12 YEARS A SLAVE

Slave mistress: "Your children will soon be forgotten"--12 Years a Slave

Last night I finally saw Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave at the Market Square. (I haven't been there for quite a while.) It was pretty spellbinding, and disturbing.  When the overseer told the slaves to start clapping their hands, I found myself clapping too.  Now I want to see McQueen's Hunger, which also had Michael Fassbender, this time as Bobby Sands starving himself to death.

I have a pretty busy weekend coming up.  I saw two episodes of Treme this evening, so I won't fall behind Moira when she sees one tomorrow night.  I also baked gingerbread for Sunday's cookie exchange.

Father and I are going to start on the book business accounts one of these days. (We'd talked about doing it this afternoon, but he didn't feel up to it.)

I've run short again.

Anno

I started a new online game called Anno a few days ago.  It involves building a colony in the New World.  Unfortunately, I expanded the production facilities too quickly, leading to a predictable money squeeze.

In Sunshine Bay I spent quite a bit of real money, something I'd resisted doing, to acquire a water-bottling plant that expanded the range of voyages available to my ships. (If I'd waited a few days I could have got it a lot cheaper, but oh well...) I also saved enough coin to acquire a second business yacht, and the available passengers are getting moved more quickly.

In The Tribez I finally figured out how to visit the Marble Fiord island. (You have to go the map.) The new settlement has had big shortages of food and cut stone, requiring much subsidy through zeppelin shipments.  But I'll soon have marble pits there to send marble back to the original island and allow higher-level construction.  To do that, first I'll have to upgrade my three mansions there to their top level, then make one more upgrade in the local town hall.

We've been having trouble with our internet connection several times in recent days.  Maybe the cold weather and all the electric heaters operating at once have slightly lowered the local power's voltage level. (When I can't get online early in the evening, I go to bed early, for a few hours.)

TREME

"Did he hit on you?" "Kinda not really"--Treme

We've started watching the third season of Treme on DVD.  That show's all over the place, but I like it anyway.  Great theme song!

Yesterday afternoon at the memoir group there were just five of us, so we had time for three subjects again:  impromptu public speaking, landmark buildings and hair coloring.  On the first subject, I wrote about the big meeting at Goodenough College where I spoke briefly about the recycling program I'd been helping out with. (People were impressed that I did it in one minute flat.) On the second, I wrote about the Robarts Library which I frequented as a Ph.D. student.  On the third, I wrote about orange-haired Johnny Rotten, a hero of my adolescence.

Selia made it for the first time in three weeks.  She's still low on energy and got me to go to the library kitchen and find the canister containing the subject cards that we draw from.  It turns out that we'll be able to continue meeting through the holiday season. (It's only on Christmas and New Year's days that the library's closed.)

Last night the choir started rehearsing the Christmas program in order of performance.  Predictably, "Feliz Navidad" needs a lot of work.

This evening was the last opera rehearsal before the new year.  We went over Cosi Fan Tutte and the second half of Carmen again, then staged the last part of the latter's first act.

Cold weather

Thursday night I saw the comedy documentary When Jews Were Funny at the Bloor.  It had some pretty funny jokes.

Friday night I went to Lillian's Karaoke Meetup at Mayday Malone's near Bathurst & Dupont.  It was close enough that I would have walked except that it was freezing cold! (I ordered a bowl of chili.) It was rather noisy and I only stayed for one song.

At the Acting Meetup yesterday afternoon we each pretended to do  a commercial audition. (I did a BMW ad.) I also did a scene where someone pretended to be a cop arresting me, and I gave him a Bronx cheer!)

Last night I saw Edward Burtynsky's Watermark at the Revue with a Movie Meetup group.  It was as eerie as his Manufactured Landscapes.  I was hoping to meet Pam there--she's one of the most interesting people I've ever met--but she couldn't make it.

