The DVD I didn't see

This evening I was going to watch the DVD I got from zip.ca of the silent Swedish movie EROTIKON.  Directed by Moritz Stiller, who discovered Greta Garbo, it's said to be a very daring study of love for its time. (One of the sexiest movies I've ever seen is also Swedish:  Ingmar Bergman's SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT.) And it promised to give me something to write about here.  Unfortunately, the disc had a crack and couldn't be played.  I've reported it as unplayable, and they promise to send me a free one.

Instead I watched an episode from "The Best of GUNSMOKE." (They've sent me three whole discs from that series!) It was the first episode where Burt Reynolds appeared, as Quint the Metis blacksmith.  This episode, from 1961, also featured Harry Carey Jr., the western actor who died the other month, and the actor who played Scottie on STAR TREK.

This afternoon Moira came to see the TOR as we put on HOFFMANN. (The parents feel too weary to come.) She doesn't like the opera as much as I do, but I think she did enjoy this performance.

I was just reading in that book of 50 physics ideas about the EPR paradox. (That stands for Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen.) I'm afraid it was all a bit over my head.  But I've finally finished most of the stuff about quantum mechanics, so I hope I'm over the hump.

Trotsky in Amherst

Tonight the TOR put on BARBER, so we had some long breaks.  I was talking to Rosa, who was reading a three-volume biography of Trotsky.  We got to talking about history.

I've always been interested in the brief period in 1917 when Trotsky was taken off a ship in Halifax and sent to an internment camp in Amherst, Nova Scotia for a month or so until Russia's post-Tsarist government decided to force his release.  The place was one of Canada's largest internment camps during World War I, with many captured German sailors and Ukrainian immigrants who had come to Canada from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  In his short time there he became very popular with most of the prisoners and when he left they saw him off with an improvised band playing (what else?) the Internationale.

This interests me because Amherst is just a short distance from my hometown of Sackville, New Brunswick.  After I got home I went online and learned more about the place.  I found an article about his stay written by Nova Scotia journalist Silver Donald Cameron, and some other information.  The camp was a converted foundry at the intersection of Park and Wickham streets.  I was particularly interested in finding its address since I'm familiar with parts of the town, and it isn't often you get to make a connection between an area you have some familiarity with and an important episode in history.

I love the internet!

The 50 IDEAS YOU REALLY NEED TO KNOW series

When I was in London last September, I bought several books in the 50 IDEAS YOU REALLY NEED TO KNOW series.  I started reading 50 MATHEMATICAL IDEAS and really enjoyed it.  I learned from it that if something increases exponentially at 1% per year, in 100 years it'll increase by a factor of "e" (an irrational number that comes from the series of inverse factorials, equal to about 2 and 5/7). That finding really interested me, because I was wondering why exactly that increase would lead to doubling in 72 years.  I now see that it relates to increasing in 28 years by a factor of e divided by 2.

After I finished that I started reading 50 PHYSICS IDEAS, but got bogged down in it.  Some of the stuff in it, like Newton's laws of motion and the temperature of absolute zero, were familiar enough.  But there are also things like Brownian motion and the Fraunhofer diffraction and Schrodinger's cat that are a bit over my head.

It reminds me of the time I started learning Grade 11 physics.  I was not quite 15 and not quite ready for it.  I ran into trouble learning about torque because I confused it with levers.  My father got a doctorate in physics and became a physics professor, but it wasn't for me.

One of these days I'm going to get around to finishing 50 PHYSICS IDEAS, then read others in the series. (They have books on subjects like art and philosophy too.)

MAD magazine

When I was young, we had some paperback reprints of MAD magazine, though Mother disapproved.  In recent years I've been rereading them and found a lot of it is pretty sharp satire, some of it in ways I couldn't appreciate at the time.

I did appreciate some of their kiddie humor, like a set of children's definitions that included "An aunt is to give you clothes for your birthday instead of toys," and "An uncle is to pinch your cheek, and you can't pinch back." And like "If famous authors drew comic strips..." where they show Edgar Allen Poe's version of DENNIS THE MENACE, in which Dennis burns down his house with his parents in it. ("No more spanking, Nevermore!")

One part I remembered has parents in the '50s lecturing their teenage children about how the younger generation's clothes, dances and language are ridiculous.  Then they show the parents when they were young in the '20s, wearing raccoon coats, dancing the Charleston and saying things like "Twenty-three skidoo, small change!"

And there's also "TV shows we'd like to see..." "How did you know our mystery guest was Alfred E. Neuman?" "I peeked!" And the Anacin commercial: "What do doctors take for headaches and pain relief?...  How should I know, I'm only an actor!" And how high-class magazines use the photo "Millionaire playboy shot by sweetie in lover's quarrel": HOUSE AND GARDEN says "Furniture is by Rancid, and draperies are by the Window.  Entire room is set off by Chartreuse-tinted indirect lighting.  Entire apartment is set off by dynamite."

And there's the Jack and Jill story as told in various magazines:  SEVENTEEN ("It was more than a teenage crush..."), OFFICIAL DETECTIVE STORIES ("Double death for 2 illicit lovers"), TRUE ("The last climb... Lucky for Jack he had a hangnail!"), CONFIDENTIAL ("Did they really go up for water?"), and MODERN ROMANCES ("The last thing I remember was Jack lunging at me...").

They made fun of Bobby Darrin a lot.  They did a feature "Inside Bobby Darrin's wallet," which included an order form for the book "How to be Popular" by Shlock Publications.  And they had a Dick & Jane-type guide to Greek mythology which showed Darrin as Narcissus!

The Keystone XL pipeline

Sunday they had a big rally in Washington DC against the Keystone XL pipeline.  I wish I could have been there.  The Alberta oil sands are an environmental disaster and are making a farce of our concerns about climate change.  For the first time in my life I'm ashamed to be Canadian.

Much blame should go to Alberta's Conservative government.  Premier Alison Redford recently had the nerve to say, "It's not good enough to do the easy thing and raise taxes." Well, if raising taxes is so easy why is it so seldom done?  Alberta should have raised its very low income tax and introduced a sales tax (like every other province has) twenty years ago, but Ralph Klein was an anti-tax ideologue, and so is Redford.  If the provincial government has trouble balancing the books, they prefer to slash spending and produce more and more oil.

I recall Alberta's last provincial election when the Conservatives faced a threat from the even more right-wing Wild Rose Party.  What saved them was numerous NDP and Liberal voters who voted for them to defeat the WRP.  I hope those voters are happy now! (If more voters had stayed loyal to those parties, there might have been a minority government and even some real change.)

Some people warn about the dire economic effects of reducing emissions.  I grant that if we reduce emissions more than we need to, there's a serious chance of hurting the economy.  But if we reduce emissions LESS than we have to, it may mean the end of modern civilization.  I know which direction I'd err toward.  For the sake of argument, let's accept that there's a possibility that the experts are wrong about climate change.  The significant possibility that they're right is still enough to justify action.

Master class

This evening was the start of Giuseppe's master class for TOR singers.  It's on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next three weeks.  He's done it for the last two years.  Fortunately, he has Adolfo to play the piano accompaniment.  Two years ago I sang "Le Veau d'Or" from Gounod's FAUST and Schumann's "Widmung"; last year I did "Scintille, Diamant" from TALES OF HOFFMANN and "Bella Sicome un Angelo" from Donizetti's DON PASQUALE.

This year I'm singing "Il Balen di Suo Soriso" from Verdi's IL TROVATORE and "Wohin?" from Schubert's DIE SCHOENE MULLERIN. (Like my earlier songs, these are all numbers I've studied in my singing lessons with Giuseppe.) Half a dozen people came to the first class, and it isn't all opera:  someone sang "I Dreamt I Slept in Marble Halls" from the operetta BOHEMIAN GIRL and someone else did "There Is Nothing Like a Dame" from Rodgers & Hammerstein's Broadway musical SOUTH PACIFIC.

Yesterday I made it to choir practice. (Giuseppe was anxious that I come this week:  I'm an important part of the baritone-bass.) But this week the men got to come late because the first part was just for the women rehearsing the witches' choruses in MACBETH.  Giuseppe turned out to be latest of all:  when Yvette was driving him to rehearsal, they were in an auto accident.  Nobody was hurt, but they had to go make statements.  So Adolfo rehearsed the women on his own.

Records

When I was little, we had a record player and a lot of children's records.  Our Golden Records and Spear Records singles were 78 RPM, from back in the time when you could still buy 78s.  The Goldens were in yellow vinyl, while the Spears were red and even white!  

Our Peter Pan Records singles were mostly 45s, with the extra-big holes that required a special setup on the player.  One of my favorites was a Peter Pan of George Cohan's showtune "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy."

We had several LPs in Golden Records' Child's Introduction series.  One was "A Child's Introduction to the Great Composers," with thirty cuts of famous pieces of music, stuff like Liszt's Liebestraum Nocturne, Verdi's Anvil Chorus, Rimsky-Korsakov's Dance of the Tumblers and Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, all arranged by the famous Mitch Miller.  We also had "A Child's Introduction to the Nutcracker Suite," narrated by Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo), and "A Child's Introduction to Gilbert and Sullivan."

And we also got a Disneyland Records LP of the soundtrack of the 1961 Disney movie BABES IN TOYLAND.  Particularly memorable was a dirge that went "Slowly, slowly, he sank into the sea..."

Comics

I liked comics when I was young.  In my house they frowned on the DC and Marvel superhero stuff, I recall, but I read a lot of Gold Key material.  Stuff like Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. (Carl Barks was a master!) I also liked Little Lulu, and read quite a bit of Archie and Harvey Comics.  And I read a lot of Classics Illustrated, though that can seem dorky.

