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Fargo -- on a very appropriately snowy Boxing Day

Also working on a few Narayan novels, rereading The Financial Expert and then The Painter of Signs to follow.

Planning on checking out Lorne Lofsky with Neil Swainson(!) tomorrow on Boxing Day. This is a 2 guitar quartet with David Occhipinti as 2nd guitar. Should be interesting. I'll likely stay for the late night set (Waleed Kush Afro-Jazz) who I've seen a couple of times before.

Almost finished with Powell's Angels on Toast. It's curious this is set nearly as much in Chicago as New York. Definitely not as good as The Locusts Have No King, which I'll have to reread one of these days. I'm just starting Susanna Kaysen's Asa, As I Knew Him, which is good so far.

I think once upon a time I owned this. I'll look around and see if it's still here.

I've been listening to a fair bit of Robyn Hitchcock lately. Quite a lot of his solo material and the Soft Boys album Underwater Moonlight have been remastered and reissued. He also plays weekly online gigs (called Live from Tubby's House) which are generally very entertaining as he plays his material and some covers and banters with his wife. (You sign up through Bandcamp though they are only available for a few days after the performance...) I saw him live for the first time at the Drake Underground in Toronto. I see that in April he is playing the Athenaeum in my old stomping grounds in Chicago, and then the next day he plays the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto! Unless I have an impossible conflict, I will get tickets.

Tebugo by Evan Parker - Paul Rogers - Louis Moholo https://jazzinbritain1.bandcamp.com/album/tebugo

I won't comment on this (as that would be political...) From the AP: The board of trustees voted to add Trump’s name, making it the The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. Trump, a Republican, is chairman of the board.

TIFF in Toronto. They claim it was a 70 mm print. And then next week Vertigo in 70 mm.

Watched North by Northwest (on 70 mm!) yesterday afternoon, then followed it up with an evening screening of Wake Up Dead Man.

That was true 10 and maybe even 5 years ago, but no longer. I had to pay extra to get a computer with a CD/DVD bay in it, as this is definitely no longer standard.

I just finished Austen's Persuasion. I'm just starting Dawn Powell's Angels on Toast. Almost the entire thing seems to be about businessmen cheating on their wives and trying to get away with it. Definitely not my favorite Powell...

I'm deciding between going back to The Rex to see the Murley Eisenman Quartet again (Mike Murley, Mark Eisenman, Neil Swainson and Terry Clarke). I saw them on Wed. though a different drummer was sitting in, and they were excellent. Or heading over to Hirut for a group called the House Blend Septet (a 2 trumpet, 2 saxophone line-up including Alex Dean). I think I am slightly leaning towards Hirut, in part because they serve quite nice Ethiopian food at Hirut! Not that the food at the Rex is bad, certainly far better than what the Jazz Bistro serves... Choices, choices...

TIFF is having a Mikio Naruse retrospective. I've managed to book tickets for 4 of the films and am trying to see 3 more (which are currently sold out, but tickets generally are released a few days ahead of each screening). So far I saw When a Woman Ascends the Stairs and then today, Floating Clouds, which was far too melodramatic for my taste.

Pedro Almodovar Akira Kurosawa Jacques Tati Terry Gilliam