Snowbound with George on Christmas Eve

You always assume that things will turn out as planned, but some­times they don’t. Pam and I had all but packed our suit­cases ear­lier in the week for a trip to visit with my brother and his fam­ily in Seat­tle, as well as my par­ents, who were going to be vis­it­ing from Bal­ti­more. Mother Nature had other ideas.

The fact that Canada is enjoy­ing the first coast-to-coast ‘White Christ­mas’ in 40 years is not lost on me, and it is pretty out there. Pam and I had a nice time walk­ing in the first of the snow­storms, and it looks like storm num­ber three, which started last night, will dump nearly as much on us.

The car is not ready to drive on these kinds of roads. We don’t have any snow tires, as we don’t drive that much to begin with and nei­ther of us use it to get to a work­place (unlike the days when I was work­ing in Burn­aby for IBM). Snow tires are not usu­ally needed here.

So, here we are, like hiber­nat­ing bears in our cave, look­ing out at the snow. Well, not exactly like bears in one key respect: Hiber­nat­ing bears don’t eat, and I’ve been cook­ing like crazy. I roasted a chicken stuffed with herbs and lemon (an old Jamie Oliver recipe that I’ve com­mit­ted to mem­ory), and yes­ter­day did a large pot roast with car­rots, parsnips, turnips and pota­toes.  This after­noon I baked a tray of oat­meal muffins (after also bak­ing a bunch of cook­ies ear­lier in the week). We’ve also got some steaks in the freezer, and since Granville Mar­ket is closed for the next 2 days, we’ll prob­a­bly eat those as well, along with some of other food in our larder, which we stuffed full just in case the weather did get worse.

The other thing I did, which I do nearly every year, was watch Frank Capra’s movie “It’s a Won­der­ful Life”.  For me, it tran­scends movie mak­ing to become a piece of art, the same way that some Nor­man Rock­well illus­tra­tions do. I keep find­ing new details in it, the way you do with any great piece of sto­ry­telling or music. There’s always some lit­tle motif or pas­sage here or there that after the 10^th hearing/viewing you sud­denly real­ize is referred to or echoed in some other place. Capra’s film also has a lot more res­o­nance now, when the news reports from the States ear­lier in the evening eerily echoed (or pre­saged?) the talk in the movie of peo­ple being fore­closed on their homes because of not being able to pay mort­gages, runs on banks and acts of char­ity. How many peo­ple might be, this evening, need­ing to draw upon char­ity for the first time in their lives, the way that George Bai­ley had to?

I noticed that a week or so again, Wen­dell Jamieson of The New York Times wrote a fas­ci­nat­ing reassess­ment of the film, and actu­ally found it to be essen­tially a big fat lie, some­thing that he first sus­pected when he was shown the film at school when he was 15 year’s old:

“It’s a Won­der­ful Life” is a ter­ri­fy­ing, asphyx­i­at­ing story about grow­ing up and relin­quish­ing your dreams, of see­ing your father dri­ven to the grave before his time, of liv­ing among bit­ter, small-minded peo­ple. It is a story of being trapped, of com­pro­mis­ing, of watch­ing oth­ers move ahead and away, of becom­ing so filled with rage that you ver­bally abuse your chil­dren, their teacher and your oppres­sively per­fect wife. It is also a night­mare account of an end­less home renovation.

Holy Cow!  Believe it or not, his opin­ion of the film’s mes­sages actu­ally gets harsher still:

Many are pulling the movie out of the archives lately because of its pre­science on the per­ils of trust­ing bankers. I’ve found, after repeated view­ings, that the film turns upside down and inside out, and some glar­ing — and often funny — flaws become appar­ent. These flaws have some­how deep­ened my affec­tion for it over the years. Take the extended sequence in which George Bai­ley (James Stew­art), hav­ing repeat­edly tried and failed to escape Bed­ford Falls, N.Y., sees what it would be like had he never been born. The bucolic small town is replaced by a smoky, nightclub-filled, boogie-woogie-driven haven for show­girls and gam­blers, who spill rau­cously out into the crowded side­walks on Christ­mas Eve. It’s been renamed Pot­tersville, after the vil­lain­ous Mr. Pot­ter, Lionel Barrymore’s schem­ing financier.

