More on Recent Reading

Microserfs was an odd book.  It definitely had some flashes of Coupland's later preoccupations with slogans and gnomic writings, but was filled with working characters (all mostly interchangeable coders, but at least he writes a lot about work, unlike so many contemporary writers) and then a somewhat unearned swerve into melodrama to make the reader feel something at the end.  I'm not sorry I read it, but it certainly isn't in my top half of his novels (I believe I've actually read 7 or perhaps 8 of his books, including a non-fiction book about Vancouver, City of Glass).

I was also taken a bit aback by the plot swerves in The Vendor of Sweets.  Towards the very end of the book, the main character goes back into the memory hole and spends a lot of time thinking about his wife in the early days of his marriage (a little like a rehash of The English Teacher (probably his best novel)); then he sort of leaves Mali, his (barely) adult son, to his own devices to make his own path through life with only a few thoughts towards Grace, the Korean-American girl who followed Mali to India.  I wouldn't say it was a particularly satisfactory ending.  It did have the advantage of bringing the book to a rapid close.  Likewise with Microserfs, this is somewhere in the bottom half of Narayan's novels, though so much better than The Man-eater of Malgudi and somewhat better than Swami and Friends.

I've gotten to the halfway point of All That Monk Business, and there is a major plot twist.  It's intriguing enough to keep going.  However, I have diverted almost all my attention to The Odyssey right now, having just reached Book 5 where Odysseus finally enters the story!

So in terms of what I am actually reading at the moment, it is The Odyssey, Chakraborty's The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi (borrowed from the library and it pairs well with The Odyssey) and wrapping up All That Monk Business.  I'm pretty sure that immediately after this, it will be The Library Cosmic by Ben Berman Ghan (also out from the library), McCullers's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Marcial Gala's Call Me Cassandra, Mahfouz's Adrift on the Nile and Thien's The Book of Records.  I'm debating rereading Station Eleven for Book Club, but am not sure if I'll be able to find the time.

Given my interest in the Secret Life of Books podcast, and my general push to get to 20/20 from the top 100 books of all time, and my general interest in thinking about the books I need to read or reread before I kick the bucket, I've sort of drawn up this rudimentary list of what I really must read or read again in my remaining years:

Jane Austen Emma
James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room and as many essays as I can manage
Dickens David Copperfield (and maybe Great Expectations and/or Our Mutual Friend and rereading Bleak House)
Joan Didion The White Album
Doblin Berlin Alexanderplatz
Dostoevsky rereading The Brothers Karamazov
Forster Howards End
Fuentes Terra Nostra (and probably rereading Christopher Unborn)
G.G. Marquez rereading One Hundred Years of Solitude & Love in the Time of Cholera
Grossman Stalingrad and Life and Fate
Thomas Hardy The Return of the Native and Jude the Obscure
Russell Hoban rereading Turtle Diary
Henry James Portrait of a Lady
Lessing rereading The Golden Notebook
Thomas Mann Buddenbrooks
Morrison rereading Song of Solomon and maybe Beloved
Nabokov Pale Fire
Rabelais rereading Gargantua and Pantagruel
Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath
Tolstoy War and Peace
E. White A Boy's Own Story & The Beautiful Room is Empty & The Farewell Symphony
Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray (and watching Importance of Being Earnest again)
V. Woolf rereading To the Lighthouse and The Waves

Then a few series that are of interest, most notably Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy, Lessing's Children of Violence series, Faulkner's The Hamlet/The Town/The Mansion, Trollope's The Chronicles of Barsetshire, probably Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls Trilogy and perhaps rereading Durrell's Alexandria Quartet.

There are obviously still a few gaps here and there, particularly in terms of French and German literature, which I've never really focused on, but if I do manage to get through this list, I'll have read almost all the truly central books in the British and American canons, along with my many forays into Russian, Indian, South American and South African literature along the way.  It would have been a good (reading) life at any rate.

 

Books at mid-year (2026)

As anticipated, I am certainly reading less now that I am almost never on transit.  The spring was mostly taken up with Nabokov (Ada and then Transparent Things).  On a trip out to Halifax, I started Dickens's American Notes (and made sure to read the parts where he lands in Halifax (and might well have been in a ship wreck, which would have really shaken up British literature) and later on travelled up to Toronto and Montreal!) though it took me a while to finish it up.  I also decided to abandon Hulme's The Bone People. 

I then read Steinbeck's Cannery Row (and am reserving Sweet Thursday for the fall).  For Book Club, I read Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman (in a single day!).  I made it through Thammavongsa's story collection How to Pronounce Knife fairly quickly.  I was going to read her short novel Pick a Colour, but we are reading that for Book Club in the fall, so I might as well read it later, so it will be fresh.  I was struggling with Ariel Dorfman's The Last Song of Manuel Sendero, finding it so slow and repetitive and also quite intentionally obscure.  I finally abandoned it.  Given that I abandoned another Dorfman book (about an obnoxious bike messenger!), and I have zero interest in ever watching or reading Death and the Maiden, it's safe to say he just isn't for me.  I am more interested than ever in rereading Fuentes's Christopher Unborn, really hoping that it still holds up for me.

I read quite a few poetry collections in May and June, mostly by Jennifer LoveGrove and Laurie Graham (Rove and Settler Education and Calling It Back to Me), finding that I liked LoveGrove's first and second collections (The Dagger Between Her Teeth and I Should Have Never Have Fired the Sentinel) a bit better than her later ones, though I did like The Tinder Sonnets a bit more than I expected, and I would have been ok picking up a copy at the Tranzac reading (if she had had a square on her).   I didn't care much for Joshua Weiner's The World's Room, though there was a poem at the end about air travel that I might chuck into the travel anthology.  Also, there was a pretty good poem (or section of a poem) about a shipwreck in Gbenga Adesina's Death Does Not End at the Sea.

