Dental appointment

On Hindu-Moslem violence among the Viceroy's servants: "Like Glasgow on a Saturday night!"--Viceroy's House

"Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write!  How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fears..."--On the Road

Yesterday I had a dental appointment to replace a filling that got dislodged.  It turned out that to get O.D.S.P. to pay for my checkup two weeks before, I'd brought them the receipt from the wrong month--June instead of September.

Back when O.D.S.P. said I'd be getting a dental card, I thought that meant something you put in your wallet, but it's actually in the monthly receipt they send you.  I must have thrown away September because to me it just seemed one more receipt to clutter up my room.  But I brought them the receipts for July and October, and I hope that's good enough. (Do they think there'd be a two-month gap in my coverage?)

Last night I saw Viceroy's House, about the partition of India and Pakistan, at Canada Square as a History Meetup event. (I'd meant for us to see Victoria and Abdul, but its release got delayed a week.) 

The film increased my sympathy for Lord Mountbatten, who hadn't been told that Churchill and Jinnah had already cut a deal to partition India--he was the fall guy somewhat.  If Congress had let Pakistan take all of Punjab and Bengal, instead of dividing the two states, partition would have been simpler; would it have meant less violence? (Much of the panic and violence resulted from people being uncertain which nation they'd end up in.) At any rate, Pakistan/ Bangladesh would have enjoyed greater diversity, and India still would have been huge.  Nice to see Michael Gambon and Simon Callow in the supporting cast.

Today I picked up Jack Kerouac's On the Road at Oakwood library. I've also been reading Xenophobe's Guide to the Danes.

THE ATTRACTIONS OF MAY

"I liked making love with the lights on.  He liked making love with someone else"--The Attractions of May

Tuesday night I finally made it to opera rehearsal.  We've been learning "Oh, Welche Lust!" the number where the prisoners are let out into the sunshine. (Raquel Welch played Lillian Lust in Bedazzled--see how easy to remember German words are?)

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Play Read-Through Meetup, which started at Yorkville Library but ended in the Reference Library.  We read Norm Foster's The Attractions of May, and I played Hank.  It's really funny!

Finished Manon Lescaut.  I was reading that Abbe Prevost had a lot of real-life experiences like Des Grieux, including an extravagant, enigmatic lover much like Manon!

Last night I was going to go to the Introvert Meetup at the Snakes and Lattes board game hangout, but once again I completely forgot it! (Don't like being one of those Meetup no-shows...)

Hot weekend

"Since, after all, there was nothing in my conduct, taken as a whole, that could totally dishonour me, at least when compared with that prevailing in certain circles of young men, and since a mistress is on considered shameful in the century in which we live, any more than using a little art in persuading fortune to favour one at cards, I described to my father the life I had been leading frankly and in detail"--Manon Lescaut

This weekend was a scorcher. You wouldn't know that it's autumn already!

Saturday I went to a potluck lunch with the Aspergers Meetup group.  I brought fruit salad; someone brought cookies made from corn flakes!  Evie hosted it, and had some discussion questions like "If you were on a desert island with just enough for survival, how would you make your life meaningful?" I'd watch the night skies and get to know the stars.

Afterward I went on Betty Anne's art walk.  We started in Trinity-Bellwoods Park, where they were having an arts festival. (The music was a bit too distracting for me, unfortunately.) Betty-Anne pointed out a Filipino ice cream shop where they have charcoal-black waffle cones and very exotic flavors.

On Twitter people are talking about the controversy over the football players kneeling for the national anthem.  Why shouldn't you kneel?  To me it seems every bit as "respectful" as standing!

As a Canadian, I'm ashamed that our government won't let Chelsea Manning into the country.

