Best Theatre of 2025

This list will have almost everything I saw in 2025 unless I really didn't care for it (both the plot and the acting/direction), and there were a few things like that unfortunately.  I think I only left in the middle of David French's Leaving Home, but I probably should have bailed on Job (at Coal Mine) and Winter Solstice (though this was all in one act, making it hard to do.)  However, I have cut back on the Fringe listings, focusing here on what stood out for me.  I realize that isn't entirely consistent, but I just see so much at the Fringe most summers that I want to raise the bar that much more.  Most of these plays will not be coming back to Toronto any time soon, but there may still be a few SPOILERS in my commentary on the plays.

Jan

Buddies/Common Boots - Last Landscape (an almost wordless piece that was much more about the movement and setting; not really my thing but some people liked it a lot)
Talk is Free Theatre - Cock (an intense piece in a constrained space with a tug-of-war between a straight woman and a gay man over a second man)
Factory - Small Gods: The Musical (a workshopped version of a queer musical set largely in a mall)
Talk is Free - For Both Resting and Breeding (an odd piece set in someone's kitchen in the far future when gender has all but been erased)
Canada Stage - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (another intense piece, somewhat undercut by one of the leads getting ill with his replacement not entirely off-book at that point; it probably would have worked better at the Berkeley Theatre in a less gargantuan space) 

(I was supposed to see Shakespeare Bash'd The Merchant of Venice, but my performance was cancelled due to a freak blizzard and they weren't able to rebook me, which is supremely frustrating, even though this is not a play I actually enjoy...)

Feb. 

Eldritch Theatre/Red Sandcastle - The Strange and Eerie Memoirs of Billy Wuthergloom 
VideoCab - Cliff Cardinal's CBC Special
Coal Mine - People, Places & Things (depressing piece about a women finally kicking her addictions and her family being too burnt out to really care)
Canadian Stage - Fat Ham (retelling of Hamlet with a gay Hamlet who is in love with Laertes, probably the very hardest thing to believe was the Claudius character would prefer to die choking on food rather than allow Ham to perform the Heimlich maneuver.  I found myself incredibly annoyed at the way lower middle class African-Americans were portrayed as so absurdly homophobic, and this was even more blatant in A Strange Loop, which I won't even list here, as I found this trope so offensive...)
Theatre Centre - Monks (brought back by popular demand from Fringe 2024.  So odd, with a plot ostensibly about the two monks trying to find a lost donkey, including a lot of audience participation; I was glad not to have been picked.)

March

Outside the March - Performance Review (a play about the author's best and worst jobs, set in an actual coffee shop)
Crow's - Measure for Measure (basically a small troupe putting on a radio play version of Measure for Measure, with some implied side action between the actors going on)
Factory - Truck (basically about truck drivers being replaced by technology but it ends up also being about the rivalry between a union leader and an average guy driver)
Alumnae - Age of Arousal
Al Green Theatre - Cabaret

April 

Theatre Centre - Red
Crow's - A Public Display of Affection (an older gay actor's memories of gay life in Toronto in his youth)
Canadian Stage - Mahabharata Pt 1 & 2
Video Cabaret - Pochsy IV: Unplugged
Tarragon - Feast (the ending was implausible and the dig at vegetarians at the Feast at the End of the World was frankly uncalled for)

 May 

Shakespeare Bash'd - George Etherege's The Man of Mode (staged reading)
Video Cabaret - Brecht's Three Penny Opera (student production)

June 

EldritchTheatre/Red Sandcastle - Buster Canfield's Apocalyptic Miracle Show
Canadian Stage - Next Time I Die (staged reading)
Canadian Stage - You, Always by Erin Shields (a staged reading of a play going on the main stage in 2026)

July 

It looks like the only theatre I did in July was Fringe, but there was a lot of it.  Here are some of the best I saw this past summer: #1 Clown Show, Shady Arab Ladies, Jimmy Hogg: Potato King, A Canadian Explains Eurovision, The Rhinoceros Collective, The Adding Machine, Adam Bailey: My Three Deaths, Oh! I Miss the War, Mocktails on the Beach, The Perils of Being Born in the Fall, Stealing Home, Things My Dad Kept, The Sexy Pigeon Show and Milk Milk Lemonade.

The funniest show was Milk Milk Lemonade (edging out Jimmy Hogg: Potato King).  I learned the most (actual facts) from The Perils of Being Born in the Fall.  The best revival was surely The Adding Machine.  The most touching was Things My Dad Kept.

Aug.

Canadian Stage - Shakespeare in High Park: Romeo & Juliet (Juliet and her father were very well acted, but I thought Romeo was rather weak and Tybalt was just terrible)
Summerworks - Le Concierge (an interactive piece where we walked all through a school following a custodian and even cleaning some windows by the end)
Summerworks - The Chains (another hyper-interactive piece where we eventually were sorted into groups (Team Creon, Team Antigone or the Chorus) to act out a production of Antigone!)
Summerworks - Leftover Market
Stratford - Macbeth (I liked Hamlet on motorcycles a lot better than most of the critics)
Stratford - The Winter's Tale (this is a play I simply hate, despite the fine cast, and will never see it again)
Stratford - Erin Shields's Ransacking Troy (very good but not nearly as comic overall as I had been led to expect)
Shakespeare in the Ruff @ Withrow Park - Tiff'ny of Athens (genderbent and time-shifting version of Timon of Athens; while I would like to see a proper production one of these days (I skipped out on one last year at the Theatre Centre), this actually gave me a pretty good feel for the piece)

Sept

Soulpepper - Harold Pinter's Old Times (this makes the third time I've seen this enigmatic play!)
Soulpepper - King Gilgamesh (I saw this before and decided at the very last minute to try to get rush tickets to see it a second time; it inspired me to actually read the Epic of Gilgamesh and this play is very faithful to the epic, which is pretty cool)
Crow's - Octet (this started strong but ended oddly, and I particularly thought the bit about the scientist (who used to heckle religious types just as Richard Dawkins did) encountering a godlike figure was inane and essentially ruined the piece for me)
Coal Mine - Beckett's Waiting for Godot (a fine performance, a bit more physical at some points than I was used to)

Oct.

Stratford - Goblins: Oedipus Rex (my second trip out to Stratford and the Goblins slayed)
Tarragon - Bremen Town
Talk is Free Theatre - David Harrower's Blackbird (really hard to take play about a pedophile who reunites with the woman he seduced when she was 13 or so!)

Nov.

Soulpepper - Jacobs-Jenkins's The Comeuppance (did not like the plot much at all, esp. the ending, but the acting was generally terrific)
George Brown @ Young Centre - Ruhl's Orlando
Crow's Kanika Ambrose's The Christmas Market (an interesting, often depressing, peek into the lives of the temporary foreign workers who keep Canadian agribusiness humming along)
Canadian Stage - Robert LePage's Far Side of the Moon (I saw this years ago in Vancouver with LePage in the role (!), but he wasn't performing this time around; the spectacle is good but the plot is wafer-thin and not really at all memorable)
Coal Mine - Fulfillment Centre (my main beef with this play is that the finance has uprooted her life and yet seems to have no feelings at all for her partner, and maybe even more to the point, two of the characters have extremely troubled lives but the root cause seems personal and not due to the pressures of capitalism, which is what one would have expected from this play; I thought the ending was incredibly weak)
EldritchTheatre/Red Sandcastle - Little Library of the Damned
Icarus @ Theatre Centre -  Dennis Kelly's DNA (dark comedy about teens more or less re-enacting Lord of the Flies but in an English suburb) 
Shakespeare Bash'd - Middleton's Women Beware Women (staged reading)
Alumnae Theatre - New Ideas Festival Week 2 (some good short pieces here with the standout piece about two women talking in a doctor's office before one woman is about to get news if she has cancer)

Dec
 
Factory Theatre - Public Consumption (this conveyed the horrors of the internet much more effectively than Job, which I felt was too gimmicky)
RedOne Collective - The Dishwashers by Morris Panych (the very welcome return of RedOne Collective, this play is staged in an actual restaurant; while I didn't care for the very last scene, overall this was quite good)
Soulpepper/Bad Hats - Narnia (a fun musical for all ages)
Crow's - Michael Healey's Rogers v. Rogers (a one-man show with Ted Rogers and his wife and children all played by one actor, going into the details of the Rogers' takeover of Shaw Communications)

I saw roughly 80 plays, musicals or staged readings in 2025, which is not shabby considering reviewing isn't actually my profession.  

The best spectacle was The Mahabharata Pt 1 & 2 at Canadian Stage.  I did find that nearly all the plays had something that kept them from being truly amazing, often some annoying wrinkle in the plot that didn't hold up very well.  Looking over the whole list, I think probably the best play was Ransacking Troy at Stratford, followed by Rogers v. Rogers at Crow's and then Goblins: Oedipus.  However, Measure for Measure essentially done as a radio play (@ Crow's) was very good.  Red at Theatre Centre was also quite good, though it suffers a bit from the fact I've seen it several times before, including on Broadway! 

