David Kiang

This afternoon my father's friend David Kiang came to visit.  Father taught him at Mt. Allison over fifty years ago. (Mother recalled that he did every problem in the textbook!) He was later a mathematics professor at Dalhousie University, and now he's retired.  You know Father is old when even his students have been retiring.

When David was a student he did some babysitting for us.  On one occasion he left a Chinese-language book at our house.  Later on, as I started learning Chinese, I got an ambition to translate the book, and I cracked the first part a few years ago.  It's a cold war romantic thriller about a beautiful Chinese student who gets exploited by the communists and ends up with a Prince Charming in Hong Kong.  I'll have to translate some more of it sometime.

We also talked about another Dalhousie math professor called Edelstein, who briefly taught me in a year at Mt. A. (When I saw the classic Italian movie Umberto D., something about the title character reminded me of Edelstein.) He supervised David's wife's Ph.D. thesis and spoke well of David.

This evening I went to see Night of the Living Dead at the Event Screen. (I've never seen it, though I know the whole plot from reading Roger Ebert's Reader's Digest article "Just Another Scary Movie?" which didn't fail to reveal the ending.) But it turned out the schedule had been changed.  Oh well, maybe I'm better off not seeing it...

Sunshine Bay

A Facebook game I recently started playing is Sunshine Bay.  That's a game where you send out cruise boats to different destinations, requiring passengers and fuel.  (You get the passengers by building houses on your land.) It's a game that requires long-term strategic thinking.

I've outgrown pleasure boats, which only go on local cruises.  But I still have a single small yacht, which goes to the Bahamas or Cuba. (Who cares about Washington's embargo?) It's no longer needed for the specific challenges, but it's nice to have one boat that needs only twenty passengers.  I also have one high-speed catamaran, an intermediate-sized boat that goes to Bermuda, Haiti, New York, Cancun or Venice.  I still need it for one challenge, but I imagine there won't be much more of that.  But I have two sports yachts that go to Buenos Aires, Vancouver, San Francisco, Reikjavik, Dublin or Barcelona, and I'll be getting more soon when I've accumulated enough coin, as well as a business yacht.  First I've had to replace a couple of docks so they'll accommodate boats at that level.  All that costs coin, and I've planned the order of purchases carefully.  I'll also upgrade the lighthouse to allow for a fifth dock, in addition to replacing the smaller boats.

Some players spend a lot of real money--something I only do as a last resort--and get a lot of land for buildings.  But I prefer to use the land I do have more intensively. (Beachfront expansion is a higher priority.) First, I largely got rid of my business buildings, whose income isn't so important, to focus on residential buildings.  Now I'm going to replace several of the buildings with villas that produce passengers every hour, which I consider the best frequency.  Things will be easier when I've expanded the port terminal to allow a bigger reserve of collected passengers, but it can wait.  So can other improvements like expanding the city hall for greater residential population--which I don't need--and creating a solar plant.  So far fuel supply hasn't been a problem.

A new Meetup group

Two weeks ago at the memoir slam, only six people showed up and Selia was worried about its future.  So I've started a new Meetup group to attract people from that milieu. (Since I'm already organizing the ROLT Meetup, I can start a new one with no extra fees.)

It's working well.  The Meetup group already has about ten members.  At yesterday's session three of the nine people came from Meetup. (A couple others may be coming next week.) Our two subjects were "Things that aren't as they appear" and "Being chosen last." On the first subject I couldn't think of much to write about, but mentioned how I'd belied my appearance.  The latter was a subject that I'd just submitted:  ironically, it got chosen first!  I talked about being chosen last for teams in gym class, including the time when both teams insist the other one take me.

At this evening's opera rehearsal things were reversed and Adolfo went downstairs with the boys, like in previous years, while Beatrice stayed upstairs with the girls.  We did the number from the third act of Carmen where the smugglers sing about sending pretty women like Carmen on ahead to distract the customs officer. ("Like all men, he's eager to please/He loves to play the gentleman..") Just at the end of the number there's a triple-dotted note!  That very rare sign means that the note's value is increased by seven-eighths, and it goes from two beats to three and three-quarters.  In other words, it fills the four-beat bar all except for one quarter-beat note at the end.  I noticed a note like that in the finale of Macbeth too.

The social whirl

Friday night I attend another trivia contest put on by Sash's Toronto Social Friends group, which took place at Fran's Restaurant near Carlton station.  Once again I was one of the top finishers.  In each round we formed new teams and had to choose a team name, so I chose the movies titles "The Wild Bunch" and "The Meanest Men in the West." (I was surprised how hard much of the second round was.) For my dessert prize I chose rice pudding.

I was late getting to the Actor's Meetup yesterday, so I didn't do much:  just a generic scene where I'm openly worrying and the other guy is resisting worry.

Last night I went to an Asperger's Meetup for the first time in a while.  We had an Indian dinner at the Banjara restaurant near Eglinton Station. (I ordered chicken biryani and butter naan bread.) There were five of us, all boys, but I was unfamiliar with most of them.

This afternoon I was going to go on a Professor's Walk up Dufferin, all the way from Bloor to Yorkdale Mall!  But I lost interest and stayed home.  I finished harvesting the potatoes, and they fill both of our big bowls.  Some of them are reasonably big.

Last week I tried a new Facebook game called Trainstation, but I couldn't get into it. (Joining locomotives and wagons isn't my thing.) But I have become interested in another one called Tribez [sic], which involves building a prehistoric village.

Funny Girl

"I'm a bagel in the middle of onion rolls!"--Funny Girl

Moira went off to Kingston for a while, so we'll resume watching The World at War when she comes back. (Before she left, she made us a turkey pie!)

I've started digging up the potatoes in the garden.  It's somewhat better than last year anyway.

Last night at opera rehearsal we started bringing the props upstairs from the basement.  We're now getting into the third act. (Beatrice is hoping to start the staging part before the Christmas break!) It turns out that David Roche won't be doing the acting class this year.

Today I finally saw William Wyler's movie of the musical Funny Girl at the Event Screen. (It was for the second or third time:  the first time was in French on a black & white TV, so I'm not sure how much that counts.) It's a pretty good Barbra Streisand vehicle, on the conventional side.  With Streisand, what you see is what you get:  either you adore her or you don't.  I checked out Fanny Brice on Wikipedia and it turned out that Nicky Arnstein didn't become noble in the end as the movie depicted. I think the projector didn't have trouble last week; this print starts with an imageless overture so they thought there was something wrong.

Afterward I had dinner at the Eaton Centre food court. (They now have "collection centers" for empty trays.) I used to eat roast beef sandwiches at Arby's there, but that place has now closed.  Instead I ate Indian food from Amaya Express:  butter chicken with fresh naan bread and mango juice. (They also threw in chickpeas.)

Oh to be in England...

Yesterday was the October ROLT event.  At the last minute I found out that Butler's Pantry was closed on Thanksgiving weekend, and had to change the location to Victory Cafe, also in Mirvish Village to the south.  Fortunately, we still got a full six people.

I read part of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre where she returned to her old home and met two cousins, who were messed up in opposite ways.  I also read a beautiful chapter of the third book in T.H. White's The Once and Future King explaining how Guenevere ended up in love with Lancelot. (All the library copies were out--some book club must be reading it--so I had to buy it, but I was hoping to read The Sword in the Stone again anyway.) And I read the first page of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English, and Jane considered this a highlight.  I considered reading Orwell's essay "Shooting an Elephant" as well, but skipped it.

Among the other readers, a new guy called Darren read an entry from his blog "Personal Travel Stories," about visiting Cheshire. (Like me, he's a big fan of Bill Bryson.) Moira came and read part of Samuel Pepys' diary with his vivid depiction of the Great Fire of 1666.

