New Meetups

Marie Windsor's last words: "This is a bad joke, with no punch line..."--The Killing

I'm now busy with Meetups most Saturdays.  First Saturday afternoon of the month is the French Culture Meetup:  this week we're going to discuss French art, so I'll talk about Gauguin, citing the Korean children's book I finished translating. Second Saturday is Reading Out Loud in English:  last month we started with Oscar Wilde's fairy tales and this month it'll be the poems of Robert Frost.  Third Saturday (in the evening this time) is a watch party for French-language movies:  last month Eric Rohmer's "tasty talk" comedy Claire's Knee, this month Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game.  Fourth Saturday is Reading Out Loud in French:  last month it was La Fontaine's fables, this month Molier's comedy L'Ecole des Femmes.  It's so long that we'll just do the first half, and leave the second half for next month. (If the month has a fifth Saturday, as happened last week, there'll be nothing then.)

I'm still reading that short biography of Jawaharlal Nehru for next week's History Meetup.  Next month the subject will be the Mexican-American War, so today I went to North York Centre library and borrowed Peter Guardino's The Dead March.

I finished the psychology issue of Lapham's Quarterly and I've almost finished the "Rule of Law" issue.

The other week John P. and I saw Denis Villeneuve's second Dune movie.  A solid follow-up, which has me looking forward to the next one.

This month they're showing Stanley Kubrick's movies at the Yonge & Dundas, even his early Grade Z efforts Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss.  Last night I saw his heist movie The Killing again.  It's intelligent and exciting, with Stirling Hayden a well-cast hoodlum--indeed, most of the roles were pretty well cast. (Though Colleen Gray had to say the line "I'm not pretty," which she definitely was!) Next week I plan to see Full Metal Jacket again.

I had to quit the Rise of Cultures game, because I was stuck at a point where you had to win battles and I couldn't figure out how.  But I'm still playing Sunrise Village, where I made my persona a guy named Aloysius.  With Candy Crush Saga I got stuck on Level 2165 for about a week, but I finally cracked it!