My newest guilty pleasure

"I am not in denial!"--Six Feet Under

"Make sure he marries you--first!"--North and South

On this long Easter weekend some people binge-watch on TV. Through the miracle of Youtube, I've just been watching North and South, the 1985 miniseries about a South Carolina plantation heir (Patrick Swayze, who went on to Dirty Dancing and Ghost) and a Pennsylvania foundry heir (James Read, who went on to, uh, the sequels) who become friends at West Point, as well as their families, in the years before the Civil War.  I watched the whole nine hours over two days, and I guess it's a guilty pleasure.

Produced by David Wolper, who did the overrated Roots, it's definitely on the cheesy side. (Tom Shales' review in The Washington Post: "North and South is incredibly stupid television, for people who move their lips as they watch TV.") The acting isn't so great:  David Carradine is an especially hilarious villain.  Georg Stanford Brown, as an escaped slave, seems to be on a different show (something slower and more serious). There are also cameos by doddering legends like Robert Mitchum, Gene Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor.  It's the kind of show that has a pair of southern sisters, where one is the blond nice girl and the other is the brunette bad girl.  I kept guessing what was about to happen, of course.

Yet I like this sort of story. I wonder how I'd deal with a friend who owned slaves. (Would my principles trump friendship?) Read has an abolitionist sister (Kirstie Alley) who starts out as a pain in the neck and ends up an unhinged fanatic, but at least she tried to do something about the slavery problem.  Martin Luther King wrote about "the fierce urgency of now," yet it must have been twice as urgent back when millions of people were living and dying as slaves.  There's a nice musical theme by Bill Conti, along the lines of his Dynasty theme.  And I'd forgotten how pretty Lesley-Anne Down was! I'll probably watch the sequels too.

Wednesday night I went to a Vintage Meetup at the Tot Cat Cafe, a cafe for cat-owners!  Last night I went on an Art Walk Meetup, the first in months.  I've also put aside Lapham's Quarterly and started reading Gulliver's Travels.

Enough SIX FEET UNDER!

We just saw the last episode of the third season of Six Feet Under.  We probably won't see the last two, because I recall that the show jumped the shark at the start of the fourth season.  I could write a whole post about what went wrong with it, and of course will.

Remember American Beauty, the movie written by Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball?  The story involved Kevin Spacey being attracted to blond teenager Mena Suvari, though in the end he didn't go all the way with her. (Typical tease story.) In the fourth season Claire meets a blond lesbian at art school and gets attracted to her, but in the end doesn't go all the way. In case you didn't notice the similarity, she's played by Mena Suvari! That art school milieu was kind of interesting in the third season, but in the fourth season it gets unpleasant.

Claire finally creates a work of art that sells, which is a photographic portrait except that you replace the eyes with black with points of light like a night sky.  It's remarkably ugly imagery, further proof that the art market has no taste.  The catch is that Claire swiped the idea from her loathed, pitiful ex-boyfriend Russell, to his anger.  If I'd been Russell, I would have paid Claire not to tell people that such an eyesore was my idea!

Keith has become a celebrity bodyguard, the sort of thing you do when you're running out of ideas.  Ruth's new husband (James Cromwell, always a welcome addition) has a daughter who hates him, and they get a package in the mail full of poop! That's Alan Ball's idea of a clever development.  

The musical numbers and surreal scenes and offbeat touches that seemed original in the show's beginning seem old by the end. The low point came in the last season after Claire had to get in a job in a bank after she left art school and her education money got cut off.  Her panty hose is uncomfortable so she sings "You Ride up My Thighs" to the tune of "You Light up My Life." Sux to be her!

Spring fever

Well, not quite spring fever.  But the warm weather has finally arrived, and now I can open my windows!

Friday night I went to another Vintage Meetup.  This time I wore a gray blazer I found in my closet which I don't think I'd ever worn before!  Miriam and I saw the Marion Davies silent movie When Knighthood Was in Flower at the Revue, in the silent film festival.  It's easy to forget that William Randolph Hearst's mistress did have talent--she influenced Lucille Ball--though she ended up squandering it in grotesque '30s musicals.

The movie was about the sister of Henry VIII, who was married to the doddering King of France for a year, then chose her own husband and was Lady Jane Grey's grandmother.  I got curious about the Grey line, which would have inherited the throne in 1714 but for the Hanovers, and looked up some genealogical tables online.  It turns out that the present heirs are in Princess Diana's family!

Sunday afternoon I attended John Snow's book club, where we discussed Good Morning, Midnight.  Afterward I went to the ESL Meetup again.

I've now started reading the spring issue of Lapham's Quarterly, whose theme is discovery.

History Discussion Group

Tuesday night I saw the James Baldwin documentary "I Am Not Your Negro" at the Revue.  My favorite Baldwin quote is "Love has never been a popular movement. And no one's ever wanted, really, to be free.  The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people."

Tonight the History Discussion Group talked about the Caravaggio book and our favorite art.  I printed out stuff like Caravaggio's still life fruit:

Joseph Wright's "An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump" (looks a bit like Caravaggio, doesn't it?):

John Nash's Western Front painting "Over the Top":

Which I compared to Breughel's "Hunters in the Snow":

Velazquez' "The Triumph of Bacchus":

Gainsborough's portrait of ballerina Giovanna Bacelli, who became the mistress of the Duke of Dorset (famous for his role in developing the sport of cricket and being Britain's last ambassador to France before the Revolution broke out):

Winterhalter's rather rococo portrait of Empress Eugenie with her Ladies in Waiting (she has that faraway Spanish look!):

Renoir's "Le Bal a Bougival" (See how Renoir depicts motion with the whirl of the dress--I wish I was the man there!):

I also discussed a couple of photographs, including Dorothea Lange's famous portrait of a migrant worker mother:

And this photo of V-E Day London:

I finished Good Morning, Midnight this morning, then reread Orwell's The Animal Farm in a single day.  For maybe the first time Father and Moira are ahead of me in watching Six Feet Under!

