Super Short Chicago Trip

Granted this isn't the shortest trip ever, which was last year when I flew in, took in the Cezanne exhibit at the Art Institute and flew back that evening!  But this was still a short trip.  I was supposed to fly in Sat. morning, though we had mechanical problems with the plane (fortunately discovered before we took off!) and I was rebooked on a flight that landed just before noon.  I met a friend at Jefferson Park, and we continued in on the Blue Line to downtown.  

We visited the Art Institute and checked out the Van Gogh exhibit and then the Varo exhibit, which had just opened.  I somewhat stupidly left my phone in my backpack, which I then checked.  I decided to try to really embrace living in the moment and not take a photo of everything.  (I did have my friend send me photos of three paintings, but compared to the hundreds of photos I typically take, this was incredibly restrained.)  However, I then could not resist getting both catalogues (fortunately, she had a members' discount.).  Both shows were great in their own way, but in some ways it was quite thrilling to see so many Varo paintings up close, and almost all the ones I had seen in books about Varo were present.  It is really not to be missed if you are interested in surrealistic art and happen to be living in the Midwest.

We walked up to the Cultural Centre, which was running a show on wall murals, which is actually about to wrap up.  They didn't have anything on view on the 2nd or 4th floors, which is generally where the larger shows are put on.

We then went up to the Driehaus Museum, which is housed in a gorgeous mansion (the Nickerson Mansion) just off Chicago's Magnificent Mile.  Almost all the wall decorations and fancy fireplaces are original, which is itself quite astonishing.  I did hang onto my phone this time, and I'll try to post a few photos soon, though the photos at the Driehaus Museum website are far more professional.  Apparently, the Driehaus has only been open to the public since 2019.

We then went up to an Italian place near Steppenwolf.  Her husband joined us there, and we had a good dinner before heading over to see Pinter's No Man's Land.  One thing that was perhaps a bit ominous was that the theatre was probably not even 15% full.  Summer is a tough time for theatre, and Pinter seems to be a particularly hard sell.  The reviews have generally been positive, though most of them dwell on the fact that the actor playing Spooner, one of the leads, pulled out a week before the show started, so the understudy has taken over for the entire run.  I wasn't really grabbed by this production as the stakes never really seemed that high, and it doesn't cohere as much as Old Times, for instance.  Given this was one of the prime reasons for the Chicago trip, it was a bit of a let down.  (Fortunately, the Art Institute more than justified the trip...)

The next morning we hung out a bit, then ran over to a farmer's market in Portage Park.  This was quite nice, and I had a savory crepe.  I barely managed to keep myself from buying some pastries at one of the baked goods stands.

I headed off to O'Hare after that, getting there early but not early enough to go standby on an earlier flight.  I managed to get a bit of work done, but was pretty run down and didn't press myself too far.  It was a good trip, but I'll probably pay for it when I still haven't shaken off this cough in another week or two.  In fact, I really ought to hit the sack now.

On the trip, I got halfway through Austen's Mansfield Park, but I don't care much for it.  In addition to Fanny Price being a bit of a simp, Edmund is so ridiculous priggish about so many things, and Mrs. Norris is far, far ruder (to Fanny) than one would expect of a genteel woman of her era.  And the writing really does feel so didactic.  This is a bit of a disappointment, but I will press on.  (I also am finding that All About H. Hatterr is a disappointment, not living up to the often extravagant praise it received.)  I did get a chapter into Maugham's Cakes and Ale, and this is definitely more genuinely amusing with some very catty writing about the London literary world.  I'll hold off reading it until I finish these other two books, which should happen at some point this week.

