Solar eclipse

"I tell you, sir, it's the end of the world. Never has there been loose such an unruly mob of students!  It's the accursed inventions of the age that are ruining everything--the artillery, the muskets, the cannons, and above all the printing press, that scourge brought from Germany"--The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Monday afternoon during the solar eclipse I was inside the Lillian Smith library with the memoir group. (Father made a clever gizmo out of a computer crate for seeing the crescent sunbeam.) Oh well, maybe the Imp of the Perverse would have made me look directly into it...

Now that I've finished Sons and Lovers, I got some new books there.  Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame I'm reading for John Snow's book club.  Machiavelli's The Prince I'm reading for the History Meetup.  And I also got an annotated edition of the manuscript Pioneer Girl, Laura Ingalls Wilder's first attempt at telling her story.

On the first page of Hunchback, Hugo indirectly reveals that he's started writing the novel at the time of the July Revolution.  No doubt he did so to remind his readers that the age of Paris mobs was far from over!

Hunchback and Prince are rather appropriate books to be reading at the same time, since they're both about the difficulties of the Renaissance.

HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER

"It hurt him so, that things had lost their reality.  The first snowdrops came.  He saw the tiny drop-pearls among the grey.  They would have given him the liveliest emotion at one time.  Now they were there, but they did not seem to mean anything.  In a few moments they would cease to occupy that place, and just the space would be, where they had been.  Tall, brilliant tram-cars ran along the street at night.  It seemed almost a wonder they should trouble to rustle backwards and forwards. 'Why trouble to go tilting down to Trent Bridges?' he asked of the big trams.  It seemed they just as well might not be as be"--Sons and Lovers

Yesterday afternoon I saw High Plains Drifter with Dawna (for the second time, except that the first time was on a black & white TV decades ago so I couldn't appreciate the scene where the whole town was painted red!). It's the first of the "avenging angel" westerns directed by and starring Clint Eastwood.  We also saw an episode of his TV western Rawhide--Dawna recognizes every actor who appeared on the first Star Trek series!

High Plains Drifter is the one where stranger Eastwood comes to a town whose marshal was whipped to death by three outlaws who are now getting out of jail, and the town's afraid they'll return for vengeance so they hire him to defend the town and give him a blank cheque, but at the last minute he leaves them to face the outlaws alone, then returns that night and kills them after all, and he's the ghost of the marshal who got whipped to death!

This afternoon was the latest Reading Out Loud Meetup, with the topic of humorous writing. (I titled the event "Jocularity.") I read the part of Huckleberry Finn where the King works a camp meeting; the part of Frank McCourt's Teacher Man describing his first two days teaching school; and James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.  This time we read in Robarts Library's food court.

I just finished Sons and Lovers with a week to spare.  The sensitive hero's relationship with his protective mother reminded me a bit of my relationship with my mother.

NABUCCO

"And after such an evening they both were very still, having known the immensity of passion.  They felt small, half afraid, childish, and wondering, like Adam and Eve when they lost their innocence and realized the magnificence of the power which drove them out of Paradise and across the great night and the great day of humanity.  It was for each of them an initiation and a satisfaction.  To know their own nothingness, to know the tremendous living flood which carried them always, gave them rest within themselves.  If so great a magnificent power could overwhelm them, identify them altogether with itself, so that they knew they were only grains in the tremendous heave that lifted every grass-blade its little height, and every tree, and living thing, then why fret about themselves? They could let themselves be carried by life, and they felt a sort of peace each in the other. There was a verification which they had had together.  Nothing could nullify it, nothing could take it away; it was almost their belief in life"--Sons and Lovers

This afternoon I saw the Met production of Verdi's Nabucco at the Yonge & Eglinton, with the great Placido Domingo in the title role.  That's the one where Nabucco captures Jerusalem but his daughter falls in love with a Judean and converts, but his other daughter schemes to take over when he goes out of his head... The Slaves' Chorus was so well-received that they did it a second time! (I saw that happen with "Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat" at the National Theatre production of Guys and Dolls in London twenty years ago.)