I was heartened by the return of RedOne Collective, as well as a new company starting up called Icarus Theatre.  And I didn't go to all their shows (as I just am not that interested in Tracy Letts's Bug), but King Black Box is another up and coming company that I need to keep an eye on.  For the most part, the best payoffs of the year were from these smaller theatres or events at Fringe and Summerworks.

But to me the best news of all is that Toronto Cold Reads started up in a new incarnation in Dec., and they have accepted my Stratford piece for either Jan. or Feb.  So that is exciting and gives me more motivation to keep working on my own creative writing!

I will say that given the somewhat lukewarm or hostile reception I gave to some of the critical darlings of the season (especially The Welkin), I am starting to rethink how much theatre I really ought to go to, as I don't seem to enjoy it as much as I used to.  Or maybe I am just feeling bruised at the very high ticket prices of most of these shows (and indeed there were a few shows I decided just weren't worth the $60+ ticket prices) when I often have mixed feelings about the experience.

One thing that stood out to me is that playwrights who decided to use their soapbox to engage in "both sideism" really lost me, and I lost all respect for what they were trying to do.  This was only a fairly small element of Feast where there was some completely decadent Feast for the End of Time where all kinds of endangered species were being eaten by these rich, nihilistic assholes, but somehow the author had to claim that vegetarians would also be there eating rare, ancient grains.  It's such a stupid attempt to knock vegetarians and vegans off their moral high ground (as not eating meat (at the levels indulged in by western societies) is objectively better for the health of the planet than eating (so much) meat).  But this is only a very minor (sour) note in a fairly long (too long) play.  The bit about the anti-religious zealots (like Dawkins) being just as toxic on the internet (as believers of various persuasions) might have some validity, but the way it was introduced in Octet is far from ideal.  Having the scientist dropped into a lengthy scenario where he encounters a godlike being that his scientific rationality can't explain (and thus he is forced to admit he might have been wrong in the past) is beyond stupid and really made me dislike the whole piece.

Books in 2026

I probably spend nearly as much time arranging and rearranging my lists (mental and written-out) for what I plan to read as the time spent reading.

I actually don't go hunting around for new books to read, though I do look at what the NY Times and Guardian are promoting.  From this Guardian list, I added Gwendoline Riley's The Palm House (though from the write-up her previous novel My Phantom won't be my cup of tea at all).  And if it is truly his last novel/memoir, I will probably eventually get around to Julian Barnes's Departure(s), though I expect it might be a year or two before I get to it, and I am much more likely to reread Flaubert's Parrot beforehand.

I don't track poetry nearly as much, though I probably should pull together a post on relatively new discoveries.  I may have mentioned that I just missed out on a reading that Ronna Bloom did at Queen Books, and that I would probably have been inspired to look her up (in time) had I read Public Works before her other work, as this collection really spoke to me.  She goes to a fair number of readings and book launches around Toronto, so I will probably manage to see her in 2026.  She is starting off with a Zoom reading of In a Riptide in late Jan., and I can probably make that.  I'll see if there are any other in-person readings in the coming months.  (I do see that the Queen Books reading also included John Barton reading from Compulsory Figures, which got a shout out from this CBC story on the best Canadian poetry from 2025.  Sigh.)  As I think I mentioned, I was able to get a signed copy of Public Works, which is the one I wanted the most, and I have a copy of In a Riptide, which I will bring along if I make it to any of her upcoming readings.  It sounds like Who is your mercy contact? was quite a good chapbook, but it is completely sold out and sadly no copies made their way into Robarts or the Toronto Library system.  There was another chapbook that caught my eye (The New Alphabets by Virginia Konchan) but it also was impossible to source.*  I have to say that I do think poets ought to consider more seriously putting rarities like this up for sale as digital e-books after the original run sells out, as these poems usually don't then make their way into later collections, unless the poets are quite famous (which is an oxymoron for sure...).

Anyway, from the CBC story, I picked out roughly half of the books and put in a request for them, including Barton's Compulsory Figures, Amber Dawn's Buzzkill Clamshell, Katherena Vermette's Procession and Karen Solie's Wellwater.  (I have read some of Solie's previous collections, though I hadn't thought about her for a while.)  It turns out that Konchan also has a new collection, Requiem, so I put in a request for that as well.  So I'll be reading a fair bit of poetry in 2026.

I sort of think of my reading for 2026 in tranches, with the first tranche ending in March.  I expect one of the last things to be Nabokov's Ada, which I will start on the train to Ottawa, and then Shteyngart's Vera.

The first things I expect to read in 2026 will be rereading Narayan's The Financial Expert and then reading The Painter of Signs.

Other books that will likely be read between those two markers are Mahfouz's The Beggar, Russell Smith's Self Care, Gide's The Immoralist, Ehateśāma's The Tale of the Missing Man (something from my TPL lists), Tim O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods, O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find, Jelloun's The Last Friend, Offil's Weather, Thien's The Book of Records, Skorvecky's An Inexplicable Story, Amis's The Information and maybe Scarlett Thomas's The End of Mr Y.

In the 2nd tranche, I will probably finally return to William Maxwell and read some of his later short stories, as well as So Long, See You Tomorrow.  And probably Faulkner's The Wild Palms, Reva's Endling, Dorfman's The Last Song of Manuel Sendero, Azuela's The Underdogs, Lamming's The Pleasures of Exile, Marra's A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Chakraborty's The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi (also on TPL hold shelf), Forster's Howard's End (finally, months after seeing The Inheritance) and McCullers's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. And perhaps Hunter by Shuang Xuetao and maybe Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and something by Edna O'Brien (though I haven't decided what that might be).

I'm sure there will be plenty of deviations from this (and I need to squeeze Mavis's Montreal Stories in somewhere), but it seems like a reasonable place to start, and it should be a decent balancing of reading stone-cold classics and books that are piled up that just need to be read and released back into the wild.  If I get through these and I'm still in the first half of 2026, I'll pull something else from this list.  If I end up making longer trips, I really ought to consider Fontane's After the Storm.  I think 2026 will be the year when I read Melville's Pierre (which is now the only major work of his I've never read), but I haven't decided on the order.  I am leaning towards the Kraken edition (with the Maurice Sendak illustrations!) and then at some point after that reading the originally published version.

I will say in general, I have been cutting way back on the buying of new books and even used ones, so I don't have lots of books coming in and gathering dust (as in this spot-on Tom Gauld cartoon).  Ah, dopamine!

 

I did make an exception a while back to get Bechdel's The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For (which I have at least browsed through) and John Guare's Plays from Library of America (which I haven't cracked, but this seemed like something so niche it would never turn up for less used, particularly given the outrageous shipping to Canada).  However, I still pick up DVDs and Blu-ray sets that I may not watch for years, so this is something I should try to work on more, and not buy these items until I have gotten through more of my video backlog...

 

* Interestingly, I did another search and Konchan's The New Alphabets has ended up at the Fisher Rare Book Library, so I will set some time aside one of these days to read it.  I wonder if her connection to rob mclennan (who also has a new book out that I want to read) lead to this donation.  I managed to contact mclennan a few years back and picked up Konchan's Empire of Dirt and several of his chapbooks, a few of which I ultimately donated to Fisher.  I guess I might as well email Ronna Bloom and encourage her to donate a copy of Who is your mercy contact? to Fisher. 

Best Books (Read) of 2025

Things were a little thin on the ground in 2025, though they improved in the fall.

Top 5 books:
Zevin Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Peter De Vries Slouching Towards Kalamazoo
Russo Empire Falls
Austen Persuasion
Kaysen Asa, As I Knew Him

Honorable Mention:
Giuseppe Di Lampedusa The Leopard
Joan Didion Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Denis Johnson Angels
Sean Michaels Do You Remember Being Born?
Zhu Wen I Love Dollars: And Other Stories of China (sort of relentlessly one-note, however...)
Dorothy Edwards Winter Sonata
Rosario Castellanos The Book of Lamentations
Downing A Narrow Time
The Epic of Gilgamesh (English version by Mitchell)
Dawn Powell Angels on Toast (mostly about the sordid affairs of businessmen)

I reread quite a few good to great books in 2025, and I am expecting the same in 2026 where I am probably going to reread Desai's The Inheritance of Loss, Narayan's The Financial Expert and Murdoch's Under the Net, all of which are right up my alley (and which I read in my late 40s or early 50s, so my reading tastes won't have shifted as much).  And perhaps I shall get around to Woolf's To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway's Party and maybe the rest of Joyce's Dubliners (I recently reread 'The Dead').

It's really quite hard to choose between Calvino's Invisible Cities, Carr's A Month in the Country and Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.  Calvino is the most interesting thought experiment, but it isn't successful as a cohesive narrative for obvious reasons.  Mrs. Dalloway is probably the more important of these books, but I might have enjoyed A Month in the Country just slightly more.

Best book reread:
Carr's A Month in the Country

Boxing Day Blizzard

It may not be a full blizzard (yet), but we are getting plenty of snow and it is quite windy out.  And it is cold.  We only had a few patches of snow left on Christmas Day proper, but it is definitely going to be a very white Boxing Day!  That's a bit unfortunate, as I have a few things planned, and I'll just have to leave more time for the inevitable transit breakdowns.  (The cats are just fascinated, staring out the window at the snow.  It is tempting to let them out just to let them see it's not all it's cracked up to be, being outside in the cold, even if the snow is falling.)