My interest started when we were in Britain, and we read British comics like Beano, Dandy, Beezer and Topper. (We also collected some of those comics' annual hardcover publications, a particularly British institution.)  The British approach can be more literal than American equivalents:  when showing someone tugging something, they'll write "Tug, tug!" in the same way as writing "Bang!"

And I also followed comic strips for a long while.  Our local paper's weekend comics included LI'L ABNER, DICK TRACY and PEANUTS. (Re-reading LI'L ABNER in recent years, I noticed that the Lower Slobbovians speak in Yiddish accents!) There were also MARY WORTH and REX MORGAN MD, but I didn't follow them much.  And we often got the magazine THE STAR WEEKLY, which somehow arranged to publish their weekend comics a week earlier than the regular papers.  Their comics included TERRY AND THE PIRATES, PRINCE VALIANT, MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN and THE HEART OF JULIET JONES.

I also developed an interest in daily comics.  The first daily story strip I followed was probably ALLEY OOP.  And my first daily adventure strip was RIP KIRBY, the coolest man in the world when I was 10 or 11.

My earliest memories

When I was newly born my family lived in a house on Lansdowne Street in Sackville, New Brunswick. (Sackville has several streets named after Canadian Governors-General, also including Lorne and Dufferin.) We moved to our West Avenue house--that street's named after a guy called West, though it is in the western part of town--when I was about a year and a half.

Naturally, I remember very little about that first year and a half, but I think there are actually two things!  We had a tire swing attached to a tree, and I remember noticing the water that accumulated in it. (At least I think this was on Lansdowne Street.) Also, there were three French-Canadian boys living next to us called Patrice, Daniel and Rene.  The last one we called "Weenie," and I remember this name.

When I was three and a half, we moved to Brighton, England for a year while Father, a physics professor at Mount Allison University, was on sabbatical.  We sailed there and back on the Greek Line ship the ARKADIA.  I remember when we boarded the ship and entered our cabins for the first time.  I also remember that we had a comic book based on the Disney movie THE MONKEY'S UNCLE, which I'd seen not long before, possibly the first movie I went to. (I recall that when we left the cinema it had gone dark outside.) I also remember the swarthy Greek waiters serving tomato juice, which I've never liked.

I also have memories of Brighton, especially the smells of coal smoke, diesel bus fumes, and butcher and grocery shops, which have a different smell from their North American counterparts. (I recognized those old smells when I visited Britain years later.)

Some of the other movies I remember seeing as a pre-schooler include MARY POPPINS, THE GREAT RACE (which we saw on Donald's birthday) and THE THREE STOOGES MEET HERCULES.

The opera continues

We've now finished both dress rehearsals and premieres at the TOR.  Tonight we premiered THE BARBER OF SEVILLE. (Coincidentally, I was just reading the part in WORKING where Studs Terkel interviews a barber!) We got what looked like a hundred people, which is better than usual for this early in the season:  the TALES OF HOFFMANN premiere was more typical with something like fifty people.  On a really good day we can get as many as 300 people, still barely half the auditorium's capacity.

For some reason I don't feel I have as much energy as in previous years.  I would have helped out with moving the scenery, but I'm not completely sure I can make every performance and if I start doing that they'll need me to be there every time.

Yesterday I was talking with Giuseppe about the Met production of A MASKED BALL.  He also mentioned the scene where the king was supposed to be hiding but was in full view. Remember when I compared it to a FRENCH CONNECTION scene with Gene Hackman?  That night I dreamed about Hackman.  To be precise, I recalled reading Candice Bergen's fine memoir KNOCK WOOD back in the '80s, where she wrote about filming the 1975 western BITE THE BULLET with Hackman. (Its title coincided with the slogan of President Ford's anti-inflation initiative, which didn't help the movie any at the box office.) When Bergen griped that she'd been given a stupid role to play, Hackman said, "Look, when I agreed to make this movie I made a commitment to do all I could to make it a success!" She found it a useful lesson, and it was that incident that I dreamed about.

Accounts

Father and I have started doing the 2012 accounts for our family's used book business.  (There was a delay because our old account books were filled, and we had to get new ones.) We have the first five months completed.  Since we do it month by month, if we were better organized we wouldn't wait till the end of the year and do it all at once but do the early months earlier in the year.  But it's so easy to let it slide...

We sell our goods under the brand name Aquilon Books, through the website ABEBooks.  It's a hobby that nets a few thousand dollars every year.  We did unusually big business in February, but the next two months were in the red.

We have the same routine for doing each month.  We start with expenses, and I'll write $25 for our Sympatico internet bill.  Then Father takes up our biggest expense and reads off our Canada Post receipts one at a time, and I'll write them down and when he's finished I'll total them up and write down the sum.  We often have expenses for envelopes and printer paper and ink and such from Staples.  And  there are also expenses for the new books we've bought with an eye to future sales:  we buy a lot from Goodwill and an Iranian with a bazaar-like store called Buy and Sell just north of St. Clair. (TORONTO LIFE magazine mentioned him once!) But recently we've been buying fewer of those.

Then we turn to income.  Most of that is from ABEBooks, and Father will tell me the weekly statements from that source.  But we also sell a few books directly to people in the Toronto area, and the proceeds from each of those sales also get written down.

After determining the overall balance, Father will give the money to me and Moira, partly because he doesn't need it, and partly because our own income is low enough that we won't get taxed for it.

The TITANIC

Moira subscribes to THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS.  I was just reading a recent issue with an article on the TITANIC.  That's a subject that's fascinated me for a long time.  I've sometimes dreamed of being on the TITANIC. (I often dream about being on ships or trains.) According to this article, when the ship's wireless operator received a message from another ship saying "There are icebergs in these waters.  We've stopped for the night," he responded "Shut up, I'm busy contacting Newfoundland." (With a period a bad weather just ended, he had a big backlog of personal messages to send.)

Yes, I have seen James Cameron's shameless movie TITANIC. (I saw it a second time in its 3-D re-release last year, but left when the ship started sinking.) Technically, it's expertly made, but Cameron can't resist cheap tricks and obvious cliches. Remember in ALIENS when he ended a scene by having Sigourney Weaver suddenly give birth to an alien and then revealing this was just a dream?  It was particularly contemptible to show that Rose was a "free spirit" by having her smoking--Virginia Slims?--despite the disapproval of her mother and fiance.  Cameron has admitted he had Jack and Rose smoking because teenage moviegoers are stupid enough to think that smoking is "cool." I wonder how many teenagers got hooked on cigarettes because of that movie?

I actually prefer the 1958 British movie A NIGHT TO REMEMBER. (I liked Walter Lord's book too, and also read his sequel THE NIGHT LIVES ON.)

Hell Week

The TOR has started "Hell Week." Over six days, we'll be putting on two dress rehearsals and four performances.  For me, the challenging part isn't so much performing onstage as waiting in the wings:  time seems to slow down then, like in those movies with a time bomb about to go off, where the counter seems to slow down as it gets close to zero.

This evening we dress-rehearsed TALES OF HOFFMANN.  The chorus wore makeup for the first time.  I can put it on pretty quick.  It was pretty chaotic when I first started nine years ago, but now they've posted the system on the wall.  First you put on foundation over your face and visible forehead. (You apply it with a sponge which you've wetted, squeezing out the excess water.) Then you apply shading under your chin, below your cheekbones and around your eyes.  Then you lighten your upper cheeks, nose and chin.  Then you use an eyebrow pencil to darken your eyes.  Then you add some rouge and lipstick. (For men it's a bit simpler than for women.)

The dress rehearsal went fairly smoothly, except at the start of Giulietta's story:  they had just 15 minutes to prepare the stage, and there was nobody to bring in the tree and statue decorations.  Some soloists had been helping with that, but now they're occupied with costume changes, so in future they'll need chorus people like me to volunteer our assistance.

A MASKED BALL

This evening I played hooky from choir practice to see the HD telecast of the Met production of Verdi's A MASKED BALL at the Sheppard Grande. (I'd normally see it on a Saturday, but both Saturday broadcasts were on the same day as my ROLT Meetup.) I was interested in seeing it because we recently put it on in concert at Coro Verdi.  With those Verdi operas, the more you learn the music the better it sounds.

A MASKED BALL is the one where King Gustavo (censorship made Verdi change him to a colonial governor, but this production had his original version) falls in love with Amelia, wife of his best friend Renato, who responds by joining a conspiracy to murder him at the ball of the title.  Some great music, including Renato's famous aria "Eri Tu" (a title you find in NEW YORK TIMES crossword puzzles).

It was an odd production.  The minimalist sets, twentieth-century costumes and stylized staging seemed better suited to a modern opera by John Adams or Philip Glass.  Gustavo's mortally wounded in his final aria, yet he manages to stand up in the middle of it.  During the scene where Amelia consults the witch privately and everyone else leaves but a disguised Gustavo lurks, the director didn't do enough to make it clear the king was in hiding:  Amelia and the witch could seemingly see him!

(That reminded me of a scene in William Friedkin's THE FRENCH CONNECTION where Gene Hackman was tailing a drug kingpin, who dined in a fancy restaurant while Hackman was stuck out on an adjacent sidewalk eating a slice of pizza.  As one review pointed out, the kingpin simply has to look out the window to notice there's a guy tailing him!  In Friedkin's eyes, the sheerly obvious contrast of such a scene trumped credibility.)

Oh well, I still think it's a matter of time until the Met starts staging more traditional productions to please the less sophisticated audiences coming to the HD telecasts.

Straight Edge Meetup

Today I went to a Straight Edge Meetup event.  We met at the Eglinton West station and walked south on Spadina Road from St. Clair to Bloor, passing by Casa Loma.  I was afraid that the snow would cause no-shows like with yesterday's event, but seven people showed up, as many as were expected.

I met a guy from Brazil.  A Chinese woman was telling him all about how non-citizens had to be careful about crossing the Canada-US border because they might not allow you to return.