 

I also read a lot of graphic novels (the entire Giant Days series), severely cutting into my normal reading time.  And of course, Fringe took up almost all the remaining time.

At any rate, I somehow ended up with a copy of The World Goes On by László Krasznahorkai from the library.  I think I am somewhat intrigued by his War & War, but this was easier to request.  It turns out that I brought it along with me on the trip to Stratford.  I also was midway through Offill's Weather, and I also brought along Barry Kennedy's All That Monk Business, which is a quirky novel set in Vancouver's Downtown East Side.  It does have a cool cover.  I can't remember where I picked this up, though most likely either at a Little Free Library or a library book sale.

I alternated through all three books on the bus ride in and when we had some downtime between the plays.  I finished Weather first.  It is a very fast read, with short paragraphs outlining this woman and how she lets caring for her f'ed up brother overwhelm her life to the point where her husband takes off for a while with their child.  There is also a lot of discussion on how to keep moving forward when the future seems somewhat pointless, i.e. the climate crisis will wipe out civilization.  Definitely a novel that is in tune with the gesalt.  I'll probably get around to reading her Department of Speculation, which is an earlier novel in the same vein.

I made a big dent in The World Goes On, finishing it a few days after we got back.  I didn't like this much at all, and I probably would have dropped it, except I didn't have lots of other options on the bus(!), and I had so recently dropped the Dorfman.  I will borrow War & War later to see if it lives up to the hype, but will not give it nearly as much of a chance.

I'm sort of torn on All That Monk Business.  I don't care much for the main character, Buddy Monk, and I don't really find any of the characters plausible.  It's taken 100 pages (a third of the novel) to finally come to the point where Monk's father's will is revealed.  It's not clear if this is going to set off a frantic hunt a la It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World or go in an entirely different direction.  I'm mostly plugging along because it does remind me of my time in Vancouver, not that I spent much time at all on Hastings when I could avoid it.  

I am very close to wrapping up Coupland's Microserfs ✔, and the current plan it to bring it along next weekend and give it to my brother, who is in the tech industry.  And I am probably going to finish Narayan's The Vendor of Sweets ✔ in a day or two.  I'm glad that this isn't another repeat of Swami and His Friends in the sense that the boy who decides to abandon his studies carves out another path, but I'm not liking this as much as some of his earlier novels.

The current plan for next weekend is to bring along Thrity Umrigar's The Space Between Us ✔ and Chandler Klang Smith's The Sky Is Yours ✔, both of which I should be able to leave behind, assuming I get through them on the trip.

 

After this, it will probably be Chakraborty's The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi (having borrowed this from the library), McCullers's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Marcial Gala's Call Me Cassandra, Thien's The Book of Records, Woolf's Night and Day, Harvey's Orbital, O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find and Amis's The Information.  Oh, and very likely rereading The Odyssey, almost certainly sticking with Lattimore.

In the late fall/winter, I am considering Murdoch's Under the Net, Mavis's Montreal Stories, Vanderhaeghe's My Present Age, William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow, Woolf's To the Lighthouse and The Waves, Lamming's The Pleasures of Exile, Forster's Howard's End, Tibor Fischer's Voyage to the End of the Room, Nabokov's Pale Fire and then Martel's Son of Nobody.

As ever, simply too much to read and not enough time... 

Edit (7/27): After going through Queen Books, I added an awful lot of poetry books to my TPL hold list, so I will probably end up with another long diversion through poetry (including Lattimore's Odyssey) before I get back to novels.  I also have become a bit obsessed with The Secret Life of Books podcast, though I think I will draw the line at donating/subscribing in order to join their book club.  They are working their way through Dickens's Bleak House at the moment, and I just don't have the mental energy to return to this opus at this moment.  Maybe if the book club sessions are archived, it is something I would consider next year...  One nice thing is that they largely stick to the classics (and those which I have already read!).  I think the only books I need to read before listening to their episodes are Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, Henry James's Portrait of a Lady and Dickens's David Copperfield.  Interestingly, they haven't gotten to Ellison's Invisible Man yet, and it seems unlikely they will cover Joyce's Ulysses directly (though it was discussed in brief in the legacy of the Odyssey episode), as Sophie Gee is firmly on Team V. Woolf and doesn't seem to care for Joyce much at all.  I belated realized that they seem to be sticking very firmly to literature in English, with a few exceptions, notably Homer's Odyssey and the Epic of Gilgamesh and a couple of episodes on Montaigne's Essays (perhaps due to the connection to Shakespeare), but nothing on any Russian author (and only a few passing references to Nabokov) or Kafka, all of whom inevitably show up in these sorts of canon exercises, so we'll see.  I have just gotten to their episode on literature and trains, and they talk about Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, but it is almost incredible that they have apparently skipped over Dombey and Sons, which is all about how the train ripped up and reconfigured the English landscape.

Edit (8/3): I'm back from Iowa (with a full day spent in Chicago along the way).  I managed to read two full books as I planned, basically wrapping up The Space Between Us as we touched down in Toronto.  I totally forgot that I had read Bombay Time by the same author, which has the seeds of The Space Between Us with fraught relationships between sons, mothers and daughter-in-laws as well as between the Indian middle class and their servants.  I didn't really care much for The Space Between Us, which felt like misery porn, and I thought the ending was a particular let down, sort of celebrating that the poor servant who has been cheated out of everything by many people in her life (and her mistress completely unjustly kicks her out of the house) is still there, just enduring, when in fact she is likely not going to be able to survive more than a few more days after this final betrayal.  It's a complete (middle class) cop-out.  At least A Fine Balance has the honestly to show that almost all the poor people in the novel are completely ground down and are dead or dying.  It sounds like The Museum of Failures and Honor all are variants of how bad things happen all the time in India and are inescapable and all are pretty much misery porn.  I think I am done with this author, even though her writing style is pretty good, all things considered.  But I just don't need to read fiction that upsets me that much when the world is bad enough as it is.

