KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST

"Leopold's letters and memos, forever badgering someone about acquiring a colony, seem to be in the voice of a person starved for love as a child and now filled with an obsessive desire for an emotional substitute, the way someone becomes embroiled in an endless dispute with a brother or sister over an inheritance, or with a neighbor over a property boundary.  The urge for more can become insatiable, and its apparent fulfillment seems only to exacerbate that early sense of deprivation and to stimulate the need to acquire still more"--King Leopold's Ghost

King Leopold's Ghost is a fantastic book, but very disturbing.  You may think of the Belgian Congo over a century ago as the world of the past, but I kept seeing our present-day world, with its ruthless international corporations (including Canada's notorious mining companies), bureaucratic dissembling and spin control.

Adam Hochschild has an eye for telling yet entertaining details, like suggesting that ivory was the plastic of the 19th century.  Would you believe that the book Leopold read about managing profitable Java plantations was written by JWB Money?  King Leopold is the sort of historical figure who makes me gasp:  one man can make a terrible difference! (The Germans have a word for people like him: schreibtischentaeter, which means a criminal who works from a desk, Adolf Eichmann being another prime example.) I'm reminded of that moment in Chinatown when Jack Nicholson asks, "How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?" and John Huston answers, "The future, Mr. Gittes!  The future."

We finished the second season of Top of the Lake.  It wasn't as great as the first one but still pretty good (like the second season of The Crown). Now I want to see In the Cut, another Jane Campion story about a female police detective.

Yesterday my city in the Vikings game suffered five waves of attacks!  I don't mind the loss of resources--they can refill pretty quickly--but what really annoyed me was that I kept trying to start rebuilding my defence forces only to have them wiped away in the blink of an eye. (It didn't help that Thursday I'd spent my whole gold reserve on upgrading resource production and education to accelerate training of soldiers, both of which will help in the long run...) Today I've been using one of my two treaty bonuses that make me safe from attack for a day, and the rebuilding is so complete that I won't need the second just yet.

The greatest people of the 18th century

I'll now take a stab at naming the greatest people of the 18th century.

William of Orange (1650-1702): Dutch Stadtholder and English King who played a crucial role in bringing together the Grand Alliance that checked absolutist French king Louis XIV's ambitions of continental domination, in The War of the League of Augsburg and the War of the Spanish Succession.

Peter the Great (1672-1725): The most progressive Tsar of Russia's Romanov Dynasty, he introduced many facets of western culture, increased the Russian Empire's territory and built the Baltic port of St. Petersburg from scratch.

Robert Walpole (1676-1745): British Whig politician who over almost two decades made the office of Prime Minister the centre of power in the United Kingdom.

Johann Sebastian Bach  (1685-1760): Outstanding German composer of the baroque era. His music, often dismissed as old-fashioned in his lifetime, is still widely listened to today.

Voltaire (1694-78) French man of letters who emerged as one of the leading thinkers of the Enlightenment.

Benjamin Franklin  (1706-90) Philadelphia printer who was a leader in the movement for American independence as well as a scientist, inventor and man of letters.  He was one of the Enlightenment's central figures.

Karl Linnaeus (1707-78) Swedish biologist and pioneer taxonomist, who created the modern classification system for living things, an advance that made the Theory of Evolution possible.

William Pitt Sr. (1708-78): English politician whose global strategy in the Seven Years War led to crucial victories in the annus mirabilis of 1759 and made Britain a world power.

Qianlong (1711-99): Chinese Emperor who took the empire to its territorial peak, conquering a swath of central Asia.  In his later years, however, his attraction to the corrupt official Heshen started the Qing Dynasty's decline.

Frederick the Great (1712-86): Prussian King who obtained superpower status for his kingdom through narrow victories in the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War.

Adam Smith (1723-90): Scottish thinker whose The Wealth of Nations became a founding text of capitalist economics.

Catherine the Great (1729-96): German-born Empress of Russia, who extended her realm's borders westward and southward, becoming one of the European powers.

