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I generally didn't think Netflix streaming service was worth it, much preferring the DVDs. I also liked LoveFilm when I was in the UK, and there I only had physical DVDs. Here in Canada we basically get hosed. Netflix is streaming only, and has even less selection than the US streaming version. (You can't get Hulu unless you jump through a lot of hoops to try to prove you are actually an American. No clue if Hulu will ever make it up here legitimately.) There is some Netflix-like service called Zip.ca that does mail out the DVDs but the reviews are pretty negative. So I guess things are always relative, and both the US and the UK have it better than Canada. I guess on the positive side, Toronto still has a fair number of specialty DVD rental stores (yes, you can go into a store and rent DVDs still), and I'll investigate that soon. Perhaps there will be one on my commuting path, so I can stop off on the way home.

This is an art installation that somehow manages to mix Kafka (think In the Penal Colony) and a trip to the dentist. It is pretty unsettling toward the end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak6Ldat9yto

how's that for hubris? if he wants to make fun of jazz writing, he should make fun of jazz writing and those that produce it, using a musician isn't the soundest of ways to achieve that - but then no one would ever read a piece making fun of jazz writing, so ... lame ass stuff. Yeah, he's definitely a conceited d-bag. Stop digging, son...

Only about 100 pages into Dostoevsky's Demons but am enjoying it quite a bit. I was worried since I was so disappointed with The Idiot, and I wasn't sure if I had changed or this was just very uncharacteristic Dostoevsky (I think the latter). It kind of helps that I was really immersed in the world of Russian nihilists and anarchists when watching Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia. What's particularly intriguing is that Dostoevsky knew this crowd but fell out with them fairly early on, and apparently had a difficult relationship with Turgenev, which was mostly a negative one. Turgenev shows up as a risible character in Demons, despite the fact that some of the plot points in the first 100 pages are lifted from Turgenev's A Month in the Country. At any rate, Turgenev and a bunch of the other Russian intellectuals show up in The Coast of Utopia, but not Dostoevsky. He's kind of conspicuously absent. I've decided to somewhat reorient my reading list and to go ahead and read Berlin's Russian Thinkers and I guess Herzen's My Past and Thoughts (the 2 vol. abridged version). I think that will allow me to get this out of my system and most on to the Rezzori and some other literary topics.

I wrapped up The Man Who Cried I Am. In the end, a very strange book. About halfway through it switches over to sort of a Forrest Gump approach -- Black writer with nationalist leanings gets to meet and mingle with elites in New York and Washington D.C. He even becomes a speech writer for Kennedy for a few months. The final quarter morphs into this paranoid mode somewhat reminiscent of Chester Himes' Plan B. I didn't think this mixing of styles worked well. I thought the first half of the book was the strongest. I'm just getting started on Dostoevsky's The Demons. After that it will be (or should be) Von Rezzori's An Ermine in Czernopol.

Now that's interesting, as I know Seva has a restaurant in Ann Arbor (and I would guess it is the mother restaurant). I had no idea they operated in Detroit as well. I also just learned that Seva moved from downtown to the west side, which I will have to keep in mind if I ever make it back to Ann Arbor.

A month ago I was thinking very seriously of going, but my last two experiences have made me completely swear off trying to drive to the States over a holiday weekend. I literally was stuck at the border for 3.5 and 7 hours. I'm never doing that again, and the price to fly to Detroit that weekend is just ridiculous. So sadly I don't think I'll ever make it.

I read that the real doctor that inspired the Patch Adams movie thought Williams was too restrained in the role.

It makes far more sense to publish the satire in the New Yorker, where a least a considerable number of the readers will be up on jazz (though probably more will be classical aficionados). It doesn't make any kind of sense to go in the Washington Post. I think what slays me is just how lame it is to say "This isn't a satire," and then later on to admit that it is. Unbelievably lame. It's so disappointing watching mainstream media becoming addicted to click-bait type articles. I just don't see how anyone can avoid the fact that news (and popular culture) is coarsening and is worse than 15-20 years ago.

Oddly enough I somehow avoided a lot of his hits and saw his less successful (at least commercially) movies. The crazy thing is I just can't remember whether I saw What Dreams May Come or not. I suspect that my favorite part is actually the genie in Aladdin, simply because it seemed the only role where his quicksilver changes made much sense. As for his dramatic roles, I think my favorite is Moscow on the Hudson. I am very sorry he couldn't hang on for a while longer, but depression is a real beast...

Shoot -- just the other day I accidentally hit some combination of keys and the whole computer shut down. Wasn't too happy about that.

