Daffy Duck

Last week was the American Thanksgiving, and some people online were mentioning things they were thankful for.  Even though Canada's Thanksgiving was seven weeks ago, I want to mention something I'm grateful for:  Daffy Duck cartoons.  The later, curmudgeonly Daffy is the greatest of all Warner Brothers animated characters, and not for lack of competition! (When I was young I would have named Bugs Bunny as my favorite, but now that I've grown up I prefer Daffy.)

The greatest Daffy Duck cartoon of all is Duck Amuck, with Daffy in a cartoon world drawn by a prankster cartoonist who keeps changing things around, to Daffy's indignation. ("Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin!") At the end Bugs looks up from the drawing board and says, "Ain't I a stinker?" They tried making a similar cartoon with Bugs in the changing cartoon world, but it didn't suit his character as well.

There are some great cartoons pairing Bugs and Daffy, such as Ali Baba Bunny, in which they find themselves inside Ali Baba's treasure cave.  While Bugs just wants to find Pismo Beach and all the clams you can eat, Daffy starts pouncing all over Bugs and saying, "It's mine!  It's all mine!" What, share?  In the end Daffy offends a genie who turns him into a tiny figure trying to snatch the pearl from Bugs' clam. (Pismo Beach must have some oysters as well.) Such a fate has a Dantean logic, since Daffy's greed has already made him small!  And there's also Beanstalk Bunny, where Bugs and Daffy climb a beanstalk and tangle with a giant Elmer Fudd.  (At one point they run around inside Elmer's predictably empty head!)

Even the minor Daffy Duck cartoons have some great moments.  Take the late cartoon Aqua Duck, in which Daffy finds a big nugget of gold in the desert, but can't find water! (A parody of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, of course.) I like the bit where he starts hallucinating and saying things like "Belly up to the bar, boys!"

But I've never cared for Robin Hood Daffy, a cartoon which many people consider a classic.  Daffy's goofy Robin Hood and Porky Pig's derisive Friar Tuck are both funny in themselves, but the combination of the two isn't so funny.  There's a one-note story in which Porky wants to join Robin Hood's band but refuses to believe that someone as bumbling as Daffy is the one he's looking for, so Daffy sets out to prove he's Robin Hood by carrying out a robbery, but only confirms how goofy he is.

Tonight was the last opera rehearsal before the new year.  Some girls brought a box of chocolate treats that included some party hats.

The other day online I came up with this saying:  Who's the bigger fool, the fool or the one who underestimates his foolishness? (I admit that despite realizing what a weak candidate Hillary Clinton was, I still couldn't believe that American voters would be foolish enough to elect Donald Trump!  I wasn't alone there, of course.)

LOVING

Closing passage of Cricket on the Hearth:  "But what is this!  Even as I listen to them, blithely, and turn towards Dot, for one last glimpse of a little figure very pleasant to me, she and the rest have vanished into air, and I am left alone.  A Cricket sings upon the Hearth; a broken child's-toy lies upon the ground; and nothing else remains."

 

Last night I saw Loving at the Varsity.  It's a quietly compelling drama about an interracial couple who challenged Virginia's law against mixed marriages, with heroic help from the American Civil Liberties Union, leading to a Supreme Court decision that struck down all such laws and formed the precedent for a similar decision regarding same-sex marriages a few years ago. (I couldn't help recalling attending that same-sex wedding last month, which wouldn't have been legal in Canada fifteen years ago.) The husband was like a cross between Dobie Gillis and Popeye the Sailor!

I finished Cricket on the Hearth the other day and started reading A Christmas Carol for the second time.  The part where Scrooge sees himself as a lonely schoolboy finding company in books is moving! (Was Dickens describing his own childhood?)

 

Moira borrowed from the library a DVD of an episode of the series Globe Trekker, about Australia's history of convicts and gold prospectors and outlaws.  I'm fascinated by Australia, the way everything's a bit different there. (We once bought some Australian fruit cocktail packed in pear juice!)

Tonight was the fundraiser concert at Christchurch Deer Park, the Anglican church near St. Clair station.  Besides the chorus numbers, there was also stuff like Frank Sinatra's "All the Way" and a flute arrangement of Carmen highlights!

