“I’d almost forgotten what that was like”, Jean commented, as we exited the Registry Theatre after a Larry Larson’s Jazz Guys concert. And by that, he met a live musical performance of any kind.
We’d intended to attend many a live musical performance over these past and coming months, but then the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony suddenly and apparently irrevocably went bankrupt—a mere week before what would have been their first concert of the season. Our season’s tickets for various performances, from Bolero to Magic! to Back to the Future to Shostakovitch, suddenly longer worth nothing more than a tax receipt.
There are efforts underway to try to revive the local arts scene, but who knows. Government funding is tight all around. The Globe and Mail has been covering the problems that theatre companies have been experiencing right across the country (🎁 article link). Mirvish is doing fine, but others are not. I suppose the lack of audience return is due to combination of people having become increasingly accustomed to home entertainment; inflation lowering budgetary for spending on discretionary events; and some remaining concern about the health risks of crowded spaces.
But for us, at least this year, it was just mainly that the Symphony disappeared. And we’ve had trouble finding appealing alternatives. It’s been some time since we’ve been out anywhere.
February has seemed virtually packed with arts activities, comparatively speaking.
Instead of an overview, I decided to focus on two books that captured some of the social unease of 2023. (Albeit with additional recommendation of short story collection How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa.)
The Survivalists, by Kashana Cauley, is a novel centred on Aretha, a young Black lawyer. Near the start, she goes on a date with the handsome Aaron. She doesn’t go into the date with high hopes, but she and Aaron really hit it off. However, this is not a romance novel.
Aaron is a coffee entrepreneur—he sources, roasts, and brews high-quality beans. He works out of his home, a mansion that he shares with two other people. Their focus is not so much on coffee. Brittany and James are more into protein bars, bunkers, martial arts, go bags… and guns. They are survivalists.
Aretha finds this out only gradually, learning some of the alarming details only after she moves in with Aaron. Aaron is frequently away, hunting down beans, leaving Aretha trying to make the best of it with her odd roommates. Meanwhile, her career prospects, which she has banked her entire future, seem in increasing jeopardy as a new hire consistently outshines her. The prospect of working on survival gradually takes on more of an appeal, much to her best friend’s dismay.
It’s definitely uncomfortable taking this journey with Aretha, whose choices at many points are… not the ones I would have made, let’s put it that way. And that made be the reason for the rather polarizing reviews of this book. But I was really drawn into this story, and I felt it was saying something about today’s society, and its risks, and how much we can protect ourselves from them.
Doppelganger, by Naomi Klein, is a more personal work of non-fiction than this author has produced in the past. Over the years, Naomi Klein has been confused with Naomi Wolf, author of (most famously) The Beauty Myth. This became something of a problem during the pandemic era, as the previously liberal and feminist Naomi Wolf came to embrace anti-vaccine, pro-gun, conspiratorial, right-wing beliefs.
Klein is alarmed that her name is mistakenly being associated with extremely troubling opinions that she by no means shares. She discusses how this damages her online “brand”, not being at all sure what to do about it, and the fact this is even a concern is something of an irony for the author who first came to fame with No Logo.
Klein then becomes very curious about the question many were asking: what the heck did happen to Naomi Wolf? Klein researches Wolf’s past, revisiting some of her past work, noting some of its limitations, and pointing out areas where her data is weaker. And also traces the history of her declining influence in leftist circles, which culminates when Wolf’s confusion about the phrase “death recorded” as indicating execution when it meant the opposite, led to the cancellation of her book Outrages.
In contrast to the mocking engendered by that, Wolf was truly embraced by the right, receiving the kind of acclaim and popularity she hadn’t had in years. Stuck at home during the pandemic like the rest of us, Klein became somewhat obsessed with following Wolf’s trajectory—even to the point of becoming a devoted listener of Steve Bannon’s podcast (shudder), where Wolf is a frequent guest.
The book looks into the wider questions of how the right has been so successful in garnering attention and enthusiastic followers. “They get the facts wrong but the feelings right.” Klein notes the missed opportunities on the left to fight the government for policies such as school ventilation upgrades, debt cancellation, and permanent paid sick days for all. (But also the difficulty in doing so when everyone is, by necessity, separated.)
It also examines the predecessor anti-vaccine debates and their effects on the autism community, along with a fascinating but appalling history of approaches to treatment of autistic children. (Klein’s son is autistic.) It covers the lost opportunities on climate change. And using the point that both she and Wolf are Jewish and have made stances related to that, it also includes what turned out to be a very timely chapter on Israel and Palestine.
It’s all a bit of an unsettling journey, through the personal and the political and back again. Klein concludes that we need to continue fighting for what we believe in, as a group effort. But with no illusions that it’s going to be easy.