Rereading the Odyssey

I guess it is somewhat natural, but everyone is talking about The Odyssey nowadays.  I haven't booked a ticket yet to see Nolan's Odyssey yet, but I will fairly soon.  Interestingly, Market Square is showing it, but I want to try to see it at an IMAX theatre, at the very least, though I am not going to fly to Regina or wherever to see it in Super IMAX.  There are even podcasts dedicated to the Odyssey this summer (Secret Life of Books Eps. 154-158, in particular), as well as plenty of articles talking about what Nolan left out (the bed riddle and almost all of the sex with Circe and especially Calypso) or added, most notably the ending.  There are in fact some scraps of legends talking about what happened to Odysseus post-Ithaca, so it isn't as if this ending was completely tacked on, but it certainly isn't what is in the Odyssey itself.  His final voyage is discussed in passing in Dante and is actually the focus of Tennyson's Ulysses.  I suspect I will overall enjoy it, though I've heard parts are extra loud and then there are long stretches with people whispering.  I honestly wonder why no one can seem to convince him that his audience would actually grow more if he didn't tinker with the sound balance so much.  I will not go to see Tenet again for this very reason...

I'm debating rereading The Odyssey or at least large chunks of it before I go off to the movie, along with many, many others.  (There is even a piece on how bookstores can't keep up with demand for The Odyssey, The Iliad and other classics (paywalled unfortunately).)  I recall that back in 2019 I read the Fitzgerald and Lattimore translations of both The Iliad and The Odyssey back to back, coming down firmly in favour of Lattimore, and fortunately I still have my copies of Lattimore's Homer.  I've only read a very few snatches of the Wilson and Mendelsohn translations.  I'll dig a bit deeper, but am almost certain I will come back to Lattimore as the best translation for what I am looking for in Homer.  (As a bit of a follow-up to this post, I did end up getting Musa's Portable Dante, and I really ought to read that fairly soon, alternating with Ciardi's translations.  I even have Longfellow's translation of Dante!  I don't think anyone finds that a particularly good translation, but it has all of Dore's illustrations, which makes it worth perusing as well.)

Interestingly, Mendelsohn has a memoir or fictionalized memoir (An Odyssey: A Father, a Son and an Epic) about his father sitting in on his class about the Odyssey and their bonds growing stronger through exploring the text.  This sort of sounds like what Night Journey at this year's Toronto Fringe was going for, though that play was ultimately pretty disappointing.  

I had high hopes for this, but they were dashed.  It's hard to say just what went wrong, though pretty much every critic agreed that the social media influencer who comes in at the very end and tries to stir up trouble was a huge mis-step.  This wasn't even remotely believable.  I would say that it suffers the most from the playwright not actually writing about anything he knows about personally (academic politics) so filled in the gaps from what he pulled from diverse headlines over the years.  It wasn't really clear whether this was all taking place at a university or a college (which in Canada are basically community colleges).  

The professor clearly operates as if he is in a classics department in a university, and the rich heir would never be sent to a college (his character was not remotely believable, which was another major problem).  However, the bizarre under-resourcing, the other three students and the way that the board of regents tried to bend over backwards to pacify a loony social media agitator all reek of college.  Aside from the complete lack of insight into how the college politics would play out, the play just didn't dive into the poem itself enough and show how wrestling with the thorny issues in the poem changed the students' lives.  Most of the character growth (generally not believable) came through interactions that had nothing to do with Homer's source material itself.  And the staging was just ridiculous with so many short, unlinked scenes, making this drag on for too long.  So this really requires a complete rethinking and rewriting.  It was such a missed opportunity.

 

Edit (7/27): I spent a bit of time looking into the other translations, and I do not like Emily Wilson's at all.  Far too spare and not really poetic at all.  Am I at all influenced by how she so needlessly ran down Nolan (saying she would be "ashamed" to be associated with it), even after he praised her highly (and certainly increased sales of her translation)?  Perhaps.  I don't really need to justify my opinions.  I thought Mendelsohn's wasn't bad, but still always was a close second to Lattimore, and I don't really see what it adds, so I'll just stick with Lattimore for now.  (I don't have an edition with this cover unfortunately, but at least I have a physical copy at hand.)  I probably will try to flip through Mendelsohn's memoir at some point.

 

Slow Weekend

While two and three weekends ago were completely stuffed with Fringe activities, and last weekend was Stratford and next weekend is the funeral in Iowa, I actually don't have all that much on the calendar for this weekend.  I think it is likely going to rain, but it doesn't actually look like it will at the moment.  Maybe it will wait until tomorrow.

Friday evening I had some spare time, as there really wasn't anything going on that caught my eye at the Rex or Hirut.  As the weather was nice, I decided I should hit the AGO again to simplify Sat. afternoon if it was raining hard.  I passed through the David Blackwell again quickly, as that is closing soon.  Then saw the Enda Tacon exhibit and the Impressionist paintings on loan from Dallas.  (The Monet room was still busy but not as packed as before.)  I even had time to go into the Infinity Room again.

I managed to get this one work task done pretty quickly, using my "unauthorized" copy of SPSS, since work still can't get around to getting my license activated, so I am using a home version.  I still haven't finished my time sheet, but that is a tonight problem...  (I have a pretty major CRA thing to deal with as well, but that is also going to have to wait.)

