Busy Sept.

I've been quite busy throughout Sept.  I actually had a bit of a rest day today, and I promptly got sick.  It could be the changing of the seasons or stress.  I suppose it could have been worse, as I could have gotten sick on the way to (or back) from Ottawa.

Let me back up a bit and see if there is anything I haven't covered at least a bit.  Maybe I'll start with books.  I wrapped up The Scarlet Letter and then was mostly alternating between Denis Johnson's Angels and Zevin's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which I thought was great.  However, there were a couple of concerts (James and Pulp) I was going to where I couldn't take a large bag, so I took one of the smaller paperbacks towards the top of my list, Canetti's Auto-da-Fé, and read that before the shows started.  (I actually didn't have much time at the Pulp show but had a bit of time before James started.)  Then I wanted to take something slightly shorter than a doorstop book up to Ottawa, and I opted for Russo's Empire Falls (over McCullers's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter).  As it turns out, I was able to get more work done on the bus than I expected, and only read about 75 pages, so I could have taken anything and perhaps I should have just finished Kundera's Ignorance (though I am not enjoying this much at all and just wish it was over...).  

On Sunday, I was at Trinity-St. Paul's seeing a short Tafelmusik concert for subscribers.  It was fun, though I do wish they had program hand-outs or done a better job in announcing the pieces they were playing.  They ended with Purcell's Air from Timon of Athens, which I liked a lot when they played it back in 2024.  It is possible that I was starting to come down with whatever I have now, as I was feeling pretty draggy and didn't really want to bike home.  I did, however, and I didn't think much of it, though whatever I had came back with a vengeance today.  The main reason I bring this up is that I was reading a bit of Angels before the show started and then tucked it next to me in the pew rather than putting it back in my backpack.  Big mistake.  When I got home, I was organizing everything and realized that I must have left it in the church!  Wow.  I'm considering giving them a call, but I was probably just going to give it away anyways (though I would have tried once selling it at Seekers' Books), and the irony of a dark book about criminals (called Angels) in the church book corner (I'm pretty sure they have one) appeals to me.  I was quite close to the end of this book and found an on-line pdf and just powered through the final chapter today.

So the tail end of Sept. will be me trying to finish Ignorance and then perhaps alternating chapters of Empire Falls and Auto-da-Fé, with Empire Falls being much more to my taste.  I will probably read some shorter novels as well, such as Gibbon's Ellen Foster, Kaysen's Asa, as I Knew Him and Jelloun's The Last Friend, though clearly this pushes me into October.  There is a small chance I will read a few stories from How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa, as I need to dig it out from a book pile before her reading at TPL.  I will also have to decide by late Oct. if I am definitely going to read Austen's Persuasion in Nov. (probably) and then Nabokov's Ada and Shteyngart's Vera, or Faith in Nov. or Dec. (less likely).

I saw quite a few movies over the month.  Out of Sight and Midnight at the Revue with Naked Lunch in a few more days, assuming I beat this cold.  I saw Kajillionaire at Paradise, and I enjoyed this a lot.  I think I must have seen a very different trailer, as I didn't realize how central Gina Rodriguez was to the plot.  I do think it was a bit unlikely that the parents would have enlisted her in the first place, risking bringing an outsider into their endless scamming and grifting, as they don't seem the type to really plan out far enough for the long con (that ended the movie).  Gina was just so beautiful and patient with Old Dolio (what an insane name for a daughter!).  I barely follow tv so didn't realize that she was pretty much a star by this time (after several seasons of Jane the Virgin), so I'm glad she agreed to do the movie.  What I didn't realize is that the writer/director was Miranda July, who is now much better known as the author of All Fours.  They actually had a completely offbeat video introduction by Ms. July, apparently shot on a camera in an airport bathroom!  If the Tafelmusik concert on Sunday had been shifted by half an hour or Pearls of the Deep (at the Paradise) had been half an hour later, I would have gone to that as well, though probably it is just as well I didn't try to do that as well.  

On Sunday I had also gone to the gym, bought groceries, then biked over to Carlton to see The Matrix, then stopped by work and put about an hour in on a proposal and picked up the tickets to the show, then biked up to Bloor to see Tafelmusik.  So it was a lot, even without trying to see one more movie.

In terms of $5 movies at Carlton, I saw The Breakfast Club earlier in the month and then the Matrix yesterday.  I see that Kiki's Delivery Service is coming back, but I think I'll pass, having seen this twice.  I probably will see Howl's Moving Castle again, assuming it is in rotation for Oct. or Nov.  It wasn't a $5 movie, but I saw Honey Don't! at Carlton, which I enjoyed, and then This is Spinal Tap II at Market Square on Sun.  My wife actually came along, and she hasn't been in a movie theatre in years!  I thought Tap II was good, though it is very much aimed at Boomers and Gen X who are starting to feel (along with Marvell) "Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near" and specifically that there are more grains in the bottom of the hourglass than at the top...  This picture is aimed at the aged still trying to recapture a bit of their former glory (and some of the shots of the actors from 40 some years ago are just painful to see what has happened to them; it's the same though even worse with Tim Curry post-stroke).  The younger generations complain about Tap II and just don't think the old geezers are funny enough...

On Sat. I also managed to see a documentary about Georgia O'Keeffe (overall very good but probably a few too many talking heads going on about her work).  I would say O'Keeffe is quite an important figure for me, in part because she was so important to my mother.  One of the very first major exhibits that I went to was the O'Keefe retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1988.  My father decided to pick up the catalog as a gift to my mother, and I eventually inherited it.  Over the years, I saw some smaller O'Keeffe exhibits, including one focused on her skyscraper paintings (might have been at AIC or the Whitney, but I can't recall), then an exhibit sponsored by the Tate that hit Toronto's AGO in 2017 (a little surprised I didn't mention it here at that time*), and then the O'Keeffe-Calder joint show in Montreal in 2024 (some photos of that here).  My mother would really have enjoyed that show.  I know that my mother enjoyed spending time in the U.S. Southwest, and I'm almost certain that she went to the O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, NM.  I think it's a museum I probably ought to visit, though who knows when I will be willing to travel south again.

I didn't see all that much theatre.  I did see The Welkin, which I thought had strong acting but I really didn't like the script and I checked out midway through the second act when there was just one too many plot twists (to say nothing of the endless sobbing over the strains of 'Running Up That Hill').  I was going to see Waiting for Godot this upcoming weekend, but pushed it back a week (and in fact am seeing The Green Line at Buddies earlier that same day!).  And The Public Enemy at Alumnae just before that.  It looks like I saw almost no theatre in Sept., though a fair bit in Aug. and then a fair bit is upcoming in Oct.  Instead, I mostly saw movies or went to the Rex or to other concerts.  I saw Haim quite early in the month, then James and Pulp in the same week.  (James was the best of the bunch, and if they had played 'Born of Frustration' it would have been the cherry on top...  They apparently are playing all the songs off of Laid at most stops on the tour!)  And The B-52s are this Wednesday, assuming I am healthy, so I really had better get off to bed now...

 

* What is particularly odd is that I clearly remember taking photos, particularly of her last paintings of Ghost Ranch, but they aren't in the folder with other 2017 photos.  Instead, I have photos (including some O'Keeffe paintings) taken in DC and Chicago on trips we took in 2017.  I even have looked in the 2018 folder, but nothing so far.  So strange.

Georgia O'Keeffe, The Shelton with Sunspots, NY, 1926