considered fully human).  But the interactions between her and the Mickeys were really the most interesting part of the movie, and I wouldn't have minded seeing even more of that, including how she coped with the fact that she would be mourning Mickey and then immediately start with a fresh one the next day.

Perhaps the drollest thing for me was the printer and how close it came to malfunctioning and generally it seemed to catch just like the old dot matrix printers.  I think I probably still have a few things printed on those continuous rolls of paper.  Or how they didn't always have the "printer tray" ready, and the new Mickey would end up on the floor.  Indeed, my brand new printer doesn't appear to have any sort of a printer tray, and my print jobs always end up on the floor.  Frustrating!

Now part of me is a little annoyed as I had drafted a SF story that uses some of the same conceits (reprinting bodies and overlaying a personality matrix on them).  So it might be a while before I could shop that around.  But it isn't as if this is really unique plot point.  I can think of several other authors that got there first, including Altered Carbon.  What is interesting is that apparently in the actual novel, not the movie, the aliens have a hive mind, which is something I was toying with in my "moon novel."  

And several people were saying they vastly preferred the movie Moon, which had some parallels to Mickey 17, and particularly to the original novel by Edward Ashton.  I'm kind of glad I didn't see this, as it apparently has cloning as a plot point, and yes I was thinking that there might be a handful of the colony founder's clones running wild in my novel, so probably best to wrap up whatever I am going to do with my own novel (which is, honestly, probably nothing) before watching Moon.

I had debated going to see Blade Runner on Wed., but was just far too busy, and tonight I need to get a first cut of the U.S. taxes done.  If all goes well, I will try to see Godard's Une Femme est une femme at The Fox after work on Friday, but I have to say I predict something will come up to prevent that from happening, given the way things have been going lately.

Quiet Desperation

I'm struggling a bit to recall how I found out about Dorothy Edwards.  Most likely it was through an Amazon recommendation, though I don't think I have been browsing anything lately that would have triggered this.  At any rate, I was surprised at the parallels between her and Katherine Mansfield (connections to the Bloomsbury group and dying much too young), though I suspect Virginia would have seen Mansfield as much more of a true rival.  Indeed, the way that Edwards sort of fell out with the group, and with David Garnett in particular, led to her suicide in 1934.  She had published Rhapsody, a collection of short stories, and Winter Sonata, a novel about a young man who struggles with his feelings towards a beautiful young woman in the village where he lives.  It's not really giving that much away to say there is not a happy ending in sight in the novel.  (I haven't read through the short stories yet.)

I don't remember all the details of Carr's A Month in the Country.  I vaguely remember the plot running on similar lines but being very different tonally.  Nonetheless, given that A Month in the Country is quite short, I think I will slip it into my list of very short books I am reading on the side.

For that matter, I have only read long chunks of Walden, but not the whole thing.  (This links back to the title of the post: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”)  Perhaps in the late summer and autumn, I will finally tackle reading all of Walden.  The edition I have also has some excerpts from The Maine Woods and Cape Cod, and I'll probably read those as well.  I actually have the full texts in a LOA volume of Thoreau's writings, but honestly, I think that will have to wait for some other year.

For the book club at work, we are reading one of my suggestions - Tim O'Brien's America Fantastica, which is a darkly comic road trip through Trump's America.  (This is set during the first Trump term and has quite a lot to say about greed and corruption.)

I'm kind of reskimming it now, though I don't know if I will definitely get through the whole thing.  I may need to borrow a copy from the library if that is possible.  (After checking, this definitely doesn't appear to be a problem...)  Here is a good summary though it and the interview with O'Brien have some significant spoilers, which I am trying to avoid.  At the time, I saw lots of parallels with Rushdie's Quichotte, and those are definitely still there.  But the slightly manic road tripping (with a spunky female sidekick) also recalls Tibor Fischer's The Thought Gang.  I'm trying hard not to endlessly reread books I've already read (though sometimes I do read them faster the second time around), but I remember really enjoying The Thought Gang, and I probably ought to read it again one of these days.