I was up fairly early this morning cleaning up some computer files.  I have tried a couple of times to get Disney+ working on Roku again but am pretty close to giving up, esp. as Roku aggressively discourages people from contacting them.  What a completely shit company/service provider they are.

I went back to bed for a much needed nap (and much longer than I expected) when I was woken by the house foundations shaking due to Ontario Line construction nearby.  I really am going to have to find that number to force them to do an inspection and take some photos, so they will pay for the damages if the house really does crumble due to their digging and tunnelling.  Sigh.  One more thing I really don't want to have to deal with...

I'm about to go off to the gym.  I think after this I will briefly hit the galleries in Yorkville and 401 Richmond, then come back.  Depending on how I feel and if it has started raining, I might try to weed the front yard which badly needs it.

Sunday, I plan to go swimming at noon, and then meet a friend at Video Cab to see Our Town.  I decided to hold off on getting tickets to see Herbie Hancock at Massey Hall.  There are still quite a few left, the last time I checked, so I'll try to get rush tickets and see what those cost.  So not exactly a restful weekend, but certainly less crammed than usual...

Edit: I ended up dawdling for so long that I went downtown first.  I ate (too much) at an Indian buffet, then hit 401 Richmond and Yorkville.  I'll probably post a few pictures of things I stumbled across shortly.  Then I went to the gym and did groceries.  I'm pretty close to winding down for the day, but I think I'll try to do a bit of weeding in the front yard, so quite an inversion of the way I thought the day would go. 

Edit (7/27): Sunday did go more or less as planned.  I got to Jimmie Simpson just after noon.  The fast lanes were basically empty.  I got my swimming in, wrapping up at 1.  Then did a bit of shopping and window shopping on Queen St.  Saw Our Town with my friend and hung out at a coffee shop afterwards.  I actually managed to clean up the front yard a fair bit.  The main difference was that Massey Hall didn't have any reasonable rush tickets for Herbie Hancock, so I passed on seeing him and went to see Mike Murley at the Rex instead (for $20 instead of $100+).  This does decrease the likelihood that I go back to the Rex tonight, however.

Life Interlude

I was planning on either writing about our recent trip to Stratford (quite fun, even though the plays were certainly on the depressing side!) or the massive Fringe catch-up post.  However, as we were grabbing food at Union Station after the bus ride back in from Stratford, my wife said that my cousin had messaged her and said that the funeral arrangements were underway.  I was very sad, but not totally surprised.  Then I had a second to think about it and wondered why my cousin would be involved at all.  I took another look at the message and realized that it was my other cousin, Adam, and not my step-brother who had just passed away.  This was certainly a shock to me, even though he had not been taking care of himself.  And also was a fairly heavy drinker.  I tried to estimate his age and decided he was about 48, though when the obit came out, it turned out he was only 46!

Very very sad.  I certainly wasn't close at all to him, and slightly closer to my other cousin, but in small families, you try to go to weddings and funerals, so I started looking into it.  At first, I thought it would be cheaper to break the flight up and buy tickets on Porter to Chicago and then on United or Southwest from Chicago to Moline (in the Quad Cities), but I was reading things wrong and the price was completely jacked up.  (My friend in Chicago tells me that this is Lollapalooza, which I had no idea was even still running, so that's probably why the prices are so high!)  It ended up being cheaper to do it all on United.  What I finally worked out was flying from Toronto to Chicago to Moline next Friday.  The visitation and memorial service and everything will be Sat., and we'll spend time with what's left of the family.  My brother has work trips that he can't get out of, so he's going to try to rearrange things so he can make most of the service and then head back to the airport to go on to his next destination!

I'll leave pretty early on Sunday, fly into Chicago, but then the Chicago to Toronto leg will be in the evening, so I'll have pretty much the whole day in Chicago.  I will say that it is possible if Trump had started his latest ravings about Canada and that the wildfires are our fault and how ungrateful we are and that he is going to try to put more tariffs on our goods and bring us to our knees, I would have told them, sorry I just can't justify going down under these conditions.  (And indeed, if my step-brother passes away in the next month or two, it will be an even tough decision to go down.)  However, as long as I am going, I might as well do something in Chicago to make the trip worthwhile.  I plan on checking out the Art Institute for a few hours and then the MCA and meet a friend for dinner.  I had wondered about theatre, and while there is The Importance of Being Earnest playing, it is in Oak Park, which is a bit of a trek.  And for some odd reason, Tuta is doing Crime and Punishment, but not at all on that one weekend!  The most interesting was Stoppard's Leopoldstadt.  However, it was in Glencoe(!), so I would have to convince my friend to go.  And then I would have to stay over and leave Monday morning.  If it had been in downtown Chicago and it really only involved/inconvenienced me, I probably would have done it.  (My friend is a theatre buff but not quite to the same degree as me and she figured she needed her sleep more...)  If I hadn't managed to see it in New York (after it didn't turn up in Toronto), then I would probably have gone ahead and done it, but I don't have to see it again.  Anyway, I'll get more than enough museums in during my one day in Chicago.

Starting to work through the books I'll take on the trip, trying to prioritize books I can read and leave behind.  I actually should be finished with Coupland's Microserfs by then, and I'll try to pass that along to my brother.  So that's what's on the agenda for next weekend. 

Edit: I had definitely thought about shipping some things to my friend, which I did on my last visit.  It turns out that despite there being a pretty good sale at Radiance this week (to celebrate launching their US site) where the prices aren't too bad, shipping to Canada still sucks.  So I was about to ship a copy of Eiichi Kudo's Yokohama BJ Blues to my friend in Chicago, but it turns out that Robarts has it, and I just needed to search on Kudō instead of Kudo.  Then I took a look at Amazon.com and sure enough they had a pretty decent sale on Blu-rays, including Huston's The Dead.  In this case, shipping to Canada was not so different from shipping to Chicago, so I did that and won't have to impose on my friend at all, which is certainly for the best.  Also, the Rishi Dastidar book I tried to buy through Amazon (Cherry Blossom at Nightbreak) -- but was blocked by file format issues -- is on order at Robarts.  It may take a while for it to end up in the system, but it should get there eventually, which is terrific, as I don't imagine I would read this more than once, making a library copy ideal.