This afternoon I was in the opera fundraising concert.  This year it was at the Hart House music room on the University of Toronto campus.  Tetyana, who's playing Carmen, wore a ballroom dancing dress.  I met Barbara Thompson afterward. (Giuseppe Macina didn't come:  he told Yvette, "That book is closed!")

A dream

Yesterday morning I had to leave pretty quickly to meet Puitak and Gordon for lunch, so I didn't get to take my Cipralex.  As a result, last night's dreaming was more intense than usual.

I dreamed I was joining some friends (none of them actual people) near Camp Tidnish, a Rotary Club camp near our cottage.  We went underwater to do some fishing under a magical spell that allowed us to see and breathe the same as above the surface.  I grabbed a piece of wood which magically contained evidence of WWII war crimes--I'd been reading about Japanese war crimes on Wikipedia--and brought them to the actor James Whitmore, who was playing General Patton.  I told Whitmore how much I liked the actual scene in Asphalt Jungle where he was being taken to his cell and in a rage lashed out at the gang's squealer, who was safe in another cell.

We walked around underwater in the area near the eastern end of the New Brunswick-Nova Scotia border, here a much wider and deeper area than in real life, and approached a non-existent area where the underwater geology was radically different.  I met a girl and it turned into a story about how dangerous it is for people to have their wishes magically granted.  I imagined turning the story into a Hollywood movie and wondered what would be a good location for scenes taking place under a bridge.

I also dreamed about seeing four different versions of a Warren Beatty comedy, in the area around my old high school.

Facebook games

I've been playing Sunshine Bay for a while.  I finally saved up enough coin to buy a business class yacht, but I can only sail it to a few ports.  A wider range will require a big expenditure on a water treatment facility.  And I got a fourth sports yacht, completing a mission, but then I sold off my first one in order to replace its dock with a new one at a higher level, to put a business yacht in it someday.

I'm also playing The Tribez.  In that game sometimes a caveman or two will invade the space and you have to land six hits on them to make them disappear, before they start burning your buildings down. (Putting out the fires requires more hits.) But what's frustrating is a caveman invasion happening when you have a slow connection and the signals you send the game take several seconds to process, too long for hitting moving targets.  On such occasions, even leaving the game takes a while.

At least they've finished the Halloween business with the Pumpkinheads.  Though these invaders could be removed with only five hits, sometimes they'd cross paths with villagers and leave them tangled up in vines.  And they only got released from the vines when you hit on them eight times, except sometimes they'd be hard to spot. (If I were tied up in vines, I know I'd want to be freed quickly.)

And they're almost finished this new business of supernatural invaders (fairies, vampires, witches etc.). What bugs me with this one is that the villagers scream whenever they run into them.  The sound effects in this game can be tiresome.

Puitak and Gordon took us to lunch at a dim sum place today.  The food was so oily that I had to take a nap in the afternoon.  But they don't take us out too often.

Rob Ford

I haven't had much to say about the Mayor.  I've been against him since he promised to kill TransitCity--one time when the planners had actually got it right!--yet I can't help feeling sorry for him.  He doesn't seem to have the sense God gave a goose, as the saying goes.

Father and Moira are interested in the whole affair.  They've been watching the city council debates live on the computer. (Who watches the TV set any more?) Yesterday they even left it on during the big vote so they could listen to it over dinner, something I don't care for.

The other day someone I knew on Facebook posted on his wall, "You aren't a total loser unless you watch reality TV." I added the comment, "Or read magazines like Maxim." Before long I wrote another comment, "Or vote for Rob Ford a second time."

At tonight's opera rehearsal we prepared for Sunday's fundraiser concert, then staged some more of the first act.  There's a bit where the factory girls enter screaming, and we had a hard time getting it right.  The first time Carmen threw the flower into Don Jose's lap, it wouldn't come off her blouse.

This is about the time when I start to imagine the mini-character I'm playing in the chorus.  I think I'll be a veteran soldier who joined the guerrilla army fighting Napoleon while still a kid, and is now middle-aged and starting to feel indifferent about everything except watching and flirting with women.