Too bad that the lunch I ordered there made me unwell for much of the day. (Beware those home fries!) Donald came over for dinner but I had to skip dessert.

Viewership of this blog has been sluggish for a while, but I just had a big uptick.  My "Busy evenings" post has already had seven pageviews!

HEADACHE!

At today's Acting Meetup, I did a commercial for a financial planning group, pretending to be a rich heir confiding in his psychiatrist.  I also did a scene from The Replacements where coach Gene Hackman recruited has-been quarterback Keanu Reeves for his team. (It was the kind of cliched writing where Hackman waits on Reeves' boat then makes him jump when the latter returns there exhausted.) I played the Reeves role, but in hindsight I really should have been doing Hackman.

This evening I was going to try to see Funny Girl again at the Event Screen, planning on an early dinner since the movie started at 6:45.  It turned out, however that John and Kathrine were coming for dinner and they'd be a while arriving.  Do I stay for dinner with them and miss the movie, or go to the movie and miss dinner with them?  In the end I did neither, because I had such a big headache I ended up in bed.

Lately I've been doing o'ekaki puzzles by this Japanese expert.  The way it works is that you have a grid of tiny squares where some are filled and others are empty.  With each row and column, they tell you the length of the segments of filled squares, but you have to figure out the length of the empty segments yourself, and when you're finished you get a picture! (Left-brain process, right-brain result.) 

I really love that kind of puzzle.  Figuring out which squares are filled requires a special kind of logical thinking.  For example, if a segment is more than half of its row/column's length, you can determine that some squares in the middle have to be filled.  Or when you have a long segment on the top of the grid while the adjacent row only has some very short segments, you can figure out its location by seeing which columns begin with a single-square segment.  Or if a row/column equals the combined length of its segments plus the number of segments minus one, that means its unfilled segments are all just one square in length and you can determine the whole row! (Or if it's that number plus n, you can determine part of the segments that are n+1 in length.)

Busy evenings

Tuesday night I went to opera rehearsal.  Just as I approached the bus stop I realized I'd left my Metropass at home!  I had to go back and get it, so I was twenty minutes late. (Oh well, I'm usually early.)

Last night I went to see Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl at the Event Screen with the Classic Movie Meetup group.  But the projector broke down (it was delivering sound without picture) and they gave all of us rainchecks.  Actually, it was probably for the best because I wasn't feeling well.

This evening I went on the Queen Street art walk.  One of the places we went to was a boutique selling Japanese art prints that just moved there from Yorkville.  In the back they were having an exhibition of Hiroshige's landscape prints.  Hiroshige's one of my favorites! (I especially like his winter images.)

What with my schedule, I've been watching The World at War in the afternoons while Moira watches it in the evenings.  Just today I saw the episode about the incredible Battle of Stalingrad.  The budget standoff in the American government reminds me of Stalingrad, with the Republican extremists ruling out compromise like Hitler ruling out retreat, and the Democrats forced to take a stand like the Russians.

IVANHOE

I've developed an odd ambition to read every novel that was made into a Classics Illustrated comic book.  Issue #1 of Classics Illustrated is Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, which I  read about a decade ago. (It's amazing how villainess Milady takes over the story in the second half.) The second issue is Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, and I picked it up yesterday at Lillian Smith library.

It's a bit slow so far, with lots and lots of visual description:  I'm glad I've read the comic.  It occurred to me to read into the novel's Norman-Saxon conflict a subtext of the emerging class tensions in Regency Britain.  Cedric the Franklin seems to represent the upper-middle class, the backbone of the modern British social order.  Of course, the squirearchy of the antebellum American South took Ivanhoe to heart and made the Normans their role model, which is odd because Scott's Normans are basically jerks.

At yesterday's memoir slam there were just six people, so we had time to do three subjects:  breakfast, bad grades and Saturday rituals.  (The latter two had been my suggestion.) On bad grades I wrote about being in Grade 7 the year we were in Mississauga, and the art teacher giving my blue squares 1 out of 5 because the edges were messy; on Saturday rituals I talked about the color comics in the weekend newspapers and swimming at the university pool.  But I couldn't think of much to say about breakfast.

I got the idea of starting a Meetup group to attend the memoir slam, to see if we can attract Meetup people, since I can organize a second group with no extra fees. (I had to quit trying to start the Ph.D. Students Meetup because of the Acting Meetup on Saturdays, but I was getting nowhere anyhow.) I've set it up and we already have one new member!

Last night's choir practice was the last for three weeks.  We started "Tu Scendi Delle Stelle" (we'd done this under Giuseppe, but this was a simpler arrangement) and Jose Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad." I forgot to bring the book of Hemingway stories for John George, so I'll just have to remember it next time.

This evening I got an email from Blanche Klein.  I attended the first meeting of her book club, then didn't get to any of the later ones.  But I think she liked my book suggestions, and I'm impressed that she remembered me. (They'd just been reading The Leopard, which I'd suggested.)

What I think about sometimes

During yesterday's walk in the park, I got to thinking about how I'd remake Ingmar Bergman's sexy comedy Smiles of a Summer Night in an American setting.  I imagined it being set in Arlington, Virginia, in 1899.  I imagined Fredrik going to see the opera Carmen at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., with Desiree shown singing the Habanera.  And there'd be some dialogue afterward.

Younger woman (cooing, holding up her fan): That was so immoral!

Older woman (livid): You could see he was having intimate relations with that... that...  If he hadn't stabbed her, I would have!

Mother (with boy in tow): He should have married the nice girl.

Fredrik:  It's all French to me.

Boy: If they were Spanish, why were they singing in French?

Mother (grabbing the boy's ear): Don't ask questions all the time!

And I imagined a scene where Fredrik sneaks up behind Anne and puts his hands over her eyes.  Anne smiles at first, but when Fredrik speaks and she realizes it's him and not Henrik her smile fades, but it returns when she turns around and faces him.

I think the original movie had a scene where the Countess fires a pistol at a shooting range, so I imagined a soldier saying to her, "Bullseye!  We could have used you in Cuba!"

That's what I think about sometimes. (While I remember these characters well, I had to check the Internet Movie Database to remember their names.)

Autumn damp

Yesterday's Acting Meetup still attracted a good twenty people.  Someone did a commercial pitch for Captain Morgan's rum, and that character appealed to me.  So when I did a pitch for this fish vitamin that improves your skin I performed it as Captain Morgan! (I started by swooping off my imaginary hat.) I also did a scene from Elysium, where my only three lines were "Where are the guns?" "What is this?  Family Heirloom?" and "Hmm--yeah, it'll do."  I had a bit of a headache, so I didn't mind.  I entered the scene at a slow, steady pace to suggest a gangster.

I've finished Larry McMurtry's Roads.  I haven't read any of the "50 ideas you really need to know" series for a while, so now I've started reading the entry on architecture.  I knew a bit about gothic architecture because I recently saw J. Bronowski discussing it in The Ascent of Man, and I also knew about Doric, Ionian and Corinthian columns (which Vitruvius compared to a man, a woman and a maiden respectively).

This afternoon I went on a Walking Meetup with some Culturelink people.  We met at Victoria Park station and walked through Dentonia Park.  The weather was damp with autumn gloom:  you could see fog around the tall buildings.  But that weather appeals to me.  I considered seeing Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal again at the event screen, but the day was gloomy enough.

I've been getting into Facebook's Sunshine Bay game.  Just now I'm saving money to upgrade my port to allow a greater capacity for passengers.  After that I'll replace some of my businesses, which I don't really need, with residences to increase the passenger flow. (I won't be able to buy more land till I get a fourth neighbor.) Only then will I save to buy more sport yachts.  And I still won't need to upgrade the town hall to increase the resident capacity for a while, because I'm not yet close to full.  Fuel upgrades aren't needed either.

