Oh, Canada

We went to Toronto for the first time on Canada Day Weekend (which intersects with 4th of July weekend, as it happens).  Charmed as hell to see this guy as the plane flew into the city airport.  

This year celebrates Canada's 150th birthday, so recognitions of that were all over the place.

Not content to have one night of parties for such a big milestone, there were concerts and fireworks several days in a row - we caught one incarnation.

Our first stop after checking in was the SkyDome (which is now named after a cell service company, I guess) for a Blue Jays/Red Sox game.  We missed the first inning and change because, well, we were coming to the game from Newark, but that did not spoil our day. The dome was open when we got there, but some rain started a few innings in so they closed it mid-game.

Our next stop was a brewery/restaurant, where we grabbed seats at the bar and got as much info from the fantastic bartender as we could about places to go.  

We walked our asses off, like you do when you're in a city you don't (yet) know well. Great city, many fab neighborhoods, super friendly people, really good food and drink, good public transportation, great street art, robust art & performance scene all around.

On multiple recommendations, we went to the AGO and caught, among other things, a show focusing on Canadian artists, with a particular eye on indigenous artists [as you can imagine, the whole "this nation was formed 150 years ago! Woo hoo!" story plays pretty differently among the indigenous population and allies].  Also caught a retrospective of Rita Letendre, whom I hadn't heard of; the show was an excellent, necessary corrective to that.

So yes, Oh, Canada - you're not perfect, and your dreamboat of a Prime Minister has made some sketchy compromises and gets off super easy because of his disastrous counterpart to the south, but you are a (relatively) open society with an eye on human rights, and what appears to be an open mind about truth and reconciliation with the people who have lived on this continent for millennia.

Plus, Toronto has an airport you can get to via a 90 second ferry ride, which is pretty bitchin.

Trifecta

Three Shakespeare plays over three nights, Thursday through Saturday.  One was free, one pay-what-you-want, and one was the opposite of free.  Each has something unique to offer to this summer's Shakespeare season (made a little extra juicy by this year's commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.)

Troilus and Cressida from the Public/NYSF at the Delacorte; As You Like It from The Cradle Theatre in Prospect Park; The Merchant of Venice, which is the contribution to the Lincoln Center Festival from Shakespeare's Globe.

As I've said before (and will say again), I'm an actor, not a critic; no desire to pick these shows apart.  Dan Sullivan (whom I've known for a while) takes a really good swing at the very tricky pitch that is Troilus.  The curveballs of love and politics, the high heat of war, the secret signals that hold together the batteries of diplomacy and military intelligence.  Homeric Greece and Troy find their way to an Orwellian present of perpetual war.

Rebecca Etzine (whose tumblr I've admired for a while, and whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the show on Friday) delivered an As You Like It that is even more distinctly of today.  A young company of young artists turned a wooded part of Prospect Park into the forest of Arden - a few extra twists of gender and sexuality, plenty of playfulness, and a healthy dose of irreverence result in a show that is compelling, contemporary, and - most importantly - alive.  They're moving camp to Ft. Greene this weekend; check their website.  Cory missed this one, sadly; hey, this heatwave is a real thing, and not everyone's appetite for Shakespeare is quite as bottomless as mine, especially given that on the docket for the next night was...

Last and emphatically not least, Jonathan Pryce was Shylock in what is of the most brutal, and certainly one of the best, productions of Merchant I've ever seen.  While the staging and design is firmly in 16th Century Venice, the anti-semitism conjures all-too-current outbreaks in Europe and America.  Never (in my experience) has Shylock seemed so justified, never has Jessica been so disdained (even after her 'voluntary' conversion and marriage to Lorenzo), never has Antonio been such an asshole, and NEVER has Portia been such a snotty, snobby, vindictive prig (while still managing to be the smartest person in the room).  The final, added scene of Shylock's forced baptism was bitterly piercing.

Not much visual stimulation for you today, but here are a couple shots of Shakespeare's birthplace from our trip.  [What?? A side trip to Stratford-upon-Avon when we went to London?  Hey, he'll only have a 400th Deathiversary once.]

A couple exteriors of the gables.

A shot of a little one checking out the signatures scratched into the birthroom window.

And - why not? - a couple shots from Anne Hathaway's cottage, including Rudy, Cory, and Mol checking out the epic garden.

Early Work

Our first stop on our first full day in Barcelona.

Bell Esguard, one of Gaudi's first jobs.

Back to Barca

Not a Madrid match or anything, but it was fun to be there.

Do I have true afición for fútbol? It is fair to say I do not.

But we were there in the crowd, we heard the beat of the drum, we saw Messi score.  And although they blew the lead against Deportivo to settle for a loss-like tie, it was well worth the trip to see Barca on their home turf.

Bicycle Chandelier

More Ai Weiwei.  Who knows something about blogs.

Chandelier sculpture from the 2015 exhibition at the Royal Academy in London.

 Constructed from beaded bicycle frames.