Of 2023. Meaning, this year I spent most of my time listening to music I already own, rather than discovering new sounds on streaming services or radio. So not that much of it was music released in 2023.
Not sure how much this was cause vs. effect, but I also had trouble settling with any particular music streaming service this year.
Spotify: A service I’ve tried off and on over the years (whenever they offer me a discount, as I don’t like the ad version), but it was mostly off in 2023.
YouTube Music: I did subscribe to this earlier in the year. As a previous Google Play Music user, I’d built up a pretty good music data set in there. But YouTube Music has never been as good as Google Play Music was. On the July long weekend, I tried to find some sort of Canada Day playlist there, and pretty much came up empty. (Maybe because Google was at this point fighting with the federal government over streaming service regulations?) This led me to try out…
Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, and ?
Amazon Music Unlimited which offered me a three-month free trial. I found that they had quite a few fun Canada Day playlists! Of course, in general they had only a fuzzy idea of my music tastes, but it still a decent enough service for when I wanted to listen to something other than “my” music. Still, when this offer ran out, we decided to switch to…
Amazon Prime Music: Because it was included with Prime, which we already had. But I had not realized that with Prime, in most cases, you can only listen to albums or playlists in shuffle mode. And it won’t even show you in what order it’s shuffled songs into. While this was perfectly fine for Jean, it was overly limited for me. Sometimes I want to shuffle; sometimes I do not. Either way, I like to see what’s up next. Hence, I decided to take up another three-month offer to try…
Apple Music: It’s pretty nice. No ads, no limitations, clean interface, good queue, embedded lyrics. Will I pay for it when the free period is done? Tbd.
No Spotify Wrapped for me
I did not use that service enough. I did find it pretty amusing that most every other digital service of any kind that I used tried to offer something similar. My Kobo erReader: What a bookish year it’s been! My Washington Post Newsprint: What’s your reader type? My Starbucks year in review? I’m not even kidding! Look back at your Starbucks routine!
I mean…
YouTube Music had enough data to cobble something together for me. Apparently the song I listened to those most on that service last year was…
I really didn’t write about movies much this year, but I did see some, so let’s catch up…
In theatres
We most recently (on Boxing Day) saw The Holdovers—appropriate timing, as the movie does take place at Christmas. It’s a story about a boy’s boarding school where a few students, “the holdovers”, are not able to go home at Christmas. One teacher, played by Paul Giamatti, is tasked with watching over them.
The movie is directed by Alexander Payne, who also directed Sideways, which also starred Paul Giamatti. It’s similar to that movie only in that it’s also a character-driven story focused on male relationships. I did enjoy it, even though it didn’t particularly pass the Bechdel Test. Jean liked it well enough also, though he prefers plot-driven movies.
Although… Has it been a year since I cancelled Netflix? Not really sure.
Been a while, though. Long enough that I’m completely behind on recent seasons of Stranger Things, The Crown, Ginny and Georgia, Sex Education, Derry Girls… And I have yet to see the Glass Onion movie, or the Shania Twain documentary.
The plan at the time was to cancel it for a few months and try out another service, then cancel that one and try another, then maybe back to Netflix, and so on. Only it didn’t quite work at that way. Shortly after cancelling Netflix, I got a several months free offer for Apple TV, which I then kept afterwards (as it was quite cheap at the time). Soon after that, I got a similar free offer for Disney+. That was so many new TV options at once (along with Prime and Crave and even cable), that I did not end up circling back to Netflix.
Hence a completely Netflix-free list of TV shows I particularly enjoyed in 2023.
With honourable mentions Jack Ryan (Prime), Our Flag Means Death (Crave), Platonic (Apple), Extraordinary (Disney), Good Omens (Prime), and Upload (Prime).
Earlier this week, I realized I’d written Garbage on the date of December 25 on our paper calendar (yes, we still have a paper calendar).
Now, that wasn’t a reflection of my feelings about Christmas—at least not consciously! It’s just that Monday is our usual garbage pick-up day, and since they only accept trash bi-weekly (recycling and compost weekly), I put on the calendar which Mondays are the actual garbage pick-up days.
Only December 25 won’t be one of them. I’ll have to look up when they’ve moved that to. [Edit: That would be Tuesday, December 26.]
But December 25 is just a date, and you can choose to celebrate on other ones. Pre-2020, we almost always went to Timmins for actual Christmas, but also had our own Christmas celebration for two the weekend before that, complete with gifts and roast beast.
Post-2020, Jean can’t take extra vacation days right before or between Christmas and New Year’s, which makes it a bit tight to go north then. Last year I went to Timmins in earlier December with my sister; this year I did the same with Jean.
