Sha Na Na

"His talents were of the very first order, although his mind showed a preference always for the ideal and the aesthetic, and there was about him that repugnance to the actual business of life which is the common result of this balance of the faculties"--Uncle Tom's Cabin

Funny how one piece of music can remind me of another.  At my Sunday afternoon singing group we've been singing "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square." (Did you know that Vera Lynn is still with us? She's now a centenarian!) In our version there's a coda that starts with some low notes that remind me of...

...of the outro to the TV show Sha Na Na, where Bowzer would say "Grease for peace!" and sing some low notes to start them into "Good Night, Sweetheart." (And a cop would come onstage and run them all in!) I think my favorite Sha Na Na member was Santini.

Sha Na Na did the hand jive school dance number in Grease, the best number in a largely second-rate musical. (Can you really change partners in the middle of a dance contest?) The movie was so lamely directed by Randall Kleiser that the band barely got shown!  And of course, the cast was clearly too old for high school--it makes you appreciate those John Hughes movies where actors like Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall seemed really adolescent.

Some people from the singing group showed up at our first La Traviata performance tonight. (I met them afterward.) I got the inspiration to improve on my royal blue shirt with a black bowtie of mine and the same white wig I wore in last fall's Marriage of Figaro  production!

UNCLE TOM'S CABIN

"It's a free country, sir; the man's mine, and I do what I please with him--that's it!"--Uncle Tom's Cabin

I finished the history of Mexico, borrowed Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin from Spadina Rd. library Saturday and started reading it for the second time. The Dickensian influence is pretty clear.

The singing group yesterday was doing "By the Light of the Silvery Moon," "Don't Let the Music Stop" (they changed "I hear America singing" to I hear Canada singing"), and a piece that combined "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," "O When the Saints Come Marching in," and "I Wanna Sing, Sing, Sing."

We're putting on La Traviata, and the rehearsals are getting hectic! (I missed last Wednesday's rehearsal because I couldn't find the place--I knew it was on Geary St. but not the number.)

We're now rehearsing at the Al Green Theatre, where we now put on performances.  Tonight we wore our costumes for the first time. (I think I'll bring my bow tie to go with the royal blue shirt!)

I've finally given up on the Reading Out Loud Meetup. (Too many months with hardly anyone turning up!) But I hope someone else is brave enough to replace me as organizer...

I've returned to the Elvenar computer game, and I'm now building cities in two worlds--one human and one elvin.

Busy weekend

Saturday afternoon was another opera rehearsal.  First we had a makeup tutorial:  we're going to have our faces coloured below a diagonal line--sort of a Phantom of the Opera mask in reverse.  And I also had a costume fitting, and will be wearing a royal blue shirt with my black pants.

Yesterday afternoon the singing group did some Irish songs for St. Patrick's day, including "Cockles and Mussels" and "Black Velvet Band." We also sang "The Ash Grove," which I'd suggested.

The Reading Out Loud event was complicated by Dora Keogh having a big music day.  What with the noise and a $10 cover charge, I had to move the location to Timothy's World Coffee again.  Anyway, there was only one other person who had the quietest voice you ever heard, not so suitable for reading aloud.  A couple of other people would have shown up, but there was another schedule irregularity so they came an hour too early--I can't help wondering if there's something wrong with the meetup.com software!

I think I may have to quit the Reading Out Loud Meetup--for month after month there's been almost nobody showing up! (Maybe someone else will dare to take on its organization...)

Tonight was the Classic Book Club Meetup, jointly with the Celtic Culture Meetup, discussing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  A couple of people found the book too difficult for them.

That book of Mexican history is fascinating!  Several times on the subway I've missed my stop because of reading it.

On Duolingo I was recently learning Korean words for animals.  I've been making a glossary of all the Korean words I come across, with a lot of different categories for them:  just now I have Numbers, Courtesy, Relations, House, Time, Weather, Space, City, Country, Culture & learning, Business, Food, Work, Pastimes, Body, Nature and Abstracts. (My only abstract word so far is 의미--uimi--which means "meaning.")

FAREWELL, MY LOVELY

"That car will stick out like spats at an Iowa picnic"--Farewell, My Lovely

Monday night I saw a Raymond Chandler double bill presented by the Toronto Film Society at Innes Hall.  The first was The Brasher Doubloon, with a rather lightweight George Montgomery. The second was Farewell, My Lovely, with a suitably world-weary Robert Mitchum, which I saw for the second time.

Today I helped Anne sort and arrange the pins Miriam will be selling at a craft fair Sunday.  She has a stock of T-shirts and pins with pictures of literary figures like Alan Ginsburg and Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath.  They let me keep one pin that said, "Poetry:  The thing that got you detention"!

I've just been learning Korean words for food on Duolingo. (Quite a few of them are close to their English translations, like hamburger and pizza.)

I've started watching Dragon Ball Z online.  I'm also watching the fourth season of Sailor Moon, which features a winged horse!  I guess I'll start the next season of One Piece too.