Plantar fasciitis

Wednesday I finally went to see Dr. Ang, and it turned out I have plantar fasciitis.  Moira has had that too, but she runs a lot more than I do.  She recommended some foot exercises (which Moira knows all about) and suggested insoles for my shoes.  Moira also mentioned that her hairdresser recommends a change of shoes.

I've been wearing my previous pair of shoes, whose soles are a bit worn, but my condition is already easing.  This evening I finally got out to the drugstore and bought the cheapest pair of insoles I could find. (Tell me I'm not my father's son!) That meant I had to cut them to my foot size of 8 1/2; unfortunately, I cut them to a woman's 8 1/2, which is more like a man's 6 1/2.

Wednesday I went to rent the Danish version of The Killing at Suspect Video in Mirvish Village. (I used to go there a lot a decade ago, before we started our zip.ca subscription.) Unfortunately, they had no copies of the first half which we wanted, though they had three copies of the second half!  I've been hoping to rent the third season of Treme, but that still isn't out.  

Instead, Moira and I went out to 2Q Video where she decided to rent The World at War, the 1973 British documentary series about World War II.  What a powerful show it is! (I'm seeing it for the fourth time.)  It's very clear and well-structured, with a lot of interesting people being interviewed.  But it's also rather depressing.

Group photo

Larry McMurtry on Edmund Wilson: "He was a great describer--after all, he even described Finnegans Wake"--Roads

At the memoir slam we did life on a farm (I wrote about our family garden) and vacations.  Selia wrote about a vacation where she found out some girls she'd admired had stolen something, and that's all she could remember about it.

At choir practice we posed for our group photo so we were dressed fancy, largely in black. (I wore my black suit and black tie, but with a grey shirt.) They had us stand on a staircase so we could all get in the shot.  We also did a new song combining "O, Holy Night" and "Silent Night."

I was pleased that John George showed up. (He'd missed the earlier rehearsals, and Giovanni was giving me a lift afterward instead.) He told me that he was taking up reading Ernest Hemingway, so I promised to lend him a volume of Hemingway's short stories that I have in my room.

My right foot got sore around the heel instep and has me limping.  The odd thing is that I have no idea why:  it just got sore. (Someone in the choir said that when you get older soreness often comes out of nowhere.) I'll have to see my doctor about it.

A busy weekend

Friday night I went to a Karaoke Meetup at Jingle's.  The place was small and a bit noisy, and I only stayed for one song ("Ring of Fire.")

Yesterday afternoon I went to a new Acting Meetup connected to the Fringe Theatre.  An actor called Ivan started this group so actors of different skill and experience levels can get together and play scenes.  I enjoy that sort of thing, and he intends for us to meet every Saturday!  For the first meeting he gave us brief scenes to do from recent TV shows.  I did one from Nikita where I'm talking to a techie while looking at a computer scene. (I held my sheet in front of me to stand for the screen, which made glancing at my lines less awkward.) For the other scene I was one of two tough ex-cons meeting in a bar: one of my lines was "Shitty day, whiskey neat."

This morning I went out to Chudleigh's in Milton and picked apples as part of the Born in the '60s Meetup.  Heather gave me a lift from Islington station at 9:00 so we could get there at the 10:00 opening, so I had to get up early and take the Bloor bus before the subway started.

Chudleigh's has long lines, but they know how to keep them moving pretty quick.  I bought Cortlands, Honeycrisps and some pre-picked Empires. (I'd visited Chudleigh's once before, when I was 12 and we were in Mississauga for the year.  I think we picked Red Delicious apples then.) Unfortunately, nobody else could make it.  I guess we would have done better to find a less crowded orchard where we wouldn't have had to get there early.

Non-fiction book club

"Now I'd rather be almost anyplace on the planet--always excepting Rock Springs, Wyoming--than on the Long Island Expressway at rush hour"--Roads

Yesterday afternoon I met with Heather of the ROLT Meetup at the Butler's Pantry.  She and Jane were in a quarrel, and since I listened to Jane last week it was important to talk with Heather too so she wouldn't think we were uniting against her.  I think I made a good impression.

After finishing The Ascent of Money I decided to start reading Roads.  It's a book by Larry McMurtry--one of my favorite writers--about driving along some of the less famous American highways. I enjoy his discursive style:  in the first chapter he starts out recalling dining in a revolving restaurant in Duluth, and on his way to Wichita expounds on Nelson Algren, MTM sitcoms, the "adopt a highway" program, the "women in chains" genre of '70s B-movies, serial killers on the Great Plains, and Oklahoma City's obsession with oil production.

Last night I went to the Non-fiction book club at the Rosedale library where we talked about The Ascent of Money.  Niall Ferguson's best when talking about how the financial system came to be the way it is today; on what it'll be in the future, his writing tends to beg the bigger questions.

Choir and opera

At choir Monday night we started doing "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music, a musical for the fallout shelter era.  It's all about joy in the face of dread, most clearly in that song.  I had a big headache.

Last night at the opera we got to the Habanera. (I still don't know the date when David Roche is doing our acting class.) I mentioned to Beatrice the six styles of love and how they correspond to the leading characters in Carmen:  ludus (love as a game) is Carmen; mania (love as obsession) is Don Jose; eros (love as conventional romantic passion) is Don Escamillo; and storge (affection developing gradually out of friendship), pragma (practical considerations) and agape (self-sacrificing empathy) are all Michaela.

I recently found an interest cheque they sent me a few months ago. (I thought it was a statement.) That puts me ahead of the game financially!)

This afternoon I went to an open house at Culturelink, an institute for established Canadians to meet immigrants. (I've been considering volunteering for that.)

I just finished Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money.  I wonder what I should read next?

CHINATOWN

Sunday afternoon I saw Roman Polanski's Chinatown yet again, at the Event Screen with the Sunday Afternoon Movie Meetup.  It was another in the "Film 101" series introduced by Murray Pomerance. (I usually go to them, though I missed his presentation of Spielberg's Empire of the Sun last month.) What great dialogue!  When a girl on the phone asks "Are you alone?" Jack Nicholson says "Aren't we all?" That's the kind of line Nicholson worked wonders with.

Pomerance talked about the movie afterward, but I didn't stay for that part.  I actually left before the tragic ending, because I didn't want to be late getting home for dinner, and I was just in time.  Dinner was Chinese food, fittingly enough.  My fortune cookie said that I'm good-natured, practical and attached to my beliefs, which I suppose is true.

Yesterday at the memoir group the two subjects were "The best compliment I ever received" and "September." (The latter was a subject that I'd submitted.) On the former subject I mentioned how ten years ago Cynthia, my dance teacher at the Arthur Murray studio, called me a gentleman.  Selia liked the September pieces so much that she submitted the other twelve months of the year, so we'll probably be doing a lot of that.

At The Huffington Post I wrote a post about an Elizabeth Drew piece saying "Don't scapegoat people who don't vote.  If they don't care, they don't care." But the moderators wouldn't publish it, and Moira realized it was because they were automatically blocking posts with the expression "don't care." (So abusive!) So I rewrote it as "If they're not caring, they're not caring," and it got published.

Managing the ROLT situation

Friday I met Jane at the Butler's Pantry and we discussed the disagreements that followed the previous weekend's ROLT event. (Joel has left the group, and he was one of our most regular attendees.) We may put out a statement to try to prevent future disputes.  Heather was publicly disagreeing with Jane, and I'm going to see her on Thursday to hear her side of it.

