Guns, Germs & Steel

I've started reading Jared Diamonds Guns, Germs and Steel for the next Non-Fiction Book Club event.  It's very readable.  I just finished a chapter all about Polynesian societies and the environmental factors that informed their different levels of development.

Saturday morning I went on a Walks with Profs outing.  We met at Eglinton & Dufferin and walked north to a magic shop. (To tell the truth, I'm not much interested in magic.) Unfortunately, the starting time was 10:30, and at least one person got there after we'd left.  I had to skip breakfast to avoid being late.

On the PBS website I saw the American Experience documentary about the Rockefellers.  Nelson Rockefeller kind of wrested the family leadership from his older brother John III, which reminded me of John F. Kennedy's rivalry with his older brother Joe. (They didn't include the famous photo of Nelson giving students the finger.)

John and Father have removed the bricks from one of the two new window holes in the living room.

I'm writing this on Sunday morning, and the blog already has over 100 pageviews for the day!

Sagrada

Today I was to going to meet Bev for lunch, but we didn't meet. (She emailed me about a different time, but I didn't check my email before leaving.) I got pretty soaked.

This evening I went to see a documentary at the Bloor.  I used up the second of two free tickets I got when I became a member there a year ago.  I recently renewed my membership and got a voucher for four free popcorns, one of which I claimed tonight.  I also got the July schedule, and they'll be showing a movie about a casting director from the 1970's who discovered a lot of famous actors and revolutionized the business of casting.  Sounds interesting.

The film I saw was Sagrada:  The Mystery of Creation, about Antoni Gaudi's Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona, which they've been building for over a century and may take another century to finish.  It looks like something that a wizard roused out of the earth.  I hope I live to see it completed!  If there's any creation I believe in, it's artistic creation. (This reminded me that someday I want to read Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth, about the long construction of a gothic cathedral in mediaeval France.)

Wednesday this blog got just over 100 pageviews.  I guess people are interested in The Last Picture Show and Unruly Voices.

A filling

This afternoon I went to the dentist and got an old filling replaced. (I would have done it three weeks ago, but that was the same day as the Coro Verdi end-of-season concert.) I spent a few hours recovering.

At Hulu I started watching the second season of Alfred Hitchock Presents and saw an episode with Cedric Hardwicke as a father whose daughter killed a man and sets out to protect the family from embarrassment, ultimately by framing another man for the murder.

Unotelly has links to a lot of channels that I've only started looking at.  This evening I opened the link to pbs.org and saw an American Experience documentary about Billy the Kid.  New Mexico author (and Ben-Hur author) Lew Wallace does not come across as honorable:  Billy testified against a number of killers on the assumption that he'd be pardoned, but Wallace abandoned him to his enemies.

Talk about coincidence!  In the afternoon I got the filling, in the evening I saw the Freaks and Geeks episode where Neil's dentist partner had a party for all his clients.  That was also the episode where Linda found out that people in detention weren't allowed to study. (Such a petty show of power is a sign of a weak school.)

Non-Fiction Book Club

This evening I went to the Non-Fiction Book Club Meetup at the Reference Library.  We discussed Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind:  Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.  I just bought the book three days ago so I only had time to skim through it.  Fortunately, every chapter ended with a summary.  Someone started going on about the issue of gun ownership.  Next month's book is Guns, Germs and Steel.

I've got up to level 65 in Candy Crush Saga and 56 in Pet Rescue Saga.  So now it's time to quit them again, and I again removed both apps.  How long before my next regression? (On the subway today, I saw an Asian woman playing Candy Crush Saga on her Ipod.)

I've started watching The Twilight Zone on Hulu, which I can now get with our VPN.  Rod Serling's specialty, of course, was the perverse final twist:  I just saw an episode with Ed Wynn as a salesman who makes a deal with Death to delay his departure until he's managed the really big sales pitch he's always dreamed of, but then a little girl he likes is hit by a car and the only way he can save her is by giving Death the pitch....  The original musical theme (they didn't yet include the famous four notes) was by the great Bernard Herrmann.  I've heard that they managed to slip a lot of subtle social comment into the show, on issues like racial tolerance, because the network people thought it was just weird stories and didn't look any closer.