The Extended Mend

I'm now three for three events keeping my cough under control, and in fact I'd say I'm probably 90% back to full health.  The first was the Summer Music concert featuring Brahms Sextet #2.*

Then on Sunday I went to see The Effect, since I had never heard back from Coal Mine.  Although Sunday is actually the day I do the bulk of the grocery shopping for the household.  Then I had a bit of time to kill and had the bright idea to run over to the gym to do an ultra short set of weights and some time on the stationary bikes (to see how I would fare if I bike to work on Monday, weather permitting) and then get under the ultra hot shower to break up the crud in my lungs.  That all worked ok, though I was probably 10-15 minutes behind schedule.  Then the 72 bus was having one of its fairly predictably shitty days.  I ended up speed walking all the way up to Danforth and then 3 showed up in a bunch.  I wish I were joking.  I was very unhappy about this.  In the end I made it to the show with about 3 minutes to spare, so another close call, and one that didn't put me in the best of moods to say the least.

I know the reviewers have generally liked this play (about pharmaceutical trials) or liked it with reservations, but I really didn't care for it, particularly some of the revelations and twists after the intermission.  There was one bit that wasn't at all clear if the young woman had tried to force her pill on the young man, which then effectively doubled up on the chemicals in his system, triggering an overdose.  The acting was all very good, but I just couldn't buy into the script and didn't really care that much about the characters.  To me it was by far the weakest play of the season, and I am confident I would have felt the same even if I was completely healthy.  At the intermission, I went and complained about the whole email fiasco and the woman at the desk said she had seen the email and wasn't sure why no one responded to me.  It was a challenge to stay polite and say that without some sort of phone service, things like this would keep happening and that I wasn't willing to subscribe next season without changes.  (And while the official, official announcement isn't until this Thurs., Concord Theatricals (formerly Samuel French) and DPS say that Coal Mine is planning on Waiting for Godot (which seems like an odd choice for them), Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and People, Places and Things by Duncan Macmillan.  Maybe this isn't such a bad year to sit things out anyway...)

I briefly debated bagging it and going home, but I ended up heading up to Richmond Hill to see Castle in the Sky.  This involved getting up to Finch station on Line 1 and then talking the Viva Blue up to Bernard Terminal and then crossing over into a strip mall.  Curiously, the trip involves a stop at Langstaff GO Station, which is immediately next to SilverCity Richmond Hill Cinema. I'm almost certain that I made a stop there to see Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel when I was staying in Richmond Hill on a company outing and had access to a car.  However, I still had another 20 minutes or so to go to get to Imagine Elgin Mills.  It was quite a long way to go just to see a movie, and I am hoping that there are more Toronto options for Howl's Moving Castle and then I might see Spirited Away again in the original Japanese with subtitles.  Though I do know how to do it if I have to go again.  I did get halfway through Desani's All About H. Hatterr, and I'll review that more thoroughly at a later time.  I will say that this book is starting to feel a lot like Gogol's Dead Souls, for better and worse.

Anyway, I enjoyed the movie.  There's non-stop action (about as much as in the Indiana Jones movies) and some silly set pieces as well.  I'm glad I'm finally seeing these movies, but I'm not going to watch them over and over.  I was glad I didn't cough through this movie, even though there weren't that many people in the theatre.

I reversed the trip and got home just after 11 pm.  Again, probably not the wisest set of choices for the day for someone who is technically still on the mend...

* I'll just say there was a lot of Brahms in this festival.  Maybe a bit too much.  I sort of remember when they were bringing a famous symphony to town, but all they were playing were Brahms's symphonies, so I passed.  Just as I favour Beethoven, Dvorak and Shostakovich over Brahms for symphonic work, I prefer Shubert and Mendelssohn (and Shostakovich) for chamber pieces.  That said, Sextet #2 was interesting (and I'm still a bit burned over the way they programmed Sextet #1 as a free lunch concert in a small hall that ran out of space**).  And I also thought his Piano Quintet was very well done.  But it still was an awful lot of Brahms this summer...

** And I'm even more bummed about the seemingly random way one could reserve a seat to some of these concerts.  That wasn't explained well at all.  I found out that I could book to Friday's concert, which I really wanted to go to, and then I got called away to something else, and I got back an hour later and it was sold out!  If indeed, they are not saving any seats for the general public on the day of, this seems the worst of all possible approaches.  Anyway I can't take the time off to find out just to suffer one more disappointment this week.

