Art walk

"It's called 'disclosure,' you dickhead!"--My Cousin Vinny

The night before last I thought of going on another ROMwalk, but they don't interest me so much.  Instead I stayed home and saw the DVD of Jonathan Lynn's courtroom comedy My Cousin Vinny (for the second time). It's a pretty good Joe Pesci vehicle.

Last night I went on Betty-Anne's Queen Street art walk again.  Monday's flooding wreaked havoc on her itinerary, and she had to make a lot of last-minute changes.  But for one gallery it was an opportunity:  they made an impromptu exhibit of art they'd salvaged from their flooded basement.

The walk started at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, with an exhibit of Louise Bourgeois' modern art.  One of her abstract sculptures reminded me of African art. (It's a paradox that 20th-century modern art sometimes found inspiration in the "primitive.") We also went next door to the Edward Day Gallery's exhibit of Rebecca Last's paintings.  They were mostly clouds on lakes, but they really "move": I felt like there was something happening.  The artist appeared and answered questions!

We also went inside a shoe boutique called Gravity Pope(?).

Afterward I had a big headache, so this blog had to wait till the morning.

How to write like Pauline Kael

The other day in The Globe and Mail, TV critic John Doyle said that some of the people in his trade have ambitions to become the Pauline Kael of television.  That got me thinking about offering them tips on how to emulate the famous New Yorker movie critic:

Be nasty.  In reviewing the movie of the musical A Little Night Music, she said, "Hal Prince directs as if he had never seen a movie!"

Use the second person in the present tense.  Don't say "I didn't like it"; say "You don't like it."

Appeal to artistic snobbery.  She said that Bugsy Malone is "only for people who like putting ribbons on dogs." What if I like putting ribbons on dogs?

Use attention-grabbing overstatements.  She famously compared the Last Tango in Paris premiere to the premiere of the Stravinsky ballet The Rite of Spring.  A bit premature, wasn't she?

Invent new words.  Grease is a "klutzburger."

Don't be afraid of spoilers.  In her review of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining she spoiled what she admitted was the movie's scariest scene, which involves the sentence "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." (If you've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about.") All this so she could reach the clever conclusion, "All work and no play makes Stanley a dull boy too." That's a sore point for me because back in 1980 I read the review before seeing the movie.

Generalize aggressively.  Write about "why movies today are so bad."

Be vulgar.  She called the True Grit sequel Rooster Cogburn and the Lady "a belch from the Nixon era"; her review of the movie version of Annie said, "The other group that might like this movie is the fetishists:  it has big-girl and little-girl panties."

Make cultural references that half your readers won't get.  Shelley Duvall in The Shining "looks more like a Modigliani than ever."

Be alert to "confidence" in actors and even directors.  In reviewing the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, she said that "the director, Phil Kaufman, provides such confident professionalism that you sit back in the assurance that every spooky nuance you're catching is just what was intended." Well, she did anyway.

Use overelaborate expressions.  Don't say "one of the most"; say "one of the two or three most."

Be sarcastic.  In her pan of Four Friends, she said: "There's a wholesome, beefy moralness in Steve Tesich's script, and Arthur Penn does his best to bring out its hearty bouquet." And all smart moviegoers hate that, of course.

Speculate about the filmmakers' intentions.  When she panned the Funny Girl sequel Funny Lady, she said: "They weren't just going to make a musical sequel--they were going to knock us out! (And they were going to outdo Cabaret, besides.)"

In using adjectival description, be spontaneous, stylish, "and"-less. Tex "is oddly quiet, tepid, soft." Robert De Niro in True Confessions "seems flaccid, pre-occupied." George Cukor's direction of Adam's Rib "is too arch, too consciously, commercially clever, but it's also spirited, confident."

Write overlong sentences.  Her review of Dressed to Kill alone has two sentences each over sixty words long!

Don't get me started on how to write like John Simon!

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE

Frank Sinatra: "I've been having this dream--and it's a swinger of a dream, too"--The Manchurian Candidate

We were lucky last night when our blackout lasted only two hours. (In some places it went on past midnight!) But this afternoon it returned and lasted about five hours!  But when that happens I can still have a bath or a nap like before.

This evening I saw John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate (for the third time, I think), at the Event Screen, presented by Murray Pomerance.  It's pretty chilling, and its box-office success must have surprised the industry. (The last line is "Hell, hell!") 

Frank Sinatra is at his best:  I liked his scene telling Laurence Harvey that all the links had been cut.  The Janet Leigh character seemed a bit superfluous.  The Harvey character of course brings to mind Damien Lewis on Homeland, though the latter is more of a conscious defector.  Pomerance told us that Sinatra initially wanted Lucille Ball cast in Angela Lansbury's sinister mother role! (She might have pulled it off.)  I'll have to check the Internet Movie Database, because there were several actors I think I recognized.

Memoir slam

"He's a New Yorker.  Nothing really impresses him"--Company

Yesterday I went on another Prof Walk.  We met at the Dundas West station and walked down Roncesvalles to Parkdale and the shore.  Afterward I had lunch at a restaurant called Eggsmart.  Once in a while I am capable of doing something new!

This afternoon I went to an Out of Your Shell Meetup event at the Lillian Smith library:  a dozen people met for a sort of memoir slam, where they randomly choose a memoir subject to write about, people write for half an hour than read their writing aloud, then they do it again. (They meet most Mondays.) The first subject was the countryside near our childhood home; the second was bodybuilding.

I was half an hour late because I'd been off seeing Dr. Hassan to get my Cipralex prescription renewed, then getting it refilled at Shoppers Drug Mart.  So I didn't get to write in the first round, but just listened to the other people.  But I couldn't think of anything to write about bodybuilding, so in the second round I actually wrote about the first-round subject!  I told them about how we'd take ice cream to our cottage and it would be half-melted, and I still have a soft spot for half-melted ice cream today; and also about our year in Brighton, of which I remembered several smells and seeing Rolf Harris play his wobble board on TV.

In preparation for Saturday's ROLT event, I picked up a book of A.E. Housman's poems at Lillian Smith, and one of Robert Browning's poems at Gladstone.  It's at times like this that I miss Mother:  she liked Housman and I wish I could talk to her about his poetry.  

I made it home just before a big downpour that presumably caused the two-hour blackout this evening.  Blackouts are something the goblins cause from time to time to remind us how dependent us modern city slickers are on electricity.

Has liberalism failed?

Moira reads the left-of-center magazine The Nation.  I used to read it too, but lost interest in recent years.  The other day, however, I read a Nation article that asked the question, "Has liberalism failed?"

That got me to thinking, and I'd suggest that American liberalism failed back in the 2004 election campaign, when it succumbed to risk-averse "pragmatism." Pragmatic liberals are quick to accuse Ralph Nader and his few supporters of enabling Bush Jr.'s "election" and his 2003 invasion of Iraq.  But look at their own behavior in 2004!  When they chose prowar candidate John Kerry over antiwar candidate Howard Dean in the primaries, then Kerry over antiwar candidate Nader in November--all while hoping Kerry didn't mean it, of course--they provided the warmongers with some enabling of their own. (In truth, the left had largely surrendered to pragmatism back in the 2000 election, but not unanimously enough to please the Nader-haters.)

Ever see the 1980s high-school comedy Pretty in Pink?  That's the one where rich kid Andrew McCarthy fell for "back of the tracks" girl Molly Ringwald and was going to invite her to the prom, but his rich friends gave him grief and he chickened out.  He later explained to her, "I believed in you.  I just didn't believe in me." Dean was rejected because American liberalism stopped believing in itself.  And that's the heart of the matter.

I recall Democrats portentously saying back in 2004, "This is the most important presidential election of our time," and I fear they were right.  Liberals hoped that Obama would be another Dean, but he's ended up looking more like Kerry, his latest Secretary of State.  To live again, liberalism needs to make a clean break with the slippery slope of pragmatism and its ever-diminishing returns.

A Heritage Toronto walk

Last night I had some vivid dreams, as I predicted.  I was cast in an acting role in this Batman-like gothic TV series; and I was walking around Sackville in a snowstorm and realized I had no place to go to. (After I woke up I went onto Youtube--the new twelfth link on my homepage--and listened to Woody Guthrie's "I Ain't Got No Home in This World Any More." A real classic!)

This afternoon I went on a Heritage Toronto walk around the Guild Park in Scarborough. Getting there via the TTC was a real adventure:  I took the Bloor-Danforth subway to its eastern end at the Kennedy station, then took the Morningside bus east on Eglinton, beyond Kingston Road to the Guild Inn.  I got there an hour early and had time for lunch at a nearby strip mall, where I chose Pizza Nova over Subway.  It's been years since I visited a strip mall!  There's a new cafe there whose opening has been delayed, with a sign saying, "For sure we'll open in June July!" (I got to use my strikethrough!)

I was going to join some people from the Over 50 Meetup for the walk, but the weather was too hot for most of them. (Ruthie did come before the walk so I was able to lend her our copy of Wild Animals I Have Known as I'd promised.) The walk went on for almost three hours and I got a bit of a sunburn on my arms.  Tim Hudak turned up in the huge crowd. I'll have to look up future Heritage Toronto walks online.

This evening I went to 2Q Video and rented a DVD of a recent production of the Stephen Sondheim's famous 1971 musical revue Company--the one about a single man and his married friends--with actors like Neil Patrick Harris, Jon Cryer and Christina Hendricks backed up by the New York Philharmonic. (I saw it on the London stage seventeen years ago, at the cutting-edge Donmar Warehouse theatre.)