It looks like some but less than you might think. Amazon UK has more but still incomplete details: CONTENTS CD 1-2 BACH - BRAHMS -TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concertos Oistrakh CD 3-4 BACH Cello Suites Fournier CD 5 BEETHOVEN Symphonies 5 & 7 Kleiber CD 6 BEETHOVEN Symphony 6 SCHUBERT Symphony 5 Böhm CD 7 BEETHOVEN Symphony 9 Karajan CD 8 BEETHOVEN Piano Concertos 4 & 5 Kempff CD 9 BEETHOVEN Sonatas 8, 14, 21 & 23 Kempff CD 10 BRAHMS Symphony 4 Kleiber CD 11-12 BRAHMS Piano Concertos Gilels CD 13 BRAHMS Cello Sonatas Rostropovich CD 14 CHOPIN Piano Concerto 1 CD LISZT Piano Concerto 1 Argerich CD 15 CHOPIN Études opp. 10 & 25 Pollini CD 16 CHOPIN Polonaises Pollini CD 17 DEBUSSY La Mer RAVEL Boléro CD MUSSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition Karajan CD 18 DVOŘÁK Symphonies 8 & 9 Kubelik CD 19 DVOŘÁK Slavonic Dances Kubelik CD 20 DVOŘÁK Cello Concerto Rostropovich CD 21 GRIEG Lyric Pieces Gilels CD 22 MAHLER Symphony 1 Kubelik CD 23 MAHLER Symphony 5 Karajan CD 24 MENDELSSOHN Symphonies 3 & 4 Karajan CD 25 MENDELSSOHN - BRUCH Concertos Mutter CD 26-27 MOZART Symphonies 35, 36, 38-41 Böhm CD 28 MOZART Piano Concertos 6, 17 & 21 Anda CD 29 MOZART Violin Concertos 3 & 5 Mutter CD 30 MOZART Wind Concertos Prinz - Tripp - Zeman CD 31-32 MOZART Die Zauberflöte Böhm CD 33 ORFF Carmina Burana Jochum CD 34 PROKOFIEV Piano Concerto 3 RAVEL Piano Concerto in G Argerich CD 35 PROKOFIEV Scythian Suite - Lieutenant Kijé Abbado CD 36 RACHMANINOV Piano Concerto 2 TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto 1 Richter CD 37 SCHUBERT Symphonies 3 & 8 Kleiber CD 38 SCHUBERT “Death and the Maiden“ Quartet “The Trout” Quintet Gilels - Amadeus CD 39 SCHUBERT Die schöne Müllerin Wunderlich CD 40 SCHUBERT Winterreise Fischer-Dieskau CD 41 R. STRAUSS Zarathustra - Till Eulenspiegel Don Juan Karajan CD 42 R. STRAUSS Four Last Songs Tod und Verklärung Janowitz - Karajan CD 43-44 TCHAIKOVSKY Symphonies 4-6 Mravinsky CD 45 TCHAIKOVSKY Ballet Suites Rostropovich CD 46 VERDI Messa da Requiem Fricsay CD 47-49 WAGNER Tristan und Isolde Böhm CD 50 Martha Argerich Debut Recital LISZT CHOPIN - BRAHMS - PROKOFIEV - RAVEL

I guess this is right on the edge of being a bargain: http://www.amazon.com/Luciano-Pavarotti-Edition-First-Decade/dp/B00G5WUIP4/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t Pavarotti - the First Decade (Decca). 28 CDs and a small vinyl bonus disc for roughly $100. Almost everything remastered well apparently. I think this is one of those sets where price will drop, then skyrocket when it goes OOP. I don't enjoy opera enough (or at all) for this to tempt me.

It was written in the mid to late 60s when the legal landscape was a bit different. I'm honestly not sure if it is supposed to be a pure roman a clef or if the characters are composites. I'd have to do more research to find this out, and I'm not up to it at the moment. But it's a pretty good read so far.

I believe it is a bit of a grey area, but definitely unenforced either way. My general understanding is that trade commissioners and others have found that an individual can import one copy for personal use without bringing down the copyright cops upon their head. But as with many things it is probably better left a bit ambiguous.

Speaking of Spark, has anyone looked into her collection of non-fiction The Informed Air? There was a relatively positive review in the Toronto Star over the weekend, though the few Amazon reviews have been fairly negative, saying that these are largely short, inconsequential pieces that don't merit the title of essay. I'd be curious to hear what Spark had to say about the Brontes (a whole section devoted to this), but it definitely sounds like something to check out of the library rather than purchase. The Man Who Cried I Am is pretty good on the whole, but I am tired of trying to guess which character corresponds to which Black author. The introduction spells out who is Richard Wright and who is James Baldwin, but then doesn't say who is Ralph Ellison. I'm guessing Chester Himes is represented as well, but am not sure. Rudolph Fisher (The Conjure Man Dies) is probably too obscure (I really ought to reread this one of these days). I haven't run across any poets in the narrative yet, so it looks like Langston Hughes and Jean Toomer were left out. Carl van Vechten makes an appearance, but I am not sure who his Jewish counterpart was supposed to be.