I'm going to give a short rundown of the past week.  I'm already forgetting some of the details, so probably best to commit it to paper.

Last Friday I took Toby to the vet to be neutered.  I decided to work from home that day, and that was probably a wise decision.  Anyway, it was quite chilly out.  I actually had to go back out to meet someone for lunch.  We picked this place that had super cheap banh mi sandwiches, but it was cash only and there was no seating, so we went over to Gerrard Square.  We talked a bit about trying to convince Metrolinx to invest in upgrading their land use modelling (and that naturally we were the consultants best placed to carry this out).  I also came up with the idea that I will pitch as an abstract for TAC.  (Naturally, I am excited about this and want to do a lot of research on it, rather than just bearing down and finishing up a few other projects, including this poster that is going up at TRB Crossroads in Jan., though there was a corporate decision not to send me to present (and explain!) the poster.  I didn't really want to go to DC, but at the same time, it really rankles to have to do extra work (mostly off the clock) and then not present it.)

I was back at home, trying to focus on work when the vet called he said that Toby still had his baby teeth in, and it wasn't clear if they would come out on their own, so that would be a second surgery, and it would make more sense to do it all at once in two weeks if they still hadn't come out (or at least were loosening).  I wasn't at all thrilled by this, but I also didn't want to put him through surgery twice in one month, so we deferred the surgery, and I went to pick him up again.  (One of the reasons that I am rushing to have him fixed is that it turns out Rho is a female cat after all!  I guess that is burying the lede, though I mentioned that I had suspected this was the case...)

I picked up Toby and had a bit more time at hope, trying to refocus on work after a fairly disruptive day.  I then had to rush out to get to TIFF to see Yearning.  I think but am not entirely sure that I biked over.  Yearning is interesting in that it has a few aspects of The Shop Around the Corner portraying the ills of uncontrolled capitalism (in the form of big supermarkets opening and squeezing the small shop owners), though it is still early enough that families seem to have the assets to combine and open their own supermarket!  (There isn't much analysis in how they can actually drive prices down.  It's assumed that if they enlarge their store footprint, they will magically be more competitive...)  This is only a secondary subplot in favour of focusing on the younger son in love with a youngish widow (of his older brother!) still living in the household and keeping them all afloat through dint of her hard labour.  It was pretty good, though sentimental for sure.  The widow really was quite pretty. 

Sat. I stayed home quite a bit later, and then went swimming at Jimmie Simpson around 1.  It wasn't very crowded and I got in 25 laps!  Then I took the streetcar in and saw Late Chrysanthemums, which is quite a bleak film.  Basically it covers 3 former geishas.  One has become a moneylender (and a cold-hearted bitch) and the others are ekeing out a pretty miserable existence.  Almost everyone, including two former male clients, come begging the moneylender for money, and she ruminates on how everyone has disappointed her.  Not one I will likely return to any time soon.  In the evening, I spent a bit of time trying to clean out the back room in the basement where there was some flooding or something, and a lot of cardboard boxes ended up ruined.  I probably need to throw down some bleach.  In general, I haven't been too willing to clean up ever since I discovered a huge wasp's nest down there!  (I actually had a dream lately where one great big wasp had survived all the poison I had dumped on the nest and was going after me!  I think it may have been the same dream where Toby lost his front teeth.  And then a big black cat was riding a bicycle, though not my bicycle as it was still locked up.  So the cat had stolen a bike and learned to ride it!  Going one better than Bulgakov, I think.)

Sun. I managed to get over to the gym by 9.  I'm slowly getting used to the new machines, but generally don't care for them all that much, preferring the older set-up.  I cut things a bit short, hit Walmart for cat food, bought the groceries and still made it back by 11:45.  That was just enough time to hop on the bike and make it to TIFF to see The Secret Agent.  One of the more interesting aspects is that about halfway into the movie, the film suddenly jumps from 1977 to present-day where students are listening in on wire-tapped conversations (from 1977) then it switches back.  However, only a very small amount of what we see in the film would have been recorded, and oddly enough some of the deaths are shown "in real time" and some only reported in newspaper archives!  So it isn't clear if the students are trying to fill in the gaps from the newspapers and recordings, or if this is a broader commentary of how the past "is a foreign country."  I think in general, this should either have been explorer further, perhaps with different students arguing for different series of events (and watching this unfold and play out different ways -- to some extent this happened in American Fiction in the novel within a novel) or dropped entirely to make it a straight narrative film.

Then I hustled over to Aroma and managed to slip in before the buffet closed at 3.  It would have been better to have had another 15 minutes, as I wouldn't have had to eat quite so fast.  Anyway, it was fine.  I took the bike into the parking garage in HDR's building (as it is open on the weekend!) and dropped in to the office for about 30 minutes, then it was back to TIFF to see Sound of the Mountain, which is one of the very few Naruse films to really focus on a male character.  In this case, it is an older businessman, getting ready to retire with two adult children who have fallen far short of expectations.  The son in particular is a very poor excuse for a human being, cheating incessantly on his wife and refusing to take any responsibility.  One interesting note is that the older couple go on about how they would like grandchildren, but they do have a slightly snotty grand-daughter and then a baby grand-daughter, but these are from his daughter, not his son, so aren't even considered part of the family line.  Oh Japan...

My son was back from Ottawa on Sun., though he and his girlfriend had run off to get Tibetan food, so I got home while they were still out.  We talked a bit after then were done eating, and then he left with her for a while.  I'll probably see her again on Sun. the 28th when we may go over to the AGO.

I've been having a lot of computer issues, which is extremely frustrating as this is a fairly new computer.  I've got to restart very frequently.  Anyway, I will just outline the rest of the entries and finish this up later.

Monday I worked from home.  I didn't have many extracurricular events, though I did bike down and went swimming at Jimmie Simpson.  Twice in a week is what I aim for, though rarely achieve.

Tues. I actually had a pretty good TTC ride in to work.  I had debated biking in, and I wish I had, as the trip back home was horrendous, as someone pushed the emergency power cut button.  I'll go into that later.  I actually had seen Floating Clouds at TIFF.  This is a colour film and one of Naruse's very last films.  

Wed. (Christmas Eve) I ended up biking in to work and working pretty much a full day (aside from the time I carved out to send my e-cards!), and then I went over to TIFF to see Vertigo in 70mm.  I'm going to cut to the chase and say I don't like this film very much and don't plan on seeing it again.

Christmas itself was fairly low key, though we couldn't manage to get the kids to come out at the same time to open their presents.  I went off to Carlton to see Tokyo Godfathers (fortunately the original language version with subtitles, not the dubbed version that ran later on).  I happened to see that Tangerine was playing, and this was something I had missed out on at Paradise.  I decided to stick around, even though it was over an hour before it was going to start.  I finished up Powell's Angels on Toast during this time.  Tangerine is pretty dark, though it actually reminds me a lot of Egoyan's Exotica.

And with that, it is time for me to try to get over to the gym.  I'll be seeing Fargo later today (assuming the TTC doesn't completely break down under the snow), and the weather is extremely appropriate for watching the film.

 

 

Christmas Prep Done!

I think I am actually done, though I suppose I will get my wife an e-gift card.  I had temporarily forgotten that I had already bought Xmas cards at a dollar store, so that is checked off as well.

We don't have a lot of presents to exchange, but I did wrap them up last night.  There are a couple of presents to myself (books naturally...), and I went ahead and wrapped those as well, which I don't typically do.

I got the stocking stuffers on Monday, and I believe the last of the presents arrived in the mail on Sunday(!), though we may get a delayed package from my step-mom. 

The biggest difference is we didn't put up a tree because we were so sure the cats would mess around with it and knock it over.  However, I was in the basement looking for a few things to put out (no wooden nutcrackers, which they would chew to pieces!) and I came across some mini trees we used to put in the kids' rooms.  We put one of those out by the fireplace.  While the cats have definitely been messing with the ornaments, they have mostly left it alone, giving us some hope that next year we can put up the full tree (after the cats are out of their kitten phase).

 

 

Now I just need to turn this picture into a holiday card and send it around to everyone, and my holiday prep is in the books for 2025.  Happy holidays to anyone who has been following along on the blog.  A lot more to follow when I have some downtime later in the week...

 

Edit (12/25): I did manage to get the e-card out to a long list of friends (and former friends?) and former work colleagues.  I have to admit that the number of cards and e-cards I get from others is close to zero, and I often wonder if it is worth sending these around any longer.  On the other hand, the level of effort is relatively minimal once I have made the card, and this year I was particularly efficient.  And I was somewhat enthused to send around word that we added the kittens to the household.

 

It snowed on Monday, but nearly all of it is gone, so it isn't really a white Christmas after all.  I actually biked off to work on Wed., and I am seriously considering biking to Carlton to see Tokyo Godfathers.  It turns out that the version with subtitles is only playing once today at 6:55, so I will have to keep myself occupied with other things in the meantime.  Fortunately, I have a long list of things I have been putting off, including working on my year-end lists...  

So Many Movies!

