I can’t give you such a thing, but if you’re interested, head on over to The Wandering Gourmet—an interesting blog anyway, for those into travel and food—and leave a comment on this post saying what you might like to subscribe to. That’s all there is to it. (But hurry; only a few left.)
Zinio, you may recall, offers a wide assortment eMagazines that you can read that you can read on any tablet or PC (or smart phone, I guess, though I personally would not try reading a magazine on that small a screen). I am quite fond of their service.
Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof. Shakespeare’s classic comedy in a modern setting.
“I’m bored.” — Text from my husband, just before the movie started.
She says: On a warm summer’s evening, I had proposed an outing of walk in the park, gelato, and movie. He eagerly embraced the proposal—except for the movie. He feared being bored by that.
I was not so concerned. But as noted, the movie is set in modern times, and begins wordlessly. When the characters begin speaking in iambic pentameter, I must say I did find it a bit jarring, as though I was hearing Esperanto without subtitles. But I got into the flow of the language pretty quickly, and was fine thereafter. A lot of the comedy is physical, as well, which helps it along.
Overall, I found it very enjoyable. It’s very funny where it’s supposed to be, throughout. The dramatic moments are suitably so. The inserted backstory of Beatrice and Benedict adds interest. And it is fun seeing some of Joss Whedon’s favorite TV actors again: Topher! (from Dollhouse, as Claudio), Fred! (from Angel, as Beatrice), Captain Reynolds! (from Firefly, as Dogberry).
Don’t fear the Shakespeare.
He says: OK, it wasn’t totally boring. Nathan Fillion was really good—really funny.
It’s past 8:00 pm and it’s still over 30C, and humid. It’s been like this for days. It’s officially a heat wave.
I must admit I don’t suffer that terribly during these. Fact is, I leave my air-conditioned house for my air-conditioned car, then drive to my air-conditioned office.
But also, I’ve been wearing dresses all week.
People, there is no better hot-weather garment in the world than the dress. Naturally, I do not mean the uncomfortable, bedazzled type of dress one might wear, say, when getting married.
Not this kind of dress! (Also, hadn’t realized that “pink wedding dress” was a thing.)
I mean the plainer, looser type of garment that rests on your shoulders and just flows down from there, making a natural breeze as you walk.
OK, this one might not make a breeze when you walk. But you get the idea. It’s a very simple dress.
Obviously, the dress must be worn without any hose. Nylons would absolutely ruin the whole thing, in every way. No longer comfortable, no longer cool.
But just the dress, with some little sandals (and some undergarments, one assumes, but that’s really your business) is the next best thing you can wear in the heat. There’s a reason people in warm climes wear robes.
So pity the poor men-folk among us, who must make do with shorts–if their workplace even allows those, that is. Shorts are just not as good. They are a recipe for sweaty inner thighs. Who wants that?
The ability to wear dresses in summer is one of the very few advantages our society offers women over men.
And yet, I observe, not that many women take advantage.
Some, I suppose, may fear the air conditioning– that this outfit so perfect for the 33C degree, 40C humidex weather outside will only leave them shivering with cold while inside. A not unfounded fear (I actually sometimes bring in a sweater (!) just in case).
But an awful lot more, I think, either don’t realize how comfortable a dress can be (maybe they haven’t worn one since the prom?) or simply don’t feel comfortable in such a feminine garment. It’s undeniable that there’s nothing much more girly than a dress—even a simple dress—and girly just doesn’t sit well on every woman.
Fortunately, I am a lipstick feminist, totally in touch with my girly side. (And no fan of sweaty thighs.)
Seated in the third row of the Avon Theatre at Stratford, engrossed in our conversation, Jean and I were nearly jolted from our seats by the extremely loud opening chords of “The Overture”.
Judging by the nervous giggling all around us, we weren’t the only startled patrons. Welcome to The Who’s Tommy, live on stage at Stratford, Ontario.
Spot The Who amongst the literature at a Stratford bookstore
I enjoyed it very much, of course. Having seen it back in the 1990s in Toronto, I suspected I would. This version has more complex staging, more special effects. I couldn’t tell you what the differences are; I don’t remember well enough. But I can tell you this is one of the most elaborately staged musicals I’ve ever seen. There were always things to look at, all around the stage. (And from the third row, that sometimes made for a sore neck.)