AFACT

John George was reading my blog and sent me a snail-mail letter of condolence from his summer home in New York State.  John, I'm going to write back to you in snail mail. (I haven't done that for years!)

In the afternoon I went to replenish my Cipralex but it turned out I have to see Dr. Hassan next week and get my prescription renewed.  When I run out of Cipralex I sometimes get vivid dreams.

This evening I went to an AFACT rehearsal.  They gave me some new lines, involving me talking with Maude the diva and Jenkins the butler.

Corinne resigned as organizer of the Ph.D. Students Meetup--she couldn't afford the fees--so I took over. (Since I'm already organizing ROLT, I can organize this without paying extra fees.) I'm going to have meetings at the Victory Cafe in Mirvish Village.

I've finally quit that Empire game after someone raided my castle twice and left me with one soldier!  That means I have a vacancy among the twelve links on my homepage.

WEST SIDE STORY

"Go walk the streets like your sister!"--West Side Story

Today I had lunch with Bev of the Aspies group.  We met at Yonge Sushi.  I played it safe and had the chicken curry.  Next time I should be more adventurous and get an actual sushi order.

This evening I saw West Side Story (for the fourth time) at the Event Screen.  Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins were a team of genius.  The movie was pretty close to the stage show, I'd imagine, and my favorite number is "America." But the movie version has pretty weak romantic leads:  Natalie Wood was pretty, but Hispanic as my grandmother.

Of course, for JFK-era moviegoers white vs. Hispanic gang warfare bore a subtext about white vs. black racial tensions. (Just like when the 1956 movie Giant dramatized discrimination against Chicanos, the audience sensed it was really about discrimination against Afro-Americans.) Frankly, the middlebrow 1950s concern about juvenile delinquency and violent youth strikes me as hypocritical.   At least teenagers who played "chicken" were only endangering themselves.  John Foster Dulles' "brinksmanship" was chicken with nuclear weapons, and the world was lucky to survive the Cuban Missile Crisis.

After that amazing spike early in the week, my pageview level has subsided to what it was before.  I wonder what exactly raised it so high?

Ph.D. Students Meetup

Yesterday I went to a Ph.D. Students Meetup.  Sure, I'm long finished with that part of my life, but I like to have a chance to talk about it with people still going through it.  We met at the Art Gallery of Ontario cafeteria. (Corinne was doing research at the AGO library.)

Corinne is in a Ph.D. program at the University of Edinburgh.  Her thesis has something to do with art and music and vagueness, but I can't really describe it.  I do know that her research has something to do with the painter Eugene Delacroix, because that's why she was at the AGO library.

Dianayah was also there.  She's working in psychology and her thesis will be about abused children.  She's a native of Benin in Africa, and she was really impressed that I remember her native country used to be called Dahomey.

In the evening I went to another trivia contest with Sash's Toronto Social Group.  This one was about 1970s movies and I did very, very well.  But the noise level of the crowd got to me.

Last night, no doubt because of the earlier Meetup, I dreamed of being back at Goodenough College trying to finish my Ph.D. thesis research.

MYSTERY MEN

Yesterday we finished Coriolanus.  It's one of those movies that leave all the credits to the end, so only then did I learn that Ralph Fiennes directed it himself!  It was filmed in Serbia (very appropriately).

Last night I saw the superhero spoof Mystery Men at the Event Screen.  It had some pretty good dialogue. ("Dad, I'm going to my room with three strange men.") And I also liked the cast:  Ben Stiller (his superpower is throwing tantrums), William H. Macy(he bonks people with his shovel), Janeane Garofalo, Peewee Herman.

Unfortunately, I felt a bit sick as I was watching it.  I guess I ate too many peanuts for lunch.

In that online game Empire I finally got to level 30 where I could add another castle extension.  I had to build quite a few buildings and decorations to get there.

For the last three days I've been getting about 200 pageviews a day!  My most popular post is the one where I talk about Twenty Feet From Stardom.  I suspect all my Polish readers are interested in the part where I write about getting a VPN and HDTV.

Coriolanus & Help!

"There is a world elsewhere"--an exiled Coriolanus

For lunch today, I made a peanut butter sandwich from the white bread I baked a few days ago. (I do that about every three months.)

This afternoon Moira and I saw the first part of the Shakespeare movie Coriolanus.  It was a pretty cool adaptation, set in the 21st century amid urban unrest and hand-to-hand combat.  Ralph Fiennes in the title role and Vanessa Redgrave as his divaish mother Volumnia were well cast.  The political story was a bit complicated, and the play's no doubt worth reading in detail.  Kathrine arrived (with her and John's dog Caillou), so we'll have to finish it tomorrow.

This evening I saw Help!, Richard Lester's second Beatles vehicle, at the Event Screen with the Classic Movies Meetup.  It was frantic and a bit thin:  A Hard Day's Night definitely did more with less.  But some of its zaniness must have inspired the later school of British comedy exemplified by Monty Python.  Afterward we  hung out at the Imperial.

I read another chapter of Guns, Germs and Steel.  This one was about how prehistoric societies made the leap from hunter-gatherers living off local wild plants and animals to farmers raising domesticated strains descending from the same.

Canada Day

"He says my drums were interfering with my school work.  The way I see it, school work is interfering with my drumming"--Freaks and Geeks

Today is Canada's national holiday.  They've had a couple of posts on that subject at the Canadian page of THE HUFFINGTON POST. (I mostly read the US page, but I sometimes read the Canadian and British pages too.) One writer asked about the meaning of Canada, and one comment said that Canada meant nothing.  I couldn't resist adding, "Canada:  the 'It's about nothing' country!"

Yesterday I went on another ROMwalk.  This one started at the first Toronto post office and went through the St. Lawrence market neighborhood.  I hadn't noticed what fancy architecture the St. Lawrence Hall was.

Last night I saw an American Experience documentary about Robert E. Lee.  I couldn't help feeling that his genius was tragically wasted on a cause that couldn't win and didn't deserve to.

Yesterday this blog got over 200 pageviews!  And the main source is Poland.

Guns, Germs & Steel

I've started reading Jared Diamonds Guns, Germs and Steel for the next Non-Fiction Book Club event.  It's very readable.  I just finished a chapter all about Polynesian societies and the environmental factors that informed their different levels of development.

Saturday morning I went on a Walks with Profs outing.  We met at Eglinton & Dufferin and walked north to a magic shop. (To tell the truth, I'm not much interested in magic.) Unfortunately, the starting time was 10:30, and at least one person got there after we'd left.  I had to skip breakfast to avoid being late.

On the PBS website I saw the American Experience documentary about the Rockefellers.  Nelson Rockefeller kind of wrested the family leadership from his older brother John III, which reminded me of John F. Kennedy's rivalry with his older brother Joe. (They didn't include the famous photo of Nelson giving students the finger.)

John and Father have removed the bricks from one of the two new window holes in the living room.

I'm writing this on Sunday morning, and the blog already has over 100 pageviews for the day!

Sagrada

Today I was to going to meet Bev for lunch, but we didn't meet. (She emailed me about a different time, but I didn't check my email before leaving.) I got pretty soaked.

This evening I went to see a documentary at the Bloor.  I used up the second of two free tickets I got when I became a member there a year ago.  I recently renewed my membership and got a voucher for four free popcorns, one of which I claimed tonight.  I also got the July schedule, and they'll be showing a movie about a casting director from the 1970's who discovered a lot of famous actors and revolutionized the business of casting.  Sounds interesting.

The film I saw was Sagrada:  The Mystery of Creation, about Antoni Gaudi's Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona, which they've been building for over a century and may take another century to finish.  It looks like something that a wizard roused out of the earth.  I hope I live to see it completed!  If there's any creation I believe in, it's artistic creation. (This reminded me that someday I want to read Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth, about the long construction of a gothic cathedral in mediaeval France.)

Wednesday this blog got just over 100 pageviews.  I guess people are interested in The Last Picture Show and Unruly Voices.

A filling

This afternoon I went to the dentist and got an old filling replaced. (I would have done it three weeks ago, but that was the same day as the Coro Verdi end-of-season concert.) I spent a few hours recovering.

At Hulu I started watching the second season of Alfred Hitchock Presents and saw an episode with Cedric Hardwicke as a father whose daughter killed a man and sets out to protect the family from embarrassment, ultimately by framing another man for the murder.

Unotelly has links to a lot of channels that I've only started looking at.  This evening I opened the link to pbs.org and saw an American Experience documentary about Billy the Kid.  New Mexico author (and Ben-Hur author) Lew Wallace does not come across as honorable:  Billy testified against a number of killers on the assumption that he'd be pardoned, but Wallace abandoned him to his enemies.

Talk about coincidence!  In the afternoon I got the filling, in the evening I saw the Freaks and Geeks episode where Neil's dentist partner had a party for all his clients.  That was also the episode where Linda found out that people in detention weren't allowed to study. (Such a petty show of power is a sign of a weak school.)

Non-Fiction Book Club

This evening I went to the Non-Fiction Book Club Meetup at the Reference Library.  We discussed Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind:  Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.  I just bought the book three days ago so I only had time to skim through it.  Fortunately, every chapter ended with a summary.  Someone started going on about the issue of gun ownership.  Next month's book is Guns, Germs and Steel.

I've got up to level 65 in Candy Crush Saga and 56 in Pet Rescue Saga.  So now it's time to quit them again, and I again removed both apps.  How long before my next regression? (On the subway today, I saw an Asian woman playing Candy Crush Saga on her Ipod.)

