September 10, 2009
Television saved my life
Though I’ve always been partial to television, its tendency to consume my evenings whole meant that I’ve kept my distance from it these last few years. I also don’t have cable, which definitely helps with this. (Further, I hate commericals, which is why I love Midsomer Murders on TV Ontario, also because MM is the best show ever.)
But this summer, it’s true that television saved my life. First, when a friend lent us her Series 1 and 2 DVDs of 30 Rock in late June, and though we’d have to turn it up loud to be heard over the baby’s screaming, each episode provided us with a little bit of lightness every evening. And though I went into the show with Liz Lemon’s character appealing to me most, I was surprised to find that Tracy Jordan became my favourite. In every episode, he’d utter a line that would completely surprise me, and turn my idea of who he was inside out. His complete lack of conformity (to anything) made him always fresh and interesting, bizarre and hysterical. ThoughI do continue to worship at the alter of Tina Fey. (Naturally. I’m a girl with glasses).
The other show I’ve watched, and the one I appreciated the most, however, is CBC’s Being Erica. Which does appeal by its Toronto location (and Jessica Westhead reference– see Pulpy & Midge behind Erica’s desk. This is one bookish show). I’d almost given up on liking Canadian television, as every show I tried to watch was usually terrible, but I had heard good things about this one, and the series was being rerun for the summer. (I also liked that I could watch it online whenever I wanted.) It’s a show with a gimmick (girl goes back in time to learn lessons from her past), but the gimmick was never the point for me.
For me, the part of the hook was half-decent acting from most of the cast. (Most of the cast– some do act like actors on Canadian TV series, but this is a Canadian TV series after all.) A really wonderful soundtrack that catered to my nostalgic side whenever Erica went back to high school. And pretty fantastic writing that veered towards the unexpected. (I also liked it when Erica enquired whether her going back in time to change the past would disrupt the space-time continuum, as you do, and he informed her that her overall impact on the universe was not quite that extensive.)
I put Erica to the test in a recent episode, where Erica is at the movies with her pregnant friend. Friend has to go to the bathroom, but can’t get out from her seat, and just before the show breaks for commercial, water splooshes all over the floor. “If she’s wet her pants instead of having her water break, therefore defying all television convention,” I said, “then this is the best show ever”. (It was a water splooshing all over the floor moment that had me sure I was never again going to watch Sophie, a previous Canadian show I’d tried to like). And back from commerical, Erica won!
Now, full disclosure, Judith’s water did go sploosh later in the ‘sode, but I’m still giving credit. This show isn’t perfect, but it’s a million times better than most of the other stuff on TV. It’s immensely entertaining, and I look forward to Season Two in a couple of weeks.
August 10, 2009
T is for Toronto books
Oh, no one tagged me, but I want to play too. To join Rebecca and Kate in compiling their top Toronto books. I’m not sure I can come up with fifteen, but this is the best I can do off the top of my head. (Update: Fourteen. I’ll do my best to think of another. Update Update as inspired by Rebecca: YES! BOOKY! Update 3 see below).
1) A Big City ABC by Alan Moak: I have the original edition of this book, with Exhibition Stadium instead of the SkyDome under “B is for baseball”. And I is for island ferry indeed. The illustrations are beautiful, and I remember spending considerable time examining them closely when I was small. (This book was re-released in 2002, and will be coming out in paperback in October).
2) The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood: I love the depictions of Ward’s Island (I is for island ferry, see above) especially, but the entire book captures the city’s neighbourhoods brilliantly. I was also quite fond of the university setting when I was getting ready to become a student in Toronto myself.
3) Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood: Shows the fringes of the city back when the fringes were newly constructed bungalows in a sea of mud up around St. Clair Avenue. And the ravines! And then revisits to find the city changed by the 1980s, with grey skyscrapers that were like tombstones.
4) Headhunter by Timothy Findley: For a course I took called “Reading Toronto” in university, I read works including some Morley Callaghan, Fugitive Pieces, Alias Grace, The Swing in the Garden by Hugh Hood, and this book. I’m not cheating by stocking this list with my course syllabus, but Headhunter has to be included as it’s stayed with me ever since I read it, particularly the scenes in the Toronto Reference Library.
5) Stunt by Claudia Dey: I is once again for island ferry, and P is for Parkdale. Eugenia Ledoux’s narrative is Toronto as an underwater dream.
6) Muriella Pent by Russell Smith: The reason I ever took a walk to Wychwood Park, Smith’s most recent novel is Russell Smith the novelist coming into his own. Also notable for Brian Sillwell’s basement apartment.
7) Helpless by Barbara Gowdy: Once again, the neighbourhoods. Here is Cabbagetown, the dodgy end, portrayed as a place where people live and where community happens.
8) Girls Fall Down by Maggie Helwig: Toronto underground, in the deepest ravines and down in the subway’s depths. Helwig creates an unfamiliar city out of Toronto in the grip of panic.
9) When I Was Young and In My Prime by Alayna Munce: P is still for Parkdale, and for poetry too, Munce’s poem/fiction hybrid an extraordinarily rendered feat. Toronto stands for onward and away as the narrator grapples with her grandparents’ decline.