On the Mend

I'm definitely better though not 100%.  I went out of the house briefly on Friday.  Saturday I ventured downtown.  I picked up a few books from Robarts, then stopped by the Hart House Museum.  I found myself pretty sweaty even from just normal exertion like walking but I was coughing a lot less.  I caught the train to St. Patrick to head over to the AGO.  I stopped to grab a slice of pizza, and while eating, I emailed Coal Mine to try to move my Sunday ticket to Thursday.  I really wanted to call their Box Office.  But incredibly, they are handling everything online and through email.  I'll just jump to the chase and say that even with over 24 hour notice, no one got back in touch, which is inexcusable.  I've been a supporter and tried to be understanding since the fire, but at some point, they need to rejoin all the other theatre companies and have a proper Box Office.  I've decided I am not going to renew my subscription for next season, and I plan on telling them that tomorrow.

Anyway, I ran into Bau-Xi.  I found out that Bau-Xi Photo has moved to Dupont and Dufferin, so I'll probably see that much less often.

Then I saw the Sarindar Dhaliwal exhibit at the AGO.  I managed to get there about 10 minutes before all the speeches started, which meant I could actually see the art.  I enjoyed it, but I wasn't blown away like I was with Jaune Quick-to-See Smith at the Whitney.  I was feeling a bit rocky, and kind of wish they had the talk in the atrium like usual (with enough chairs!), but I was able to lean against a column. 

Sarindar Dhaliwal, Indian Billboard, 2000

I was glad that Sarindar kept her remarks quite brief (not much over 10 minutes), and I left shortly after that.  Actually, I did take a very quick look at some Canadian art on the 2nd floor.  I wish this was a bit sharper, but it is an older man who looks almost exactly like William Kurelek's The Bachelor.  Too droll...

I actually thought that Nina Amin would be at Yumart for the closing of her show, so I walked over there (401 Richmond) next.  It was interesting to see that virtually all of the calligraphy pieces (and all the ones I found intriguing) had been sold.  That's just as well (and of course so great for the artist!).  If I do buy any new art (and I really shouldn't without a major boost to my salary!), it will be from this year's Toronto Outdoor Art Fest, which I still need to review at some point...

I saw a few other things of interest at 401 Richmond, though it looked like Abbozzo was right in the middle of a rehang.  I did find out that there will be sort of a history exhibit about Ontario Place at Yumart in August, so I'll probably stop by for that.  Also, in a roundabout way, this visit reminded me I needed to check out The Image Centre at TMU.  Fortunately, I have until Aug. 5 to see the Spring/Summer shows, including one featuring Jin-me Yoon, and I didn't just miss out which sometimes happens.  I kind of wanted to sit down on the train to Union, but my Presto pass had expired, and it wasn't that long a walk.

When I finally got there, I had a bit of an internal debate on whether to just go home or stick it out for the Summer Music concert at 7:30.  I was able to sleep a bit at the office, grab some sushi and still made the concert with 5 minutes to spare.  I've been cutting things close for weeks now!  (Which probably hasn't helped my overall stress levels.)

I'm proud to say I didn't cough once during the concert.  That gives me some confidence that the play on Sunday will also be ok, despite my general annoyance.  I found the Brahms Sextet #2 to be pretty interesting, though it went on a bit long.  In fact I really wish the concert had been 15 minutes shorter, but you can't have everything.  I just have to hope that I didn't use up too much of my reserves on Saturday.  I guess I'll find out soon enough. 

¡Basta!

A Man Plans...

I'm trying to think back to the last time I was really sick.  It's been quite a while fortunately.  There were a few times that I had a pretty bad cough, though in all cases I tested negative for COVID.  Generally that only lasted a day or two.  In fact, roughly a year ago I think I did drag myself to the office (when I was under the weather) specifically because moving around usually helps break stuff up (compared to lying in bed), and I knew that no one was actually in the office, so I wouldn't be spreading anything.  Now that people are in much more regularly, I can't do that anymore.  I wouldn't have been able to do that this time because I was actually quite ill.

