THE NOT SO CRUELEST CUTS OF ALL

This past weekend I had the second week of my medieval fencing workshops at the Academy of European Medieval Martial Arts.

We went through the stances and basic postas again and I felt myself getting confused at some of the stances. Each posta or guard, can be done on either side of the body, so left posta's are done with the right foot forward, left posta's are done with the right foot forward and I kept screwing them up. I found this a bit surprising, as I usually have no problem distinguishing left from right.

Marx was on the left. Jerry Falwell is on the right. See, I know this ...

Then our instructor started to take us through the various cuts with the sword, each cut coming from a posta and then returning it. I did well with the cuts, edge straight and stopping it right on the mark.

The posta's then began to make some kind of sense to me. Instead of being absract stances, they were for something.

Standing and holding the sword with the tip down and in front of you (boar's tooth) then opening your wrist to hold it to one side (left or right tail) or laying the edge of the sword across your shoulder, tip pointed back (women's guard) began to make sense when moving the sword up through all the points, so I was swinging it up around my head to guard or turn into an attack

Some directional confusion aside, I like the precision of it, the control you must exact on the blade. This isn't Hollywood fencing with its big fast sweeping movements that look so cool on the screen. This is all based on reality, interpreted from the l'arte dell'armizare, not a fanciful work of fiction, but a training manual for fighting. Not fencing, not sport, but fighting

The instructors are very good at always explaining the real life application of everything that we're doing. And I see the benefit of learning all these elements, the guards and thrusts and cuts, and learning them precisely; it can be a very fine thing, your grip on the hilt, the position of the "true" or cutting edge of the sword always being aware of your feet and where the sword is pointed and where you are holding the balance of your body

That balance, of course, is a bit of an issue with me and my not so bionic ankle. The instructor kept questioning why I was having trouble shifting weight from the rear foot to the front foot and I had to explain my situation; I sometimes felt that if I shifted the weight the way she wanted, Vic would be more Weeble than D'Artagnan. But let's face it, I could never pull off a Musketeer, my French accent is really really stinky

I have four sessions left and I know we will continue to work on our stances, guards, cuts etc. I don't expect any sparring, I don't believe that's covered in the course. I've earned a month of free formal lessons at the academy which covers grappling, dagger, sword etc. I'm hoping by the time I reach the end of this course that I'll be able to evaluate whether or not I have the physical capacity to continue

Gee, imagine me learning bare hand and dagger and sword ...

Be afraid. Be very afraid (Oh, that advise wasn't for people on the street, it was for the EMT's and ER wards of Toronto, they should really just clear their calendars)

SOMETIMES IT'S TOO EASY

Sometimes it really is too easy

I just saw a TV commercial for a new infant product. It's Winnie. You know, the little honey loving bear. You know his full name.

Say it to yourself, just to make sure you have it

But he's not ordinary Winnie. He's a baby Winnie, to relate to your human baby one supposes

Now we have Winnie and it comes with a rattle that the baby can hold. When baby shakes the rattle, baby Winnie dances .. ok, it just sits there and vibrates but that pretty much emulates an infant's dance style. And after a couple of tequilla's it pretty much emulates my dance style as well

Anyway

So baby shakes the rattle and baby Winnie dances. Or, as the commercial copy declares, Winnie "goes" Except they don't use baby Winnie's first name. They use his appelation. Now, say Winnie's full name again. Say it, don't spell it, just do it phonetically. Keep the "baby" part in the name please

Yes lady and gentlemen, give your baby a rattle and when she sakes it really really hard, you can "watch baby poo go"

Sometimes, it's just too easy

WHY WOULD ANYONE GIVE ME A SWORD???

But they did. Give me a sword that is.
The "they" in question is the Academy of European Martial Arts based here in Toronto

AEMMA teaches, studies and competes in the form of medieval fencing known as l'arte dell 'armizare as chronicled in a 14th century manuscript by Fiore dei Liberi. This swordmaster laid out in detail, with illustrations, the tenets of grappling, dagger and sword fighting. The Academy teaches these disciplines as faithfully as possible
Which brings us to me. You know, the guy with the messed up ankle and the 50 something body who's major form of exercise is hoisting pints of beer .. hmmm .. does fencing require strong elbows?