The meeting was also an occasion for me to suggest changing the day from Saturdays to Sundays.  That's because of a new member--Betty-Anne, who organizes the Queen Street art walk--who can't make it on Saturday.  I don't know of anyone who can't make it on Sundays, and I'm sure Betty-Anne would be a valuable addition:  she used to tape audio recordings for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. (We used to have a CNIB broom.) Fortunately, Jane had no problem with changing the day; on the contrary, she likes Betty-Anne too.  So I went to the Meetup website and changed future events to Sundays.  The only problem is that I can't change the thing on the homepage that says "This group meets every second Saturday"! People will just have to ignore it.

On Saturday night I went to Jonah's Karaoke Meetup at BarPlus.  There was a new Korean guy who sang a Korean song.  I sang "Every Breath You Take," which I've hardly ever done before.

O multigrain flour, where art thou?

Since Father stopped driving last month, it's been a while since we shopped at the No-Frills in Dufferin Mall.  But today I went there for one reason:  to find multigrain flour.  The Robin Hood people make it by combining regular flour with cracked wheat and cracked rye and flax. (How exactly do you crack wheat?) We just ran out and I couldn't find it at the huge Loblaw's near the Bathurst station.  I'd hate to have to stop baking it, because I have such a neat 12-loaf rotation system where whole wheat and multigrain (one loaf in four) alternate with white bread, cheese bread (both one in six), raisin bread and rye bread (one in three).

But I didn't need to worry.  It turned out that they were still selling multigrain flour at the No-Frills place.  Too bad you can only get it in five-kilo packages. (You can get white flour in packages of twenty kilos!) Oh well, back in Sackville, New Brunswick, you probably can't get it at all.  But there's a health food store there called Jacob's Larder where you can buy loaves of protein bread...

Moira and I have are still working together to straighten out the location files for our huge book collection.  We finally finished the living room and started working on the attic.  Monday night the computer screen fell over and the screen got cracked.  But the Apple people managed to fix it and we were back in business today.  This evening we did it differently:  I told Moira the titles and she entered the information.  I have to admit that saying the titles is the easier part of the job, but doing it once in a while is enough for me.

Toronto City Opera

Yesterday at the memoir slam our subjects were "Change of residence" and "Unusual meals." (The subject "Hemorrhoids" also got chosen, but we decided to skip it.) When I mentioned about having lived in London somebody expressed interest in hearing more from me about it.  On the subject of unusual eating, I mentioned that when I was thirteen I ate a whole can of cherry pie filling on a dare from John.

Last night at choir practice we started "The Little Drummer Boy." We're no longer doing the version with the men singing "Prum, prum..." but the one Bing Crosby and David Bowie did as a duet.  I liked prum-prumming but the new version does have nice harmony.  It's also in favor of peace on earth, like anyone admits to being against it.

This evening was the first rehearsal for the Toronto City Opera (formerly the Toronto Opera Repertoire), where we're doing Bizet's Carmen and Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte.  Beatrice has succeeded Giuseppe as artistic director, while Adolfo is still musical director.  We started learning Carmen, and this time Beatrice directed the men downstairs while Adolfo stayed upstairs with the women.  We did that opera five years ago, and the music is still familiar to me.

Last night I dreamed of a much longer version of the movie Citizen Kane, as screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz might have imagined it before director Orson Welles scaled it back to normal dimensions.  This version included a subplot about a woman involved with a pirate on the Panama Canal. (The movie has a line about the Spanish-American War: "But do you think if it hadn't been for that war of Mr. Kane's, we'd have the Panama Canal?")

You can't read THAT!

Friday night we had another rehearsal.  It was decided to delay the performance till April.  Our next rehearsal won't be till November 8. (Martha is in a play in Aurora.) That'll give me some time to learn more lines.

Saturday afternoon was another ROLT event.  I chose banned and challenged books for the subject, because the week honoring banned books is this month, and called it "You can't read that!" I read the first part of Tomi Ungerer's witty children's book No Kiss for Mother; the part of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn where he says, "All right, I'll go to hell then!"; part of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (which I just reread) where Holden Caulfield talked about how he was something of a coward, and where he talked about still being a virgin.  I thought of reading the chapter in Don Quixote where they burned his books, but decided it was too slow.

There was a wide range of stuff read.  Someone read from Truman Capote's In Cold Blood; someone else from Alice Walker's The Color Purple; and Jane read Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen and Helen Bannerman's Little Black Sambo.  Unfortunately, Joel took offence and left while I was reading from Mark Twain.  I'll have to do a better job of preparation.

For next month I think I'll do British writing.

Hello Dollys

Moira and I made Hello Dollys the other day.  That's a dessert recipe they came up with in the 1960s to sell condensed milk. (I want to try some new recipes.) You make a base from graham cracker crumbs (with sugar and half a cup of melted butter!), like with cheesecak.  Then you add layers of chocolate chips, shredded coconut and chopped pecans, pour a whole can of sweet condense milk over it, and put it in the oven for half an hour.

I had a piece yesterday.  They weren't terrible, but once was enough for me.  In hindsight, to tell the truth, I'm more interested in making these things than in eating them.

I'm still helping Moira straighten out the locate file for all our books.  We've finished the living room, and yesterday we started on the extra books in the attic.  Sometime we're going to clear the attic shelves so we can remove the carpet, and we'll have to label the boxes so the books get put back in the right places.

Wednesday night I went on another professor walk.  I was talking to an Italian girl called Elettra and an Irish guy (deep brogue) who likes horror movies.  But we went to a restaurant that was so noisy I had to leave pretty quick.

Last night I went on another Queen St. West art walk with Betty-Anne.  We visited Yellowkorner, Gallery Catalyst, Georgia Scherman Gallery, Susan Hobbs Gallery, and Carmen's Spanish kitchen, where they had samples of little watermelon cubes garnished with basil.

Columbus Center Community Choir

At yesterday's memoir slam, the subjects were expectations and TV commercials. (The latter subject was one I'd submitted.) On the subject of expectations, I talked about how I was cautious in looking forward to things.  On TV commercials, I mentioned this '70s ad with a farmer saying "Hey, you kids get out of that Jello tree!' and an '80s ad where someone said, "You own a computer and don't have games like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong?  That's like having a stereo with no hit records!"

Last night was the first rehearsal of the new choir under Beatrice Carpino's direction.  She's made a few changes.  Giuseppe Macina seated mezzos in the front row left, sopranos in the front row right, basses and baritones (my range) in the back row left and tenors in the back row right.  Beatrice, on the other hand, seats mezzos on the left, tenors center-left, basses center-right and sopranos right.  And she starts with voice exercises. (Also, she had a cookie break in the middle!)

Our first piece was the Pachelbel Canon.  Years ago I saw a choir singing that piece at the start of the really sad movie Ordinary People. (Canada's Donald Sutherland is one of Hollywood's most underrated actors!) So I still find that piece rather depressing.

I got up to level 70 in Candy Crush Saga and level 58 in Pet Rescue Saga, and now I've quit those games again (for how long?). I've started a new Facebook game called Sunshine Bay, which involves developing a Florida port as the starting point for cruises.

IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD

"Why, if I had money I could live in a convent"--It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

This afternoon I saw Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (for the fifth time) at the Event Screen with the Classic Movies Meetup.  They were half an hour late getting started and gave us coupons to see a free movie.  It turned out to be the shorter print.

IAMMMMW is what you call a guilty pleasure.  The author of The United Artists Story (one of four coffee-table studio histories I own) calls it "vulgar, cynical and cruel," and I can't disagree:  it's about people motivated by sheer greed and becoming mean.  But I first saw it at age ten--definitely the right age--and it has a nostalgic appeal for me.  I like actors like Phil Silvers and Terry-Thomas, though Spencer Tracy gives his worst performance.