George Washington (1732-99): Virginia planter who led the military struggle for American independence, promoted the 1787 constitution creating a federal government, and became the nation's first president.

James Watt (1736-1819): Scottish engineer who developed the first practical steam engine, helping to spur the Industrial Revolution.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809): English thinker who took the lead in calling for  American independence, then helped draft the Declaration of the Rights of Man for the French Revolution.  His publications include Common Sense, Rights of Man and the Deist tract The Age of Reason.

Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803): Haitian mulatto who led the slave colony in a long war for independence that signalled the beginning of the end for the New World's colonial slave economy.

Francisco Goya (1746-1828): Spanish painter whose style evolved into a dark, psychologically profound vision.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe  (1749-1832): A dominant figure in German literature and leader of the romantic cultural movement.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91): Outstanding Austrian composer in the classical era.  For his short life, he was unusually prolific in  many musical fields, including symphony and opera.

William Blake (1757-1827): English poet and engraver, as well as radical religious and political thinker, at the forefront of the Romantic movement.

Horatio Nelson (1758-1805): English admiral whose sheer determination and advanced tactics in the Napoleonic Wars guaranteed the British Empire's naval supremacy.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97): English author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, a treatise that started the continuing movement for women's rights.

Busy day

Saturday afternoon I went to the big Chapters-Indigo bookstore on Bloor & Bay and bought Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost, about the Belgian Congo, to read for my August History Meetup.  It's one of those books that's hard to put down.

Sunday was the Classic Book Club, where we discussed Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.  I brought our coverless Classics Illustrated comic of the book, which amused the others.

Yesterday was busy.  First I went to the memoir group. Then I went to Miriam's place to proofread her proposal to get a booth for her business at a Kensington Market place.  Then I saw the documentary Design Canada at the Bloor. (I would have seen it with the Movie Meetup group, but I arrived at the last minute and didn't know they were in the balcony.)

Today I went to the bank to ask about getting a reverse mortgage on our house.  They referred me to some home equity specialists.

We saw the first episodes of Jane Campion's second Top of the Lake series China Girl.  It's even more unusual than the first one!

Goulash

"New York University has torn down... a home that Edgar Allen Poe once lived in. (NYU partially re-created the facade of the Poe house.  Quoth the raven:  Fuck you)"--Kevin Baker, Harper's

Wednesday I cooked goulash for the first time.  I chopped up the onion and the green pepper really fine.  And I fried the hamburger the way I'd read online, browning the bottom layer then turning it over to brown the opposite layer, only then breaking it up.  It was pretty good, but next time I'll add more tomato paste and less cayenne pepper!

Wednesday night I saw  Desiree (for the third time) on the DVD with the History Meetup.  Marlon Brando seems oddly miscast as Napoleon.

Today we got the latest issue of Harper's.  There's a very interesting Kevin Baker article about how big money is destroying New York City.

Music clips

Some more music clips today.

Humperdinck, Children's Chorus, Hansel & Gretel.  One of my favorite opera overtures!

Richard Adinsell, Beau Brummel.  This 1950s MGM production is no great shakes: Stewart Granger is an oddly stolid choice for the title role, Robert Morley's George III is a haunted-house madman, and the final deathbed scene is fiction. (He actually outlived George IV!) But it has a nice fanfare by Adinsell, who also composed the Warsaw Concerto.

Jerome Moross, The Big Country.  William Wyler's 1958 western is a classic, and Moross' musical score does it justice.

"We Won't Be Happy Till We Get It," from Babes in Toyland.  The villain's trio from the 1961 Disney movie of Victor Herbert's operetta, it's the best of the songs that Leven & Bruns added. (The main villain is Ray Bolger, best known as the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.) When I was little we owned the soundtrack album and I became familiar with these songs.  Youtube actually has the movie number, but I prefer the vinyl version.

Peter Gabriel, "Biko" from Peter Gabriel.  A musical tribute to the anti-apartheid movement's most prominent martyr, murdered by South African police in 1977. (For what it's worth, I think the movie Cry Freedom got a bad rap.) Gabriel is a singular musical talent!

