Almodovar Rankings

I had a chance last week to watch Matador.  I did not care for this at all.  I'm so glad that I didn't break it out while my son was visiting.  I would say this is probably my least favorite Almodovar film of all time, though his first film Pepi (which I've only watched part of) could overtake it for last place.  (Pretty much everyone says this is a very raw, not great film, but you have to start somewhere...)  Although no Almodovar film is completely bad.  In Matador, Pedro himself shows up in a cameo as a controlling and not very nice fashion shoot director.

Now these ranking could shift a bit, as I still have 4 more films to watch: Pepi (in its entirety...), What Have I Done to Deserve This?, High Heels and Live/Flesh.

The best:
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
All About My Mother
Pain and Glory
Volver
Law of Desire

The worst:
Matador
Pepi, Luci, Bom
Kiki
The Skin I Live In/Talk to Her (tie for creepy situations where people are powerless*)
Parallel Mothers

The rankings might shift a bit after I watch the last few films, but not likely in a major way.  

Almodovar must be the director I've seen the largest percentage of his films (and maybe the only one where I will see everything he directed**), though probably one day I will get there with Kurosawa and Ozu and perhaps Hitchcock and Aki Kaurismäki, given that I have so much of their work on DVD.  I think there are quite a few films by Lynch, Cronenberg and even Scorsese that I am just never likely to watch. 

 

* Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down! also belongs in this general category, though somehow the film's exuberance and the victim's ultimate reconciliation with her captor make it a bit more palatable.

** Almost immediately after I wrote that, I realized that I have seen all of Tati's films, as well as those of his sometime friend and disciple, Pierre Etaix.  But we are talking about 5 or 6 feature films and a handful of shorts and/or documentaries in both cases.  Maybe I should qualify this by saying I mean watching all major films by a director who has directed over 10 films.

More Fringe

I actually had a Fringe-free Sat.  I first had to run over to Walmart to have a prescription filled and to buy a new bike light (as mine had been stolen on Friday evening).  Then I briefly hit the library, and then I went swimming.  It was surprisingly easy to get my laps in without bumping up against slow swimmers in the medium lanes.  I had hoped to finish up by 12:15, but it was actually 12:30 by the time I finished.  So I biked over to Carlton Cinema and saw Whispers of the Heart.  This is one of the relatively few Studio Ghibli films directed by someone other than Miyazaki (though he did write the script and generate the storyboards!).  It is also one of the relatively few Ghibli movies without fairy tale or supernatural elements, aside from a bit of a dream sequence.  (I guess one could also saw the same about Grave of the Fireflies, which I only just learned is officially a Studio Ghibli movie as well, and also not directed by Miyazaki.)  Anyway, it is a good film, once you get past the kind of icky feeling of watching two 14 year olds pledge undying love to each other...

Then I had a chance to see the Joyce Wieland exhibit at the AGO.  I'm glad she's getting the exposure (she also had a small show, more like a room of her art, at the National Gallery), but in general she doesn't excite me all that much.

Joyce Wieland, Betsy Ross, Look What They've Done with the Flag That You Made with Such Care, 1966

After this, I ran over to the Rex and saw a group called Waleed Kush Afro-Jazz.  As I probably have mentioned before, I like the Rex a lot, but it mostly presents jazz played by older, white men.  This group was a bit younger, though, I guess this being Canada, still the majority of the musicians in the group were white...

Sunday, however, I saw two Fringe shows.  The first was A Canadian Explains Eurovision to Other Canadians.  My wife got a kick out of this.  She is a pretty big Eurovision fan, and she said the guy knew his stuff, and she even learned a thing or two.  I have never really gotten that into Eurovision, probably mostly because I don't like watching TV for long stretches, no matter how "worthy" the subject.  And quite frankly, I don't have a lot of time for Eurovision until they do the right thing and kick Israel out, at least until they stop their all-out attacks on Gaza.  The show's creator, Matti McLean, sort of dances around this uncomfortable topic but doesn't let it spoil his appreciation for the spectacle of it all.

The last thing I watched was a sketch show by the Rhinoceros Collective.  One of the more distinctive aspects of this show was that it was broken in three parts.  Every skit in the first part dealt with cave men and prehistoric times.  The second part was all about chess.  And the last third was about the Illuminati (who knew that college students were still reading about the Illuminati these days!).  I thought the middle section was best, though the Illuminati dance was pretty funny as well.