I've started watching The Twilight Zone on Hulu, which I can now get with our VPN.  Rod Serling's specialty, of course, was the perverse final twist:  I just saw an episode with Ed Wynn as a salesman who makes a deal with Death to delay his departure until he's managed the really big sales pitch he's always dreamed of, but then a little girl he likes is hit by a car and the only way he can save her is by giving Death the pitch....  The original musical theme (they didn't yet include the famous four notes) was by the great Bernard Herrmann.  I've heard that they managed to slip a lot of subtle social comment into the show, on issues like racial tolerance, because the network people thought it was just weird stories and didn't look any closer.

The Last Picture Show

Daughter: "She's forty years old!" Mother: "So am I, honey.  It's a rather bitchy age"--The Last Picture Show

This evening I saw Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 movie of Larry McMurtry's novel The Last Picture Show (for the second time) at the Revue. It was one of the first movies of the 1970s "nostalgia" genre, but that label doesn't to justice to its realism and honesty.  Its spare, understated style reminded me of old-world directors like Ingmar Bergman.  

The movie introduced several actors who later became famous, including Jeff Bridges, Ellen Burstyn, and Cybill Shepherd, who played a tease acting like a fast girl.  Mother once told me that when she was young people in her community would call a fast girl a "clipper." (As in the fast sailing ships.)

They showed it as part of a series of books turned into movies. (In a month or two they're doing The Godfather.) They were giving away some books as prizes, and I won the last one by naming Bogdanovich's first wife whom he left for Shepherd:  Polly Platt, who was this movie's production designer.  I got the last book,  Mark Kingwell's Unruly Voices:  Essays on Democracy, Civility and the Human Imagination.  Even if I'd won earlier and had a choice, I probably would have chosen that one, though Literature Saved My Life also looked interesting.

What's a VPN?

Father to his teenage daughter: "Look, if I were really a prude, you wouldn't exist!"--Freaks and Geeks

Today I subscribed to a VPN.  That's a "virtual private network," which means we can now get access to a lot of interesting channels worldwide.  Most importantly, we can get the American version of Netflix, which has a much wider range of programming than the Canadian version. (I was saying that the only advantage of living in the U.S. instead of Canada is their version of Netflix.) 

There are also channels like Hulu, which has a lot of classic TV shows, and even some European channels!  Yet I can't help feeling that we're circumventing the rules somehow:  I wonder if this will all be banned soon.

Just saw another funny episode of Freaks and Geeks, the one where Linda and Kim ran over Millie's dog and felt guilty about it, while Bill's mother was dating his gym teacher, to his great discomfort.  Notice that I'm now writing titles with italics instead of ALLCAPS?  I've been learning more of this software's available features.  They also have bold and underlined and, if you want to be nice and ironic in a modern internet style, strikethrough!

THE FLY

"God, don't let it out!"--THE FLY

The weather is pretty hot these days.  It's a bit hard to sleep at night.  I've noticed that the potatoes have really taken off this year. (They're suited to wet springs.)

This afternoon I went to the Chapters at John & Richmond (near the Scotiabank cinema) and bought RIGHTEOUS MINDS, which my Non-Fiction Book Club Meetup will be talking about in three days, and GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL, which we'll be talking about next month.  Time for some speed reading!

This evening I went to see the original 1958 version of THE FLY, with Vincent Price and Herbert Marshall in co-starring roles. (Script by future bestselling novelist James Clavell.) It was pretty creepy.  The film was set in a MAD MEN-like bourgeois household, in Montreal of all places!

This was part of a week of monster movies they're showing at the Revue.  I was joined by Mark and Jeannie of the Classic Movies Meetup.  Afterward the weather was so nice that we walked back to the Dundas West station instead of waiting for the streetcar.

TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE

"Let's get him!" "Let's get him HARD!"--TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE

This morning I went to a Scottish Meetup at the Pipers, which is just a short distance from our house.  I met Harry, who comes from Belfast, and Joanne.  We were also joined by Trevor, who wasn't part of the group but wanted to meet us! (Unfortunately, Fiona the hostess--she and her brother own the Pipers--wasn't feeling well and missed the event.)

I had the traditional Scottish breakfast, largely the same as an English fry-up.  It disagreed with me, and I napped in the afternoon and got sick later.  Next time I'll order something different.

In the evening I saw John Huston's TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, yet again, at a Classic Movie Meetup in the Fairlawn screening room.  This was the first event where we managed to fill the place. (Host Alex had to stand.) It's Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston at their best, an appropriate follow-up to the previous MAGNIFICENT SEVEN event.  Afterward we had a long discussion about a lot of different movies.

I've finished the first half of THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP.  I plan to take a break and read some different stuff (including some of the latest LAPHAM'S QUARTERLY) before returning to it.

Auditions

This evening AFACT had three new people coming to audition. (I took rudimentary notes.) They were called Linda, Tamara and Anastasia.  They read the roles of Sheila the party crasher, Sabrina the stable manager's daughter, Rebecca the daughter in law, and Lily the maid.  In a couple of weeks we're going to see the murder mystery show at the Old Mill.

Moira was throwing out some old books we can't sell to make more room in our bookcases.  I spotted some children's storybooks which I decided to keep in my room. (My bookcases now have some room to spare.)

Our Mazda is almost twelve years old. (We bought it on 9/11.) It'll soon be uninsurable, and Father's decided we can go without a car then.  We're now city people!

I'm sure that this trunk in the basement contains some of our piano books, and we're getting some new bookcases in the living room, so I'm hoping we'll bring out those piano books and put them near the piano.  Who knows how many other old books are in that trunk?

I've finally learned how to format these posts so the words are right next to the margin on the right as well as left side!

TWENTY FEET FROM STARDOM

Today I went to see Dr. Hassan.  He told me that in Arab countries a bereaved family can hire a professional wailer!

I read over sixty pages of THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP today.  In the most recent part Little Nell has been working for a travelling waxworks, presenting verbose descriptions of the figures. (One is of Lord Byron and makes schoolgirls swoon.)

Donald came over and suggested getting a V.P.N. so we can get the American version of Netflix with its far wider selection.  We may be ending our satellite TV subscription so I think I'll buy an antenna to receive HDTV broadcasts as far away as Buffalo.

This evening I saw TWENTY FEET FROM STARDOM at the Bloor.  It's a documentary about backup singers and their career aspirations.  Lisa Fischer was pretty stunning!  It was a sneak preview to raise money for Big Life, a charity that protects elephants and giraffes from poachers in eastern Africa.

I've sent an email to Bereaved Families of Toronto inquiring about their services.  I imagine they'll have sessions for bereaved people to get together.

Yesterday this blog got a record 163 pageviews!

Music trivia night

Last night I dreamed of riding a bicycle through deep powdered snow; meeting movie director David Lean; finding myself three years into the future living in a different place; a science fiction story about a youth ending up in a future where his reading and cycling skills were now at a premium because nobody bothered to learn those skills anymore; and observing that I didn't like Disney's Humphrey the Bear cartoon IT'S IN THE BAG. 

IT'S IN THE BAG is an actual cartoon from the 1950s where this park ranger makes the park's bears dispose of the trash in their individual sectors of the park before they'll get their dinner. (He tries to make the chore a game at first, but they aren't fooled.) Unfortunately, Humphrey's sector is in the middle of the ticktacktoe-style grid, so the other bears quickly shift their own trash into his area and go off to have their dinner while Humphrey's stuck was getting rid of the whole load!

Father's made a plan to renovate the living room by knocking two windows into the southern wall.  That won't be easy, since this is a brick house.

This evening I went to an Over 40 Meetup at the Madison where we competed in a music trivia contest.  Alas, I'm not quite as good at music as I am with some genres of trivia.  Al, Liz and I formed a team called The Experts.  Al knew more than I did, but at least I knew more than Liz.  At one point, Liz spilled wine on our sheet. (Coincidentally, one of the music pieces we heard was titled "Spill the Wine.") The winning team was called The Animals.

THE RED SHOES

"Why do you want to dance?" "Why do you want to live?"--THE RED SHOES

This morning I helped Father trim the branches from the trees that were too close to our southern neighbors' house.  When I help Father with something, what tends to happen is that he does most of the work while I stand around waiting for something to do. (Like a government project.)

In the evening I saw Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's THE RED SHOES at the Event Screen, the latest Film 101 event hosted by Murray Pomerance.  It's about three artists--Diaghilev-like impresario Anton Walbrook, composer Marius Goring and ballerina Moira Shearer--coming together to create a ballet based on the Hans Christian Andersen story "The Red Shoes," the one about a girl who can't take off her magical dancing shoes and gets danced to death.  It's also about the first two artists' pissing match over the third. (Frankly, being married to Goring doesn't look like a barrel of fun.)

Brilliantly photographed by Jack Cardiff, it's a visual triumph.  And it's an earful as well as an eyeful:  I liked the parallel between the ballet's frenzied dance music and the train engine noise foreshadowing Shearer's fate.  But the message of art as an "all or nothing" proposition that doesn't allow compromise struck me as a bit silly.

KICK-ASS

"My only superpower was being invisible to girls"--KICK-ASS

Today I saw the Marvel comic-book movie KICK-ASS at the Event Screen.  I now sit in a regular place there, at the back row half a dozen seats from the left.  This is the one about a teenager who decides to become a superhero vigilante, but he's essentially an amateur.  Then he meets two pros:  the father-daughter team of Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage, resembling Bryan Cranston in BREAKING BAD) and a bloodthirsty, foul-mouthed preteen called Hit Girl.  There's also a gangster's son who becomes Red Mist to infiltrate the superhero circle.  It's sometimes tasteless but pretty fun overall.