OK, I'm not that bad, but seriously, I am not in the greatest of shape (remember, I sit on my bum for a living and no, I don't have any job openings just now). And that ankle is pretty much a mess. I know it can be more flexible but for sure there is a limit to that flexibility. The other issue I have is my balance. Like .. I really don't have it anymore. Once upon a time I was quick and I had good balance. I'm still fairly quick ... watch me pop the lid off this beer bottle.

Oh too bad. You blinked.

So anyway ... AEMMA offers all kinds of instructional variants, starting out with a apprentice style system and working your way up. Commitment to time and commitment to money. I found a way to test the waters as it were: A six week course offered through the ROM. A basic introduction to the the, um, basics that would allow to me A: see how my ankle would fare and B: just find out if I wanted to commit to further training.

It's not that I have failure to commit ... I wouldn't want to make that strong of a statement .. cause that would be .. well .. commiting.

I had my first class this past Saturday. The stated capacity of the class was supposed to be 20 students which I thought was pretty good. It got even better. There are five students and three instructors which is about as good a ratio for which you could ask.

And I'm probably going to need all the personal attention I can get.

The class is four guys and one girl, all of them of the age where they could call me Dad .. or maybe even Grandpa. Hell, the instructors could call me Grandpa. Hmm, I know online I must be able to buy a walker with a custom sword attachment

This first class covered the very basics, namely postures and the basic guards, called postes. Unlike formal European competition fencing, this form is based on the reality of the situation, it's not a sport, it's a defensive art form. So instead of moving in a straight line, the postes are designed to give you 360 degree protection from your enemies. With me, though, I found my enemies may need to give me a moment while I sort out my lefts from rights. It's not something I normally have issues with, but it's the point of the sword point always aimed at the person to whom you want to kill ... Which is funny, cuz the instructors seemed like such nice guys ..

I could see that once I became comfortable with these postes, that everything flows from them, including your attacks. There's a logic and precision in it that appeals to me so it all comes down to practise and execution ...

Um, perhaps "execution" is a bad choice of words when discussing swords

Stay tuned

ONE SERVING OF THANKSGIVING, ON THE ROCKS

Hey stranger, welcome to Vic's Warthog Bar. Take a stool (don't mind the crumbs and the spilled beer and the discarded video tapes, it's that kind of place) and enjoy our special today: Our annual Thanksgiving repast. A big warm bowl of family and friends, served on the rocks .. the rocks of Georgian Bay that is.
Yup, this is no ordinary Thanksgiving Special my friend. Oh sure, you have your turkey and your gravy and your stuffing, but this is the Pointe Au Baril Special so you also have your rocks, your waters and your trees changing colour

Now Thanksgiving in Canada, as you would know dear patron (cuz if you're a patron of the Warthog Bar you would be up on your history, down on judgement perhaps, but up on history) has nothing to do with Pilgrims, it is essentially the tradition of the harvest festival. In some parts of the country that would mean conveying oneself to the celebration in a horse and buggy, or a hay wagon, or a Massey-Ferguson combine, but up here in Pointe Au Baril, they prefer a more aquatic friendly mode of transportation

The ingredients for this Pointe Au Baril Thanksgiving Special are pretty simple. Mix in some sun .
... waves ...

... and of course a nice cold beverage
But of course this is Thanksgiving on the rocks, and by rocks I don't just mean the ice in Dennis's cooler, I mean the rocks of the Canadian Shield that make up the island which provides us with our dining space.
Yes, no cushy couches for the patrons of the warthog bar, these are Georgian Bay people, hardy and rugged .. and um, ok, sometimes passed out on a mattress with the baby

Thanksgiving on the rocks would not be complete without gifts of course. But we are not exchanging turkies here brother, it's only quality goods all the way

You could call this group social Thanksgiveners, they don't like to thank all by themselves

They come in groups, party as a group and of course leave as a group. Head counts are almost as important as beer counts. Almost

So another serving of Thanksgiving served. The imbibers and digesters and game players gone back across the water to their homes. With nothing left behind on the Bay, except of course, the rocks

Oh, and of course, a video

Pointe Au Baril Thanksgiving from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