I've been able to get out and see a lot of movies in the past few months.  This may be approaching the glory years of the mid 90s when there was a whole string of second run theatres, many along Bloor, and they even had their own publication listing all of the monthly movies at all of the theatres.  I generally avoid Cinema Clock these days, sticking with the Revue and Paradise and Carlton websites, as those are the places I go by far the most.  It's relatively rare for me to get over to TIFF, though I have been going more recently, now that they have this Naruse retrospective on.  I've been quite patient, lurking on the website, and about a week ago, I managed to get a ticket to Yearning.  Then on Wed., I was getting ready to listen to Dave Young over at the Rex, and I happened to check the TIFF website and a few tickets to Sound of the Mountain popped up, so I had to drop everything and try to book the best seat of the bunch (on my phone, no less!).  That was a bit stressful, but it worked out.  (And indeed, at that show and on the streetcar home, I finally wrote out the last of my Stratford piece.  Yea!  I'm fairly happy with the ending, but now I need to type up the whole thing and see how balanced it is.  I suspect I meander a bit too much, but maybe not...)

And just a few minutes ago I looked and the last two movies that caught my eye had a couple of seats open up.  In both cases, they are a bit too close to the screen, but given how hard it has been to book these screenings, I'll put up with it.  I'll be seeing Flowing on Jan. 2 and then Daughters, Wives and a Mother on Jan. 24 (after watching the Sondheim musical Company over at Theatre Centre, so that will make for a long day...).  I decided to check, and indeed I think the same person who cancelled Flowing also cancelled Lightning, so I got a ticket for that as well on Jan 3.  In the end, I will have seen 9 of Naruse's films, including several that appear to be quite difficult to source on DVD or Blu-Ray, including Yearning, Lightning and Scattered Clouds.  Having gone from 0 to 9 is a huge swing!  That's certainly the most films I've seen by a single director after excluding Hitchcock, Almodovar and Kurosawa.  I believe Naruse just edges out Jon Huston, though that might change when I finally get around to watching The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Beat the Devil.  What is particularly intriguing is that 1950s, Naruse's films covered topics such as infidelity, suicide, rape (with the perpetrator not being caught and punished!) and even abortion!  A lot of his films are pretty melodramatic to be sure, many of them being adaptations of novels aimed at women.

It's possible that this big push to see films (on the big screen) started at the tail end of 2024 when there was the huge Almodovar retrospective.  I have to admit that The Room Next Door was disappointing in some ways, though I did appreciate the shout out to Huston's The Dead, which I feel is a bit underappreciated in general.  I was pleased I managed to catch this on Monday.  (I had planned on rereading Joyce's story but instead read it immediately afterward.  Huston is generally quite faithful to the story, but there are a few changes, including making the Irish tenor a bit rougher and even a bit unpleasant at times (as he was battling a sore throat) and having the tenor join Gabriel and Gretta in their cab on the way over to their hotel, which is not in the film.)  The meditative ending is what elevates the story and the film.

I kind of forgot that last year, I went to see The Big Lebowski at Hot Docs on New Year's Eve, which is becoming a Toronto tradition (with people showing up in their bathrobes).  I see that it is on again this year on New Year's Eve, but the truth is that (for me) The Big Lebowski has not aged very well, and I have no intention of going again.  (It didn't help that the thing dragged because of some pre-show activities going on at Hot Docs, so then I couldn't go see this other thing at the Tranzac Club and I also had a very mediocre Thai meal for dinner.)  I'm much, much more likely to make watching Tokyo Godfathers a holiday tradition, having seen it first at the Revue, then at Carlton.  And I am fairly likely to try to see it on Christmas Day, as there is not that much else that will be open.)  I don't know that it is a tradition proper, but interestingly The Fox is showing The Apartment sometime next week, and the Paradise is playing it on New Year's Eve, so I plan on catching it right after work on New Year's Eve at the Paradise.

I haven't managed to see more than a handful of Atom Egoyan films, but I saw Exotica at TIFF (a few years back) and then Speaking Parts at Paradise.  Egoyan actually showed up at both screenings to give some general comments and then a Q & A at the end, which was very cool.

I certainly can't remember everything I've seen, but there was a screening of quite a few restored Kurosawa films at the Revue (and Ran at the Fox, though that was a bit disappointing).  Playtime at the Fox.  I also saw a few Wes Anderson films there.  I'm pretty sure I saw The Life Aquatic (loved the Bowie songs in Portuguese!) and The Royal Tenenbaums at the Fox and maybe Moonrise Kingdom.  I've kind of worked backwards with Wes Anderson, oddly never having seen Rushmore or Bottle Rocket.

I saw The Shining and Midnight Cowboy for the first time at Carlton.  I saw Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express at Carlton, as well as In the Mood for Love.  I saw Linklater's Before Trilogy at the Revue in Feb.  I went ahead and watched Brazil again (mostly because Tom Stoppard just passed away) and enjoyed it more than the previous time, though I still think Sam Lowry is an absolute dolt at the police road block, so there are about 10 minutes of the film that I find really hard to watch.  Speaking of Gilliam films, I just saw 12 Monkeys again at the Carlton, slipping in just as the title sequence was wrapping up.  That was cutting it too close!  That's a pretty bleak film for sure.  And I saw Total Recall again, as well as The Matrix.  These movies really cry out to be seen on a bigger screen.

I managed to watch Akerman's Jeanne Dielman (and managed to sit through the entire thing without running to the washroom!), but I did not care for it at all.  It is absurdly over-rated.  I've seen it once is probably the best thing I can say about it.  I can pretty much guarantee if I had watched at home, I would have dropped it around the 40 minute mark.

In addition to seeing North by Northwest on 70 mm this past weekend, I managed to get a ticket to see Vertigo in 70 mm.  I've seen Rear Window a couple of times and North by Northwest three times on the big screen, but this will be the first time seeing Vertigo in the theatre, so that's exciting.

I've started watching more David Lynch films (after being really turned off by Eraserhead in college).  I saw Blue Velvet at TIFF and Wild at Heart at Carlton.  In Jan., I am planning on watching Mulholland Drive at Paradise.  So I only need to see Lost Highway (maybe at the Revue?) to catch up with the movies that I had expected to see at the movie theatre at Yonge-Dundas Square (but they changed the schedule on me!).

I finally got around to watching Thelma and Louise!  I saw Kajillionaire, which was really good.  This was a film that really got squelched by COVID.  It was shown as part of Queer Cinema Club over at Paradise.

I try to get to most of the Queer Cinema Club offerings, but I definitely have missed a few.  Can You Ever Forgive Her? and Guidance were both films I wouldn't have watched except for QCC.  Over time, I've now managed to watch 4 or so Fassbinder films, including most recently Fox and His Friends.  (This is another case where I have quite a lot on DVD but I really am trying to watch the films for the first time in a cinema...)

I just watched Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (yesterday in fact!).  I'm not sure I was actively avoiding it, but it wasn't that high on my list.  I thought there were some interesting parallels to Scorsese's After Hours.  Some people see these connections and others don't...  (It was a few years back that I managed to see Bringing Out the Dead again but wasn't able to swing After Hours.  I am waiting on my Blu-ray copy to arrive, but I definitely hope After Hours ends up at The Revue or Carlton...)

I don't watch nearly that many brand new movies, aside from Wake Up Dead Man, Honey Don't, the Running Man remake and Spinal Tap II.  (RIP Rob Reiner!)  But I did just catch Hamnet and thought that was pretty good, though longer than it needed to be (and more than a little emotionally manipulative...).  I'm likely to try to catch this Brazilian movie called The Secret Agent over the weekend.  We'll see.

Edit (12/20): I'm not sure if I should make a full list of all the movies that I would like to see (or rewatch) in a proper movie theatre, as it might be extremely long (like this partial list of plays I'd like to see), but there are a few that are top of mind, including Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well and Red Beard, as well as Amodovar's What Have I Done to Deserve This?, Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7, Huston's Key Largo, Lynch's Lost Highway and maybe Inland Empire, and Scorsese's After Hours (I just missed out at seeing this at TIFF but it seems like one that Carlton should run one of these days).  I suppose I am hoping for a Rohmer or an Ozu retrospective at TIFF, as these are probably the two most important directors that I have barely scratched the surface of their films, despite owning a huge number!  Bergman is sort of in that category as well, though I have seen four or five of his core films, so he and Fassbinder are basically in the same boat. 

Edit (12/25): I haven't introduced myself, but I am starting to recognize a few hardcore movie fans that are at all the key TIFF screenings.  I overhear them talking about how they have seen most of these movies for the second or third time, and how they are heading over to the Revue for additional movies.  (Yesterday, they were off to see Scrooged again.)  I think the main reason I don't is that, while I enjoy movies, I will almost always cut them first, when there is a conflict with a play or a concert, because they are essentially unchangeable and will be the same whenever I do finally watch them, unlike a live performance.  Granted, this may mean I need to watch them at home rather than on the big screen.  Last year there were mini-festivals at the Paradise for John Waters, and I only managed to get out to see Serial Mom (with Kathleen Turner), as well as for Mel Brook, and I only got out to see High Anxiety and Space Balls.  If I rated movies more highly, I would have found a way to get out to a few more.  Now that Paradise does seem to be screening more movies, I think I might sign up for a membership for 2026.  The Revue is still too far away, and I basically have written off The Fox.  Even though I suppose it would have paid off in the end, given how many Naruse movies I finally signed up for, I don't plan on getting a TIFF membership in 2026, though I would probably change my mind if they dp put on an Ozu or Rohmer retrospective.

