PANDORA'S BOX

"Kill yourself....  It's the only way to save both of us"--Pandora's Box

This afternoon I went to see G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box (for the third time, I think) at the Revue, part of the Silent Sundays series with live piano by William O'Meara.  I felt like seeing some movie today, and this one is pretty stylish.  I want to read Louise Brooks' memoir Lulu in Hollywood.

Unfortunately, the movie was at 4:15 so I was concerned about being late for dinner:  we were ready to see the last episode of the second season of Borgen and Moira had to start it before 7:00 or so or she'd get sleepy, while I had to see it tonight because I have choir practice tomorrow night.  So I had to watch the clock or we'd have to see it separately.

I ended up leaving early, during the gambling scene. (Gambling scares me.) Anyhow, I was happy to leave before Jack the Ripper did Louise Brooks in.  But when I got to Dundas West station there was a problem at Dufferin station, so they were sending shuttle buses between Keele and Ossington.  I waited in the station, but it took me half an hour to figure out that the buses were picking up people outside the station, south of Bloor Street.  Dumb, stupid, stupid, stupid!

In the end it took me almost 90 minutes to get home and I had to watch that episode without Moira.  It reminded me of a time twenty-odd years ago, back when the two of us were living in that apartment on Slade Avenue.  I went to York University on a blizzardy day and managed to lose my house key on the way there.  On Monday nights Moira went to a lecture series about The Divine Comedy or something, but I had to phone her and ask her to wait till I came home so I wouldn't be locked out in such weather.  The commute between home and the university normally took just under an hour (someday they'll finish the subway extension...) but today on the way back the bus was moving so slowly in the blizzard that I took about three hours to get home!  Which meant that Moira had to miss her lecture, and I still feel really bad about my responsibility for it, because she really enjoyed the series:  it was the highlight of her week.

If this cloud has a silver lining, it's that it gave me something to write about here.

Thursday Acting Meetups

I've decided not to join the Cosi Fan Tutte chorus for next month's opera.  It just feels like more trouble than it's worth.

The Acting Meetup now meets on Thursday afternoons as well as Saturdays.  I went there this afternoon and performed a scene from The Wire where I was Bubbles' drug rehab sponsor, telling him he had to learn to forgive himself. (I must see that whole series soon!) 

I'll miss the group two weeks from now because I have an appointment with my shrink.  Then I'll miss it three weeks from now because I just scheduled a dental checkup for then today. (Maybe I should have asked for a different date, but I'm just too polite.) In addition I've just joined a new Acting Meetup that's also on Saturday afternoons!

This evening I joined Lillian's Karaoke Meetup, which was renting a room at Gorhe Gorhe, a Korean karaoke place just around the corner from Christie station.  At that place, after you finish a song the machine somehow calculates to give you a score out of 100. (I'd like to know its criteria.) Once or twice I got a perfect 100!  At this place behind the lyrics of the song you're singing they'll show the video for an unrelated song--I noticed this because they sometimes showed the same video for different songs.

After leaving the karaoke place, I peeked in the nearby Baskin-Robbins ice cream place.  I wish people still made ice cream in strawberry ripple and cherry vanilla flavors.

AIDA

"I never screwed my secretary--or did I?"--Borgen

Saturday afternoon I skipped the Acting Meetup and went to a screening of a Paris Opera production of Verdi's Aida at the Bloor. It's one of my favorite operas--I've seen it several times--but this was a rather strange production, with cleaning women and other modern touches.  In Aida's first scenes she was wearing a blond wig that makes her and Amneris look like doppelgangers at first glance.  Though she took it off before long, it confused the audience at a crucial time, when their characters were being established. (That's the kind of detail Giuseppe Macina hates.)

Saturday I finished the Byzantine history and now we can resell it online.  And now I've started reading the comedy issue of Lapham's Quarterly.

Sunday night I watched a second episode of Borgen so I wouldn't fall behind when Moira saw it while I was at choir practice.  The drawback was that I was dying to talk about it but couldn't spoil it for her. (We can talk about it tomorrow, of course.)

At choir practice this evening we started doing "Pie Jesu" from Faure's Requiem Mass.  I've heard it before but this is the first time I've sung it.

The Pearl Princess

Last night Puitak and Gordon took us out to dinner.  We had Chinese food at the House of Gourmet in Chinatown.  The food was a bit oily for my taste, but that's the way Pui likes it.