Brian Eno, "1/1" from Music for Airports. Genius musical producer Eno came up with this 1978 album of new-wave ambient music. (They actually tried playing it in airports, but people found it too depressing!) It rewards patience.

Heaven 17, "Come Live With Me" from Luxury Gap.  A single from an underrated 1982 British album.

The Parachute Club, "Rise Up" from The Parachute Club.  I loved this song and video back in 1983, even before I moved to Toronto and got to know the city in the background.

The Payolas, "Where Is This Love" from Hammer on a Drum.  A 1983 song by another underrated group, this time Canadian. I especially like the moment where the kid instinctively protects the little guy!

Frank Zappa, "Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk" from Broadway the Hard Way.  When they made Frank Zappa they broke the mold. (Or as Zappa might say, they threw away the shovel.) He did this single attacking the "Christian right"--who are neither Christian nor right, IMHO--in the mid-'80s, at a time of his high-profile fight against musical censorhip.

The World is my Back Yard

https://kseniaparkhatskaya.com/portfolio/dance/

The other day I found a link of an incredible Russian woman dancing the Charleston on a Russian TV talent show! (It's the lower left video on the page linked above.) It actually got put in a Facebook group devoted to the Gilded Age, but why be fussy?  No-one dances like the Russians--nobody else has that craziness!

Saturday afternoon I went to that costume warehouse in New Toronto where they were having a big sale in period clothes.  Nothing interested me, but getting there and back was a fine adventure. Afterward I went on Betty-Anne's art walk, but I left a bit early what with the heat.

Yesterday was the Reading Out Loud Meetup.  The topic was translated foreign-language writing, and I titled it "The World Is My Back Yard." (That's a line from a song in the Disney animated feature The Aristocats!) I read Heinrich Heine's poem The Lorelei, a story from Boccaccio's Decameron about a convent gardener pretending to be a deaf-mute, and my translation of Camoes' Lusiades (the part where the Greek gods debate Portugal's future).  A blind guy brought some Arabic poems by Adonis and a Zimbabwean read a Neruda poem. (We also read the part in Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris where Quasimodo's ugly mug gets him crowned King of Fools and the part in Cervantes' Don Quixote where he charges at the windmills.)

The Comics Kingdom run of Popeye strips from the '30s is finished. (Just before that great story set in the Wild West where Olive Oyl became a dancing girl!) I replaced it with Bruce Tinsley's conservative satirical strip Mallard Fillmore (like 19th-century POTUS Millard Fillmore, geddit?), in the hope of some nice political quarrels in the comments section.  But the strip and the comments are both pretty mild...

John came over today and cut down the crab apple tree in the front yard.  When we first bought this house 25 years ago it was barely my height, but in a decade it got as high as the attic!  Oh well, even the days of trees are numbered. (He's also returned Strap Hanger, a book about urban transit which I still intend to read one of these days...)

Reading material

Saturday night I went to Nicola's Singing Meetup again. (There were a dozen people there!) We sang "Let It Be." My favourite line in it is "Shine until tomorrow," though I thought it was "Shine on till tomorrow," which I actually prefer...

On the way there I stopped at the Beguiling and bought Chester Brown's lauded graphic novel Louis Riel. (It's a Drawn & Quarterly publication, like that Klondike book.) The first pages are pretty good!

Monday, after the memoir group, I went to the Gladstone library and borrowed The American Revolution:  A Very Short Introduction, which I'm reading for the History Meetup.  In addition, I'm reading Cartoon County a bit at a time.

Last night I went to the Bloor Cinema to see a documentary about Canadian design.  But it was a big premiere screening and already sold out!  Oh well, I'll see it later...

My email backlog is back to over a thousand messages!  I'm working my way through the links from medium.com, but it's going slowly because there are so many interesting articles there:  last night I read one about stoic philosophy, and it rather appeals to me.

I accumulated a huge pile of gold in the Vikings game, over a period, and yesterday I largely used it up to speed up the research process, so now I can train warriors pretty quickly.