Here’s the thing about Pot­tersville that struck me when I was 15: It looks like much more fun than stul­ti­fy­ing Bed­ford Falls — the women are hot, the music swings, and the fun times go on all night. If any­thing, Pot­tersville cap­tures just the type of excite­ment George had long been seeking.

…

Not only is Pot­tersville cooler and more fun than Bed­ford Falls, it also would have had a much, much stronger future. Think about it: In one scene George helps bring man­u­fac­tur­ing to Bed­ford Falls. But since the era of “It’s a Won­der­ful Life” man­u­fac­tur­ing in upstate New York has suf­fered terribly.

On the other hand, Pot­tersville, with its night­clubs and gam­bling halls, would almost cer­tainly be in much bet­ter finan­cial shape today. It might well be thriving.

I checked my the­ory with the oft-quoted Mitchell L. Moss, a pro­fes­sor of urban pol­icy at New York Uni­ver­sity, and he agreed, point­ing out that, of all the upstate coun­ties, the only one that has seen growth in recent years has been Saratoga.

“The rea­son is that it is a resort, and it has built an econ­omy around that,” he said. “Mean­while the great indus­trial cities have declined ter­rif­i­cally. Look at Con­necti­cut: where is the growth? It’s in casi­nos; they are con­stantly expanding.”

In New York, Mr. Moss added, Gov. David A. Pater­son “is under enor­mous pres­sure to allow gam­bling upstate because of the eco­nomic problems.”

“We ease up on our lot of cul­tural behav­iors in a depres­sion,” he said.

What a grim thought: Had George Bai­ley never been born, the peo­ple in his town might very well be bet­ter off today.

Well, I’m not sure that the raunchy Vegas-like Pot­tersville is any bet­ter than the Biff Tannen’s alter­nate Uni­verse town of Hill Val­ley (which doesn’t get a rename, despite the sim­i­lar biz­zaro treat­ment) in Back to the Future II.  I’ll bet that a few choice grotesque zooms on the land­scape of Pot­tersville would have hor­ri­fied the rest of us as much as it did George Bai­ley rather than thrill him that that his town was less bor­ing with him not in it. Capra per­haps didn’t want to hit us over the head with the mes­sage, so it didn’t escape the 15-year old Mr. Jamieson’s cynicism.

Any­way, apt or not, I still find it a great piece of sto­ry­telling, even if it teaches us all the wrong things. Jamieson is not alone in his dis­dain for the film. Besides the fact that the movie was con­sid­ered a finan­cial flop (too expen­sive to make, didn’t make back what it cost), Charles Affron on filmreference.com says:

The impe­tus and struc­ture of It’s a Won­der­ful Life recall the famil­iar model of Capra’s pre-war suc­cesses. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton and Meet John Doe. In each of these films, the hero rep­re­sents a civic ideal and is opposed by the forces of cor­rup­tion. His iden­tity, at some point mis­per­ceived, is finally acclaimed by the com­mu­nity at large. The pat­tern receives per­haps its dark­est treat­ment in It’s a Won­der­ful Life. The film’s con­ven­tions and dra­matic con­ceits are mis­lead­ing. An idyl­lic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of small-town Amer­ica, a guardian angel named Clarence and a Christ­mas Eve apoth­e­o­sis seem to jus­tify the film’s peren­nial screen­ings dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son. These are the signs of the ingen­u­ous opti­mism for which Capra is so often reproached. Yet they func­tion in the same way “happy end­ings” do in Moliere, where the arti­fice of per­fect res­o­lu­tion is in ironic dis­pro­por­tion to the real­i­ties of human nature at the core of the plays.

Maybe I should have just watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Rein­deer instead.

Acrobats at the PNE

Thanks to a really cool gift from my par­ents, a Flip Ultra Video Cam­era, I’m thrilled that now I’ll be able to add not only pho­tos, but now videos of my own to my blog, and plan on doing that from time to time.