 Medium of mobility, not-quite-pedestrian, quotidian symbol of China, dripping with faux crystal.

Suuuuuure It's not a Gingerbread House

One of the entrance buildings at Park Guell.  Originally used for offices, and a sort of holding area for the customers wanting to buy plots and build residences (customers who pretty much never turned up, as it happened), it is now a gift shop.  Also one of the many dragon motifs that turn up in Gaudi.  

But ain't nobody telling me he wasn't thinking about a gingerbread house. 

And so it goes...

Some follow-up may be required.  Last weekend saw a trip to Wisconsin for my Grandmother's memorial.  Yes, she died back around New Year's, but the family made the call (an overall wise one, in my opinion) to hold the memorial event with a lot of notice, making it easier for people to come from far and wide, with the added bonus of not needing to contend with last winter's unremitting frigidity. Which was wonderful in its way, but which of course carried a certain amount of grief, sadness, pain, and family agita (always a healthy dose of family agita).

And, because fate is bitter and mocks us all, a few days before the trip, one of my friends from growing up lost his battle with depression and killed himself.  I can't bring myself to call it luck, but the circumstance of being out there meant that - while still prevented from attending his memorial, I was able to pay my respects to his father and brother, and take said brother out for drinks on a night when I think it's fair to say he could use some out-of-the-house amusement, or at least distraction.

As if that weren't enough (it was quite enough, thank you very much) my extremely-robust-but-there-ain't-no-getting-around-it-OLD Grandfather, who mourns in a way that I don't suppose anyone who hasn't been married for over 70 years can really identify with, had a couple health events of his own.  The first happened the day he arrived: after a 14-hour drive, he and Mom stopped at my aunt's house for supper.  On a trip to the bathroom he stumbled, lost his balance, and fell into the tub - had to go to the emergency room for X Rays. No real damage, but he scraped the hell out of his arms so it was good he was in a place where he could get them bandaged by a pro.  Then, the day after the memorial, which was a celebration but still heartbreaking, a group of us went out for breakfast and grandpa had a Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA, sometimes imperfectly referred to as a mini-stroke) about two-thirds of the way through his french toast. His 8-yr-old great-granddaughter (my niece, shown feeding that calf in the last post) was sitting right across from him, eating french toast of her own, and I have to say she held it together remarkably well as I went over and got his attention, helped ease him back to alertness, went through some of the "rule out a for-reals stroke" steps, unhinged his fingers from his coffee cup, and got him standing and out into the parking lot with my cousin Wally. 

That fresh air did him good right away, as he recovered from the overheated sweat he’d broken into.  But of course it also meant another trip to the hospital, which he wanted about as much as a hole in the head.  Once we got him there, kicking and screaming, the visit went about as well as it could have, and it only took a small chunk out of what was going to be our last day in that part of the state before he headed east with one of his daughters.  And Cory and I headed to Madison to take care of the understandably unhinged friend whose brother had died the week before.

So that happened.  And believe it or not, I’m leaving out some of the nastiest stuff.  Now it’s Friday the 13^th and it’s raining.  Ruby Dee died, almost exactly the same age as my Grandmother, and I’m listening to some Duke Ellington and we’re seeing Macbeth tonight because fuck curses and fuck bad luck.  Power poses all around.

Wisco Weekend

A lot went on last weekend, a lot of it pretty dark, and the effects will resonate for a while.  But there were some streaks of light.

Weight of the World

Since the recent reports on Global Climate, and the not-coincidental Civilians show The Great Immensity at the Public, I've been thinking a lot about the Adrián Villar Rojas exhibition we caught at the Serpentine last year, Today, We Reboot the Planet.

The floor of the gallery consisted (for this exhibition) of bricks fabricated from native clay in the artist's home country of Argentina.  The bricks were laid without mortar, which meant that they clinked against the sub-floor and each other when people walked on them, creating a constant descant of sound, and conveying the shaky ground we all walk in this pivotal moment of high-stakes environmental poker.

Clay was his primary medium throughout, most prominently in the central image of an elephant bearing the weight of the building - and, as I read the sculpture, bearing up under the weight of development (another kind of 'building'), industry and imperialism with their interlocking versions of environmental effrontery.

A central studio with stained glass gable windows contained dozens of smaller sculptures, also mainly fired clay, with other media, including found objects, mixed in.

Maybe you'll forgive me if I admit that this one, even with its explicit connection to the earth in the form of farm and gardening implements, reminds me of Marvin the Martian.

Happy May Day.

Next Day

Last Sunday looked something like this...

Times Square, natch

Promethean Zamboni

Petting Patience (not to be confused with Fortitude) for luck.

More Patience, more luck.

New York Niece

Yes, our big project last weekend was hosting my lovely and talented niece Mary.  We actually have been working up to this project for weeks ahead of time, planning bunches of things  while keeping our options wide open.

And so, I present to you some of the highlights:

The arrival on Friday night was smooth.  Picked her up at JFK and brought her back to Chelsea.  Cory ordered dinner that got there within minutes of our arrival.  Minutes, I tells ya - minutes!