Rough (Transit) Weekend

I'm back on the TTC, more or less full time, until the weather warms up and the streets are clear enough to cycle.  Now I did end up cycling a bit on Sat., though I hit a few chunks of ice on the "back roads" where traffic is much lighter (and they don't usually salt), so I did come reasonably close to wiping out.  I returned home on the major streets.  I may actually be able to bike on Wed. or Thurs.  It's supposed to be above freezing on Tues. as well, but I have to go out to the Theatre Centre, and I feel that is just pushing my luck.

Anyway, I biked back and forth from the Distillery because I was seeing Narnia (the Musical) at noon, and it was clearly going to take 40 or so minutes to get there on transit (and the preferred route was to take a bus along River St., which I have never taken, which didn't exactly instill a lot of confidence) versus 15-20 minutes on a bike.  In the end it took the upper limit, precisely because I had to slow down and watch for icy patches.  Interestingly, it felt colder coming back from the show, and the ride back was fairly unpleasant.

I did a couple of quick things at home and then decided I should go check out a few galleries, since I wasn't able to watch Wake Up Dead Man at a time that worked around my schedule.  However, had I known everything, I would definitely have planned things differently.  It wasn't until Castle Frank or so that they made a big announcement that Line 2 was completely shut down between St. George and Ossington!  Normally, I can live with Line 2 disruptions as long as the Broadview to Yonge stretch is open, but this time I was continuing on west.  I wanted to get over to Dufferin to get to Bau-Xi.  The shuttle bus was quite a nightmare.  It clearly added 20 minutes or so to the trip, and it was so crowded and uncomfortable.  I wasn't even able to get any reading done.  I only spent about 10 minutes at Bau-Xi.  I ended up leaving around 4:45, and I had no idea if I was going to make it over to 401 Richmond in time.  I actually let one bus go by, in order to take the Dufferin Express southbound.  The Dufferin Express wasn't really the problem, but then the Queen streetcar was pretty slow.  I made it to 401 Richmond around 5:30, and I was a bit steamed.  I would definitely have made it to both places by 5 pm had Line 2 not been compromised.  Fortunately, two or three galleries, including Gagne Contemporary, actually were open, so it wasn't a completely wasted trip.

Getting back was a huge struggle.  I decided I should try to take a streetcar across the city rather than deal with the replacement buses.  I rode up to College, only to just miss a streetcar.  Then I saw it turn down Spadina.  For some unclear reason, Carlton streetcars were diverting to Dundas.  The next streetcar (on College) was a Dundas car!  I didn't want to take the Dundas streetcar, so I hopped off as it also made the turn, and then the next Carlton car didn't stop, even though there were a bunch of us at the stop.  I was completely beside myself at this point and so angry with how badly and inconsistently the TTC and its drivers do things.  I figured I would just take the Spadina streetcar north and then walk over to St. George.  I sort of forgot that you can't be let out early (as on Bathurst) and you have to go all the way inside Spadina station.  Once there, I decided I might as well walk to Line 1 (which did have service at Spadina), take this south to St. George and then transfer back to Line 2.  As you might imagine, this took way, way more time than I had planned for, so I decided I would rather go straight on to Hirut, even though I would be early, rather than stopping off at home and be late.  (To top it all off, it was an extremely long wait for Line 2 to come, so it was pretty crap service all the way around.)

When I did get over to Woodbine, I needed to stop by the bank (as Hirut's cover charge is cash-only) and pick up a notebook and pen from Dollarama.  Fortunately, I had the time to do this.  Then I went in to Hirut and had their Ethiopian food, which is quite good fare, for a jazz club.  There was a septet playing.  I managed to get a lot of notes down in the notebook and a few more pages of the Stratford piece, which is starting to shape up.  At least getting home was generally easier, except the wait for the 72 bus was so long that I ended up walking the whole way down Pape.  Thanks for nothing, TTC!

On Sunday I had to get across the city again, but I figured I would take the Queen streetcar to Dufferin (and avoid Line 2).  However, there was a major problem with my plans.  As I was leaving, I scrambled around in my bag to make sure I had my phone.  I was totally sure I had my glasses in the bag as well (so didn't look for them when it would have been easy to fix), but this was not the case, however.  As I was already most of the way to Jimmie Simpson, I decided to go ahead and get my laps in, but then I would have to come home.  I cut it a bit short but still managed to get in 19 or 20 laps, which is a solid workout.  I made it back to the house, grabbed my glasses off the dining room table and turned back around.  I was reasonably fortunate that there was a 72 bus coming in only a few minutes.  (The vast, vast majority of the time I end up waiting 8 or more minutes, which is simply infuriating...)  I decided that the best course of action was to take Line 2 to Bay and hop off and catch a cab there, instead of at St. George where everyone would be looking for a cab.  This actually worked out pretty well, and I didn't have to order a cab after all.  I took the cab to Dovercourt.  I made it a couple of minutes late, but they held the movie about 5 minutes because of the huge TTC disruptions.  I was there to see My Night at Maud's, which is incredibly the first Eric Rohmer movie I've watched (even though I own most of his films on DVD!).  I recall that there was another Rohmer movie I wanted to see, but I just couldn't make it work.  I believe this was likely Pauline at the Beach, though it might have been Maud's.  At any rate, I'll try to catch Pauline the next time it comes around.  I thought Maud's was maybe a bit too intellectual in places, but it's probably as good a place as any to start with Rohmer.

I didn't have time to eat anything, and I had to hustle over to Dufferin because I had exactly 45 minutes to get to TIFF to see North by Northwest (in 70 mm!).  I was lucky that the next bus was a Dufferin Express, and I got down to King fairly quickly, though once again Dufferin to John seemed to take forever.  I made it with something like two minutes to spare, hit the john and then slipped into my seat just before the Rolex commercial.  The movie was great.  I actually saw a clean print in 2024 at Scotiabank.

I went to an Indian place for dinner, then dropped by work but only for about 30 minutes.  Then I went back out to Scotiabank to see Wake Up Dead Man.  It was an overly complex plot with a few moments that I would consider cheats (where they show the audience something that didn't happen).  For a few moments I thought they were claiming that the Monsignor had faked his own death a la Juliet (from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet) but that wasn't the path they went down fortunately.  So it was a long day of movies.  I took the streetcar back rather than deal with any further pain of breaks in the subway service.  I probably did try to fit too much in, given the vagaries of transit (and not being able to bike (much) in the winter). 

Did I learn my lesson?  No, because on Monday I went straight from Huston's The Dead at Paradise to a play reading session down on College.  Because I was at Dovercourt, which is almost exactly between Dufferin and Ossington, Google said the best transit route was just to walk it, so I did.  Go figure. 

 

Mikio Naruse at TIFF

As always, TIFF giveth and taketh.  I found out pretty late about a really interesting Naruse retrospective at TIFF.  There are 6 new prints at the heart of this retrospective (though I have to say the one for When a Woman Ascends the Stairs had quite a few moments it went out of focus, though maybe that was the projectionist's fault?).  But because TIFF lets its members book for free, and then there is no revenue with these films, they banish them to the tiny top floor theatres, and no one else can get in.  It is the silliest membership program out there, leading to so many people being shut out.  I simply cannot support this, and indeed the whole membership thing made far more sense pre-COVID.  And out of principle, I just don't imagine ever being a member again, until they change their position on members booking every film free.

That said, I have been able to book tickets to 4 films:
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Scattered Clouds
Floating Clouds
Late Chrysanthemums

I will keep trying every night or so to see if a seat for Flowing, Yearning or Sound of the Mountain opens up, though generally this won't happen until 3 or 4 days before each screening.  Sigh.

I actually had to move a ticket for Public Consumption at Factory after Woman Ascends the Stairs opened up, but it was worth it.

I will go from knowing a bit about Naruse but never having seen any of his films to having seen some of his core films.  I actually have an awful lot of these on DVDs (mostly from the UK!), but I find it is better for me to watch in the theatre, as I am locked in and focus much more under those conditions.  (I mean as long as the sight lines aren't terrible as they are at the Fox.)

Transcription Test

I'm a fairly fast typist, but I also am extremely short on time most days, so I wanted to test if I could get some sort of transcription software working.  Years and years ago I used Dragon, when it was good but still had a ways to go.  Anyway, pretty much all computers have various types of free transcription going, though you do somewhat inadvertently give away all your data into the cloud to be scraped.  But I figure this blog is scraped all the time, so why not give it a try.  So what follows is taken directly from the transcript of a recent Teams chat, and I'll see how much I need to clean it up.  If this works, I have something else I need to try, and then maybe I can get through a severe backlog of blog posts.