ESL Meetup

Apostrophe to an employer: "Let's say that you have this mystical right to cut my legs off. But the right to ridicule me afterwards because I am a cripple--no, that I think you haven't got. And that's the right you hold most dearly, isn't it?  You must be able to despise the people you exploit"--Good Morning, Midnight

Yesterday afternoon I went to an ESL Meetup, for foreigners learning English.  I met several Chinese and Koreans and Brazilians. (One Chinese thought that "past" and "passed" were pronounced differently--that's one of those things Anglophones hardly think about!) We were given lists of English idioms and it was fun to explain them.  For "jail bait," I told them that Britney Spears acts like jail bait. For "laughing all the way to the bank," I cited Kim Kardashian! Afterwards I bought a copy of Gulliver's Travels at the Chapters-Indigo at Yonge & Eglinton.

I finished going through the pictures online that Francine Prose talked about in her Caravaggio book.  I was especially impressed by his still life of unusually blemished fruit: looking at them, I wanted to eat them, more so than perfect fruit. I couldn't help noticing that the book could have used better editing.  Rarefy and Velazquez are spelled "rarify" and "Velasquez," and Prose describes Caravaggio's "Madonna in Ecstasy" as having a non-existent skull in her lap. (She must have been thinking of a de la Tour madonna from 1640!)

GOOD MORNING, MIDNIGHT

"What's he like?  Oh, he's the real English type.  Very nice, very, very chic, the real English type, le businessman....  I thought, 'Oh, my God, I know what these people mean when they say the real English type'"--Good Morning, Midnight

I've started reading Jean Rhys' Good Morning, Midnight for John Snow's book club.  It's a "stream of consciousness" sort of novel about an Englishwoman down on her luck in 1930s Paris. I was impressed right from the start: she has just the right balanced touch, downbeat but not maudlin, sharply observed but not clinical.  On the second page she writes of walking around Mecklenburgh Square in London, which is now the location of Goodenough College, where I spent the best eight months of my life twenty years ago, and will be staying again next month!

Though it wasn't widely read at the time, I couldn't help wondering if it influenced Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse, at least in the title? And I think Rhys wrote a line I can't find that seems to be a reference to Gertrude Stein's "A rose is a rose is a rose."

Last night I went out to an art class, but it seemed to be cancelled.  Oh well, I left my addy for their mailing list.  The place had a California Gold Rush address:  1849 Danforth Avenue!(I often remember addresses from the year they correspond to.) I braved the snow to get there, but it was worth getting out of the house anyway.

Today I walked down to the Sobey's near Dupont & Shaw to buy their Friday fish and chips special, as well as their coconut cream pie.  Moira was really grateful that I went out in this unseasonal weather. (It's starting to become a routine:  I did it last week too, though I forgot the pie.) On the way there I stopped at the ATM and found out I'd got my first ODSP deposit!

RAIN

"You're committing a serious offence." "What you're doing would make a hyena cry!"--Rain

Tonight I went to the first Vintage Meetup.  I hadn't been into vintage clothes, true, but I'm willing to try new things.  I wore this corduroy jacket in my closet which probably dates from the '70s which I hadn't much worn for almost thirty years.  It got rather tight for me in the meantime. (Fancy that!) I miss corduroy pants.

We met at the Starbucks at College & Euclid. (On the way over, the bust of Luis Vaz de Camoes reminded me of Gabe, Claire's badass boyfriend in the first season of Six Feet Under.) The generous organizer handed out gift packages, and I got a pair of cufflinks and a bracelet that I briefly wore--I guess I'm a metrosexual now!

After a while we went to the Royal nearby and saw Lewis Milestone's Rain, which I'd never seen before. (There are still a few classic movies I haven't seen!) It was presented by Ladies of Burlesque, and just before the movie we saw a stripper with a face like Barbara Stanwyck and several tattoos--really, I don't get the appeal of body art.

The movie, adapted from the W. Somerset Maugham story by playwright Maxwell Anderson, is striking:  Joan Crawford and Walter Huston made a fearsome pair! (I'd forgotten what a great actor Huston was.) I remember seeing Sonny and Cher doing a recurring spoof of the movie on the TV, with Cher's posterior making a drum noise.

I recalled researching my Ph.D. thesis on Chongqing's foreign community and learning that Maugham had visited the city and met some local missionaries, including one named Alfred Davidson, whose name he gave to the missionary played by Huston! (Maugham was cheeky that way.) To tell the truth, I'm not so surprised that Huston ended up going all the way with Crawford:  look at all those big religious leaders with a promiscuous side, like Mormon Joseph Smith or Elijah Muhammed or Sun Myung Moon, or even Jimmy Swaggart. It's like the gregarious sort of character that can lead you into preaching can also lead you into sex!

The missionary movement has a fairly mixed record worldwide: too often it's been caught up in colonialism and destruction of aboriginal culture. But I'd say the China missionaries tend to come off well, partly because they had less power than some.  I like the idea of going to a foreign country and doing good, like education and medical care, but I don't care for the mindset that says you have to win someone over to your belief system in order to save his soul! The part I wouldn't like about being a missionary is getting a letter asking me, "How many people did you save last year?"

I've finished the Caravaggio biography, but now I want to go through it again and download all the paintings it talks about!

Classic Book Club

"Sex is so stupid!"--Six Feet Under

Yesterday at the Classic Book Club we discussed James Joyce's The Dubliners.  I managed to reread it in one week flat, including "The Dead" in one two-hour session the night before. (I've translated the last couple of pages of "The Dead" into Portuguese.) I should see the movie again too.

Last night I dreamed of being hypnotized into believing I was married to this young woman.  I also dreamed of reading a review of a non-existent book that said that diplomats who'd served at a compound in Finland got to put a little circle at the end of their C.V.!  And I dreamed again of being on the moon, and getting a view of the earth much bigger than you can actually see on the moon.

DUEL

Tuesday morning I submitted my consent form for O.D.S.P., so I'll presumably be getting it at the end of the month.  I handed it in at the Eglinton Avenue office, when I should have taken it to the Sheppard Avenue office (d'oh!), but it got straightened out in the end.