Edit (7/24): I had completely forgotten that I have the following Monday off, so I could have seen the play Sunday evening, stayed over and left at some completely reasonable time on Monday (instead of 6 am).  And while that is sorely tempting, the fact that I would need to convince my friend to go (is Glencoe is way off the beaten path) and also to then let me stay overnight just makes this a bit too stressful, even before trying to rearrange the flight at this point, so I will just let it go, and see if Mirvish ever does manage to bring Leopoldstadt to Toronto.

World on Fire

I was going to write about something else, but this merits its own post.  The skies over Toronto were dull orange yesterday, and most of the day it was almost like going through a partial eclipse.  It was really hard to focus, as it felt like early evening for pretty much the entire working day.

I probably shouldn't have biked in, but I did, and have some shots I took along the way.

 

 

The CN Tower is barely visible between a few buildings in the third picture.  I didn't apply any special filter to the shots, and indeed I think the camera did amp up the orange a bit, but it looked pretty much like this, especially this fourth shot.

My son was going to join me at the Jazz Bistro to see Nathan Tran but decided it made more sense to stay home, and I decided it wasn't a great idea to come home and turn right around and go back out in this, so I worked another hour, ate at Ginger and then went over to the Jazz Bistro.  I only stayed for the first set. 

What is so incredibly dispiriting is that we are almost at the point where even the climate change deniers can no longer deny things are badly out of whack, but there is still no push to make any meaningful change and most countries, esp. in North America, are badly off track and in fact going in reverse when it comes to implementing policies that would improve matters.  An entire generation betrayed by the current political leadership, including Carney.  It does seem to me that western democracy (and the underlying institutions that so clearly favour the weathy and powerful) has completely failed this test.  I really don't see any reason for hope at all.

Life Away from Fringe

The Toronto Fringe wrapped up Sun.  I never did get around to posting my Fringe schedule, so I will do it retrospectively at some point with comments on what I saw.  I would say I enjoyed pretty much everything I saw with one unfortunate exception.  I will also post a few thoughts on my show and how things went and what I might do differently the next time.  (Each time at Fringe you learn something new...)  But I'll just write down some non-Fringe thoughts for now.

My son came down from Ottawa (admittedly in order to see my Fringe play).  He was scheduled to leave tomorrow, but with the extreme heat, Via is saying that the trains will have multi-hour delays(!), so it looks like he will stay until Thurs. or maybe even Friday.  It has been quite hot here.  Last week wasn't so bad, but the first week of Fringe there was a massive heat wave.  Which is back now.  I'm still planning on biking to work tomorrow, but will try to set up before the worst of the heat, and then perhaps I'll go swimming on the way home, which might help a bit.

I haven't done too much other than Fringe for the past two weeks.  I had wanted to see Silent Running over at the Paradise.  But it overlapped with Galen's Grocer: the Musical, which was amusing but quite goofy, and Night Journey, so I really couldn't make it.  I also had thought very seriously about catching the first set of Kirk MacDonald with Neil Swainson at the Rex.  This is very similar to the group that I saw at the Jazz Bistro, though Neil wasn't sitting in.  In the end, my wife and son went to an Indian restaurant (after coming back from You Choose), and then I biked off to see 2076 at Sweet Action Theatre.  While I would have enjoyed the set, 2076 was pretty good, and I wouldn't really wanted to have missed it.  I'll probably be going to the Jazz Bistro once or even twice this week, so it's not like I won't get my jazz fix in.

That day I also took them to the AGO (in between my Fringe show and You Choose), so that was at least something different.  The current exhibition is Impressionist paintings on loan from Dallas.  The exhibition runs through mid Oct., so I'll go back several times.  The room with the two Monet's was definitely the most popular, and it was very hard to see the paintings at all.  Here's one of them:

Claude Monet, The Water Lily Pond (Clouds), 1903

My favourite was probably this painting by Pissarro:

Camille Pissarro, The Fish Market, Dieppe: Grey Weather, Morning, 1902

I really have not been able to keep up with my reading.  I did read Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman (in the course of a single day!) for Book Club, but didn't care for it very much.

I am midway through Copland's Microserfs, and this is a bit more to my taste.  It explores a world that I remember, even though I was never particularly into coding in the late 80s or 90s and mostly just used computers for course work.  I'm pretty sure I never took a course in computer science or computer engineering, though by the late 90s I was using quite specialized programs for work (and indeed the need to move back and forth between work and home computers led me away from Macs in the late 90s, as they were not compatible with these programs).

I finally gave up on Dorfman's The Last Song of Manuel Sendero.  It just felt so incredibly static with all these unborn babies trying not to be born to stick it to the (Chilean) dictatorship, but nothing happened at all even as I skipped ahead.  (In some ways, Midnight's Children also deals with a large cadre of children, albeit those that were born, but then these children get up to all kinds of things in the real world.)  Apparently, there is this whole meta-fictional thing going where thousands of years in the future, they are trying to uncover the truth about the events in the book (not unlike what happens in Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play) but either I didn't reach that stage or more likely I didn't understand what Dorfman was trying to convey.  I just found it all intentionally obscure, and I generally can't bear books like that.  My recollection is that Fuentes's Christopher Unborn, which came out a couple of years before Manuel Sendero, is far more interesting and engaging.  I'd like to try to read it this year, though I am certainly worried that I won't like it nearly as much this time around.