I've finished shelving my books.  I even shelved some of the big heap I bought in London last September, which are only seeing the light of day now.  Sometime I may have the bookcase on the north wall and the old desk on the west wall trade places, so that the latter will get in the way of the north window instead of the west.  But I'm not sure:  the west window has no curtains and the desk keeps some of the annoying evening light out.

It looks like we'll be interring Mother's ashes in Cape Breton in the last week of August.  Margaret wants to bring her children, and we'll also invite Puitak and Gordon to come.

Rearranging

We've been rearranging the house quite a bit since Mother died.  Today I rearranged my own room.  The new desk that was on the south side I moved to the southeast corner.  The dresser that was at the southeast I moved to the northwest.  The old desk that was at the northwest I moved to the west.  The dresser mirror and the top of the old desk block much of my western window, but I don't care.

I moved my bed at the southeast corner so it's facing east instead of north.  And I moved the new bookcase to the northeast corner.  Fortunately, it's so new that I'd barely started to fill it.  The old desk, on the other hand, was full of books that had to be taken out, and I've barely started to return them.  The old computer desk that was at the northeast corner I moved out of my room. (We may set it up in the living room so Father won't have to climb the attic stairs to use the computer.) There are a couple of other items I'll be moving out--we're likely to put them in the hallway--but first I'll have to move the books on top of them.

Moira and Father think my room looks better-arranged now.  I also did some vacuuming there. (I was wondering, why is the dust that accumulates in a vacuum cleaner grey instead of, say, brown?) I have a little carpet which I took outside and shook to remove its dust.  I said, "Look at me, I'm Rolf Harris!" Rolf Harris being an Australian singer we saw on TV when we were in England in the mid-1960s.  Part of his music he made with a "wobble board" which he flicked in the same way I was flicking the carpet.  I wish Mother could have seen me!

THE LAST COMMAND

Tsarist general (just before the revolution): "The show will be over in a minute"--THE LAST COMMAND

This morning I was going to go on another Walking Meetup at Sunnyside Park.  But once again, I was late!  And I was going to go to a Karaoke Meetup in the evening, but Jonah the organizer couldn't make it and it was cancelled.

Moira came home today, accompanied by Margaret and her children who are in Toronto to see a Taylor Swift concert.  But we haven't seen much of them so far.

I rented the DVD of THE LAST COMMAND, a silent movie directed by that madman Josef Von Sternberg.  It starts Emil Jannings, a German who was one of the finest actors of '20s cinema.  He specialized in playing humiliated characters, like the demoted hotel doorman in THE LAST LAUGH and Marlene Dietrich's swain in THE BLUE ANGEL.  His performance here, along with THE WAY OF ALL FLESH, won him the first Best Actor Oscar.

In this movie Jannings plays a Russian prince commanding the imperial armies in World War I just before the Russian Revolution breaks out.  He gets involved with a woman who's dedicated to the revolution but also attracted to him.  In the last part he's a broken refugee in Hollywood, playing an extra in a movie set in the earlier time, directed by a former revolutionary (William Powell) whom he'd once arrested.

AFACT

This evening I went to another Applause for a Cause Theatre meeting.  Vic Blackman, whom I know from TOR, joined the group as stage manager.  It looks like maybe a dozen people will come to next week's casting call.  There'll be more women than men, but we can have a woman play a male role (what they call a "trousers role" in opera).  I rehearsed my lines again.  I got the idea to divide them into two or three sentences each to organize them in my brain.

I've mentioned that there's a lot about Mother that I never learned. But she did tell us a lot of stories about her childhood.  Like there was the time that her father brought home a Christmas tree, she didn't like it, so he went out a got another one. (Her mother said that he never did that for any of his other children.) Or the time that her father was griping that young people in the present day (then ca. 1930) were into dancing shamelessly, and her mother reminded him that when he was young he'd danced in a graveyard once! Or the time that she and her sister were in a penny candy store, she said "Let's get two cents worth of this," and her sister said "Two cents me eyeball!" A man overheard them and got a big kick out of it:  when he met my aunt soon afterward, he couldn't resist repeating "Two cents me eyeball!"

Art walk

Yesterday I went on another ROMwalk, in the Grange area near the AGO.  Puitak lives in that area, and I visited her and told her about Mother.  Today she and Gordon brought us flowers and a sympathy card.

Today I went on Betty-Anne's art walk. (I got there early for a change.) We started at Alison Milne gallery where they were displaying black & white photos of Detroit's urban decay:  one photo reminded me of the room where Sleeping Beauty found the spinning wheel and pricked her finger.  Then we went to Pari Nadimi gallery and saw photos of Italy's suburban wasteland and paintings that looked like double-exposure photos.

Betty-Anne normally points out interesting shops along Queen Street as we pass between destinations, but we got caught in the rain. (Shoulda worn my raincoat.) So we hurried to Graven Feather  and met Holly Wheatcroft on the opening night of her exhibition.  Then we went to the nearby Ursa restaurant and got samples of this dish that combined tofu and mushrooms and alfalfa sprouts and some other stuff:  I suppose it must have been a delicacy, but I'm really not an expert.

In the last week I've returned to the computer games Candy Crush Saga and Pet Rescue Saga.  It's a bit like an ex-smoker returning to his habit in a time of stress.  I've advanced past Level 50 in Candy Crush Saga, but in Pet Rescue Saga I'm still stuck at Level 34.

THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP

I've started reading the early Charles Dickens novel THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP.  It's Dickens at his most shamelessly melodramatic.  It's rather hit & miss:  the first few chapters have a narrator character, but then he gets replaced with conventional third-person narration.  Mr. Quilp is an obvious but gleefully written dwarf villain. (Visually grotesque bad guys are a long cultural tradition, from Shakespeare to Dick Tracy.)

There's a funny chapter when Little Nell's whelpish brother has proposed to his friend Dick Sniveller that he'll pressure her into eventually marrying Dick, and the only problem is that Dick already has a girlfriend called Sophie Wackles.  So he goes to a social event at a girl's school run by Sophie and her mother and sisters, planning to act jealous and dump her.  And there's also a market gardener there who Sophie's older sister and mother want her to marry instead... It's like something from a different book, and a better one.

I wish I could tell Mother about this book:  that's the sort of thing she liked hearing about.  I wonder if my writing on this subject seems emotionally distant, like Joan Didion's THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING which I happened to read recently. (I want to read the sequel, about her daughter's death.)

I had an unusual dream last night.  It took place at Broadmoor, the British institution for the criminally insane whose inmates have included psychopaths like one of the Kray brothers and one of the Moors Murderers. (Their partners were judged sane and ended up in conventional prison.) My parents were there to babysit some children, but I remembered that Mother was dead, and she suddenly disappeared from the scene.

Maybe Broadmoor in this dream was the world of the living, full of crazy people and dangerous people.  And maybe babysitting those kids meant raising me and my siblings.  And of course Mother's sudden disappearance was her death.

THE GREAT ESCAPE

John and Kathrine came over again today and did a lot of yard work.  I didn't do much, just separating their clippings into stuff that'll fit into our compost and branches that we'll have to bundle up and let the city collect. (Or at least, I started that job.) But I did get to cook dinner, which was the rest of the Indian food plus some rice and boneless chicken.  I probably wouldn't have even got to do that if Father hadn't been drowsy!

I found out online about a support group for bereaved families in Toronto.  I went out and found their office--it's near the YWCA headquarters in the Summerhill area--but I think I came at the wrong time and couldn't find anyone.  I'll try again later.

This evening I saw John Sturges' THE GREAT ESCAPE at the event screen.  It was made by the same people as THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, with some of the same actors, particularly Steve McQueen, and this one's even more exciting.  James Garner is an actor I like. (He disapproved of the Reagan presidency, and I recently noticed in that Harry Belafonte documentary that he was a supporter of the civil rights movement.)

Cecilia from Brazil was reading of my mother's death on my blog and sent a message of condolence.  This blog does have its readers. (Last Saturday I got almost eighty pageviews despite having been on a break for almost a week.)

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN

"Your friends don't like you any more.  You force them to make too many decisions.  With me, there's just one decision to make:  Do as you're told!"--THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN

This afternoon I went to the Maria Schucka library to return THE CATCHER IN THE RYE and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. (I'd read their closing passages, along with HUCKLEBERRY FINN and L'ETRANGER, at Saturday's Meetup.) It was pouring rain, appropriate for pathetic fallacy.

I felt something like the same way I felt fifteen years ago, after a meeting with my thesis committee.  I'd written the sixth draft of my dissertation, and waited three months for this meeting, but it turned out I wasn't any closer to finishing. (A committee member said "We want to impress upon you..." That's how you talk to schoolboys!) Afterward I felt really empty, not feeling like doing anything or even watching TV, and I ended up walking over to the Wychwood library just to do something.

This evening I went to the Central in Mirvish Village, where the Classic Movie Meetup showed John Sturges' THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN.  It isn't close to the Kurosawa original THE SEVEN SAMURAI, but on its own terms it's efficient and exciting, with a rousing score by Elmer Bernstein. (Alex told us that when they were filming it Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen didn't get along and kept trying to upstage each other.)

My mother died this morning

About a week ago Mother fell down the stairs in the middle of the night. (We should have kept the hall light on!) They took her in an ambulance to intensive care at St. Michael's hospital.  I rode in the ambulance with her and stayed at the hospital overnight, and later made several visits.  She seemed to be recovering--though even when awake she was too drowsy to talk--and they even moved her out of the ICU.

