Busy Thursday

"He did not know himself what was the matter.  He was naturally so young, and their intimacy was so abstract, he did not know he wanted to crush her on to his breast to ease the ache there.  He was afraid of her.  The fact that he might want her as a man wants a woman had in him been suppressed into a shame.  When she shrank in her convulsed, coiled torture from the thought of such a thing, he had winced to the depths of his soul"--Sons and Lovers

"I'm sorry, I forgot that you were sick the day they taught law at law school!"--A Few Good Men

I had a busy Thursday.  First I met with Midwife and we discussed the articles I've been writing for her.  We had lunch at the 12 Hours restaurant where I had the beef noodle soup.  Later she took some pictures of me in front of wall paintings!

Early in the evening I went on Betty Anne's art walk.  This time we were on Dundas West, between Ossington and Dufferin. Later I went to a Karaoke Meetup at the Midtown Cafe north of St. Clair station.  I sometimes have to leave after just one song, but this time I managed to stay for two.

This afternoon I saw Rob Reiner's A Few Good Men with Dawna, for the first time.  The military code of silence is an important issue-- witness the Chelsea Manning controversy-- but I found the movie pretty conventional.  You could see people "acting":  Jack Nicholson was clearly a bad guy from the first moment you saw him!

We've started watching the third season of Bloodline.  It's the best TV show I've seen since Breaking Bad!

DUNKIRK

Looking for work: "Then he looked wistfully out of the window.  Already he was a prisoner of industrialism.  Large sunflowers stared over the old red wall of the garden opposite, looking in their jolly way down on the women who were hurrying with something for dinner.  The valley was full of corn, brightening in the sun.  Two colliers, among the fields, waved their small white plumes of steam.  Far off on the hills were the woods of Annesley, dark and fascinating. Already his heart went down.  He was being taken into bondage.  His freedom in the beloved home valley was going now"--Sons and Lovers

"He's dead, mate." "Then be bloody careful with him!"--Dunkirk

This afternoon I went to the first Cross-Culture Meetup.  It's for people who've spent over a year of their life outside of Canada, and I've spent about three years in Great Britain.  We met in Dufferin Grove park, and may do a karaoke sometime.

Tonight I saw Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk at the Varsity as a History Meetup event.  I thought a war movie like that would attract an all-male group, but I was the only boy there!  The movie was exciting and realistic, without the cheap tricks Nolan sometimes employs. (Remember in The Dark Knight when Commissioner Gordon got killed, but it turned out he'd faked his own death to protect his family?)

I remember seeing a bit of an earlier movie about Dunkirk at my aunt Alma's house, but finding out that she couldn't bear war movies.  Too grim for her!

UNFORGIVEN

"We've all got it coming, kid!"--Unforgiven

Yesterday afternoon I saw Unforgiven with Dawna. That's the fourth in the series of "avenging angel" westerns starring and directed by Clint Eastwood, along with High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales and Pale Rider.  It's even better the second time. 

It's an old man's western, like Ride the High Country and The Wild Bunch.  Gene Hackman's especially good as the ex-gunfighter sheriff nemesis. There are some funny touches, like Hackman's jerry-built house and Eastwood's persistent trouble getting his horse to stand still so he can mount it.  But there's also a scene with two guys on a train shooting birds out of the sky in a marksmanship contest, encapsulating the waste culture of the frontier.

Today I was going to see a documentary at the Bloor, but misplaced my glasses just before I was going to leave.  After a few hours Father found them at the bottom of the stairs. (They must have fallen out of their case when I picked it up.) But in the meantime I was in a foul mood.

I've started reading Xenophobe's Guide to the Portuguese.  Of the ebooks I started looking at, I've ended up spending the most time on the book about the California gold rush.

Ebooks

I've started reading some of my virtual library.  Through Bookbub I've been getting a lot of history ebooks for just a dollar or two, but they aren't worth much until I read them...

Two of them are American Heritage magazine publications about the Great Frontier and the USA's "confident years" between the Civil War and World War I respectively.  The latter begins with a chapter about how Andrew Johnson's 1868 impeachment came about.

Some years back I enjoyed Only Yesterday, Frederick Allen's "informal" history of the United States in the 1920s.  Now I've started Since Yesterday, Allen's sequel dealing with the '30s.  It starts with a long description of September 3, 1929, the day the New York Stock Exchange reached its pre-crash peak. (It was also exactly ten years before Britain and France declared war on Germany and World War II started!) Just to confuse you, the 1929 stock market crash actually happened on two days:  the first part was on Black Thursday, the second five days later on Black Tuesday.

I've also been reading Struwwelpeter, Heinrich Hoffmann's 19th-century German collection of gleefully cruel children's stories! (Stuff like the kid who wouldn't stop sucking his thumb, so a man came along with a huge pair of scissors and cut his thumbs off...) Seems he wrote it because he wanted to buy his child a book, but all the children's books he could find were bland.  Lucky for me, the German is simple enough that I can figure it out with help from Google Translate.