No more long johns

"'Did the idea ever occur to you,' Cranly asked, 'that Jesus was not what he pretended to be?'... 'The first person to whom that idea occurred,' Stephen answered, 'was Jesus himself"--A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Finished A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, including the endnotes.  Now I've started reading Lynn Foster's A Brief History of Mexico for my History Meetup. (Mesoamericans imagined zero long before the Old World did!)

I was way early for the singing group last week, and today I was on time.  We sang "Mairi's Wedding," "You Raise Me Up," "Dream a Little Dream" and "Walkin' My Baby Back Home."

On the way back I was talking to Elizabeth in the group. She's an actress who's learning lines for a revival of the Mae West play Sex!  She told me about some Ryerson community courses for people over fifty, and I'll have to check that out.  When I mentioned that I'd taken some acting lessons, she asked if I was going to return to it and I said, "Never say never!"

I've started reading my Classics Illustrated comics collection again.  This weekend I read The Call of the Wild and Daniel Boone.

It got warmer this weekend, and I've stopped wearing long johns. (There may be some more cold weather, but I don't care.) I need to get new ones anyway.

WHITE HEAT

"His morning walk across the city had begun, and he foreknew that as he passed the sloblands of Fairview he would think of the cloistral silverveined prose of Newman, that as he walked along the North Strand Road, glancing idly at the windows of the provision shops, he would recall the dark humour of Guido Cavalcanti and smile, that as he went by Baird's cutting works in Talbot Place the spirit of Ibsen would blow through him like a keen wind, a spirit of wayward boyish beauty, and that passing a grimy marinedealer's shop beyond the Liffey he would repeat the song by Ben Jonson which begins: 'I was not wearier where I lay'"--A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

"You'll never get away with this, Cody!" "Cody--you have a good memory for names.  Too good." (BLAM!) --White Heat

At Sunday's singing group we sang "The Belle of Belfast City," "We'll Meet Again" and "Danny Boy."

I finished that Teach Yourself Beginning Korean book and started doing Duolingo lesson, like I did before with Portuguese.

I'm reading the last part of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, with Stephen Dedalus as a college boy in intellectual discussions with schoolmates.  James Joyce could have been a playwright, his dialogue feels so natural!  He was starting to develop the style of Ulysses  and Finnegans Wake, as when a kid sibling, asked where their parents have gone, answers, "Goneboro toboro lookboro atboro aboro houseboro."  This edition has a lot of end notes and I've been going through them, which slows me down a bit.

I've started a new computer game called Elvenar.  It's a town-building game from the same people who made Forge of Empires.

Tonight I went to see Raoul Walsh's White Heat yet again with the Classic Movie Meetup.  That's the one with James Cagney as the psychotic gangster with mother issues and a headache problem.  Like many of Cagney's movies, it holds up very well.

A few of my favourite comic strip characters

I thought I'd describe my favourite respective character in some of the comic strips I follow regularly on The Comics Kingdom and GoComics.

Funky Winkerbean:  Bull Bushka.  Back when the main characters were high school students, Bull was a jock and at first a bully.  Now he's just retired as athletics coach and dealing with CTE from the football blows he'd taken to the head. (The strip can be rather downbeat...) I like the way that even the more mature Bull still had a rather intimidating way!

Mary Worth:  Ian Cameron.  Mary's academic neighbor with a skipper's beard, given to bloviating!

Luann:  Gunther.  A platonic friend (so far) of the adolescent title character, he's an earnest dweeb that I identify with personally.

Gil Thorp:  Marty Moon.  In this strip about a high school athletics coach, the bane of Gil's existence is jerky sportscaster Marty.  Right now there's a storyline where young jerk Robby was getting attention by coming on Marty's show and putting Gil down. But Gil's wife Mimi told Marty that Robby's really after Marty's job, so Marty's tricked Robby into revealing his contempt for the town without realizing they're on air...

Among the "vintage" comics I follow:

Heart of Juliet Jones:  Eve Jones.  Julie's passionate younger sister got more erratic  and forlorn as the strip progressed.

Mandrake the Magician:  Lothar. (Every character in this strip had a single name.) His pidgin talk wouldn't be PC today, but I like how whenever Mandrake's brains weren't enough, Lothar would put his fist in!  His catchphrase was "Me smash!"

The Wizard of Id:  The Spook. He's the prisoner in Id's dungeon, always trying to escape.  Do I see deep existential meaning in this character?  No, I've always liked his name!

At tonight's La Traviata rehearsal, when we were dancing in the festive opening scene I tried to do a dance like with Ichabod Crane where one part of his body started moving and it spread to the rest of him!  The catch is that it gets tiring pretty quickly. (Makes you appreciate dance pros--they get tired too, but not nearly as soon.)

The other night I saw a History Channel documentary about the French Revolution on Youtube.  Too bad there was nothing about Mirabeau or Sieyes.

I finally broke Level 1919 in Candy Crush Saga!