Next morning, we had bagel breakfast, and then headed out for the big Day One:

A sight Mary got to know well: the good ol' 23rd St. stop on the 1 train.

Thence, we went to see The Grand Budapest Hotel, which was most excellent, at the fancy theater with barcoloungers on the UWS.

Hoofed it across town, stopping to grab treats at a fine establishment named Treat House [I believe Cory grabbed a shot; I'll plug it in if so] which we then ate in Central Park, near the Delacorte and the Great Lawn, before moving on to the Museum district.

Poked our heads into the Guggenheim.  

Then moved on to the Met, where we spent a while in the Marville/Paris photography exhibition before doing a highlights tour with one of their docents - that covered a good bunch of ground in terms of time and space, from ancient Greece, to Rome, to Assyria, Africa.

Then down to Little India in the East 6th environs.  Had dinner at one of the more aggressively colorful places, before wrapping up the day with the Neos.

Nights in the Museum

Did a reading at MASS MoCA (which venue, in the larger sense, I've mentioned here many, many times) a couple Thursdays ago.  The American Premiere of The Interview, by Guillaume Leblon and Thomas Boutoux, to go along with Leblon's exhibition at the museum.

Photo by James Voorhies as far as I can tell

Photo by Art Evans

The experience provided me with a crash self-taught course in contemporary art, at the very least.  I sometimes feel like I know what I'm talking about when it comes to such things, then I'll run across a script like this one and realize that I don't know shit.  It was a great experience for me working on the piece with the artist, his wife, the other actor (plus the very game film intern we roped into being part of the show), and all the amazing, fantastic people at MoCA.

As if that weren't enough, we made a weekend out of it; I visited the museum exhibitions - most of them multiple times.  They're always good, you should go.  The Izhar Patkin work in the big room was especially moving, to me.

And we got to catch the residency/work-in-progress The Colorado, (also referred to as "Water Songs: Ha Tay G'am") a film and music project exploring the heartbreaking developments in the Colorado River Basin, and by extension the environmental catastrophes facing, umm, the entire planet.  Amazing.  Murat Eyuboglo is making the films; William deBuys is consulting on the science; a number of composers (Brittelle, Adams, Prestini, Worden, possibly others when all is said and done) scoring the music performed by the brilliant Roomful of Teeth; they all worked fast to put together the show we saw last Saturday.  I'm talking fast: they all showed up on Monday to talk, look at footage, write, and edit; the musicians arrived on Thursday morning; and the presentation was Saturday night.  The project won't be finished until 2015 (I think), keep an eye out for it.

Moving on from MoCA, I just want to mention the Cynthia Hopkins show A Living Documentary that happened at New York Live Arts this past Thursday.  Cynthia's one-woman theater/music piece about creating performance and trying to make a living (or even stay alive) doing it, in a universe where all the funds seem to go to production equipment and architectural 'improvements,' while shockingly little goes to the artists (arguably because the artists continue to give it away, or sell it cheap).  Lot going on there - funny, moving, creative, upsetting, exciting, inspiring, enraging.  It only played for a few days in that incarnation, glad I was able to catch it.

1/4/14

Just a few words to ring in the New Year/celebrate this numerically rare date.

This Holiday Season was up and down, to say the least.  To cut to the most important chase, my Grandmother died last Sunday at the age of 91.  It wasn't what you'd call unexpected, but the grief has been nonetheless profound.  At the same time, there is a lot of life there for all of us to celebrate, and as my dad put it: "By now, she'll be directing the choir up there."

That said, there was a lot to celebrate in general too.  A fantastic T-Day in the Catskills; wonderful Thanksgiving and Chanukkah celebration with Joe and Andrew in L.I.C.; great music from Lucius at Bowery Ballroom and Yo La Tengo at the Bell House (though of course those shows gave me more than a few pangs of a different kind of grief over Maxwell's and the YLT benefit shows); stunning Shaw from the Bedlam company; impressive original work (again) from the Representatives; brilliant poetic theater from Dominique Morriseau and the LAByrinth in Sunset Baby; another moving musical from the Public with Fun Home; Mark Rylance's Richard III to bookend the Twelfth Night we caught last Thanksgiving week in London.  Good movies and friends and New Year's Eve with Les & Megan in the Village.  And the warmth of the Christmas celebration in New Jersey cut through both my and Cory's colds.  (Well, kind of.  We're still struggling to shake those off a week and a half later...)

Speaking of London I haven't even gotten into this year's (well, last year's, at this point) trip!

So, just a little on that now - a few shots from early in the trip, and one from the end of it.

The Saturday after we arrived, we took a walk over Tower Bridge to visit the Maltby Street Market, where we enjoyed, among other things, some food and libation.

Little Bird gin bloody mary.

And on the last day of the trip, we took a trip to the National Portrait Gallery.  Here's a shot Cory snapped of me and my rally beard with a picture of Will Ferrell.

Miss you, Grandma.