For a while I've been playing Candy Crush Saga and Pet Rescue Saga at an "intermediate" level, starting at level 12 and 14 every time, the lowest levels where the game started challenging. (The highest level I'd get to before using up all my lives was 21 or 22.) But I've decided to do something different, and started the game at the highest level I'd already reached.  Naturally, I've ended up reaching new levels, and now I'm at 28 and 26.

What with the opera rehearsals, I now have the Hoffmann-Giulietta duet going through my head.  (In previous years it's been stuff like the love duet in LUCIA DI LAMERMOOR.) I also have some of the MACBETH opera from the Coro Verdi rehearsals sticking around.  I must say that the more I learn that opera's music, the more I like it.

I'm good at this

This afternoon was going to be the ROLT February event.  We were going to read science fiction.  But what with the weather only two people showed up:  me and a new member called Kayla. (Jane, who's usually reliable, sent me an apologetic email, which is more than any of the other no-shows did.)

I read for Kayla an E.B. White story called "The Hour of Letdown," about a guy taking a computer into a bar.  It came from a collection THE WORLD'S BEST SHORT SHORT STORIES, which are all three to six pages long, convenient for reading here.  I only had one thing to read anyway.

I thought the event would give me enough for a whole post, but I'll have to think of something more to write about.  The last few days I've got into a pattern where I look at a DVD early in the evening, then I get sleepy enough to go to bed at eight or nine.  Then I sleep for a few hours and wake up toward midnight.  Then I go on the computer for a few hours before going back to bed.  I read things like the online version of the British newspaper THE GUARDIAN and the King Features Syndicate comics at dailyink.com .  The new day's comics become available just after one in the morning.

I must say, I think I'm getting good at blogging. (If I'm wrong, please tell me.) I've managed to think of enough subjects to keep going every day, though I imagine I have repeated myself on occasion.  And I've shown a wide range of interests too.

WORKING

I've started reading Studs Terkel's 1974 book WORKING.  It's very enjoyable.  Terkel went out and interviewed a wide range of working people, catching their perspectives on work and other things.  So far I've encountered flight attendants, newsboys, stonemasons, models, steel workers, actors, switchboard operators, farmers, hookers, miners, garbage collectors, secretaries and press agents.  And that's just in the book's first hundred-odd pages! (It's about 600 pages long.)

The interviews with two people in the advertising business are particularly remarkable.  They definitely bring MAD MEN to mind, and I wonder if the book influenced the show's writers.

Some of these people have incredible stories.  The flight attendant tells how when they were in stewardess school they were taught things like to look into a man's eyes when he lights your cigarette. (That part should interest Kathrine, who's a flight attendent herself.)

Running short again.  I've quit the game Coasterville.  I paid real money for the starter kit because it was a good deal, but when that was exhausted I wasn't motivated enough to buy more.  Dynasty and Megapolis I'm still playing:  they motivate me enough to keep spending a little.

TERMS OF ENDEARMENT

"I think... we'll have to get drunk"--Jack Nicholson in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT

This evening I saw James Brooks' Oscar-winning TERMS OF ENDEARMENT on  the Young & Dundas Event Screen. (I'd last seen it almost thirty years ago.) I saw it with the Movie Meetup group, but I was waiting for them in the downstairs lobby while they were waiting on an upstairs floor, so I didn't make contact with them until I got into the theatre.

The movie struck me as rather lightweight and middlebrow.  The best thing in it, of course, was Jack Nicholson as a veteran astronaut looking "a little older and a little heavier" (as Andy Warhol described Nicholson in his famous diary) but with his randy, boyish charm undiminished.

I'm running short again.  I must say how dumfounded I am by a Will Short article in THE HUFFINGTON POST insisting that Ronald Reagan would have opposed Obama's drone assassinations policy. (Does the expression "wishful thinking" mean anything to you?) I responded, "Reagan would have supported drones if his people told him to support it," a comment which the moderators blocked.  But they didn't block a poster ignorant enough to say, "Reagan was not a big supporter of the overseas empire and stupid wars." I responded, "Many Central Americans would disagree." (Remember Iran-Contra?)

The late Ed Koch

Last week THE HUFFINGTON POST responded to New York mayor Ed Koch's death with some laudatory columns and forums kept clear of comments criticizing him.  SALON, on the other hand, had some thoughtful and not uncritical pieces on him.  I liked Joan Walsh's discussion of the city's political and cultural shift between the John Lindsay era and the Koch era.

Speaking for myself, I always found Koch's in-your-face "How'm I doin'?" persona annoying.  He seemed to pitch all his statements to inattentive people.  I remember from when he was running against Mario Cuomo for state governor seeing an ad from his campaign attacking Cuomo, which made a point of mispronouncing his name "Mar-eye-o." Such aggressiveness must have annoyed a lot of voters statewide, because Koch blew a big early lead and Cuomo pulled an upset victory. (When Koch was elected mayor Cuomo was a pretty strong second, and I still think he would have made a far better mayor.)

"Gentrification" of Manhattan's better neighborhoods was perhaps the key New York event when Koch was mayor, and financially it saved the city, yet it was a mixed blessing. (It didn't help the growing problem of homelessness.) This trend was reflected in the rising profile of Donald Trump, with whom Koch had a famous falling out.  Koch called Trump "jerky," just about the first time I heard the word used that way.  Koch and Trump were bound to be fierce enemies because they had such similar extroverted personalities:  even New York wasn't big enough for both egos.  I remember seeing both of them on Phil Donahue's talk show in the 1980s and noticing that they were motormouths. (DONAHUE is one of the only things I miss from that decade.)

BTW, the other week in THE HUFFINGTON POST there was a report on Trump's latest pronouncement and someone wrote a comment: "That reminds me that I want to visit the orangutans at the zoo." I added: "And I want to buy a shag carpet." =)

The TOR costumes arrived!

Today Malabar shipped the costumes for the TOR shows to the Bickford Centre.  I came over to help unpack them as I do every year, and that's always fun.  I sometimes get a glimpse inside the women's dressing room. (I've never seen the witches' cauldron, but they do have more full-length mirrors than us men.) I usually get the chance to try on my own costume, though this year the time was lacking.

I got to wear my costume in the evening, when we did a dress rehearsal of TALES OF HOFFMANN.  This year I get to wear the same costume in both operas. (In THE BARBER OF SEVILLE, the male chorus also have police uniforms.) The shirt feels so comfortable I wish I owned one of that material!  This year we don't have to wear knee socks, which are a bit of a headache for keeping pinned.

At the rehearsal we also got masks to wear for the Barcarolle scene. (While Pablo was rehearsing Hoffmann's aria in that scene, Giuseppe told him, "This is a whorehouse, give us more dick!") I got a pink cat-style mask to wear and had a frustrating time tying the strings behind my head before I figured out that it's better to tie them before putting it on.

Today was also my birthday. (I was born on February 5, 1962, the same day as the birth of actress Jennifer Jason Leigh and a rare combination of solar eclipse and planetary conjunction that had some astrologers predicting the end of the world.) The whole TOR chorus sang "Happy Birthday to You" for me.  We ate Chinese food and my fortune cookie said, "You will be showered with good luck." I'll believe it when I see it.

Recent DVDs

The other day I saw the first episode of the DVD of the series LEGACY, where Michael Wood visits the sites of ancient civilizations and draws lessons for the present world.  I've always enjoyed Wood's documentaries, on subjects ranging from Dark-Age England to the Trojan War to India to western art. (Last year I saw a show on Netflix where he retraced Alexander the Great's routes of conquest.) This is another vivid one.

For a while I've been watching DVDs of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATRE 3000, where they show cheesy movies and insert snarky comments.  I recently saw their masterful treatment of JACK FROST, an awkwardly-dubbed English version of a colorful but surreal Russian fairy tale production, from back in the 1960s.

I've also seen another DVD of short avant-garde films from the pre-1950 era, a collection of 1979 pop music clips from THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL, some more episodes of MISSION:  IMPOSSIBLE and GUNSMOKE, one of the musical specials Barbra Streisand made for TV in the mid-'60s, and a couple of documentaries from PBS' THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE about the 19th-century laying of the first telegraph cables across the Atlantic Ocean, and the World War II construction of the Alaska Highway through the Yukon. (Canadians only got mentioned briefly.)

We've received the last of our 16 monthly discs from zip.ca and the next ones won't arrive for a couple of weeks.  But I still have three left to see:  an episode of the 1950s country-music variety show TOWN HALL PARTY, an expressionist German silent movie of OTHELLO starring the great Emil Jannings, and SHORT INFINITY, a National Film Board documentary about a community on of the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Questions of netiquette

Around fifteen years ago, I used to post in the forums at mrcranky.com a lot.  There was no moderation and I met several interesting people.  There was one who was rather thin-skinned, and eventually he stopped writing posts there, but continued to "lurk," reading other people's posts.  Some people say it's a violation of "netiquette" to keep lurking in a thread that you aren't contributing to.  But speaking for myself, it's no skin off my face if someone reads my posts without posting himself.

On one occasion, however, this ex-poster sent me an email taking issue with something I had posted, leading to a quarrel.  This seems objectionable to me:  someone posting in a thread can only write for the other people posting there.  If you can't reply by posting there, let it ride. (It wasn't like I'd been writing about him.)

A year later, it happened again.  I sent this person an email in an attempt to be friendly with him, and in his reply he attacked me over something I'd written there.  This resulted in another quarrel, and we haven't communicated since.  What particularly bothered me was that a few months before, after an earlier incident, he'd returned to the site and made a rather theatrical promise to stop lurking. (I should have guessed he didn't mean it.) I hate losing friends!

Some years back, I was organizing the Karaoke Meetup in Toronto. (That ended after an event where I thought five people were coming, but I was the only one who showed up.  Those cold January nights will do that!) One person attended an event I hosted, and I seem to have done something rude then.