I did just reread Gide's The Vatican Cellars.  While it was fine, I didn't think it was quite as amusing this time around.  The criminal gang was sufficiently interesting, but Lafcadio is a bit of a drag, and I couldn't really get behind his motiveless crime this time around.  But it does set me up to read a couple of short Gide novels this year.

Anyway, to round out books that I might reread in the next couple of years.  I am definitely considering Murdoch's Under the Net, even though I don't know where my copy is.  I did plan on reading other Murdoch, though it might not be until 2026, so there isn't a huge hurry.  It looks like I read it for the first time in 2014.

I don't think I am going to reread Hoban's Turtle Diary in 2025, though there is a chance I might tackle it in 2026.  I read this back in 2019.  I don't have any specific novels I would pair it with, though it does make me think of del Toro's The Shape of Water.

On top of my work book club, I just found out that The Fox seems to be partnering with Great Escape Books (over on Kingston) to do a book club meeting on Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes on May 9 with the actual film screening the following week at the Fox.  This is awfully tempting, but I am not sure I will be able to fit it in.

Just to recap, I have about 100 pages to go in Winter Sonata, and I should wrap this up tomorrow (or rather the next day I take transit).  I have two more chapters (roughly 150 pages left) in Soseki's I am a Cat (which honestly I am not enjoying all that much).  I'll probably go ahead and intersperse I am a Cat with Dawn Powell's Sunday, Monday and Always and Joy Williams's State of Grace as I wrap this up.  After that, I probably need to switch exclusively to O'Brien's America Fantastica, and then decide if I am going to read Abe's The Woman in the Dunes.  I think after this it is The Leopard and some other short story collections and maybe A Month in the Country.

Speaking of quiet desperation, I think I'll put in another hour or so on the ground work to do my US taxes and then go to bed.  Unfortunately, because of a pension distribution (a long story), I likely will owe US taxes, or at least I might before I claim the foreign tax credit, but I need to have the Canadian taxes completely done before I know what that credit would be worth.  It's definitely annoying.  I was on track to have the US taxes done in time, but think it would be a real push to have the Canadian taxes also done by the 15th.  I mean Musk is destroying the IRS, and Trump imagines replacing taxes with tariffs, but neither of these (quite horrible) events will happen in time to prevent me from needing to file my own taxes.  Sigh...
 

Edit: I just found out I don't even have a copy of The Woman in the Dunes.  I was sure I did, but instead I have The Ruined Map (which is probably the book I remembered wanting to read) and The Ark Sakura.  Weird.  (Maybe I do have a copy in storage in the basement, but I suspect not.)  TPL has this as an e-book, but only one reference copy.  Fortunately, there are a few copies kicking around at Robarts if I decide to tackle this after all.

 

Last Chance - Truck and Red

There is quite a lot I should blog about as it has been on my mind for some time, but I am running late, per usual, and will keep this brief.

I was able to slip in to see John Logan's Red over at the Theatre Centre.  I enjoyed this production a lot, though nothing ever quite lives up to the experience of seeing Alfred Molina on Broadway.

Molina even looked a bit more than the real Rothko (above) than this actor, though that doesn't really matter in the end.

At any rate, for 90 minutes you get Rothko opining on art and other artists and how the viewers need to be "compassionate" towards the art they are viewing.  I've actually seen this play three times (also in Vancouver), making it one of the most-seen plays I've seen along with Stoppard's Arcadia, Kushner's Angels in America, Rivera's Marisol and of course many Shakespeare plays (including 6 Lear's after a slow start!).  I wouldn't quite put it that company, but it is definitely worth seeing, esp. if you love visual art.

There are two shows today and one on Sunday over at the Theatre Centre.