I have started Jennifer Offill's Weather, and this is far more to my taste, so I plan to read this and a few other short books that I am fairly sure I will like, including Narayan's The Vendor of Sweets and perhaps rereading Iris Murdoch's Under the Net and perhaps Denis Johnson's Train Dreams (which I am less sure I will like, but it is quite short whenever I can actually get it from the library) to try to get back into my reading habits.  I guess that is enough for now, as I do need to get back to work.  My next posts will probably be those Fringe round-up posts, but I definitely don't have time to tackle them now.
 

A (Nearly) Sold Out Show!

Yesterday afternoon was the best ticket sales so far.  I knew it was going to be a big crowd, but I was expecting around 75 people.  In the end, with a few last walk-ups, we had 101!  

Here we see people actually wrapping around the corner, waiting to get in!

Alumnae is one of the bigger theatres, seating 123 (or so), so it wasn't sold out, but very close.

It was a solid show, though we had some problem with the sound cue between scene 1 and 2, and then a rushed entrance midway through scene 2.  But people seemed to get the jokes and generally had a good time.

I didn't hang out with the actors this time around, but I talked briefly to the Fringe staff (one of whom wants to do more producing of her own, so we may connect) and then biked up to Tarragon to see You Choose (again).

I haven't had much luck passing out postcards at Soulpepper, but I have always had better luck at Tarragon, and tonight was no exception.  In fact, as I was passing out the cards, one guy said that he didn't need one, he had seen the show.  I asked if he had liked it, and he said yes.  Then I passed out the postcard to the next person, and he said to her that it was a fun show.  So that's amazing, and that's exactly the word of mouth we need for a strong second week.

In fact, sales for this second week of Fringe are pretty good, with the exception of tonight, where sales are on the low side (20) but I'm expecting some late sales and walk ups.  I think every show after tonight is at least 30 and usually 40 or more, so we should have a strong second week to close out Fringe.  As ever, more info and a link to buy tickets to see the show yourself can be found here.

I've kind of personally hit a wall, and am a little tired of all the hustling.  I wouldn't say I really want Fringe to be over, but I don't want to feel responsible for stirring up more ticket sales (or trying to break even, a more or less impossible task) or if anything goes wrong at one of the shows.  I'd rather just focus on the shows I have booked to see and let everything else go for now...

 

2nd Show over

There is so much more I wanted to write, but I am running so late today (and I absolutely need to get my time sheet in before I run off to MOCA!).  I'll see if I can add more tonight after I am back from our 3rd show and You Choose.

We have our own mini Fringe tent right outside Alumnae Theatre. This does attract a few passers-by, which is great.  We're pretty close to the Fringe Hub, but Berkeley is still a little bit out of the way.

 

 

Last show of the night at Alumnae

Last night was always the lowest in terms of sales, but the Daily Discount helped.  In fact, we had been stuck at 9 for days.  Then I got word right before the start of the show that we were up to 20.  There were a few people buy tickets at the door and had two more volunteers get rush tickets (which is itself a good sign).  In the end, we had 27, which is not bad for an evening show on Sat.

It was a very good performance of the show, and the audience was engaged (and laughed at the funny parts).  It ran 54 minutes, which is incredible.  I think we're pretty much in the groove from here on out, and I'll see if we want to add in any shout outs tonight.  Still, it is tight, and there are always a few people that run out immediately after curtain call.  There was also one guy who left mid-show, which is a bit odd, though I wouldn't be surprised if he thought Eric Peterson was involved and then wasn't so interested after that...

Definitely looking forward to the rest of the run. Link with more info (and tickets) here. 

Edit: I really thought I would make it over to MOCA today, but I think it's just one too many things.  I'll get ready to go swimming, then see Medusa at Soulpepper and then make sure to run off a few more programs, as today's show will have close to 100 people!  I don't think I'll have time to hit MOCA.  I'll see if I can go another time, or wait for the first weekend in August when it will be free (again).

Dialing Back (Slightly) on Fringe This Weekend

Our show has two shows over the weekend, and one on Monday, so I definitely won't be cutting back much, but I was toying with the idea of sneaking in Camp or Such Ado around 3 pm today (when I had a gap in my schedule), and I just don't feel like it.  I may see if I can do one more pass by Fringe Central and pass out postcards, but I'm kind of tired of Fringe at the moment.  (Maybe due to seeing 3 yesterday, including a late show last night...)  I'll write more about what I got up to on Friday later.

I am about to head off to the gym.  There is a bit of a break in the rain, and it's cooler.  I suspect it feels much better outside than inside...  Then I am going downtown.  I think I'll try to hit the AGO, but only to see one exhibit, then stop by City Hall Library to get a couple of DVDs that should be on the shelves.  Maybe put in an hour or so at work, as I am quite behind on one project, and it is starting to weigh on me.  On the other hand, I could just hit 401 Richmond and then get to Factory early (I have a 5:30 show there) to pass out more postcards.  (I probably should have cut the order in half when I reordered them.  I am going to end up with a lot left over...)

Then I'll grab something to eat (maybe at the Well) and then make sure to get to our show around 8:30.  That might give me another hour or so at work.  We'll see.

Sunday is a little simpler, but it does depend a bit on good weather.  I am planning on leaving around 9:30, getting to MOCA a bit after 10, check out the exhibit there, then come back to Regent Park and go swimming, making sure to wrap by 12:45, to get over to Soulpepper to see Medusa at 1:30.  Then we have our show at Alumnae, and I have one more chance to check out The Howland Company's You Choose at Tarragon at 7.  And that will be a wrap on the weekend.

Gotta run now.