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE

"'It is impossible,' he said, 'that the wealth that maintains you in your dissolute way of life should have come to you lawfully.  You have acquired it dishonestly; it will be taken from you in the same way.  The most terrible punishment that God could inflict on you would be to leave you to enjoy it in peace.'... I listened amicably to his advice; and although I was not in the least disposed to follow it, was grateful for his zeal, for I knew the source from which it sprang"--Manon Lescaut

"The things I do for England!"--James Bond

This afternoon I saw Lewis Gilbert's You Only Live Twice with Dawna.  It's one of the more offbeat James Bond movies. (When Sean Connery was in Japanese disguise, he reminded me of Marlon Brando in Teahouse of the August Moon!) Major plot hole:  at the end they escaped through the tunnel where they couldn't enter earlier because it contained poison gas.

I'm enjoying my reading these days.  Manon Lescaut must have been ahead of its time:  there's something really modern about the contradictions in Des Grieux' character. (Remember when I said that the book and opera Carmen was the first film noir?  Now I think this was it!)

I'm also enjoying J.L. Granatstein's coffee-table book about Canada in World War II, especially the chapter about the home front.  In the broad terms of Canadian history, the wartime period seems like something of an aberration...

Lawyer Glenn Close on Damages is pretty scary, like Tina Brown on speed!  Talk about a poker face...

D'OH!

Des Grieux on Manon being sent to the Hopital jailhouse: "It was not that she was treated barbarously; but she was kept in close confinement, alone, and condemned to complete each day a particular task, the necessary condition for her securing a portion of disgusting food"--Manon Lescaut (Forced to work for a living--poor baby!)

Last night was the first rehearsal for the new Toronto City Opera season.  We'll be doing Beethoven's Fidelio and Mozart's The Magic Flute. (We were going to do the Canadian opera Transit of Venus instead of The Magic Flute, but plans got changed.) This year the chorus will be unusually big.  We'll be doing Fidelio in its original German, a language I don't recall we've ever done before:  pray for us.

I wasn't there, however. (I know of the chorus size because it was mentioned on a TOR-related webpage.) So why did I miss it? Because I completely forgot about it!  I guess John Snow's right -- I do have too many activities.

We've started watching the legal drama Damages on DVD from the library. (We're interested in it because it's created by the same people as Bloodline.)

Saw Blurred Lines at the Bloor. It's a documentary about the modern art scene and how it's been distorted by millionaires paying huge sums at the big auctions. (As far as I'm concerned, you can have Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons.)

*GASP!*

"Everything they say at Saint-Sulpice about free will is an idle fancy.  I already see that I will lose my fortune and my reputation for your sake.  I can read my destiny in your lovely eyes"--Manon Lescaut

Friday morning I had a dental checkup. (In the reception area I met Kathy from my opera group!) I still haven't got my dental card from ODSP so I'll have to deal with that soon. Because I had a headache Thursday and had to get up early Friday, I got behind in my emails. (I need to unsubscribe from more of those lists!)

Yesterday afternoon was the Reading Out Loud Meetup. September is Banned Books Month, so as usual our topic was banned and challenged books. (The event's title was *GASP!*) I read a chapter from Frank McCourt's memoir 'Tis, in which he tried to teach J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye to his high school class but the principal came in and confiscated all the books!  We also read the chapter from Catcher where Holden meets Luce the college boy.  

Other readings were the first chapter of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover (from the second edition--I suppose John Snow knows the differences between the editions!); the part from Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita where Humbert Humbert recalls all the places they visited driving around the U.S.; and Tomi Ungerer's children's book No Kiss for Mother (which a librarian panel denounced, leading to all his books being removed from some school libraries!) I would have read a bit from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, but we ran out of time.

Through sheer persistence, I've come to follow over 2500 people on Twitter. (Some of them are nice enough to tweet their thanks!) I skip the singers and the business firms and those using foreign languages, but there are still a lot of others.  And mostly as a result of that, I already have close to a thousand followers.

Manon Lescaut is a cracking good read!  I'm still not sure what to think of Manon:  is she a "bad girl" or just making the best of her limited options?

Nightmare!

"That human resolutions should be subject to change is not something that has ever surprised me:  being born of a particular passion, they may be destroyed by another; but when I think of the sanctity of the resolutions that had brought me to Saint-Sulpice, and of the inner joy Heaven granted me so long as I continued to carry them out, I tremble at the ease with which I was able to break them"--Manon Lescaut (Something Catholic about that!)