NUIT BLANCHE TORONTO: ART CRAWL VS BEER CRAWL

Some further musings about this year's Nuit Blanche

As I mentioned in my last post, the art festival may be becoming a victim of its own success. It happens here. Nuit Blanche started out five years ago as the Canadian version of an event hosted in cities like Paris and New York. It attracted thousands of people. mostly die hard arts lovers of which there are many in Toronto

Time goes on, word spreads then the event starts attracting people like Collette and myself; we are not gallery lurkers, up on every new artist who has a show in town but we do enjoy art and we do enjoy street festivals. So the art fest becomes more street fest with food vendors popping up and commercial institutes jumping in to take advantage

It was actually amusing some times as you wandered around, watching people trying to figure out if that light display about the deep emotional benefits of drinking Red Bull was a satirical comment on our reliance on advertising or an actual advert for Red Bull ...

What happens, when something becomes increasingly popular, is that it threatens to become less about the original intent (in this case the opportunity for artists to use public and open spaces) and more about people gathering to be an an event, any event

All summer long Toronto is a city of street festivals. Close off a street to traffic and you will attract people, lots of people. So Nuit Blanche has grown from thousands of people to, last year, hundreds of thousands of people

This year the estimated attendance was around one million. I have no doubt about that. Younge Street in particular was difficult to move about in. Last year we noted that a lot of young people were using this all night festival, with its extended public transut hours, as a party opportunity. I saw it as the normal evolution of the thing, that is what happens in Toronto

But something happened this year to give that natural evolution an artificial boost. No, there were no giant robots wandering around smearing us all with latex paint .. but how cool would that have been? Robots, not that's art!

Ahem

What really happened this year was that the city decided to extend serving hours in the bars. So people could drink themselves senseless until past 4 am. Now, isn't that how you want to appreciate art? Staggering half blind down a street with 100,000 other drunks?

I'm not being hypochritcal. Yes, I enjoy my beers (gosh, really Vic, should we make the news flash now??) and during the evening I enjoyed a pint with our dinner. But I don't go to Nuit Blanche to drink. If they didn't want to serve me a beer with my dinner I would not have cared. Collette and I go to look at the art, to see things we normally wouldn't see and to experience the excitement of being out on the city streets all night with a million of our closest friends ...

Drunken ass holes detract from the experience. I enjoyed some of the exhibits on lower Yonge St but it really became a huge party zone. Daniel Lanois was performing over at Nathan Phillips square and because there was music (well, barely music) it became a huge outdoor rave.

I enjoy the crowds. I love seeing people out on the streets so late at night, when normally our downtown core would be quiet as a grave. But I don't come down for a big drunken party or a rave. I was told that the Drake Hotel, which had several exhibits going on, had hallways filled with vomit

Mmmm art

It's one thing when people redefine an event. As Nuit Blanche has become more popular, the audience has certainly changed the environment somewhat. I think it's great that so many people are coming out to see this kind of art and performances and I absolutely love it when public or private spaces are used in this way.

But let the people decide. The gov't deciding that what we really need is more hours to get wasted is injecting an element right away, in one year, that may have take another three years to develop.

It's commerce over art I suppose. I have no problem with the food vendors setting up all night. I didn't even mind all the promo companies coming down. One of the more popular exhibits was Nuit Market, which brought the tacky old Weston Flea Market downtown in the middle of an art festival ... I loved that juxtaposition of Elvis on Velvet competing with art school grads

But let it all happen. How can this city say they want to promote art well at the same time making it far too easy for the party monsters to take the whole thing over.

I hope this trend doesn't become accelerated. We love Nuit Blanche. We'll continue to go. Perhaps it means avoiding areas like Yonge Stree or city hall which would be a shame, because there are often great exhibits there. People have the right to do what they like and enjoy an event as they like ... perhaps the city should understand that and let things evolve

Now, I think I'll go look at my new art book of images of dogs playing poker while I open a cold beer ...

NUIT BLANCHE TORONTO 2010

Large crowds wandering aimlessly in the streets, giant clown heads peeking out of narrow alley ways, strange shadows walking over the walls of buildings, people standing in line to wait for nothing ...