This person was also a member of a Movie Meetup that I belonged to, and a short while later she posted a message saying that she was going to see a certain movie at the Cinematheque and inviting the other members to join her.  I was going to see this same movie so I sent her a message saying I'd like to see it with her.  She responded that the invitation didn't apply to me because of my "distasteful" behavior at this earlier event.  I replied by asking what I'd done, adding: "I wish I'd been told earlier." Crickets. (That's net slang for "No answer.") I skipped the movie.

So who needs the manners lesson here?  Does she think that if she doesn't tell me what I did, I'll search through the recesses of my memory and manage to figure it out myself?  Alas, all I can do is assume that she's out of her tree and that my behavior was perfectly polite.

LES MISERABLES

This evening I saw Tom Hooper's movie of the musical LES MISERABLES at the Varsity.  I haven't read Victor Hugo's book, but Moira tells me it's pretty shameless.  I saw a pretty good 1936 movie of it with Frederic March as Valjean and a witty Charles Laughton as Javert (in contrast to Anthony Perkins in the 1978 TV movie, who played Javert with unrelieved grimness).

As for this movie, meh.  The music--I've never seen the stage musical--strikes me as kitschy, with a general feel of sameness, though I do have a soft spot for "Bring Him Home." (It's Giuseppe's favorite LES MIZ song too.) The live singing feels rather slight.  Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter are pretty funny as the crooked innkeepers.

Trivia note:  The world's two shortest telegrams resulted after Hugo sent the LES MIZ manuscript to his publisher.  He sent a cable consisting of "?" and got the response "!" On the other hand, the novel has what may be literature's longest published sentence (thank goodness for cut & paste):

"The son of a father to whom history will accord certain attenuating circumstances, but also as worthy of esteem as that father had been of blame; possessing all private virtues and many public virtues; careful of his health, of his fortune, of his person, of his affairs, knowing the value of a minute and not always the value of a year; sober, serene, peaceable, patient; a good man and a good prince; sleeping with his wife, and having in his palace lackeys charged with the duty of showing the conjugal bed to the bourgeois, an ostentation of the regular sleeping-apartment which had become useful after the former illegitimate displays of the elder branch; knowing all the languages of Europe, and, what is more rare, all the languages of all interests, and speaking them; an admirablerepresentative of the “middle class,” but outstripping it, and in every way greater than it; possessing excellent sense, while appreciating the blood from which he had sprung, counting most of all on his intrinsic worth, and, on the question of his race, very particular, declaring himself Orleans and not Bourbon; thoroughly the first Prince of the Blood Royal while he was still only a Serene Highness, but a frank bourgeois from the day he became king; diffuse in public, concise in private; reputed, but not proved to be a miser; at bottom, one of those economists who are readily prodigal at their own fancy or duty; lettered, but not very sensitive to letters; a gentleman, but not a chevalier; simple, calm, and strong; adored by his family and his household; a fascinating talker, an undeceived statesman, inwardly cold, dominated by immediate interest, always governing at the shortest range, incapable of rancor and of gratitude, making use without mercy of superiority on mediocrity, clever in getting parliamentary majorities to put in the wrong those mysterious unanimities which mutter dully under thrones; unreserved, sometimes imprudent in his lack of reserve, but with marvellous address in that imprudence; fertile in expedients, in countenances, in masks; making France fear Europe and Europe France! incontestably fond of his country, but preferring his family; assuming more domination than authority and more authority than dignity, a disposition which has this unfortunate property, that as it turns everything to success, it admits of ruse and does not absolutely repudiate baseness, but which has this valuable side, that it preserves politics from violent shocks, the state from fractures, and society from catastrophes; minute, correct, vigilant, attentive, sagacious, indefatigable; contradicting himself at times and giving himself the lie; bold against Austria at Ancona, obstinate against England in Spain, bombarding Antwerp, and paying off Pritchard; singing the Marseillaisewith conviction, inaccessible to despondency, to lassitude, to the taste for the beautiful and the ideal, to daring generosity, to Utopia, to chimeras, to wrath, to vanity, to fear; possessing all the forms of personal intrepidity; a general at Valmy; a soldier at Jemappes; attacked eight times by regicides and always smiling; brave as a grenadier, courageous as a thinker; uneasy only in the face of the chances of a European shaking up, and unfitted for great political adventures; always ready to risk his life, never his work; disguising his will in influence, in order that he might be obeyed as an intelligence rather than as a king; endowed with observation and not with divination; not very attentive to minds, but knowing men, that is to say requiring to see in order to judge; prompt and penetrating good sense, practical wisdom, easy speech, prodigious memory; drawing incessantly on this memory, his only point of resemblance with Caesar, Alexander, and Napoleon; knowing deeds, facts, details, dates, proper names, ignorant of tendencies, passions, the diverse geniuses of the crowd, the interior aspirations, the hidden and obscure uprisings of souls, in a word, all that can be designated as the invisible currents of consciences; accepted by the surface, but little in accord with France lower down; extricating himself by dint of tact; governing too much and not enough; his own first minister; excellent at creating out of the pettiness of realities an obstacle to the immensity of ideas; mingling a genuine creative faculty of civilization, of order and organization, an indescribable spirit of proceedings and chicanery, the founder and lawyer of a dynasty; having something of Charlemagne and something of an attorney; in short, a lofty and original figure, a prince who understood how to create authority in spite of the uneasiness of France, and power in spite of the jealousy of Europe, — Louis Philippe will be classed among the eminent men of his century, and would be ranked among the most illustrious governors of history had he loved glory but a little, and if he had had the sentiment of what is great to the same degree as the feeling for what is useful."

How do you define a religion?

I was thinking about the definition of a religion, and decided it has the following features:

1.  Oral or written traditions.

2.  Group activities and rituals.

3.  A professional priesthood.

4.  A behavior code.

5.  A theory of the creation and of the afterlife.

6.  A sense of mysticism.

And I define it so that something is a religion if it has at least five of the six features.  Something like Confucianism is close, but it has only four features.

That's one of those abstract things I sometimes think about.  I've been thinking recently about three-dimensional geometry, and Platonic and Archimedean solids. (They're the three-dimensional figures formed with regular polygons as their faces.  The most famous example is the cube.)

My diary decade

Before I started this blog, I wrote a diary.  I started it at the beginning of 2003, when I was not quite 41.  At first I was fanciful enough to address my writing to a non-existent 13-year-old girl called Dinah.  After I saw GANGS OF NEW YORK, I wrote: "Dinah, I know you want to see anything with Leo di Caprio in it, but I can understand your mother not wanting you to see it." But such fancy can only go so far, and I soon reverted to a more conventional approach.

Every day I'd write down what I'd had for dinner, simply because it was a guarantee that I'd have SOMETHING to write about every day. (Now I understand why Samuel Pepys talked about food so much in his diary.) And I'd often write about my dreams.  My writing will show that I often dream about my old home in Sackville, New Brunswick.

In the early years I wrote quite a bit, as much as six pages a week.  But in more recent years I slowed down and wrote just a couple of pages weekly.  I originally started this blog back in 2007 and wrote it off and one for about a year, then let it lapse because I couldn't think of things to write about.  It was when I was visiting London last September that I decided to resume the blog, since I felt I had a lot to write about now.  But lately I've been worrying about repeating myself:  I've written so much that it's hard to remember whether or not I've already written on a specific subject.

Joyce Murray

This evening I went to a Joyce Murray campaign event at Scallywag's.  She's the Vancouver MP running in the federal Liberal leadership race, who supports creating an electoral alliance with the NDP and the Greens.

Joyce Murray appeared and talked a lot about the importance of a non-Conservative alliance.  Most of the people there were grits, but there were also some New Democrats like me and at least one Green. (Some of those attending emphasized fighting climate change, which is also a big concern for me.) Thomas Mulcair says working with the other opposition parties isn't a priority with him, but he's party leader, not king!  I just hope this grassroots movement gets critical mass in the next two years, before the next federal election.

Afterward I went to Book City and found some more discounted books. (Most of them had a list price of $25 to $30, but were being sold for less than $10.) I bought Gore Vidal's BURR (sure, he was glib, but I've heard very good things about his historical novels); Mark Kurlansky's THE LAST FISH TALE, about the fishing town at Gloucester, Massachusetts; LATIN LOVE LESSONS, about Rome's amorous poetry; MUTINY ON THE _GLOBE_, a first-person account about a deadly 1824 mutiny on a Pacific whaler (led by the author's brother); Daniel Boorstin's THE SEEKERS, a history of world philosophy (I've read his the DISCOVERERS and THE CREATORS); Dava Sobel's THE PLANETS; a history of Australia; an illustrated book about modern art, and another of fairy tales.  I'd like to read some of them, and even if I don't we can sell them online.

Reagan the "moderate"

Something that bugs me these days is American liberals using the "Reagan the moderate" talking point.  They think they're being clever when they say that today's Republicans are so extreme that they'd reject Ronald Reagan.  Actually, they're being weak.  I won't deny that the Republican party has been getting disturbingly extreme, yet this extremism is Ronald Reagan's legacy more than any other man's.

Don't get me started on Reagan.  The Iran-Contra scandals showed what crimes a US president can get away with when Congress and the Washington press don't do their job.  Congress made a crucial mistake in 1987 when they spared Reagan impeachment, guaranteeing that his crimes would be repeated.  But it's too convenient to put all the blame on a safe target like Congress.