At the same time I went to see my shrink Dr. Hassan to tell him the good news.  Without him, I not only couldn't have done it but wouldn't even have imagined it!

Tuesday night I saw Stephen Spielberg's early TV movie Duel (I'd seen part of it before) with the Classic Movie Meetup, which I hadn't attended for a while.  That's the one with driver Dennis Weaver in danger of being crushed by a malevolent truck!

The Staples people straightened out the problem with the printer return.

I've finished Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty and started Britain's Bloody Crown, a documentary by the same historian about the Wars of the Roses.  Funny how the Plantagenets (including the Lancaster and York branches) combined very strong kings with very weak ones!

Reading out loud

Yesterday afternoon was the latest Reading Out Loud Meetup. There were ten people there! (Getting to the location was complicated by the St. Patrick's Day parade down Yonge Street.) Someone said I should warn people you have to enter the building at the door near Gould Street.

I read the last half-dozen pages of James Joyce's The Dead and translated my Portuguese picture book Mama's Heart.  I also sang not one but two a capella songs: Burns' "Ye Banks and Braes" and Yeats' "Down by the Sally Gardens." They seemed to like my singing.

Speaking of "The Dead," I realized that the Classic Book Club will be coming up before the History Meetup, so I stopped reading the Caravaggio biography and started reading Joyce's The Dubliners.

Donald came over for dinner and set up my new inkjet printer. (I might have done it myself, but didn't complain.) It prints at a high quality!

My credit card statement showed that Staples failed to refund the price of that last printer I returned when it malfunctioned.  This morning I went there and showed them the statement.  The manager's trying to solve the mystery now.

I've been playing this Facebook game Dakota Farm Adventure, but I think it's time to quit.  The interior decorations I need to open Aunt Sally's room cost more than my income can produce, and too much of the game depends on production there.

RYAN'S DAUGHTER

Priest: "Doing nothing's a dangerous occupation!"--Ryan's Daughter

Last night I saw David Lean's Ryan's Daughter (for the second time) with my history group. Debi brought some mini-cupcakes and I ended up eating six!

At three hours, the movie is anything but lean.  It's about Irish girl Sarah Miles marrying earnest but unexciting schoolteacher Robert Mitchum and cheating on him with a British officer, leading to the locals scapegoating her after a Republican landing gets betrayed.  Mitchum was oddly cast against type, perhaps for his resemblance to Lean. (Moira wonders, "How can any guy be more exciting than Robert Mitchum?") Sarah Miles was a babe, even with her hair cut off! It's the sort of movie where the villagers often move about en masse.

We saw the missing episode and are now watching the second season of Six Feet Under.  Nate not telling Brenda about his brain condition is a straightforward cliche! (If he told her right away, as most people would presumably do, that would be less dramatic...) Nate said about the corporate villainess, "What kind of name is Mitzi?" I could have told him,  "The kind of name they give a TV show character!"

St. Patrick's Day snowstorm

Back in New Brunswick we'd speak of the last big snowfall that would happen around this time as the St. Patrick's Day snowstorm. Toronto had one yesterday. Stayed in the house all day!

I've been watching Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty, another Acorn TV British documentary, this time about the Plantagenet House.  As the title suggests, it's on the unsubtle side. (I would have like to hear more about King John--I'm so picky!) One thing it mentioned was Henry II getting monks to whip him thousands of strokes to atone for his indirect role in Beckett's murder.

Last night I had a dream where I was walking along the coast of Cape Breton with my parents and saw a trail leading up to a promontory sacred to First Nations.  I tried to climb it, and Father gave me a leg up, but it was too steep for me.  I was also wondering if I should take flogging to atone for my responsibility for what we've done to the Indians!  I also saw tall urban buildings over the sea and decided it was an optical illusions. (I've seen that in several dreams.)

Tonight I was going to see A Streetcar Named Desire at a Classic Movie Meetup, but when I got to Queen's Quay I couldn't find the place! (They'd given a number to text message them, but I'm not a text messager.)

I finally succeeded at Level 629 of Candy Crush Saga, another particularly difficult one.

Back to the memoir group

With my cold out of the way, this afternoon I finally returned to my memoir group after a month away. (I hardly ever miss a session normally.) One of the subjects was "High," and instead I wrote about trees, one of last week's subjects.

Yesterday afternoon I went to John Snow's book club where we discussed Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.  Unfortunately, what with my cold I'd only got around to reading a fifth of the book, and on top of that I was over an hour late, because I'd forgotten about the Daylight Savings Time change. (D'OH!) They took it pretty well.  John told me that he missed my memoir blog posts.

Tonight I finished Waldemar Januszak's documentary series Rococo Before Bedtime.  The rococo movement was oddly contemporary with the Enlightenment of the 18th century!

We were going to see the last episode of the first season of Six Feet Under but accidentally skipped it and saw the first episode of the second season instead.  That Watteau portrait of the Pierrot reminds me of Buster Keaton!

Book exchange

This morning I got a letter from the Ontario Disability Supports Program.  My application was accepted, so the next step will presumably be a live interview!

This afternoon I had a dental checkup.  I have some root canal work coming up, but I'm delaying it till the O.D.S.P. business is finished, because that'll probably cover the expense of it.

This evening I went to a Book Exchange Meetup at Pauper's.  I brought Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome and D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow, and took a graphic treatment of the H.P. Lovecraft story "The Shadow of Time."

I've resumed reading Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha since my cold interrupted.  I won't have time to finish it before John Snow's book club this Sunday, but I'll read some of it by then.

March is my favorite time of year.  Too bad there's some more cold weather coming up this weekend.

The opera's finished

Sunday afternoon was the last opera performance. (We did Carmen, and were in rare form!) No more leering at Merry Widow grisettes--of course, I was it wasn't me who was leering at them, I was only playing a leering character!  What new reason will I find for returning next year?

For a change, I went to the cast party afterward at Paula's loft near Dufferin Streets. (Paula was one of our Carmens, and she's also an artist!) They had a lot of that churrasco chicken with the orange-colored rice.

I'm still not completely over my cold, so I skipped the memoir group again this week. (I hardly ever skip it!) This evening I went to Loblaw's and bought four of those huge pomelo grapefruit.