I've just been rereading The First Four Years, Laura Ingalls Wilder's unfinished addition to her Little House series, describing her newlywed life.  It's only half as long as the other books:  I have a feeling that she gave up on it because it brought back too many painful memories. Three of their first four crops were lost--including a $3000 bumper crop wrecked in a hailstorm--her husband suffered paralysis from a combination of diphtheria and overwork, she lost their second child shortly after his birth, and their house burnt down.  The good old days...

The Crown keeps getting even better! (They've now got to the part in the mid-1950s when my parents were in England.) As the Queen, Claire Foy's polite poker face reminds me of a geisha.

THE CROWN

At the theatre: "The drama continued.  He saw it all in the distance, going on somewhere; he did not know where, but it seemed far away inside him.  He was Clara's white heavy arms, her throat, her moving bosom.  That seemed to be himself.  Then away somewhere the play went on, and he was identified with that also.  There was no himself.  The grey and black eyes of Clara, her bosom coming down on him, her arm that he held gripped between his hands, were all that existed.  Then he felt himself small and helpless, her towering in her force above him"--Sons and Lovers

We've started watching the royal drama The Crown on Netflix.  It's a handsome production and pretty believable. (The Duke of Windsor privately referred to Elizabeth II as "Shirley Temple"!)

Saturday afternoon I saw some more spy shows with Dawna: The Man From UNCLE, Mission: Impossible and Get Smart. (The last was one of my favorite shows when I was young, though I have to admit such '60s comedies were rather sexist.)

I was going to watch the meteor shower in Christie Pits with Miriam's group Saturday night, but the webpage said we'd meet at the Black Rock Cafe at 997 Bloor St. West and when I got there it turned out the address was wrong!  I went home and it turned out that the address was 977 Bloor St. West.  So I went there but couldn't find the rest of the group.

Last night Miriam and I were going to see West Side Story at Christie Pits' outdoor screening and then go out for Korean soup again.  But she wasn't really up to the movie, so we went straight to the soup.

Zoosk

"She put her hands over him, on his hair, on his shoulders, to feel if the raindrops fell on him.  She loved him dearly.  He, as he lay with his face on the dead pine-leaves, felt extraordinarily quiet.  He did not mind if the raindrops came on him:  he would have lain and got wet through:  he felt as if nothing mattered, as if his living were smeared away into the beyond, near and quite lovable.  This strange, gentle reaching-out to death was new to him"--Sons and Lovers

Yesterday Betty-Anne's art walk returned to Queen Street West. One place we went to was a shop for cocktail paraphernalia!

That night at a midnight showing (well, 23:00 anyway) the Carleton had a special screening of the Godzilla classic Destroy All Monsters in honor of the guy inside the monster suit who just died.  I was thinking of seeing it, but my headache came back and it looked too noisy for me.

On a whim, I joined the dating website Zoosk. (Hope over experience?) For my profile I wrote:

I'm a late bloomer. I love classic books, music, movies and TV. My favourite journey is to London, England.
I like reading, especially history. (Fairy tales and comic books appeal to me, even at my age!) And walking is one of my favourite activities.
I'm politically conscious. There are a lot of things in the world that make me angry. (With Donald Trump, however, I've gone beyond anger...) I believe in justice, though in practice I'm skeptical about realizing it.

For my perfect match I wrote:

I like someone who's a good listener, has a sense of humor, and cares about important things as passionately as I do.

For my perfect date I wrote:

A good first date would be just going out for ice cream or doughnuts. Later, karaoke would be fun! Or a movie: my idea of a good romantic movie is Disney's LADY & THE TRAMP, the John Wayne-Claire Trevor western STAGECOACH or even John LeCarre's THE CONSTANT GARDENER. After that, who knows? =)

The good thing about this site is that you get to choose from a wide range of available interests to add to your profile:  people, books, movies, TV shows, sports and such.  And also observe other people's profiles:  I don't think I can date a woman whose interests include the stupid, shameless movie Life Is Beautiful...