The other play is Truck, which is a one hour play about automated vehicles taking over the trucking industry and putting thousands of blue-collar workers out of work, on top of the general deindustrialization that has so shaken North America.  The playwright also sees the same forces impacting creative work, and even copy-writing and legal work, though he doesn't raise it in the play, only in this interview.  Unfortunately, the CBC piece gets the closing date wrong and says the show has closed (and even the splash screen at the Factory website says the same!).  Nonetheless, there are two more performances of Truck; one tonight and a matinee tomorrow.  Tickets here.

I'll just drop in one more thing, as I am really late now.  I had vaguely remembered there is a Warhol exhibit opening up somewhere in Yorkville, and I didn't think I had missed it but wasn't sure.  It was surprisingly hard to find the right info, but the show opens next weekend at Taglialatella Galleries and will run through April.  I expect to get there next Sat., and also to stop in at Galley Gevik, though I think the current exhibit will have closed, which is a bit annoying.  Well, I really don't get over to Yorkville that often and probably can't add yet one more cluster of galleries to my crowded calendar.

Edit: While I never made it swimming, I did stop in and saw some new paintings at Thomas Landry in the Distillery.  Then I went to Taglialatella in Yorkville.  Interestingly, they had all the Warhols installed, so I wandered around for a bit, though I plan on going back next weekend with my wife.  Interestingly, Gallery Gevik thinks they will extend for a few more days, so I didn't absolutely need to get over there on Sat.  I am sorry that I didn't stay on top of this and see the Henry Wanton Jones exhibit back in Nov.  I liked several of the pieces.  They were nice enough to give me one of the exhibit catalogs.  They had a handful of pieces from that show in the basement, and I was able to look them over.  There is a small chance I will pick up a small painting, though I have to admit, I am not sure where I would hang it...

Cutting It Close

I think I mentioned that I just gave up on trying to submit a piece to the Toronto Star short story contest.  I do have a decent idea and it was written out, but I just couldn't find the time to type it out.  (I definitely should take a week off and just type up all the other material I have written in long-hang before I completely forget what I was trying to write out.  My hand-writing is pretty hard to decipher, even for me...)

Anyway, as I mentioned a couple of times, my old computer went down, and I really needed that to some some specialized computing to finish up this paper.  I really should have spent the evenings working on it, but mostly I spent the time on work work unfortunately.  So I ended up backed into a corner and the one week extension I had came and went, and I said I would try to wrap it up and turn it in over the weekend.

On Friday, I did manage to get the estimation software working, and I also figured out how to get Stata to produce weighted cross-tabs.  This is something that is a breeze in SPSS, though I used to have to do this from home, since I can't get my employer to install SPSS.  I did work from home on Friday.  Now in an ideal world, where I wasn't being pressed so much on the work front, I probably would have gone to see Gary Smulyan playing on Thurs., and then run over to the Revue to see Wenders's The American Friend on Friday.  Instead, I ended up staying until the last minute and then went to see Smulyan on Friday instead.  It was a good show.  I wrote out a lot of notes for the paper, though I have to admit, this was more useful for getting my thoughts together, and I didn't really use most of them in the final draft.

Sat. I went to the gym reasonably early, then took my daughter over to this bakery where she will be volunteering next week.  Her mother took her home, and I went over to Woodbine Beach.  I want to check out the Winter Stations exhibit.  I seem to manage to get to it every other year, and I was reasonably determined to go this year.  The pieces aren't really what one would call great art, but they are somewhat playful, and the best of them allow for children to clamber all over them.