Here’s some­thing from the first day I got to use my new toy, at the PNE. We went with my par­ents and had a great time. Once again, the high­light of the day for me (and for the rest of our group, I think) were the Bei­jing Acro­bats. We saw them last year, and were thrilled to see them again. Here’s a short video I did of some of their rou­tines. The light­ing is not ideal, but most of the time I think you can get the gist of what they are doing. Not bad for a first try, I hope:

Filmed In Front of a Live Audience

Before my work­ing week­end, Pam and I were lucky enough to be able attend an event that was, at least as the come­dian Simon Rakoff and ‘Mas­ter of Cer­e­monies’ described, the first time some­thing like this had hap­pened in 10 years in the Van­cou­ver area: the film­ing of a Sit­com pilot in front of a live stu­dio audience.

Because of an email from the CBC that I answered (I don’t know how I ended up get­ting it; prob­a­bly from hav­ing signed up at the CBC web site at some point), at about 5:15 on Fri­day, Pam and I found our­selves shiv­er­ing in line at twi­light in front of what looked like a non­de­script busi­ness office, at the cor­ner of First Avenue and Gilmore Avenue in Burn­aby. We had both just come from work nearby, so we were for­tu­nate that it was easy to get to. The con­ces­sion truck was feed­ing chili to the actors and crew (and it smelled good), but soon we were ush­ered in to a messy col­lec­tion of sets, cam­eras, and bleach­ers inside. After a few min­utes, Mr. Rakoff handed out tick­ets for a bunch of draw­ings for door prizes that would go on as the evening’s film­ing pro­gressed, and explained our duties for the evening. “Peo­ple watch­ing TV aren’t too smart, he said, “so we want you to help out, and laugh so you can show them where the jokes are. Your laugh­ter is an impor­tant part of the process of bring­ing this show to life.” OK. Bring on the jokes. But first, the setup.

The name of the show was ‘All the Com­forts’. That much we knew already. Here’s the gist of the sit­com that we were to see, cre­ated for us the first time that evening:

The Bunion fam­ily is headed by Mac and Brenda, who, in their retire­ment years, are hop­ing to take off with their new motor home to cel­e­brate their golden years alone together. Unfor­tu­nately, their plans are thwarted by their daugh­ter Susie, a ditzy 20-something who has never left the nest, and the recent return of their always opti­mistic and timid but né’er do well son, his pretty but abra­sive wife and their 2 kids (2 typ­i­cal pre­co­cious and cute sit­com chil­dren). Mac is a grouchy rubber-faced Jackie Glea­son type who just wants to be left alone to enjoy his massager/recliner, his sand­wich, TV and bot­tle of Snap­ple in peace. Soli­tude and space is to not be found. Through a series of phys­i­cal gags, jokes involv­ing aging and child-rearing, the cranky old guy even­tu­ally apol­o­gizes for yelling at his grand-kids and may even admit that there are advan­tages to hav­ing them around (one of them dis­cov­ers and turns on the ‘auto adjust’ but­ton on his hi-tech chair, end­ing his 4-year quest to find ‘the per­fect set­ting’). While they aren’t a per­fect happy fam­ily, they may just make it, although Mac will still be thrilled the day that all of his kids finally do leave, and he and his wife can hit the road together.

Before I get into any crit­i­cal appre­ci­a­tion, it was just kind of fun to see how you shoot a sit­com. This was a four cam­era show, with direc­tor call­ing cuts and cam­era angles, 3 dif­fer­ent sets (includ­ing the motor home), and a large crew, includ­ing a stage direc­tor, cam­era­men, sound man, grips, key grip, clap­per, a bunch of writ­ers doing rewrites of jokes down to the last moment, and bunch of other peo­ple (who I couldn’t tell what they did). This was as close as we’ve got­ten to the film­ing of a real TV show, and it was a great edu­ca­tion about how this is done these days.