I took the moment to lend Puitak a comic book we found in our house the other day.  It's "The Pearl Princess," part of the Classics Illustrated Junior series of fairy tale comics.  But this version was reprinted in the '90s on the occasion of the golden anniversary of the beginnings of Classics Illustrated.  (To my surprise, it was a higher print quality than the original!) I lent it to her because I may have another copy.  And Pui's bound to like it:  the English is simple, and people wear fancy clothes in it.  

This story is about a princess who told her father she loved him like salt, so he took offence and sent her away with a sack of salt on her back. (Her tears formed pearls, hence the title.) A bit like King Lear. They cite the Grimm Brothers collection, but Moira says it's a Russian story as well.  And the salt metaphor does describe family love well:  losing Mother feels a bit like running out of salt forever.

Those comics, besides the main fairy tale, would also have an Aesop's fable, here one about two fish swimming into a dangerous river; a page illustrating a children's poem, in this case a Lear limerick (they also did poems from Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses); a page describing an animal, in this case the grebe; and a page for you to color in.

Back to the opera

Last night was the new year's first opera rehearsal.  We blocked out the second, third and fourth acts of Carmen. (We'll review the first act next week.) When I told Susan that I'd learned to say "Ola, bonatinha" she said that they'd have to find me a Portuguese girl to say it to!

Moira rented the DVDs of the first half of the second season of Borgen.  I'd guessed they'd have Katrine go to work for that creep Laugesen.  At one point Kasper carelessly called his new girlfriend Katrine, and just afterward we saw on Netflix the episode of Cheers! where Diane's then-boyfriend Frasier told Sam about her calling out Sam's name at an intimate moment. (He renamed himself and Diane Thor and Elektra.) Coincidence!

I finally got through Level 82 of Pet Rescue Saga by using a cheat measure.  That's the first time I've used it playing this game, and I hope it's the last!  I was stuck on Level 85 too, but just now I've managed to get past it.

Running short again.  I posted the next ROLT event just the other day--the topic is city life--and fifteen people have already said they're coming!  Maybe the group's reaching critical mass. (We now have over 250 members.)

Back to the choir

At yesterday's memoir slam our subjects were junk (which we had a lot to say about) and horses.  I ended up talking about that song "Where Do You Worka, John?" which I had on a little record when I was a kid.

Last night was the first choir rehearsal of the new year.  We're going to do an inspirational concert, raising funds for a charity for homeless families.  We started learning a prayer song that Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli did as a duet, and the gospel song "How Great Thou Art." (I remember Elvis singing that.) The one copying out the first song forgot to copy page six, but fortunately we were all repeating the earlier melody (at a slightly higher pitch) with no harmony.

Last month after the concert at the Blythwood church I left my binder with the music scores in Don's car, or at least I hope that's where I left it.  Don didn't make it last night, and it isn't clear whether he's found it. (That binder has my opera scores too, and a couple of pages from the memoir slam that I haven't yet blogged.)

I'm now learning some new Greek.  Last night I learned the Archimedes quote that translates, "Give me somewhere to stand and I can move the earth by myself." Before now I've put the Greek writing and my makeshift dictionary on the same document, but now I got the idea to separate them into two.

If you ask me...

Yesterday was the January ROLT Meetup.  The subject was essays, criticism and opinion pieces and the event was titled "If you ask me..." We got a dozen people, one of our best turnouts, and I hit them for contributions toward the Meetup expenses.  I suggested moving the location to the Victory Cafe, and the others agreed to it.

I read Roger Ebert's hilariously sarcastic Agitprop-style review of Ken Russell's excess-fest The Devils, and George Orwell's essay "Why I write." Jane read part of a Tom Wolfe 1970s article about "the perfect crime." Someone read three poems he'd written, and someone else read something about Darwin.

Last night I had another complicated dream.  I was a graduate student looking for something original to research who was tempted to start producing illegal drugs.  We were going to produce them in an unused mansion inside a skyscraper!  Then this famous football coach had a Nazi-type rally at the mansion, resulting in a huge crowd descending on it.  I ended up deciding to write a book about the crime I almost committed, and how I would have been caught.  I also dreamed of a statue made of cocaine being built on a rooftop and getting blown away.

Karaoke

Last night I attended Lillian's Karaoke Meetup.  It was going to be at Mayday Malone's but at the last minute it turned out that some group had rented the whole place that night so she had to change the location to the Fox & Fiddle near Wellesley station. (I've had to do that sort of thing with the ROLT Meetup a couple of times.) I arrived early, but the weather was so mild that I was able to await Lillian outside the entrance!

This karaoke emphasized a comic approach and we had a long wait while they showed unusually vulgar music videos for songs like "Wrong Hole" (don't ask). I sang Weird Al Yankovic's "Eat It" (an appropriate song for this place) but left after one song.