Back in the spring of 1987 the US news media responded to Iran-Contra by launching a big attack on the Democratic candidates in the 1988 presidential race, labelling them "the Seven Dwarfs" a year before the primaries! (Actually, it was one of the more interesting Democratic races, because one of the dwarfs was Jesse Jackson, but I digress.) The Republican candidates didn't experience the same pile-on, despite not being so much better than their Democratic rivals.  In some cases this one-sidedness resulted from straightforward pro-Republican bias, but more often it reflected a contemptible phenomenon that I call safetargetism.  Your typical Washington reporter clearly calculated that attacking Democrats would put his own position at less risk than attacking Republicans like Reagan.

The continuing conservative praise of Reagan is ignorant, but it's what I expect.  What really bothers me is the cowardly deference that too many liberals still pay to this monster.  It used to be that Washington would have a big White House scandal every fifty years:  the Grant administration in the 1870s, Harding in the 1920s, Nixon in the 1970s.  Now it's happening every ten years:  Nixon and Watergate in the 1970s, Reagan and Iran-Contra in the 1980s, Clinton and Whitewater-Monicagate in the 1990s, Bush Jr.'s war crimes in the 2000s.  This is what happens when presidents are allowed to escape legal accountability for their actions, as in Nixon being pardoned by his successor, Reagan being "pardoned" by Congress, and Obama sparing his predecessor legal action in the name of "looking forward, not back." Such cowardice means that future crimes will be worse.

DICKENS IN AMERICA

I've started watching a fascinating 2005 BBC series called DICKENS IN AMERICA. (Moira borrowed it from the library so we'll have to see all twelve half-hour episodes in a week.  Myself, I've already seen four!) It's about British actress Miriam Margolyes, who's played Dickensian characters in stuff like the 1988 adaptation of LITTLE DORRIT, retracing the route Dickens took in his famous 1842 tour of the United States.

That tour, of course, was the subject of Dickens' book AMERICAN NOTES. (His criticisms of some things in the US caused resentment among Americans, but he reserved his real vitriol for his satirical novel MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT.) Not quite thirty, his early books had already made Boz famous as far away as the US:  when the new steamships arrived in America carrying the magazine serializing THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP, people onshore called out "Is Little Nell dead yet?" MM compares him to the Beatles arriving in the US in 1964.  His attitude toward the US is remarkably ambivalent:  he admired the idea of a republic free of Britain's class consciousness and open to new ways, but he didn't always admire the actual results.  British people today still feel some of that ambivalence.

In this series, MM goes through the same places as Dickens one at a time.  Dickens crossed the Atlantic on the Cunard steamer BRITANNIA, while MM takes the humongous QUEEN MARY 2 in the first episode. (The latter ship's captain pointed out that the earlier ship could have fit inside his craft's biggest dining hall.) In the next episodes she travels through Boston, New England and New York City.  Later on, she's going to follow him through Canada!

Some American should make a PBS documentary series following Mark Twain's route on the 1860s tour of the Old World that led to his book THE INNOCENTS ABROAD.

DAUGHTER OF THE REGIMENT

Today I saw the DVD of the Donizetti opera DAUGHTER OF THE REGIMENT.  That's the one where Marie, a foundling adopted by a whole French army regiment, gets her live saved by a foreign peasant called Tonio and they fall in love, but she turns out to be the long-lost niece of a Marquise (actually her daughter, it later turns out), who takes her off to her castle to turn her into a lady of quality...

This version, translated into English, is a 1974 production, staged outdoors in a Virginia state park part of a summer festival and videotaped by the PBS station in Washington, DC.  The costumes were from Malabar in Toronto, which also provides the TOR costumes! (The closing credits misspelled it as "Malabor," and omitted the "c" from the publisher Schirmer's name.)

Most importantly, Marie was played by Beverley Sills in her first televised opera performance. (Sills describes Marie as "Lucille Ball with high notes.") When she came out the audience broke into wild applause like when Henry Winkler's Fonzie made his entrance on HAPPY DAYS.

Also, I saw a DVD of some early episodes of THAT GIRL, the sitcom with Marlo Thomas as an aspiring actress in New York City. (At the start of the episode some character, asked whom he'd chosen, would point at MT and say "That girl!" then the show's title would appear below her gaping face.) It's pretty dated, the kind of show where she gets scared by a mouse and when she first arrives in NYC her agent finds her a part right away.  It's only a tiny role on a kiddie show where she plays a mop that gets pushed around a floor, but still!

FREAKS AND GEEKS

"Your butt was calling to me"--Seth Rogen, FREAKS AND GEEKS

My latest Netflix TV series is the one-season wonder FREAKS AND GEEKS which I've seen before on DVD.  It's a classic high school show about a geeky freshman brother trying to fit in, and his older sister who's determined not to, set around 1980. (The show appeared in the 1999-2000 season.) James Franco and Seth Rogen got their start as two of the sister's only friends.

I like Joe Flaherty as their Father, who says things like "When I was in high school I had a friend who smoked.  Do you know what he's doing now?  He's dead!" (It's a shame that Flaherty didn't have as big a career as most of the other SCTV performers:  in my book he was the funniest of all.) But my favorite character is the anti-social Kim (Busy Phillips). I recall that "Kim Kelly Is My Friend" and the Halloween episode were masterpieces.

Meanwhile, I got started on a new online game called DYNASTY. It's about an heir restoring his father's ruined business empire in the 1930s.  But so far I'm just a farmer buying up properties in a nearby suburb.

I also looked at a DVD of Bollywood music videos from India.  Some of them were pretty strange!

Statues of TV characters

I travelled to New York City by bus once. (It wasn't very comfortable, but on the way in through New Jersey I spotted some of the locations where they filmed THE SOPRANOS.) Outside the city's big bus depot they had a statue of Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden with the inscription "Bus driver.  Raccoon lodge treasurer.  Dreamer." Quite appealing.

They've erected several statues of TV characters around the US. (I think some company that airs classic shows has been sponsoring them.) There's Mary Richards waving her cap in Minneapolis, Fonzie in Milwaukee, Bob Newhart in Chicago, and Samantha in BEWITCHED in Salem, Massachusetts.  The last one, making a connection between a real-life tragedy and a TV comedy, strikes me as tasteless.  Even Canada has a statue of Al Waxman in KING OF KENSINGTON in Toronto's Kensington Park.

I've been thinking about all the other TV characters who could use statues.  The ones best suited are those identified with a particular city or neighborhood.  I can see J.J. in GOOD TIMES in Chicago's housing projects area, Freddy Prinze in CHICO AND THE MAN in a Hispanic section of Los Angeles, Archie Bunker (in his chair, with a cigar and can of beer) in New York's Bedford-Stuyvesant, Kotter and the Sweathogs in Bensonhurst, Crockett and Tubbs of MIAMI VICE in Miami, Sam Malone of CHEERS in Boston, Frasier in Seattle, WKRP's Dr. Johnny Fever in Cincinnati, even Dabney Coleman in BUFFALO BILL (with his distinctive hand wave) in Buffalo.  Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones in LONESOME DOVE could be erected anywhere on the Great Plains, perhaps at the National Cowboy Museum.

But why stop at TV?  I can see statues of movie characters too.  There could be Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade of THE MALTESE FALCON in San Francisco, Judy Garland (with the posture of a trolley car passenger) in St. Louis, Marlon Brando in ON THE WATERFRONT on the Hoboken shore (I see him twenty feet tall, holding a longshoreman's hook), Al Pacino as Serpico in New York (perhaps in the neighborhood where Serpico was shot in the face?), Blanche Dubois in New Orleans, Gregory Peck in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD somewhere in Alabama...

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

Today I saw the DVD of Michael Hoffman's 1999 film of Shakespeare's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, with a cast including Rupert Everett as Oberon the fairy king.  Everett is an actor who interests me:  I've been seeing a lot of his films on DVD, even the trashy 1983 miniseries PRINCESS DAISY where he was the heroine's evil stepbrother.

This version has an interesting cast, including Michelle Pfeiffer and Kevin Kline as Bottom. (James Cagney's Bottom was the best thing in Max Reinhardt's rather slow 1935 version, which I saw last year.) Stanley Tucci's Puck is counter-intuitive but witty.  Personally, I find Calista Flockhart goofy.

This version has a handsome, original look--it's set in Italy toward 1900, with the lovers riding bicycles--and some nice opera music.  No doubt they were inspired by Kenneth Branagh's MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.  But at times it tried too hard to make Shakespeare "accessible," with a mud-wrestling scene and some not very necessary nudity. (Back in the 1990s it was the fashion to insert nudity in Shakespeare movies:  see also OTHELLO and RICHARD III.)

Of course, maybe I was ill-disposed to it because I was feeling sick. (Hope I feel better tomorrow.)

Back at the TOR

The TOR resumed rehearsals a couple of weeks ago.  The first two weeks were only Tuesday, but with the performances approaching we're now rehearsing on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. (Next week will be Thursday instead of Wednesday.)

We're now not just learning the singing but going on the stage and getting our movements straight.  For the tavern scenes at the beginning and end of TALES OF HOFFMAN, we get long pipes and metal mugs for props.  In THE BARBER OF SEVILLE the chorus only sings a few times, so Beatrice has us onstage without singing in a couple more scenes.  For one, the men are pretending to be musicians accompanying the Count's serenade.  I pretend to play a violin, and the half-kneeling is a bit of a challenge for me. (I half-kneeled last year during the Vilja song in THE MERRY WIDOW and the year before during the "Bruderlein und Schwesterlein" number in DIE FLEDERMAUS.) I may need a single kneepad.

When we were rehearsing the HOFFMANN scene with Olympia the dancing doll, she was wearing a fancy wig but Giuseppe decided that she looked like Bette Davis in the Grand Guignol film WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?  Which reminded me of the NEW YORK TIMES capsule description of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? which said "Plenty."