The Last Picture Show

Daughter: "She's forty years old!" Mother: "So am I, honey.  It's a rather bitchy age"--The Last Picture Show

This evening I saw Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 movie of Larry McMurtry's novel The Last Picture Show (for the second time) at the Revue. It was one of the first movies of the 1970s "nostalgia" genre, but that label doesn't to justice to its realism and honesty.  Its spare, understated style reminded me of old-world directors like Ingmar Bergman.  

The movie introduced several actors who later became famous, including Jeff Bridges, Ellen Burstyn, and Cybill Shepherd, who played a tease acting like a fast girl.  Mother once told me that when she was young people in her community would call a fast girl a "clipper." (As in the fast sailing ships.)

They showed it as part of a series of books turned into movies. (In a month or two they're doing The Godfather.) They were giving away some books as prizes, and I won the last one by naming Bogdanovich's first wife whom he left for Shepherd:  Polly Platt, who was this movie's production designer.  I got the last book,  Mark Kingwell's Unruly Voices:  Essays on Democracy, Civility and the Human Imagination.  Even if I'd won earlier and had a choice, I probably would have chosen that one, though Literature Saved My Life also looked interesting.

What's a VPN?

Father to his teenage daughter: "Look, if I were really a prude, you wouldn't exist!"--Freaks and Geeks

Today I subscribed to a VPN.  That's a "virtual private network," which means we can now get access to a lot of interesting channels worldwide.  Most importantly, we can get the American version of Netflix, which has a much wider range of programming than the Canadian version. (I was saying that the only advantage of living in the U.S. instead of Canada is their version of Netflix.) 

There are also channels like Hulu, which has a lot of classic TV shows, and even some European channels!  Yet I can't help feeling that we're circumventing the rules somehow:  I wonder if this will all be banned soon.

Just saw another funny episode of Freaks and Geeks, the one where Linda and Kim ran over Millie's dog and felt guilty about it, while Bill's mother was dating his gym teacher, to his great discomfort.  Notice that I'm now writing titles with italics instead of ALLCAPS?  I've been learning more of this software's available features.  They also have bold and underlined and, if you want to be nice and ironic in a modern internet style, strikethrough!

THE FLY

"God, don't let it out!"--THE FLY

The weather is pretty hot these days.  It's a bit hard to sleep at night.  I've noticed that the potatoes have really taken off this year. (They're suited to wet springs.)

This afternoon I went to the Chapters at John & Richmond (near the Scotiabank cinema) and bought RIGHTEOUS MINDS, which my Non-Fiction Book Club Meetup will be talking about in three days, and GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL, which we'll be talking about next month.  Time for some speed reading!

This evening I went to see the original 1958 version of THE FLY, with Vincent Price and Herbert Marshall in co-starring roles. (Script by future bestselling novelist James Clavell.) It was pretty creepy.  The film was set in a MAD MEN-like bourgeois household, in Montreal of all places!

This was part of a week of monster movies they're showing at the Revue.  I was joined by Mark and Jeannie of the Classic Movies Meetup.  Afterward the weather was so nice that we walked back to the Dundas West station instead of waiting for the streetcar.

TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE

"Let's get him!" "Let's get him HARD!"--TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE

This morning I went to a Scottish Meetup at the Pipers, which is just a short distance from our house.  I met Harry, who comes from Belfast, and Joanne.  We were also joined by Trevor, who wasn't part of the group but wanted to meet us! (Unfortunately, Fiona the hostess--she and her brother own the Pipers--wasn't feeling well and missed the event.)

I had the traditional Scottish breakfast, largely the same as an English fry-up.  It disagreed with me, and I napped in the afternoon and got sick later.  Next time I'll order something different.

In the evening I saw John Huston's TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, yet again, at a Classic Movie Meetup in the Fairlawn screening room.  This was the first event where we managed to fill the place. (Host Alex had to stand.) It's Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston at their best, an appropriate follow-up to the previous MAGNIFICENT SEVEN event.  Afterward we had a long discussion about a lot of different movies.

I've finished the first half of THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP.  I plan to take a break and read some different stuff (including some of the latest LAPHAM'S QUARTERLY) before returning to it.

Auditions

This evening AFACT had three new people coming to audition. (I took rudimentary notes.) They were called Linda, Tamara and Anastasia.  They read the roles of Sheila the party crasher, Sabrina the stable manager's daughter, Rebecca the daughter in law, and Lily the maid.  In a couple of weeks we're going to see the murder mystery show at the Old Mill.

Moira was throwing out some old books we can't sell to make more room in our bookcases.  I spotted some children's storybooks which I decided to keep in my room. (My bookcases now have some room to spare.)