Headache!

"Mrs. Morel felt as if her heart would break for him.  At this rate she knew he would not live.  He had that poignant carelessness about himself, his own suffering, his own life, which is a form of slow suicide.  It almost broke her heart.  With all the passion of her strong nature she hated Miriam for having in this subtle way undermined his joy.  It did not matter to her that Miriam could not help it.  Miriam did it, and she hated her"--Sons and Lovers

These are a couple of those pictures Midwife took of me last week.  She wants to do some more once she knows my clothes size!

The other night I got a big headache that's only now gone away.  I usually read while on the TTC but I couldn't do it so much yesterday.

Monday night we saw the last episode of Bloodline.  The last three episodes, after the trial, weren't as good. (Too much confusing surrealism...)

Yesterday I met Midwife and Miriam.  Miriam's been reading my articles too, and likes them. My next one will be about how I was born on the day of a big Aquarian stellium! (I'm too rationalistic for astrology, really, but it is kinda fun.)

Last night I went to the Cross-Cultural Meetup at Page One near the Ryerson campus.  I had to leave a bit early because of my headache.

I've made Dawna's Classic TV a joint event with my Reading Out Loud Meetup.  Since my group has over 4000 members, that's bound to increase interest in hers!

THE WILD, WILD WEST

"He looked at his mother.  Her blue eyes were watching the cathedral quietly.  She seemed again to be beyond him.  Something in the eternal repose of the uplifted [Lincoln] cathedral, blue and noble against the sky, was reflected in her, something of the fatality.  What was, was.  With all his young will he could not alter it.  He saw her face, the skin still fresh and pink and downy, but crow's-feet near her eyes, her eyelids steady, sinking a little, her mouth always closed with disillusion; and there was on her the same eternal look, as if she knew fate at last. He beat against it with all the strength of his soul"--Sons and Lovers

"I love being a grandmother.  It's like eating all the ice cream you want and never getting fat!"--Bloodline

Thursday night was the History Meetup, where the subject was modern China.  Just three people came, but one of them talked a lot and that was worth quite a bit.

This afternoon I saw three episodes of The Wild, Wild West with Dawna.  That show was The Man From UNCLE on the frontier, as crazy as it sounds. In one episode they took on a megalomaniac who wanted to create an independent state between the U.S. and Mexico and had stolen the first copy of the United States constitution; in another someone tried to shoot the Mexican president and they had to figure out who was really behind it; in the other one the dwarfish villain Dr. Loveless faked his death and pretended to be his own neurosurgeon uncle.

By today's standards it was a cheesy show, especially the de rigeur fight scenes.  Watching several episodes, you'll notice that the sets got recycled. (Big Brad's Bar seemed to be a chain with franchises all over the west!) One detail that bugs me is their getting orders from Washington by pigeon post: how can a carrier pigeon track down a moving railroad car?

Enough on my plate?

"Spring was the worst time.  He was changeable, intense and cruel.  So he decided to stay away from her.  Then came the hours when he knew Miriam was expecting him. His mother watched him growing restless. He could not go on with his work.  He could do nothing.  It was as if something were drawing his soul out towards Willey Farm. Then he put on his hat and went, saying nothing.  And his mother knew he was gone. And as soon as he was on the way he sighed with relief.  And when he was with her he was cruel again"--Sons and Lovers

Yesterday, through some bureaucratic SNAFU, the room at Lillian Smith library where the memoir group usually meets was taken for some conference.  They did let us meet in the reading area, but we only did one topic since we couldn't talk too loud. Since next week is a holiday, I brought home the can of subject cards to remove superfluous items and maybe add some more of my own.

After two weeks, I'm halfway through Sons and Lovers.  When I'm finished that, I'll have to read The Prince for my History Meetup and The Hunchback of Notre Dame for John's book club. I'm way behind in Lapham's Quarterly.