ALL IS LOST

Yesterday afternoon I saw All Is Lost at the Varsity with the Sunday Afternoon Movie Meetup.  It was a pretty good sea story, with Robert Redford uncharacteristically showing his age.  I like the genre of marine tragedies, including The Perfect Storm and Open Water.  This reminded me of some of the stories I read in the sea issue of Lapham's Quarterly a few months ago.

As I came there I passed some Santa Claus Parade clouds.  It was unusually warm weather, good for a parade.  It was also warm the day before, but I wore my long johns when I didn't have to; I didn't make that mistake the next day.

But today was cooler. (The night before the wind was so fierce it kept me awake.) I actually saw a bit of snow on the way to choir practice, where we learned a French folk song "Les Cloches du Hameau." Beatrice wanted to do a couple more songs but it's getting close to performance time and now we'll have to concentrate on reviewing what we've done before.

At today's memoir session our subjects were "Classroom fights" (my suggestion); and "The perfect therapy" (as in marijuana, which I have no experience). The subject of August also got chosen, but we weren't interested in that one.  Selia wasn't feeling well and couldn't make it.  I hope she's in better shape next week.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Last night I saw Bette Davis and Leslie Howard in Of Human Bondage (for the second time) at the Lightbox as part of a Bette Davis series.  The part I remember from that is the scene where Howard's struggling through a medical school exam, and he looks at the medical-school skeleton and imagines those bones with Davis' flesh on them.  I saw it with a Movie Meetup group, including someome who gave me a big share of her popcorn.

At the Acting Meetup today I did a Second City sketch where I was a doctor's patient being prescribed pills, who wanted more "natural" treatment, leading to a quarrel.

In the evening I went to an Aspergers Meetup combined with a British Culture Meetup, so I met some new girls in the latter group.  It was at the Duke of Somerset, which I had a devil of a time finding!

I've decided to have the next ROLT Meetup at the Central in Mirvish Village. (Moira finds the Butler's Pantry noisy, and the food at the Victory Cafe upset my stomach.) We'll try different places until we know the best one.

Last night I dreamed of Mother.  In this dream I remembered she was dead and told her, "We miss you!"

LAPHAM'S QUARTERLY

After finishing Ivanhoe, I started the death issue of Lapham's Quarterly.  It has articles on subjects like animal grief and last meals, and Jessica Mitford's book The American Way of Death. (I should read that someday.)

Last night I dined at the Mengrai Thai restaurant downtown with the Life Begins at 40 Meetup group. (There were about 25 people there.) I think I prefer the Golden Thai restaurant, or at least for my taste that place is almost as good for a bit less money.

We finished The World at War this evening.  In the larger sense, it's hard to imagine how they could have done it significantly better.  But there are a lot of minor shortcomings.  One example is that they say very little about China's eight-year war, except to mention that they lost 15 million people, mostly to starvation. (I suppose they had a hard time finding eyewitnesses in the communist bloc, which would also explain why there's rather little about Poland.) There's also little about India, and the Japanese veteran who speaks admiringly of the Korean "comfort women" seems unaware that they were often coerced.

Another shortcoming is that there isn't that much about the Commonwealth:  the episode about the Battle of Britain omits the Dominions' all-important support, though they do mention the Canadian navy's role in the Battle of the Atlantic.  They do mention the Commonwealth in the last episode, where Imperial War Museum director Noble Frankland (who had a big influence on the series) mentions in the last episode that the Bomber Command he served in was multinational.

Finished IVANHOE

The cold weather has arrived! (I noticed it today when I went to the Maria Shchuka library to return "The Lottery" and "The Tell-Tale Heart.") I've brought my winter jacket out of the closet and moved it downstairs.  Looks like it's time to start wearing my long johns.

