The Clock

The promotional still for The Clock

Yesterday Sarah took a holiday from her work and we finally got down to the Power Plant at Harbourfront in Toronto to see Christian Marclay's incredible work of visual and sound art, The Clock. (Sarah had already tried to see it once by herself, hoping to catch what is rumoured to be a pretty spectacular set of clips at midnight a few weekends ago; alas, the lineups were too long and she gave up around 1 a.m.) I can think of several words to describe this amazing piece but the one that does it the most justice, in my mind, is "riveting". We had more than a vague idea of the wonders awaiting us as Sarah's Mom, Evlyn, had been to see it quite a few times while it was on display at the National Gallery in Ottawa. But no matter how well she or, indeed, anyone else attempted to describe the power of Marclay's masterpiece, this is something that one absolutely must experience for one's self. On the subject of those attempts at capturing the essence of The Clock, I have read quite a few of them for myself—including the rather mundane blurb in the Power Plant's own program—but the one I found the closest to accomplishing the feat was one written by Daniel Zalewski which appeared in The New Yorker in March of this year. It's a rather lengthy read but it does not simply focus on this single creation of Marclay's; I feel that the exploration of the man behind The Clock broadens and heightens the entire experience considerably. Despite my concession of the futility of attempting to understand the impact of this artwork, I am stubbornly going to proceed to describe my own experience yesterday afternoon, because this wouldn't be much of a blog piece if I just said, "We went to see The Clock yesterday" and left it at that. That's what Facebook and Twitter are for!

A Blue Moon to End the Summer

The first drinks: Blue Moon martinis.

It was a Blue Moon tonight, the first since New Year's Eve, 2009, and the last until July of 2015. Neil Armstrong, who died last Saturday, was memorialized today in Ohio, his home state. There is no way it was a coincidence that this happened on a Blue Moon, let alone a full moon. Sarah and I did what we always do for this infrequent occasion (the Blue Moon, not the memorial service): we prepared some blue food and blue drinks, put on a quartet of CDs I made many years ago for a Blue Moon party we held together shortly after our relationship began, and settled in for the evening. We had blue pasta and chicken and I mixed us some Blue Moon martinis at first, then we switched to Blue Lagoon cocktails for the rest of the evening. The CDs are a wonderful collection of songs with either the word "Blue" or the word "Moon" in the title, heavily leaning toward the latter. There's "Harvest Moon", "Blue Moon of Kentucky", "Moondance", "Claire de Lune". The Waterboys are represented, as are Echo and the Bunnymen, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and King Harvest. I have, on one of the disks, something like 17 different versions of "Blue Moon" alone. I only get these CDs out on the occasion of a Blue Moon which keeps the compilation "fresh" for the most part.

If I Hadn't Been a Dad

Grumpy P and the chicks, Father's Day, 2006 at Bluffer's Park

"The first time you hear the word 'Daddy', I don't care who you are, your heart just melts."

I blame Three Men and a Baby.

Tim, brand-new. Nice specs, Dad. Good idea with the sticker, too.

There we were, four twenty-something couples out together for a night at the movies in 1987, no distractions, no worries, just one of so many frequent nights out with friends. We could do that, then; we were only responsible for our own happiness and comfort. But near the end of the movie, Mario Joyner as "the cab driver" delivered that fateful line to the three hapless bachelors in his taxi heading to the airport to bring back the little girl they had been raising since her mom dropped her on their doorstep many months earlier. And in that instant, I knew life had changed forever for each and every man in our little group. I stole a glance down our row and saw three other Adam's apples bobbing up and down as quickly as my own as we each pretended that the scene had had no effect on us whatsoever. But the jig was up.

Goodbye, Cumberland

Sign over the entrance to the Cumberland Four Cinemas after the final show; nice Bladerunner reference!

The Cumberland Four Cinemas in Yorkville showed their last movie yesterday (fittingly, it was a film entitled Footnote). According to a Cineplex spokesperson, the property owner has plans to "redevelop" the site. I guess they want to fill the "gap" in the multi-million-dollar condo market in Toronto. Who knows? It's quite a discomfiting feeling, though, to have attended the opening of a brand-new movie house as an adult and have that same movie house close in my lifetime. I don't care for it much at all.

(Disclaimer: the particulars of this story proved very hard to research so much of it relies on my increasingly suspect memory. If you find any glaring errors, please let me know.)