Concert clips

I think I'll post some clips from famous concert movies (and similar shows).

Lesley Gore, "Hey Now" from The TAMI Show.  A number from a classic 1964 pop concert movie. (LG's hairdo made the singer look about forty!) I like that chorus accompaniment.

Dusty Springfield, "I Can't Hear You" from Ready, Steady, Go!  This clip is from a "The Sound of Motown" episode of the British series Ready, Steady, Go! so there's another great chorus accompaniment: Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, no less. (Pretty silly dancers.)

Dionne Warwick, "Message to Michael" from Hullabaloo. One of the songs Burt Bachrach and Hal David wrote for Dionne Warwick, a formidable team in the mid-'60s. (She's performing it on the American TV show Hullabaloo.)

Marvin Gaye, "Ain't That Peculiar" from Hullabaloo.  Why not have two Hullabaloo clips? (I meant to include Billy Preston stealing the Concert for Bangladesh with "That's the Way God Planned It," but it got taken off Youtube!) The show's dancers included Michael Bennett, who directed the Broadway blockbuster A Chorus Line, and Donna Mckechnie, who had a star-making role in it.

Janis Joplin, "Ball and Chain" from Monterey Pop.  A stunning number, from the classic concert movie directed by D.A. Pennebaker.  That's Mama Cass in the audience, clearly impressed. (Those are the two singers I'd most like to bring back from the dead...)

The Beatles, "Get Back" from Let It Be.  A number from the Fab Four's final "rooftop concert" in 1969.  Split screen was getting old by this time, but it's still a moment of musical history.

Ravi Shankar, "Evening Raga" from Woodstock.  Can't omit a Woodstock clip, can I? (Someone said that watching the movie is better than seeing it live--you don't get rained on!) And I can't very well omit the great sitarist either...

Emmylou Harris and The Band, "Evangeline" from The Last Waltz.  The Band went out with a bang in this 1978 concert movie directed by Martin Scorcese.  The key is the guest stars, ranging from Joni Mitchell to Neil Diamond.

The Talking Heads, "Burning Down the House" from Stop Making Sense.  My favourite single (I sing it at karaoke) by one of my favourite new age bands, from Jonathan Demme's great concert movie.  I like the bit where the guy makes a face into the camera!

Morris Day & The Time, "Jungle Love" and "The Bird" from Purple Rain.  I'm stretching a bit here, but they are performing on stage! (How to steal a movie from Prince...)

Fun with electoral numbers

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-election-results-2018-a-map-of-the-live-results/

I thought I'd look at the figures from the Ontario election and determine how they'd look with a mixed proportional representation scheme like I'd prefer.  Start with the 124 seats that were elected by the "first past the post" system, of which the Conservatives won 76, the NDP 40, Liberals 7 and Greens 1. (BTW, though I'm a New Democrat myself, I'm glad that the Greens won a seat and the Liberals weren't completely shut out.)

Suppose we added 26 seats to be determined indirectly, for an even total of 150. (In this way, the system could be introduced right away without a new election!) Suppose that there were 124 A-seats, elected directly just as today, and 22 B-seats to be allotted so that the total would be as close to the popular vote as possible. And suppose that the other 4 were C-seats, to be awarded to the party with the highest popular vote and improve the chance of a stable majority government, except in one case.  That case would be if the leading party's A-seats alone were greater than the number of A- and B-seats together that matched its popular-vote share, in which case they'd go to the opposition parties so that their total number would be closer to their own share.

Start with the total of 146 A- and B-seats.  Multiplying each party's popular vote percentage by 146 would give the Conservatives 59.1, the NDP 49.0, the Liberals 28.6 and the Greens 6.7.  But the Tories actually won 76 seats, so this will be the exceptional case where the other four seats go to the opposition parties.  Even so, they'll be thirteen seats short of their popular-vote share, so we'll have to deduct four seats from the NDP and the Greens, and five from the Liberals because they're just over 28.5.

This result would give the Tories the same 76 seats, the NDP 45 (40 elected directly/5 indirectly), the Liberals 24 (7/17), and the Greens 3 (1/2).  The Conservatives would have a skin-of-their-teeth majority.