So the one critique this production has received is that the effects and all are too much; that they overwhelm the excellent cast. Jean and I would disagree with that. Tommy is big rock musical with big themes. It and its cast are only enhanced by staging that matches those ambitions. And I, for one, did not find that it diminished the play’s emotional impact. I remain touched by Tommy’s situation.
As I know both the album and the movie inside and out, I found it interesting to see how the story was adapted for the stage. I had recalled, from the Toronto production, that the story is somewhat softened from the movie version, both necessary (to not restrict the play to those 18 and over) and a relief, given that the Uncle Ernie, Cousin Kevin, and Acid Queen happen to the 10-year-old Tommy in the play, unlike the Daltrey-aged Tommy in the movie. (And no, little Tommy is not left alone with a hooker; his father merely toys with the idea before coming to his senses.)
But I had forgotten tons of things, like the interplay of Tommy at ages 4, 10, and 20something, which both dramatizes the character’s extreme self-imposed isolation, and allows us to enjoy the performance of lead actor Robert Marcus in the first half, before Tommy grows up; the very different handling of the Sally Simpson story (at least compared with the movie); and the much bigger role of Cousin Kevin—which is great, as he’s played by the wonderful Paul Nolan (Jesus in last year’s Jesus Christ Superstar).
Most especially, I’d forgotten that lyrical changes that turned “We’re Not Gonna Take It” into Tommy’s refusal to lead his followers into his world of isolation, whereas both album and movie had Tommy trying to do just that, and them rebelling. (Of course, the followers reject him here as well—only for a completely opposite reason.)
There are many other lyrical changes (for example, “21” refers to the mother’s age rather than the year), but only one new song appears in this production: “I Believe My Own Eyes”, which provides the segue into “Smash the Mirror” (without any need of the movie’s baked beans and melted chocolate). It’s very much a Broadway song, more so than a Who tune, but having bought the soundtrack, I do find myself humming it at times, which is interesting.
As I’ve already suggested, I thought the cast was very good, and on a shallow note, I found young Mr. Marcus very attractive, looking rather better on that stage than he did in his publicity photos. Jean was similarly struck by the lovely Kira Guloien as Mrs. Walker.
Gotta say that one thing really lost in the stage version is the power and potency of the “Listening to You” final chorus that you get from hearing The Who play that live. But a play is a different animal than a rock concert. And this one is also worth experiencing, in my opinion.
Select quotes
“At least now I know why Tommy was deaf, dumb, and blind. I never understood that before.” — Jean
“I was hoping that I would know at least one song. Just one. But I didn’t recognize any of them.” — My Mom
“Oh my God. The music is by Pete Townshend? Of The Who? Oh my God. This is terrible!” — Lady sitting behind me
Après theatre dining
If you do go to Stratford, for Tommy or other, I might suggest dinner or lunch at La Taverna, which is a new section of Pazzo restaurant, as we very much enjoyed our meal there. It’s pretty small, but a pleasant room, with a comfortable feel. Sound level would have been fine, except we had a big Italian family dining next to us! 🙂 And the service was very good.
Appetizer
We started by sharing oysters, and a bocconcini bruschetta with figs and prosciutto (not pictured, but very nice).
Main course
Jean had a very nice gnocchi dish as his main, while I went with the fish special of the day.
Dessert
And we concluded with an arborio rice pudding for Jean and a “baked vesuvius” for me, that being a limoncello-soaked cake with lemon gelato and cardomom meringue. Delish.
Ethan Hawk, Julie Delpy. Third in the series of movies featuring one day in the life of this couple. They are now in their early 40s and struggling with the stresses of children and ex’s.
He says: Whatever you do, don’t say I liked that movie.
She says: So, he did not like that movie. But it wasn’t because he found it boring, or badly written, or unrealistic. It wasn’t a quality problem.
It was that Céline drove him nuts.
He says: God! She was so irritating!
She says: It’s true; Céline was really irritating. See, in this installment, the couple spends an awful lot of time arguing. And I must admit that I also found myself more often taking Jesse’s side. Céline often did seem over-dramatic, stubborn, unfair… even mean.
But these are movies of talking. And she would have her moments of being to explain why she was responding as she was. The strain of having to deal with their infant twins while he was on book tour. The feeling that she had to take on more of the burden of care. And she’d kind of win me back. (And maybe someone with kids would be more on her side in the first place… I dunno.)