I'm glad the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse is being used again.  I think it had one Fringe show in 2022, but generally hasn't been used that much since COVID days.  Maybe this means it will be back in circulation for other UT productions, just as I am hoping Hart House Theatre will start putting on full seasons again.

That was pretty much the extent of my Fringing this weekend.  I have a couple shows lined up for Monday (In the Diving Bell and The Adding Machine) and then two shows up at Tarragon on Tuesday.

I might be able to make it out to one or two more shows, but I think I've kind of hit my limit this year.

 

Day 3 of the Fringe

To celebrate Day 3 of the Fringe, I saw 3 shows back to back to back.  That wasn't intentional on my part, but I really wanted to check out what was going on at Video Cabaret (and to see anything I wanted to see there at one time), and the timing worked out well.  

This is the only official Fringe venue east of the Don.  I was told Crow's just wanted too much money.  I'm trying to remember if Soulpepper was part of Fringe before.  I definitely remember Tarragon and TPM being much more central to Fringe in the past.  (And I'm quite sure the Fringe patio was much further west, first in Mirvish Village, and then after that was torn up, either at the skating rink area behind the library at Bathurst or near Trazac.  Now it is tucked away in the Distillery and frankly is absurdly tiny...)  Interestingly, TPM pulled out of Fringe, but then someone came along and put up a whole bunch of musicals there and linked them back to Fringe.

Some years there have been several site specific shows in the East End.  I didn't notice that there were that many this time around, but I didn't look that hard either.  (It looks like there is one show up on Danforth near Chester, which I might check out.)

The shows I was seeing were #1 Clown Comedy, Very Shady Arab Ladies, and Jimmy Hogg: The Potato King.  

I was able to bike over from work just after 6.  I had time to get over to stop in at Queen Books (sadly the book I was looking for had sold out), Craig's cookies and then got in line.

I happened to run into Nina Kaye, who was one of the writers of #1 Clown Comedy.  Our paths crossed a bit at Sing-for-Your-Supper and Toronto Cold Reads, though we weren't super close.  In terms of other celebrity sightings, I ended up sitting next to Peter Tabuns, who is MPP for the district.  (He actually came out to my Fringe show in 2018, as it was one of the very few shows in the East End that year.)  

After the #1 Clown Comedy, I had a chance to chat with Nina a bit more and one of her friends.  We talked a bit about the fact that Video Cabaret really isn't doing the History of the Long Boats any longer and may or may not return to that.  It's really a shame that they never got the funding to record the full series in a proper way, though I imagine they may have archival copies.  We stopped in briefly at a pub, but I had to get back right away.  I mentioned that I was thinking of doing something like Sing-for-Your-Supper East, and she thought that was a great idea (though it means I now need to follow through).  We agreed to get back in touch after Fringe was over.

The #1 Clown Comedy was very funny and got positive reviews.  It looks like there are 4 or so shows left, so go check it out.

I had mixed feelings about Very Shady Arab Ladies.  I was surprised Glenn Sumi liked it a fair bit.  I liked bits of it, but some parts dragged, particularly the running around in the underground tunnels.  And the jazz-playing cops were an interesting touch.  What this reminded me of the most was one of George F. Walker's stranger plays (Beautiful City).

I had basically an hour between this play and Jimmy Hogg, so I did go over to Eat BKK Thai around the corner.  I have not been disappointed at this location, though the one on Bloor near Bathurst once served me a terrible meal, and I haven't been back.

It's good that I managed to eat something, as long stretches of Jimmy Hogg's show were about food preparation, and how he would never again date a woman that turned up late, resulting in spoiled risotto.  This was quite polished and a very entertaining show.  It is basically sold out, though there is a good chance they will add a Sunday show as a Patron's Pick, so keep your eyes out.

However, the evening was definitely spoiled a bit when I picked up my bike and realized someone had nicked the front light.  Come on, Toronto.  Do better!!!

Belated Posts

There are so many missing posts it is hard to even know where to begin.  I might as well start with the more recent events and go backwards.  I actually stumbled across several folders of old photos, quite a few of which need to be backed up onto a second hard drive.  Now I don't have time at the moment to upload photos from the L.A. trip (or the other museum trips), but I will see if I have some time over the weekend.

One interesting fact is that I was riding home and realized that this small food court area on Parliament (near Queen) actually had a name, which is "Hangout Street"!