We've taking to putting our unsaleable books in a box outside so anyone can take them. (One day the other week we put out about twenty and all but two moved!) The other day I noticed we were giving away Don't Know Much About History, which my history group will be reading in a couple of months, so I kept it.

I've started translating Walt Whitman's poem "There Was a Child Went Forth" into Portuguese, because, why not?

PARTNERS IN CRIME

 I've been watching Partners in Crime on Crave TV.  It's the new British series based on Agatha Christie's stories about the detective couple Tommy and Tuppence.  There was a lighthearted version in the early '80s, but this version is more about thrills.  While the earlier version was set between the wars, this one involves '50s Cold War intrigue. The supporting cast includes Alice Krige, whom I remember from Chariots of Fire, and Clarke Peters from the David Simon series The Wire and Treme.  It's handsome and taut, but I think I prefer the earlier version because it had Francesca Annis, who's major fine!

 

Sunday afternoon was Reading Out Loud.  The event's topic was American literature, and I titled it "The greatest country in the Whole Wide World!" (Some Americans will look at that title and take it seriously...) Attendance was reduced by the cold weather and the nearby Santa Claus Parade, and two people were late because there was a book release event upstairs and they thought that was our event.

 

I read Hemingway's "The Killers," the part of Tom Sawyer where Injun Joe's found dead in the cave, some Spoon River Anthology poems about soldiers, and let other people read Robert Frost's "A Servant to Servants" and Longfellow's "The Skeleton in Armor." Malcolm read the opening passage of Cricket on the Hearth with the cricket and the tea kettle playing a duet, Cathryn read from her self-published novel about the Smyrna crisis after World War I, and someone whose name I sadly forgot read from Kerouac's On the Road.  I didn't get the chance to read the chapter in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie where she attends someone's birthday party.

I forgot to bring my Pierre Belvedere notebook to the memoir group, a mistake I've never made before, but someone gave me a couple of sheets to write on.  Afterward Helen was telling me about how she'd been a missionary in Pakistan.  It must be interesting to be a former missionary:  you'd see your old home in a new way!

Tonight was the last opera rehearsal before Saturday's fundraiser. (The chorus is doing the Habanera, the Vilja song and the Grisette number.) I told Beatrice about Noises Off because that sort of thing would interest her.  That glamorous Merry Widow music has been going through my head!

On Facebook I came in contact with Pena, whom I met on the New York tour.  Seems she's been reading this blog and likes it.  She and John Snow make two fans!

 

In Cricket on the Hearth I got to a part about a toymaker with a blind daughter who shelters her from knowledge of their decrepit house and harsh taskmaster.  I remember reading it in school over forty years ago!

I've started translating Walt Whitman's poem "There Was a Child Went Forth" into Portuguese.

NOISES OFF

Thursday we screened Anne of the Thousand Days for the history group.  Richard Burton's Henry VIII didn't have as much juice as Keith Mitchell in The Six Wives of Henry VIII or even Robert Shaw in A Man for All Seasons.  But Genevieve Bujold was a very pretty Anne Boleyn, and Anthony Quayle was in fine form as Cardinal Wolsey.

 

Yesterday afternoon I met with Bev at the downtown Spring Rolls.  She brought her spaniel Lily, and I couldn't help thinking of Toto. (Someone online said that Toto doesn't care whether he's in Kansas or Oz, so long as Dorothy is with him!)

This afternoon the Play Read-Through Meetup did Michael Frayn's classic comedy Noises Off.  I remember seeing it in London fifteen years ago.  My seat was actually too close to the stage--if I'd been sitting further back I'd have had an easier time taking in all that was going on.  I did the part of Frederick, the actor playing Philip.

It's about a theatre company doing a touring production of a third-rate "people coming in and out of doors" farce:  the first act is a very rocky dress rehearsal, the second is backroom dramatics as the play's performed, the third is a performance near the end of the run, with everything falling apart!    Some of the humor was inconveniently visual for reading through, and we skipped over most of the second act with its pantomime slapstick.