And there are all those Ebooks that I've started reading.  I just finished a history of the California gold rush the other day.  But I've also started a biography of Walt Disney, a history of the Versailles palace, a history of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and The Boo, Pat Conroy's biography of the fatherly assistant commander at the Citadel military school. (I liked My Losing Season, his memoir of playing basketball at the Citadel.)

In addition to all that, today I went to the Gladstone library and borrowed Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie. (Just because I felt like reading it again!)

Someone said I don't like people, which may be true to some extent. (Linus Van Pelt: "I love mankind--it's people I can't stand!") He mentioned that I rarely talk about people in this blog, but part of the reason is that I worry about what people may think if they read about themselves here.  Which is why he shall go nameless!

Busy Thursday

"He did not know himself what was the matter.  He was naturally so young, and their intimacy was so abstract, he did not know he wanted to crush her on to his breast to ease the ache there.  He was afraid of her.  The fact that he might want her as a man wants a woman had in him been suppressed into a shame.  When she shrank in her convulsed, coiled torture from the thought of such a thing, he had winced to the depths of his soul"--Sons and Lovers

"I'm sorry, I forgot that you were sick the day they taught law at law school!"--A Few Good Men

I had a busy Thursday.  First I met with Midwife and we discussed the articles I've been writing for her.  We had lunch at the 12 Hours restaurant where I had the beef noodle soup.  Later she took some pictures of me in front of wall paintings!

Early in the evening I went on Betty Anne's art walk.  This time we were on Dundas West, between Ossington and Dufferin. Later I went to a Karaoke Meetup at the Midtown Cafe north of St. Clair station.  I sometimes have to leave after just one song, but this time I managed to stay for two.

This afternoon I saw Rob Reiner's A Few Good Men with Dawna, for the first time.  The military code of silence is an important issue-- witness the Chelsea Manning controversy-- but I found the movie pretty conventional.  You could see people "acting":  Jack Nicholson was clearly a bad guy from the first moment you saw him!

We've started watching the third season of Bloodline.  It's the best TV show I've seen since Breaking Bad!

DUNKIRK

Looking for work: "Then he looked wistfully out of the window.  Already he was a prisoner of industrialism.  Large sunflowers stared over the old red wall of the garden opposite, looking in their jolly way down on the women who were hurrying with something for dinner.  The valley was full of corn, brightening in the sun.  Two colliers, among the fields, waved their small white plumes of steam.  Far off on the hills were the woods of Annesley, dark and fascinating. Already his heart went down.  He was being taken into bondage.  His freedom in the beloved home valley was going now"--Sons and Lovers

"He's dead, mate." "Then be bloody careful with him!"--Dunkirk

This afternoon I went to the first Cross-Culture Meetup.  It's for people who've spent over a year of their life outside of Canada, and I've spent about three years in Great Britain.  We met in Dufferin Grove park, and may do a karaoke sometime.

Tonight I saw Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk at the Varsity as a History Meetup event.  I thought a war movie like that would attract an all-male group, but I was the only boy there!  The movie was exciting and realistic, without the cheap tricks Nolan sometimes employs. (Remember in The Dark Knight when Commissioner Gordon got killed, but it turned out he'd faked his own death to protect his family?)

I remember seeing a bit of an earlier movie about Dunkirk at my aunt Alma's house, but finding out that she couldn't bear war movies.  Too grim for her!

UNFORGIVEN

"We've all got it coming, kid!"--Unforgiven

Yesterday afternoon I saw Unforgiven with Dawna. That's the fourth in the series of "avenging angel" westerns starring and directed by Clint Eastwood, along with High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales and Pale Rider.  It's even better the second time. 

It's an old man's western, like Ride the High Country and The Wild Bunch.  Gene Hackman's especially good as the ex-gunfighter sheriff nemesis. There are some funny touches, like Hackman's jerry-built house and Eastwood's persistent trouble getting his horse to stand still so he can mount it.  But there's also a scene with two guys on a train shooting birds out of the sky in a marksmanship contest, encapsulating the waste culture of the frontier.