It was just a small listing in the What’s Happening Waterloo newsletter:
Agit-Pop! Musical Meditations on the Pre-Post-Apocalypse
Intriguing.
Reading further:
Superstar drag comedienne Pearle Harbour performs her doomsday cabaret. Laughs & tears through the headlines, and hits from David Bowie, to Britney Spears. A hilarious and heartbreaking cabaret for the end times. Agit-Pop! reimagines the hits of Bowie, Britney, Judy Garland, Tom Waits and more as you’ve never heard them before.
Sounded right up my alley, really. Drag. Doom. Pop.
Jean, ever the trooper, agreed to come along.
As we approached the door, I noticed that all the theatre staff were masked, which was refreshing. Then the man a bit ahead of us in line turned around to go back out, stating “I’ll just go get the mask in my car!” Huh. Then I noticed the “Please wear a mask for this performance” sign. Double huh! Hadn’t seen one of those in many a moon!
Policy was not strictly enforced, so some people remained unmasked. But, I’d say a good 90% to 95% went along with it. Peer pressure, eh. Can also be a force for good!
But. On with the show.
Though it’s not the easiest to describe, as I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Admittedly, I don’t go to a ton of drag shows regardless, but have seen a few, and I don’t think this was a typical one of those.
Pearle Harbour, accompanied by a single musician who can play multiple instruments, discusses the various challenges and problems facing our world. The need for Indigenous reconciliation. The climate crisis. The ongoing Covid epidemic. Anti-immigration sentiments.
And interspersed it with pop music, not as a distraction, but as a commentary.
5 years. That’s all we’ve got.
My loneliness is killing me.
There’s a land I dream of… Somewhere, over the rainbow
I think I just wasn’t made for these times…
But it was still drag. So it was not all po-faced. There was bawdiness, there were jokes, there was a whole lot of audience engagement and participation. A tragicomedienne, she is called, and that sounds about right.
Given all the interaction, Jean enjoyed the evening as much as I did. We did the wave—the Covid wave! We discussed the etymology of agit prop. We shared guilty pleasures. We stood en masse to do the duck and cover. To a background of Cold War era cartoons (some of which are quite something).
Bit late to tell you this now, but she also play Waterford and Fergus. Then she’s moving on to other provinces (and bigger cities—Montreal, Calgary).
I decided to go see Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill: The musical because I am a big fan of Jagged Little Pill, the album, and indeed of much of her other oeuvre. But I didn’t know anything about the musical itself, or what kind of story they’d woven around the songs.
Jean agreed to go also because, well, because he’s a sport I guess, given that he hadn’t super enjoyed the last two musicals we’ve seen, the acclaimed Hamilton and the also acclaimed Rent. Couldn’t quite follow the former (lots of plot, admittedly), and couldn’t quite get the latter.
And what I wouldn’t give to find a soul mate? Someone else to catch this drift And what I wouldn’t give to meet a kindred?
All I Really Want, Alanis Morissette
Fortunately, Alanis, Diablo Cody (who wrote the book), and Glen Ballard (who co-wrote many of the songs), were kindred with Jean. He really enjoyed this musical. As did I. Because it was awesome!
The songs are used to tell the story of a year in the life of a family of four: the tightly wound Mary Jane, her workaholic husband Steve, their academically inclined son Nick, and their activist adopted daughter Frankie. Big, heavy topics are addressed: Sexual assault. Opioid addiction. Racism. Sexism. Some moments are super uncomfortable. But there’s a lot of humour in between. And all those great songs!
The playbill includes everything from Jagged Little Pill along with some selections from other albums, like “So Unsexy”, “Uninvited”, and “Thank U”. Lyrics are occasionally modified to suit the character and the situation. They really supported the story; none seemed to be just trotted out because they were big hits that needed including! “You Oughta Know” is not necessarily sung by whom you’d expect, to whom you’d expect, but it builds to an undeniable thrilling climax nonetheless. The audience responded ecstatically, as they should have.
But I had to laugh that after the line:
Why are you so petrified of silence? Here, can you handle this?
The audience totally could not handle the following silence, and had to fill it in with random clapping.
Anyway. This thing was really well cast, with the actors playing Mary Jane, Frankie, and Jo (a friend of Frankie’s) particularly standing out. Amazing singing voices, and just outstanding performances.
5 stars. No notes.
Getting there and back
This was in Toronto, so we had to make our way there. For Jean, this trip turned out to be the day after he got back from a later-scheduled work trip, so that wasn’t ideal, but he coped! We took Flixbus again. They’re finally using proper branded Flixbuses on the Kitchener-Toronto route (previously it was a generic bus), which even had wifi, albeit somewhat flaky.