The third episode of Six Feet Under is a doozie!  That's the one where a guy cleaning an industrial bread machine gets cut into a thousand pieces, and Claire's boyfriend has carelessly blabbed around high school that she sucked his toes, so she swipes the guy's foot and puts it in the creep's locker, then he dumps it in the park where a dog eventually finds it! (Meanwhile, mother Ruth blows 25 grand at the racetrack.)

I was dreaming about the actual incident when I was twelve and painting a bunch of blue squares as my first assignment in art class, then got 1 out of 5 because the edges were messy.  Really, I'd never been in an art class before and thought that just getting it done was an achievement!  What bugged me was that this was the only time the art teacher graded our individual assignments, which meant that people like me didn't get the chance to earn a better grade next time.  She only graded that first assignment to start out the year with a show of power, as bad teachers are wont to do.

Getting over the cold

Ruth (going through her late husband's clothes): "How could a man who had so few clothes have so many clothes?"--Six Feet Under

I think I'm almost over the cold. I've been eating grapefruit constantly, and Wednesday I found one of those huge pomelos at Loblaw's.  Tonight I returned to the opera, and ate a grapefruit during the breaks. (Kathy got me to add my signature to the gingerbread recipe!)

Too bad Father and Moira have caught my cold.  Last Sunday we had a big family gathering and ordered lots of Indian food, and we kept eating Indian leftovers through Thursday, which is nice for people with colds.  Today we used a coupon for Harvey's hamburgers, and I was the one who went out and bought them.

We've regressed to brass-monkey weather just now. That groundhog must have gone for a long stroll a month ago!  But it should be warm again on Monday, and I hope this is the last cold weather before next winter.

Yesterday I started a new computer game on Facebook, Dakota Farm Adventure.  We'll see how far I get before there's nothing interesting left to do...

My browser's been acting up.  It won't open meetup.com properly, so I've had to access it on the downstairs computer.  And I can start threads on The Huffington Post, but not add to them.

SIX FEET UNDER

A.J. Soprano (answering the phone): "Home of the Burger--what's your beef?"

"Your father is dead and my pot roast is ruined!"--Six Feet Under

I think I'm over the worst of my cold. Monday night I sweated a lot.  The Merry Widow song "A Highly Respectable Wife" has been going through my head, as has Don Jose and Micaela's duet in Carmen, and Danilo's song near the end of the Merry Widow second act!

We finished the fourth season of The Sopranos.  We've decided to skip the rest of the show, which I recall gets even bleaker and has less of Meadow and A.J.  After Adrianna got killed that was sort of the show's "point of no return": after that everything else seemed anticlimactic.

Last night we saw the first episode of Alan Ball's Six Feet Under, about a Los Angeles family in the funeral home business, which would start each episode with someone dying and have lots of surreal stuff like the dead speaking.  It was a brilliant balance between the real and the absurd, though I didn't like the last two seasons nearly as much. (They were bound to run out of ideas eventually...)

A cold!

The last few days I've been getting a bit of a cold. I managed to get through all the opera performances this last weekend, but I'll have to wait and see about the last one. (Two years ago I had to miss the later half of the shows!)  The next four days will be mostly rest.

Today I bought some grapefruit to help with the cold.  This was after the Sunday afternoon Merry Widow performance, which Moira saw.  If only the weather had been warmer and I'd been in better shape we could have walked home like last week!

Today we had another big family gathering to mark Donald's birthday today, and Father and Margaret's birthdays in this coming week.  We had Indian food again, and I took too much and could only finish half of what was on my plate, so we saved it so I can eat it later. (Nobody else wants it because of my germs!)

I remember a year ago when I got a cold and ate huge grapefruit while watching the miniseries Texas Rising, with Bill Paxton who just died as Sam Houston. (I also liked him in One False Move, Trespass and the polygamy TV show Big Love!)

Friday I baked some gingerbread for the opera people to sell in the lobby. (It went pretty fast.) I wrote out the recipe for Kathy, my dance partner in The Merry Widow.

Thursday I went to the Deer Park library to try to find Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha for John Snow's book club, but it had just been taken out.  So Saturday I went to Yorkdale Mall and bought one of three copies at Indigo Books.  The Spadina subway line was being serviced so I had to take the bus north on Bathurst, west on Lawrence and north on Dufferin.  I love these urban adventures!

On The Sopranos I got an episode ahead of the others again, so I could warn them to skip the scene where Paulie murdered his mother's friend for her money stash! (But they liked the scene where the family was talking about Billy Budd.) That show had a lot of good actors even in small roles, like Sharon Angela as Carmela's widowed friend Rosalie and Alla Kliouka as the unaffected Russian Svetlana.

More dress rehearsals

Last night and tonight we had two more dress rehearsals of the operas for the other lead casts. (We have two groups of soloists for each show.) That's a total of four dress rehearsals and two performances over nine days.  It's grant time and we need to sell about 1400 tickets this year--we've done that before when doing Carmen.  The music from both shows has been going through my head.

Yesterday was a holiday, so the library wasn't open for my memoir group.  I took advantage of the two-week gap to take home the canister of subject cards again, and winnowed out half a dozen redundant ones. (Last time there were more like ten.) I found one card that had subjects written on both sides, so I rewrote them on two cards.  Used to be that I'd think of a lot of new subjects to add, but I don't think of many these days.

I've finally finished the Lapham's Quarterly special issue about Alexander Hamilton.  They ought to make a movie about the crisis in late-1790s America!

In our latest Sopranos episode, we skipped the part where Tony confronted Ralph and ended up killing him. (As loathsome as Ralph was, he did dress pretty cool!)

I'm no longer wearing long johns or winter boots. I guess it's time to put my electric heater away too.

Opening weekend

The opera started this weekend, with The Merry Widow last night and Carmen this afternoon.  The audiences were pretty enthusiastic.  Moira came to see Carmen today (she liked it) and we walked home together in the mild weather.  I'm now wearing my non-winter shoes again!

Yesterday we finally got around to returning the new malfunctioning printer.