Start>>

I'm only going to talk for a very short bit, then I'm going to launch something on the isolated laptop, and then I go over to the gym.  So let me give a very quick rundown of Saturday. I had a somewhat frustrating experience trying to get the cats into the cage and over to the vet.  Toby, as usual, was not really a problem, though he was banging very hard against the cage door once he was locked in there. I simply couldn't catch Rho. Rho hid under the couch and then ran upstairs into the bedroom and was under the bed.  After 15 or 20 minutes of futility, I gave up and called the vet and said I just was bringing Toby over. So this is going to probably be an ongoing issue. Rho has trust issues to begin with and this doesn't help!  Still, I will try to get them used to the cage and just leave them outdoors for a bit, so that everything they are in the cage they aren't going off to the vet!  Still, I don't really see how I will get Rho over the vet in the next couple of weeks to keep him* on the same vaccination schedule as Toby. 

Anyway, after that I came back. I spent a very short time with my daughter getting her started on some math problems and then I decided to go head out for the rest of the afternoon. I was going to see the exhibits at 401 Richmond, which I did. I double-checked that most of the galleries were going to be doing something interesting on Thursday evening, and indeed most will be open. So my plan is to go back to 401 Richmond on Thursday, do this open house and then go to the Rex. I've been checking the Rex website, and and so far it looks like Friday and maybe Saturday at the Rex are selling out (for Thompson Egbo-Egbo's dates), but Thursday is not, so I'll probably just wing it and not reserve a spot, though I may change my mind.  I didn't have time for lunch, but I grabbed a few things at the Bulk Barn and I went in to see an anime movie called Angel's Egg, which sadly was just terrible, though it was only one hour wasted out of my life. There was almost no action at all.  Just mopey wandering around an abandoned city.  I think the point was there was some kind of a spaceship controller or an alien that had forgotten its purpose and was just hanging out in this abandoned city.  But then some soldier came around and found this controller (taking the form of a little girl with this egg) and finally took the "angel" egg away and cracked it, which led to the controller realizing what its purpose was and went back to, you know, running the spaceship.  (This was done in a better way in Zelazny's Roadmarks.**)  Anyways, completely stupid.  I had a series of micro naps through the whole thing, as just nothing happened. I probably should have just left early.

Then I hit BMV.  I was able to sell one book back.  They didn't want these jazz CDs I had with me, so I think I'll try Sonic Boom and maybe Kops.  I don't think I'm going to try She Said Boom, as I don't think they take jazz, so if either of them aren't interested, I'll just put them outside. 

Then I grabbed a wrap from Freshiis on Spadina. I really don't like biking up and down Spadina, but it just seemed the easiest way to get there (and obviously I survived).  One of the workers apparently just hangs out right there in the doorway and smokes, which not only is illegal, but it's completely disgusting. So I had a word to the other guy working the counter and then took my wrap and split for work. I didn't have much time at work. I had basically 40 minutes, so I didn't get that much done, but I ate my wrap and dropped off some stuff that I didn't have to carry the rest of the evening.  Then I went back up to Bloor (up University this time, and then cutting through Queens Park to Harbord).  

The Soundstreams concert was at Trinity-St. Paul's.  I saw Linda Hutcheon was there as well. We chatted just a little bit.  I was tired, but did enjoy the program, which started off with Messiaen, then Murray Schafer's Wild Birds, and a short Arvo Pärt choral piece.  I biked along Bloor, which is always an adventure getting home and dealing with all the e-bikes and scooters crossing the bridge.  I thought I might be a little more energized with all that adrenaline, but I just did not get much done. I pretty much fell asleep and now I have some work to do for New Zealand (and get my stupid time sheet submitted).  I decided I will skip Jeanne Dielman, as I just don't have time, though there is a tiny chance I will check it out Tuesday after work.  If I manage to get everything else done (rather unlikely unfortunately), I will go see Total Recall at 10 pm tonight!

[I'd say this worked pretty well.  I will see about reading out some longer pieces later today after I get more done on the New Zealand project.]

* One of the main reasons to get Rho to the vet is to determine once and for all if it is a boy kitten or girl kitten.  The guy who sold me the kittens said they were all boys, but I definitely have my doubts!

** I just happened to run across this post that said HBO is turning Roadmarks into a tv series.  I would watch that.  However, this was 4 years ago(!), and while these things take time, I would say this probably means it isn't actually happening.  Nonetheless, I will try to check back occasionally to see if it ever gets off the ground.  I will probably have more luck figuring out when Hulu releases Futurama.  It does seem that "Season 13" hit fairly recently.  I will probably wait until Season 14 comes out and then sign up for Disney + again (or wherever we can stream Hulu shows in Canada).

 

 

Kitten Update #3

We ended up with more baby mice, but we think they are all gone now (and that the kittens caught the mama mouse).  It's sad, but we just were not willing to share the house with mice.  And ideally the presence of cats is a sufficient deterrent that we don't have to keep going through this.

Anyway, I did get a pretty good scratching post that they have been using, sometimes perching on the very top, even though it doesn't have a proper platform.  I haven't decided if I am going to get one of those large wooden things with lots of places for them to lay on.  I kind of doubt they would use it.

I can report that Rho, the silver one, has gotten much more used to being petted and generally likes it.  Now whether she warms up to anyone else in the house is unclear, but hopefully so.  I'll pause for a short comment from a Star article (on "black cat boyfriends"): "Dogs were bred to be attentive. Bless them, they cannot be any other way. But when a cat loves you, you know you really earned it."

Rho still doesn't like being picked up, and I am dreading the first vet visit, but I need to schedule that soon, maybe if we get a bit of a break in the weather.  The other day I bought a couple of break-away cat collars, so I guess I will need to try to get them used to that, as well as having their nails trimmed, which is also going to be a lot of fun and will probably end in tears (more mine than theirs).

There have been a couple of evenings where one or both will snuggle up to me on the couch, which is nice.  I even saw Toby jump up into my daughter's lap.  So the bonding has largely taken place.

One interesting thing is that I was back from the pool, and I still had some chlorine or other pool chemicals on me, and they went absolutely berserk.  For some cats, this is just about the same as cat nip or something.  They definitely were nipping me more than was comfortable, and it also put them into this drugged out state where they were really fighting each other, so I will need to try to wash off even more thoroughly in the future.  (Not easy when the water pressure at these pools is pretty low...)

So I have been enjoying them, despite the occasional annoyances when they jump up where they aren't supposed to be or knock things over.  This will probably be a recurring problem for the next 2 or 3 months. 

I have noticed that Toby (the orange one) stares wistfully outside, even when there is snow on the deck.  I really don't plan on letting him or Rho be outdoor cats, but it may be a bit beyond my control.  Even more reason to get them used to collars, so I can put a phone number on the collar or something.

Charity Ranking

It's getting towards that time of year when I ramp up my charitable giving, and this year I decided it was time to do more investigation into whether the charities were worth giving money to.  Naturally, there is a site that investigates them and provides grades and some rankings.

Based on other things I have read, I was not terribly surprised that the Canadian Red Cross scored poorly, with a low percentage of funds actually spent in the field, though I was surprised that their impact grade was low as well, perhaps because more of the funding ends up cycled through for admin (and more fund raising!).  In contrast, Médecins Sans Frontières had a terrific score, one of the best across all categories and in the very top for international aid.  For me in practical terms, I think I will just cut out the Red Cross and redirect any donations to MSF.

I often give donations to the Heart and Stoke Foundation.  Their ranking was kind of middle of the road, with some softness around their impact and a slightly lower percentage of donations (65%) spent on programming rather than on overhead than I would like to see.  In practical terms, I will probably continue to donate but only in periods (like now) where there is a 2x or 3x match.

I was most surprised at their quite low ranking for the Toronto Star Charities (the Fresh Air Fund and the Santa Claus Fund).  While the percentage to programming and gifts is extremely high (94%!), they give it a D+ for not actually reporting much on the number of gifts given out and children sent to camp.  I'm not really sure why the reporting is lax, but I feel pretty comfortable in continuing to send money to them, usually twice a year (and indeed it's about that time again...).

Not too surprisingly my very local charity (Eastview) is not in the database, but I think I'll give money to them anyway.

I ran through some of the arts organizations I donate money to.  Not surprisingly, they were a mixed bag.  TSO and Soulpepper had reasonable percentages spent on programming (better than Canadian Stage certainly), though impact was a bit unclear.  Coal Mine and Esprit Orchestra weren't even listed. 

So in the end I probably won't change much of what I have done in the past, aside from stop giving to the Red Cross and give more to MSF instead.

Halloween (Cheat) Week

I think I will wait another week or two before getting on the scales.  I was a bit surprised a few days before Halloween that I had kept the weight off, though of course I hadn't lost as much as I wanted.  But we had pumpkin pie in the office as well as candy corn (a lot of people don't like this, as it is pure sugar, but it is hard for me to resist, so I can't buy it on my own).  We had a reasonable number of trick or treators come by (and I gave most of them two pieces of candy), but there was still a bit too much left over in the house.  (I'm not sure it would have mattered, but the trick or treating stopped completely at 7:45, as all the parents went home to watch the game!)

I don't know what happened of the photos I took of our block, as people usually go all out, but I have a few good photos of the streets just west of us, where there is perhaps even more Halloween spirit.  That's certainly where I would have gone trick or treating had I grown up in Toronto.

