Random Thoughts--Munro, TCAF and Toronto Theatre

I suppose it is not a great surprise, but Alice Munro just passed away at the age of 92.  She said she was retiring after Dear Life (over 10 years ago now!), and unless some snippets or an unpublished story emerges, then we have everything in 14 collections of short stories, which is certainly quite the legacy.  I have been slowly working my way through her work in order.  I had managed to get through Open Secrets fairly recently (late 2023).  I didn't do a full review, in part because I have given up on the Canadian book challenge and also because I just didn't like the stories that much, particularly the historical ones.  I may review her other books if they resonate with me more.  We'll see.  Anyway, I don't have time to read all of The Love of a Good Woman this week, but I'll try to read a couple of the shorter short stories and then work my way through the rest by this summer.  If I do that, then I will only have five more books to go, which is sort of exciting but sad at the same time.  Of course, this just adds to the number of things that are keeping me from my interim reading list.  I'm also somewhat likely to reread Camus's The Stranger and tackle Howard's End (after seeing The Inheritance at Canadian Stage).

At least it doesn't take nearly so long to read comic books, which is somewhat appealing at the moment.  In fact, Camus is only on the list because I just read a graphic novel version of The Stranger, and I am curious how it compares to the "real thing."  I also was at TCAF this past weekend.  On Sat. I had a bit of time before The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp over at TIFF.  I actually had even managed to sell off some classical CDs at BMV (perhaps the last store in the city that will buy classical CDs!) and had some cash in my pocket, which is always a good thing.  I was a bit annoyed that I just missed one vendor selling an interesting 'zine comic.  And then I found out that there was a whole group of vendors up on the 3rd floor!  So in the end I went back on Sunday and bought a few more things.  I'll try to circle back and list the main things I picked up.  I briefly debated buying an autographed copy of Seth's Palookaville (I had missed his relatively short signing window Saturday morning), but decided my bag was already full enough!  I did stop by Luke Healy's booth up on the 3rd floor, but he was actually ill and was having to skip pretty much the entire TCAF, which was a terrible blow for him.  Anyway, I had a good time and bought a lot more things this year, particularly compared to last year where I think I only picked up a couple of zines from OCAD* students.  One bit of shocking news is that the Toronto Reference Library is going to be closing down for extensive renovations for a year or two, though I'm not sure when this is starting.  Anyway, TCAF is looking for a new home for the next couple of years.  I would imagine the Toronto Metro Convention Centre would work but probably will cost too much money, so we'll see what happens to TCAF.  I will have to remember to go back and look at anything I really wanted to see at the Reference Library over the summer and fall.

I was going to write a bit more about Toronto theatre, but I think I will just note that I am fairly excited about the upcoming Canadian Stage and Tarragon seasons.  I am deeply uninterested in Soulpepper, which is a real shame, and the off-Mirvish plays leave me pretty cold as well.  While I'm not quite as excited about Crow's Theatre as this past season (and certainly I think their ticket prices even with a subscription are too high), I will still subscribe again.  I'm quite curious if Factory Theatre manages to make a comeback.  I'm also interested in Coal Mine.  I skipped them this season, but I hope there is something I like next season.  I actually came very close to seeing Hedda Gabler, as the reviews have been great, but it's just not a play I like very much.  And I did see a good production in Chicago (of course).  I finally wavered and tried to pick up one of the few remaining tickets, but it worked out to $82 with all the fees and taxes.  That's just too much for a play I don't even like that much.  I'm kind of feeling the same way about Herbie Hancock at Massey Hall.  I missed out on some reasonably priced tickets and now everything that is left is $100.  (Or there are some $75 tickets with obstructed view and limited leg room!)  I might try to rush Herbie Hancock, or maybe see if another coupon pops up.  I think that is a thing at Massey Hall but not 100% sure.  I guess I could even try to rush Hedda Gabler, but it seems unlikely they will have any rush seats, though I suppose Tues. and Wed. are the nights to try.  I'll think about it...  Ok, I think that is enough for now.  Ciao.