It was pretty chilly, and I had to make a big loop to get back to Beach Cinema.  I had checked a couple of times, and Mickey 17 was playing at 3:30.  However, when I got there at 3:27, someone had changed the schedule, and it was now scheduled to play at 3:10!  Even with the 10 minutes of trailers, I would be coming in a few minutes into the film, so I just turned around and left.  This happened to me before, spoiling one of the very last times I could convince my daughter to let me take her to the movies (I think it was the Wreck It Ralph sequel where they had switched the times of the regular and 3-D versions of the film).  I'm generally a pretty unforgiving guy, and this will probably be the very last time I attempt to see a movie at Beach Cinema.  I swung by the Jones Library on the way back, and then mostly just crashed, between disappointment and general exhaustion.  I had debated going back out to see Smulyan a second time, or maybe to see if I could catch an evening show of Mickey 17.  In the end, I didn't really do much, aside from get some rest and run a few last cross tabs of the data.  I should have pushed myself to write more of the paper, but I just didn't.  

On Sunday, I biked over to Jimmie Simpson to swim.  Then I picked up a few groceries.  Then I worked on the paper pretty much straight though until 6 pm.  I then ran over to the Revue to see Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg.  Transit was not cooperative, and I ended up showing up 5 minutes late, just as the final previews were showing.  (This is getting a bit old...)  It was an interesting film, mixing true stories about Winnipeg history with his own family history.  It was certainly quirky.  I took the King streetcar (and actually was able to get a bit more of the paper drafted on the way).  I ended up stopping in at the office, and just powered through.  I ended up turning in a really rough draft after 1 am.  In fact, I found out (at the last minute) that I had formatted the paper incorrectly, so I tried to get that in shape, which took maybe another 30 minutes.  It's far from my best work, but it's not too shabby for a paper written in a day and a half, and the main thing is it keeps me on the program for this conference in Ottawa in May, and it sets me up to work with these professors on turning this into a proper paper.

I finally left the office around 2 am.  Fortunately, the streetcars were still running, and I just managed to catch a Kingston car, which dropped me off at Queen and Carlaw.  Unfortunately, the night bus wasn't scheduled to stop by for 25 minutes, so I had to walk home.  My mood was not helped by the fact that it actually snowed, and of course I hadn't thought to wear books.

I worked from home on Monday, though I should have take more time off.  I ended up going over to Paradise after all.  And I left enough time this time that I was able to drop in at African Palace for Ethiopian food.  I was there to see Fellini's La Strada.  Wow, that was a depressing film...  I don't exactly regret watching it, but I can't really envision watching it again.

I generally am not taking transit much these days, but, when I do, I am slowly making my way through Soseki's I am a Cat.  I brought this on the trip up to Ottawa and managed to get 300 pages into it (which is definitely better than my progress on a few other long trips).  I only just recently hit page 400, and there are 200 pages more to go!  I have to admit, this isn't really grabbing me, so I am trying to read it gently, and I will take it over to Seekers Bookstore after I finish reading it.

 

I think for the last few chapters, I will alternate a relatively short book and then a "cat" chapter.  I think it will likely be Gide's Lafcadio's Adventures, perhaps Dawn Powell's story collection Sunday, Monday and Always and then Joy Williams's State of Grace.  That might provide a bit of variety while still clearing out a few more books.  I think after this will be Lampedusa's The Leopard and then maybe Dorothy Edward's Winter Sonata (or I could reverse them while winter is still fresh in memory).

It's going to be another overstuffed week, but I am going to try not to do quite so much over the weekend.

Computer Almost Back in Business

The timing was just terrible to try to carve out time to set up this new computer, as I had an incredibly busy week at work, just like the previous week in fact.  We had a number of impossible deadlines, and the only realistic way to make them was to work overtime.  I definitely can't have this become the new norm.  As if that weren't enough, I needed to try to write a paper by the end of day.  I thought just possibly I could do it, but the questions at work never stopped, and at some point I just gave up.  Indeed, I eventually went to The Rex to see Gary Smulyan (backed by Neil Swainson and Terry Clarke).  I did write down a lot of notes for the paper, but I didn't have a laptop or any such thing with me.  I told the people at the conference that if the portal for papers was still open on Sunday, I would submit, but that would be the best I could do.  I probably shouldn't even have promised that, as I desperately need a break.  If it hadn't been for work (and this paper deadline) I would probably have managed to see Smulyan yesterday, then I might have gone to see Wenders's The American Friend at the Revue tonight.  That said, going to see Smulyan was fine; I believe this is the first time I've heard him live.