As for ‘All the Com­forts’, it sounds like pretty typ­i­cal sit­com fare, doesn’t it? On this evening, what the writ­ing of the pilot lacked, the actors made up for in pro­fes­sion­al­ism and energy. They made the mate­r­ial far fun­nier than it deserved to be, but will it be enough for this pilot to catch on? That’s hard to say. The theme of the return of kids liv­ing with their par­ents far into their 30’s is some­thing that many of us are uncom­fort­able with, to be sure. It used to be a stigma, but is becom­ing so wide­spread that it is clearly going to have to be re-evaluated. Dis­com­fort often leads to humour, so this might have a chance. On the other hand, if it just becomes another col­lec­tion of sit­com gags…

• Mac attempts to return a stolen xxx before dis­cov­ery of the theft … Hilar­ity ensues.
• Susie is given the posi­tion of respon­si­bil­ity she can’t han­dle … Hilar­ity ensues.
• Brenda, tries to change her phys­i­cal appear­ance through an xxx … Hilar­ity ensues.

I hope that they reach for plots and char­ac­ter devel­op­ment that’s bet­ter than these stock sit­u­a­tions. Pam and I have both become real fans of Cor­ner Gas, a CBC Sit­com that con­sis­tently pro­vides a big laugh at least once in an episode. I sus­pect that it’s the writ­ing staff, although that sit­com also has very good act­ing. So far, ‘All the Com­forts’ is no Cor­ner Gas, but per­haps it could be. I’m hop­ing it does, because to have been in the audi­ence at the pilot could be a bit of his­tory, if it is a hit.

The September Arts and Events Flood

Ami­tai Mar­morstein and Celine Stubel
in Legoland
“Mor­mons are creepy.”

I don’t know what it is about Sep­tem­ber. Pam and I have duti­fully tried to keep up, but there’s just so much going on! I’m way behind in post­ings, so here are a few things just to get caught up.

The Fringe
We went to three plays (just a frac­tion of the num­ber pre­sented), includ­ing Dar­ren Barefoot’s charm­ing roman­tic com­edy Bul­loxed. Bul­loxed, as you can read from the blog about the play (but I include here so you don’t have to go hunt­ing for the blurb) is:

Set in Dublin, Ire­land, at the height of the dot-com boom, Cana­dian com­puter pro­gram­mer Jack is struck by love and a God-awful pain in his ‘bol­locks’ at pre­cisely the same moment. While he may have found the woman of his dreams, dis­cov­er­ing the source of tes­ti­cle pain is, well, more sen­si­tive. Will a clash of cul­tures and the nag­ging feel­ing that things just aren’t right kill the romance for good?

Is it pos­si­ble to have a roman­tic com­edy about tes­ti­cle pain? As it turns out, it’s not only pos­si­ble, but Pam in par­tic­u­lar (per­haps because she felt less empa­thy?) found it extremely funny. It’s a shame that some sub­jects are so tick­lish that the cen­sors would never let them through for a stan­dard sit­com or even movie, unless it were an inde­pen­dent film. After all, pain in the groin area is some­thing that many of us guys have expe­ri­enced at one time or another. While the whole tes­tic­u­lar agony thing was the ‘hook’ for the play, the play is more of a dat­ing dance, between a fiery Irish girl and geeky Com­puter Pro­gram­mer. I felt par­tic­u­larly proud as a new­comer to Canada to get the joke when Jack and Aoife enter into a scene singing the theme song to ‘The Lit­tlest Hobo’, which I learned out about via a “Cor­ner Gas” episode only a few short months ago. While I felt the whole story could have gone on a bit fur­ther, the fact that I wanted more was prob­a­bly a good sign. Per­haps Dar­ren will write a big­ger play next year.

A few nights later, we caught short but intense mono­logue called ‘Troia’ about the intern­ment of Ital­ian Cana­di­ans dur­ing World War II (not dis­sim­i­lar to what went on in the US with the Japan­ese dur­ing the same time period). Again, I felt it was too short, and per­haps even could sense a screen­play in there some­where. (My pitch to the pro­duc­ers: Think Snow Falling on Cedars meets Moon­struck and set it in Ontario).