On a more positive note, I got in a few extra laps in the pool on Sat., I did a pretty full workout on Sun., even squeezing in 20 minutes of cardio.  I biked to work on Monday, despite it threatening to rain, and I got in 23 or 24 laps on Monday, even though the Jimmie Simpson pool was more crowded than I expected.  That said, I am sure I have gained a few pounds, so I want to get back on track before I see what the damage is.  I actually came across the loose fit jeans I was wondering about (that are one size smaller than what I normally wear).  I couldn't quite get into them (and it wouldn't have looked right even if I could have squeezed in).  I probably need to lose another 10-15 pounds.  So not an impossible task, but one that will be challenging given winter is coming up and I won't be biking nearly as much soon.  I clearly need to get more serious about not snacking at work if I want to keep making any progress.

I also biked today, though I probably will not bike tomorrow, as it is likely to rain.  I came very close to going off to see St. Elmo's Fire right after work, but decided it was just a bit too much of a melodrama for my current mood.  Also, I didn't get quite enough work done during the day, and I wanted to help my daughter with some math problems.  Also, I still have 100 pages to go in Mrs. Dalloway, and the TPL event is tomorrow!  So maybe another time, as Carlton seems to cycle through these 80s and early 90s movies with some regularity.  I actually expect to watch quite a few in the second half of Nov., so there's no point in getting too upset over skipping over this one (for now at any rate).

Woolf Interlude

I was able to get through Orlando in time.  (I'm seeing a version of Orlando, dramatized by Sarah Ruhl, next Sat.  I have seen the film, but not in ages.  I might see if I can watch it some time this winter, assuming it doesn't show up at the Paradise.  It was one of the early screenings of the Queer Cinema Club at the Paradise when people were just emerging from the COVID shutdown.  I'm not entirely sure why I didn't go, and there may have been a conflict at the time.)

I am halfway finished with Mrs. Dalloway, and I should be able to read it by the TPL event on the 5th, as it is a fairly quick read, despite the stream-of-consciousness bits.  I hadn't remembered that the point of view skips around so much, over to Peter Walsh, one of Clarissa's former beaus, and even to Septimus Smith, a WWI veteran who was still suffering greatly from a form of shell-shock.  I also hadn't recalled just how morbid parts of it are, with Septimus saying repeatedly that he (and his wife) should kill themselves, particularly knowing that Woolf eventually ended her own life, so the death-drive (as Freud might put it) was strong in her.

Anyway, I will likely reread To the Lighthouse, which for me is her greatest achievement, at some point in 2026 or 2027.  I might eventually get back through all her novels and other major works.  I was looking over the list, and while I thought I had read everything in my 20s, I'm having some doubts now.  I am sure I never read her diaries or her letters, and I am still quite unlikely/unwilling to tackle that.

I guess I will put an x in front for anything I read as part of this cycle of reading Woolf as a middle-aged man, which is a very different thing from reading her in my 20s...

    The Voyage Out (1915)
    Night and Day (1919)
    Monday or Tuesday (1921) - stories
    Jacob's Room (1922)
x   Mrs Dalloway (1925)
    To the Lighthouse (1927)
x   Orlando: A Biography (1928)
    A Room of One's Own (1929) - essay
    On Being Ill (1930) - essay
    The Waves (1931)
    Flush: A Biography (1933) (being the biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog!)
    The Years (1937)
    Three Guineas (1938) - essay
    Between the Acts (1941)
    A Haunted House and Other Short Stories (1944) - stories
    Mrs. Dalloway's Party (1973) - stories

I'm sure I never read Flush, as I am just not a dog person.  I am somewhat inclined to listen to Prunella Scales read a somewhat abridged version when that comes off the hold list.  I don't believe I read On Being Ill, and while I think I read Three Guineas, I am not 100% sure.  Similarly, I'm reasonably but not entirely sure that I read The Waves.  I'm less certain that I read The Years, though I probably did.  I'm actually not nearly as sure that I read Between the Acts, as the plot doesn't sound that familiar (and, intriguingly, sounds a bit like something Barbara Pym would come up with).

My overall reading list is already absurd, but I will probably try to get back through Woolf, alternating with Pym, who I am also rereading (though I am far more sure that I did read all of Pym's novels once upon a time...)

Disappointments

As will be very evident as I move through the day here, the whole city is basically in mourning that the Jays couldn't get it across the line.  The baseball gods were particularly cruel in Game 6 where the ground ball double rule probably prevented them from tying up the game, and they hit into a double play.  Then in Game 7 where the pitching just wasn't good enough (and frankly the manager was an idiot for not bringing the rookie pitcher back in) and the Jays just couldn't convert on some prime scoring opportunities in both inning 9 and 11.  So heart breaking.  I am certainly disappointed, but not being a die-hard fan, I just don't take it to heart the same way  I'm already back, thinking about how to squeeze in even more culture -- and whether I will pay the inflated price of the ticket for Theatre francais de Toronto next week.

Another disappointment that hits closer to home is that the kittens found (and killed) a baby mouse.*  Honestly, it's not at all clear what these mice are eating, as there really isn't any food on the 2nd floor, and we believe the adult mice have been caught.  Anyway, the kittens are doing their part at least, and we probably need to bring the exterminator back around again.

I'm going to head over to the gym now and see how hard people are taking it there.  Either there will be lots of people there working out their frustrations or maybe the gym will be more or less empty.  I'll know soon enough. 

 

* The disappointment being that there were still mice around, not that the kittens were doing their job in catching the things...

Edit: Well, they just caught a second baby mouse, so maybe the hunger is driving them out.  Anyway, we are trying to get the exterminators to come back round today...

Edit 2: I guess I need to apologize (slightly) for calling the manager an idiot.  He did put in the rookie pitcher, but he just wasn't sharp enough and gave up run 3.  Who knows if he would have settled down (and not given up run 4 in the next inning!), but he didn't get the chance.  This definitely was a game of inches, and the Jays just came up short.  Several commentators are saying this was the best World Series ever, but that is cold consolation to Jays' fans.  The gym was pretty light today, very likely because people were having trouble getting motivated...  Frankly, I would have put up big signs at the gym and the bars that this would be a sports news-free zone for the next 24 hours!

What I really hope doesn't happen is this serves as a portent that, despite being plucky and trying to forge new trade partnerships, the Orange One keeps up the pressure and industry in Canada just crumbles, sending the country into a recession.  The signs are not great, frankly.

Nov. book news

I guess I am jumping the gun just slightly, but I am already looking ahead.

One of the annoying things about getting busy (and now having to deal with kittens and their needs on a daily basis) is that I do let some things get away from me.  I never did make it over to the Trinity book sale, though honestly I just don't need more books at the moment!  I guess Art Toronto was last weekend, and I didn't do that either.  Maybe I would have if I hadn't been off in Stratford on Saturday.

I finally managed to make it through Woolf's Orlando.  It was fine, but I don't think it is as strong a novel as Mrs. Dalloway or To the Lighthouse.  I don't really expect to read it for a third time, so I did put it out front.  (No takers so far...)  I decided to try to get through Henry James's The Turn of the Screw by Halloween.  It will be a close thing, but I think I'll make it.  Now whether I will make it through Mrs. Dalloway by Nov. 5 (when I am attending this TPL celebration of Mrs. Dalloway) is definitely in question.  It certainly means that Empire Falls keeps getting pushed off.

Also for Nov., I should try to get to Miéville's The City and the City, as this is being read in a book club at work.  It turns out that all the TPL copies are on hold already, so I may need to get it through Robarts.  But since I can only keep it for two weeks, I might as well wait until I am actually ready to read the book straight through, so probably the second week of Nov.  After this, I need to try to wrap up Empire Falls and Canetti's Auto da Fe and then I'll see about reading Austen's Persuasion before the Austen anniversary celebrations in Dec.  If I get through this, then really the only Austen left to read will be Emma, and I might see about putting that on the list for 2027.  (Interestingly, Prunella Scales narrated an abridged and unabridged version of Emma that was very well received, though you have to buy the unabridged version on cassette(!) or CD.  I am toying with the idea of ordering a copy and putting it aside until I have actually read Emma first.)  

I decided just to buy Shteyngart's Vera and have him sign it (at his Dec. TPL event) rather than trying to read it in advance, particularly as this is a case where one really ought to read Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor first!  That was never going to happen.  I had thought I owned a copy of Ada, but it turns out that I don't, so I started hunting a copy down.  I went to the BWV near the Eaton Centre, but they didn't have it.  On my last outing to Tafelmusik, I had time to duck into Seekers Books.  They didn't have it either, unfortunately.  The BWV on Bloor did have one copy, so I snatched that up, then went off to hear a terrific concert, mostly of Vivaldi and some of his contemporaries.  I don't have a specific time-line, but I would like to try to get to Ada in early 2026 (and maybe my next trip up to Ottawa on Jan. 20 is a good opportunity to at least start the novel), and then read Vera at some point after that.  If I am successful in following through with this, maybe I should put Atwood's MaddAdam trilogy in the 2nd half of 2026, and slot War and Peace and Lessing's Children of Violence cycle (and Emma) into 2027.