I'm not actually sure what I will do tomorrow.  Ideally, I will take my daughter to this bakery she is supposed to volunteer at next week, though I suspect she will bail on me, esp. as it will likely rain.  I'd like to go swimming, though I have to say the times aren't ideal, though I might be able to make it back to Matty Eckler in the early evening.  I would like to get over to 401 Richmond, but that seems unlikely.  It looks like there is one exhibit at Red Head Gallery that closes tomorrow, but I think I will just not make it.  I definitely need to get to 401 Richmond on the 29th.  I believe this is the same day I am seeing Truck at Factory, so at least I'll be in the right general area.  Anyway, I am likely to be staying east this Sat., as I will see if I can get to the Beaches to see Winter Stations (which closes March 30, I believe), and then will likely see Mickey 17 at the movie theatre out that way as well.  (Of course, this does somewhat depend on not feeling particularly guilty about missing the paper deadline.)

Anyway, back to my computer updates.  While I would never have recommended this, there have been a few positives.  I believe I mentioned that Mailstore now works again after a gap of several months, and I was able to find the old emails.  I was able to get TotalRecorder working after getting those old emails back.

It tooks a few tries but I managed to get iTunes back on the computer.  So far it hasn't kept asking for the password, knock wood.  A lot of programs were relatively simple to get back, including 7-Zip, VLC Player and Libre Office and IfranView (once I remembered its name).  I ended up going with a new CD ripper - EAC (Exact Audio Copy).

What was relatively difficult to the point I nearly gave up was getting Kindle and Calibre set up the right way.  (I was getting extremely put out over this.)  However, I think it is oddly enough a staging issue in fact.  It is best to get Kindle for PC back on the computer, then Adobe Digital Editions, and then finally the right version of Calibre.  It was incredibly frustrating, but it seems to be working again.

About the only thing I haven't been able to figure out is how to bring MODI (the MS Tiff editor) out from hiding.  It is possible that it simply isn't possible in Windows 11, and there are a handful of alternatives, but it is still annoying.  And while I think I downloaded the latest version, I don't think I have installed Notepad ++, which I will need to do, as I have a need for it coming up quickly.  I also have a subscription to SPSS (as well as Disney and Crave).  I don't think I'll get the temp license for SPSS back in time, so I really ought to follow through with cancelling!

Oh, there is also some good news.  I had copied some of the key files from the damaged hard drive to a USB memory stick, but it basically said everything was damaged and corrupted.  This was a hard blow, but I wanted to give it another try, so I picked up a new hard drive from Staples.  I was able to copy the damaged files.  I believe this was a successful rescue effort (and it was just a failure on the part of the USB stick, not expecting such a huge transfer of data!), though I will have to sit down later and try to open up every one of the transferred files.  So this put me in a pretty good mood for once.  I think the amount of files that I actually lost is probably pretty low, all things considered.  (Weirdly enough, I can't seem to recover a playlet I wrote as SFYS was winding down.  I submitted it through Google forms, rather than emailing it, or I could track it down that way.  I still have the hand-written notes, but I certainly don't feel like retyping it if I don't have to...)

Ok, with that I really had better get back to this paper, at least for an hour or two.  Ciao! 

Edit to add: I forgot that I have plugged in an old scanner, and the new computer doesn't seem to recognize it.  So I am a little hesitant on trying to install drivers and such, though I may do that at some point, after I clear the desk to the point I can see which cable is going where!  I do have a newish printer, and if things get to that point, it can do basic scanning, but I would still prefer to get this old scanner working.