At last night's choir practice, we did a jazzy version of "Go Tell It on the Mountain." (Giovanni brought Timbits!) I lent John George my book of Hemingway short stories, since he's interested in that author just now.

At opera rehearsal this evening we started preparing the numbers we'll be doing at the fundraiser in a couple of weeks.  Then we went onstage to start preparing the blocking! (Under Giuseppe we didn't start doing that till January.) We staged the first act up to the end of the Habanera.

I've finally finished Walter Scott's Ivanhoe.  Bringing Athelstane back from the dead was pretty jaw-dropping.  The next books I'll be reading in my project of Classics Illustrated comics sources will be two of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking novels:  The Pioneers and Last of the Mohicans. (I'm doing The Pioneers first because Cooper wrote it first, and I've read it in comic-book form.)

BOO! said the monster

This afternoon was the latest ROLT event.  Titled "Boo! said the monster," it was devoted to scary stories.  Nine people came, though one left early.  Moira and I walked to Butler's Pantry and back.  (She considered reading a passage from The Woman in Black, but the noise got to her.)

I read the George Orwell essay "Decline of the English Murder"; Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"; and Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." (The others thought I read the last story quite well.)

Next month's event will be about children's writing.  December seems like the right month for that, what with Christmas being close at hand.

Afterward I felt unwell.  John and Kathrine brought dinner over but I only ate a little and went to bed quickly.

I don't usually run short, but my mind is going blank just now.

ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK

At this afternoon's Meetup I did a scene from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, as the experienced cop about to show her the corpse from the 40 years-cold case.

Finally finished the first season of Jenji Kohan's Netflix series Orange Is the New Black.  I could have watched all at once like on DVD, but I ended up watching it once a week or even less often.  It was a bit of a chore, to tell the truth.  It's a very, very uneven show (not unlike Boardwalk Empire). 

An uneven show can be more frustrating than one that's consistently poor.  The subplots are often compelling, and some of the supporting actors are very good--I especially admire the transsexual hairdresser.  But I find the central character Piper annoying, especially her tendency to whine. (One comment in The Huffington Post suggested that she's intentionally annoying!) The sexual politics in the main storyline doesn't really interest me:  Piper used to be the lesbian lover of drug smuggler Alex, illegally moving cash for her, but now she's engaged to Larry, then she's serving a year in the same prison as Alex, and Larry finds out that Alex ratted her out, but lies to her about it to avoid worsening her situation, then Piper becomes Alex' lover again...

The "bourgeois bohemian" background of Piper and her fiance is a pretty easy satirical target, and a lot of the humor feels sour.  (Kohan's earlier series Weeds was quite uneven too.) Also, I should mention that the opening-credit sequence is unusually obtuse and unimaginative:  we see one closeup after another of the convicts' mouth, then they switch to repeated closeups of their eyes!  I guess they wanted an "in your face" effect.

MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG

"What do you do?" "I drink." "What do you really do?" "I really drink!"--Merrily We Roll Along

Last night I saw Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa for the third time, at the Event Screen.  Beautifully made and intelligent, thought the central romance feels rather weary. (Robert Redford is the weak link as Meryl Streep's love interest.) I planned to see it with the Movie Meetup group, but didn't realize they were seeing it at the Yonge & Eglinton!  I also ordered popcorn with butter just for variety, which I won't be doing again for a while:  it made me a bit unwell.  Two mistakes in one night!

This evening I saw a special Digital Theatre broadcast of a West End revival of Stephen Sondheim's 1981 musical Merrily We Roll Along.  This was another Event Screen presentation, but was so popular that they showed it one of the bigger rooms.  It tells the story of a threesome working together in musical theatre--a commercially ambitious man writing melodies, a more artistic man writing lyrics, and a woman writing scripts--with lots of showbiz cynicism.  Curiously, it tells the story in reverse chronological order, starting at the end and moving back and back to their beginnings in the age of Sputnik.