Flip Wilson as Adam: "It wasn't the apple in the tree, it was the tomato on the ground!"--Laugh-In

Last night I had a nightmare. That doesn't happen often, but I was tardy refilling my Cipralex prescription and that tends to cause vivid dreams. (The night before I had a dream involving Liv Tyler and Colin Firth in a movie about invaders destroying London landmarks, with me an actor playing Firth[?] and improvising lines about how depressed I was being in such a stupid movie.) 

In my nightmare I was in the movie I Want to Live! the one where Susan Hayward ends up in the gas chamber, which I actually haven't seen. (A glamorous-looking death row prisoner, isn't she?  If you ask me, a movie with an exclamation mark in the title is trying too hard.) In the dream I wasn't a character in the movie, but an audience-like observer who knew what was going to happen and wanted to get out before seeing it.  Sort of like when Wile E. Coyote went off a cliff and got them to end the cartoon before he reached the ground.

This afternoon I saw a couple of episodes of Laugh-In with Dawna.  Yes, it is pretty dated. (The funniest bit was Tommy Smothers introducing Rowan and Martin and struggling to pronounce their names!)

I've started reading Abbe Prevost's Manon Lescaut for John Snow's book club and J.L. Granatstein's The Last Good War, about Canada in World War II, for the History Meetup.

Last time I forgot to mention that at this week's memoir group, there was a rare subject that I couldn't think of anything to write about:  sports cars.

LEAVING HOME

"As for Pierre Gringoire, he not only managed to save the goat, but he became somewhat a success as a dramatist.  It appears that, after delving into astrology, philosophy, architecture, hermetics, and having tasted every variety of silly pursuit, he returned to tragedy, which is the silliest of all.  It was what he called coming to a tragic end....  Phoebus de Chateaupers likewise came to a tragic end--he married"--The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Sunday night I saw a documentary at the Bloor about A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the East Indian who brought the Hare Krishna movement to '60s America, then the world. (I couldn't remember his name and had to look it up on Wikipedia.) 

Then Monday night I saw the documentary Hitler: A Career on Netflix.  (They were rather opposite personalities, of course.) It mentions that part of the reason the Nazis caught on in early '30s Germany was because their activities were more fun than the other parties!

Yesterday I ran through David French's Leaving Home with the Play Reading Meetup at Yorkville Library. (We had to move out to a park in the middle because a book club had the room.) It's a 1972 play about a Newfoundland family in Toronto, and I was Ben, the son about to leave home.  I saw the play on the CBC back in the '70s, or maybe it was the sequel Of the Fields Lately.  At any rate I remember the grace: "Bless this food that now we take and feed our souls for Jesus' sake!"

I've finished Hunchback. Its style is rather theatrical, almost operatic! (I wasn't surprised to learn that Victor Hugo wrote a libretto for an opera version.)

I now have over 500 Twitter followers!  I guess I reached a critical mass after following a thousand Tweeters...

Organizers Meetup

"I wonder if anything gives a mother more delight than the contemplation of her infant's shoe, especially if it be a holiday, a Sunday, or a baptismal shoe, a shoe embroidered to its very sole--a shoe worn before the child has taken its first step.  That shoe so cute and tiny covered a foot to young to walk; it is the shoe that recalls her baby so poignantly that it seems as if the child were present"--The Hunchback of Notre Dame

"What place are you bound for?" "Same place as you, Jeremiah--hell, in the end"--Jeremiah Johnson

Wednesday night I went to an Organizers Meetup at Spring Rolls near Yonge & Bloor.  I met quite a few people I knew, including the Russian Margo (not the Polish Margo).  Some people speaking for Meetup were talking about the site's new look and looking for feedback from us. But I really can't judge such changes until I've actually been working with them.

Thursday night was the History Meetup.  The subject was the Renaissance and we discussed Machiavelli's The Prince.