This thread and several others basically bring me to the conclusion that jazz is finally dead and there are a bunch of moldy old figs fighting over the carcass. It's so reminiscent of the dig at academics that the passions runs so deep because the stakes are so inconsequential. It's depressing how little life there is on any of the music threads (indeed I pretty much only post in the classical threads or to discuss books). Well, as Samuel "Skeeter" Johnson once said, "When a man is bored with jazz, he is ready to live life again to its fullest (out of the basement)."

There's nothing worse than someone insisting that they have a perfectly good sense of humor, but that X or Y just isn't all that funny. At the moment, I do seem to be reading works that are Important and Serious and have little lightness at all (to borrow from the Calvino essays), and that seems to be the rut I want to stick in for a while. So Lessing is a better fit to say nothing of Dostoevsky. The humor I can stomach at the moment is of the wry variety. Or black humor may be ok (there is some of that in The Man Who Cried I Am, which seems to be the book that I had hoped City of Light would be). I imagine this will pass, and I will be more open to books that have a bit more generosity of spirit about them... (At that point, I am considering reading some Montaigne...)

As Ken Livingstone, the left-wing former Mayor of London, loves to point out, the Daily Mail (which never liked him) was hugely enthusiastic about Hitler in the 1930s. I'm certainly aware that the Fascists had many admirers in England. I didn't think it made that much sense for Brodie to have been so particularly enamoured of them, given how she reacted to authority at the school and her general sense of herself as a free spirit (who elevated Art and philosophy over math and science). Perhaps she is simply to sly for me, but it seems on the whole, I strongly prefer Doris Lessing over Muriel Spark. The one vaguely amusing bit was how the painter painted all the girls as looking like their teacher, but then this joke was spoiled when she repeated it two or three times, and then even had one of the girls confront the painter over it. Not terribly subtle after all...

I wrapped up The Tin Drum (more on this later), and Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I have to admit I didn't care for the second one much either, mostly because I didn't like the way Spark structured the book, draining it of any real dramatic interest (we know within the first few pages of the death of a character and that there will be a betrayal). So then you think it will be more of a procedural as it is revealed who betrayed whom. And then that is revealed midway through in a very underwhelming fashion. Finally, the why is sort of left dangling but just isn't that interesting. When we finally get to the how -- there is another objection that arises. (Minor spoiler alert). It is not impossible but it seems unlikely that Jean Brodie with her great attachment to Art and the Pre-Raphaelites (particularly Rossetti) and slightly unconventional morality would be so attracted to Mussolini and then Hitler. It's not impossible, but it doesn't hang together very well for me, and it sort of was one more thing that I didn't care for in the novel. I though Spark was making a number of points about how adults can be capricious and that unconventional, unfusty teachers are not necessarily that much better than traditional ones (they just have a different set of prejudices). I didn't think she was also (intentionally) making a point that it is difficult to be consistent with one's politics and one's way of life, but perhaps she was. If so, I think it was one step too far in being almost postmodern in not having any grounding under the main character(s). If that was the best of the bunch, I will have to think long and hard about reading any other Spark, since I have dozens of other books to try to tackle first that would seem to speak to me more. Anyway, I am now alternating between Calvino's Six Memos for the New Millennium and John A. William's The Man Who Cried I Am, which I've had, it seems, for forever.

Some do, and I've tried to pick those up. Silverstri was one I thought was particularly good, and definitely Melos. But it is kind of depressing looking at the newish Abbado or Kubelik sets and seeing that it really is the canon over and over again (counting Dvorak symphonies as canonical).

Maybe that's why he's not going the mix tape route. (If you've never heard the song Mix Tape from Avenue Q, it's worth listening to. Though to be honest, I find the soundtrack really picks up a few songs later with You Can Be As Loud As the Hell You Want! )

This one? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Leonard-Bernstein-Edition/dp/B00LL4U1TE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406698479&sr=8-1&keywords=bernstein+sony Tempting...

Resurrecting this thread as it has become relevant to me (after a long period away from Toronto, I am back, presumably for good). I've seen a small LP shop on Queen St. near Jones but I didn't go in. When I have a minute or ten, I will pop in and see if they have any jazz. While I've pared down the collection a lot, if anyone has tips on the best place to sell (or trade) CDs or vinyl -- jazz and/or classical -- do let me know. Vortex takes a wide variety of stuff, but absolutely no classical according to their website. It looks like Amaroso takes classical, at least for trade.

For whatever reason, the Amazon.ca price on this box set (Complete DG recordings of Ferenc Fricsay) is much better by about $100 than Amazon.com. The UK site also has a better price. http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00K12RE92/ref=s9_newr_gw_d54_g15_i2?pf_rd_m=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0YENG7D86V1Q0HX2HDXP&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1687860482&pf_rd_i=915398 That might not last long though. I don't know what the shipping to US would be. While this has much merit, I am going to respectfully decline...