Fundraiser

"It really had not occurred to her to think of them in that light.  Scullery maids were machines who carried coal scuttles and made fires"--A Little Princess

"When you think about it, the same God who made you and me made a rattlesnake.  That don't make sense!"--Godless

"He was engaged in counter-counter-counterespionage." "It looks like someone countered his counter!"--The Avengers

Yesterday afternoon we had our opera fundraiser at St. Paul's Catholic church near Queen & Parliament.  There were quite a few snacks at the reception afterward, as usual, and I spoiled my dinner somewhat.

Yesterday Dawna and I saw a couple of episodes of The Avengers, both of which were pretty complicated.  The first one was about an invisibility formula that turned out to be a hoax. (We'd also seen that on a Get Smart episode!)  The second was about spies using pigeon-cams and sending their secrets through a talking parrot. Emma went undercover as a model, not illogically.

A Little Princess is a great story!  I read more than a hundred pages over the weekend.

Godless is getting stranger and stranger, not that I mind.

On Youtube just now I've been listening to Leroy Anderson's instrumental pieces.  I especially like "Trumpeter's Lullaby" and "China Doll."

GODLESS

Woman speaking First Nations language: "He looks simple." Boy translating: "She says you look strong." "I'll name him Stray Dog." "And she's naming you Wandering Star"--Godless

Tonight we saw the first episode of the western series Godless on Netflix.  It was a promising start, with lots of graphic mayhem and bleakness and existential dread. (I noticed that the shaman trying to cure the sheriff's failing sight was Deputy Hawk from Twin Peaks!)

We just saw a DVD of Roberto Rossellini's neo-realist films Paisan and Germany:  Year Zero. (We also had his Rome:  Open City, but we'd seen it before.) I'd wanted to see both for quite a while, and they're powerful depictions of Europe at the end of World War II.

At the opera rehearsal Tuesday night we did the acting exercise where we formed successive pairs and took turns mirroring each other! (The director asked each of us for a rhyme or alliteration of our name so he could remember them, and I called myself "James the Joker"!)

I finished the Civil War book and started Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess.

Athens rising near the pole

Saturday afternoon Dawna, Debi and I watched some episodes of Get Smart and Hogan's Heroes.  Hogan's Heroes was really a little boy's idea of World War II:  that's the key to it! (People who actually lived through military imprisonment are apt to find it tasteless.)

Yesterday afternoon was Reading Out Loud Meetup.  The topic was Canadian writing, so I titled the event Athens Rising Near the Pole (quoting Alexander Pope!). We read several stories from Kaleidoscope:  David Helwig's "Streetcar, Streetcar, Wait for Me," John Metcalf's "Early Morning Rabbits," Hugh Garner's "The Moose and the Sparrow" and David Lewis Stein's "The Huntsman." (Other Kaleidoscope stories I remember from high school are Alice Munro's "Day of the Butterfly," Mordecai Richler's "Pinky's Squealer" and Hugh MacLennan's "The Lost Love of Tommy Waterfield."

The other night I dreamed of getting into a fierce quarrel with my father. (We never fight in real life!) Just last night I dreamed of visiting the old Mount Allison campus and finding it unrecognizably high-tech, and of hearing the torch song "Ten Cents a Dance" in a supermarket.  I've been having vivid dreams because I'm experimenting with cutting back my anti-depressants to every other day.

FOLLIES

Last night I went to the Event Screen cinemacast of London's National Theatre production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies.  They showed an interview with Sondheim where he said that in early drafts the show had a great start with introductory scenes, but started dragging when the plot came in.  So in later drafts they got rid of the plot!

About halfway through the show they got sound problems from the London end.  The accompaniment was coming through fine, but you could hardly hear the singing!  During the number "Hey, Mr. Producer" people in the audience started singing the song themselves! (They must have known the score well.)

I could have stayed until they sorted it out but I had a bit of a headache and left early.  It didn't help that the place was packed and I could only find a seat in the front rows near the screen.

John Snow and I were going to have lunch today, but he sent an email delaying it a week.  Of course, I only got around to reading the email after going there and waiting half an hour! (My email backlog is bigger than ever...) On top of that, the St. Clair street car had a derailment and they replaced it with shuttle buses.  The electronic board said the next bus was coming in nine minutes, but nine minutes turned into another half hour so I went home by subway.

But when I got home I was in a good mood again, for it turned out that that book of Canadian short stories had arrived in time for Sunday's Reading Out Loud Meetup. (I was worried about that.)