Tonight I also went to Jonah's Karaoke Meetup at BarPlus.  

This afternoon I went to the first Acting Meetup of the new year.  I did a scene from CSI:  Criminal Minds with Milan, who also comes from Sackville, N.B.!  At the end Ivan had us stand in a circle and take turns saying what we wanted to get out of this class, and I said I wanted to become less shy and more outgoing.

Level 78 on Pet Rescue Saga was a bearcat, but I managed to get past it a few days ago.  But Level 82 is even worse and I think I'll quit for now.

Stagehand!

When they show the Met opera telecast in cinemas, sometimes in the intermission they'll show the stagehands changing the sets backstage, and you can hear them talking in quintessential New York accents.  This week I got to be an opera stagehand myself!

Frank needed volunteers to help set up the main parts of our opera set at the Bickford Centre.  I came at the last minute, too wary to make an early commitment. (There were half a dozen of us.) First we brought up the tall columns from the basement storeroom, which meant opening the metal door in the stage right floor and guiding them upward.  Then we assembled and raised everything on the stage.  At one point I was driving screws with a drill to add a wooden reinforcement to a stage piece, but the screws David Roche gave me were too long, so I ended up nailing the piece to the floor! (Memories are made of this.)

I was telling Frank about Borgen, and it turned out that he's already on the show's third season through the miracle of illegal downloading.  He would be interested in political shows, what with his Green Party involvement.

Last night I went on Betty Anne's Queen Street Art Walk again.  This time we mostly went along Ossington Avenue north to Dundas Street and back.

Brass monkey weather!

Romantic banter: "Aren't you going to search me?  I might have anything down my pants!" "Or nothing"--The Hobbit:  The Desolation of Smaug

Sunday afternoon I saw Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (for the fourth time, I think) at the Event Screen with the Sunday Afternoon Movie Meetup group.  My favorite character is Mr. Pink. (Steve Buscemi played basically the same character in Fargo.)

Monday night I was going to see The Maltese Falcon with the Classic Movie Meetup, but it was cancelled because of the cold weather.  So I lost the chance to headline this post "Two classic tough-guy movies." I only found about the cancellation when I got there after braving the cold. (Yeah, I need to check my email more often.)

In this freezing weather I depend on my room's electric heater, which I've even been turning on in the daytime! I hardly feel like doing anything, including writing this blog.  But this evening I went out to the Yonge & Eglinton and saw The Desolation of Smaug, the second of Peter Jackson's movies based on Tolkien's The Hobbit, in 3-D.  Like the first one, it was overlong and pretty conventional--get ready for the "outrun the explosion" cliche and orc heads comin' at ya!--  but it did get me out of the house.

I've finally finished reviewing all the Greek I learned in the past, and I'm now learning some new Greek lessons!

A CONCISE HISTORY OF BYZANTIUM

Last Friday I finally got my used copy of Warren Treadgold's A Concise History of Byzantium through the miracle of snail mail.  I only had to wait about a month for it, but that's what happens when you order something in December!

Fortunately, the book's only 240-odd pages long, so I'll have an easy time getting it read before the Non-Fiction Book Club meets. It covers a period of almost 1200 years, which works out to almost five years per page.  I'm already about a third of the way through!

The book reminds me a bit of Pocket History of the United States, a book I read thirty years ago, which also covers a pretty wide range at limited length.  I should suggest that book for one of the club's future events on its messageboard!  I should also post a link to Selia's list of memoir publications (which I've contributed a few titles to).

Speaking of Selia, the memoir slam starts again tomorrow.  I should suggest that Selia go through the subject cards in the canister because there may be some duplicates.  Specifically, I'm afraid I may have submitted the same subject a second time in a couple of cases.

What's eating you?

What's eating me?  The other day I read about this New York Times op-ed piece written by the newspaper's former executive editor Bill Keller. (Back when he was editing the Paper of Record, someone nicknamed him "Helen" Keller, which is unfair to the real Helen Keller and her high ideals.)

In this piece, Keller identified liberals like Elizabeth Warren and Bill di Blasio as "the left-left," while more moderate liberals like President Obama were "the center-left." It's always bugged me when people refer to liberals as "the left"--while "the conservative right" is redundant, "the liberal left" is an oxymoron--and now Keller's taken it one step beyond!  This is the consequence of liberals responding to conservative victories by demanding a move "to the center," a move as short-sighted as a punched boxer stepping back.