I finished Angela's Ashes yesterday and started reading the rest of the Lapham's Quarterly special issue about Alexander Hamilton.

Father and Moira have finally caught up with me, and now we're watching The Sopranos together again.

It turns out that we're doing two more dress rehearsals this week for the operas' other lead casts.  You'd think I'd have noticed that earlier, but I'm my mother's son!

Dress rehearsals

"Elizabeth, your justice could freeze beer!"--The Crucible

Tuesday and Wednesday were the dress rehearsals for The Merry Widow and Carmen respectively. On Tuesday I didn't wait for a mirror but put on most of my makeup by feel! (Kathy says I did an OK job.)

Tonight I looked at the video of Nicholas Hytner's movie of The Crucible, Arthur Miller's play about the Salem witch trials.  It was pretty good, though I got sleepy in the middle part.

Last night I dreamed of being in a Heart of Darkness type adventure, except that instead of a man the target was a woman in military uniform, and the team out to get her included a teenage boy. Then I dreamed of a non-existent tall building west of Keele & St. Clair that exploded into a big fireball. (That must be from hearing about the tennis club fire near Yonge & St. Clair.)

Because of that fire, Scallywag's is closed for now, so I'll have to move the History Meetup location elsewhere, presumably to the Ryerson Hub where I've moved my other Meetups.

I've been contributing to a lively discussion at the Salon website about an interview with Susan Sarandon and her being blamed for not supporting Hillary Clinton.  Something that bugs me is that when I say that Bernie Sanders would have had a better chance at beating Trump, Clintonites respond with a circular argument: "We Democrats didn't vote for Bernie, therefore Bernie wasn't electable, therefore not voting for Bernie wasn't a mistake!"  I posted that Democrats who voted to nominate Clinton were "dumb as styrofoam"!

Costumes

Young Frank McCourt (being told that his baby brother was going to be christened Alphonsus): "That's a stupid name.  It isn't even Irish"--Angela's Ashes 

(He got slapped and missed out on the christening.)

This morning I went to the Bickford Centre and helped them unload the costumes for the opera. (I also tried on both my costumes.  Our male gypsy costumes for Carmen include a serape-type thing you drape over your shoulder--I wonder if it'll keep falling off unless you pin it or something.) I went to Beatrice and the other girls in the women's dressing room to tell her, "The male costumes are all hung," and couldn't resist adding "...and well hung too!" (That got a groan...)

Yesterday I attended John Snow's book club in his apartment building on Adelaide Street, where we discussed Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac. (Years ago Moira called her Anita Droopner!) I didn't have much to add, however, since I didn't have time to read the book. Getting there in the snowy weather was an adventure in itself.

When John visited a week ago he spent half the visit trying to fix my new printer.  Then Donald visited yesterday and spent a lot of time on it too. It reminded me of a time about thirty years ago when Donald was visiting the family in Sackville, but our new Atari 2600 computer was on the blink and I had a college paper to print out, so he spent most of the visit working on our machine!

As it is, it looks like we'll have to return or exchange the machine.  This time Father and I will carry it back together!

Just read the part of Angela's Ashes where his father went off to work in the factories of wartime England but never sent any money home, so his mother had to go apply for relief to two officials who made the experience even more humiliating than it had to be. Limerick may be a city, but it definitely reminds me of a small town!

The cable signal finally came back so we're watching The Sopranos again. (I'm an episode ahead of the others.)

LA LA LAND

On Los Angeles: "They worship everything and value nothing"--La La Land

Thursday I visited Dr. Hassan and with his advice completed my O.D.S.P. application. (My description of how Asperger's Syndrome affected me was on the brief side.  Maybe I should have mentioned my occasional bouts with insomnia!)

Last night I went to Bulk Barns near Keele & St. Clair and bought brown flour and rye flour there for the first time.  Our cable connection is off so we haven't been watching The Sopranos for the last few days.

This afternoon I was going to attend the big rally for electoral reform.  Unfortunately, it was in Nathan Phillips Square and I went to Queen's Park instead. (D'oh!) Oh well, it was a nice mild day for getting out.

Tonight I saw La La Land at the Market Square. It's a cute confection that gets better as it goes along.  It reminded me of Jacques Demy's 1960s musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, though that film had more passion.

The other night I dreamed of being involved in this scheme where they smuggled me into one of the Gulf States in the Middle East and I posed as Arab royalty and attracted pretty women!

ANGELA'S ASHES

Frank McCourt's father at his christening (to a priest who'd implicitly criticized his speakeasy habit): "Take off that collar and we'll see who's the man."

I've started reading Frank McCourt's memoir Angela's Ashes for my history group, for the second time. (The first time I read it, some fifteen years ago, I finished it in just four days or so:  it helped that I'd already seen the movie.) Depressing yet funny--I've heard that he developed the story from telling and retelling it over the years.  When they were interviewing him on 60 Minutes he said, "A Limerick man said to me, 'You shamed your mother, you shamed Limerick and you shamed Ireland!' A holy trinity of shame!" His Teacher Man is also excellent.

I had lunch with John Snow again yesterday. (We were going to eat at a new Indian restaurant called Ji, but it turned out that it's only open for dinner, so we went to Schnitzel Hub again.) Unfortunately, I didn't have much to talk about because so much of it I've already written on this blog, which he reads.

At opera rehearsal Beatrice said to the women doing the Gypsy Dance in Carmen, "Smile, ladies!...  Think of sex, think of shopping, think of ice cream, think of something that excites you!" I hope I have enough energy for the performances.

Someone compared Donald Trump's adviser Steve Bannon to Tony Soprano, and Trump himself to Tony's protege Christopher Moltisanti.  If you ask me, Trump is more like the twisted gangster Ralph Cifaretto!

55

Today I turned 55.  We ate Chinese food and a strawberry shortcake with white chocolate curls. My fortune cookie said "You have an excellent imagination." (Someone said that you can improve any fortune cookie prediction by adding the words "...in bed"!)