Our Mazda is almost twelve years old. (We bought it on 9/11.) It'll soon be uninsurable, and Father's decided we can go without a car then.  We're now city people!

I'm sure that this trunk in the basement contains some of our piano books, and we're getting some new bookcases in the living room, so I'm hoping we'll bring out those piano books and put them near the piano.  Who knows how many other old books are in that trunk?

I've finally learned how to format these posts so the words are right next to the margin on the right as well as left side!

TWENTY FEET FROM STARDOM

Today I went to see Dr. Hassan.  He told me that in Arab countries a bereaved family can hire a professional wailer!

I read over sixty pages of THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP today.  In the most recent part Little Nell has been working for a travelling waxworks, presenting verbose descriptions of the figures. (One is of Lord Byron and makes schoolgirls swoon.)

Donald came over and suggested getting a V.P.N. so we can get the American version of Netflix with its far wider selection.  We may be ending our satellite TV subscription so I think I'll buy an antenna to receive HDTV broadcasts as far away as Buffalo.

This evening I saw TWENTY FEET FROM STARDOM at the Bloor.  It's a documentary about backup singers and their career aspirations.  Lisa Fischer was pretty stunning!  It was a sneak preview to raise money for Big Life, a charity that protects elephants and giraffes from poachers in eastern Africa.

I've sent an email to Bereaved Families of Toronto inquiring about their services.  I imagine they'll have sessions for bereaved people to get together.

Yesterday this blog got a record 163 pageviews!

Music trivia night

Last night I dreamed of riding a bicycle through deep powdered snow; meeting movie director David Lean; finding myself three years into the future living in a different place; a science fiction story about a youth ending up in a future where his reading and cycling skills were now at a premium because nobody bothered to learn those skills anymore; and observing that I didn't like Disney's Humphrey the Bear cartoon IT'S IN THE BAG. 

IT'S IN THE BAG is an actual cartoon from the 1950s where this park ranger makes the park's bears dispose of the trash in their individual sectors of the park before they'll get their dinner. (He tries to make the chore a game at first, but they aren't fooled.) Unfortunately, Humphrey's sector is in the middle of the ticktacktoe-style grid, so the other bears quickly shift their own trash into his area and go off to have their dinner while Humphrey's stuck was getting rid of the whole load!

Father's made a plan to renovate the living room by knocking two windows into the southern wall.  That won't be easy, since this is a brick house.

This evening I went to an Over 40 Meetup at the Madison where we competed in a music trivia contest.  Alas, I'm not quite as good at music as I am with some genres of trivia.  Al, Liz and I formed a team called The Experts.  Al knew more than I did, but at least I knew more than Liz.  At one point, Liz spilled wine on our sheet. (Coincidentally, one of the music pieces we heard was titled "Spill the Wine.") The winning team was called The Animals.

THE RED SHOES

"Why do you want to dance?" "Why do you want to live?"--THE RED SHOES

This morning I helped Father trim the branches from the trees that were too close to our southern neighbors' house.  When I help Father with something, what tends to happen is that he does most of the work while I stand around waiting for something to do. (Like a government project.)

In the evening I saw Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's THE RED SHOES at the Event Screen, the latest Film 101 event hosted by Murray Pomerance.  It's about three artists--Diaghilev-like impresario Anton Walbrook, composer Marius Goring and ballerina Moira Shearer--coming together to create a ballet based on the Hans Christian Andersen story "The Red Shoes," the one about a girl who can't take off her magical dancing shoes and gets danced to death.  It's also about the first two artists' pissing match over the third. (Frankly, being married to Goring doesn't look like a barrel of fun.)

Brilliantly photographed by Jack Cardiff, it's a visual triumph.  And it's an earful as well as an eyeful:  I liked the parallel between the ballet's frenzied dance music and the train engine noise foreshadowing Shearer's fate.  But the message of art as an "all or nothing" proposition that doesn't allow compromise struck me as a bit silly.

KICK-ASS

"My only superpower was being invisible to girls"--KICK-ASS

Today I saw the Marvel comic-book movie KICK-ASS at the Event Screen.  I now sit in a regular place there, at the back row half a dozen seats from the left.  This is the one about a teenager who decides to become a superhero vigilante, but he's essentially an amateur.  Then he meets two pros:  the father-daughter team of Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage, resembling Bryan Cranston in BREAKING BAD) and a bloodthirsty, foul-mouthed preteen called Hit Girl.  There's also a gangster's son who becomes Red Mist to infiltrate the superhero circle.  It's sometimes tasteless but pretty fun overall.