This evening I went to the first Born in the '60s Meetup event at Sugar n Spice, a dessert place west of the Yorkdale station. (I warned them that I'd be late arriving, and I was.) I ordered a peach melba sundae and got a headache.

I've been having some odd dreams lately.  Last week I dreamed of creating a story about an American in World War II who gets drafted but sneaks off to Mexico instead. (I can see myself running away.) The other night I dreamed of bouncing on trampolines.

Last Night at the Proms

Al Pacino (eating a French fry): "I've lived on these since I was ten.  That's why I'm so good looking"--The Panic in Needle Park

Last night we returned to rehearsing the play. (I've memorized my first two lines!) Don took the measurements for our customs.  Martha found an actor called Sal, with professional experience, to play Inspector Hugh Dunnit.  Sal suggested giving the play some "tweaking."

This afternoon I saw the Last Night at the Proms concert with the Classical Music Meetup at the Yonge & Eglinton.  There was some familiar music like Wagner's Meistersinger overture and Vaughn Williams' "Ascent of the Lark." (Violinist Nigel Kennedy dresses like a hobo.) I left in the intermission:  just didn't feel motivated to stay for the second half with all the regular pieces like "Land of Hope and Glory."

This evening we looked at The Panic in Needle Park on Netflix.  That's the early Al Pacino vehicle about heroin users, written by John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion.  It's one of those spare, "gritty" New York movies from the '70s.  Pacino was lively enough, but the movie got too depressing for us.

Sorting comics

"He hated it when you called him a moron.  All morons hate it when you call them a moron"--The Catcher in the Rye

It's September, so I'm doing some spring cleaning.  We moved my tall desk from the west wall to the northwest corner, my dresser from the northwest corner to the north wall, and a bookcase from the north wall out to the hall.  The wall around the west window still needs work, and now there's nothing in the way.

In addition, I'm finally rearranging my comic-book collection.  I've put it off for years, because it means temporarily creating an even bigger mess.  But when I'm finished the space will be used more efficiently, I hope.

I saw the last episode of The Ascent of Man. (The second-last, about sex and genetics, wasn't as explicit as I'd remembered it being.) I couldn't help thinking about how science has now developed drone aircraft and "low cost" killing.  To tell the truth, I don't know what to do about Syria.  Maybe bombing will just make things worse, but maybe we should do it anyway.  Call me wishy-washy. (I saw Bashir Assad on the cover of The Economist with the headline "Hit him hard." It must be nice to think you know what's right.)

OUR NIXON

"The last six Roman emperors were fags"--Nixon in the White House tapes

I've finished the latest Lapham's Quarterly, and the new one hasn't yet been published!  I'm ahead of the game for once.

Now I've turned to two books I'm likely to read at ROLT's banned books event.  I borrowed J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye from the Spadina library.  None of the libraries have a copy of Tomi Ungerer's No Kiss for Mother, so I bought it at the World's Biggest Bookstore. (They had a couple of copies at the Bay & Bloor Indigo, but their graphic novels section was such a mess I couldn't find it there!) It's really funny.

Last night I saw Our Nixon at the Bloor.  It's a documentary made from the home movies Watergate figures Erlichman, Haldeman and Chapin filmed at the White House during the Nixon presidency, along with TV news reports and recordings from the White House tapes. (They show Phil Donahue interviewing Haldeman.  Boy, do I miss Donahue's show!)

Paradoxically, people with the most power seem to have the greatest insecurities, as when Nixon worried about the United States becoming "a pitiful, helpless giant." (Mother felt sorry for Nixon, though she disapproved of the Christmas Bombing.) I suppose they have nobody willing to hold their insecurity in check.    Oddly, the documentary made no mention of the invasion of Cambodia, the Nixon decision I think had the most important legacy.

This film reminded me that I want to see the 1999 Watergate comedy Dick again. (We should try the Hello Dollies recipe.)

Canadian National Exhibition

I'm not a big fan of the Canadian National Exhibition:  I'll go to it every three years or so.  I was really impressed by it the first time I went, at age thirteen, when it was near its all-time attendance peak.  But maybe I was just more easily impressed back then.

Yesterday I attended the Ex with the Out of Your Shell Meetup group.  There were about a dozen of us, but after we arrived half went off to stand in line for the super-dog show.  I was with the other half, and we visited the Arts and Crafts Building and the Scadding cabin and saw some of the air show near the lakeshore. (What's so great about air shows?  They're better than dog shows, anyway.)

Then I went my own way and headed to my real reason for coming:  the Midway rides.  I splurged and bought an "all you can eat" wristband, then went on ten rides, including stuff like the Euroslide and the Tilt-a-Whirl and the chair lift that carries you up over the midway.  But my favorite ride is the bumper cars, and I rode them twice after waiting in long lines. (I could have saved time by paying another twenty dollars for an express wristband, but that would have been excessive even for me.)

What else did I do there?  I ate spaghetti and meatballs in the Food Building.  I  saw some butter sculptures in the Farm Building.  As I was leaving I met a man who'd had breakfast at the Canadian Law Society with someone who was my spitting image, including the same jacket.  I said, "I hope you didn't lend him any money!"

FAR OUT ISN'T FAR ENOUGH

Last night I saw Far Out Isn't Far Enough at the Bloor.  It's a documentary about Tomi Ungerer, who was a well-regarded artist and writer of children's books but then turned to kinky erotica and got banned from American libraries.  The children's book reviewer at The New York Times refused to review his books.  One of his books, No Kiss for Mother, got the DUD award for the year's worst children's book!  It's quite a coincidence that I saw this just before an ROLT event devoted to banned books.  Maybe I'll read No Kiss for Mother.  

I do know that I want to reread all his books.  I remember reading books like The Three Robbers and Zeralda's Ogre in my youth.  The latter was about a child-eating ogre who gets tamed by a little girl with advanced culinary skills.  On the last page he shaved off his beard, became respectable, and married the girl when she grew up.  After seeing the movie Beauty and the Beast, which ended with the Beast overcoming his curse and becoming a normal man, Greta Garbo said "Give me back my beast!" I felt like saying, "Give me back my ogre!"

The other night I dreamed about getting on a bus to take me downtown, falling asleep and waking up only to find that the bus had taken me out into the country. (John Lennon said, "Life is what happens when you're making other plans.")

KICK-ASS 2

"My superpower is, I'm rich as shit!"--Kick-Ass 2

Yesterday I went to the Yonge & Eglinton and saw Kick-Ass 2.  Yeah I know, I was slumming.  It was pretty tasteless and predictable, as I expected.  I did like the bit at the end when he said that the world needs real heroes. (People like Chelsea Manning!) 

At the end they had a big fight between a mob of masked superheroes and a mob of masked supervillains and I was wondering how they told each other apart.  Wouldn't they end up attacking people on their own side?  At least in the Star Wars movie the Imperial soldiers wore masks while the rebels didn't.

Afterward I bought my tickets for the Last Night at the Proms concert and the Met opera broadcasts. (I'm seeing Rusalka, Prince Igor, Werther, Cosi Fan Tutte and Cenerentola.) I ended up with over a thousand Scene Points.  If I'd bought these tickets beforehand, I could have spent them on Kick-Ass 2.

The night before I saw a documentary about Lon Chaney Sr. on Netflix.  I remember when I was a kid seeing a big comic book ad for Aurora's monster models series. (Donald made an Aurora model of the Lost in Space robot.) Anyway, the image of Chaney as the Phantom of the Opera caught my eye:  you could see that he wasn't just a simple monster but a creature in pain.