Finally, our favourite play(and picked as one of the best of the fes­ti­val and repeated this week­end): Legoland. Legoland was the name given to the out­side world by two home-schooled chil­dren on a BC Com­mune (their par­ents get impris­oned for grow­ing pot, wouldn’t you know), Penny and Ezra Lamb. Their story was part cau­tion­ary tale (part of Penny’s ‘Com­mu­nity Ser­vice’), part kalei­do­scopic Amer­i­can Road trip, and part ode to every out­sider kid you’ve ever known (or ended up being). It was a scream, and as we left the the­atre, we knew that we’d seen some­thing really extra­or­di­nary. The actors, Ami­tai Mar­morstein as Ezra and Celine Stubel as Penny, were so per­fect for their char­ac­ters that if some­one ever turned the play into a movie, they would have to cast them in the same parts. Next year, per­haps we’ll triple our num­ber of plays attended again. Nine plays in 10 days? Well, some of them really are just 20 min­utes long.

The Blog­ger Meetup
Last week was the Sep­tem­ber Van­cou­ver Blog­gers Meetup. Sev­eral of us spent a few hours on a rainy evening chat­ting, eat­ing and drink­ing, in about that order. While we talked about a range of sub­jects, includ­ing how to blog about your some­one with­out them know­ing about it, are reli­gious peo­ple actu­ally dan­ger­ous (in these days of sui­cide bombers and Chris­t­ian theocrats, not a triv­ial ques­tion), how to make a liv­ing dri­ving traf­fic to web sites, and how we all make deci­sions about our lives. I think that Isabella Mori, our Meetup Leader, found a really nice meet­ing place in Cen­tury, an old bank that is now con­verted to a restau­rant and bar on Richards (about 2 blocks from where I work). The place is both cozy and impres­sive . That may be hard to imag­ine from the sound of it, but the high ceil­ings, leather fur­ni­ture and dim light­ing, along with friendly staff, a well-stocked bar and tasty food (I had crepes filled with BBQ Duck, Oax­a­can cheese and herbs — a lot of fresh tar­ragon, I think) all made it a win­ner in my book. It was a lit­tle noisy, but I’m happy to have found a new place to meet and take refuge on those dark and wet nights that will be on their way here soon.

Speak­ing of the sea­sons, fel­low blog­ger MJ men­tioned that she had read and partly agreed with my char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Vancouver’s pendulum-like swing between the city of the mind (fall,winter) and city of the body (spring,summer). She did point out, how­ever that not every­one can com­pletely go all-mind in win­ter and all-body in sum­mer, par­tic­u­larly those like she who are fans of win­ter sports like ski­ing and snow­board­ing (how could I for­get that stuff?). So I guess the city does not split the year so neatly. Nev­er­the­less, this last week­end we got to…yet another Arts Event:

The Word on the Street
On Sun­day late morn­ing we headed over to the Library, for ‘The Word on the Street’, their annual book and mag­a­zine fair. Booths around the library (and in that sort of mini-mall on the inside) as well as ‘The Word Under the Street’ in the base­ment hosted all sorts of lit­er­ary and lit­er­acy orga­ni­za­tions, writ­ers, poets, and other speak­ers. Pam and I were lucky enough to hear ‘The Hockey Sweater’ (a story that is so cen­tral to Cana­dian cul­ture that an excerpt of it is actu­ally printed on the 5 dol­lar bill!) read by the warm and funny author of the tale, Roch Car­rier, who is also one of the most cel­e­brated Que­bec writ­ers in Canada. It was made into an ani­mated short in 1980 (with M. Car­rier nar­rat­ing) and is now con­sid­ered a clas­sic of Cana­dian lit­er­a­ture. Pam was very touched by this cute story (no spoil­ers here — go and read it your­self!), and we both felt like we had got­ten one step closer to being Cana­di­ans. We also col­lected a ton of stuff, includ­ing books, pads, free mag­a­zines and var­i­ous tchochkes.

In a few days, Pam and I are going to take a lit­tle break, via a trip up to Whistler to take in some more of those BC vis­tas that put us (and our now more active minds) more in per­spec­tive. Man does not live by plays, con­ver­sa­tions and books alone.