I guess this all started on Tuesday evening.  I was coming back from the gym, and I developed a bit of a cough.  This lasted all night, but I didn't think too much about it.  I went off to work on Wed. per usual but just started feeling worse and worse.  I actually did a self-COVID test right away, but it came back negative again.  I think I finally gave up at 3 pm, saying that I just needed to get home and get some rest.

On the one hand, this could be related to running myself ragged at the Fringe and Summer Music or even getting careless about masking up on the TTC, but I think this latest round of sickness is linked to all the stress that hit me dealing with getting my daughter into summer school, when the administrators were saying she hadn't been enrolled properly.  As it turned out, I did have a ticket to a concert that evening, but I decided I would clearly have to skip it.  I tried to find someone at work to use it, but I don't think I succeeded.  My hope was that I would recover by Thurs. evening to catch a slightly more significant concert that evening.

It's probably no surprise, but things didn't work out that way.  I still wasn't feeling very good, and I laid down for yet another nap and then woke up at 8 pm (after the concert had officially started).  I'm feeling better today, but by no means 100%.  I have hopes to hit an art gallery or two on Sat. (initially I had planned on getting over to the Hart House Museum on Wed.), and then I have a concert scheduled for Sat. evening.  I think I can make that, but I'll have to see if the hacking cough has gone away.  It won't be fair to go if I am going to be a nuisance.  What's more challenging is deciding about a play on Sunday at Coal Mine Theatre.  It's much harder than it used to be speaking to anyone in the Box Office to see about switching tickets, but if I don't have the date moved to a bit later next week and I don't feel like going on Sunday, then I simply lose the ticket.  (On top of the two Summer Music tickets I've lost so far, that would be too much.)  And also complicating factors is I was thinking of trying to head off to Imagine Elgin Mills for Castle in the Sky, but I can't do that unless I am fully recovered by Sun.

So it's all incredibly frustrating, but there isn't too much more I can do to return to a state of good health.

Edit: the worst of the soreness is gone, and I'm not coughing as much.  I'll likely be able to go to the concert tomorrow, and Sunday shouldn't be too much of an issue.  That said, if I experience any flare-ups tomorrow, I'll try to contact the Coal Mine to reschedule.  I suppose things would have been much worse if this happened a week later, as I probably would have had to scrub a short trip to Chicago!

Bookish News

It definitely took longer than I expected, even with the weird breaks between shows at the Fringe, but I finally got through Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March. All I can say is my reading tastes and outlook have changed radically since I was in my 20s. Back then I thought Augie March was the bees' knees, and I highly recommended it. This time around, I found it so ponderous and slow and very boring and just unpleasant in many sections, particularly anytime Augie's boorish brother Simon was on stage. Maybe things would have been different if I was reading large chunks at a time and finished it in a week or so (like I used to do), but I somehow doubt it. I will say the last line of the book is a killer: "Columbus too thought he was a flop, probably, when they sent him back in chains. Which didn’t prove there was no America." And this paragraph near the end is also pretty good: "She {Stella} doesn’t have any terrific talent for acting, but that’s how it appears to go. People don’t do what they have a talent for but what the preoccupation leads to. If they’re good at auto-repairing they have to sing Don Giovanni; if they can sing they have to be architects; and if they have a gift for architecture they wish to become school superintendents or abstract painters or anything else."

Obviously I didn't want to hang onto the book after such a disappointing repeat performance, so it is currently sitting out in front in the Little Free Library.  (No takers so far...)  I found that I drastically downgraded Powers's Morte d'Urban as well.  While I still liked the beginning of Bell's Waiting for the End of the World, I couldn't swallow the ending this time around (reminded me too much of Hitchcock's Rope, which I loathe because of the inconsistency of the main character).  