I got a whole lot of "Happy birthday" messages on Facebook from people I don't know.  I replied with a smiley emoticon for each of them, but with people who clearly had Spanish/ Portuguese/ Italian names I wrote "Gracias/Obrigado/Grazie"!

When I brought the new printer Friday, the salesman talked me into buying a fresh ink cartridge too.  So I assumed I'd have to add that cartridge when installing it, but it wouldn't go in. Eventually I figured out that there was already a cartridge inside!  I felt quite the monkey.

The printer is almost installed, except that when I try to print something I get a message that the printer isn't responding.  Oh well, I can wait for Donald or John to figure it out.

We're now watching the fourth season of The Sopranos.  We skipped the last part of the first episode where Christopher avenged his father's death.

I made a goof scheduling this months Reading Out Loud Meetup.  I thought that the opera's eight performances would be like last year, over two weeks with four performances each.  But it turns out that there are two performances in the first week, three in the second and three in the third. Which means it conflicts with that Meetup event, so I had to move it to March. (First time I recall doing that with Reading Out Loud!)

ROGUE ONE (spoiler!)

Good Guy: "You'll never win!" Bad Guy: "Now where have I heard that before?"--Rogue One

Yesterday afternoon I returned to the previous day's interview site with a void cheque (so they can put money directly into my account) and a copy of my 2015 tax return.  I had to miss the first event of a new Meetup group for people over 55, but there were almost thirty people going and I don't care for groups that big.  Besides, I'll only turn 55 this Sunday!

Last night the History Meetup discussed the United States.  Predictably, our discussion ended up being about The Donald.

This afternoon I went out to Staples near Keele & St. Clair and bought a new printer for my computer as a birthday indulgence. (First I checked out the Best Buy competition.) I'd been planning on getting a color inkjet, but on the way over I realized that I could use the downstairs computer's color printer, so I might as well get a monochrome laser printer.  It was somewhat more expensive but in the long run it'll save ink costs.  I was hoping they'd deliver it, but instead I had to tote it home.

I've started reading the original articles in the new Home issue of Lapham's Quarterly.

Tonight I finally saw Rogue One at the Carlton. Like the Star Wars series in general, it was rather shameless fun. The blind martial artist seemed to be derived from Japan's blind swordsman Zatoichi. One thing I liked about it was that... (Here comes the spoiler!)

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...all the important characters died in the end! (Like The Hateful Eight, it reminded me of those Biddle Family childhood plays where my siblings and I would all die in different ways.) While the Star Wars movies owe a lot to serials like Flash Gordon, this one reminded me as much of a war movie.

Welfare

Paulie: "You're late!" Ralph: "Well, tomorrow I can be on time, but you'll be stupid forever!"--The Sopranos

John Snow asked what I was doing today.  I had an interview about getting onto the welfare rolls so I can apply for O.D.S.P. (Moira came along with me and helped out.  I was late in thanking her, because I was ashamed that I couldn't do it all by myself.)

Unfortunately, I got the place wrong.  I'd convinced myself that the interview was at the office near Metro Hall when it was actually at the office near Eglinton Station!  We were half an hour late, but things went pretty well.  There was some confusion because I'd put down Father's income source when I was supposed to give my own, but it got figured out in the end.  I also got my name put on this list that can involve me in recreational activities and such.

Opera rehearsal is now on both Tuesday and Wednesday night.  We're finally working onstage with the soloists.  Last night was Carmen and tonight was The Merry Widow, and we staged the whole operas and stayed for four hours!  Us men had fun diving for the Merry Widow's dance card, but we had to do it three times to get the right place:  first time we were too close to the center stage entrance, second time we were too far upstage near the curtain.

In Carmen I get to kneel next to the star during the later part of her Habanera number until she pushes me away and I do a pratfall!

20TH CENTURY WOMEN

"Why can't something just be pretty?"--20th Century Women

This evening I saw 20th Century Women at the Yonge & Dundas.  It was a pretty good comedy set in 1979 California, with a fine cast. (Shame that there are so few worthy roles for middle-aged actresses like Annette Bening.) I identified with it somewhat because in my childhood I was known as Jamie, like the son in the movie, and was also born in the early '60s, and my mother, like his mother, gave birth to me in her early 40s.  Really funny scene where one girl insists on talking about menstruation among mixed company!

This afternoon was the latest Classic Book Club event where we talked about Steinbeck's Cannery Row. I also recited the short chapter from The Grapes of Wrath about the turtle crossing the highway.

Yesterday Moira and I had lunch with Puitak and Gordon at the King's Noodle near Spadina & Dundas.  That sort of Chinese food is rather oily for me.

I've been getting thinner, or else my long johns have been stretching.  When I was at the movies the other night those long johns fell down to my knees inside my pants.  It gave me a funny feeling, like I was walking around with my outside pants down and nobody noticing!

I finally cracked Candy Crush Saga's Level 530 after a couple of weeks.  It's one of the hardest levels ever!

We skipped the Sopranos episodes where Dr. Melfi got raped and A.J. and his friends trashed their school, and we should also skip the one where Jackie Jr. is dumb enough to try robbing the big poker game.  And there's a scene at the end of the fourth season's first episode worth skipping!

SILENCE

Sometimes I run into a drought with this blog and can't think of anything to say.  I seemed to be in one earlier today, but this evening when we were going to watch another Sopranos episode (we skipped the one where Dr. Melfi got raped), we couldn't get the cable signal!  So I went out to see a movie instead.

I saw Martin Scorsese's slow but fairly powerful Silence at Canada Square. That's about a couple of Jesuits who go to Japan to track down Liam Neeson, a priest reported to have gone apostate.  As Jesuit movies go, mind you, I'd give the edge to Bruce Beresford's Black Robe just because of its Canadian scenery!

Andrew Garfield plays one of the Jesuits, who comes under pressure from a Japanese inquisitor to publicly recant his faith too. (This reminded me of Hacksaw Ridge, where Garfield was pressured to abandon his pacifism.) Neeson only turns up late in the movie, and I couldn't help thinking about his losing his wife Natasha Richardson and how that must have been like his character losing his Catholic faith.