I've finished shelving my books.  I even shelved some of the big heap I bought in London last September, which are only seeing the light of day now.  Sometime I may have the bookcase on the north wall and the old desk on the west wall trade places, so that the latter will get in the way of the north window instead of the west.  But I'm not sure:  the west window has no curtains and the desk keeps some of the annoying evening light out.

It looks like we'll be interring Mother's ashes in Cape Breton in the last week of August.  Margaret wants to bring her children, and we'll also invite Puitak and Gordon to come.

Rearranging

We've been rearranging the house quite a bit since Mother died.  Today I rearranged my own room.  The new desk that was on the south side I moved to the southeast corner.  The dresser that was at the southeast I moved to the northwest.  The old desk that was at the northwest I moved to the west.  The dresser mirror and the top of the old desk block much of my western window, but I don't care.

I moved my bed at the southeast corner so it's facing east instead of north.  And I moved the new bookcase to the northeast corner.  Fortunately, it's so new that I'd barely started to fill it.  The old desk, on the other hand, was full of books that had to be taken out, and I've barely started to return them.  The old computer desk that was at the northeast corner I moved out of my room. (We may set it up in the living room so Father won't have to climb the attic stairs to use the computer.) There are a couple of other items I'll be moving out--we're likely to put them in the hallway--but first I'll have to move the books on top of them.

Moira and Father think my room looks better-arranged now.  I also did some vacuuming there. (I was wondering, why is the dust that accumulates in a vacuum cleaner grey instead of, say, brown?) I have a little carpet which I took outside and shook to remove its dust.  I said, "Look at me, I'm Rolf Harris!" Rolf Harris being an Australian singer we saw on TV when we were in England in the mid-1960s.  Part of his music he made with a "wobble board" which he flicked in the same way I was flicking the carpet.  I wish Mother could have seen me!

THE LAST COMMAND

Tsarist general (just before the revolution): "The show will be over in a minute"--THE LAST COMMAND

This morning I was going to go on another Walking Meetup at Sunnyside Park.  But once again, I was late!  And I was going to go to a Karaoke Meetup in the evening, but Jonah the organizer couldn't make it and it was cancelled.

Moira came home today, accompanied by Margaret and her children who are in Toronto to see a Taylor Swift concert.  But we haven't seen much of them so far.

I rented the DVD of THE LAST COMMAND, a silent movie directed by that madman Josef Von Sternberg.  It starts Emil Jannings, a German who was one of the finest actors of '20s cinema.  He specialized in playing humiliated characters, like the demoted hotel doorman in THE LAST LAUGH and Marlene Dietrich's swain in THE BLUE ANGEL.  His performance here, along with THE WAY OF ALL FLESH, won him the first Best Actor Oscar.

In this movie Jannings plays a Russian prince commanding the imperial armies in World War I just before the Russian Revolution breaks out.  He gets involved with a woman who's dedicated to the revolution but also attracted to him.  In the last part he's a broken refugee in Hollywood, playing an extra in a movie set in the earlier time, directed by a former revolutionary (William Powell) whom he'd once arrested.

AFACT

This evening I went to another Applause for a Cause Theatre meeting.  Vic Blackman, whom I know from TOR, joined the group as stage manager.  It looks like maybe a dozen people will come to next week's casting call.  There'll be more women than men, but we can have a woman play a male role (what they call a "trousers role" in opera).  I rehearsed my lines again.  I got the idea to divide them into two or three sentences each to organize them in my brain.

I've mentioned that there's a lot about Mother that I never learned. But she did tell us a lot of stories about her childhood.  Like there was the time that her father brought home a Christmas tree, she didn't like it, so he went out a got another one. (Her mother said that he never did that for any of his other children.) Or the time that her father was griping that young people in the present day (then ca. 1930) were into dancing shamelessly, and her mother reminded him that when he was young he'd danced in a graveyard once! Or the time that she and her sister were in a penny candy store, she said "Let's get two cents worth of this," and her sister said "Two cents me eyeball!" A man overheard them and got a big kick out of it:  when he met my aunt soon afterward, he couldn't resist repeating "Two cents me eyeball!"

