Some dialogue, some books some other things

I was going to call this post “Miscellany” or some variant if I have already used that but I realize these titles have to be more descriptive, in case I or anyone else wants to find them later. Mostly this is a miscellaneous post because I have been doing a lot of things late and this has given me both a lot of different things to talk about and too much sleepiness to organize them properly.

1. I have been trying to read a lot of different kinds of books lately to expand my reading horizons, and mainly it has been pretty fun. I read an Elmore Leonard novel this past week, Freaky Deaky. I liked the tight witty dialogue, the scene-setting in Detroit and all the little technical details but I ended up not enjoying the book all that much. It was published in 1988 and while I try not to evaluate books from the past by the standards of the present, the way the characters treated issues of race, gender, sexual assault were so unsettling the whole book felt vaguely yuck to me. If anyone can recommend a Leonard novel that is a little less vile by 2025 standards, I would be interested—as I say, I did think the writing was good. Now I’m onto My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh, which someone on Goodreads called “The Catcher in the Rye for hot girls.” Doesn’t seem…far off, actually. Depending what you think of Holden Caufield. Expect a report.

2. I went to see Bryan Adams in concert with some pals on Friday night and it was really really really fun. I was trying to write—and may yet—a post on The Great Canadian Nostalgia. I read This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin a while back and it was overall just such a great book for many reasons but there was a bit about how music imprints in your youth much more deeply than it ever will again later in life and that just feels so viscerally true. When Bryan played “Cuts Like a Knife” every single syllable of the lyrics rose to my lips as if from nowhere—I hadn’t even remembered the song existed. Every song fit like a tight puzzle piece into my memory. It was so very satisfying. I try not to indulge in TOO much nostalgia—the present is what we mainly have to deal with—but it is very pleasant.

3. At a bookclub meeting on the weekend, we briefly switched gears and played a video game called Tiny Bookshop, wherein you stock, organize and decorate your bookshop (which is actually a little trailer you drive around down—cute!) and then handsell books to your customers based on what they say they are interested in and your current inventory. It’s all real books and the type of fun literary puzzles I always hoped for when I actually worked in a bookstore but rarely got (mainly people wanted to be left alone to browse, to get books for school, or the one the movie they just saw was based on or the one they just heard about on the radio—this was in 2002 so I imagine there is more TikTok involved now). Anyway, it was awesome and I will probably end up buying it but so funny that there are enough of us interested in such things for this game to exist??!!

4. Yet another thing I did this weekend (what a weekend!) was see the musical Bright Star at the Panasonic theatre on Yonge. I don’t have an articulate thought to share about it but the music was so lovely and there’s tickets still available so I’d encourage you to go if you like musicals. The plot is…well, a musical plot. But it’s fun, and so very pretty.

5. Dialogues:

   1. (Mark and Rebecca watch season 2 of White Lotus on TV)
      MS (pauses TV): I have to tell you something.
      RR: Ok?
      MS: I broke the plug for the bathtub.
      RR: You had to tell me that right now?
      MS: I got worried that you would go in the bathroom and see that it was in three pieces.
      RR: Why is it in three pieces?
      MS: I broke it.
      RR: …
      MS: I was going to take a bath, and I put it in the drain but after a while I could see the water was going out anyway and I didn’t know why.
      RR: It has two settings. When it is flipped up it’s a hair drain, when it’s down it’s a plug.
      MS: ok. I don’t see why we can’t have a normal plug.
      RR: You were there when we bought it, we bought it together.
      MS: I was?
      RR: Yes. Maybe you weren’t paying attention. But we’ve had it for two years. Have you not taken a bath this whole time?
      MS: I guess not. I’m more a shower guy.
      RR: Ok, well you just flip the top part down and it becomes a plug.
      MS: It actually doesn’t matter because I didn’t know how to close it so I fiddled with it for a while and now it’s in three pieces on the bathroom counter.
      RR: You don’t think it’s going back together?
      MS: I don’t, no.
      RR: Why didn’t you throw it in the garbage?
      MS: I didn’t want you to yell at me. I wanted to give you a chance to see it.
      RR: I trust you to tell when it’s time to throw it in the garbage.

   2. RR: I found a half a bag of arborio rice in the pantry. Like really old. Like the bag was sticky.
      MS: Gross.
      RR: So I want to make a risotto next week and use it up.
      MS: That’s cool. But do you know how to make a risotto?
      RR: …
      MS: We can try to figure it out together.
      RR: What I want to know is, where you have been for the entire marriage if you don’t think I can make a risotto? Particularly for all the risottos?
      MS: So you know how to do it, then?
      RR: Also what you think we’re doing with HALF a bag of arborio rice?

   3. (very long involved story with detailed stage directions including who was sitting where and what everyone’s name was including people and animals)
      RR: …was that story even interesting?
      MS: Sure, it was all right.
      RR: Like on a scale of one to ten?
      MS: A solid 4.
      RR: Oh no.
      MS: Maybe even a 5!