No, aging near sighted rebel hippies did not finally figure out how to drop LSD into Toronto's water supply. This past weekend saw the return of Nuit Blanche to Toronto. This all night art and performance festival is one of our favorite annual rituals. It's also become the ritual for an awful lot of people, this year saw crowds of around 1 million people, which in Toronto makes something almost a victim of its own success. Judging by the huge amount of drunken teenagers staggering up and down Yonge Street, I don't think everyone was out all night for the art. The two gentlemen in hockey jersies who were pummeling each other outside the restaurant in which we had our dinner were not, I suspect, having a disagreement over surrealism versus impressionists.

Still, the amount of art is almost daunting, something like 130 exhibits spread all over the city. Almost too spread out. Although the TTC did a great job of running all night, there is just literally too much to see. We never seem to make it down to the art zone that spreads out along Queen Street West and by the time we thought of going over to the Distillery District is was too late to catch a bus back in time. Not that that left us with nothing to see. There was tons to see and we were out from about 8 pm till 5 in the morning. And judging by our aching bones the next day, damnit, we may be getting too old for this .. not that it will stop us, mind you.

So, on to the exhibits. The beauty of Nuit Blanche is that you are bound to encounter the unexpected, and you'll walk a few blocks to see something you may never have considered .. Usually what you have to go by is the provided guide book and its descriptions of the exhibits. Sometimes I think the authors of this book have a very keen and twisted sense of humour. Allegory for a Rock Opera, for instance was described thusly: "Historical and popular ephemera fuse in a satirical hodge-podge of visual and aural samples, all of which pose contradictions to our popular understanding of the working class" I think you need to be leery anytime someone uses the term "ephemera" What the allegorical rock opera consisted of, was a small enclosure in which a woman threw rocks into a bucket ...

Rock opera .. rocks .. throwing ... Um, ok, I get it. Now mind you: We watched only a few minutes of a performance piece that was scheduled to run for several more hours. So perhaps there was more to it. That is the thing about performance pieces at Nuit Blanche, they change over the eight hours but I'm not likely to stand around that long to watch them.

Right across from our ardent rock music deconstructer was the exhibit called Nuit Market. It was, in its entirety, a local flea market transplanted to the downtown core. I guess you could make the points of flea market kitch becoming contemporary art, and of the connection of art to commerce, a particularly relevant discussion here in my money-obsessed city.

From the market (no, we didn't take the opportunity to shop though I was curious if they had any dogs playing poker or Elvis on black velvet ... now that my friends, is art!) we went over to Ryerson University which, like the Ontario College of Art and The Distillery, was a kind of art locus of and to itself. Multi media exhibits are very popular at this festival and this year there were a number of exhibits with interactive photo electric properties.
Ning Ning was one such piece. It was a window filled with motion sensitive LED lights that winked on and off as people passed by. Tucked down an alley, people enjoyed this display but perhaps because it was quiet, free of revelling teens and provided a bench ... a perfect exhibit for us old folks.

Down another alley we found Swan's Lake, which featured a bunch of mechanical swans dancing to Tchhaikovsky's music.

Cutting edge, certainly not, but it had a certain charm. A couple even older than us (yes, they exist and no, they weren't using walkers) commented "So far, it's the only thing I like" But they were fans of "real" opera I feel and not, I suppose, "rock" opera.

We went further into the depths of Ryerson hunting for an exhibit called Meeting Point. It was one of several "structures" constructed by the artist as a way of examining our city's relationship between the human and the mechanical. Only it was not a structure. It was big photograph of a structure, one that doesn't really exist.

Now, I've had a couple of days to think about this. Perhaps this was just a badly conceived and/or badly promoted piece or it was an intentional bit of Pirandello ... The space that the artist created is not an actual tangible 3D space, not an actual construct, but just the idea of a construct, impressed upon a real landscape, awaiting our interpretation .. sorry, but I interpreted it as him being too lazy to build the damn thing

From Ryerson we went over to Atrium on the Bay that hosted a couple of exhibits. As we made our through the mall, we saw what looked like a huge instructional dancercise class; a fellow with a mic leading a bunch of people through some dance moves. Turns out this was an exhibit called Dances With Strangers. Again, the description waxed poetically about the social interaction of dance that reflects the immigrant experience of our cultural gestalt ... but it was a bunch of people dancing. Art? Well, not when I'm on the floor, that's for sure

Outside the mall on Bay Street, was False Kratwerk. I was a kind of fan of this 80's "industrial" band from Germany and their music pulsed across the street, but the point of the two people and their similarly dressed mannequin? Well, Kraftwerk wore ties, that much I remember.