I finally cracked level 52 in Pet Rescue Saga.  After I've reached my highest level, I think I'll go back and play level 52 again!  It's a real challenge, requiring you to move the keys down ahead of the animals and use the level-zapper at the right time, and even when you've learned to do that the odds are somewhat against you.

At the cinema the other day, I saw a movie poster with the line "Based on the inspiring true story." That's the least appealing movie promo I've seen since "From the makers of Love, Actually"!

Last night I went to Lillian's Karaoke Meetup at the Office.  I'm glad I don't have to work in places like that.

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

Spin doctor: "Denmark is rather unsexy"--Borgen

This evening I saw Martin Scorcese's The Wolf of Wall Street at the Yonge & Eglinton. (I was supposed to see it with a Movie Meetup group, but I couldn't find them.) The movie was more sad than funny, and I felt its three-hour running time fully.  I suppose I would have liked it more when I was younger.  Scorcese's Goodfellas (one of my favorite movies) and Ted Demme's Blow handled similar material better.

This afternoon I saw two episodes of Borgen. (Since I was going out in the evening, the episode that Moira saw then I'd seen already.) The first was really terrific, combining issues of terrorist suspect rendition, Greenland sovereignty and journalists dealing with anonymous sources.  The second was more conventional, with a sexy female minister played by an actress who looked exactly like supermodel Helena Christiansen (but wasn't her).

I've finally quit Candy Crush Saga (for now, goodness knows) after getting up to level 89.  In Pet Rescue Saga I'm still stuck at level 52, but I've reached level 59 before and I don't want to quit that game until I've reached at least that level again.

Hogmanay

"You know why so few women play poker?  Because they can't bluff!"--Borgen

It's a new year.  Last night, as usual, I went to bed early and tried to sleep through midnight.  And as usual, I was awake and heard the noise at midnight.  But I heard noise at several points and can't be completely sure which was midnight.  For me, that's close enough to sleeping through it.

Yesterday Moira rented the Danish political TV series Borgen at 2Q Video.  It's a terrific, gripping fictional show about Denmark's first female prime minister and all the sneaks she has to deal with. (Her first spin doctor reminded me of Dr. Hassan.) Moira's watching it in the afternoon as well as the evening, which she rarely does.

It's by the same group who made that police procedural series The Killing, which we saw the first episode of on Youtube.  I want to buy the video online, since we can't seem to find it for rent.

I haven't made a lot of New Year's resolutions.  There's a girl called Susan at the opera who's gone out of her way to be friendly to me, so I intend to be friendlier with her this coming year. (I think she's the one who sang "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls" at last year's master class.) Also, I've been rewriting some fairy tales and intend to print them out and submit them to a publisher...

SAVING MR. BANKS

P.L. Travers on the Mary Poppins script: "Where is the gravitas?"--Saving Mr. Banks

Last night I saw Saving Mr. Banks at Canada Square.  That's the movie about P.L. Travers and Walt Disney collaborating (combatively) to make the movie Mary Poppins.  The psychology was pretty middlebrow, and Travers' dissatisfaction with the final movie gets glossed over.  But Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks are uncanny in the lead roles.  I also liked Colin Farrell as Travers' alcoholic father in the flashbacks.  Now I want to learn more about Travers' life.

I love the Mary Poppins movie--the Sherman Brothers became Hollywood's most prolific songwriting team, but they never surpassed their early work there--but I didn't care for the first of the books when I read it some years back.  Presumably, the books read better when you're one of the few people who haven't seen the movie.  (Maybe I should try them again.)

I've returned to translating those Portuguese booklets about the lives of the saints.  I've been working on the story of Sao Tomas de Aquino, but it took me a few days to realize that's the Portuguese name for St. Thomas Aquinas!

Father found a book of Pindar's odes, in both their original Greek and an English translation.  I'm likely to spend some time on that.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

Record producer F. Murray Abraham (hearing Llewyn's audition): "I don't see any money here"--Inside Llewyn Davis

Last night I went to Jonah's Karaoke Meetup at BarPlus.  I sang quite a few songs, including the Alan Parsons Project's "Don't Answer Me," which I'd only sung once or twice before.

This afternoon I saw the Coen brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis at the Lightbox with a Movie Meetup group.  Pam was there too, and we always have interesting conversations. (She spent a year in New Guinea, which I'm now interested in after reading Guns, Germs and Steel.)

The movie was set in the New York folk music scene of the early 1960s, but was really about that scene's second-rate talents, sort of like the Christopher Guest spoof A Mighty Wind.  It was rather odd, part droll and part downbeat, with a far from likeable hero.