Art walk

Yesterday I went on another ROMwalk, in the Grange area near the AGO.  Puitak lives in that area, and I visited her and told her about Mother.  Today she and Gordon brought us flowers and a sympathy card.

Today I went on Betty-Anne's art walk. (I got there early for a change.) We started at Alison Milne gallery where they were displaying black & white photos of Detroit's urban decay:  one photo reminded me of the room where Sleeping Beauty found the spinning wheel and pricked her finger.  Then we went to Pari Nadimi gallery and saw photos of Italy's suburban wasteland and paintings that looked like double-exposure photos.

Betty-Anne normally points out interesting shops along Queen Street as we pass between destinations, but we got caught in the rain. (Shoulda worn my raincoat.) So we hurried to Graven Feather  and met Holly Wheatcroft on the opening night of her exhibition.  Then we went to the nearby Ursa restaurant and got samples of this dish that combined tofu and mushrooms and alfalfa sprouts and some other stuff:  I suppose it must have been a delicacy, but I'm really not an expert.

In the last week I've returned to the computer games Candy Crush Saga and Pet Rescue Saga.  It's a bit like an ex-smoker returning to his habit in a time of stress.  I've advanced past Level 50 in Candy Crush Saga, but in Pet Rescue Saga I'm still stuck at Level 34.

THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP

I've started reading the early Charles Dickens novel THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP.  It's Dickens at his most shamelessly melodramatic.  It's rather hit & miss:  the first few chapters have a narrator character, but then he gets replaced with conventional third-person narration.  Mr. Quilp is an obvious but gleefully written dwarf villain. (Visually grotesque bad guys are a long cultural tradition, from Shakespeare to Dick Tracy.)

There's a funny chapter when Little Nell's whelpish brother has proposed to his friend Dick Sniveller that he'll pressure her into eventually marrying Dick, and the only problem is that Dick already has a girlfriend called Sophie Wackles.  So he goes to a social event at a girl's school run by Sophie and her mother and sisters, planning to act jealous and dump her.  And there's also a market gardener there who Sophie's older sister and mother want her to marry instead... It's like something from a different book, and a better one.

I wish I could tell Mother about this book:  that's the sort of thing she liked hearing about.  I wonder if my writing on this subject seems emotionally distant, like Joan Didion's THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING which I happened to read recently. (I want to read the sequel, about her daughter's death.)

I had an unusual dream last night.  It took place at Broadmoor, the British institution for the criminally insane whose inmates have included psychopaths like one of the Kray brothers and one of the Moors Murderers. (Their partners were judged sane and ended up in conventional prison.) My parents were there to babysit some children, but I remembered that Mother was dead, and she suddenly disappeared from the scene.

Maybe Broadmoor in this dream was the world of the living, full of crazy people and dangerous people.  And maybe babysitting those kids meant raising me and my siblings.  And of course Mother's sudden disappearance was her death.

THE GREAT ESCAPE

John and Kathrine came over again today and did a lot of yard work.  I didn't do much, just separating their clippings into stuff that'll fit into our compost and branches that we'll have to bundle up and let the city collect. (Or at least, I started that job.) But I did get to cook dinner, which was the rest of the Indian food plus some rice and boneless chicken.  I probably wouldn't have even got to do that if Father hadn't been drowsy!

I found out online about a support group for bereaved families in Toronto.  I went out and found their office--it's near the YWCA headquarters in the Summerhill area--but I think I came at the wrong time and couldn't find anyone.  I'll try again later.

This evening I saw John Sturges' THE GREAT ESCAPE at the event screen.  It was made by the same people as THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, with some of the same actors, particularly Steve McQueen, and this one's even more exciting.  James Garner is an actor I like. (He disapproved of the Reagan presidency, and I recently noticed in that Harry Belafonte documentary that he was a supporter of the civil rights movement.)

Cecilia from Brazil was reading of my mother's death on my blog and sent a message of condolence.  This blog does have its readers. (Last Saturday I got almost eighty pageviews despite having been on a break for almost a week.)

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN

"Your friends don't like you any more.  You force them to make too many decisions.  With me, there's just one decision to make:  Do as you're told!"--THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN

This afternoon I went to the Maria Schucka library to return THE CATCHER IN THE RYE and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. (I'd read their closing passages, along with HUCKLEBERRY FINN and L'ETRANGER, at Saturday's Meetup.) It was pouring rain, appropriate for pathetic fallacy.