HIGH SIERRA

"Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over"--Sons and Lovers

I recently found my credit card blocked.  It turned out that my paying off the whole bill in two big instalments had made them suspicious!  I got it straightened out Sunday.

Last night was John Snow's 60th birthday, and I joined him and two other people at the Hot House. (I had salmon.) It's hard to make conversation with John, of course, because he's the most faithful reader of this blog and it's hard to think of stuff I haven't already written about here!

I finished The China Mirage yesterday and started D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers for the Classic Book Club.  I've already read almost forty pages!  It didn't surprise me to learn that the parents in the novel are based on Lawrence's actual parents--I got the feeling that he knew these two people very well!

Had lunch with Pam at the Grenadier Restaurant and walked through High Park a bit.

In the evening I saw Raoul Walsh's High Sierra (for the third time) with the Classic Movie Meetup at Eton House. Humphrey Bogart has a star-making triumph as a Dillinger-like bank robber, though the subplot with Anne Sheridan's clubfoot is pretty shameless!

Within you and without you

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Classic TV Meetup and we watched DVDs of some TV shows from the 1960s.  The first was The Man From Uncle, in which a Japanese woman accidentally switched her film with the bad guys' film showing their control of volcanoes!  The second was Mission:  Impossible, in which they thwarted an international heroin dealer.  

The third was the first episode of The Time Tunnel, in which our heroes found themselves on the Titanic! (Dawna pointed out that they never seemed to end up in safe places.) Masterpiece Theatre legend Susan Hampshire was a guest star, and I was hoping they'd end up taking her back to the '60s!

Last night I finally got to the Bay at Yorkdale Mall and bought another pair of pajamas. (The pair I got last fall is already "condemned"!)

This afternoon was the latest Reading Out Loud Meetup.  The event had religion as its topic, and I titled it "Within You and Without You." I read the Robert Burns poem "Address to the Unco Guid, or the Rigidly Righteous," the Tolstoy story "The Three Hermits," some Spoon River Anthology poems and the part of Angela's Ashes where Frank McCourt talks about his first communion.

We've been meeting in a lounge in the Robarts Library.  I was just starting the Burns poem when someone complained, so we moved out to the benches near the sidewalk. (Nobody's complained before--it isn't like we were in the reading room!) This worked out pretty well, despite a little sprinkle.  The only thing that bothered me is that two people in our group lost interest then.  I'll see if the Whole Foods common area would work better.

Dry spell

It's another of those summer periods when I can't think of much to write about.

Last night I dreamed about being on a ship again, returning from London to Halifax. (The ship had trees on board!) The odd thing is that when I woke up and remembered having visited London the month before last, it already seemed like something that had happened long ago.

Today I went on another of Betty-Anne's Queen Street West art walks.  Among other places, we visited Dufflet's pastry shop, where they had free samples!  

I didn't have time for dinner before leaving for the walk, so I was one of the group who stayed on for dinner after the walk, at the Rickshaw Thai restaurant. (I ate coconut chicken.) The place was very noisy, so I wasn't the best of conversationalists.  One of the people at the dinner was a Cambodian-Canadian!

Salsa weekend

On hard cash: "One dollar of this is worth ten dollars of talk!"--The Maltese Falcon

Last weekend was the Salsa on St. Clair festival near our house. (It was pretty noisy.)

Saturday night I went to the Poetry Meetup in Budapest Park. (It was a bit noisy:  maybe High Park would have worked better.) I read stanzas 19 to 41 of the first canto of my translation of Camoes' As Lusiadas. (Before I can read much more, I'll have to do some more translating!) I also read that translation of Pessoa's first Alberto Caeiro poem, and "Th' Brae," my Scots version of "The Hill," the first poem in Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology.

Sunday afternoon was the Classic Book Club, where we discussed Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier.

On Sunday evening I saw John Huston's The Maltese Falcon (for the umpteenth time) at an outdoor showing in Christie Pits with Miriam and Anne of the Vintage Clothes Meetup.  It has great dialogue, including a lot of suggestive lines. ("How did you and the widow make out?") Sam Spade actually refers to a cop's partner as his "boyfriend"!

It rained a bit during the screening.  Afterward we had hot soup at a late-night Korean diner. (Very spicy!) Then we walked all the way to the Spadina subway station.  I was rather late getting home, like back when I went a long distance to karaoke.

Today I had a pretty big headache.  I had to skip the Toronto Film Society's film noir double bill at the Carleton. (One of them was Robert Mitchum in Where Danger Lives!)

ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE

"She likes you.  I can see it." "I'd like to know the name of your oculist"--On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Last night was the History Meetup.  We talked about Canadian History and the dummies book, but there were just four people. (A fifth was in the Robarts Library but couldn't find us.) That wouldn't have been so bad, except that two of them got into a spat, and they both left! I wish one of them had stayed, at least.  But Ann did stay and we had a pretty good conversation. (She wrongly blamed herself for the spat.)

Today I went to Dawna's Regent Park screening and saw the James Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service for the first time. That's the one with George Lazenby as Bond, getting into a serious relationship with Diana Rigg, leading to a tragic wedding day. (Spoiler, like it wasn't predictable...) I ate potato chips for the first time in donkey's years!