Half-assed agnostic that I am, I identify with religious dissidents, whether they're Catholics facing a Japanese inquisition or people facing the Catholic inquisition.  Here the Japanese inquisitors had taken the course of making priests recant by executing their followers. (There's nobody lower than hostage takers!) I couldn't help thinking of the interrogation in Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is back in the news these days.  They say, "With power comes responsibility," but I say that power is the ability to hold other people responsible for your actions!  Those in power always have a rationale, you see...

Tuesday at opera rehearsal we blocked the rest of Carmen and started doing The Merry Widow. Peter also gave us tickets to sell.  When some guys brought out the Madonna statue (Mary, that is) for the pre-bullfight scene, it was slightly tilted, and Beatrice said, "Mary's drunk!"

BEST WORST THING THAT EVER COULD HAVE HAPPENED

Alan Alda's advice to a young actor: "If you can see yourself doing anything else, do it"--Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened

Saturday night I saw the Harry Potter prequel Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them at the Kingsway. (Haven't been there since that whaling movie about a year ago.) It was complicated but moderately entertaining.  Those scenes where a whole building gets destroyed in a wizard battle then restored by further wizardry strike me as a cheat!

Yesterday I saw Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened at the Bloor, with the Sunday Afternoon Movie Meetup.  It's a documentary about Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince's 1981 Broadway musical Merrily We Roll Along, with three characters shown in reverse chronological order, going from middle-aged cynicism back to youthful ambition. (I was lucky to see the cinemacast of the award-winning London revival a year or two ago.)

For the original production Prince cast only actors under 25, in the hope of capturing youthful essence, and had them wearing T-shirts with labels like "Best pal" and "Wealthy backer" and "Fan." (I have a feeling he was trying to be original for the sake of originality...)  But critics were largely unimpressed and the original production closed after two weeks, though the show got a cult following through revivals. (Twenty years afterward the cast reunited to perform the songs in a benefit concert.) 

The documentary interviews the performers three decades later and considers how the experience changed their lives.  One of them went on to become a theatre director, and directed this film; another, Jason Alexander, became a TV star on Seinfeld. (Fifteen or twenty actors producing one star:  that gives you an idea of the heavy odds in the profession these people devote their whole beings to!) Quite interesting, especially for Sondheim fans.

I noticed that in Trump's inaugural speech, in a dig at Obama, he complained about leaders who were "all talk and no action." That reminded me of Aesop's fable about the frogs who wanted a king, so Zeus sent them an inert log.  The frogs decided they deserved better than that, so Zeus sent them a serpent who ate them all!

The other day I was translating Lincoln's Gettysburg Address into Portuguese (because, why not?). Now that's a speech!

I'm a welfare queen!

Or I will be soon.  When we talked to Dr. Hassan last week, he said that I should start by applying for welfare so that they'll send me an ODSP kit. Yesterday I went to an Ontario Works office near Sheppard station, and they sent me on to a Social Services office near Metro Hall.  

Today I went to that office, but they told me you have to apply by phone or online, so that's the next step.  Moira hates the idea of applying online, but applying by phone means staying on hold for about 40 minutes, so I'll be weighing both options.

We're finished with the second season of The Sopranos. (I doubt that the others would be interested in the last few episodes.) Next we'll be looking at the third season, which introduces Ralph the twisted gangster.  I like Joe Pantaliano in the role, but I don't know how the others will feel.  The episode involving the ill-fated stripper is considered a classic, but I don't think they'll want to see it; I know I don't want to see it again.  And there's the depressing storyline about Jackie Aprile Jr., a young guy Tony wants to keep out of trouble, but if he succeeded there wouldn't be any point. (I mentioned the other week that I don't like that kind of plot.) But I'm sure we'll see that last episode where Tony tries to put his son into military school:  some of my favorite episodes involve A.J.!

The Donald got inaugurated today.  I'm pretty frustrated that so many Democrats are still in denial about their unfair primary.  I posted online, "If the primary had been an election for president of the Teamsters union, the government would have made them do it over." If the DNC elite isn't held answerable for their shenanigans, they can be expected to stack the next primary for another "insider" candidate, as they clearly care more about controlling the party than winning elections. When the Democrats screwed Bernie Sanders in the primaries, they screwed themselves in November, and they screwed America for the next four years!

Back to the opera

Last night was the first opera rehearsal of the new year.  We went onto the stage and blocked out the first half of Carmen. It turns out that both stage director Beatrice and music director Adolfo are going elsewhere next year.  I can't imagine Toronto City Opera without them! (Then again, a decade ago I couldn't have imagined it without stage/musical director Giuseppe Macina.)

Beatrice is a fun director.  Tonight she showed the girls how to fake hair-pulling in the catfight scene! (The pullee puts her hand on the puller's hand and guides it down her head.) For the gypsy dance at the start of the second act, she has the men watching it on the stage this time.

Tonight I went to that Cozy Drinks & Books Meetup again.  One of the girls there reminded me of Giovanna Baccelli in that Gainsborough painting, so I printed it out to show her.  On my first attempt, the paper got stuck inside the printer and I had to drag it out a little at a time. (I'd had the same problem a few days earlier trying to print something out for Reading Out Loud.) I ended up printing three copies!  When I showed it to her, I realized she didn't look that much like the picture...

I wrote about the incoming U.S. president online, "Wait and see, but don't hold your breath!"

Sez you!

Janice Soprano: "Did you know there's a Zuni saying, 'Of twenty things a child does, pay no attention to nineteen'?" Tony Soprano: "Did you know there's an Italian saying, 'Fuck up once and you lose two teeth'?"

Yesterday was Reading Out Loud, and the topic was opinion pieces, with the title "Sez you!"  I'd moved the location from the Victory Cafe to the Ryerson Hub next to Jorgenson Hall.  It seems to be a good location, with lots of seats and nobody else around.  One person couldn't find the place, but they should figure it out before long.