Because it's Christmas time, I've been playing Candy Crush Saga and Pet Rescue Saga again.  (I'm up to level 86 in Candy Crush Saga.) Now I have several Facebook friends who are also playing them.  After you play a level both games sometimes offer you a fun-o-meter to rate how much you liked it.  But the way I see it there's no point in rating each level, because what makes those games so fun is that all the levels are different!  If some levels are less fun than others, that's still better than if you only got to play the most fun levels.

Merry, merry

Roger Sterling: "You know Detroit [the auto business].  All fun and games, until they shoot you in the face"--Mad Men

Yesterday our internet connection got restored.  So I'm back to playing all those Facebook games.

Yesterday morning I noticed that I'd forgotten to move my outside window pane so there'd be two layers of glass during the winter (unlike in summer, when I can open it completely).  One of the panes was frozen shut and I used some boiling water to get it moving.  I had to take the panes out to rearrange them and put them on the corner of my bed, leaving a wet spot there that I could feel between the sheets.

Donald, John and his family came over for Christmas dinner.  We had both turkey and vegan food.

For lunch today I had a tuna sandwich for the first time in a while. I noticed that I bake good whole wheat bread!

This evening I had dinner at the Golden Thai restaurant with ten other people from the Asperger's Meetup.  I splurged and had both Golden Thai chicken and Golden Thai fried rice.

Ice palaces

We have a couple of trees in our front yard and yesterday they were covered in ice.  It would have been a good day for a Photography Meetup event.

Saturday night I saw the Alistair Sim version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL for the first time since I was a kid, with the Classical Movie Meetup at the Fairview screening room.  It's a great psychological movie.  When we get back online I'll be eager to learn more about it at the Internet Movie Database. (What else did Brian Desmond-Hurst direct?)

Yesterday I saw a broadcast of the Royal Ballet production of Tchaikovsky's NUTCRACKER at the Yonge & Eglinton.  My favorite costumes were the women in the Spanish Dance.  I would have seen it with Mary of the Classical Music Meetup, but she couldn't make it because of the ice storm. (What a shame:  I haven't seen her for a few months.)

The streetcars weren't running yesterday so I walked to St. Clair West station.  But I still had to take a shuttle bus north to Eglinton station because a tree fell near St. Clair station. (I arrived with little time to spare.)  On the way back I took the bus to Eglinton West station and hoped to take the Ossington bus south to St. Clair, but there turned out to be a detour so that bus was no longer coming all the way to Eglinton West!

I've finished ONE SUMMER, which I enjoyed greatly, and let's hope the Byzantine history arrives soon so I can start reading that one.  In the meanwhile, I've resumed reading the book with 50 things I need to know about architecture.

When I bought a drink yesterday at the Yonge & Eglinton they gave it to me in a reusable cup with a bendable straw, illustrated with a New Jersey Devil.  I guess I'll be reusing it.

It took quite a search this morning to find a library computer. (There have been some blackouts nearby, so more people must be depending on libraries for their net connection.) In the end I found one at the Gladstone library.

A week off line!

I'm posting this through the facilities of Wychwood library, since our modem conked out Thursday and can't be replaced till Christmas day. (I hope technicians get paid extra for working then.) To tell the truth, I needed a break from those Facebook games.

With the web unavailable, I've been reviewing my Greek.  If I get really bored, I might even watch TV!

Father and I have been watching the sixth season of MAD MEN on DVD.  The fifth and sixth seasons aren't quite as good as the first four:  Megan isn't as fascinating as Betty.  But I guess diminishing returns were inevitable. (Consider how diminished SIX FEET UNDER was in its last two seasons.)

Wednesday night the choir performed again, for the Earlscourt Rotary club.  Again, they treated us to dinner!

Another dream

I had a vivid dream last night.  It was about a non-existent Twin Peaks-type show about a group of people in a New England town.  They found themselves transported to a parallel universe that was exactly like theirs, except that they themselves were tiny and inconspicuous, like in the Irwin Allen series Land of the Giants.  

But then it gradually emerged that some scientist had found the mode that transported them, and they could transport back to their regular world.  And that there was a way for them to increase their size to one that was normal in this world, and become the same people as in their regular world, except that they could change things.  And that they were coming to this parallel universe to make Groundhog Day-like changes to avoid some big tragedy.  And that the group had originally just been the scientist, but had gradually grown to include more and more others.  And that the people in the group had developed a brotherhood among each other, with an initiation ritual for new people joining, involving dancing a mazurka in a circle around a circular table.  And that the storyline was gradually moving toward their making the changes that would fundamentally transform the outcome.

Maybe I could go to Hollywood and sell that concept.  But then I'd have to watch the show!