I can dream, can't I?

Bad news and good news

"There it was, you see.  A man is a man, at bottom.  Whole ages of abuse and oppression cannot crush the manhood clear out of him.  Whoever thinks it a mistake is himself mistaken.  Yes, there is plenty good enough material for a republic in the most degraded people that ever existed--even the Russians; plenty of manhood in them--even in the Germans--if one could but force it out of its timid and suspicious privacy, to overthrow and trample in the mud any throne that ever was set up and any nobility that ever supported it"--A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

So Rob Ford's brother is Premier of Ontario now.  We're in no position to look down on Americans electing Trump!  It reminds me of the second season of Twin Peaks when the deceased villain Jacques Renault got followed by his brother Jean. (I'm showing my age again...) 

But at least the New Democrats took second place, and should provide a more spirited opposition than the Liberals would. (The Liberal government was pretty worn out:  Kathleen Wynn had been lucky to survive the previous election.) And here in St. Paul's Jill Andrew won a close race!  They had a party for the volunteers at the Midtown pub, but I just made a brief appearance there.

Wednesday night at the History Meetup we discussed the Portuguese empire.  One of the people there was a blind woman, and afterward I let her hold my arm as she walked home!

Finished A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court the other day.  The apocalyptic ending--which reminded me of the Mad Max movies--leaves a bad taste in the mouth, but does seem remarkably prophetic of the 20th century. (Did Che Guevara read it?)

Comedy clips

Time for another post of comedy clips!

We Faw Down.  The great Leo McCarey directed Laurel and Hardy in this silent short, in which they pull the wool over their wives' eyes to sneak out to a poker game, but in the end the women are coming for them with a shotgun!  Of course, they reused the basic story for the duo's classic feature Sons of the Desert, not to mention innumerable episodes of The Flintstones!

Speakeasy scene, Horse Feathers.  This is a scene from college comedy Horse Feathers, my favorite Marx Brothers movie.  This was before the 1934 Production Code, when they could joke about stuff like speakeasies. (Did you know that "Knock knock" jokes probably originated in speakeasy culture?)

Two short scenes from Footlight Parade.  Joan Blondell was in top form in this great comedy, with Busby Berkeley numbers to boot!

Ping Pong scene, You Can't Cheat an Honest Man.  Circus huckster Larson E. Whipsnade is one of W.C. Fields' more unpleasant characters, but this movie still makes me laugh. (This is the one where he keeps mentioning snakes and causing the delicate lady to faint!)

"See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have," Destry Rides Again.  Marlene Dietrich, who'd become "box office poison" in the late '30s, had a big comeback in this western, as Frenchie, a knockabout comic saloon singer role. (Compare it to "Garbo laughs!" in Ninotchka.) This is her funniest number.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3dsl7i

Operation:  Rabbit.  Chuck Jones had Wile E. Coyote pursue Bugs Bunny instead of a the Roadrunner in a few cartoons, and even gave him a voice!  The first one is really funny, with some great dialogue. "And--I'm a genius, while you could hardly pass the entrance examinations to kindergarten."

George Carlin, "Baseball vs. Football." In routines like this classic, Carlin looks at familiar things in very unfamiliar ways!

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6gehc1

Maude, "The Case of the Broken Punch Bowl." Maude was an uneven show to be sure, but Norman Lear and Bea Arthur developed a great character (probably based on Mrs. Lear) in Maude Findlay, the liberal suburban diva.  I especially liked this 1976 Rashomon-style episode, partly because my own mother collected antiques. (Please pardon the reversed screen, which only really affects the credits.)

SCTV News, "Togo Earthquake." Joe Flaherty and Eugene Levy originally developed their newscaster routine on the Second City stage. (For you Americans out there, Floyd Robertson and Earl Camembert are based on real-life Canadian anchormen Lloyd Robertson and Earl Cameron.) In case you can't tell, Floyd can't stand Earl. They must have been inspired by "The Mr. Bill Show" from Saturday Night Live here.