Tonight I saw Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge with the Movie Meetup. (I was hoping some people from the history group would come, but they weren't interested.) It's a square but powerful war movie about a hillbilly conscientious objector who serves as a medic in World War II, enduring intolerance, and ends up saving seventy soldiers on Okinawa and getting the Congressional Medal of Honor.  COs are an interesting subject to me:  morally, refusing to fight in an unjust war is an easy call--it's refusing to fight in a just war that takes the real guts!  Merlin in The Once and Future King says that the bravest people are the ones who aren't afraid of looking like cowards.

I've finished The Chimes (I have some questions about the goblins' motivation) and started Cricket on the Hearth.

THE CHIMES

"Incontinently his little white apron would be caught up over his head like a naughty boy's garments, and his feeble little cane would be seen to wrestle and struggle unavailingly in his hand, and his legs would undergo tremendous agitation, and Toby himself all aslant, and facing now in this direction, now in that, would be so banged and buffeted, and touzled, and worried, and hustled, and lifted off his feet, as to render it a state of things but one degree removed from a positive miracle, that he wasn't carried up bodily into the air as a colony of frogs or snails or other very portable creatures sometimes are, and rained down again, to the great astonishment of the natives, on some strange corner of the world where ticket-porters are unknown"--The Chimes

 

I finished Spoon River Anthology and started reading Charles Dickens' Christmas novella The Chimes for my book club. (It's actually about New Year's Day!) The goblins haven't shown up yet, but there's some acute social comment.

 

On the weekend I saw a PBS documentary Moira got from the library about the rapid emergence of 19th-century Chicago as a big city.  I hadn't realized that the big meat-packers like Swift depended on byproducts like hides for their profit.  It would be nice to continue it into the 20th century!

Sunday afternoon I went to visit Giuseppe again.  He's glad he won't be around in the future age.

 

I rented Anne of the Thousand Days from Queen Video for Thursday's History Discussion Group screening, and the package included Mary, Queen of Scots, which I watched today for the second time.  It's a great story with a cast to match:  Vanessa Redgrave in the title role, Glenda Jackson (reprising her Elizabeth R triumph), Timothy Dalton, Patrick McGoohan, Ian Holm, Trevor Howard and Nigel Davenport, who also played George III in the delightful British series Prince Regent and here reminded me of Billy Bob Thornton.  But the result is on the dorky side, with cheesy touches like Queen Bess smashing a lute.  I did like the line where Cecil (Howard) says about Bothwell (Davenport): "He can't be bribed?  I hope you take him alive, my Lord.  I'd like to examine such a specimen!"

At tonight's opera rehearsal we learned the rest of the Merry Widow score.  The highest tenor notes are still a bit of a challenge for me.

At Salon and The Huffington Post people are debating the Democratic Party's failure in this election.  I'm rather sore that the Democrats ignored the polls showing that Hillary Clinton had a narrower lead than Bernie Sanders over Republicans like Trump.  Rather predictably, the Clintonites are trying to scapegoat the pro-Sanders dissidents.  Someone posted that Sanders is back to "bashing Democrats" and I responded, "Let's hope he bashes some sense into them!"

The day after

"Now I, an under-tenant of the earth, can see

That the branches of a tree

Spread no wider than its roots.

And how shall the soul of a man

Be larger than the life he has lived?"

--Spoon River Anthology

Some years back Lilliana the psychologist was interviewing me for her doctoral dissertation on Asperger's Syndrome.  She was a Serb in Croatia and ended up a refugee in Canada as a result of the 1991 war.  She told me that when the war started nobody could believe it--they all thought someone would stop it!  I guess that's how a lot of us feel after Donald Trump's election as U.S. president.  I was thinking about the poem W.H. Auden wrote about seeing war break out in Europe in 1939.  I went to the Meetup of political discussions tonight, but I didn't have much to say.

It's interesting that I've been reading The Wizard of Oz just now, because Trump seems like the Wizard:  a tough-talking humbug.  For someone like me who supported Bernie Sanders during the primary contest, it's a great temptation to say, "I told you so." I could see all of Hillary Clinton's weaknesses back then, yet on the election's eve I just couldn't believe that they'd take the plunge! (Could there have been fraud?)