PEANUTS

Yesterday I went to The Beguiling and bought a new entry in the Fantagraphics series of Peanuts reprints. (I also got a few more Mad magazine paperbacks, including Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.)

I'm now up to the mid-'70s in the Peanuts series.  It's now past the years that I read in past paperback reprints, but I remember it surprisingly well from reading it in the newspaper.  I remembered the very odd story of Sally conversing with the school building, as well as the one where Charlie Brown got so obsessed with baseball that he developed a rash like the stiches on a baseball (which his round head already resembled) and went to summer camp with a bag over his head and people called him "Mr. Sack" and elected him camp president!

Yesterday afternoon I went to the memoir slam and the two subjects were "The joys of senility" and "Forbidden fruit." On senility I talked about how I wasn't yet old, but visiting London last year my feet got sore from all the walking.  On forbidden fruit I mentioned how my parents kept me away from scary stuff, but I wasn't sure that was best for me.  I mentioned that Nick Nolte in Rich Man, Poor Man put a snake in his son's crib so he wouldn't be afraid of snakes when he was older and said, "Sometimes I wish someone had put a snake in my crib."

THE ASCENT OF MAN

Betty finished her draft of the play, and I printed it out before Friday's rehearsal, where we had our first run-through. (She liked the portentous sound with which I quoted the newspaper headline.) There's no rehearsal on Labor Day weekend, so it's time to start MEMORIZING my lines!  I improvised a line for the closing scene, and Betty likes it enough to include it.

Moira borrowed J. Bronowski's BBC series The Ascent of Man from the library, and we've been watching it again. (I remember seeing the whole thing in a Sunday afternoon presentation in the university auditorium, two episodes per Sunday, when I was twelve.) Like Kenneth Clark's Civilization, it's a very entertaining "personal view" of mankind's onward & upward progress.  I remember it in much detail. (I was thinking of renting the Danish version of The Killing from Suspect Video, but that can wait till we're finished with this.)

This afternoon I went on another Professor's Walk.  This time we met near Spadina station and took a circular route that led us to the Chinatown festival.  It was pretty noisy, especially the Falun Gong drummers. (When I got home I had a headache.) I was talking to a woman from mainland China who teaches about polymers and was interested in our house renovations.

A new blog

As previously considered, I started a new blog at memoirslam.blogspot.ca to post my memoir pieces from the Monday afternoon group.  I've already posted three or four pieces, but then I got lazy.

Yesterday I visited Dr. Hassan and told him about the group and the blog.  He seems impressed about how active I am, but it doesn't impress me.  People who work from 9:00 to 5:00, they're the ones who are active!  I've got into the habit of having lunch at the Burger King near Eglinton station after visiting my shrink. (Maybe I should break that habit.)

Last night I went to a new Karaoke Meetup organized by Lillian Zepeda.  (We went to Freezone Karaoke in Koreatown near the Christie station.)  She and I were the only people who showed up, but maybe it'll grow.

I still haven't bought any tickets for the Met opera screening next season.  I think I'm interested in Prince Igor and Rusalka and even seeing Cenerentola again, but I just don't feel motivated at the moment.

Tina Brown's Daily Beast finally got interested in the Bradley Manning case when he renamed himself Chelsea. (Typical!) I've tried to get into that site, but it's just too thin.

BLUE JASMINE

Puitak came over yesterday and brought us lunch from a Vietnamese place. (She brought me curry chicken and rice.) There was enough left over for another lunch!

In the afternoon Moira and I went to see Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine at the Varsity.  I'd accumulated enough Scene card points to get both of us in free! (I'm glad they let me share the points from my card.  You never know when there might be a snag.)

The movie was a pretty scathing satire, to the point of grimness.  Cate Blanchett was in rare form in the title role. (One actor, Bobby Cannavale, looked a whole lot like Colin Farrell.) They put on a commercial in the middle of the trailers, which bugged me.  I can accept commercials before trailers, but this is a step too far!

Bradley Manning got sentenced to 35 years yesterday.  I've been commenting about it a lot on The Huffington Post.  The homophobic glee of some people is getting on my nerves.  People keep calling him "the little twerp" or "the little punk." One guy wrote, "I hope he serves his full 35 years, then gets hit by a truck on the day of his release." But I still think he's a bigger hero than I've ever managed to be.

Three classic movies

"I shall hang you twice, I think"--The African Queen

"Suppose Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks divorce!"--Some Like It Hot

On selling drugs to Negroes: "They're animals anyway, let them lose their souls!"--The Godfather

Over the last few days I've seen three classic movies.  I'd seen them several times before, and saw them again with Classic Movie Meetup groups.

Saturday night I saw John Huston's The African Queen at the Fairview screening room.  It's a great romantic adventure, with Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn achieving a nice quirky chemistry.

Monday night I saw Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot at the Event Screen.  Jack Lemmon had a great scene saying "I'm engaged!" It occurred to me that it wouldn't have worked as well in color as it does in black & white.

Last night I saw Francis Coppola's The Godfather at the Revue, as part of their series of movies based on books.  During the scene where Michael visited his father in the hospital, I remembered visiting Mother in her last week.

Geoff Pevere introduced the movie and talked about it afterward.  When he asked for audience comments, I mentioned that the scene where Barzini got assassinated on the big steps resembled the ending of The Roaring Twenties where a mortally James Cagney climbed the church steps.

Yesterday I went to Dufferin Mall and a found a shoe repair place that sold me a new watch battery. (I also replaced my threadbare watch strap.)

Memoir slam

Yesterday I went to Matthew's Movies and Outings Meetup at Just Desserts near Wellesley Station.  I also saw a documentary about Mary Pickford on Netflix.

This afternoon I went to the memoir slam.  The first subject was "Trouble with customs and immigration officials." I haven't had any real trouble with them, but I wrote about my trouble getting into the Ontario health care system a year after returning from my eight months in London researching my Ph.D. thesis.  In that system applicants wait twenty minutes in a preliminary queue, then after they tell you your papers are in order you get to wait in the main queue for two hours.  

In my case, I thought my papers were in order--I had a passport to prove my citizenship--but when I came to the front of the second queue it turned out I needed more documentation to prove residency. (They were afraid I was a Canadian citizen who'd become a British resident and was now sponging off Canadian health care.) So I got more documentation and returned the next day.  But once again, they let me past the first stage only to tell me it still wasn't good enough.  This time I put up a fuss because I'd wasted so much time in queues, and luckily they relented.

The second subject was "Clocks and watches." I talked about our antique clock from Berlin, Ontario--before it became Kitchener in World War I--and how I missed owning a watch I could wind up because now they only sell battery watches. (Coincidentally, my watch battery died today.) Then I talked about how I had no trouble learning to tell time, but was a long time learning to tie my shoes, leading to a long digression.  But the others didn't mind:  when I was finished, one woman asked if I had any more to say!

I enjoy the memoir slam so much, I think I'll start a second blog of my writings there. (Maybe other members will do the same!)

Finished THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP

Yesterday I finished The Old Curiosity Shop.  Kitschy and all over the place.  The notes had a Greek quote from The Odyssey which Dick Swiveller alluded to, and I managed to translate it! (It goes something like "At once she put the drug into the wine, then he drank it.")

Last night we had another rehearsal.  There's a new actress called Sheila.  The writer finally printed out the first act, which I have a bigger role in.  I was afraid I'd have to leave early, but there was plenty of time.  It's time to get serious about memorizing my lines.