Opening Night!

I think, all in all, it went off incredibly well.  There were a few snags, as always.  They let us in 5 minutes late, so we scrambled a bit.  Next time we'll set up the stage first and then get into costume.  The sound was a bit low at the very start, but they fixed that.

There were a few line drops but nothing too significant and nobody froze.  The most significant misstep was when an actor skipped pretty close to a whole page, leaving out a song!  (In fact the only song, though intentionally it wasn't an amazing song.)  Amazingly, the other two actors in the scene were able to keep going, even after he realized his mistake and redirected back to the song.  (I would have been upset for the actor who is supposed to sing if his whole moment was lost.)  So it feels like things are under control, and I can probably just leave the script at home from here on out.

One slight downside is that while Alumnae is air conditioned, it is so loud, they only run it between performances, so the audience did start to wilt and I think the second scene suffered a bit due to that.  But there were good laughs in the first and third scenes.  

We had over 40 people for the opening, which is terrific.  Most night we are doing pretty well, though Sat. evening is low, so I will make it one of the Daily Deals.  We have 75 people booked to show up on Sun., which is incredible.

We're sitting at just over 240 seats sold (plus passes).  I will have to adjust my expectations somewhat, as I thought we would be doing pretty well if we got to 250, and we will clearly surpass that.  Maybe 300, with 350 as a stretch goal.  We still won't actually break even, that would take probably 500-600, but it isn't going to be a complete financial disaster...  I thought there was an outside chance we might be Patron Pick at Alumnae, but we are up against a ringer -- Every Fringe Show You've Ever Seen All At Once.  I think the only way we would get it is if they had too many schedule conflicts (as they are already performing on Sunday!) and bowed out, which they would be crazy to do.  So I think I will likely be able to see Whose Lineage is It Anyway again on Sunday, but again I will hold off for a while.  Hopefully that performance doesn't sell out.  (I mean I do have an unused voucher, so I could book it anyway and pass it to someone else if we somehow do end up being Patron Pick for Alumnae.)

Today, I am off to see Little One, by Leroy Company.  I'm still looking forward to it, but am still also annoyed that they moved the venue from Bloor down to Queen, so getting between Little One and Fray will be challenging, particularly if this when we get hit with the sporadic thunderstorms in the forecast.  I wouldn't have constructed my schedule this way if I had known beforehand what the ultimate venue would be.  Interestingly, Fray is in a tiny black box theatre not far at all from Aluna, where we did all our rehearsing.  There is an outside chance that I will hit Potato Potato Saves the World at Soulpepper.  (It's more or less on the way back, though I would have to dip a bit further south, but it is at the brutal time of 10:30 pm.  In fact, I see they made this show a Daily Discount, though I would use my rush pass, given I don't want to commit to going until I know how I feel, and if I get soaked in the rain...)

 

 

Day One (and a Half) of Fringe

Day One got off to a pretty good start.

I stopped by Fringe Central (in the Distillery).  I was there to try to get the artist lanyards, but they still weren't ready!  They will have some temporary lanyards, apparently on Thurs.  Then I will need to stop by one last time when the real ones come in.  Sigh.  I was able to pick up the artist rush passes, so I'll bring those to the show on Thurs.

I also talked to someone about upping the number of comp. tickets I can request for each show, which I do need to fix before I book the next round of comps.

I saw our poster has a decent position on wall of posters in Fringe Central in Distillery.  It has decent but not amazing positioning on the wall.

 

I was also able to leave a decent amount of postcards inside the Soulpepper atrium.

Then I swung by Equity, which has an office on Victoria St.  I was pretty late on the paperwork, and I really wanted to get it in before the first show.  I had to call someone, since you can't just go up to their floor.  Then I got a voice mail saying they had closed early.  I was a bit miffed, but I saw a security guard and asked him if they had a drop box or something.  He actually agreed to drop off the envelope to the floor, which I thought was great.  Then he came back down and said the receptionist was still there, and she wanted to talk to me.  This was pretty baffling to me, but I quickly realized she had thought I was Eric Peterson (whom she knew), but she then told me twice that she wasn't disappointed I wasn't him...  Anyway, she had my cheque and said it would be processed on Thurs.  At any rate, she said she knew Mark Terene, who is playing one of the leads in At Home with the Bards, and that she and a few others were coming to see the show.

I had a very short stint at work after this, mostly coming in for Book Club, where we were discussing Murata's Convenience Store Woman.  I didn't really care for it, as I am just not feeling up to reading books about autistic characters.  It was a quick read, however.  And Nermean brought in rice cakes as a snack.

On the way up to Tarragon to see You Choose (an improvised murder mystery by the Howland Company), I was able to stop by Robarts and return the book.  It wasn't a bad ride up there, though it was hot.  I was wearing the cast t-shirt and passed out a ton of postcards.  My 5 second pitch is "Stratford bed and breakfast comedy" and hand over a postcard, which worked pretty well.  In general, I think Fringe audiences really respect the hustle more than anything.  One couple I talked to already had tickets, which is a pretty great feeling!  Inside the theatre, I was sitting close to the actor who was in King Gilgamesh.  We didn't really talk about it, but I said I liked it, and then handed over a postcards.  I definitely convinced the woman sitting next to me at the show to come to see our show.  

You Choose is quite good, though it doesn't quite hit the same heights as Entrances and Exits, which was truly next level improv.  I'm actually seeing it two more times, so we'll see how it goes the other times.