Three Off-the-Beaten Path Film Makers

I've been thinking a bit more about Universal Language, which was the Canadian film where almost all the dialogue was in Farsi or (to my mind) very strangled French.  I suppose this was partly to foreground the strangeness of the world of the film but mostly as a nod to the Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami.  I've actually seen very few of Kiarostami's films.  I'm fairly sure I will not really care for his work, but I'll try to watch a few of the more central films, like Taste of Cherry and perhaps Certified Copy.  I did watch The Traveler, which is about a selfish boy trying to see a soccer match, at TIFF, but I didn't enjoy it at all.  It reminded me too much of Narayan's Swami and Friends.

Here's a shortened list of Kiarostami films that are generally available in North America:
The Koker trilogy - Where Is the Friend's Home? (1987)
And Life Goes On aka Life and Nothing More (1992)
Through the Olive Trees (1994)
Close-Up (1990) - not part of the Koker trilogy
Taste of Cherry (1997)
The Wind Will Carry Us (1999)
Ten (2002)
Tickets (2005) with additional sections directed by Ken Loach and Ermanno Olmi
Certified Copy (2010)
Like Someone in Love (2012)
24 Frames (2017) - Posthumously released

I don't think I've seen any of these, though it is possible I watched Like Someone in Love at TIFF.

Kiarostami also was the story writer on Jafar Panahi's The White Balloon, which I'll probably get around to one of these days.  It's not really all that many films, and nearly all are still available through Criterion (though the DVD of Taste of Cherry is no longer available, as they put out a Blu-Ray instead).

While there are not great similarities between Kiarostami and Aki Kaurismäki, I usually think of them together, though I would say Kaurismäki films are definitely more plot-driven.

Here are Kaurismäki's main films:
O Crime and Punishment  (1983)
O Calamari Union (1985)
Shadows in Paradise (1986)
O Hamlet Goes Business (1987)
Ariel (1988)
Leningrad Cowboys Go America  (1989)
The Match Factory Girl  (1990)  
Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses (1994)   
Total Balalaika Show (1994)
O Drifting Clouds (1996)
The Man Without a Past (2002)
Lights in the Dusk (2006)
Le Havre  (2011)
The Other Side of Hope (2017)
Fallen Leaves (2023)

I actually own a couple of DVD sets by Kaurismäki, though they are mostly gathering dust.  I did watch Hamlet Goes Business, which is certainly quirky.  I did see Fallen Leaves at TIFF back when it came out.  I thought I had seen The Other Side of Hope at Facets in Chicago, but given the timing, that's not possible.

Fairly recently, a new Blu-ray set came out, covering essentially everything Kaurismäki did through The Other Side of Hope.  It's a tough call, given there is a fair bit of duplication with what I have.  Also, I'm fairly sure I'm not going to really be into the Leningrad Cowboys.  The middle ones in the Proletariat Trilogy (Ariel and Match Factory Girl) and late films are covered pretty well by Criterion and are easy to rent through the library.  I would definitely have gotten the set had Fallen Leaves been in there, but it stops just short.  I will probably think about it for a while (and watch a couple other of his films) and then most likely get it anyway given all the shorts and bonus features in the set, but I'm a little annoyed.

The last film-maker in today's post moves us from Finland to Sweden.  Roy Andersson is another quirky director.  Apparently, he has retired from film-making, but one never knows.  I've certainly seen a higher proportion of his films, as I definitely saw You, the Living (perhaps at Facets) and I'm almost certain I also saw A Pigeon...  I thought that the scene with the house moving on tram tracks (from You, the Living) was similar in spirit to some of the more absurd sections of Universal Language.

Andersson's main films
A Swedish Love Story (1970)
Giliap (1975)
Songs from the Second Floor (2000)
You, the Living (2007)
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014)
About Endlessness (2019)

A Blu-Ray set came out from BFI with all of these films, aside from Giliap, and adds a documentary, Being a Human Person.  I went ahead and ordered this and am just waiting for it to turn up.  So that's the round-up for today.