I suppose this means I really will need to eat there once.  I've tried a couple of times to get tamales at Tamalmex, but one time they didn't have any tamales without meat (shades of my recent bad experience at the Cuban sandwich window), one time the woman seemed incapable of taking my order when she was talking with someone else hanging around by the stall and then one time I didn't have any cash.  But probably one day the stars will align.  I'm not really sure if this is a "permanent" food court or if it is planned to be wiped away by condo development as soon as the market comes back.

The other photos in the LACMA folder are from the Griffin poetry prize reading a few weeks back.  I have written about this at some length but only in longhand and not on the blog.  In short, it was a fairly disappointing event.  Or rather the ending of the evening really colored the overall experience in a negative way.  The main draw was that Margaret Atwood was being given a lifetime achievement award, and probably half the books for sale were by her (more on that later).  I had brought along my copy of her selected poems with the cool UK cover.  

I did, however, spring for a couple of books by Diane Seuss, who was also reading.  She was basically the only poet there I was familiar with, aside from Atwood of course.

I realized something was a bit off when Seuss made a point of saying when she removed her mask to read that this was the first time anyone had seen her mouth since the pandemic!  She was very wary of being around strangers with her presumably compromised immune system.  I suppose this was a bit of a game-time decision, but in the end she didn't come out to do any signings.  Neither did the young poet who had won for best first book.  But I found it pretty inexcusable that Atwood didn't do any signings.  They could have put some rules in place, like she'll only sign two items or whatever, but it just felt wrong to me.  To top it off, it was complete chaos for 30 minutes after the event ended, and staff could definitely have come around saying that Atwood and Seuss weren't going to be signing, so that only the people wanting the remaining poets to sign their books would have stuck around and the rest of us could leave right away.  As I said, it really spoiled what was a generally entertaining evening.  (In some ways, I am still annoyed that Sharon Olds didn't make the cut a couple of years back.  I will definitely never commit to going to the Griffin awards until I know who is on the short list!)

Start of the Fringe

It looks like a moderately busy Fringe for me this year.  I started off seeing a musical called Iris (Says Goodbye) which seems inspired by Haley McGee's Age is a Feeling in that the possible lives that Iris could take over (after being reborn) are selected by the audience, so each performance is different.  Though in this case, each night you only see 8 out of 20 or so, which means it is extremely unlikely you would see them all, even if you went three times.  I lucked out and saw all (or maybe all but one) of the Age is a Feeling episodes.  It was a good idea and generally entertaining, though the band often overpowered the singers.  I don't feel obligated to rush back and see it a second time.

Friday, I am seeing three things at Video Cabaret (the first time they have been part of the Fringe), and if things go well, I should be able to sneak out and grab Thai food between the second and third plays of the evening. 

I actually don't have anything scheduled on Sat., and I might just take the time to recharge, or I might go to the Rex.  Hard to say at the moment.  I probably should swing by the AGO, as the Joyce Wieland exhibit has opened.

Sunday, I am going with my wife to a show about Eurovision (she's quite the fan) and then I need to bike over to UT to see a comedy sketch show.

It turns out that one of the Fringe sets would have interfered with yet another TO Summer Music concert, so I guess it is just as well that I waited until nearly the last minute (though I do have pretty sucky seats to see the New Orford String Quartet...).

Anyway, I have been up way too long today, since I did indeed wake up early and got that second coat of stain on the deck between 7 am and 8:30 am when I had to break and join a webinar.  (I suppose now I just need to dedicate a few hours each week to getting the back room straightened up to the point I won't be completely embarrassed if people tromp through it on the way to the bathroom, as I am tentatively planning on having people over for a BBQ on the 22nd, assuming it doesn't rain!  I am a bit frustrated that the city didn't take away this broken Adirondack chair, so I still need to deal with that, but otherwise the outside of the house is not too bad...)

As ever, global news just pisses me off, watching how the Orange One pulls off one heist after another (and the Supreme Court comes out with something else outrageous).  I really think any decent person needs to think seriously about leaving the U.S., though I realize that is easier said than done.  Given how thoroughly those scumbags are looting the Treasury, there won't be any Social Security funds left in 20 years, so I might as well renounce my citizenship.  I've looked into it but not that seriously, but I think it is time.  However, rather than dwell on this any longer, I think it is time to call it a night.

Frustrating Weekend

I suppose many, indeed most, weekends could be categorized as frustrating, given how many terrible things continue to go on in the world while truly terrible people remain in charge.  As one home-spun philosopher put it, people are no damn good.  