Then I went to the Karaoke Meetup.  It was supposed to be at Jingle's, but it turned out they weren't having karaoke that night.  But Jonah can think on his feet, and decided to move the location to Kramer's, which was having karaoke.  I went first while he waited at Jingle's for other people who showed up there.  As a result, I got to be first in the rotation!  I sang Dean Martin's "Sway"  and The Moody Blues' "Ride My See Saw."

With the Dickens book finished, I've started reading the sea issue of Lapham's Quarterly.  Looks like it'll be entertaining! (I wonder if they'll publish an issue on death one of these quarters?)

HDTV

For the past twelve years, we've subscribed to satellite TV with its myriad channels, but recently we let it lapse.  So I went out and bought an indoor HDTV antenna at the Futureshop near Keele & St. Clair.  We now get Toronto's local stations free in all their HDTV glory, and Buffalo stations when the weather is good.  Moira was pleased, because Margaret was worrying that Father would get bored without TV.

After finishing the second-last season of Breaking Bad, we watched Ken Burns' two-part documentary The Dust Bowl on Netflix.  It made good use of first-hand accounts from people who were children at the time. (Moira's only problem with these shows is that she has trouble staying awake in the evening.)

This evening we saw Ron Howard's movie Frost/Nixon.  It was better than I expected.  Lately I've been a bit curious about the year 1974 and reading about that year's news items and hit songs. (I recall that Mother felt sorry for Nixon.)

John fixed up the new overhead light for my room. (All that was left to do was some plastering around the old light's fixture.) The new light's very convenient.

THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE

"I like cats.  They're always up to something!"--The Postman Always Rings Twice

This afternoon I went to the memoir slam.  Our two subjects were "bargains" and "looking through windows." On bargains I wrote that I've never really got into consumer culture or watching for bargains, but that Giuseppe Macina's singing lessons have good value for money.  On windows I mentioned staring out the back window when I was little, which Mother called "foxing"; looking out my window in early fall after a frosty night and seeing green grass covered in a temporary white blanket (something I miss from my New Brunswick days); looking out the window from my first Toronto home twenty years ago and seeing the old buses and streetcars at the Wychwood Barns; looking my window today and seeing a firehouse tower, and wishing I could get access to the top and see the view.  I really enjoy this group!

This evening I saw the 1948 version of The Postman Always Rings Twice at the Classic Movies Meetup at the Central. (I'd seen it on TV before, but I recorded it on video and didn't get the last ten minutes.) John Updike got it right when he wrote in The New Yorker that it isn't a great movie but has great moments.

After I got home I saw the last episode of the second-last season of Breaking Bad.  Pretty stunning.

Walking from Eglinton to Bloor

This afternoon I went on a Walking Meetup organized by Matthew.  We met near Yonge & Eglinton and walked down to Yonge & Bloor.  And we were pretty brisk:  it only took about an hour.

A dozen people came, with some nice variety. (One mother brought her son.) I was talking to a German girl wearing sandals, with a ring on one toe.  I was also talking to an Iraqi girl who's been reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a feminist critical of Islam.

At the end of the walk, we had lunch at Hue's Kitchen.  I ordered the butter chicken with brown rice, and the girl sitting next to me ordered the same thing.  I got served first, but I gave her the first serving and waited for the second. (Gentleman or what?)

You wouldn't expect to meet people you know by chance in a city as big as Toronto.  But that happened twice to me last week!  On Wednesday I went to a second meeting of the bereavement support group (I had a headache and had to leave early), and on the subway on the way there I met Sara, organizer of the Board Games Meetup.  It was a bit awkward because I haven't been to that group for a while.  

Then on Thursday, I went to Beguiling in Mirvish Village tp buy another volume of Fantagraphics' series of the complete comic strip Peanuts, from  1971 to 1974--I remember seeing some episodes at the time! I also got some cheap reprints of Mad magazine, including Dave Berg Looks at the U.S.A., and Dennis the Menace Rides Again. What was I talking about?  Oh yeah, just afterward I met Alex, organizer of the Life Begins at Forty Meetup.  And I reminded him I'd be attending his screening of The Postman Always Rings Twice on Monday.

In a Lighter Vein

Today was the latest ROLT event:  In a Lighter Vein, devoted to humorous writing.  Fifteen people said they were coming, I made a reservation for ten, and seven showed up. (Four were new.)

I read James Thurber's "The Night the Bed Fell" (Mother liked Thurber) and Stephen Leacock's "My Financial Career." They're from the books My Life and Hard Times and Literary Lapses respectively.  Last Sunday I bought them at the World's Biggest Bookstore, which had only one copy each.  I also bought a discounted book showing Gustave Dore's famous drawings of 19th-century London.

In the evening I went to the Karaoke Meetup at BarPlus.  There were just three people, but one was a new girl with whom I sang the "Summer Nights" duet from Grease.

The annual week for commemorating banned books is in September, so for next month's ROLT, I think I'll make it about censored and challenged writing.  Besides reading censored works, we could also read writing about censorship, like Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and the book-burning in Cervantes' Don Quixote.

BREAKING BAD

"Walter, just because you shot Jesse James... don't make you Jesse James"--Mike, Breaking Bad

"Boys shave, and girls say 'You cut yourself!'"--Eva Gabor, Green Acres

My failure to post this last week hasn't been due to anything like my earlier earache.  I simply couldn't think of anything to say!

In recent days Moira and I have been watching the second-last season of Breaking Bad, which just came available on Netflix.  It's a really brilliant show. (It's the one about the high school chemistry teacher who gets into the crystal meth business.) As Moira says, Bryan Cranston is an actor who can do two things at once.  We watch an episode every evening. (There are eight.)

I've also been watching some old TV shows on Hulu.  I just discovered Green Acres there.  Every episode I've seen--I'm starting with the last season--has a detail I remember from seeing the show back in 1970!  Eddie Albert did a great slow burn.  

I also saw the first episode of Blake Edwards' Peter Gunn, which is cool in a 1958 sort of way, especially Henry Mancini's theme music. (Crazy, Daddyo!) But I can't quite get into Night Gallery, Rod Serling's early '70s horror followup to The Twilight Zone.  Maybe it's his hairpiece.  I couldn't quite get into Ric Burns' documentary Death and the Civil War either, which I saw the first part of on Netflix.

Two new TV shows

Last night Moira and I saw the first episode of the original Danish version of The Killing.  It built into something pretty gripping.  We watched it on Youtube, where someone posted it one quarter-episode at a time. (We tried to see it on our HDTV, and I did manage to find it there, but I couldn't figure out how to change it to a full-screen format.)

Later I saw the first episode of Jenji Kohan's prison series Orange Is the New Black.  The central character in it was a bit annoying.  I still get angry about the War on Drugs ruining lives.

I've been watching Mission:  Impossible on Netflix.  There are still a few episodes from the sixth season that I didn't rent from zip.ca because the disc needed replacement.  But I don't remember seeing any of these episodes at the time.

We got the first peaches of the season.

Non-fiction book club

Last night I attended the Non-Fiction Book Club Meetup at the reference library, where we discussed Guns, Germs and Steel.  It was pretty lively.  Some people speak more than others, of course.  I only spoke a couple of times, but I'm just as happy with listening as talking.  I met Jane, and afterward I was explaining to her about our VPN.

Last night I saw an episode of Night Gallery where a character was reading Charles Dickens' Bleak House, and the book was part of the green Centennial Edition of Dickens' complete works that we own!  (I'm now reading the Centennial Edition of The Old Curiosity Shop.)

My earache has mostly gone away.  And the ear drops have almost run out.

I'm running short again.  Maybe I should put my comic-book collection into better order.  My Megapolis city now has a population of over five million.  I got the August schedule for the Bloor Cinema, but it doesn't look so interesting.  And I got new razors at the drugstore.