Yesterday I saw the 1972 Sydney Pollack-Robert Redford western Jeremiah Johson with Dawna. Anne came too, but she left early because she couldn't face its turning violent.  It's one of the cooler westerns, though the last half hour is weak.

Today I went to Dutch Dreams for ice cream with a Meetup group.  The weather's been changing, and I've had a severe headache.  This evening we watched an architectural show on Netflix about ten outstanding bridge designs. (The series also does museums and city squares and such.)

MILDRED PIERCE

"He did not know, he whose heart was as light as air, he who observed no law in the world but the ordinary laws of nature, he who allowed his passions to follow what course they wanted, so that the spring of his emotions was always dry because he opened daily so many fresh channels--he had no idea with what fury that flood of human passions swells and surges when it is refused outlet, how it gathers strength, and overflows, how it wears away the heart, how it has broken away its dikes and burst from its bed"--The Hunchback of Notre Dame

"A ruler who just plays the lion and forgets the fox doesn't know what he's doing.  Hence a sensible leader cannot and must not keep his word if by doing so he puts himself at risk, and if the reasons that made him give his word in the first place are no longer valid.  If all men were good, this would be bad advice, but since they are a sad lot and won't be keeping their promises to you, you hardly need to keep yours to them.  Anyway, a ruler will never be short of good reasons to explain away a broken promise"--The Prince

"One of these days you may have a weak moment." "When I do I'll send you a telegram--collect!"--Mildred Pierce

Sunday we finished the Netflix series Ozark.  As much as I like shows with smart characters, so many characters being this smart is rather hard to swallow.

Tonight I saw Michael Curtiz' Mildred Pierce for the third time. It's a hard-boiled Joan Crawford melodrama and corny fun, with some great dialogue. (The Kate Winslet version wasn't as good, despite having a handsome look.) Jack Carson and Eve Arden have good supporting roles.

I'm now following over 500 tweeters, and have over 30 followers of my own. (The big topics on Twitter just now are Trump announcing he'll abandon the Dream Act, and Hillary Clinton's weaselly-sounding campaign memoir.)

What weather!  Harvey hit Texas last week, Irma is about to hit Florida, and Jose is already forming.

DIRTY HARRY

"Women understand and respond to one another more quickly than do men....  To tinge a whole company of pretty women with a certain amount of ill-humor, it is enough for just one prettier woman to arrive on the scene--especially when there is but one man present"--The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Dirty Harry (to his new partner): "I hope your college degree doesn't get you killed, because I might get killed with you."

Thursday night I tried to screen Zhang Yimou's To Live at Debi's place for the History Meetup. But the subtitles wouldn't play, and about a third of the way through it got completely unplayable! Pity, it's a wonderful movie...

Yesterday afternoon I saw with Dawna Don Siegel's Nixonite vigilante classic Dirty Harry, which made Clint Eastwood a star in America. (He was already the top star overseas!) To call it a caricature is putting it mildly: in the last third it becomes a full-fledged cartoon!  The villain, out to extort money from the city government,  assassinates random people, then says he has a girl buried alive, then gets released on a technicality, then pays someone to beat him up so he can say Eastwood did it and stop the latter's surveillance, then takes a school bus hostage.  It's the sort of movie where Eastwood's watching for the villain through binoculars and ends up seeing naked women who haven't closed their curtains. (I'd thought that Animal House invented that cliche!) Never a dull moment, I'll admit.

What's depressing about movies like this isn't just that they're transparently manipulative. (Dedicating the movie to San Francisco policemen killed in action was especially shameless!) It's that people are so easy to manipulate, at least in America. Just like those Jell-o Pudding Pops commercials where Bill Cosby says in a smarmy voice, "Mom won't give you the Evil Eye because it's made of real pudding!" Then they show a pair of motherly hands mixing the pudding and adding milk from a pitcher.  We all know it's made in some factory and filled with sugar and fat and exotic chemicals, but American moms have a vague image of pudding as "wholesome."

Twitter is a first-class time-waster!  I've been following every tweeter they suggest just in case any of them comes up with something interesting...