But in a nutshell, I managed to get my swimming in last Sat. (even though there was a very slow swimmer that got into the fast lane and then ran into me going the wrong way(!) and then there was a super aggressive swimmer that tried to swim up the middle when there was not enough room), but that was practically the highlight of the weekend, which should be taken as a warning sign that things continued to deteriorate.  I biked all the way over to High Park in order to meet up with some Hart House mentors.  I did see the Carlton streetcar sitting in the very countrified loop, which never fails to amuse me.  It is possible that I will take it all the way to the Shakespeare in High Park performance this summer, though unfortunately this loop is not well connected to the rest of the park, so I will have to think about that carefully.

I had assumed that this event had a bit more official backing, but in fact it was a totally casual thing organized by one mentor as a bit of a get-together.  Had I known this, I definitely would not have bothered, as there was a much more interesting event happening at 401 Richmond.  Anyway, I was exhausted by the time I got there and then was more than a little annoyed at how hard it was to find anyone.  Even though the directions said it was at the High Park Outdoor Pool, it wasn't there but across the road in a large picnic area.  I called and managed to find the organizer but a few others gave up and a few people cancelled.  So it was just the two of us, but I wasn't in the mood to hang out very long or do the poetry exercise that had been discussed.  To top it off, while I was cleaning up, it appears I managed to toss my bike gloves in the trash (on top of the pair I lost at The Fox, this has been a bad season for biking gloves).  

I turned around and biked back downtown.  (I will say the southern route, via the Queensway and then finally getting back to Queen via a bunch of detours was pretty sucky, compared to coming via Dundas or College to Howard Park Ave. and then finally over to High Park.)  I made decent time, but it was still 3 by the time I showed up and the event had ended.  Darn it.

Fortunately, the artist that I was most interested in meeting, Emily Zou, was still there.  I slowly cooled down from the ride, and we chatted for a while.  It appears that she was at the Outdoor Art Fest last year, though I have to admit I don't recall seeing her booth.  It looks like the Outdoor Art Fest is coming back in about a week and a half, so I'll have to leave a bit of room in my Fringe schedule for that.  (I have (finally) booked nearly all the Fringe shows I was interested in, though Cigarettes are Good for You has apparently sold out its whole run, and I might have to try to catch it as a Patron's Pick on the 13th...)  Anyway, Emily's artworks are currently made of recycled materials and reclaimed trash, including paintings that she felt were not up to snuff.

This piece was in the show at Gagne.

This piece was sort of held back in reserve.

Anyway, I did regret missing the artists' talk, but I did have a nice time meeting Emily.  I told her that she was on the same wavelength as Athena Papadopoulos's The New Alphabet from MOCA back in 2023, though she had not managed to catch that show.

Where things really got off track after that was I decided to try this hole in the wall sandwich shop on Spadina.  I was very clear that I wanted the cheese sandwich, as it was the only vegetarian option.  I got this sandwich that was sort of sealed up like a panini.  Within a bite, I realized something was dreadfully wrong.  The jerk had given me a cubano with ham.  So I spit that out, and then went over to the office to try to throw up as much as I could.  However, my stomach was already getting quite upset.  I have yet to do it, but I plan on giving that place a one-star review.  The rest of the day spiraled downhill from there.  I did swing by the Rex, and they weren't sure if there were any cancellations for the sold-out Ghost Note show, and I didn't feel like coming back.  Maybe it is just as well.

I decided to at least try to do a bit of the outdoor side of the jazz fest.  I wasn't that taken by the Anthony D'Alessandro Quartet but I did like this steel drum led trio.  (They started off with St. Thomas (one of Sonny Rollins's features) and ended with Caravan.)  

Then I went home to take a Tums and see how I felt the next morning.

Not surprisingly, I ended up making a very late start on Sunday.  I decided maybe I ought to sand the deck, but then I had to go buy safety goggles, as I just couldn't find the pair I used last time around.  I also bought one more can of stain in case I ran out halfway through.  One minor positive is that they finally reopened the cut-through from Home Depot (and the Planet Fitness) to Jones Ave.  This will slightly increase the likelihood that I go to the gym in the evenings after work, since I won't have to take the bridge twice.

Anyway, I did manage to get through the first pass at sanding.  (I had thought about going one last time to the jazz fest for a show at 4:30, but I wasn't feeling up to it, and I also didn't want to deal with any overspill of the Pride Parade onto Bloor.)  I went back to the mall around 7.  Almost everything was closed, but Home Depot was open, and I got finer grain sanding belts and some wood filler.  (It looks like there are two boards in the middle deck that really ought to be replaced, but I am going to try to wait for one more year...)  Then I went to the gym.  So it was a moderately productive day, but not really the end of the weekend that I had planned out...