PS: One of the rea­sons this post is really 3 is the fact that I’m spend­ing a fair amount of time get­ting ready to move this blog. Yes, I man­aged to get the domain ‘loudmurmurs.com’, and am think­ing about mak­ing the leap to Word­Press, which I installed and worked to cus­tomize a lit­tle ear­lier today at that domain. It seems none too soon, as I’ve been hav­ing a really hard time post­ing this — Blog­ger has been incred­i­bly flakey and slow lately.

If all goes well, I’ll be mov­ing to the new URL and blog­ging plat­form in Octo­ber. Stay tuned for a new look and new location!

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

Sep­tem­ber has always been my favourite month of the year, and not only because it is the month of my birth. When I lived in the North­east, it was always the time of lots of blue skies, crisp, cool air, and that spec­tac­u­lar fall foliage. It was always a seri­ous month, deal­ing with the end of things, and per­haps even thoughts of mor­tal­ity. My mother has always vehe­mently been a Spring per­son, asso­ci­at­ing her birth month with rebirth, new blooms, the end of win­ter, more com­fort­able weather (although often not quite yet), and longer days. Nope, not for me. I’ll take a Fall walk in Ver­mont with the smell of wood fires over a muddy trek through a gar­den that’s maybe get­ting ready to get going.

These days, I can’t say that I love Sep­tem­ber quite as much. Van­cou­ver doesn’t get those flashes of color in the trees and the air isn’t all that dif­fer­ent, although you do have to start wear­ing a coat again. Instead, what’s in evi­dence is the switch back to the city of the mind from the city of the body. I’ve talked about Vancouver’s yearly pen­du­lum swing between the hedo­nism of the spring and sum­mer months and intel­lec­tual and artis­tic pur­suits of the fall and win­ter months. This is not unique to Van­cou­ver; my par­ents, who spend a lot of time in Paris, talk about ‘la ren­trée’ (From the web site understandfrance.org):

For the French, the year does not begin Jan­u­ary 1^st! It begins in Sep­tem­ber and the begin­ning of the year is so unpleas­ant that it ruins the Sum­mer vaca­tions (no won­der the French need so much vaca­tion dur­ing the rest of the year). It is called “la ren­trée”, like in schools. Just imag­ine : in Sep­tem­ber, you receive the tax bill, kids start school and it is the period of the year where, tra­di­tion­ally, many strikes take place, par­tic­u­larly trans­port strikes (train, metro, etc.). It takes a few months to recover, then Christ­mas comes (noth­ing spec­tac­u­lar) then the “sol­des” (sales, more inter­est­ing), then Feb­ru­ary vaca­tion (very appre­ci­ated), then Easter vaca­tion and the won­der­ful month of May, with its “bridges”. Then it is time to plan Sum­mer vacation.

I’d say for Van­cou­ver, it’s more like ‘le réveil’ (the reawak­en­ing); a time when you no longer spend the long after­noons that stretch into the evening at the beach or sit­ting in the park (or hik­ing up Grouse). Even though the sum­mer did have some the­atre, includ­ing the suc­cess­ful ‘Bard on the Beach’, there are now sev­eral fes­ti­vals and con­cert sea­sons that are all set to begin. This past week­end, we made another short visit to the PNE (hardly big brain food, but after all, we were just get­ting started). I think I’ll always think of the PNE as a sort of farewell, to sum­mer. After that, The Van­cou­ver Fringe Fes­ti­val, which includes 10 days of enter­tain­ing and some­times chal­leng­ing evenings of the­atre, mostly on Granville Island stages, starts in 3 days. Just 11 days after that, the 25^th Annual Van­cou­ver Inter­na­tional Film fes­ti­val, includ­ing some 300 shorts and fea­tures from over fifty coun­tries (and a quar­ter of the films this year are non-fiction — which I guess means Doc­u­men­taries in most cases). At the end of the month, the Van­cou­ver Sym­phony Orches­tra opens their sea­son with Strauss’s Ein Helden­leben. So as you can see, every­thing starts up, and not quite in the way that the French do it.

I’m a big cul­ture vul­ture, so I’m thrilled that this is all hap­pen­ing, and if it is in part because it’s not going to be so nice out and the sun is going to set ear­lier and ear­lier, then, so be it. My mind is tired of being on vacation.