Today I was going to see a documentary at the Bloor, but misplaced my glasses just before I was going to leave.  After a few hours Father found them at the bottom of the stairs. (They must have fallen out of their case when I picked it up.) But in the meantime I was in a foul mood.

I've started reading Xenophobe's Guide to the Portuguese.  Of the ebooks I started looking at, I've ended up spending the most time on the book about the California gold rush.

Ebooks

I've started reading some of my virtual library.  Through Bookbub I've been getting a lot of history ebooks for just a dollar or two, but they aren't worth much until I read them...

Two of them are American Heritage magazine publications about the Great Frontier and the USA's "confident years" between the Civil War and World War I respectively.  The latter begins with a chapter about how Andrew Johnson's 1868 impeachment came about.

Some years back I enjoyed Only Yesterday, Frederick Allen's "informal" history of the United States in the 1920s.  Now I've started Since Yesterday, Allen's sequel dealing with the '30s.  It starts with a long description of September 3, 1929, the day the New York Stock Exchange reached its pre-crash peak. (It was also exactly ten years before Britain and France declared war on Germany and World War II started!) Just to confuse you, the 1929 stock market crash actually happened on two days:  the first part was on Black Thursday, the second five days later on Black Tuesday.

I've also been reading Struwwelpeter, Heinrich Hoffmann's 19th-century German collection of gleefully cruel children's stories! (Stuff like the kid who wouldn't stop sucking his thumb, so a man came along with a huge pair of scissors and cut his thumbs off...) Seems he wrote it because he wanted to buy his child a book, but all the children's books he could find were bland.  Lucky for me, the German is simple enough that I can figure it out with help from Google Translate.

HIGH SIERRA

"Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over"--Sons and Lovers

I recently found my credit card blocked.  It turned out that my paying off the whole bill in two big instalments had made them suspicious!  I got it straightened out Sunday.

Last night was John Snow's 60th birthday, and I joined him and two other people at the Hot House. (I had salmon.) It's hard to make conversation with John, of course, because he's the most faithful reader of this blog and it's hard to think of stuff I haven't already written about here!

I finished The China Mirage yesterday and started D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers for the Classic Book Club.  I've already read almost forty pages!  It didn't surprise me to learn that the parents in the novel are based on Lawrence's actual parents--I got the feeling that he knew these two people very well!

Had lunch with Pam at the Grenadier Restaurant and walked through High Park a bit.

In the evening I saw Raoul Walsh's High Sierra (for the third time) with the Classic Movie Meetup at Eton House. Humphrey Bogart has a star-making triumph as a Dillinger-like bank robber, though the subplot with Anne Sheridan's clubfoot is pretty shameless!

Within you and without you

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Classic TV Meetup and we watched DVDs of some TV shows from the 1960s.  The first was The Man From Uncle, in which a Japanese woman accidentally switched her film with the bad guys' film showing their control of volcanoes!  The second was Mission:  Impossible, in which they thwarted an international heroin dealer.  

The third was the first episode of The Time Tunnel, in which our heroes found themselves on the Titanic! (Dawna pointed out that they never seemed to end up in safe places.) Masterpiece Theatre legend Susan Hampshire was a guest star, and I was hoping they'd end up taking her back to the '60s!

Last night I finally got to the Bay at Yorkdale Mall and bought another pair of pajamas. (The pair I got last fall is already "condemned"!)

This afternoon was the latest Reading Out Loud Meetup.  The event had religion as its topic, and I titled it "Within You and Without You." I read the Robert Burns poem "Address to the Unco Guid, or the Rigidly Righteous," the Tolstoy story "The Three Hermits," some Spoon River Anthology poems and the part of Angela's Ashes where Frank McCourt talks about his first communion.

We've been meeting in a lounge in the Robarts Library.  I was just starting the Burns poem when someone complained, so we moved out to the benches near the sidewalk. (Nobody's complained before--it isn't like we were in the reading room!) This worked out pretty well, despite a little sprinkle.  The only thing that bothered me is that two people in our group lost interest then.  I'll see if the Whole Foods common area would work better.