Monday, I finally finished reading The Book of Lamentations.  It had its moments, but overall I didn't care for it all that much.  I did like the last few pages where one of the servants is retelling the story of the uprising but compressing it and distorting it in weird ways.  This also happens at the end of Melville's Billy Budd and is the entire point of Mr Burn's, A Post Electric Play.  (More and more, I kind of kick myself for skipping this when it was playing in the neighbourhood, and then I also missed on a chance to see it in Raleigh...)  I ended up biking to work just after noon!  I thought it was only going to be a light rain, but on the way home I got soaked.  Needless to say, I was in no mood to go swimming that evening, so I just read for a while.

Today, I did get to the gym early.  It was fairly busy and getting even busier when I left (it was closing at 1 today).  I'm currently partway through the sanding and should be able to finish sanding and staining the deck.  If I can accomplish that, then I won't fuss too much if I don't get much else done today.  So I'm off to try to wrap that up.  Anyhow, Happy Canada Day!

Edit (9 pm): Perhaps I should have gone a bit easier on the workout this morning.  I ended up sanding for 90+ minutes, and then it was 2 1/2 hours of staining the deck.  

A quarter of the way there (counting the railing)

 

About 2/3 done

Finished for now

My left arm is a bit sore, and who knows how it will feel tomorrow.  Now the forecast is changing so there is a threat of rain, which is super frustrating, but my current plan is to let this coat set, and then try to put on a second (and final) coat Thurs. morning.  (My neighbours are probably even more relieved that there is no more sanding in the near future!)  I'd say there is a reasonable chance I can get this done in 90 minutes on Thurs., as I won't be repainting the posts or side boards, only the top of the railing and the middle deck planks.  This should keep for another year or so, though I do think there are a few boards that will probably need to be replaced next year. 

I think that was more than enough activity for one day, though I did pump up my bike tires a bit, and I'll probably trim my hair.  I haven't decided if I am just going to read more Dombey and Son (still about 4 more hours to go) or watch Almodovar's Matador.  Whatever I do, I need to keep in mind the local fireworks show that will last for almost an hour!

Summer Reading

A few posts back, I talked about "summer reading" books that were hitting the libraries and book stores.  While a few do look like they might be interesting, I don't really think any of them are going to make my list this year.

I am so close to wrapping up Dombey and Son, and then on to things I will actually enjoy.  I was going over my list of what I had read and actually enjoyed in 2025, and there wasn't that much.  The best books have been rereadings: A Month in the Country, America Fantastica and Lafcadio's Adventures (and the second and third had some fall-off in terms of my overall enjoyment from the first reading!).  I will need to reread Calvino's Invisible Cities, and that will likely also contribute to this finding that the new-to-me books just aren't cutting it right now.

I am reading (or rather rereading) Cyprian Ekwensi's People of the City (NYRB), which curiously enough has many parallels to Zhu Wen's I Love Dollars: And Other Stories of China.  They both seem to feature extremely cynical, oversexed young men, which isn't exactly what I need to read at the moment.

I am going to make a real effort to read new books I actually will enjoy, so I'm going to turn to The Leopard soon and probably Lord Vishnu's Love Handles, and maybe Azuela's The Underdogs.  If there is time beyond that I was hoping to get to short stories by Mavis Gallant and perhaps Edna O'Brien.  Then I will likely turn to Richler's St. Urbain's Horseman and Dorfman's The Last Song of Manuel Sendero, though I do worry it will have turned to fall before I crack them open.  Maybe I should take one or two on the trip out to Montreal (which indeed I should book fairly soon before my calendar completely fills up...)  Maybe I could take St. Urbain's Horseman (which has connections to Montreal, even though set in London!) and Walden, which is calling out to be read.

Sneak Peek - August at the Revue

I was a bit afraid this would happen.  Suddenly, the Revue is doing something like 8 straight days of Kurosawa films in early August, though perhaps ironically not Rhapsody in August.

Getting over there is often a chore, but I will do it for truly amazing films, and I expect I'll see most of these, though I can skip Yojimbo, having just seen it at the Revue about a month back (even though this is a better restoration).  I may or may not go out to see Ikiru.  I loved this the first time I saw it, but the second time I found the framing and over-bearing narration to really detract from the film.  Maybe third time's the charm?  I will likely go back to see High and Low, even though I did see this as the Paradise, but really liked it.