Back when I occasionally read parts of the TIMES other than the crosswords, I liked some of their movie capsules. (I think some were written by Howard Thompson.) On THE DIRTY DOZEN: "Entertaining as a blow-torch." TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT: "Swell first chapter, the rest not bad." GUNGA DIN: "Plenty of both." STAR WARS: "All aboard." The three-story movie YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW: "The first and third parts are wonderful, it's number two that's the clunker." FLUFFY: "Dweadful." THE GODFATHER: "Minestrone and dynamite." MY FAIR LADY: "Not to be rude, but what was all the shouting about?" MOMMIE DEAREST: "You won't be bored."

Coasterland

I've started another of those cute kid-sized Zynga games whose apps you can get on Facebook.  This one's called Coasterville.  It's a bit like Cityville, but it involves building an amusement park.  You earn money, ship goods and collect thrills to build attractions and outfit food-selling carts.  I'm seeing how far I can get without spending real money to get special bucks.  And if I do spend real money, we'll see how long that lasts and whether I end up acquiring more. (When you buy those bucks the first time, they give you a special deal, but it costs more when you buy more.)

I've got up to level 20 in the game Pet Rescue Saga.  As I play that game, I keep thinking of the movie NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE, maybe because the pets are like animals stuck in a house. (I also keep thinking of the book LITTLE WOMEN, which I've never read.) I have a feeling that John Landis sold his soul to the Devil when he made ANIMAL HOUSE:  some directors just give me that vibe.  Another example would be Roman Polanski.

Lately, I've been getting the feeling that some of the things I'm now writing in this blog are things I've written earlier. (There are now too many entries for me to go back through to prove or disprove it.) I'm starting to wonder if I only have a finite number of things to say.  Maybe there's a way to put tags on entries to categorize them so I can check more easily, but I'm still too lazy to figure it out.

New York City

I've visited New York City a few times, and I'd like to do so again sometime, notwithstanding ROSEMARY'S BABY. (Moira says her only reason for visiting would be to have a big New York breakfast, and there are places where she can get that in Toronto.) But I always feel like I've only scratched the surface:  I'd like to find the non-touristy places that aren't so well known.

Of course, there are well-known sights that I'll keep coming to, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  My favorite part is the section with the American art:  some of it I've recognized from Ken Burns' Civil War documentary.  I enjoy the footpath on the Brooklyn Bridge, and I like Central Park too. But there must be a lot of interesting stuff in the outer boroughs like Brooklyn. (I'm curious about the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood because I think ALL IN THE FAMILY was set around there.) I guess I should read something like the Lonely Planet guide.

I suppose you'd have to live there a while to really know the place, like when I was lucky enough to live in London in 1995. (But would it be worth the hassle of living in New York City?  Fran Leibowitz points out that when New York newspapers ask people on the street "What would you do if you won the lottery?" they answer "Leave New York!")

And I'd like to visit Los Angeles someday, just to see Disneyland (especially Main Street USA).

BTW, the other night I dreamed of meeting the actress Laura Dern at the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown, PEI.  I said to her, "Any day when I meet Laura Dern is a good day!" Which it would be.

ROSEMARY'S BABY

"This isn't a dream!  It's really happening!"--an unsubtle Mia Farrow line in ROSEMARY'S BABY

This afternoon I saw Roman Polanski's ROSEMARY'S BABY, for the second time, at the Bloor. (I considered seeing an earlier showing of the Maysles brothers' classic documentary SALESMAN, but decided it was a bit too downbeat for me.)

I didn't much care for the movie the first time I saw it and I still don't.  It's very much of its time (1968), about big-city paranoia and a creepy New York apartment building, not unlike all those horror movies involving a creepy haunted house.  I'm not attracted to movies about satanism:  THE EXORCIST left me cold.  I guess I'm more afraid of the evil within us.

I'll admit that Mia Farrow's performance is rather stunning of its kind.  But I didn't care for her costar John Cassavetes:  he was another of those actors whom I can see acting.  And Polanski's the kind of director who can make a bouquet of roses look sinister!

True fact:  Mia was married to Frank Sinatra, who wanted him to costar with him in THE DETECTIVE.  But the ROSEMARY'S BABY production got behind schedule and Mia had to choose between walking off the movie and bowing out of her husband's vehicle.  Sinatra gave her an ultimatum:  Make my movie or I'll divorce you! (Nice guy, huh?) But Paramount production executive Robert Evans showed her footage of her scenes that had already been filmed, and she finished it and sacrificed her marriage. (Evans tells the story in his memoir THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE.)

The movie was so long that I was late getting home.  John and Kathrine had brought over dinner and they'd already eaten, so I went out to KFC.  Though to tell the truth, they always bring vegan food and I'd probably have sneaked out to KFC afterward anyhow.

BEWARE OF MR. BAKER

To his interviewer: "Don't be an 'intelligent' dickhead!"--Ginger Baker

Today I saw BEWARE OF MR. BAKER at the Bloor.  It's a perversely entertaining documentary about Ginger Baker, a pioneering rock drummer who's kept crash-landing through life. (The title comes from a sign he posted on his property in lieu of "Beware of the dog"!)

Baker is the kind of guy who made millions from a recent reunion tour of his 1960s group Cream then squandered it on polo ponies!  And he's still pugnacious after all these years. (He socked the documentary director on the nose with his cane.) But in his time he was a musical genius, inventing the drum solo and discovering Afro-western fusion music years before anyone else.  If I could magically get the talent to play one musical instrument at genius level, I think I'd choose drums.

The documentary interviews a lot of musicians, including his '60s bandmate Eric Clapton. (If Clapton is God, Baker must be Lucifer.) If they're still friends it's because Clapton's stayed away from him.  And they also interviewed Johnny Rotten of Sex Pistols fame:  when I was a teenager, he was one of my few heroes.

Last night I had another night of extreme dreams and slept around the clock.  Among other things, I dreamed of being up on a roof and not knowing how I got there.

THE HOBBIT

"It's his excessive consumption of mushrooms.  They've addled his brains..."--THE HOBBIT:  AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

Today I saw AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY, the first movie in Peter Jackson's prequel trilogy of Tolkien's ersatz folktale THE HOBBIT.  It was mild, conventional fun despite the rather slow pace, especially in the early scenes.  I kind of enjoyed their LORD OF THE RINGS movies, though some parts I liked more than others. (I felt the same way about the books.)  One quibble I have is that the goblins had too great a visual resemblance to the orcs, causing confusion.  Also, was the Shire modern enough for MAILBOXES?

There are some curious parallels between Tolkien and TH White's Arthurian series THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING.  THE HOBBIT and THE SWORD IN THE STONE were both published in the 1930s and have the feel of British boy's adventures from an era when the Empire was still largely unquestioned.  But LORD OF THE RINGS and White's three later books were both published in the 1950s and their greater complexity in some ways reflects the grim idealism of the postwar era.

Another curious thing is that Tolkien was Catholic.  I couldn't help noticing that many prominent British authors in the 20th century were in that nation's Catholic minority. (Other examples: Hilaire Belloc, GK Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, Agatha Christie, Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess.)

Once again, I was in such a hurry that I forgot my house key.  But this time the door was left unlocked.

THE GREAT GATSBY

On Tom Buchanan: "'Now don't think my opinion on these matters is final,' he seemed to say, 'just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you'"--THE GREAT GATSBY

After finishing WHAT A YEAR! I decided to read THE GREAT GATSBY again. (I read it twice, when I was 19 and 24 respectively.) I guess I'm still interested in the 1920s.  And a new movie of this oddly unfilmable novel is coming out soon, and Matthew may make it the subject of a book club event in his Meetup group.  And I want to recite part of it when ROLT has an event involving love-related writing.

We've sold our copy online, so I found a cheap Penguin edition at Book City near the Bathurst station.  I also picked up some well-discounted books:  an issue of GRANTA about the American view of foreign countries, an illustrated guide to the history of ancient Greece, and Studs Terkel's survey WORKING. (I enjoyed HARD TIMES and 'THE GOOD WAR', his oral histories of the Great Depression and World War II.)

Fitzgerald's writing is delicate and sharply observed.  Yet in a self-pitying moment he wrote, "There are no second acts in American lives." Yet all the most remarkable American lives are distinguished by their second acts:  even his own life and writing had an interesting second act in the 1930s. (I may have posted that before, but it would take forever to confirm.)

THE HOUSE I LIVE IN

"If you're a casual drug user, you're an accomplice to murder"--Nancy Reagan

Today I saw Eugene Jarecki's documentary THE HOUSE I LIVE IN at the Bloor. (The title comes from a Paul Robeson song performed over the closing credits, in which the "house" is the US.) It's about the War on Drugs and all its human casualties, including some in the family of a maid who worked for Jarecki's family.

Jarecki's made some fine documentaries before, like CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS (about a child-abuse witch hunt--the clown brother was the most interesting character) and WHY WE FIGHT (about the military-industrial complex), and this is another good one.  It made me feel both sad and angry.  There's intelligent commentary by people like David Simon, creator of THE WIRE, an HBO series about drug cops in Baltimore.  As I know from reading WHAT A YEAR!, the questions now being raised about the War on Drugs were also being raised about Prohibition back in 1929.

I also saw a DVD (for the second time) of a PBS documentary about the country-music pioneers the Carter Family.  What haunting melancholy music they made!

Another Huffpost moderation outrage

THE HUFFINGTON POST recently ran a report on ex-president George Bush Sr. being released from the hospital.  The accompanying posts were a gush of sentimental praise for him.  But I couldn't help thinking of his most famous quote: "Read my lips--no new taxes!" It's precisely the Republican Party's fidelity to his principle that's produced the US federal government's current fiscal crisis.

But the posts I read were like this one: "Look here!  This Lib is wishing President Bush continued health improvement!  Why?  Because as an American, I wish nothing but the best for Presidents, past and present.  I afford the office respect.  Speedy Recovery President Bush." Another post had the temerity to respond with the question "Why?" so I wrote one saying: "Because too many Americans treat presidents like kings." And the Huffpost moderators wouldn't publish it!  I can confirm that it wasn't an accident because I tried to post it later and it was blocked again.