Another book I managed to finish while at the Fringe was Red Hot City, which is an urban studies book about Atlanta and the various missteps (some more intentional than others) that led to massive gentrification in Atlanta and generally pushing the poor out into the suburbs, which were even less prepared to meet the needs of this population.  It's depressing stuff, particularly now that we are what Marx would call an era of late capitalism.  I generally do try to read a non-fiction book at work, and I have decided that the next one will be Lucretius's On the Nature of Things.

I'm just launching into Desani's All About H. Hatterr.  It's something different all right.  I'm not sure it's a book I'd read more than once.  I'm not sure if I can explain it, but it seems to be about a Eurasian boy who is orphaned early on and ends up in India.  His use of English, as he recounts his life story, is very loose indeed.

I finished Reuss's Henry of Atlantic City.  This was a more interesting book, to me, than Horace Afoot.  In both cases, it seems like Reuss is taking some bit of esoteric knowledge he has (Roman philosophy or gnostic teachings) and building a novel around it.  Henry has photographic recall, and he seems fairly autistic.  (This book came out a few years before The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night but has some fairly interesting parallels.)  Given how much he talks about angels whispering to him, I suspect he is meant to be schizophrenic as well.  A very heavy burden for this boy, who has a very unreliable father, and most of his other adult role models are in the casino business or in the mob or both.  There are a few loose ends not tied up at the end, and it really isn't clear how Henry will make out with his new guardian at the end of the novel.

I'm actually reading a bit more science fiction/fantasy, which I return to every few years.  I'm rereading Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and toying with rereading the Elric Saga.  I suspect Elric won't hold up nearly as well as when I read it during my years of teenaged angst.  Perhaps I'll find out. 

Aside from that there are short stories to read.  Mavis Gallant's Varieties of Exile and stories by Alice Munro and Ellen Gilchrist and perhaps Joy Williams as well.

I was supposed to pick up the LOA edition of James Baldwin's Later Novels, but I missed out by less than a week of someone snatching it up first.  That's annoying.  I have the LOA edition of his Collected Essays, and I recently ordered (Early) Novels and Stories (to replace a copy that got mold damaged!), though I suspect the seller will cancel when he realizes just how much shipping to Canada is.  We'll see I guess.

Just in general, I think I'll finally have better momentum as almost all the books I am reading for the foreseeable future are shortish with the exception of Perec's Life: A User's Manual and Austen's Mansfield Park, which I might end up reading on the train to Ottawa, or the bus to Detroit for that matter.

Anime Updates

I've managed to catch a couple of movies at Carlton Cinema: Perfect Blue and Paprika.  I'm not sure if TIFF was showing Perfect Blue, but they did show Paprika; however, it was "sold out."  I'm learning that way more often than not, TIFF showings aren't sold out after all, which is super annoying as a non-member.  Anyway, I've been aware of both of these movies forever, but never got around to watching them.  There is one scene in Perfect Blue that I probably need to see again, since somehow I missed some critical info.  Overall, I found this just a bit too violent for my tastes, though I did find the scenes of the early web pretty amusing.  I liked Paprika quite a bit more, and it had some really weird dream scenes.  I'd say that Fellini was at least one of the inspirations behind this movie. And apparently Nolan admitted that Paprika was an inspiration for Inception.  

It looks like Carlton is definitely showing Ghost in the Shell in early Sept., and probably Grave of the Fireflies right around then as well.  I'll see if I can make it to both.  This would cover almost all the non-Ghibli films I want to see, though I do need to get around to watching Akira one of these days and possibly Tokyo Godfathers.*  Also, I really do need to sit down and watch Cowboy Bebop in the proper order.  I have this on DVD somewhere.  Maybe I'll try to dig this out in the late fall.

I went ahead and watched Kiki's Delivery Service at home, since it wasn't showing anywhere near me on its official Ghibi Fest date.  I hadn't realized that the cat's voice was dubbed by Phil Hartman.  I was sort of torn between being glad he was part of something rather special and sad to be reminded of his tragic end.  I also didn't realize that Kiki's Delivery Service was the first (domestic) smash that Ghibi had; apparently My Neighbor Totoro wasn't as big a deal at the time.