For some reason we couldn’t seem to leave from our usual Waterloo stop, and had to get on at the Kitchener stop. Not a big deal—just meant staying on the Ion (our local light rail) for four stops instead of one. Still seemed odd, though, because on the way back, we did get off at the Waterloo stop.
Waterloo Park, which is near our usual Flixbus stop
The bus was weirdly overheated for the first portion of the trip back. I was starting to wonder if I could actually handle the entire 1 hour, 45 minute trip (not that it was clear what the alternative was) when the heat finally stopped pouring out.
We managed the Toronto subway pretty well also (we have Presto cards now!), though Google kept confusing us with mentions of line outages. Took us a while to realize that said outages were occurring much further up the line than we intended to go.
Other stuff we did
It was a quick trip: we left Saturday morning and returned Sunday morning. Of course, that was long enough that we needed a hotel room. We went with the Courtyard Marriott, which was a “mere” $300 or so for the night. Was nice that the room was available despite our arriving pretty early, around 11:00 AM, and even nicer that they gave us a little bag of snacks and bottles of water. Totally worth the $300! (I joke. But it actually was nice.)
We grabbed lunch from a Freshii, which, oddly, we’ve never eaten at before. It was good. We each had a smoothie and a wrap. Quite fascinating how much stuff they can fit into those wraps.
Since we have memberships, we spent a bit of time at the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario). Their special exhibit was featured the artist Kaws, who does stuff like this:
Which was kind of interesting. For one part, you had to download an app on your phone, then point it (the phone) at a particular spot in the gallery to see the art, as a 3D image. We took a picture after doing that, but are not clear on where that pic ended up…
And overall, we probably enjoyed the Cornelius Krieghoff room (part of the permanent collection) the most during this visit.
Our post-musical dinner was at Avelo, where we’ve been twice before. Since our last visit, though, they’ve changed things up. The beautiful room upstairs, where we sat both times previously, has been converted into a bar. Meals are now served downstairs, in a smaller, darker, noisier room. Since we had both envisioned the previous visits, we were a bit miffed.
To be fair, I think they had emailed me about these changes—it just hadn’t really registered. (I thought their new Bar Avelo was at some other location than our Avelo.) With generous table spacing and visible HEPA filters, the previous seating area felt as safe as a maskless, indoor dining experience could possibly be. And while the new downstairs room did still have a couple HEPA filters, and not all the tables in the small room were filled, it still didn’t feel as comfortable.
On the plus side, the food was still amazing from start to finish, the service was very good (though we still missed our upstairs guy), and the wine pairings were spot-on. It has lost what made special, though—other Toronto places also have good food, service, and wine.
(Not that Avelo needs me. From where I was sitting, I could overhear that the new bar was super-popular: so full that they had to turn people away.)
Swallow it down (what a jagged little pill) It feels so good (swimming in your stomach) Wait until the dust settles
And it’s being felt in hospitals already. For example, in Waterloo Region:
Hospitalizations for COVID-19 have climbed to almost the most seen this year. The regional public health unit reported 52 patients in three local hospitals Wednesday. The last time local hospitals had this many patients was New Year’s Day, with 53.
But, the new vaccine is becoming increasingly available. It should be attainable for high-risk people pretty much everywhere in Ontario, and in many cases, “regular-risk” people can access it, too (try pharmacies). It’s approved for ages 6 months and up.
(Of course, wearing an N95 or KN95 in crowded indoor spaces also helps reduce viral spread, not only against COVID but also flu, cold, RSV, and every other airborne disease.)
This was the second of a two-part series on cognitive dissonance: how you try to convince yourself that a decision you made was the right one, even in light of evidence to the contrary. Pretty much all humans do this, so even if you’re well aware of that tendency, you might still do it. But the awareness can at least help you harness it for good.
Some really interesting examples here of how to harness cognitive dissonance for good, including in the realm of public health. Hmm…
The federal government is killing local news by trying to help local news
Thanks to Michael Geist, I’ve been aware of Bill C-18, the law that (essentially) says that Facebook and Google must pay news organizations for linking to their content, for years. And that it has resulted in Facebook (Meta now, I guess) doing exactly what they clearly said they would do if this bill passed, which is to stop linking to news. With Google now likely to do similarly.
What I learned from this Paul Wells podcast is how this has specifically hurt an organization that I had never heard of before. Village Media has been very successful at going into markets that have lost their traditional local news outlets. Village Media has filled that void, supplying communities with local news, all online. They have staff journalists, with benefits—not just a bunch of freelancers! They are profitable, and growing, and had been planning to expand into several new markets this year.