But in the early hours today she passed on.  I wasn't there, but she was unconscious anyway.  They say it was a peaceful death.  We decided to cremate her through the Simple Alternative.  We'll bury her ashes at the cemetery in her hometown of Louisburg, Cape Breton, where most of her family is buried.  She was almost 94, a lot older than I thought she was. (I have a feeling there's a lot about her that I never learned.)

Of course, this family crisis is the reason I haven't been posting for the last week.  Father and Moira didn't want me writing about her state, or rather they felt that Mother wouldn't want it.  But that's moot now.  Life goes on:  on Wednesday the Coro Verdi had the end of year concert; on Thursday I returned the CENTENNIAL DVDs on time and got my blood iron level tested, also at St. Michael's so I combined it with a visit; on Saturday I hosted the latest Reading Out Loud Meetup, with the topic of closing passages. (Next month we'll do poetry again.)

Margaret came from Kingston on Friday, and when she returned today she took Moira with her for a few days.  Donald, John and Kathrine came over for dinner and we ordered Indian food.  At the moment Father and I are alone here.

Sunnyside

Today I was going to go on a Walking Meetup at the Sunnyside beach.  We were meeting at the Dundas West station to take the Roncesvalles streetcar south to Sunnyside, but I got there five minutes late and they must have left already.  I hoped to catch up with them, but it was over fifteen minutes before the next streetcar arrived, so I ended up doing the walk by myself. (On the way back I stopped at John's house near High Park, but he was out.)

I've finally returned the THIS IS TOM JONES discs.  One part I watched over and over was the Moody Blues singing "Ride My See-Saw." It was only the second time I'd heard it:  I heard it on the Muzak near Metro Hall some years back and noticed it because CTV used the melody in the CANADA A.M. theme music back in the 1970s. That song really impresses me:  the producer clearly learned a lot from Phil Spector's "wall of sound" style.  But the preceding recitation did remind me of Spinal Tap.

I'm still translating that Spanish comic with Mortadelo and Filemon involved in Formula One auto racing.  Today I found a sentence that none of the online dictionaries could translate:  When Mortadelo gets thrown out of a race car (?) he says "Que nos desmorramos!" (There may be just one "R" in it.) In the end I decided that "Pray for us!" was good enough.

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE

I've started reading a recently-acquired volume in the series reprinting Harold Gray's famous comic strip LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE.  It's the second in the series, taking the strip to the end of the 1920s. (It's greatest stories, from the 1930s, lie just ahead.)

This strip, of course, is about a spunky red-haired orphan, her dog Sandy, and her millionaire benefactor Daddy Warbucks.  She was actually in an orphanage at the start of the strip, until Daddy adopted her.  But the strip's structure requires Daddy to disappear periodically, leaving Annie to rely on her own resources until his return.  She'd end up meeting honest working people, on the farm or in the city, work hard (in the circus, at a newsstand or elsewhere) and offer homespun wisdom.

Harold Gray was a great storyteller.  I remember being highly impressed back in the mid-1970s when they reprinted some of the strip's '30s stories.  The reprint introduction points out that Gray was heavily influenced by Charles Dickens, who often used young orphans as his heroes.

I got 90 pageviews on Monday!  Peter Pan must have attracted a lot of websearches.

CENTENNIAL

"What brought you to St. Louis?" "The river"--CENTENNIAL

This evening I was going to a Karaoke Meetup at Chalker's.  But when I got there it turned out they didn't have karaoke there!  Oh well, at least it got me out of the house.  On the way back I was wondering what I'd post about today, but I stopped at 2Q Video and rented the 1978 miniseries CENTENNIAL.

CENTENNIAL is a maxi-miniseries, over 20 hours long, from James Michener's meganovel about the development of a Colorado community, starting with the formation of the land millions of years ago.  It's fairly middlebrow, but I enjoyed the first episode, "Only the Rocks Live Forever."  That takes place near the end of the eighteenth century and involves the sometimes violent interactions between a fur-buying French-Canadian coureur de bois (Robert Conrad) and the local First Nations.  There's also Conrad's Scottish partner (Richard Chamberlain), who falls in love with an Arapaho hero's daughter (Barbara Carrera, who's easy on the eyes), but her father gives her to Conrad... (The title comes from an Arapaho proverb.)

The later episodes take the story through the frontier era into the twentieth century.  I got the whole set for a week, but it may take longer to see.

Another ROMwalk

After the rain let up this afternoon, the warm weather came back.  I've put away that winter blanket again.

This evening I went on another ROMwalk.  This one started at the Anglican church near King & Trinity, and went through the Corktown and Distillery areas.  It wasn't quite as big as the Annex walk, but I think there were at least fifty people.  That includes some other people from the Introvert Meetup, but I had a hard time finding them.

I'm still enjoying the videos of THIS IS TOM JONES highlights.  Every episode would have him doing a hip-shaking number to turn the staidest housewives into bobby soxers!  His guests included singers like Little Richard and Janis Joplin, with whom he'd do lively duets.

There were also comedians like Richard Pryor, who joked about birth control and religion at a time when the TV networks considered both subjects too "daring." (This was about the time when David Steinberg got THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS SHOW cancelled.) The improvisational comedy groups Ace Trucking Company and The Committee both appear, and I recognized Fred Willard and Howard Hessemann, as well as Bill Saluga doing his "You can call me Ray..." routine, which I always found annoying.

Two singers

Not much happening today.  I was hoping to see THE GREAT GATSBY in the afternoon with Bev, but that fell through for now.  And there was going to be a meeting of AFACT (Applause For A Cause Theater), but that got delayed to Sunday.  So I went out and rented a couple of videos.

One was SING YOUR SONG, a documentary about singer-activist Harry Belafonte.  He's still being active today on issues like New Orleans.  The clips they showed of his TV specials made me wish I could see them whole!  (I never knew that "There's a Hole in the Bucket" was a Belafonte song.)

The other was some episodes from Tom Jones' TV show between 1969 and 1971.  The first episode was pretty fun, though the joke about four beauties coming out of a packing case was not PC.  They had Peter Sellers in a car-salesman sketch written by Graham Chapman and John Cleese of Monty Python fame.

Through experimentation, I've figured out that half an hour is too long to let a Klondike bar thaw at room temperature. (It gets all gooey.) But at fifteen minutes it's melted enough to appeal to me.  I like half-melted ice cream.

The spuds are in the ground

"And the best part of it was that he was now the very person he wanted to be.  If he had been free to choose, he would have chosen to be no one else.  Because now he knew that there were thousands and thousands of forms of joy in the world, but that all were essentially one and the same, namely, the joy of being able to love"--THE NEVERENDING STORY

Today I finally got the potatoes planted in our backyard garden.  I hoed out six rows for them first, and later I watered them too.  Next year I hope to do it earlier.

In the evening I finished rereading THE NEVERENDING STORY.  It's still wonderful.  Now I'll go back to the LAPHAM'S QUARTERLY animals issue.

Someone on THE HUFFINGTON POST commented, "The president [Obama] is not a magician," and I replied, "That's the understatement of our time!"

I've started a couple of new Facebook games.  I'm trying Western Story because I liked Frontierville so much.  And I'm also trying Invincible Armada, in which you build a shipping fleet and fight pirates in the Mediterranean.

PETER PAN

This afternoon I went to the Open Doors events at the Bloor and Revue cinemas.  At both of them I got to inside the projection room and see the projectors. (The Bloor largely projects digitally these days.) And both places had free popcorn!

Later I joined the Classical Movies Meetup to see the silent version of PETER PAN (for the second time), with live piano by William O'Meara.  It's the best film I've seen of J.M. Barrie's play:  Betty Bronson is remarkable in the title role. (Silent cinema is well-suited to adult actors playing children, as Mary Pickford often did.) Next month they're showing the Buster Keaton comedy THE THREE AGES.

In addition to the feature, they showed a silent Our Gang short called DOG HEAVEN, 1890s French films by the Lumiere brothers, and footage of Remembrance Day ceremonies at the Ottawa war memorial.  They took so much time all together that I didn't get home till past 7:00.  Oh well, I think I prefer scalloped potatoes after they've gone cold. (You won't burn your mouth.)

Bev and I are trying to find a time when we can see THE GREAT GATSBY together.  I'd said I prefer the non-3D version, but that's really a minor detail for me.

KUMARE

"This is the story of the biggest lie I ever told, and the greatest truth I ever experienced"--Vikhram Gandhi

This morning I went to Doors Open with a few people from my Asperger's Meetup.  We visited City Hall, Osgoode Hall and Campbell House.  Casper was pushing a pet rabbit in a stroller, which got a lot of attention. (I was also going to see THE GREAT GATSBY with some Aspies this afternoon, but we couldn't find it in non-3D at the right time.)

This evening I saw the documentary KUMARE on DVD, for the second time. (Last year I saw it at the Bloor.) It's a film by Desi American Vikhram Gandhi about his year-long intellectual experiment posing as a guru in Phoenix, Arizona.  He acquired about fourteen followers and advised them to find their own inner guru, which seems good advice to me.

I also saw the documentary CITIZEN HEARST about William Randolph Hearst and his media empire.  Unfortunately, only the first third was about Hearst itself, the rest being about the Hearst company after his death.

Just a few days ago I finally put away my extra winter blanket, and then came this cool weather so I ended up taking it back out!

"What Do You Worka, John?'