One very long novel (700 pages) that I think I will just skip is Kiran Desai's The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny.  I just saw her at a TIFA event, and they were talking about her novel and the long, long journey to get it finished (20 years in the writing!).  I think partly I was stressed over my tight schedule, and the fact they had a meltdown and couldn't actually sell any copies of her new book, and they started late (with a somewhat insulting explanation that they were having sardines on toast and lost track of time), but there really isn't anything that she said that makes me want to read this novel.  I mean never say never, but I have literally 500+ books I want to read ahead of this, including rereading The Inheritance of Loss, which is a terrific novel.  I had pretty much given up on getting any books signed (since I had a concert to go to that started at 7), but even though they started late, they ended at 6:31, and I somehow managed to get in line towards the front (probably in the first 10 people).  She signed my copy of Inheritance, and I scampered off and made it to the concert after all.*  (I suspect that had I paid the hefty sum for Loneliness and thus had more skin in the game, I would have been halfway back in the (very long) line and would have bailed in the end.)

The last thing I wanted to touch on before I run off, is that I just wasn't paying enough attention, and a bunch of holds I had at TPL simply expired, as I usually put them on inactive status for long periods of time.  I guess this means I should just use the save function rather than trying to put them on suspended hold.  This is pretty annoying, and I am trying to recall just what was on there.  Over the past few months, I had whittled the list down a fair bit.  I DNR Ghosted after I found out what a morally bankrupt book it was.  I ditched holds for Vera and Pick a Colour, as I will end up buying those books.  I ended up getting a copy of Do You Remember Being Born? ✓ which is about a older poet (based on Marianne Moore) interfacing with an AI agent that needs to be trained in understanding language.  So this is one I need to try to finish up between Mrs. Dalloway ✓ and The City and the City ✓, but at least I have it in hand and won't just forget about it.  There were a few still on hold where the expiration date was far enough away.  This includes Aliens on the Moon by Thomas King and You've Changed by Ian Williams** and Murakami's latest.  I remember I had one book about architecture on hold, but I am not as interested in that at the moment.  I was able to reconstruct most of the list that evaporated:
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Chakraborty
The Pleasures of Exile by George Lamming
What We See in the Smoke by Ben Ghan
The Tale of the Missing Man by Manzoor Ahtesham

(The last one was particularly hard to find as it is a south Asian novel, not an Arabic one!  And I kept thinking it was called Lost Man or something like that.  I wasn't terribly far off, but it took a while to turn it up again.)

I think in general, I will try to get through this list in 2026, as most of the books are not all that long, and not risk this happening again.  I am sure there are a few books that I am not remembering, but these were the ones that came to mind right away and thus am apparently the most interested in actually reading (one day).

Edit (8/31): I did finish The Turn of the Screw and thought the ending was poor. 😞    I'm not a huge fan of unreliable narrators in general, though these sorts of books can be amusing, depending on how the author tips off the reader.  What I don't care for, and The Turn of the Screw has in spades, is stories that are full of radical ambiguity.  James apparently wants the reader to vacillate between thinking there is a realistic and a supernatural ending to the story.  I just don't like that at all.  Period.

 

* It certainly helped that the TIFA event was at Victoria College and the ARC Ensemble concert was practically around the corner at Mazolleni Hall, but it was still pretty stressful, worrying if I would be late.  The ARC Ensemble concert was very good, though of the 3 composers they featured, Frederick Block's pieces were clearly the strongest of the bunch.

** I keep getting blocked from seeing Ian Williams.  Last year when he was giving the Massey Lecture in Toronto, I had a ticket but had to travel for work so sent a friend in my place (and did get a couple of books signed at least).  Right after Kiran Desai (and at the same time as the ARC Ensemble!), Ian Williams was at TIFA talking about his new novel, so I missed that.  There was another recent event in Toronto where he was featuring his new novel, but I was off to see Bremen Town that evening and just didn't feel up to trying to switch the ticket.  

Late Stratford Trip

Before I get too deep into this post, I will first mention that the Jays have outperformed expectations, and clearly there is a decent chance they will win it all.  That would be pretty exciting, and, while I don't really care in my heart of hearts, I would prefer that they win (and give the Orange One something else to sulk over).

There have been a lot of celebrity deaths lately, and certainly quite a few major losses among jazz musicians, including John DeJohnette.  I saw him play at least three times (including once with Herbie Hancock!) and possibly another time or two.  And a few months back, Hermeto Pascoal passed away, though I am less familiar with his work and never saw him play.  I was saddened that Prunella Scales also just passed away, though she had been suffering from dementia for some time.  I had seriously planned on doing a mini-marathon of Fawlty Towers, but I forgot how wound-up and high-strung they make me, and I just couldn't do it.  Maybe if I have a longer break over the weekend I'll try to watch a few.

Anyway, there are a number of other things I can discuss, but I would like to briefly write up the Stratford trip last Sat.  I biked down to the office and parked my bike, then changed my t-shirt (at the office actually) and walked over to the bus stop.  I wanted to travel as light as possible, so I basically only had my tickets, a book (Auto da Fe), my phone, glasses, an apple and some chips.  The bus was pretty well packed, and I ended up next to an older man who had a long phone conversation before finally hanging up and then texting the rest of the trip!  I made some progress on the book, though not as much as I would have if there hadn't been so much chatter on the bus.

The truth is I don't really like this novel very much, and I probably should just drop it.  I wasn't all that interested in the main plot about an eccentric book collector and his housekeeper, who after marrying him, takes an outsize interest in his bank account and whether she is in his will, and ultimately drives him from his flat.  This was unpleasant enough, but then he ends up in the hands of petty criminals, and the point of view shifts over to these shiftless crooks.  It just really drags in this section for some reason.  I'm sure it's just my mind making weird connections, but somehow this portion of the book reminds me of The Seven Madmen by Roberto Arlt, though not handled quite as well.  I'll try to finish it up, but this is just not really my cup of tea...

We made pretty decent time to Stratford, unlike the last time I went late in the season and was completely snarled up by the marathon or some other race that closed down a bunch of streets.  I debated between the Thai place I usually go to or a burrito place, which was a lot faster (and cheaper).  I decided to get the burrito (a sweet potato and black bean burrito) and eat it while wandering around town.  The leaves had really started turning red and orange in this part of town.

I starting thinking whether I would ever write up my script for "Stratford" where I would focus on the issues of being a bedroom community for Toronto artists (with still substantial numbers of American tourists) and being a small Ontario town.  Not quite town and gown conflict but along the same lines, with some of the high school students really falling in love with all aspects of the theatre but most others thinking it is lame and not that thrilled about living in such a tourist trap.  (One of them could have to dress up all in ruffles, almost as ridiculous as Judge Reinhold in that pirate get-up in Fast Times, and this would naturally cause lots of resentment, and endless mockery from his peers.)  I think it is somewhat unlikely I will do much with it.  Anyway, I did wonder if it might be better off as a comedy set in a Stratford bed and breakfast (the Bard's B & B), though that would be limiting in some ways and would set up inevitable comparisons with Fawlty Towers (where I would fail miserably).  This actually was a couple of days before the news hit about Ms. Scales's passing.  I think probably the first idea is better (though itself would suffer when compared to Slings and Arrows), though maybe there is just one episode where one of the main actors has to spend a couple of nights in a bed and breakfast -- and hears all about how much the company was hamming it up.

Unfortunately the "mall" where I bought the burrito didn't have any public restrooms, so I decided to walk over to Tom Patterson Theatre, as there is a place nearby with public washrooms.  Those were locked for the season(!), but I was able to go into the arena and finally found a washroom that was open.  If I ever do work more on this series, I would probably swap the hockey arena for a curling rink, as I remember from the exurban fringes of Saskatoon.

I found out that Art in the Park was no longer running due to it being so late in the season, so I just started walking back to the Studio Theatre.  It was sprinkling a bit but it wasn't too bad, so I didn't sprint back.  I had thought I might drop in at the other bookstore right next to the Studio Theatre, but apparently that has been shuttered for many years (before 2019 at least).  I think I did go in once or twice but never bought anything there.

It wasn't too long before the Goblins arrived.

This time around they were recruiting people to serve as the chorus.  These people got quite the workout. I'm really not that big into audience participation, so it is just as well they didn't ask me to do it.  

 

I enjoyed this a lot, though it wasn't such a radically new thing as Goblins Macbeth was.  One of the most amusing running gags was that one of the Goblins wanted to put on some version of the Christmas story and he often managed to include Christmas carols or sneak in lines from A Christmas Carol or even The Grinch!

There are four more chances to see it between now and Friday, but you clearly don't have a lot of time.  I still have some hopes that this will land at Tarragon, and I would go see it again.

Since the whole show, including a post-play dance party takes just about 90 minutes, I had a lot of time to kill before the bus back to Toronto.  I wandered back over to Shoppers but they didn't have any single-serve ice cream!  So I went to another place and just got over-priced ice cream, then hit the dollar store, and then went over to the Avon to wait for the bus.  It was much, much less crowded on the way back, and I had a seat to myself.  Unfortunately, the traffic was pretty bad, and the bus driver ended up taking the 401 (rather than the 427 to the Gardiner) and dropped most of us off at the Lawrence West station where we could just get on the subway.  So all in all a good outing, even if I (yet again) didn't get as much reading in as I had hoped.