As I was poking around, debating whether to also watch Castle in the Sky at home, I found out that Imagine Elgin Mills (up in Richmond Hill) is going to be showing it, starting next Sunday.  I asked Carlton if they were going to be showing it, and they said no, which seems like a damn shame.  I started trying to work out if I could actually go.  Then I got derailed by finding out that Line 1 is going to be replaced by shuttle buses, making the trip, which is normally already 90 minutes, extend longer than 2+ hours in each direction, which is just too much.  This got me completely steamed up, until I realized that the shutdown was this past weekend, and, unless they stretch the repairs out another week, I should still be able to go.  So I guess I'll do that, though I am not too happy about it. 

Looking even further ahead, it looks like Howl's Moving Castle is going to be playing in Buffalo (and I could theoretically combine this with a visit to the Albright-Knox Museum) and probably also at Imagine Elgin Mills in late Sept.  I have asked (practically begged) Carlton to show it at the same time, but I won't know if I convinced them for a while yet...  I think that would really cover the movies I feel I need to see.  I can live without Ponyo or Porco Rosso and some of the others.  Now I do hope that TIFF manages to get a screening of Miyazaki's How Do You Live soon.  I suppose I would even drop my boycott of the TIFF festival proper if that was the only way to see it, though I suspect I wouldn't be able to score tickets anyway.**  I would imagine this has to make it over to North America eventually.  In fact, I just read that it will be released in North America at some point this year but under the title The Boy and the Heron, so something to perhaps round out the year.

* I know I missed a few opportunities to see this.  It looks like the Revue over on Roncesvalles shows it at some point in Dec. each year, as the kick-off to the holiday season, so I'll try to make an effort to catch it this Dec.  This would also be a good way of closing out this year of anime!

** Not only is The Boy and the Heron going to be at the TIFF festival, it is going to open the festival, which means tickets to this will be impossible to get.  I could look into seeing if it screens other times during the festival, or just give up and wait to see if TIFF Lightbox carries it a week or two after the festival wraps up (my general preference).  Nonetheless, I should definitely be able to see this in the fall.

Fringe Patron Picks

If you go here, you can find which shows were Patron Picks and have one final show added today.  I have no idea if there are tickets or these are already sold out.

I will note that I saw 3 of these at this Fringe (Mail Ordered, Blake and Clay and Ms. Titaverse) and then Aliya Kanani last year.  I'm tempted to see her tonight, but I do have other plans.  In any case, all 4 of these are interesting shows (with Mail Ordered having a particularly good blend of audience participation with plants mixed in with real audience members -- to say more would just spoil things).  Also Good Old Days has one more matinee today at 2:45, and I think there are still some tickets for that.  

I actually spoke to one of the cast members of Good Old Days, Brianna Wright, while we were both waiting to go into Ms. Titaverse.  Ms. Titaverse was great, with one of the first songs, They Call Me Suplada, kicking it off in style.  I am not in touch with those cast members, though I did say hello at the opening night party.  If I were, I would recommend that they all get these necklaces...

Anyway, it was a good Fringe for me.  I hope next year is as entertaining.  I'm nowhere near as inspired by Summerworks (which seems to have almost completely abandoned traditional theatre in favour of happenings and workshops/lectures), though I'll probably see I am Your Spaniel, which sounds like it was developed through Buddies in Bad Times -- and really ought to be presented there rather than out at the Theatre Centre.  Lady M sounds like something I should see (a reworking of MacBeth focusing on Lady MacBeth), but I simply know that I am going to be so thrown off by the focus on this being a deaf-led production that I won't be able to immerse myself into it.  It's clearly my own limitations and hang-ups.  It also doesn't help that it's also showing at the Theatre Centre, and I am really trying to limit my trips out there until the Queen streetcar reverts to a more normal schedule (probably 2 or 3 years from now!!!).