Dry spell

It's another of those summer periods when I can't think of much to write about.

Last night I dreamed about being on a ship again, returning from London to Halifax. (The ship had trees on board!) The odd thing is that when I woke up and remembered having visited London the month before last, it already seemed like something that had happened long ago.

Today I went on another of Betty-Anne's Queen Street West art walks.  Among other places, we visited Dufflet's pastry shop, where they had free samples!  

I didn't have time for dinner before leaving for the walk, so I was one of the group who stayed on for dinner after the walk, at the Rickshaw Thai restaurant. (I ate coconut chicken.) The place was very noisy, so I wasn't the best of conversationalists.  One of the people at the dinner was a Cambodian-Canadian!

Salsa weekend

On hard cash: "One dollar of this is worth ten dollars of talk!"--The Maltese Falcon

Last weekend was the Salsa on St. Clair festival near our house. (It was pretty noisy.)

Saturday night I went to the Poetry Meetup in Budapest Park. (It was a bit noisy:  maybe High Park would have worked better.) I read stanzas 19 to 41 of the first canto of my translation of Camoes' As Lusiadas. (Before I can read much more, I'll have to do some more translating!) I also read that translation of Pessoa's first Alberto Caeiro poem, and "Th' Brae," my Scots version of "The Hill," the first poem in Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology.

Sunday afternoon was the Classic Book Club, where we discussed Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier.

On Sunday evening I saw John Huston's The Maltese Falcon (for the umpteenth time) at an outdoor showing in Christie Pits with Miriam and Anne of the Vintage Clothes Meetup.  It has great dialogue, including a lot of suggestive lines. ("How did you and the widow make out?") Sam Spade actually refers to a cop's partner as his "boyfriend"!

It rained a bit during the screening.  Afterward we had hot soup at a late-night Korean diner. (Very spicy!) Then we walked all the way to the Spadina subway station.  I was rather late getting home, like back when I went a long distance to karaoke.

Today I had a pretty big headache.  I had to skip the Toronto Film Society's film noir double bill at the Carleton. (One of them was Robert Mitchum in Where Danger Lives!)

ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE

"She likes you.  I can see it." "I'd like to know the name of your oculist"--On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Last night was the History Meetup.  We talked about Canadian History and the dummies book, but there were just four people. (A fifth was in the Robarts Library but couldn't find us.) That wouldn't have been so bad, except that two of them got into a spat, and they both left! I wish one of them had stayed, at least.  But Ann did stay and we had a pretty good conversation. (She wrongly blamed herself for the spat.)

Today I went to Dawna's Regent Park screening and saw the James Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service for the first time. That's the one with George Lazenby as Bond, getting into a serious relationship with Diana Rigg, leading to a tragic wedding day. (Spoiler, like it wasn't predictable...) I ate potato chips for the first time in donkey's years!

It was one of the series' less popular entries, though Peter Hunt staged some good action scenes in the second half, including two ski chases.  When I was little, I looked at the poster and thought that Diana Rigg was "her Majesty"!

The China Mirage says a lot about China-born Henry Luce of Time magazine (the son of a missionary) and his favouritism toward Chiang Kai-shek.  I've always resented that magazine's tendentiousness and shameless promotion of favorites such as Nixon and Reagan.  One especially funny Time cover came after Nixon's resignation when they showed his successor Gerald Ford with the headline "The healing begins." (A note of wishful thinking there...)

YANKEE DOODLE DANDY

Theatre investor: "I've been in show business for twenty years, and I've never said I was wrong! [pointing to his partner] That's his department"--Yankee Doodle Dandy

"You're a piece of shit, Raeburn!" "It isn't my fault that your mother likes me better than you"--Bloodline

Yesterday I finished The Road to Wigan Pier and borrowed The China Mirage from the Deer Park library.  It's a fascinating book about the USA's naive China policy which led to "Who lost China" disillusionment after 1949.  I didn't know that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's wealth came from his maternal grandfather (a Delano), who reaped a fortune from the China trade--mostly in opium.