No wonder the posts were all sentimental praise. (When one poster called him "decent," I did manage to publish the cryptic reply, "Decent is as decent does.") You know, it isn't like I used the expression "shut up" this time.  So sad to learn that the Americans who treat presidents like kings include moderators at THE HUFFINGTON POST.

Back to choir practice

Today Coro Verdi had its first rehearsal in the New Year.  With the Christmas concert finished, we've returned to rehearsing Verdi's MACBETH. (We spent a lot of time on the Cutthroats' Chorus.) I don't like to boast, but it's a fact that John George and Giovanni like to sit next to me because I'm a fast learner.

Giuseppe is worrying about not having enough singers, especially sopranos.  TOR has lots of sopranos, but as a rule he doesn't lean on the TOR chorus people to join his other group.  We're going to move rehearsals to the Villa Colombo building sometime, but not just yet.

Today I also finished WHAT A YEAR!  In the last chapter Joe Alex Morris wrote "For better or worse, Americans who died in 1929 had never heard of..." then recited a long list of phenomena that he expected 1956 readers to be familiar with.  I knew most of them, though not everyone remembers Gina Lollobrigida or Cinerama.  There were a few I had to look up, however.

Dave Garroway:  first host of THE TODAY SHOW. (That's one of those names that sound vaguely familiar to me.)

Economic royalists:  FDR's 1936 term for robber barons.

Dacron:  a brand of polyester.

Indirect lighting:  A lighting system where flourescent tubes along the top of a living room's wall reflect their light onto the ceiling.

Fala:  FDR's terrier.

Sulfanilamide:  a germ-killing elixir that caused mass poisoning in 1937.

I'm still trying to figure out why he included Nashua.

DJANGO UNCHAINED

"My good man, I'm simply trying to ascertain..." "Speak English, goddammit!"--DJANGO UNCHAINED

Today I saw Quentin Tarantino's slave revenge saga DJANGO UNCHAINED at the Empress Walk.  It was pretty fun but way too long.  (On top of my sitting through almost three hours, the TTC had a problem so I was an hour getting home!)

Directed in Tarantino's customary Jacobean cartoon style, it borrows from spaghetti westerns and '70s blaxploitation like Fred Williamson in THE LEGEND OF NIGGER CHARLEY. (Think Tarantino uses the N-word a lot?  Back then they put it in TITLES!) Even the dentist's wagon with the giant tooth is borrowed from Erich Von Stroheim's silent classic GREED.

I like many of Tarantino's movies, though they can be off-putting.  INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS left a rather bad taste in the mouth for all its brilliant elements. (Brad Pitt was a hoot, especially his tin-eared "Bon giorno.") Maybe it's just that some scenes were so real and convincing--especially the beginning-- and others so over the top, that they didn't go together.

On the subject of slavery dramas, I've always thought the '70s miniseries ROOTS to be overrated.  It struck me as cheesy and relentlessly obvious, with scene after scene played to the rafters.  Sure, several of the black performances were impressive, but Maya Angelou and OJ Simpson gave embarrassing performances even for non-actors, and the white cast was mostly weak. (Edward Asner, normally a superb actor, played the slave ship captain as if he had a severe hangover.) For a truly great miniseries, see Larry McMurtry's LONESOME DOVE.

ROLT January

Today was January's ROLT Meetup event.  We had a record turnout of nine people.  The weather was unusually mild for January so we decided to sit outside, but as the event went on the weather got worse.  Someone suggested a different locale but we'll see.

Our topic was Canadian writing. (I titled the event "The Maple Leaf Forever.") I read part of a chapter from Mazo de la Roche's JALNA, with Renny worrying about being in love with his brother's wife, then going out to the stable and trying to save a dying foal.  Jane read part of a CODCO script. (That show was the predecessor of THIS HOUR HAS 23 MINUTES.) Someone read part of WO Mitchell's WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND, someone read poems by Irving Layton and Leonard Cohen, and someone read part of the Stephen Leacock sea-story parody "Soaked in Seeweed." (That's the one that ends with "I died.  I buried myself.") Moira came and considered reading an Alden Nowlan poem, but decided against it.

I was going to make the February topic writing on love, since that's the time of St. Valentine's Day.  But Moira preferred writing on science, so I've decided to combine scientific writing with science fiction.  I'm considering future topics like biography & memoirs, travel writing, city life, closing passages, and a second poetry event since the first was so popular.

VERTIGO

"Come here!" "No, you'll muss me"--romantic banter in VERTIGO

Saw Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO for the third time, with Matthew's Movie Meetup group at the Yonge & Dundas Event Screen.  There was some confusion about when to meet so I ended up getting there an hour early and waiting in the lobby. (Oh well, I got some more of WHAT A YEAR! read and had something more to blog about.)

VERTIGO is one of those movies that improves with repeat viewings.  Indeed, you have to see it two or three times to appreciate it. (I can well believe that its initial reviews were not so good.) It's the one where detective James Stewart gets hired to put a tail on Kim Novak, who says she's possessed by the spirit of a girl who died a century before, but all is not what it seems...

It's a disquieting portrait of romantic obsession. Many people consider VERTIGO Hitchcock's masterpiece. (Myself, I'd choose NOTORIOUS.) Stewart and Novak have an eerie chemistry, helped greatly by Bernard Herrmann's haunting music and the San Francisco locations.  Has any movie made better use of that city?  I ought to see BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE, a romantic comedy with Novak as a witch out to put a spell on Stewart, not unlike in this movie.

In 1976 Brian de Palma, working from a Paul Schrader script, directed a curious reworking of VERTIGO unsubtly titled OBSESSION.  That one had Cliff Robertson as a New Orleans businessmen whose wife (Genevieve Bujold) and daughter get kidnapped, then drown in the Mississippi River where their bodies are never found.  Twenty years later he meets a young woman the same age as his daughter would have been, also played by Genevieve Bujold...

Dreams

I sometimes have vivid dreams.  Last night I dreamed of pitching a movie script that started with a schoolboy finishing a school essay about predicting the weather, then finding that someone had changed it to talk about raising your hands to create a storm vortex above you.  Then he found out about this parallel universe where people had such power over the weather, and met a group of scholars from that world eager to learn from him, including a big expert whom I suggested could be played in a Sacha Baron Cohen cameo.  Then I started telling the story to Antonio Banderas, but stopped and apologized, saying "You must hear a lot of movie pitches!"

I also dreamed of roller skating along a long road that ended in a channel being dug down a slope for a waterfall with a lot of streams that would cancel each other out and dissipate, with big flakes of gold visible here and there.  And I dreamed of being in the futuristic world of the movie SOYLENT GREEN, except that I was in the area of Seattle while the movie took place in New York City.  And I dreamed of a jungle tribesman who came to the big city for the Olympics, didn't fit in and became a fugitive, and of having a girlfriend in the Royal Family, and of bicycling downhill on a slope that got faster and faster, and of ending up in a science fiction movie with Greg from THE BRADY BUNCH, and of going on a tour of the world except that we only spent a short time in China before flying to Vancouver where I was trying to figure out the time back in Toronto.

I dreamed all that last night.  Some nights are more vivid than others.

Movie trivia contest

Tonight I went to a Movie trivia contest hosted by Sash of the Toronto Friends Social Group Meetup.  I was careless with the time and got Father to drive me to the subway station so I'd be there in time, but I should have realized it would start a lot later than scheduled.  It isn't the first time I've inconvenienced Father when I didn't have to.

I finished third and chose a serving of cookies & cream cake for my prize.  I also met a CBC science reporter who ultimately finished first.  I actually finished first in these contests once, and I'm sure I'll do it again one of these months.

I'm pretty good with movie trivia, and even noticed a couple of mistakes in Sash's questions:  ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK came out in 1982, not 1981; and Rooney in FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF was a vice-principal, not a principal. (I heard someone floated a proposal for a Ferris Bueller sequel, and I'd like to see one where Ferris is a fortysomething unemployed welfare bum who can't read or add and now says, "I shouldn't have skipped school." Rooney, meanwhile, has become Secretary of Education.)

I wish I knew how to quit Candy Crush Saga.  I've said that it was addictive, and Pet Rescue Saga is too. (Did I mention I've been careless with time?) I'll just have to find a new game twice as addictive...

Back to the opera

Today was the first post-New Year's rehearsal for the TOR.  Performances start next month, and now we're going on stage!  I remembered to bring my checkbook to pay $50 of additional expenses, and my ticket money. (My parents and sister are seeing both shows, so I sold six tickets.) But I forgot to bring indoor shoes, so I went on stage in my sock feet.

We were rehearsing TALES OF HOFFMANN, and did the opening and closing scenes set in a pub.  We also did the greater half of the scene with Olympia, but didn't get to the scene with Giulietta. (The  chorus isn't in the scene with Antonia.) For the pub scene we get to hold metal mugs and long pipes.

I mentioned before that there were a few cameo roles that I was being considered for.  It turns out that they decided not to include them.  Part of me felt relieved at not getting the extra responsibility--I was too polite to admit it, of course--but I felt stupid about being the last to find out.

Speaking of Hoffmans, in the afternoon I saw Dustin in the William Goldman-John Schlesinger thriller MARATHON MAN at the Young&Dundas.  It's one of the older movies they've been showing on the Event Screen there.  That's the one where Nazi Laurence Olivier keeps asking Hoffman "Is it safe?" before torturing him with dentist equipment.  I'd read that it was crude, and it was. (Did the book make more sense?) Frankly, I only saw it so I'd have something to write about here.

Recent DVDs

I've been watching some more uncommon DVDs through zip.ca.