I thought the next show was at 9 at Tarragon, so I would go around the corner to grab some pizza and get back in line (as I had almost no postcards left!).  However, it turns out Whose Lineage is It Anyway? is at Factory, so I biked straight down Bathurst to see that (and didn't eat after all).  Because they have added red paint and made the central lanes streetcar only, the cars are in the right lane, and it truly feels like a deathtrap for cyclists.  I certainly hope I don't have any other days I need to go straight from Factory to Tarragon or vice versa!  I'll have to investigate some other routes, as I really want to avoid Bathurst from here on out.

I ran into our stage manager, Victoria, at Factory.  We were both going to the show.  I told a few people in the line about our show (and displayed a smaller poster I had with me).  One woman is going to be at opening.  

Whose Lineage is It Anyway? was outstanding.  They do an improvised show in the style of a Shakespeare history play (using Victoria's prompt no less!), and often manage to speak in rhyming couplets.  It really is impressive.  I'd like to see it again, but I think the only time I could go is late on the last Sunday.  I'll forebear from booking that time slot for a little bit longer, even though I just realized we are up against a ringer for Critic's Choice at Alumnae.  Every Fringe Show You've Ever Seen All At Once is almost certainly going to be the show at Alumnae that gets the extra show on Sunday, and we'll likely come in second.  (Which means I might go see Whose Lineage is It Anyway after all, though I won't book just yet...)

We're still doing quite well.  When I checked on the numbers, we had jumped from 150 to 190 in a single day.  I know I can't take credit for all of that...

Canada Day is a more low-key day, as there are very few shows going on, not least because it is super hard to convince the main venues to open up, so it is mostly stuff happening at Fringe Central and the unconventional venues.

I had certainly considered going to see Such Ado, but it was sold out today!  And I might still have run up and tried to use my rush pass, but I was actually proctoring my daughter taking a math test at that time!

I did get to the gym a bit later than I hoped, and it was so very crowded.  I put in about half a workout (and I still need to make up for skipping the gym last Saturday!).  Then I biked straight over to Fringe Central and participated in the Fringe parade.  Brian (the actor playing Robin Bard) was there, along with the director.  I'm glad I turned up, as they didn't have any posters to promote the show.

The crowds watching the parade were on the thin side, probably due to the extreme heat, as well as competing activities (like watching the World Cup).  Nonetheless, I talked to several people, and I think I convinced some volunteers to go.

Our first performance is tomorrow after work.  I'm excited and yet still nervous all at the same time.  I guess at this point, I just have to let it all go and let the actors do their thing.

Futurama Interlude

My wife is back from a quick jaunt to Chicago.  She managed to see one concert (Patrice Rushen) but Lionel Richie was still recovering (from dehydration apparently) and that Lionel Richie/Earth-Wind-Fire concert was cancelled (and ultimately rescheduled for late Sept.).  This means she will most likely be going back for that.  It reminds me a bit of The Fixx cancelling on me in NYC.  They may have rescheduled eventually, but by that point I wasn't going south.  Interestingly, they have a new tour (where on some of the dates, they are backed by The Smithereens, not that I think seeing them would really be worth it without the original lead singer).  They do have a Vancouver date.  They are slowing adding shows in New York (though the venues are very small).  They actually come to Rochester, which is pretty close but still further than I want to venture into the States.  I probably would go if they came to Buffalo, but I really wish they would just tour Toronto and/or Montreal.

The reason I bring this up is that I had a few Futurama items that I picked up where the sellers simply wouldn't ship to Canada.  Mostly they were pins that celebrated seasons 11 and 12 (the new ones from when Hulu picked Futurama up and resurrected it).  I overall enjoyed the new material, with a few exceptions (like a particularly terrible COVID-19 themed episode), though I agree it wasn't peak Futurama.

I also got a grey market copy of what was supposed to be Season 13.  When I finally played it, it was Season 12, which I already sourced, so that was extremely disappointing.  It's not like the seller was going to offer up a refund, and I had placed the order several months ago.

I've read on some forums that Season 13 was actually better than Seasons 11 or 12.  It looks like Season 14 will drop in mid Aug.  I guess I'll consider looking for one of those deals where you sign up for Disney+ for 3 months, then cancel, so I can binge both of these Futurama.  Of course, I wish Hulu would get with the program and sell DVDs of their shows, but that is extremely unlikely to happen, sadly.  I don't have any idea if they will renew once again, but hopefully so.

Canada Day Reflections

Going through the news today is basically as depressing as ever.  Trump decided to tear up the CUSMA trade agreement, which wasn't a surprise, but still will cause real hardship up here, as well as being quite bad overall for US manufacturing.  Such an incredible dolt and a disgrace to humanity.  

I am not at all happy about Carney's recent moves and announcement that he is scaling back Canada's climate change goals to focus more on "national unity" (i.e. sucking up to those horrible Albertans) and economic growth.  This is extremely short sighted, on a week that is breaking all kinds of heat records in Canada, to say nothing of the US and Europe.  This complete inability to force hard choices on the public, i.e. actually making them pay the full external costs of carbon and thus reining in consumption and eventually restoring some sort of balance to the environment, really shows up the limitations of Western democracy (and the general short-sightedness of human nature).  So I am not particularly proud of where Canada is heading, though I guess it is still somewhat better than most of the alternatives (and much better than living in the States!), aside from a few European countries that actually do have their transportation and environmental priorities in better order.  But immigrating to any of them is pretty much out of the question at my age, and unfortunately, they themselves are starting to show their racism as immigration levels increase throughout Western Europe.  I guess not exactly a ringing endorsement, but I am just not in a great mood these days.

On the other hand, Canada will apparently be joining Eurovision in 2027.  I might even watch for once, though I would be a lot more interested if Israeli was booted out.  If they ever come to their senses and stop occupying Gaza and imposing apartheid on Palestinians, I would be willing to cut them more slack...

I might as well cut this short and move on to more diverting and less serious topics.

Happy Canada Day, eh?