Overall, there’s no way for this one to be quite as enjoyable as the first two, which involved falling in love, then reconnecting. Staying together is just a more difficult theme. But it is explored effectively in this movie, if you’re brave enough to go there. And Greece does look really lovely in it…
We’d contemplated doing an overnighter this long weekend, but ultimately decided that a day trip would do. We decided to visit the little town of Fergus. Turns out to be a pretty quaint little place, with a lot of historic buildings. Many of the homes sport signs indicating the previous inhabitants’ name and occupation: landlord, farmer, shoemaker. The Grand River runs through it, and that lends it some interest as well:
Grand River in Fergus
It also had some nice trails.
Walk in the woods in Fergus
I also enjoyed its I Love Chocolate! store. And, we’d been hearing about how it had this fabulous Indian restaurant, so we tried that for lunch. It’s called Tandoori Grill. We decided to make it easy on ourselves and have the set Dinner for Two. This started with three small pieces of chicken tikka, and three small vegetable pakora. Both were tasty and came with three really nice dipping sauces.
That was followed by a chicken curry, a beef curry, (can’t recall exactly which ones of either of those) and veggie curry with cauliflower, chick peas, and potatoes. Served with rice and naan. This was clearly a place where they ground their own spices, which makes such a huge difference to the taste. The beef—something we normally wouldn’t have ordered—had fantastic texture and slightly sweet taste. The chicken was more “lively”, though the spice wasn’t excessive—it had more of cumulative effect.
Meal at Tandoori Grill in Fergus
So if you like Indian, and you find yourself in Fergus, I’d recommend this place.
We stopped in on Elora on the way home, acquiring yet more Rieker shoes! I also picked up some amazing champagne citrus vinegar at the Olive Grove.
Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum. Two rookie police officers get assigned to go undercover as high school students to find the source of new dangerous drug.
She says: This is one of the stupid comedies that works, partly because it’s not totally stupid. It is far-fetched, but it’s hard not to enjoy the self-reflexive in-jokes and some inspired guest casting. And the premise that what is cool at high school today—environmental consciousness, sensitivity to gay rights, earnestness—is very different from what was cool ten years ago feels kind of true (though how the heck would I know, at my age) and definitely makes for some funny moments. Was is it with American movies and the idolizing of male friendships, though? Wow…
He says: You liked that? It was kind of stupid, wasn’t it?
Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana. The second movie in the Star Trekreboo. The Federation itself is attacked, and the Enterprise is sent on a mission of vengeance that doesn’t sit well with all the crew.
She says: Not quite as good as the first in this series, I don’t think, but I still enjoyed this outing. The characters, plotting, and ethical issues are richer than in many action movies, making it more enjoyable to me—even though at least one plot twist was just too easy to guess, kinda ruining one dramatic moment for me (though I won’t spoil it, regardless). I still find it funny that much of the action in this a sci fi series just involves fisticuffs—shouldn’t there be light sabers or something? :-)—but I guess that’s an homage to the original Star Trek.
As for the change from the original in how the villain was handled; well, I don’t remember at all what the original story was (although I know I saw that movie, but it’s been years), so gotta say that it didn’t bother me in the least.
He says: That was good; I enjoyed it. It wasn’t terribly intellectual or anything, but it kept me entertained.
Stars of Sting’s stature don’t normally play Kitchener, as it’s only about an hour and a half from the much bigger, more lucrative market of Toronto. But this Back to Bass tour of his, Wikipedia informs me, has been going on for ages—since 2011! As he’s already hit all the obvious cities (like Toronto), I guess he’s working through another tier. Along with Kitchener, this leg of the tour around includes oddities like Kingston, Ontario; Bangor, Maine; Summerside, PEI; and Arras, France.
I am a Sting fan, but not a major, major one, and I’ve seen him in concert twice already—though that was decades ago. But given the combination of the show being right in town, at a reasonably small venue and price, and having friends who wanted to go, it was basically a no-brainer to attend.
As Sting does not have a new album to plug at the moment, the show was chock-a-block full of hits. Admittedly, a few of the songs I didn’t know—I have lost the thread of his solo career periodically—but mostly, the songs were ones I could sing along to. Possibly my fave, “Englishman in New York”, was third in the line-up, and prompted a rapturous response that the artist seemed to appreciate, saying that made his first visit to Kitchener seem worthwhile.
No, this won’t be a philosophical statement of my essence; it’s just my reaction to Pete Townshend’s 500-page autobiography, Who I Am (now out in paperback).
I read a lot of reviews of this, both before and while reading it. And clearly a number were disappointed to find out what a flawed human being this very talented artist is.