Anyway, I don't appear to have too many conflicts, so I will try to make the series.  I remember being a bit upset that I missed Seven Samurai at Carlton, but this will definitely be a better experience, aside from the travel involved.  (On a side note, seeing Ran at the Fox was a real disappointment - they don't have staggered seats and the slope of the theatre is just too flat, so there were always people's heads in the way.  I think I am just done going out to the Fox.  It really is an inferior movie-going experience.)  I just need to work out whether seeing these five or six films (plus Peter Sellars in Being There this Sunday) makes it worthwhile to splurge on a membership at the Revue, despite it being on the other side of town.  Possibly so, though I would need to go to about 17 films/year to make it worthwhile, and I am quite unlikely to take advantage of a free film on my birthday, whereas at the Paradise it is a free film in your birthday month!

I still haven't buckled down and ordered tickets to TO Summer Music Fest or to Fringe, so I need to do that tonight and tomorrow!

Edit (06/23): I ended up buying a few tickets at the Revue Box Office on Sunday, when I was there to see Being There.  I guess I won't get the membership after all.  I'm still a bit on the fence on seeing Ikiru again, but I likely will.  The trickiest decision is The Hidden Fortress on Aug. 1.  I didn't buy a ticket because I had something scribbled on the calendar.  It was a note that I had planned on going to a TO Summer Music concert that evening.  It turns out it is Mendelssohn's Octet, which I like quite a bit.  If the concert was a bit earlier (or the movie later), or even if they were playing the Octet in the first half of the concert, I would try to do both.  However, I have seen the Octet played at least twice before and perhaps more often than that.  (The decision is made just slightly easier because Jonathan Crow isn't actually performing, though I still wish I could somehow do both...)  On balance I think I should go see The Hidden Fortress, which is not screened very often at all and just hope that the Octet pops up in the next couple of years.  And while I am not a huge samurai movie buff, I definitely should see Throne of Blood, which is Kurosawa's remake of Macbeth, and probably Sanjuro as well, which would definitely be a lot of trips over to the Revue.  I just hope it doesn't rain too much in early August...

 

New Fiction

It's always hard to dip my toe back into blogging after some time away.  I actually have (hand)written out 10 or more pages of what I have been up to in the past month or so, but don't feel like typing it out, at least not right now when I still have a lot of pressing business to take care of, even on the weekends.  I used to have a pretty decent voice-to-type program called Dragon.  I am sure by now the technology is so much better than it used to be, and indeed there are probably freeware versions that would be perfectly adequate.  (But before I go too far down this road, I would have to see if I even can get the computer to recognize a pair of headphones (with a microphone!) in order to even test it.)  Something for another day, though it is awfully tempting to just read out all the many pages I have been writing these past few months, most often at the Rex. 

Indeed, I was over at the Rex last night to see Eric St-Laurent for the second time this month.  I only could stay for the first set, so I didn't get to see his "freak-out" number where they compress 15 or more hits into one super fast medley.  (I was joking with him a bit before the show that his versions were an awful lot like Alien Ant Farm's version of "Smooth Criminal," to the point that no one would know if he was riffing off the original or the cover...)  Anyway, they sounded good, though the mike on the congas was too hot, and hopefully they fixed that in the second set.  Still, I was glad to manage to catch them (and write out a few more pages of my planning epic), since I wasn't sure that would have the time.  I was meeting Andrea over at Carlton to see Midnight Cowboy, which I had never seen, even though I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen.  Still, a pretty gritty movie in lots of ways.  Glad to have seen it now (and Taxi Driver not so long ago).  I also was able to stop by Bulk Mine on Yonge and pick up some packets of Quavers for the book club meeting on Monday.  (We're reading Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, which is of course also depressing, and we agreed to try to bring British snacks...)