I can see why the show's first production failed:  this kind of story is hard to get into.  But I got more and more into it as the show went on, and by the time it was over I wanted to see it again.  It's a lively, faultless London production.

COSI FAN TUTTE

Yesterday I arrived late at the memoir slam, where our subjects were "Betrayal" and "February." On the former I talked about my experience taking Grade 10 correspondence courses from the New Brunswick Community College, which left me with an ulcer; on the latter I mentioned that my birthday is that month.  I wish the subjects had been in the reverse order, because I had more to write about the first one and wasn't finished writing when they started reading their stories, so I missed some interesting stuff.

Last night at choir practice we did a couple of new songs for soloist as well as chorus, though there weren't yet any soloists singing with us.  One was Adeste Fideles, the other Schubert's lullaby "Mille Cherubini in Coro." The latter's a nice piece, and today I was listening to it on Youtube, both the original German solo and Andrea Boccelli and choir in a resonant cathedral. (Moira doesn't care for Boccelli's singing.)

This afternoon I was putting away some of my new comics and took some out of the closet.  The mice took a big bite out of some of my early Prince Valiant Sundays!  They'd been safe earlier when I stored them flat against the floor.  But somehow (Moira's doing or mine?) they got pushed against the closet wall, enabling the critters to get in.

This evening at opera rehearsal we finally worked on Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte.  The chorus is just three or four numbers in it, but of course it's nice music.

Under the weather

Being sick can give you a different perspective on things.  On Friday I came to feel unwell all at once.  In the afternoon I felt fine, and Father and I managed the heavy job of prying this big file cabinet out of its cubby hole under the stairs so I can start storing my Sunday comics collection in it.  Of course, we'll still have to get it up the stairs, which won't be a pushover.

Friday night I was in bed just about around the clock.  But I didn't sleep solidly as usual, but in continuous fits and starts. (No dreaming either.) Last night I slept more normally, but I'm still a bit slow.

One consequence was that I had to cancel on yesterday's Acting Meetup. (Oh well, it isn't like I'm the organizer as with ROLT.) Then this afternoon I was going to see 12 Years a Slave with the Movie Meetup, but thought it better to cancel.  At least I wasn't the only one.

I haven't been out of the house for almost two days.  I finally brought up the electric heater from the basement, so my room is warmer now.

So Obama says he's good at killing people! (According to the new book Double Down.) And just the other night I saw Blow, with the drug-smuggling son saying "I'm great at this!" and his father saying "You'd be great at anything."

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN and BLOW

"I suppose you're right." "Of course I am!  I always am"--Young Frankenstein

"Danbury wasn't a prison, it was a crime school.  I went in with a Bachelor of marijuana, came out with a Doctorate of cocaine"--Blow

Thursday night I saw Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein at the Fairview screening room with the Classic Movie Meetup.  It holds up well in repeat viewings.  The organizer handed out printouts of trivia about the movie from the Internet Movie Database, and I was surprised to learn that Brooks resisted including the "Puttin' on the Ritz" number until Gene Wilder prevailed on him. (It's hard to imagine a Mel Brooks movie without a musical number.)

I met Cecilia there for the first time since the spring.  She was visiting her daughter in Brazil, and wouldn't let her participate in the Vinegar Revolt demonstrations.  I warned her that Ivanhoe was not suitable reading for people whose second language is English.  Even I have trouble understanding some of it. (Walter Scott uses words like "an" in place of "if.")

Last night I rented the video of Ted Demme's Blow and watched it for the second time.  It's the somewhat self-serving yet largely believable story of a drug dealer who reached the heights but ended up in prison for 60 years.  Johnny Depp has a good scene near the end when he realizes that his partners are ratting him out.  Ray Liotta has a good role as his working-stiff father, especially the scene where Depp tells him "I'm great at what I do!" and he responds "You could have been great at anything!" It's a very sad story, which doesn't reduce my anger about the wasteful War on Drugs.