"I have a message for all those people calling me a communist:  'communist' is spelled with a 'C'!"--David Steinberg

It's been a while since I wrote about my childhood memories.  We had a record player with quite a few children's records.  Our Golden Records and Spear Records were in 78 R.P.M., which they still had fifty years ago.  But the Peter Pan Records were 45s, which had a wider hole in the center back then.

One of our records had the song "Where Do You Worka John?" It was a duet--not for sensitive Italians--that went like this:

"Where do you worka, John?" "On the Delaware-Lackawanna!"
"What do you doa, John?" "I pusha, I pusha, I pusha!"
"What do you pusha, John?" "I pusha, I pusha da trucka!"
"Where do you pusha, John?" (together) "On the Delaware-Lackawannawannawannawan, the Delaware Lackawanna!"

I was looking it up online last night.  It's a novelty song from the 1920s, co-written by the great Harry Warren, who shared in three Best Song Oscars, and whose real name was Salvatore Guaragna.  The original song included verses like "Where do you worka, wop?" "On the Washington Monument top!" "What do you doa, wop?" "I pusha, I pusha da mop!" You can hear different versions on Youtube.

This evening I saw QUALITY BALLS, a documentary about comedian David Steinberg, at the Bloor.  It's been a while since I laughed this hard:  he's a shtick genius. (Director Barry Avrich was coming to answer questions, but he was a few minutes late so I didn't wait.)

BARRYMORE

"I don't know what I'd do without him, but I'd like to"--BARRYMORE

Today I went out to 2Q Video and rented the DVD of BARRYMORE, with Christopher Plummer in a largely one-man show as John Barrymore at the end of his days. (This was a video that got broadcast in cinemas, like Plummer's CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA, which I also saw on DVD.) It was quite a tour de force.  I'd like to know more about Ned Shelton, the playwright who encouraged him to become a great Shakespearean actor.

The other day I finished translating the Portuguese booklet about Saint Bruno of Cologne.  I learned that when the rest of western Europe was caught up in the First Crusade zeitgeist, he and his monks were unaffected and continued to cultivate their own gardens.  Maybe he WAS a saint!

I realized that my dental appointment is scheduled for the same day as our final choir concert.  I'll have to reschedule it lest I take too long to recover. (I tried to do that today, but the doctor wasn't in just then.)

I went to bed at 8:00 P.M., then woke up just before midnight.  No doubt it'll take me a while to get back to sleep!

CLEOPATRA

Cleopatra (seeing Julius Caesar force his way into her boudoir): "Oh, it's you."

This afternoon I saw Joseph Mankiewicz' 1963 megabudget epic CLEOPATRA.  There was a big audience for the event screen.  Lots of talent but the drama is a bit bland. (At least you can see where all the money went.) The stormy relationship between Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra and Richard Burton's Marc Antony brings their real-life marriage to mind.  By the end I wanted to tell Burton, "Stop whining and die already!"

The best performance is Roddy McDowall's shrewd, sinister Augustus.  He was a close friend of celebrities like E.T., and arranged for his diaries to be published 100 years after his death, in the 2090s when I'd be 130.  I hope against hope that I'll live that long and find out what he says about them!

Did I mention that it's just over four hours long?  After it was finished I had to go straight to choir practice without dinner. (As it was, I literally didn't have a second to spare:  I arrived just as they were starting the first number!) So I ate afterward, but at least our run-through ended early.

About twenty years ago, when the CBC opened its new Toronto building, John bought a lot of stuff from the old building for a song, including some iron frames, which we stored in the side yard.  Today Father and I finally took them out to the sidewalk to be recycled.  My hands sure got dirty!

ON STAGE

"Cheerleaders have to date athletes.  It's the law"--FREAKS & GEEKS

Today I finished my latest PEANUTS reprint and started the third reprint volume of Leonard Starr's comic strip ON STAGE.  It's about Mary Perkins and her efforts to start and maintain a career as a Broadway actress.  It's one of the best-written strips, with sharp dialogue like "Oola's producer has the look of a man who invested all his money in 3-D glasses." (This was in 1959, five years after the original 3-D fad fizzled.  How much longer will the current revival last?) And the artwork is impressive too:  like Alex Raymond and John Cullen Murphy, Starr was a comics artist who knew how to draw pretty women!

The story I'm reading about just now has Mary coming to the Riviera to promote a movie she made that's in contention for a thinly-veiled Cannes Film Festival.  Her big publicity-hound rival is Oola LaBelle, a thinly-veiled Brigitte Bardot.  Meanwhile her photojournalist fiance Pete Fletcher is being held behind the iron curtain and she's trying to get him free, attracting a con artist's attention... (Later he did get free and marry her.)

This evening I saw the documentary SCATTER MY ASHES AT BERGDORF'S at the Bloor.  (The title comes from a NEW YORKER cartoon by Victoria Roberts, whose style clearly influenced the look of Milhous on THE SIMPSONS.) It's about Manhattan's high-class designer label store Bergdorf-Goodman's.  That store's window displays are truly stunning.  But I find something depressing about the luxury trade.  Vanity of vanities, all is vanity...

After I got home, I saw the FREAKS & GEEKS episode on Netflix where Sam becomes the team mascot with a giant Viking head so he can be close to cheerleader Cynthia, but she has a crush on the basketball star...

GUNGA DIN

"How can we start a nice little war?"--GUNGA DIN

This evening I saw George Stevens' GUNGA DIN--for maybe the third time--with the Classic Movie Meetup.  Like SUNRISE, we saw it on the video screen at the Central pub in Mirvish Village. (As I was arriving there, I could hear Vince Vaughan saying, "You're coming later than the others.  Smart move, baby!")

The movie is a hodgepodge of mostly enjoyable Hollywood kitsch.  The original director was Howard Hawks before he got sacked in mid-shoot, and there's a big element of Hawksian bromance.   The credits claim that it's "based on historical fact" about the Thuggee, which makes me suspicious:  I'll have to do some Wikipedia research.  As it was, I found myself rooting for the thugs!

In the climax, the thugs capture our heroes but don't kill them because they want them to witness their army's destruction, which screenwriters call the Penguin cliche. (The Penguin was always taking Batman prisoner on the '60s TV show but keeping him alive so the latter could see his latest climactic villainy.) Notice also that they should have done a better job of stabbing Sam Jaffe in the back.

A ROM walk

Vince Vaughan (introducing a waitress to Jon Favreau): "This is the guy behind the guy behind the guy!"--SWINGERS

This afternoon I went on one of the Royal Ontario Museum's walking tours around Toronto. (I met some people from the Introvert Meetup, including Rhonda, whom I'd met on the NEAT walk the other day.) This one was in the annex, showing the vintage architecture of certain homes and churches.  I may or may not have gone on a similar walk in past years.  In July they're doing one in Wychwood Park, which isn't far from where I live.

I've finished the ditch around the garden.  Now I've started going through the ground with a pitchfork.  Then I'll hoe it and it'll be ready for planting!  And I also got the idea to leave a pile of weeds near the compost bin so that every time we put in some compost we can add a layer of weeds over it.

This evening I saw Douglas Liman's SWINGERS--for maybe the third time--at the Event Screen.  Really funny stuff. (I doubt that Frank Sinatra expected to live long enough for his LIFESTYLE to come back into fashion!) I wonder if much of the dialogue was improvised?

FIGHT LIKE SOLDIERS, DIE LIKE CHILDREN

Romeo Dallaire on recruiting child soldiers: "It's not just a crime against humanity, it's a sin."

This evening I saw the documentary FIGHT LIKE SOLDIERS, DIE LIKE CHILDREN at the Bloor.  That cinema's within walking distance of my home, so with the warm weather I'm now walking to it!

The film's about retired general Romeo Dallaire's efforts to rescue and rehabilitate child soldiers in Africa. (He wrote a book with the same title.) He's one of the good Canadians, a hero of mine.  He realizes that ending this tragedy will take decades and has to be done one step at a time.  Director Patrick Reed appeared for a Q&A after the movie.

Someday I should read Dallaire's book SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL, about how the United Nations thwarted his efforts to prevent the Rwandan holocaust, the start of the region's continuing instability.

NEAT walk

Today I went on a NEAT walk.  It stands for Newcomers Explore & Appreciate Toronto.  These walks are organized by Culture Link, an organization to help Toronto immigrants feel at home.  I sometimes go on them because I like meeting immigrants.  This walk had immigrants from Spain, Nigeria, Pakistan and Korea.  We met at the Spadina station streetcar platform, took the streetcar to College Street, then walked to Nathan Phillips Square.

On the way home I stopped at Fiesta Gardens on Christie Street to get some more seed potatoes to plant:  we now have both Yukon Gold and Kennebec.  I'm also digging a ditch around the garden to improve its drainage.  And today I brought out our electric lawnmower and cut our grass for the first time.

This morning the internet signal was flickering so I couldn't open anything.  But in the afternoon Father fixed the problem just by turning the modem off and on again!

This evening I went to another meeting of the theatre group.  We set June 14 for the big casting call.

A big new traffic source for this blog is the European social network vk.com .  In recent days a Polish spammer left some spam comments here. (Oh well, it's better than nothing.)

New shoes

Today I finally got a new pair of shoes. (The soles on my last ones split after visiting London in September.) We went to the Wal-Mart on St. Clair west of Keele, where I got a Dr. Scholl's pair.  My shoe size is 8 1/2, which is sometimes scarce.  I also got a light summer jacket to replace the tattered green one.

Today was Moira's birthday, so John, Donald and Kathrine came over and we ate Indian food.  They also brought a new bookcase for my room, which fits into one corner just right.  I won't be running out of book space for a long while!