10) The Killing Circle by Andrew Pyper: Terrifying! And you could plot it on a map, which is Terrifying! doubly.
11) How Happy to Be by Katrina Onstad: Here is great urban fiction, undeniably set in its place. Which is Toronto ’round the turn of this century as lived in by a media/culture/cool savvy journalist who’s less savvy about where her life is headed.
12) Minus Time by Catherine Bush: I found this to be an imperfect novel with so many perfect components, one of which is its depiction of Toronto. Particularly a Toronto not-too-long-ago already lost, the Robert Street tennis courts/ice rink which had been the home of the narrator’s now-demolished childhood home. And not just because it’s around the corner from my house.
13) In The Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje: I know it’s cliched, we’re supposed to hate this book, and though I’ve loved it less with each reread, it still makes the Bloor Street Viaduct magical to me, as well as the majestic RC Harris Water Treatment Plant (which I despair they no longer offer tours of).
14) Unless by Carol Shields: Much of it takes place in a fictional small town north of the city, but the heart of it is set on the corner of Bloor and Bathurst, just across from Honest Ed’s.
15) The Booky Trilogy by Bernice Thurman Hunter
15.5) Jonathan Cleaned Up and Then He Heard a Sound (or blackberry subway jam) by Robert Munsch
July 21, 2009
Links
New (to me) blogs on the horizon! Such as The Literary Type, the official blog of The New Quarterly. TNQ is always good, and I’m sure we’ll see the same quality of work online. Check out the first post, “On Joining the Conversation”, about how online is where literary people are talking these days. I’m also obsessed with the blog Making It Lovely, which is sort of strange because it’s about interior design, but also about design on a broader scale and its creator is brilliant. And join our Facebook group, [re]use your mug. As some of you can’t help but know, our city is in the midst of a garbage strike, and trash has piled up in the streets. We’ve posted pictures of the mess in our gallery— note how much of it is cups, yes? A grand opportunity (in disguise) for us to realize how much less garbage we’d produce if we cut the disposible cups out of our lives. I, for one, had taken the pledge.
February 24, 2009
Out in the world– a concert and a play
Various events this winter are conspiring to keep me from becoming hermetic, and also providing me with opportunities I won’t see again for a long time once The Baby is born. For example, a concert– Dar Williams, live at the Mod Club this Saturday!! I am very excited, as I’ve not seen her since 2003 (live in Sheffield), being too poor for tickets when she was in Toronto in ’05. And then a play! My very favourite play, no less- Arcadia, performed at Hart House Theatre in March. By Tom Stoppard– have you read it? I’ve done so many times over the past ten years, and can’t wait to delight in it again on stage.
February 16, 2009
Madeleine's Cherry Pie and Ice Cream
Today’s random ramble rather conveniently veered us towards Madeleine’s Cherry Pie and Ice Cream, which I’ve many times passed on the route to somewhere and have long been meaning to make a destination. The shop’s name a literary reference (not this one, but that one), and the space is an emporium of perfect delights. A tea shop, with a back garden (come spring), and pies, and ice cream. We had scones with jam, and a pot each of rooibos, and I really must go back again for more– cupcakes, said madeleines, brownies, where to stop? The cakery was mesmerizing, and the shop shelves bursting with wonderful things– teapots, jam jars, cups, mugs, and the like. (And how lucky are we to live in a neighbourhood with so many corners to discover?)
February 4, 2009
Good Egg
We maintain a list at our house of small businesses unlikely to weather the economic downturn well. Already, the pillow shop on Queen Street has gone out of business, and I don’t have high hopes for organic dog bakeries and fromageries. Though that our local tea boutique is flourishing means that Good Egg might stand a chance. At least, I really, really hope it does, because I liked the place a lot.
Another bookstore in Kensingston Market, and that this one specializes in cookbooks is only half the story. They’ve got display tables crowded with kitchen stuff, all your heart so desires but doesn’t especially need, which does nothing to negate that desire– perhaps I should have that ninth teapot. And though usually I’d think twice about any store that sells books and gifts together, Good Egg has selected their books with such obvious care that I really can’t help but forgive them.
The books take up about half the store, and aren’t just cookbooks, but food books, and all varieties of food books. Their children’s section is lovely, stocked with food-themed books for babies and up (I spotted Green Eggs and Ham, The Carrot Seed, The Giving Tree, though there were plenty more), as well as non-food books that are just delicious. Similarly are non-food books for adults stuck in amongst the other shelves, though I got the feeling that if I thought about them hard enough, I could discern how they might fit in with motif. Fiction fascinatingly scattered in the manner of a treasure trove around cookbooks from all over the world, food essays, chef bios, books on agriculture, and the Omnivore’s Dilemma. Every shelf yielding a surprise– an etiquette section, India Knight’s new book on thrift, a book on the art of letter writing, as well as numerous crafty delights.
The whole effect sounds a bit kitschy, but there was substance to it. (Oh, and aren’t Tessa Kiros’ cookbooks the most beautiful in the world?) Every single book in Good Egg had been selected so deliberately, arranged so artfully, and the entire place was a delight to explore just like every good bookstore should be.