* Interestingly, I managed to stop by OCAD's graduation festivities this year.  I wasn't nearly as impressed with the paintings this year compared to 2023 (or maybe it was even 2022), but I did like some of the photos and video art.  I actually picked up two photos for sale.

Enzo Earl Chen, Untitled, ca. 2024

Daniel Han, Lenox, ca. 2024

Sing-for-Your-Supper Reborn

So it actually has happened.  Sing-for-Your-Supper is back on!  It's actually the 2nd Monday of the month way out west at the Assembly Theatre on Queen West (or Queen West West...).  Monday was a particularly crappy day to try to head west across the city.  Line 2 was down for 12 hours!  I almost never take the TTC anymore, though I do take it if I am going out to Parkdale.  But it was threatening to rain, and I had a very oversized book to collect from the library, and it simply would not fit in my bike bag.  I got to the library and got the book, then saw the King streetcar coming, so I jumped on that.  I really think they should have made some announcements that Line 2 was down.  The streetcar just crawled up to Broadview station.  I saw hundreds of people out on the street waiting for shuttle buses.  One of the workers said that Line 2 had already been down for 3 hours, so I jumped back on the King streercar, which naturally got extremely crowded.  While I could technically have taken this downtown, I just didn't want to get stuck downtown when I needed to get back home in the middle of the afternoon.  After we finally got back to Gerrard, I got off and caught a streetcar home.  So incredibly frustrating.  

Even after work, the subway was still down, so I decided I would need to stick to streetcars.  I took Gerrard all the way to Yonge, then Line 1 (which hadn't been effected by the hydraulic fluid spill!) to Union.  I actually grabbed some things from Longos, dropped that huge book off at work, and then caught the King car west.  It was quite crowded to roughly Bathurst and then it got better.  It is somewhat droll that it is actually easier for me to get to the Theatre Centre and Assembly Theatre with the King streetcar diverted up to Queen for watermain work on King.  I think the diversion lasts through the end of the year more or less.  I made it with about 5 minutes to spare, not that they started remotely on time.  I saw a few actors I hadn't seen in years, and we chatted.  I was very surprised to see Scott Garland and Kat Letwin back.  They had been the original hosts when I started going to Storefront Theatre up on Bloor many, many years ago.  (Probably around 2017, though I'd have to dig through the blog to confirm...)  Scott bowed out roughly around the time that Storefront lost its lease and then SFYS started moving around the city, first to some random venues in Parkdale and then mostly over at Tarragon.  Kat and another comic did hosting duties and they had someone else vet the scripts, but then she moved to Ottawa!  And then Covid hit.  Actually Scott and Kat came back and did virtual hosting for a while, but eventually they pulled out and it fell to a couple other actors and then people just lost interest in Zoom readings unfortunately.  So it was great to see them back, lending their support.  A passing of the torch, as it were.  I think it may take a while for this to hit critical mass, but it may get there eventually, now that it seems to have a new home.  We definitely need younger actors and more female actors to show up.  Kat was cast in 4 plays, which meant there was no run through for most of them.  I stepped in and read one part, which I often did during the Tarragon days.  My piece wasn't selected.  While that is unfortunate, mostly I wish I had been notified one way or the other.  What's a bit interesting is that the current crew seems to favor playlets with parts for more actors, which makes sense as they are actors first.  (I think my piece only had two or at most three parts.)  But until a larger crowd starts showing up, then more intimate pieces make a bit more sense.  Anyway, the next piece I am working on will probably have 5 or 6 parts, so maybe they'll take it.  Fingers crossed.  More information on the newest incarnation of SFYS here.

It was a fun evening, though the performances were pretty ragged and almost none of the playwrights were in attendance!   Again, something that will likely be fixed in the future as the kinks get worked out.  I was surprised that transit going back was pretty smooth.  I took a King car to University, since this one was going to the Distillery.  I was going to take Line 1 up to Line 2 to see if it truly was back up, but there was a Kingston car immediately following, so I took that east and then was able to catch the 72 bus.  I think it took less than an hour, which is pretty good for running west to east like that.  Nonetheless, I will try to stick to the bike the rest of this week, though rain is definitely in the forecast.  Booo.