Seven people came.  A few of them read their poems, and Beatriz read a Spanish poem she'd written, along with an English translation.  I read a Christopher Hitchens article from The Nation about Bill Clinton executing brain-damaged Ricky Ray Rector on the eve of the 1992 New Hampshire primary; and a review from Charlie Brooker's Screen Burn column of the British version of the reality TV show (more like unreality!) Temptation Island.  A couple of items I brought but let other people read were Roger Ebert's review of Her Alibi (the one with a romantic denouement at Tom Selleck's country house which had been blown up half an hour earlier!), and Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant."

Looks like Bernie Sanders is taking the lead in resisting Trump.  Someone has to!

Season finale

Livia Soprano (to her grandson): "You die in your own arms!"

Yesterday I took Moira to see my shrink Dr. Hassan. (She'd never met him before.) We discussed my application for ODSP, but the subject's too boring for me to give any details here.

Last night I was going to go to an Introvert Meetup but I ended up cancelling at the last minute because John and Kathrine were bringing over dinner (burritos). I don't feel good about making those last-minute cancellations.

Tonight we saw the season finale of the first season of The Sopranos.  John Heard had a good role as a corrupt NYPD detective!  Moira's favorite character was Livia. (An Ellen Willis article on the show in The Nation titled "Our Mobsters, Our Selves" referred to Livia as one of "the damned.")

We're going to pick and choose with the second season, since there are parts that I'm sure Moira and Father wouldn't like. (I didn't like those parts so much myself.) We'll see the first couple of episodes, then in the third see the part where Meadow and her friends trash Livia's old house but fast-forward through the part with sociopath Richie Aprile.  Then we'll skip the fourth episode where Tony visits Naples and the sixth episode where he lets the guy enter the big poker game and accrue a big debt, leading to him and his business being squeezed to the last penny.  But we'll see the fifth episode where Christopher takes an acting class, and the seventh where A.J. is into Nietzsche (which he pronounces "Nich"!). In the ninth episode we'll see the part where Christopher describes a nightmarish "out of body" experience, but skip the part with the mob execution.  And we can skip the rest.  Lucky that I've seen it before!

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES

Junior Soprano (explaining why his crew has to attend funerals for people like the guy they murdered): "Fucking manners!"

Last night I saw the Studio Ghibli anime Grave of the Fireflies for the third time, at the Lightbox. Directed by Isao Takahata, it's a compelling story about two doomed orphans in Japan in the last year of World War II, still the most terrible of all wars, whose death toll includes millions of children. (I tried to make it a History Meetup event, but nobody else was interested.) I'm not spoiling the ending:  we learn of their deaths right at the beginning!  It sounds like a downer, and in some ways it is, but it's also very life-affirming in its details.  Animation can somehow depict such a story more powerfully than live action.

There's a scene near the end just after the little sister Setsuko has died--is her name a reference to Yasujiro Ozu's actress Setsuko Hara?--when a phonograph plays the song "Home Sweet Home" as we see a montage of brief moments of her while she was alive.  That song, of course, is a reference to Kon Ichikawa's Harp of Burma, about Japanese soldiers at the end of the war seeking atonement in music.  A cheesier movie would repeat moments we'd already seen, but these moments are one-time! 

I've seen the movie three times, and three times that scene has brought me to tears.  I guess that comes from the realization that the movie, which seemed to be about death at first, is really about life!  It left me with the thought that at the end of the day, love is the only thing we're left with.  The whole world should see it, especially Donald Trump.

Today I went to Mark's Work Warehouse near St. Clair and Keele to get a new sweater.  I got a light one because I have enough heavy ones. (They seem to be moth-proof.) I was hoping that Father would come with me, but he wasn't up to it so Moira came instead.  I hope he gets better so we can have a few outings like that:  he'll be 87 in a couple of months, and I don't know how much longer he'll be able to get out. I also got a big new bag of peanuts at the nearby Bulk Barn in the place where the stockyards used to be. (I visited that place just after it opened, and it still had a bit of a stockyard smell!)

Tonight I put on a spurt and finished Cannery Row.  Now I can focus on reading Don't Know Much About History for the History Meetup next month!

CANNERY ROW

I've had some more unusual dreams. The other day I dreamt I was back in our Sackville house and it was summer but there was snow on the ground! (The temperature was expected to rise to thirty degrees.) I also dreamed about going to a film festival documentary from Nicaragua--or was it a TV episode from Germany?--except that when we got to the cinema they put us on a bus to the screening!  And I dreamed of trying to remember all the movies George Roy Hill directed, and being unsure whether the Chevy Chase comedy The Funny Farm was one. (Awake, I confirmed that it was.)

I also dreamed of finding my father lying on a hillside fast asleep.  And of reading a big children's book with the chapters in reverse order, including the story of a superhero who morphed into a little quail who was about to be attacked in the street by hundreds of armored rats, but when they walked off the curb they fell into an acidic puddle that disintegrated them!

Ever read a book or see a movie where it lost you at one key moment? Screenwriter William Goldman, in Adventures in the Screen Trade, remembers a preview for his The Great Waldo Pepper and this scene where Susan Sarandon was supposed to perform this wing-walking stunt but froze in the middle of it, and barnstormer Robert Redford tried to save her, but she fell to her death. The audience had liked the earlier scenes, but right at that moment the movie lost them. (That was one of the movies George Roy Hill directed.) Similarly, Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander lost me in the scene where the kids were in two places at once.

I was thinking of this because of Steinbeck's Cannery Row.  The first half was pretty fun, but then there was this chapter where the local low-lifes had been gathering hundreds of frogs for Doc the marine biologist to sell, and he was out of town then so they decided that when he came back they'd throw him a surprise party at his place, which they'd sneaked into.  But he was late getting back and they started the party without him, and things got so out of hand that by the time he returned they'd trashed the place! (And the frogs escaped, of course.)

The book kind of lost me at that point.  Things have to go wrong, of course, otherwise there'd be no point!  That sort of plot I find depressing.  It reminded me of George Orwell's novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying, which I haven't read, but I saw the movie with Richard E. Grant as a full-of- himself advertising copywriter who decides to go through a poverty stage so he can become an Artist.  After a while he actually sells something and comes into some money, but it just results in him going on a tear, getting arrested and screwing up royally.  Because if he didn't screw up there'd be no point.