Gordon lost some weight recently, and sent Moira an email (through my address), telling her the titles of the diet books he was using:  stuff like THE PALEO DIET.

This evening I finally finished translating the children's history of Portugal.  Now I've started translating those booklets about the lives of the saints.  The first one is about Saint Bruno, who was born in Cologne and became a famous teacher in Rheims, educating people like Pope Urban II.  He was the pope who called a council that was supposed to discuss church reform, but he changed the subject by launching the most unsaintly First Crusade! (Sounds like a Republican.)

The US has now overtaken Russia as this blog's leading source of pageviews.

Under the weather

Puitak and Gordon invited us to lunch at the Mandarin restaurant near Eglinton station.  They'd recently visited China, including Puitak's hometown in Guangdong.  I finished lunch way earlier than the others did. (I skipped the soup.) My fortune cookie said "Expect much from yourself and little from others," which seems like good advice.

Unfortunately, the food disagreed with me.  I was sick that evening. (Maybe I should have skipped dinner.) While I usually write blog posts around midnight, I waited till the morning to write this one.

I've been reading the Fanatagraphic Books series of PEANUTS reprints.  I'm near the end of the 1960s by now.  I've noticed Sunday strips I remember reading at the time (on Saturdays, of course) from as early as 1968.  And I remember seeing some dailies from 1969.

I've found a Facebook page devoted to classic comic strips like KERRY DRAKE.

THE CONVERSATION

This afternoon I started spading the garden. (I'll have to get some more planting potatoes.) And I printed out that song score so Moira can record the accompaniment before I resume singing lessons with Giuseppe.

This evening I saw Francis Coppola's THE CONVERSATION (for the second time) with the Movie Meetup group.  It was a special showing at the Event Screen, presented by Murray Pomeranz.  It's a very '70s movie, all about Watergate-era paranoia.  Gene Hackman has one of those character roles where I almost forget it's him.  There's one shot of blood gushing out of a toilet that must have inspired a famous shot in Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING.

Afterward I went to the Fox & Fiddle near St. George station for a Karaoke Meetup with Paula.  I sang Dean Martin's "Sway" and Chubby Checker's "The Limbo Rock"; she sang Prince's "Kiss" and Madonna's "Vogue." (She enjoyed FREAKS & GEEKS too!)

The other day I got an interest cheque for over $1000 and today I couldn't find it! (My room's been in some disarray with the computer being moved.) But I mentioned it to Father and it turned out not to be in my room at all, but downstairs.

THE NEVERENDING STORY

Teacher monitoring the hall: "Last one in the classroom is the first on welfare"--FREAKS & GEEKS

This afternoon I set up my new printer under my new desk and connected it to the computer.  Now I can print out my score for Bizet's "Je Crois Entendre Encore"!

Afterward I went out to the Gladstone library, where they've finished the renovations, and borrowed Michael Ende's children's book THE NEVERENDING STORY.  I read it almost thirty years ago and recall that it was really, really wonderful!  Some people have the imagination.  No doubt it helps that the translation was written by Ralph Manheim, the greatest German to English translator ever. (His version of Gunter Grass' THE TIN DRUM is a classic of translation.)

I'd seen the 1984 movie of the book, and enjoyed it enough to go to the original, but the movie didn't quite prepare me for how wonderful the book was.  It's just as well I saw the movie first; if I'd read the book first, it might have suffered in comparison.  After I finish rereading the book, I'll try to find the movie too.

At choir practice this evening, John George said he'd been meaning to tell me I'm a really good writer from what he's read here.  And Giovanni told me he'd read THE NEVERENDING STORY to his son years ago.

ROMEO+JULIET

This afternoon I saw Baz Luhrmann's ROMEO+JULIET at the Event Screen.  Never a dull moment, but Luhrmann's direction tends to the frantic:  in too many scenes the actors HAVE TO SCREAM SHAKESPEARE'S LIIIIINES!!!  But I liked Claire Danes' angel wings. (I shudder to imagine Luhrmann's take on THE GREAT GATSBY.)

John and Kathrine came over for dinner.  John brought over a desk and assembled it in my room next to my big window.  Then I decided to move my computer to this desk and turn the old desk into a bookcase.

I'm still rewatching FREAKS AND GEEKS on Netflix.  The other day I saw the episode where Sam ended up streaking through the school hallway (just when the bell rang and everyone came out of the classrooms, of course) after the other boys threw him out of the locker room without his clothes.  That's the same episode where Lindsay told Nick he should work at his dream of becoming a rock drummer but when he tried to get serious about rehearsing the rest of his group walked out.  Painfully funny!

The marriage of true minds

Today was the June ROLT Meetup, devoted to writing on love, which I called "The marriage of true minds."  There were just four of us, including me and Moira.  Joel turned up as usual, and there was a new member called Helen.  When we met Butler's Pantry was packed and so noisy that we had to move to the area out in front, but by the time we were finished it was almost empty again!

I read a section of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez' wonderful ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, about Aureliano being in love with Remedios, Shakespeare's "marriage of true minds" sonnet, and the section of the Book of Proverbs describing a virtuous wife.  Moira read something for the first time:  some fourteenth-century poems by the Iranian poet Hafiz, translated by someone from Oklahoma, which sounded very modern.  Joel and Helen both read poems they'd written themselves.  Next month our topic will be closing passages.

There was a report on THE HUFFINGTON POST about the cause of Stonewall Jackson's death.  It gave us a chance to post about the American Civil War, which I always enjoy discussing.  The other day they had a report about the Obama administration still resisting allowing girls to take the Plan B "morning after" contraceptive without parental permission, a subject I feel strongly about.  It's an emergency medication that has to be taken within a few days, and forcing girls to get up the courage to tell their parents they've been having sex first will mean more teenage pregnancies, and that isn't even in the parents' interest!  So I've written a lot of posts about that too.

Yesterday I got almost eighty pageviews!  My readership is still increasing these days.  My biggest traffic source just now is the website linked to Current TV, the channel Al Gore started which Al-Jazeera recently bought. (The second is filmhill.com .) Russia still leads in my individual pageview readers, but Canada and the US have both surpassed Germany.

Applause for a Cause

This morning I woke up with a huge headache.  It must be the weather.

This evening I went to another Applause for a Cause meeting.  Two weeks from now we'll be having our casting call.  It looks like our charity will be the Geneva Centre for autistic and Asperger's people, which both Ali (through his son) and I have been involved with.  I noticed that my character is a "confirmed bachelor" and wondered if that means he's gay. (The British magazine PRIVATE EYE uses the term in that sense.) Ali will be playing the detective and I encouraged him to use my fedora in his costume.

Both Don and Martha have worked in TV, and they were talking about what a headache that is.  Martha says some TV people are really mean, and Don says everyone at HGTV seems to be twelve. I mentioned that Moira overheard someone in the Toronto movie industry on the subway who said that a lot of the stars were jerks but spoke well of Sean Connery and Kathleen Turner.  Don mentioned that he'd witnessed the filming of SWITCHING CHANNELS 25 years ago and Turner was really bitchy all through the shoot. (She was in a bad mood because she thought her co-star was going to be Michael Caine, and they had wonderful chemistry when they rehearsed, but Caine had to do reshoots on JAWS 4 and Turner was pregnant so filming couldn't be delayed, and they had to recast Burt Reynolds in Caine's role.  When Reynolds met Turner, according to Turner's memoir, he said, "This is the first time a woman had top billing over me.") Reynolds, on the other hand, was popular with everyone on the crew other than Turner.

My feet got sore by the time I got home.  I really need a new pair of shoes!

Art walk

Today I finished spreading the compost on the garden. (It always surprises me how much it settles down with time.) Next step is spading.

This evening I went on Betty-Anne's Queen Street art walk.  We started at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, where they had a big show of photographs from David Thompson's collection. One of them had a caption in Portuguese:  it showed a steamship of 1920s Yugoslav immigrants arriving in Santos, Brazil.  There was also a Michael Snow video display which reminded me of Saul Bass titles.

Our next stop was some more photographs at the Propeller Centre. Then we saw some streetscape photos at a place whose name I can't remember. (And it wasn't on the itinerary, so I can't find it out from there.) Finally we went to the Gladstone Hotel and saw "In the Playroom," an odd display of Jonathan Hobin photographs of little kids making tableaus based on recent events, with titles like "Diana's Dead." Some of us found them tasteless.

I met several people I know from other Meetups there.

OCEAN'S ELEVEN

Frank Sinatra (propositioning estranged wife Angie Dickinson): "What's wrong with a little hey-hey?"--OCEAN'S ELEVEN

This afternoon we went out to Future Shop and bought a new Hewlett-Packard inkjet printer for my computer.  They had a lot of Canon models there, but my previous printer was a Canon and a headache.

This evening I saw Lewis Milestone's original Rat Pack version of OCEAN'S ELEVEN (for the second time) at the Event Screen.  It's overlong but has some cool dialogue. ("Happy burial, dead dog.") It may have started out as a Las Vegas heist comedy, but it's really just an excuse for Sinatra and friends to have fun together.  The best performance is from Richard Conte as the "electrician" dying of cancer ("the Big Casino"). Saul Bass' opening credits are worth seeing on the big screen.

With WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN finished, I've resumed reading the animals issue of LAPHAM'S QUARTERLY.  So far, among others, I've read selections from John Steinbeck's THE GRAPES OF WRATH (the turtle crossing the highway), Herman Melville's MOBY-DICK, T.H. White's THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING (young Arthur being transformed into a fish), William Butler Yeats' "Leda and the Swan" and a LaFontaine fable about the gnat fighting the lion.