The Best of GUNSMOKE:  I remember watching some of the later seasons of that "adult western" on Sunday mornings in the '80s.  Now I've started a video collection of selected episodes from all over its 20-year run. (THE SIMPSONS has been on for a longer time, but this show made more episodes!) I've only seen the earliest ones, including an episode with Charles Bronson.

THE RED SKELTON SHOW:  I got a disc with some early episodes of that show, which I watched faithfully in its last seasons.  He was a comic genius, and well do I remember characters like Freddy the Freeloader and Clem Kadiddlehopper. (The disc also has some episodes of Groucho Marx in YOU BET YOUR LIFE.)

OF TIME AND THE CITY:  An eloquent Terence Davies memoir of his postwar Liverpool youth, combining narration with archival footage of the city and eclectic music.

CLASSIC EDUCATIONAL SHORTS:  The latest disc in a series of classroom films, this one is commercial films for salesmen and clients.  The film about the blender was so well made that I wanted to go out and make a blender recipe!

I'll soon be seeing some early avant-garde films, a couple of Luis Bunuel productions, and a documentary about the American West in the 1860s!

New computer games

It looks like I'm finally finished with Evony.  I've brought all the non-residential buildings up to level nine and completed the wall defences, and this time I'm not really interested in conquering territory or starting new cities.

Now I've started on the game Megapolis, yet another city-planning game along the lines of Simcity and Cityville.  What can I say?  I love to plan virtual cities.  But I don't know how long I'll last this time.

I've tried bubble-blasting games, but I can't really get into them.  On the other hand, I've discovered an addictive strategy game called Candy Crush Saga.  It involves an array of candy in different colors:  jelly beans are red, lemon drops yellow, lozenges orange, gobstoppers blue, jujubes purple, and the green ones are mints or something like that. You have adjacent candy pieces trade places to get three in a row, then they disappear and some new ones come down.  If you manage to arrange four or even five in a row, you get pieces with special powers.  The part I don't like is that when you lose a game they show a little girl weeping, and I always feel bad for letting her down.

I also found a strategy game called Pet Rescue Saga--from the same company, of course--which involves dissolving sets of adjacent blocks of the same color. (You can make columns disappear with an occasional pyrotechnic rocket.) If you can dissolve a column all the way down to the bottom, the pet on top will be rescued!

I discover all these games by looking at the game apps my Facebook friends are using.

THE SEARCHERS

"MOUNT!  M-O-Y-N-T MOUNT!"--Ward Bond in THE SEARCHERS

Today I went to see the John Ford western THE SEARCHERS with the Classic Movie Meetup at the Fairview Cinema's screening room. (There were seven of us.) That's the one where rootless Confederate veteran Ethan (John Wayne) visits his settled Texas brother and family, who get murdered in a Comanche raid, except for little niece Debbie--what a '50s name!--who gets kidnapped and adopted by the tribe, so he goes off on a long, relentless pursuit...

What a powerful movie THE SEARCHERS is!  That's one classic that's everything they say it is.  John Wayne is at his antihero best as the obsessive, frightening loner motivated by hate and vengeance.  Watch as he holds Debbie up by her armpits at the beginning:  he'll do the same at the end.  There's a great shot when he sees some other whites-turned captives-turned Indians.

Another character of interest is Martin (Jeffrey Hunter), the part-Indian youth adopted into the brother's family who joins Ethan's search, leaving behind sweetheart Vera Miles, but ends up anxious to prevent Ethan from killing Debbie when he finally finds her.  Ethan treats him remarkably badly, never letting him forget his prejudice against half-breeds and even using him as bait in a deathtrap!

THE SEARCHERS is a rare western with a sense of tragedy. (Clint Eastwood's UNFORGIVEN and that AMC series HELL ON WHEELS also come to mind.) Sure, the comic parts are pretty broad, but the total effect is compelling, even beautiful.

I went home with Cecilia from Brazil again.  I taught her the word "thief," which is one of those words that foreigners are slow to learn: "stealer" would seem more natural.  I'd been telling her about WHAT A YEAR! and how JFK's father was a big investor who sold out before the 1929 crash and later was put in charge of the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate Wall Street, on the principle, "It takes a thief to catch a thief."

WHAT A YEAR!

Last week I finished the political issue of LAPHAM'S QUARTERLY.  Since then I've started reading a book I picked up at a new used-book store a few blocks west of here.  It's WHAT A YEAR!, a book about the US in the year 1929, written by Joe Alex Morris in the '50s.

It's an entertaining work of popular history, similar to Frederick Lewis Allen's ONLY YESTERDAY:  AN INFORMAL HISTORY OF THE 1920s, which I read about a decade ago.  It was the year of the big stock market crash, of course, but there was lots of other stuff happening.  That was the year when Albert Einstein became world-famous with his announcement of a unified theory of physics or something.  It was also a time when Prohibition was becoming more and more controversial, Charles Lindbergh was the big hero of the day, Hollywood had just converted to sound films, Herbert Hoover began his ill-fated presidency, and silliness was common.  The popular new toy was the yo-yo. (I've also learned that the expression "Oh, yeah?" originated in the 1920s.) Lots of photo illustrations too.

I have a big headache.  I'm running a bit short again, but this time I'll just let it be short.

THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE

Just saw the documentary THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE with a Meetup group at the Bloor.  It's pretty disturbing:  the NYPD basically grabbed the first suspicious teenagers who turned up and pressured them into false confessions. (It reminded me of the treatment of Omar Khadr.)

We had a discussion about it afterward.  I thought it was really contemptible of Ed Koch to refer to "the alleged rapists," then add, "We have to call them 'alleged,' because of the regulation." (I've thought little of Koch since he pushed his support for the death penalty to get elected at the time of the Son of Sam murders.)

It was co-directed by Ken Burns, whose documentaries I've usually liked, though they can be sententious. (I was a bit disappointed by his World War II documentary THE WAR:  it started out well, but by the final chapter they'd ended up playing it safe and turning it into a "tribute" to wartime America.) I've seen his THE CIVIL WAR many times over the years.  It's very eloquent, though it lets Shelby Foote dominate perhaps too much:  I would have liked more of Ed Bearss.  I've also enjoyed Burns' documentaries on subjects like Mark Twain and Thomas Hart Benton.

Meanwhile, the parents and I have been downloading movies from Netflix.  In the last week we've seen two big, colorful Cinemascope productions from Twentieth Century Fox in the '50s:  A MAN CALLED PETER and LOVE IS A MANY-SPLENDORED THING. (Our big widescreen TV, which we got about a year ago, is suitable for such epics.) Unfortunately, the latter movie starred the terrible actress Jennifer Jones, miscast as a half-Chinese doctor babbling greeting-card profundities.  And last week we saw Terence Davies' stunning film of Terence Rattigan's '50s play THE DEEP BLUE SEA:  if you can't see it in a theatre, be sure to see it on a widescreen TV.

Emancipation Proclamation

THE HUFFINGTON POST has been a bit slow for me lately.  After the deal that averted the US "fiscal cliff," I posted: "Time once again for liberals to present a defeat as a victory..." but I don't feel like saying much about that.

Then last night there was a column about Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which became official 150 years ago at New Year's. I know quite a bit about the Civil War and wrote several posts in that column's forum.  I think some people were impressed by my perception.

Here's the longest post I wrote:

When Lincoln originally proposed the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet in July, 1862, he encountered less resistance than he feared, but one secretary--William Seward?--warned him that he should delay its announcement until after a Union battlefield victory, or he might be seen as grasping at straws.

Lincoln agreed and waited.  In a famous letter to a New York newspaper the following month, he said that he'd be willing to save the union by freeing all of the slaves, by freeing none of them, or by freeing some and not others.  In fact, this was his way of preparing the public for the Emancipation Proclamation. (Of course, the Emancipation Proclamation freed almost no slaves immediately, but most of them in the long run.)

In September the Confederate invasion of Maryland--a slave state but still Union territory--culminated in the battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg.  In terms of casualties, it was a bloody standoff.  But it was followed by a Confederate retreat back into Virginia, and the Northern newspapers did their best to present it as a Union victory. (There were also some minor Union victories around that time.) This was close enough for Lincoln's purposes, and he announced the Emancipation Proclamation, which became official at the end of the year.

***

When a subject like that comes up and I can write a lot about it, I get so excited I can't sleep!

New Year's

"I blew another year"--Charlie Brown

Last night was New Year's Eve.  As is my usual custom, I retired well before midnight, earlier than I usually do. (Noise out on the street wakes me up at midnight.) But in the morning I slept in as late as I usually do.  I just don't feel like getting up.

Over the Christmas break, I finished the latest season of MAD MEN--not enough Betty for my taste--and saw the latest season of CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, one of my favorite TV comedies ever:  I think my favorite character is Jeff's wife Susie, especially when she launches into profane rants.  I liked the episode where Susie and Jeff's dog was about to be put down so she sent him and Larry to buy this brand of frozen yogurt for its last meal, but on the way back Larry took a bite from it, then Jeff took a bigger bite, which bugged Larry so he took a second bite, and Jeff did the same, and the pissing match ended with the whole thing eaten!

Sunday of last week I saw 56 UP at the Bloor:  it's the latest installment in the British 7 UP documentary series that's been profiling a group of English people every seven years since their childhood.  (I've been watching it since 28 UP.) Just today I saw the 3D release of MONSTERS INC., for the first time.  Pretty cute.

Last Saturday I had dinner at Golden Thai restaurant with my Aspergers Meetup group. (We went to Spring Rolls nearby for dessert.) I went to another Karaoke Meetup at BarPlus afterward.

Do I have any New Year's resolutions?  Well, I quit the jigsaw puzzle app:  I enjoy them but I might spend the rest of my life doing them!  Maybe I should wake up earlier, but I need to increase my motivation...