I felt something like the same way I felt fifteen years ago, after a meeting with my thesis committee.  I'd written the sixth draft of my dissertation, and waited three months for this meeting, but it turned out I wasn't any closer to finishing. (A committee member said "We want to impress upon you..." That's how you talk to schoolboys!) Afterward I felt really empty, not feeling like doing anything or even watching TV, and I ended up walking over to the Wychwood library just to do something.

This evening I went to the Central in Mirvish Village, where the Classic Movie Meetup showed John Sturges' THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN.  It isn't close to the Kurosawa original THE SEVEN SAMURAI, but on its own terms it's efficient and exciting, with a rousing score by Elmer Bernstein. (Alex told us that when they were filming it Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen didn't get along and kept trying to upstage each other.)

My mother died this morning

About a week ago Mother fell down the stairs in the middle of the night. (We should have kept the hall light on!) They took her in an ambulance to intensive care at St. Michael's hospital.  I rode in the ambulance with her and stayed at the hospital overnight, and later made several visits.  She seemed to be recovering--though even when awake she was too drowsy to talk--and they even moved her out of the ICU.

But in the early hours today she passed on.  I wasn't there, but she was unconscious anyway.  They say it was a peaceful death.  We decided to cremate her through the Simple Alternative.  We'll bury her ashes at the cemetery in her hometown of Louisburg, Cape Breton, where most of her family is buried.  She was almost 94, a lot older than I thought she was. (I have a feeling there's a lot about her that I never learned.)

Of course, this family crisis is the reason I haven't been posting for the last week.  Father and Moira didn't want me writing about her state, or rather they felt that Mother wouldn't want it.  But that's moot now.  Life goes on:  on Wednesday the Coro Verdi had the end of year concert; on Thursday I returned the CENTENNIAL DVDs on time and got my blood iron level tested, also at St. Michael's so I combined it with a visit; on Saturday I hosted the latest Reading Out Loud Meetup, with the topic of closing passages. (Next month we'll do poetry again.)

Margaret came from Kingston on Friday, and when she returned today she took Moira with her for a few days.  Donald, John and Kathrine came over for dinner and we ordered Indian food.  At the moment Father and I are alone here.

Sunnyside

Today I was going to go on a Walking Meetup at the Sunnyside beach.  We were meeting at the Dundas West station to take the Roncesvalles streetcar south to Sunnyside, but I got there five minutes late and they must have left already.  I hoped to catch up with them, but it was over fifteen minutes before the next streetcar arrived, so I ended up doing the walk by myself. (On the way back I stopped at John's house near High Park, but he was out.)

I've finally returned the THIS IS TOM JONES discs.  One part I watched over and over was the Moody Blues singing "Ride My See-Saw." It was only the second time I'd heard it:  I heard it on the Muzak near Metro Hall some years back and noticed it because CTV used the melody in the CANADA A.M. theme music back in the 1970s. That song really impresses me:  the producer clearly learned a lot from Phil Spector's "wall of sound" style.  But the preceding recitation did remind me of Spinal Tap.

I'm still translating that Spanish comic with Mortadelo and Filemon involved in Formula One auto racing.  Today I found a sentence that none of the online dictionaries could translate:  When Mortadelo gets thrown out of a race car (?) he says "Que nos desmorramos!" (There may be just one "R" in it.) In the end I decided that "Pray for us!" was good enough.

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE

I've started reading a recently-acquired volume in the series reprinting Harold Gray's famous comic strip LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE.  It's the second in the series, taking the strip to the end of the 1920s. (It's greatest stories, from the 1930s, lie just ahead.)

This strip, of course, is about a spunky red-haired orphan, her dog Sandy, and her millionaire benefactor Daddy Warbucks.  She was actually in an orphanage at the start of the strip, until Daddy adopted her.  But the strip's structure requires Daddy to disappear periodically, leaving Annie to rely on her own resources until his return.  She'd end up meeting honest working people, on the farm or in the city, work hard (in the circus, at a newsstand or elsewhere) and offer homespun wisdom.

Harold Gray was a great storyteller.  I remember being highly impressed back in the mid-1970s when they reprinted some of the strip's '30s stories.  The reprint introduction points out that Gray was heavily influenced by Charles Dickens, who often used young orphans as his heroes.

I got 90 pageviews on Monday!  Peter Pan must have attracted a lot of websearches.