This morning Moira and I walked down to Puitak's apartment and took her to lunch.  It was nice weather for November.  But I had a big headache today.

The other night I had a dream where I was visiting my old Sackville home. (I often have that dream, and sometimes meet a friendly, non-existent woman living there now.) In this dream I said, "Viewing your old home is like visiting a parent who's too senile to recognize you"!

We're now learning The Merry Widow at opera rehearsal. (This week I remembered my score!) When we were rehearsing the Habanera from Carmen, Beatrice sang the solo part.  It was nice to hear her sing again--she was a soloist before taking up directing, and Carmen was one of her roles.

THE WIZARD OF OZ

Dorothy: "But, Aunt Em has told me that the witches were all dead--years and years ago...."

The Witch of the North: "... In the civilized countries I believe there are no witches left, nor wizards, nor sorceresses, nor magicians.  But, you see, the Land of Oz has never been civilized, for we are cut off from all the rest of the world.  Therefore we still have witches and wizards amongst us"--The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Well, just after writing the last post I downloaded the Kobo app and was able to read my Wizard of Oz ebook.  I got the idea of translating that book into Portuguese, since children's books have fairly simple language, and I've finished the first chapter! (The Portuguese word for wizard is "feitoceiro," and I've translated "munchkin" as "munchinho," using the Portuguese diminutive.) One thing I noticed is that for a children's fantasy, the first paragraphs about Dorothy's Kansas home are amazingly realistic!  I thought of the Joads.

I'm still reading Spoon River Anthology, which I imagine is best for older readers. (Gore Vidal said you have to be over thirty to enjoy Proust.) I've started imagining what my posthumous Spoon River poem might be.  I translated the first poem, "The Hill," into Portuguese ("A Colina"). I've also been translating the first chapters of Julius Caesar's Latin account of the Gallic Wars into Portuguese.  Yes, I know that I start more things than I finish. "That a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"

Wednesday night the History Discussion Group met to discuss Tudor England, but the rain depressed turnout severely. (Someone marked the wrong date as well, and Debi is working on a play on Wednesday nights just now.) But loyal Jane did show up.  She's said that I know everything about everything, and my response is that I know about everything except life...

Saturday I went to the Royal Winter Fair for the first time in years. (It got me out of the house.) Outside there was an animal rights group protesting against "speciesism," and I took their pamphlet.  I remember that years ago I got some nice bread at this Mennonite bakery display, but they don't seem to have it any more.

Margaret came over this weekend because her son Alec was in a foot race, where he finished twelfth in the province!  I was hoping that Donald would come over too and figure out my ebook problems, but he had a cough and didn't want to spread it.  I hope he gets well soon enough.

I finally got through Level 315 of Candy Crush Saga.  That one's a lulu!

Bits and pieces

Last Thursday I went to the Non-Fiction Meetup at the Reference library, where we discussed Barack Obama's Dreams About My Father.  I read the book several years ago but kind of remember it. (Obama makes a better writer than a president!) Afterward we went to Jack Astor's where I ordered the root beer float!

Sunday night I was hours getting to sleep. (Serves me right for napping in the daytime!) When I finally slept, I had this dream where I was playing in some forested, sloping land near my hometown of Sackville, but I kept noticing corpses all over the place!  Maybe Halloween had something to do with it.

At the memoir group yesterday one of our subjects was The Wizard of Oz. (We managed to say a lot about that!) The other day I downloaded a free Ebook of L. Frank Baum's original version, but it was at Kobo and I don't know how to read it on this computer.  Looks like I'll need Donald's assistance again.

Today was my last singing lesson with Andriy for a while.  I was a bit less tense than usual.  The day was pretty warm for November!

I finished reading By the Shores of Silver Lake and started reading Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology. (I'm reading the copy the Burkes from Newfoundland gave me.) Once you start reading those poems, it's hard to stop!

At opera rehearsal tonight they were tarring the roof over the auditorium so there was a bit of a smell.  We started learning The Merry Widow but I forgot to bring the score!  Fortunately, the other tenor had an extra copy.

The Lusiades is the sort of poem Russians might like, what with its bombastic style!