Last night I saw Michael Curtiz' Yankee Doodle Dandy for about the fourth time, at Eton House with the Movie Meetup group. That's the one with James Cagney as Broadway performer-composer George M. Cohan. (I've liked the title song since we had it on a 45 RPM record in my childhood.) Only the spanking scene still makes me uncomfortable.

Today I met Midwife and she gave me several ideas for new articles. (The night before I'd written an article about my parents when they lived in England in the mid-'50s while Father was earning his doctorate.)

We had lunch at the Light Cafe, where I had lobster rolls.  She wants me to raise my output to two articles a week, but I now have half a dozen ideas to develop!

THE CRUCIBLE

"In all novels about the East, the scenery is the real subject-matter"--The Road to Wigan Pier

Friday the bank gave me a number to phone, and I straightened things out so my ATM access card will work now.

Yesterday afternoon was Canada Day, and I went out to an open house at an Islamic centre near Yonge & Wellesley, where I forgot to take off my shoes at the entrance. (D'oh!) Someone gave me a long sales pitch.

This evening I went to the cinemacast at the Yonge & Dundas of a 2013 Old Vic production of Arthur Miller's Salem witch trials play The Crucible, whose movie I screened for the history group just a few months ago.  

Starring Richard Armitage, it was three and a half hours of existential dynamite!  Superbly directed, it brought back the dread I felt seeing the first act for the first time over thirty years ago. They'll be screening Angels in America on the 20th and 27th, and repeating Verdi's Nabucco in August.

I just read a Huffington Post article about measuring emotional intelligence, and I doubt that I'd score well on it.  I can't emotionally distance myself from past mistakes, and I do bear grudges from long ago.  In the comments section someone wrote, "Stein supporters and Trump supporters are cut from the same emotional cloth," and I questioned the emotional intelligence of that poster. (This whole "If you aren't with us, you're against us" attitude, which the court in The Crucible exhibited...) Can the people who still speak of "Bernie Bros" be considered emotionally intelligent themselves?

POINT OF NO RETURN

"I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt"--The Road to Wigan Pier

This afternoon I finally made it to Dawna's Classic TV Meetup in Regent's Park, on a screen that's about five feet by three feet. (On the way over I was reading in The Road to Wigan Pier about working-class housing estates that make Regent Park look like paradise!)

The DVD was Point of No Return, John Badham's 1994 Hollywood remake of Luc Besson's French spy romp La Femme Nikita.  The original had quite a few cliches--like when X pulls a gun on Y to make him do something Y was about to do anyway--but it also had Jean Reno, one of the world's coolest actors, in the surprisingly cool role of the spy boss.  

The American version predictably had even more cliches, but only had Gabriel Byrne as the boss.  Byrne has talent, but he isn't Reno.(Someone said that whatever role Byrne is in, he doesn't seem quite right for it!) The movie also had Bridget Fonda as the spy--she was very pretty, and maybe she still is!--and Dermot Mulroney as her clueless lover. (Moira fondly refers to Mulroney as "that goof"!) Harvey Keitel also played much the same "cleaner" role that he had in Pulp Fiction the same year.

How cheesy was this version? We learn early on that Bridget's a Nina Simone fan, as she specifically asks for her records, then plays them all the time. Later on Byrne reveals that he's given her the code name Nina, and she says, "For Nina Simone?" (Just in case you forget the connection...) Typical line: "Everything you touch turns to shit!"

On the way home, I met Genevier on the subway, whom I know from my time of dance lessons at the Arthur Murray studio.  I used to sing karaoke with her husband Jim, and we may get together again to do that!

On Netflix, we've started watching Bloodline again, from the first episode, before we get to the third season.  I've also started watching the last episodes of Hell on Wheels, the western with the pretty actresses.