In terms of my reading, I am slowly making my way through Castellanos's The Song of Lamentations, and I made a big push on Dickens's Dombey and Son on Wednesday evening while out at Budweiser Stage to see Simple Minds, as well as Modern English and Soft Cell (the last one being quite boring actually, and I read during their set, aside from during "Tainted Love").  It did sprinkle on and off, particularly during Soft Cell, but it was much better than I was expecting, weather-wise, so that worked out.  However, I didn't want to bring anything aside from a poncho and my phone, so fortunately I was able to get an ebook version of Dombey and Son loaded onto the phone.  I have just over 300 pages to go, so hopefully I can wrap that up by the end of next week.  Some books are worth the extra length, but this one drags a fair bit.  (If only I had managed to get 100 more pages into it on the train ride to Ottawa, then I would really feel I was nearing the finish line.  As an aside, it looks like Via workers aren't going on strike after all.  Yea!)  Getting home from Budweiser Stage was a nightmare, and I wished I had biked there after all, though of course I wouldn't have done that, given the forecast.

 
Anyway, as if I didn't have scads and scads of unread books around the house, but I thought I would highlight just a few novels from this list in today's Guardian.  A handful of them aren't even available to reserve at the library, and if I don't write them down now, I just won't remember them.

These are the ones that are catching my eye:
The Tiger’s Share by Keshava Guha
Gunk by Saba Sams
Dream State by Eric Puchner
Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
Endling by Maria Reva (might be interesting to compare to Kurkov's Grey Bees)
Spent by Alison Bechdel (should not take too long to read, as this is a graphic novel)

So perhaps a manageable summer reading list, if I didn't have so many other books I feel guilty about not reading...

 

 

Busy Week Bracketed by Beethoven

I'm not exactly sure what is going on but I have been slipping a lot on Sundays and not getting to the gym when I originally plan to go.  The good news is that I almost always force myself to go, and then it isn't so bad, but then I am running late for everything else I have planned later in the day.  So two Sundays ago, I made it over to the gym, finished packing for my various trips, then took the TTC to Hart House.  Of course, the TTC was quite unreliable as ever, including a bus that then picked up the pace while I was walking between stops.  This is so frustrating.  In the end, I would say the TTC cost me 10 minutes, and I just strolled up to Hart House at 2:35, when I had really planned to get there at 2:15 or so, though as I said I was running just a bit late and didn't set out in time.  Had I made it at 2:25 (a more reasonable target based on when I left), I probably would have gotten tickets to the Hart House Orchestra concert without too much difficulty.  But I was at the very front of the "no ticket" line, and they were trying to convince people to go upstairs to watch a closed circuit version of the concert.  That seemed pretty stupid to me, and I decided I might as well try to get inside.  Had I been much further back, I would have just left and probably tried to work for a couple of hours before my train left.  However, I just waited out and was rewarded with one of the very last wrist bands to get in.  They did Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto and Beethoven's 5th Symphony.  Always great to hear these live.  I actually briefly talked to my friend David who plays bass with the orchestra, though the musicians themselves (sadly) don't have access to extra tickets.  

After this, I took the subway to Queen St. and picked up some Vietnamese food to go from Ginger.  I dropped in at work and grabbed a huge stack of business cards and printed out a couple of things, including a card for my son, who I was planning on meeting in Ottawa.  Sadly, the train was about 45 minutes late, and it was a bit hard for me to concentrate on my reading while standing (uncomfortably) in line to board.  Not surprisingly, we got to Ottawa close to an hour late.  As it happens, the LRT would have been closed anyway (had we been on time), as it closes at 11 on Sunday evening.  So I took a cab to the Ottawa Hostel.  The driver was reasonably pleasant but he just put the pedal to the metal, trying to get back to the train station for a more lucrative fare.  The hostel was fine, though I really had to get ready for bed in near complete silence, as several people were already sleeping.  (I certainly ran into several people who couldn't believe I would share a room in a hostel, even at such a low, low rate -- $40.)

As it turns out, the hostel was only a block away from the CTRF conference, which was great.  I pretty much rolled out of bed, dressed in a better set of clothes, threw everything in a locker (I had remembered to bring my own lock) and walked over to the conference.  I have to agree, it really does feel a lot like the old TRB (i.e. quite academic) but considerably smaller and still fairly freight and logistics-oriented.  But I enjoyed going, and I'll see if I can go next year when it is in Halifax.  I was able to meet a couple of people from Alto (the agency that will be trying to develop a high speed rail system between Toronto and Quebec City), so that was a big mission accomplished.  My presentation (on ride-sharing systems during and after the pandemic) was in the late afternoon; I think it went well, and I was asked several questions.  Then I went over to the reception, but I had to leave early to meet my son.  We went to an Indian place in Byward Market.