I finished my Portuguese translation of The Wizard of Oz tonight. (Moving ending!) And I had a dream about a TV show where space aliens took over a supermarket and sent super-robots to catch people who stole food!

Dreams

The other night I had that dream again where I'm visiting Russia, which is odd because when I'm awake I don't have any conscious desire to do that. (Moira asked how I knew it was Russia, but in dreams you just know things!) I'll have to tell my shrink Dr. Hassan about it.

Just last night I dreamed of seeing director Stephen Frears and actor Daniel Day-Lewis being interviewed early in the morning.  Where that comes from was some twenty years ago Moira told me about seeing a TV interview with Frears, and said, "He's so cool he looks like he just got out of bed!" I also had another repeating dream where I'm trying to pack clothes and stuff but making a hash of it.  I suppose that's a common one.

On Sunday I finished raking the leaves on the lawn and putting them in big collection bags, which Father had started. (We got an extra-wide rake!) That evening I went to see a master class the opera group put on for soloists, which was at a church just a few blocks east of here.  I wasn't feeling well and left early, but did hear Renato's big aria from Verdi's A Masked Ball and one from Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd.

Next Sunday is Reading Out Loud Meetup.  Through ABE Books I've ordered Kaleidoscope, a collection of Canadian short stories I was lucky enough to read in high school.  A lot of good stuff there worth reading aloud, by writers like Mordecai Richler and Alice Munro and Hugh Garner and Hugh MacLennan.  I asked for Priority Post, so it should be here by Friday.

The other day I upgraded my computer's operating system from Sierra to High Sierra.  There must be some Bogart fans in Silicon Valley.

I misplaced my watch for a week or two, but just found it again in my room!

The late, great SPY magazine

"Why can't you people leave me alone?"--Gran Torino

This afternoon I saw Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino with Dawna and Debi.  It was quite good, with Eastwood at his funniest as an aging curmudgeon who gets involved with Hmong neighbours.  The ultimate message was pretty hopeful. (That movie was the source of the line "Get off my lawn!" which Bernie Sanders' detractors witlessly linked to him.)

You can read archived copies of Spy magazine online!  It's been looking prophetic lately:  long before director James Toback became part of Hollywood's sexual harassment scandal, Spy had done a feature about him picking up women by saying  things like "Hey baby, I'm a famous director!" 

I've been reading the first issue, from October, 1986--with comedian Chris Elliott on the cover--which featured the ten most embarrassing New Yorkers.  Along with people like "Queen of Mean" Leona Helmsley and Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, they cited Donald Trump, and quoted him on his desire to negotiate nuclear arms reduction: "It would take half an hour to learn everything there is to learn about missiles....  I think I know most of it anyway." (Shudder!  Spy famously described Trump as a "short-fingered vulgarian.")

I'm not yet quite over my cold. Still eating those pomelo grapefruits!

Almost over it

George C. Scott (lighting a cigar): "My doctor allows me one of these a day.  This is my third!"--Taps

I'm almost over my cold.  Right now I have the song "Shaking the Blues Away" going through my head. (One of the That's Entertainment movies had a clip of Ann Miller singing it in Easter Parade.) Another earworm is "I Only Have Eyes for You" from Dames.

Yesterday our internet and cable TV connection went off for a whole day because of this storm that happened to the east over the weekend. (That's why it's been five days since my last entry here!) 

We finished the third season of Damages and will be seeing the fourth soon.  Last night we watched a DVD documentary about the magazine The Nation. (I read it faithfully in the '90s, back when they had Christopher Hitchens and Alexander Cockburn, but lately they've been playing it safe too often.) Tonight we saw part of a series about the history of documentary filmmaking.

Saturday I saw Taps with Dawna, the one where they're going to close down this military school but cadets led by Timothy Hutton grab the drill weapons and end up in a siege.  Well, I saw the first half anyhow.  It's the sort of movie where you know Tom Cruise is a psycho because of his extreme haircut and beret, and the plot requires general George C. Scott to forget that his sidearm still has a live round. (My cold didn't help either.)

My father told me the other week that his mother's father kept a book of Burns poems, the Bible and a bottle of whisky at his bedside.  But I was confused and thought he was referring to my mother's father!

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT

I'm still not over my cold.  Last night I went to opera rehearsal, but ended up leaving early. (My voice was so weak that I may as well not have been there!) I did make it to the memoir group.

Moira got all four That's Entertainment movies from the library, with clips from MGM musicals. (She especially liked Eleanor Powell's tap-dancing.) The first one is the best: the second has too much narration.

I've managed to get up to speed with my Facebook notifications, but my email backlog is bigger than ever!