Hamilton Round-up

The trip did not come off exactly as planned.  The trip to Union was mostly ok until we got to Lakeshore and Yonge where the traffic really was quite bad.  Then the bus driver was absurdly meek at the light at Bay and Lakeshore.  She let the light cycle through 4 times before she finally really started turning.  Most people bailed after the second missed light.  My son and I finally exited the bus after the third missed light and were easily able to walk faster than the bus.  I sadly had missed the 12:30 GO bus to Hamilton, but still had a few minutes before the 1:05.  My son's train was at 1:17, so he had a bit more time, but still not as much as he should have had.  

While traffic was quite heavy on the Gardiner, we did get in more or less at our scheduled time.  As it was on the way, I stopped in for about 10 minutes at the Art Gallery of Hamilton.  I only went to the upstairs galleries which are free.  I'd seen most of the art already, though they did have a lot more Norval Morrisseau on view than they normally do.

Norval Morrisseau, Shaman and Apprentice, ca. 1980-85

Marla Panko, Fab, 2008

Anyway, it was about 3 by the time I finally got to the Hamilton Public Library.  Only to find out that their computer system was completely down, so it was impossible to copy or scan any library materials.  I was extremely pissed when I found this out, only slightly mollified by the fact that nearly all his books are now available in Toronto.  I sat down and read through two collections and some broadsheets that were only available in Hamilton.  I tried to take photos of the best poems, but I honestly don't know how they turned out.  I may see if one or two of the collections can be requested through Interlibrary Loan, but I certainly don't think I'll make the trek over to Hamilton again...

I wrapped up just after 4 and then went over to the farmer's market, which is in the same building.  I didn't have time to eat lunch but grabbed a cookie.  Walking around downtown, I ran across a music shop.  While the vinyl prices were absurd, I did get a few used CDs.  I kept walking around and saw that a Route 5 bus was pulling up, so I jumped on that.  I think I probably should have held out for a 5B, though this did eventually get me close to where I was going in Dundas.

Then I ate at an Indian place.  It was ok, though I would have preferred going at lunch when you can get 2 curries for some variety.  I didn't really liked what I had that much, but I think I just was unlucky.  A lot of the other menu items looked pretty good from what I could see.

I still had some time to kill, so I walked over to the Dundas Little Theatre and sat down outside and read more of The Night Alphabet.  I have to admit, it had some interesting moments, but kind of read like an extreme version or even a parody of radical feminist literature.  If I had more charge on my phone, I might have abandoned it and read The Chinese Groove instead.  

At 7, I got into the theatre and booked a cab for 10:30 (with pretty much my last gap of juice on my phone...).  I think the cast did a pretty good job, but, sadly, this just isn't a very good play.  The cop talk is straight out of a dozen better cop movies and tv shows.  It all felt completely fake.  And the main character (the "lobby hero") is completely annoying.  Obviously, had I known everything, I would have not made the trip.  I was pleased to find that the show actually wrapped up almost 10 minutes sooner than I expected, and also the cab showed up 5 minutes early as well, so I had plenty of time to get back to the Hamilton GO Centre and catch the 11 pm bus back to Union.  That part of the evening did go better than expected, though the cab ride was certainly pricey.  As it happens, it was period 3 of Game 7 between the Leafs and Boston, and the game was still 0-0 at that point.  By the time I got back to Toronto, I saw a lot of very sombre faces, so it was clear that the Leafs had not pulled it off after all.  I managed to hop on the subway around midnight and finished up The Night Alphabet to round off a fairly exhausting day.

I'm scheduled to go off to the gym and get groceries tomorrow morning, but I'm not entirely sure I can follow through, at least with the gym.  I guess we'll see how I feel in the morning...

Plans for the Day (May 2024)

I will briefly sketch out what is supposed to happen today, and then tonight (or tomorrow), I can circle back if things went wildly off track.  I'm going to run down to Union Station with my son, who is heading back to Ottawa on the train.  I will then catch the next bus to Hamilton.  I should be getting in close to 2 pm, and ideally quite a bit sooner than that.