"Pirate Pete," Newhart.  My favorite episode of Bob Newhart's second sitcom, from 1985.

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF

"When you are going to do a miracle for an ignorant race, you want to get in every detail that will count; you want to make all the properties impressive to the public eye; you want to make matters comfortable for your head guest; then you can turn yourself loose and play your effects for all they are worth.  I know the value of these things, for I know human nature.  You can't throw too much style into a miracle"--A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

To a doctor: "Don't you have a pill that'll make the pain go away?" "Sometimes I wish I had a pill that would make people go away!"--Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

I've had a busy weekend. 

Friday I went to the campaign HQ and did more bundling for a mailbox leaflet drop.  On the way back I stopped at Shopper's Drug Mart and not only refilled my Cipralex prescription but bought shampoo, toothpaste, dental floss, shaving cream and a new watch. (I'd had the old one for ten years, and the plastic cover was cracked!) Later I mowed the lawn, in what seemed just a short time since the previous mowing.

Yesterday I went to Krispy Kreme and bought a dozen assorted doughnuts for the first time.  (They're rather too sweet for my taste, but at least I tried something new.) Later at the campaign HQ I folded leaflets of the Toronto Star editorial calling on tactical voters to choose the NDP.  The important thing was to crease them so the worlds "Toronto Star editorial" appeared on the top fold.

Today I saw Richard Brooks' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (for the third time) at the Event Screen.  Burl Ives is a great Big Daddy:  he really owned that role!  Afterward I went to the campaign HQ and stapled pairs of sheets together.

The other night I dreamed I was on a train going through Quebec, between Ontario and the Maritimes, but we all had to get off for a while at Riviere du Loup. (I haven't travelled Via Rail for over fifteen years!)

Notice that I've gone out of my usual order here!  I'd normally do a non-diary post before the next diary post, but now I've managed to do two diary posts in a row.  That's what happens when you have a busy weekend!

More comic strips

"I will say this much for the nobility: that, tyrannical, murderous, rapacious, and morally rotten as they were, they were deeply and enthusiastically religious"--A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Since subscribing to Go Comics, I've been viewing a lot of new comic strips online. Besides 9 Chickweed Lane and Pibgorn, they also have stuff likeCathy, which I enjoyed in the '80s, and Doonesbury.  

I've also been following some through Facebook groups. Maybe I've mentioned Steve Roper & Mike Nomad, and another is Annie.  The late Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie was in reruns in the late '70s (they reprinted some brilliant '30s stories!), until the success of the 1977 Broadway musical prompted the syndicate to revive the strip with a shorter title at the end of 1979.

For the new artist they hired Leonard Starr, who was just finishing a prodigious 20-year run on Mary Perkins On Stage,  and he did this strip for another two decades.  They've been reprinting it on a Facebook group devoted to Starr, and it's a revelation. Back at the time I actually read much of the first story (involving Annie getting kidnapped by an oil sheikh and Daddy Warbucks going into tough-guy mode) in newspapers at the Mount Allison university library.  I recall an episode from some story where Annie and her dog Sandy were lost in the desert and ran out of water, but replenished their supply from the canteens of dead men!

At the campaign HQ yesterday I did some more bundling, and found an even quicker way.  I counted out 25 leaflets, then got another pile the same size, but this time I made them into one pile and got new piles the same size as that one!  I must have started with a box of 2000 leaflets, but in the end produced 39 bundles and a bit extra. (No doubt I'd made bundles of 51!) In the evening I assembled some lawn signs.

You can find anything on Youtube!  When I was little we had this record A Child's Introduction to the Classics, with one cut introducing us to Humperdinck's Hansel & Gretel.  It really scared me back then--Moira remembers it too!  Well, I've found it on Youtube. (I also found their introduction to Rossini's Barber of Seville, where I first heard the word "suspicious"!)

Last night I had a nightmare where I was trying to drive this big RV on the street. (I don't know how to drive at all, of course.) I somehow caused the vehicle to take off into traffic with nobody at the wheel, and had to run after it!