But like the Rock Opera, the hinge to performance pieces at Nuit Blanche is that are designed to run all night long. Watching a piece for several minutes may not give you the the proper perspective on the piece. But having said that, we don't go out to this event to spend hours watching one event, we want to experience as many exhibits as we can. Old I may be, but I guess still want my instant gratification.

Nathan Phillip Square at City Hall has always been one of our favorite places to visit during Nuit Blanche, usually something pretty spectacular occupies this big space. This year there was certainly star power in the square. Later That Night At The Drive-In was an exhibit featuring Canadian music superstar Daniel Lanois. The idea being that Lanois had set himself up with with a full portable recording studio, mixing electronic music to accompany various video projections viewed on screens around the square.

I had difficulty connecting to all this because the square is damn big and the screens were scattered about and removed by quite a physical distance from Lanois himself. Yes, I could hear the sounds everywhere but I really couldn't connect the music to the video. The bit of video I saw was a clip from David Cronenberg's Videodrome with a horrible Photoshop like filter applied. I found the music a tad self indulgent and spacey and really, it just left me cold. Perhaps if I had lingered, I would have found something more to my liking, but I didn't find the inspiration to do so.

On the street just beyond City Hall, we found a bus shelter entirely covered with graffiti ... which is not something you normally find in Toronto. You also don't find curtains in the entrance way and inside a couch, stereo, lamps .. this was part of the Bus House Collective, where a series of bus shelters had been transformed into habitation. Something denied to my city's homeless population.

We made our way down Yonge Street, past an old van made into a rotating light fixture ...

... a trio of giant balloon clown heads wedged between two old style office buildings ..

... and a simulated blue fog bank that spread across the street and although simple, was quite effective in creating a completely unique mood on this normally busy street

We made our way over towards St Lawrence Market and found, quite by accident, one of our favorite installations of the evening. In the little parkette behind the Flatiron building, a large tent was erected. Except it wasn't just any ordinary tent. It was a church. Church Intent to be specific.

It wasn't just a church in a tent. It was a church where all the recognizable holy objects were fashioned out of common camping supplies

You admired the craftsmanship right away, the carving in the paddles, fashioning the canoes together to make the Holy Cross, the work done on these old propane gas cylinders ...

But it was more than just the impressive artistry. Perhaps it was the thought of worship as something organic, something commonplace and every day, using these mundane practical objects to mystify religion and its all its grandiose, affected ceremonies

Just think of all those millions, or more likely billions, of dollars wasted on Holy gold and silver when they could have built their houses of worship from canvas and cedar and flotation devices

I don't really have a house of worship but the Royal Ontario Museum may come close, so over we went. As much as I love the ROM, I am not at all a fan of the Crystal, the huge architectural feature recently stuck onside the ROM's lovely over facade, much like a turd dropped on top of a Tiffany egg. But Nuit Blanche gave me a whole new appreciation of the Crystal.

They used the surfaces of the crystal to project the computer animated images of pedestrians who had earlier passed by the museum. This is always something I love about Nuit Blanche, when artists transform public spaces and buildings into something different, like a canvas or a projection screen.

Next door, The Royal Conservatory of Music had also undergone a transformation. Inside the new atrium hung Aurora, a kind of new age forest, from a distance a huge living mass of waving fronds and fairy lights that stretched a good 60 feet to the ceiling.

It was, in fact, a forest of microprocessor lights and textiles that reacted to the air flowing through the big space, to the people moving below, and to a soundtrack of wordless pants and exhalations. The thing's size impressed you at first, then its complexity, the way the lights were interwoven with the material and the material itself, comprised of thousands of delicate filaments that all waved independently. It really did seem organic and it was quite lovely.

We go to Nuit Blanche every year to experience several things: Streets closed off to traffic and opened to humans, public spaces transformed and to just see and experience things we never normally would ... And once again, all those requisites were satisfied.

I still don't what art is I still don't know what some of this stuff meant. I just know that it was an experience, and I shall remember it.