Tues. was pretty much the same thing, though I didn't have as much pressure, since my presentation was over.  I actually left my bag at the hostel, then ducked out from the presentation after lunch and ran over to the Ottawa Art Gallery.  (I didn't even know such a thing existed.  It had a pretty decent exhibit on the 3rd floor of some Group of Seven paintings and some abstract expressionist works.  As it happens, this too is right around the corner from the hostel, so I grabbed my bag and went back to the conference for the workshops after lunch.  I had to skip out just a bit early (only about 15 minutes) and this time I was able to catch the LRT over to Tremblay to catch the VIA train back to Toronto.  Between VIA and TTC, I got home around midnight.

I downloaded the Lyft app on my phone and figured I might as well use it once to get a record of actually using the app, which would help me get rides in LA.  I quickly swapped out my clothes for a new set for my next trip.  I guess I got about 3 hours of sleep, then it was time to get up for my Lyft ride to Pearson.  I ended up sitting next to my boss on the flight, so we talked over some work issues.  I read a bit, but not a lot and did try to get a bit of sleep.  LAX was a bit of a mess per usual, though they were giving out free waffles and iced coffee for some unknown reason.

We then went over to the LA offices and met a few people and talked about some upcoming projects.  I was able to meet up with someone I used to work with in Chicago while at Cambridge Systematics.  We had a good chat, and then I hoofed it back to the office to meet up with a group that was going out for dinner and drinks.  They found a place that had lots of different food vendors under one roof.  While the Mexican was tempting, I ended up at a Thai place that was quite tasty.

Thurs. was mostly an overview of company strategy, though we did take a field trip on the E line out to the site of the Lucas Museum (the one that Chicago and later San Francisco turned down).  We had dinner and drinks on the top floor of the hotel, which was super convenient for those of us staying at the hotel.  Some of the juniors ended up going out to a bar, but I declined.

Friday was only a half day talking about our transportation equity practice, which was interesting and depressing in equal measure (as Trump is trying to squelch anything that even remotely looks progressive or would promote equity).  Then after lunch (which was indeed a sort of Mexican salad), I took a Lyft over to LACMA.  I'll have to circle back and post some photos of the art later.  It turns out that Lyft wouldn't work at all unless I had data roaming turned on, which is pretty annoying.  One strange thing was that they are holding off on producing a new guide to LACMA until the new wing opens (supposedly in April 2026), so I went kind of wild taking photos of almost everything on the 3rd floor.  They even had a room that was completely Picasso paintings (and a few sculptures).  I was worried that the huge David Hockney painting would be off view until the Geffen Wing opened, but it was there on the 3rd floor.

One thing that was a bit worrying was that, after I had taken hundreds of photos at LACMA, my phone battery was dangerously low, and I wasn't sure I would even be able to book (and pay!) the next Lyft driver.  I had to put it on extreme battery saver, but I just managed to make it to a restaurant in Culver City.  The maitre d' was willing to charge it up while we had dinner, which was very accommodating of him.  I was meeting a friend who lives in L.A. with her husband.  We hadn't seen each other since about 2014, when I came down to see Kronos Quartet at UCLA.  The food was fine, though the portions were too small.  I didn't ask, but they did offer to drive me to the airport, and I didn't need a lot of convincing.  I made it through security in plenty of time.  We were all taking the same red eye flight back to Toronto that evening, though this time I didn't sit near my boss.

I got a bit more reading done but mostly tried to sleep.  In the end, over both trips I only read 300 pages of Dombey and Son (though I did get to one major plot twist, which I thought happened a bit too early in the book).  I didn't actually expect to finish the book, though I had wanted to get to 400 pages or so.  I'm going to have to quickly read Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, which is a fast read so far, though of course it is pretty depressing.  Then I may sort of alternate chapters of Dombey and Son and The Book of Lamentations.

I guess between a bit of a delay, customs and then UP-Express and the TTC, I didn't actually get home until just a bit before 8 am.  I had my alarm set for 10:30, as I wanted to see the Bach's Keyboard concert, which was part of this year's Bach Fest.  At least the concert was just up on Danforth.  So I saw that, hit No Frills on the way over to the library to pick up a book, and then dropped off some dry cleaning.  I actually biked over to 401 Richmond and looked at a few exhibits there, then came home.  I was actually able to swim a full set of laps, and then I went back out to see the TSO doing a fine version of Beethoven's Symphony 3.  So it was a pretty busy day.  Sunday was not nearly as busy, though I still didn't just stay home and rest, as I surely should have done, but I will write about this week (and some upcoming events) a bit later.

Ciao.

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...