I'm going to head over to the main branch of the Hamilton Library to look up books by Chris Pannell.  Now this is a bit weird.  There was a significant period of time where none of his books were in TPL or Robarts.  I remember this, because I actually asked a work colleague who lived in Hamilton to borrow them for me.  Pannell is a Hamilton-based poet and might even have been its poet laureate for a year or two.  It never worked out with my co-worker, so I decided I should combine a visit to Dundas Little Theatre (to see Lobby Hero) with a trip to the library.  I was starting to get a bit bent out of shape when I found out that two of the books I was going to look at were actually in the Dundas branch and not the main branch, and I don't think it is feasible to get to both branches (without a car at any rate).  Then I circled back and found that the books in question were in Robarts after all.  Weird, thought I.  But I put a hold on them, and continued planning.  Then this morning I went and checked the TPL, and they had all of Pannell's poetry collections, so I don't really need to go to the Hamilton Library after all.  (Though the Sunday matinee was sold out, so changing plans doesn't really make sense at this point.)  I know for a fact that none of these libraries had them at the time I was looking, so this definitely seems pretty strange.  But good news for poetry lovers in Toronto...

Assuming there is a bit of time, I'll probably run over to the Art Gallery of Hamilton, but I think I'll only go upstairs where the gallery is free, since the paid exhibits just don't hold a lot of appeal.  Then I'll catch the #5 bus from downtown to Dundas and get something to eat, and then slowly make my way over to the theatre.  I really hope it doesn't rain as much as they expect, or at least not in Hamilton, as I don't think there is anywhere to hang out for an hour before the play starts.  I'm feeling a bit anxious, as it looks like it won't actually wrap up until 10:30, and then there is a bus back to Toronto at 11 and then next one after that is midnight.  So I will definitely have to have a cab waiting at the theatre door to get me back downtown pronto.  

I'm not exactly loving it, but I expect to wrap up Joelle Taylor's The Night Alphabet today, so I can drop it off at Robarts tomorrow when I pick up the Pannell books.  Otherwise, I probably would have taken Nicholas Nickleby along.  I'm not really sure when I will find the time to read that, though I guess I will just keep chipping away at it, in between other things.  In the end I didn't really love Shteyngart's Our Country Friends and I thought the way he "cleverly" name-checked Boccaccio with a character named Dee Cameron but then didn't have the characters tell each other any stories, was actually pretty lame.  This review is pretty close to my views on the book.  I am finding Naben Ruthnum's A Hero of Our Time to be quite good so far.  I do worry that it cuts pretty close to the main throughline of the play about planners that I am writing, though the way that the young but fairly ruthless characters achieve their ambitions are probably different enough.  Nonetheless, I will probably find a couple of riffs on corporate life are now off-limits to me (sad), but I'll just finish it off now anyway, and then read the last (for now) pandemic novel, Rosenblum's These Days are Numbered.  After this, I suspect I will alternate chunks of Nickleby and the Heptameron, and then Rushdie's Victory City and Koestler's Darkness at Noon and Dawn Powell's The Golden Spur.  Somewhere along the way, I think I will tackle Oblomov as well.  Unless I take a summer reading break, or do a lot of travel out to California, this may well take me into the fall.

Assuming I am not completely stuck in Hamilton and I get some rest tonight, I plan on taking a few more CDs over to BMV.  I was pleased that they bought most of the CDs I brought over last time, even the classical sets!, and I have a fair number of CDs I would really love to clear out of my office space, to help get me moving on cleaning and reorganizing it.  I am currently planning on seeing District 9 at Carlton at 1, and then an animated film called Mars Express over at TIFF at 4:15.  But I have a bit of other work I should try to wrap up, and I may have to scale back my ambitions a bit.  We shall see.  As always, I am just a bit too ambitious for my own good.  (I did manage to get over to the AGO on Wed., now that the striking workers settled with management, so at least I can cross that off the list!  I didn't really love the Making Her Mark exhibit because the time period is far outside the art I like.  They are supposed to open up a modernist art exhibit in mid to late May, and that will be much more my cup of tea...)