Here's the video, with more of Collette's photo's mixed in, and a sound track provided by Rachelle Van Zanten

Nuit Blanche Toronto 2010 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

TONY CURTIS R.I.P.

Yesterday, at the age of 85, Tony Curtis died
When I go through my list of favourite actors, I'm not sure where Tony would place or even if he would come to mind. That's a misnomer, really. Because many of his movies would make, and have made, several of my lists. He made my list of favourite movie sword fights for his emotion charged duel with Kirk Douglas in The Vikings .
He also deserves honorable mention for his fencing work in what was once one of my favourite comedies, The Great Race. The only reason that movie is no longer one of my favourites is, quite frankly, because they stopped showing it on TV and I haven't thought about it in years
So from this we can establish a couple of things about Mr Curtis, that he was an incredibly athletic actor and he had a way with comedy. More proof of his physical talent comes in movies like Trapeze, an incredibly corny circus melodrama that is memorable only for director Carol Reed's typical wonky camera angles and the dazzling trapeze scenes Curtis performed with Burt Lancaster
More proof of Tony's comedic excellence can be found in a movie that does make a lot of my lists. Some Like It Hot is often remembered for Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon, but Curtis's triple role .. as the jazz player on the lam, that man's drag identity and the Cary Grant impersonation he does as Monroe's wooer .. always stand out in my mind. I'm pretty sure that as the fake millionaire pursuing Marilyn, Curtis used the phrase "Judy, Judy, Judy" which became a staple of Cary Grant impressions for many years.
I suppose these are the images of Curtis that linger in most people's mind, the gorgeous physically gifted comedian .. and let's face fact, the man was gorgeous. So gorgeous that he was cast in Spartacus as Lawrence Olivier's boy toy.
But the man had a long, long career and in that time played a wide variety of roles. He took noteable dramatic turns in movies like The Defiant Ones with Sidney Portier, a movie that was famous in its day for addressing issues of race but come across now as a bit of a pot boiler
But that movie proved Tony's bravery and his dedication to the craft of acting. He was a movie star, he was a pretty boy, he was packaged as a romantic leading man, but he wasn't scared of pursuing controversial roles, like The Defiant Ones, or roles that did not cast him in the most flattering of light. One such example is The Sweet Smell of Success (again with Burt Lancaster) that cast Curtis as a totally immoral, devious Broadway public relations man. He did not hide from this character's hard edges, he come across as slimy and heartless under that polished, gleaming pretty exterior

More famously, Curtis put his reputation as a suave, funny leading man on the line with the darkest performance of his career, as the titular Boston Strangler. Curtis did not hold back in this role. He played the man as a monster, a predator, and his role is surprisingly restrained while at the same time showing us some of the terrible darkness that must live inside someone who could perform such deeds
It seems that to survive for decades in Hollywood, you have to be able to reinvent yourself. Curtis was certainly capable of doing that. Comedian, leading man, dramatic actor, ultimate villain. In later life, he reinvented himself as Hollywood icon and artist and of course, father of Jamie Lee Curtis .. that in itself a significant achievement don't you think
Tony popped up in movies and TV over the last couple of decades, usually playing soap operaish bad guys or some caricature of himself. Perhaps that is why I don't often think of him, now, as being one of my favourites. And yet look at that movie list. Certainly The Vikings is one of my all time favorite movies and he was not just a tourist in that movie, he was an integral part of what makes it work for me. Some Like it Hot and Sweet Smell of Success often come to mind but of course for very different reasons. Both are overall strong movies and, in a sense, ensemble pieces. He was a movie star who had no problem being a co-star.
Now that Tony is gone, let's not forget about him. A lot of his movies were very much of their time and perhaps don't stand up, but others are as good today as the day they were released. He was nominated for an Oscar for The Boston Strangler but he did not win. Perhaps that is why he rarely is mentioned as a great dramatic actor. Or perhaps it's because he was a such a fine comedic actor, albeit an understated one, happy to immerse himself into a role, or a variety of roles in one movie, as in Some Like It Hot. Or, even better example, The Great Impost0r, where he played a man who pretended to be everyone, in his life
When I think of Tony Curtis I think of the movie star, of the icon, as the legend. I don't immediately think of the actor, not until I think of the roles and the movies themselves. So Rest In Piece, great impostor, what better appellation could one give to a great actor.