The iceman cometh

Gregory Peck (giving Audrey Hepburn pajamas to sleep in): "Sorry, honey, but I haven't worn a night gown for years"--ROMAN HOLIDAY

When we got our new refrigerator a dozen years ago, its freezer made crushed ice from our water supply.  But a few years ago the machine malfunctioned and now we have to buy ice and put it inside to be crushed.  With the warm weather here, I looked around for ice to buy.  The corner store doesn't have it yet, and neither does the No Frills supermarket that we frequent.  But I found some at Loblaw's this afternoon.  After taking it home I smashed it with a hammer to make the pieces as small as possible before putting them in the freezer.  You have to do it right away before the pieces start to melt, because if they refreeze they'll get stuck together and become one big piece again.

This evening I saw William Wyler's ROMAN HOLIDAY (for the second time) at the Yonge & Dundas Event Screen.  The story's pretty thin, but Audrey Hepburn's bonitinha as a button.  True story:  Gregory Peck was going to come first in the billing since he was the established star while Hepburn was the newcomer, but Peck himself asked to give Hepburn equal billing, because he accurately guessed that she'd win the Best Actress Oscar, and he feared looking silly if his name was ahead of hers.  Classy people!

The movie also had Eddie Albert in a supporting role.  I remember him on GREEN ACRES, which I watched faithfully, making a speech at the end of the show about what made America great, and you could take it seriously or see it as clever irony depending on your bent. (Moira says Albert got better-looking as he got older!) My favorite character was Haney (Pat Buttram), who was always trying to sell them stuff.  I think he had an invisible assistant.

Over 50 Meetup

This morning I went to a Meetup for people over 50.  Ruthie, the very friendly organizer, calls us Vavavavoomers, which makes sense:  you have to be over 50 to remember that expression! (They should call a Meetup for people over 70 "What's the story, morning glory?") Their first event was at the Scarborough restaurant Eggsact, which sounded promising, but it was too early for me to get there.

This event was at Edward Gardens, and it was also a bit too early:  I got there 15 minutes late and the others had already gone down into the ravine.  Ruthie was still up at the meeting place, because her legs are too weak for the steps. (That's what happens when you have a Meetup for people over 50!) I tried to find the others but couldn't, so I returned and hung with Ruthie until they returned.  She was telling me the history of her neighborhood, so I ended up telling her about our own house's 100-year history.

Later I finished reading WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN.  I'd shown the book to Ruthie, and she's so interested that I promised to lend it to her at our next event. (Ernest Thompson Seton was ahead of his time:  I just read that he criticized the policy of forcing First Nations children into residential schools when hardly anyone else was doing so.  Ruthie's interested in residential school history because she was doing some legal work related to that.)

And Ruthie says she's still learning the organization game, and she'll schedule events less early in the future.

Two more Meetups

Today I went to a Classical Movies Meetup at the Central in Mirvish Village.  We had a buffet lunch and saw F.W. Murnau's silent classic SUNRISE.  It's the third time I've seen it--the first was at London's Royal Festival Hall in 1995, accompanied by a live orchestra!  It's a conventional Hollywood story with stylish, atmospheric direction.

When the movie was finished, I went to the second floor at the Central for the Play Reading Meetup. (It's been a while since I went to that:  there were a couple of events that were filled up before I even read that they'd been posted!) We were reading Chekhov's UNCLE VANYA, from Michael Frayn's translation.  Unfortunately, the movie was delayed getting started and I got in late.  On top of that, I couldn't find the Frayn version:  all thirty library copies were out, and the Chapters and Indigo bookstores didn't have any.  And on top of THAT, the reading came to a long halt when some Russians in the group started talking about the play.  That may not be so bad when you've been there from the start, but when you got in late you need to get into the flow and such interruptions are frustrating.  So I left early.

On the way home I decided to take the Dufferin bus instead of the Ossington, on the assumption that Dufferin would be more regular, with less risk of a long delay.  But I ended up cooling my heels in a very long delay, until FOUR buses came at once!

Two Meetups

This morning I went to a Life Begins at Forty Meetup.  We walked east along the boardwalk at the Beaches.  The weather was great!  Over 20 people showed up.  We returned along Queen Street, stopping at the Outrigger restaurant for lunch, but I couldn't stay as long as the others because of my afternoon event.

In the afternoon I attended the Brunch and Book Club Meetup at the Camp restaurant on Jane Street.  We had lunch and discussed the Camus novel L'ETRANGER. (I ordered the French toast special.)

Afterward we all nominated a book for the next event, then voted.  I nominated WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN (the book I'm reading now) and voted for John Kennedy Toole's A CONFEDERATION OF DUNCES.  But the winner was Jonas Jonasson's Swedish novel THE 100 YEAR OLD MAN WHO CLIMBED OUT THE WINDOW AND DISAPPEARED.  At 400 pages, it sounds a bit too long for me.

Today I was reading in WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN the story about cowboys out to capture a fabled mustang.  It mentioned that one way to do so is by running them down in the right place, but another one is to walk them down, which means using a relay of horses and riders to keep a little behind them for days until they're too tired to run away.  I imagine that method applies to romance too!

My first date

This evening I had dinner with Cecilia at Kramer's Bar & Grill and spent the $30 gift certificate plus another fifteen dollars. (I'm 51, but I'm new to dating.  Dr. Hassan was surprised to learn that I didn't go out on dates; he wonders how I can stand it.) I wore my green cardigan since my warm-weather jacket is getting tattered.  I ordered spaghetti and ice cream and she ordered salmon.  Cecilia, if you're reading this, I had a good time with you.  And thanks for reading my blog.

WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN is a wonderful book.  Today I read this passage:  "Meanwhile the sun had gone about his business elsewhere, taking all his gold and glory with him.  Off in the east a big black shutter came pushing up and rising higher and higher; it spread over the whole sky, shut out all light and left the world a very gloomy place indeed.  Then another mischief-maker, the wind, taking advantage of the sun's absence, came on the scene and set about brewing trouble.  The weather turned colder and colder; it seemed worse than when the ground had been covered with snow."

Writing that good makes me want to be a writer too.

Which is scarier?

"Well, a boy's best friend is his mother"--Norman Bates

This afternoon I had a dental checkup. (My dentist is Czech.) It turned out the filling in one of my molars has got old and is no longer stopping decay.  I'll have to get a new filling and there may be a root canal too. (Ouch!)

This evening I went to see Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO, for about the fourth time, at the Yonge & Dundas Event Screen.  It's still pretty shocking.  Murray Pomerantz from Ryerson did a Q&A session afterward.  He says he isn't interested in seeing the Anthony Hopkins movie about its making, but the book it's based on is good. (He'll be presenting Francis Coppola's THE CONVERSATION later this month.)

I saw some fliers at the cinema showing the Event Screen's May schedule, but it still hasn't been posted online! (Who's in charge?) They're showing the original OCEAN'S ELEVEN next week, and also stuff like SWINGERS and HARD CORE LOGO and ROMEO+JULIET.

Moira found me a new pair of jeans that are the right length.

On THE HUFFINGTON POST they're arguing about the Obama administration appealing the court ruling to allow girls to buy Plan B "morning after" contraception without parental consent.  I may have said this before, but IMHO it's emergency medication that should be provided on demand.  How many girls take a week to get up the courage to tell their parents they've had sex when Plan B has to be taken within a few days?  Appeasing the fundamentalists will win the Democrats few votes.

Applause for a Cause

This evening I went to a meeting of my theatre group, which we're considering naming Applause for a Cause!  The meetings are now at a new place on Lawrence Avenue, just a little east of the Lawrence West station, so I can walk there instead of waiting for a bus. (There are also wood-carving lessons given there.) I'm going to play the editor of the newspaper owned by the deceased, concerned about his refusal to publish a story about the liaison between Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson.

Our next meeting was going to be next Wednesday, but now Friday looks more likely.  Which is good for me, since I was hoping to see ROMAN HOLIDAY with Cecilia then. (And even if she can't make it, there's also a movie trivia quiz that night.)

Last night I dreamed of a different finale to the series WEEDS, which managed to be far crazier!

I've been having a problem with headaches the last couple of days (hence my napping).  The temperature warmed up, and those changes seem to affect me.

In the afternoon I finally got started with the garden.  I put a few shovelfuls of compost on it, just so I could say I'd started.  It's funny how quickly the older compost layers can sink down in just over six months!

My jeans are too long and too hard to take up, so I'll have to get another pair.

Sleep patterns

I've had some usual sleep patterns lately.  In the afternoon I had a nap, then got up in time for dinner.  Afterward I went back to bed, then got up in mid-evening, spent some time on the computer, than went to sleep again.  Then I woke up after midnight.  For some reason translating that book of Portuguese history makes me sleepy.

In the afternoon Father and I drove to Walmart and I finally replaced my old blue jeans.  I also got some new socks and undies. (We left finding a computer printer to the weekend.  I've finished the score for the Bizet song, but my computer needs a printer.)

Today was the start of the warm weather.  I really need to get the garden started.

John and Kathrine came over for dinner and bought falafel wraps.  I like them once I've removed the tomato slices, though I prefer the ones without hot sauce.  For dessert we had grapes.

In my latest waking period, I saw the last episode of WEEDS.  It was a very unusual show. (I preferred the seasons with Elizabeth Perkins.)

When I open the Kingsbridge game, it keeps telling me to reload!