It was one of the series' less popular entries, though Peter Hunt staged some good action scenes in the second half, including two ski chases.  When I was little, I looked at the poster and thought that Diana Rigg was "her Majesty"!

The China Mirage says a lot about China-born Henry Luce of Time magazine (the son of a missionary) and his favouritism toward Chiang Kai-shek.  I've always resented that magazine's tendentiousness and shameless promotion of favorites such as Nixon and Reagan.  One especially funny Time cover came after Nixon's resignation when they showed his successor Gerald Ford with the headline "The healing begins." (A note of wishful thinking there...)

YANKEE DOODLE DANDY

Theatre investor: "I've been in show business for twenty years, and I've never said I was wrong! [pointing to his partner] That's his department"--Yankee Doodle Dandy

"You're a piece of shit, Raeburn!" "It isn't my fault that your mother likes me better than you"--Bloodline

Yesterday I finished The Road to Wigan Pier and borrowed The China Mirage from the Deer Park library.  It's a fascinating book about the USA's naive China policy which led to "Who lost China" disillusionment after 1949.  I didn't know that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's wealth came from his maternal grandfather (a Delano), who reaped a fortune from the China trade--mostly in opium.

Last night I saw Michael Curtiz' Yankee Doodle Dandy for about the fourth time, at Eton House with the Movie Meetup group. That's the one with James Cagney as Broadway performer-composer George M. Cohan. (I've liked the title song since we had it on a 45 RPM record in my childhood.) Only the spanking scene still makes me uncomfortable.

Today I met Midwife and she gave me several ideas for new articles. (The night before I'd written an article about my parents when they lived in England in the mid-'50s while Father was earning his doctorate.)

We had lunch at the Light Cafe, where I had lobster rolls.  She wants me to raise my output to two articles a week, but I now have half a dozen ideas to develop!

THE CRUCIBLE

"In all novels about the East, the scenery is the real subject-matter"--The Road to Wigan Pier

Friday the bank gave me a number to phone, and I straightened things out so my ATM access card will work now.

Yesterday afternoon was Canada Day, and I went out to an open house at an Islamic centre near Yonge & Wellesley, where I forgot to take off my shoes at the entrance. (D'oh!) Someone gave me a long sales pitch.

This evening I went to the cinemacast at the Yonge & Dundas of a 2013 Old Vic production of Arthur Miller's Salem witch trials play The Crucible, whose movie I screened for the history group just a few months ago.  

Starring Richard Armitage, it was three and a half hours of existential dynamite!  Superbly directed, it brought back the dread I felt seeing the first act for the first time over thirty years ago. They'll be screening Angels in America on the 20th and 27th, and repeating Verdi's Nabucco in August.

I just read a Huffington Post article about measuring emotional intelligence, and I doubt that I'd score well on it.  I can't emotionally distance myself from past mistakes, and I do bear grudges from long ago.  In the comments section someone wrote, "Stein supporters and Trump supporters are cut from the same emotional cloth," and I questioned the emotional intelligence of that poster. (This whole "If you aren't with us, you're against us" attitude, which the court in The Crucible exhibited...) Can the people who still speak of "Bernie Bros" be considered emotionally intelligent themselves?

POINT OF NO RETURN

"I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt"--The Road to Wigan Pier

This afternoon I finally made it to Dawna's Classic TV Meetup in Regent's Park, on a screen that's about five feet by three feet. (On the way over I was reading in The Road to Wigan Pier about working-class housing estates that make Regent Park look like paradise!)

The DVD was Point of No Return, John Badham's 1994 Hollywood remake of Luc Besson's French spy romp La Femme Nikita.  The original had quite a few cliches--like when X pulls a gun on Y to make him do something Y was about to do anyway--but it also had Jean Reno, one of the world's coolest actors, in the surprisingly cool role of the spy boss.  

The American version predictably had even more cliches, but only had Gabriel Byrne as the boss.  Byrne has talent, but he isn't Reno.(Someone said that whatever role Byrne is in, he doesn't seem quite right for it!) The movie also had Bridget Fonda as the spy--she was very pretty, and maybe she still is!--and Dermot Mulroney as her clueless lover. (Moira fondly refers to Mulroney as "that goof"!) Harvey Keitel also played much the same "cleaner" role that he had in Pulp Fiction the same year.

How cheesy was this version? We learn early on that Bridget's a Nina Simone fan, as she specifically asks for her records, then plays them all the time. Later on Byrne reveals that he's given her the code name Nina, and she says, "For Nina Simone?" (Just in case you forget the connection...) Typical line: "Everything you touch turns to shit!"

On the way home, I met Genevier on the subway, whom I know from my time of dance lessons at the Arthur Murray studio.  I used to sing karaoke with her husband Jim, and we may get together again to do that!

On Netflix, we've started watching Bloodline again, from the first episode, before we get to the third season.  I've also started watching the last episodes of Hell on Wheels, the western with the pretty actresses.