Personally, I had never looked up to him as a personal hero in that sense, so I wouldn’t say I was disappointed in him. But I was very struck by his extremes, by how he would so frequently repeat destructive patterns of addiction, overwork, isolation, speaking out unwisely. In one chapter he would be mourning the loneliness of being the only band member trying to stay monogamous; a few later, he would be brazenly chasing younger women, even in front of his daughters. Here he’s giving up drinking, then he’s drinking daily, possibly with a side of cocaine. Then sober again, then taking a test drink.
You’re getting the idea. My most frequent synopsis, after finishing another section, was “Wow. Pete is really messed up.” I ended up straggling the reading of this over a number of months, as his life wasn’ always the happiest one to travel through.
So if you needed more proof that genius, creativity, success, and money doesn’t always bring inner peace and satisfaction, here it is.
While some biographies have wide appeal, I do think this one requires a pre-standing interest in the man, in his band, or at least in the music of that time. Though it should be noted that often doesn’t spend a lot of time on some of the best-known events of the band’s history, only mentioning these perfunctorily, as though obliged, sometimes with reference to websites for more information. This would be true, for example, of their literally explosive appearance on the Smothers Brothers; details of the creative process behind Tommy; the incident where Roger knocked him out cold at Quadrophenia rehearsals; the death of 11 fans in Cincinnati… Even Keith Moon and John Entwistle’s deaths don’t take as many pages as you might think. In some cases, I can see why he might feel he’s already said enough about that elsewhere. In others, I think he may just have been unwilling to delve too deeply into it.
Naturally, I had a particular eye out for what he’d have to say about Roger Daltrey. And mostly, it was positive, complimentary stuff. Some of the many personal conflicts they’ve had through the years are mentioned, but definitely downplayed. Despite the self-censorship, I did learn some things:
While I knew that originally Pete was supposed to sing much more of Tommy than he did, I didn’t realize the breakthrough came because Roger deliberately worked very hard to develop that beautiful, high, falsetto tone that we hear in “See me, feel me”. [Both Pete and I are relieved that he did.]
The usual story of the Who By Numbers album is that Pete wrote a bunch of really personal songs that Roger had to be persuaded to sing, indeed refusing to in some cases. Here Pete writes that he actually had many songs available for that album, and it was Roger who personally picked out those more personal and bleak ones. [Hmm.]
During the time of the filming of the movie Tommy, Pete felt the physical contrast between them was at its height: Roger had never looked more fit and beautiful, while he himself was especially bedraggled and unhealthy.
Becoming a bigger star in his own right, Roger started showing up at band events in his personal helicopter, which Pete found weird and which made Keith Moon very jealous. [That’s just funny.]
Pete thinks that Roger’s vocal performances on the little-known (but lovely) “One Life’s Enough”, from It’s Hard, is one of his best. [I agree. Listen for yourself.]
Pete says wrote “After the Fire” (1985) about South Africa, and that it’s Roger’s interpretation that turned into a dirge for their lost youth of being rock stars [the latter, I admit, is how I’ve always interpreted that song!]
Pete hesitated to appear at Roger’s Daltrey Sings Townshend concert (1994), not, he says, because he was angry about the whole idea (as had been reported), but because he was afraid that performing again would threaten his newfound sobriety. [I love Pete’s appearance, and indeed that whole concert. Glad he did it.]
There was a lot of pressure on him to make his Iron Man solo album a Who album, but he was sure Roger would hate singing these songs. So sure, I guess, that he has completely forgotten that Roger did sing “Dig” on that album. It’s never mentioned. (Only, in passing, that he did have Roger sing and John Entwistle play on a cover version of “Fire” on that record.)
Video proof of something Pete has apparently forgotten ever happened…
As for the whole child pornography investigation, it’s a bit amazing that it’s received so much attention in book reviews and interviews, as it, appropriately, makes up so little of the book itself. Pete did nothing wrong. Can we move on now?
But it was nice to hear that he received many letters of support related to that and that he even made an effort to respond to many. And that he does seem happier as an older man than he was a younger. As an appendix, he includes a fan letter from 1967. He comments how he realizes now, as he couldn’t then, that this fan, his fans, love him in a genuine. And thinks how different his life would have been if he could only have learned to see and accept love earlier.
Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum. Two rookie police officers get assigned to go undercover as high school students to find the source of new dangerous drug.
*** 
I read a lot of reviews of this, both before and while reading it. And clearly a number were disappointed to find out what a flawed human being this very talented artist is.
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