Bradley Manning's conviction

Yesterday Bradley Manning was convicted on all but two of the charges against him.  I wasn't relying on a much better result, and I feared even worse. (If he'd been convicted on the "aiding the enemy" count, it would have been a disaster for the press.)

At such times I go to the Huffington Post forums and mouth off a lot.  When people say Manning betrayed his country, I'm quick to say, "He betrayed his government, not his country." Why does this issue mean so much to a Canadian like me.  I guess that with his one act of revelation he did more to make the world a better place than I've ever done.

I'm glad to see that people are already petitioning the White House to pardon Manning.  I know that Obama's launched a war on whistleblowers, in stark contrast to the rhetoric of his 2008 platform. (He's even been using the Espionage Act, which goes back to World War I and the accompanying assault on American civil liberties.) But I'm hoping that if the pressure for a pardon gets big enough he'll take the path of least resistance.  Some people say he'll wait till he's about to leave office, but I say demand it now!  Manning's American supporters should sign a petition promising not to vote for any federal candidate who doesn't publicly support the pardon.  And I don't care what the Nader-haters say.

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

"Why in heaven's name don't you die and do the world some good?"--The Petrified Forest

At today's memoir slam the two subjects were hoarding, and talking to yourself.  My pen gave out as I started to write and I had to borrow someone else's.  On the subject of hoarding I talked about my comics collection and our used books.  On talking to yourself, I mentioned how Mother used to sing to herself, which someone bugged me, and how I found the craziness that makes you talk to yourself less scary than the patriotic craziness that makes people say about the Bradley Manning case, "The American government didn't do one thing wrong!" (Someone actually said that in a Huffington Post forum.)

While waiting for the group to start, I've got into the habit of reading one of Miroslav Sasek's series of This Is... children's travel books. (Lilian Smith library has a whole lot of them.) In previous weeks I read This Is London and This Is Edinburgh; this week I read This Is Greece.  I only have time to read part of each book before things begin, and read the rest afterward.

This evening I went to the Classic Movie Meetup at the Central, where we watched the stagy 1935 movie of the Robert Sherwood play The Petrified Forest.  I find Sherwood's plays rather dated (this and Abe Lincoln in Illinois and Waterloo Bridge).

Back to THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP

I finished Guns, Germs and Steel last week.  Now I've started the second half of The Old Curiosity Shop.  I read about 40 pages yesterday on the way to York University and back.  I went there for an Aspergers Meetup at the York Lanes Second Cup, where I met Yevghenia and Tiffany for the first time in months.

Afterward I went to the Scott library and looked at the showbiz magazine Variety.  I like the "Crix' Pix" where they give a sample of a new movie's reviews.  (Unlike Rotten Tomatoes with its thumbs-up and thumbs-down, they include mixed reviews.) But it turns out they got rid of it this spring.  I did find a few issues from before the change, so I know that the reviews for the latest Die Hard movie were overwhelmingly negative.

We've been watching the Ken Burns documentary Prohibition on Netflix.  It's pretty depressing, of course.  More proof of H.L. Mencken's line: "For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong." Cool music by Wynton Marsalis. (Father finds expert Daniel Okrent annoying.)

Corn season has arrived.  We ate corn on the cob for the first time this year.

Earache

For the past week I've had an earache, which is why I stopped posting.  On Wednesday morning I went to Dr. Ang, who prescribed some ear drops.  It's finally lessening, but it's still hard to get to sleep.

I did manage to get to a Bereaved Families of Toronto support group on Wednesday afternoon.  I also got to the memoir slam on Monday afternoon, where we wrote about things that scared us; and clouds.  But I had to cancel on the Monday night Toronto Film Society double bill of THE FRONT PAGE and HIS GIRL FRIDAY.  And I couldn't make it to the documentary CASTING BY at the Bloor. (I hope they show it again.)

I managed to fiddle with the DNS preferences on Moira's computer and our HDTV, so we can now get the American version of Netflix on those machines as well as my computer. (I'm not completely useless around the house.)

We've finished assembling the new bookcases for the living room and now we're putting books in them, which means updating the locate file for our used books business.  This afternoon I helped enter data, and Moira said I was very good at it.

New comics

I just got some new Sunday funnies from Barry King, the first in quite a while.  One of the items I'd bought was a whole run of the 52 Terry and the Pirates Sundays in 1971.  This was from near the end of its run, long after George Wunder replaced Milton Caniff as artist.  It's clear they were running out of ideas:  they actually made Terry and congresswoman Dolores Deepsix into a couple!  The story about student radicals burning down a military museum was a little much.  At the end of the year there was the start of a story with the Dragon Lady, but that was mostly in 1972.

I also got some strips like The Lone Ranger, Rusty Riley, Tim Tyler's Luck, Smilin' Jack and Li'l Abner.  One thing I like about Barry is that he'll often throw in some extras:  Sundays that aren't saleable because of tears and such, but I still like to have them in my collection.

This evening I saw an episode of Night Gallery on Hulu.com .  That was the Rod Serling horror show from the early 1970s. (I'm amused by the "relevant" look of TV shows from that period.) Back at the time the credits alone scared me pretty thoroughly.  Today I find it pretty corny.

I also saw an American Experience documentary about the Greely expedition to the Arctic in the 1880s that gathered lots of weather data, but their relief ship failed to arrive and it ended in starvation and cannibalism.

Bad subway decision

Toronto's City Council made a bad, bad decision voting to build a subway line in Scarborough in place of the RT.  It looks to be a white elephant just like the Sheppard line, a money pit undermining overall TTC finances.  Rob Ford said enough to make it clear he lacks a basic understanding of the issue. (I sometimes feel sorry for the Mayor:  he doesn't seem to have any sense!)

I don't say this as an enemy of subways.  The Spadina Line extension they're building out to York University is long overdue, and will ultimately increase the number of suburban users from north of Steeles Avenue.  But this is just wrong.  What Scarborough needs is an LRT system going out all the way to the Zoo.  It'll provide big benefits at a much smaller price than the subway.

Today Moira and I saw the first episode of Top of the Lake on Netflix.  It's a series about a New Zealand detective (Mad Men's Elizabeth Moss) investigating a twelve-year-old's impregnation, produced by Jane Campion.  And it's very original:  I think I want to see that first episode again.

When I read my latest credit card bill from Visa, it turned out I'd paid my bill twice in June, and ended up over a hundred dollars in the black!  So today I went to the bank and took out $100, but instead of getting it from my usual account, I used my Visa and ended up about even.

CITY LIGHTS

On these hot summer days I've taken to drinking Coke before breakfast. (Yeah, I'm on the road to ruin!) I like to combine an uncooled can with ice so the end result is watered down.  Our refrigerator used to make its own ice, but something went wrong with it and now I get it at the store and crush it with a hammer before 

Today I mailed my snail-mail letter to John and Mary George. (They're at a cottage on the south coast of Lake Ontario northeast of Niagara Falls.) I found out it costs $1.25 to send a letter to the United States now!

This evening I saw Charlie Chaplin's masterpiece City Lights once again.  I saw it with the Classic Movies Meetup group, at an outdoor screening at Pecault Park next to Roy Thomson Hall.  (We got there early and took some of the metal chairs while they were available.) It's the one with the blind flower girl who thinks Chaplin's rich, and the blackout-drunk millionaire.  Classic ending! ("Yes, now I see.") There was a danger of rain, but we didn't get any.

This afternoon I saw the last episode of Freaks and Geeks (with disco dancing and Dungeons & Dragons); and an American Experience documentary about Jesse James.  Seems it was one opportunistic newspaper editor who made James look like a Robin Hood-type hero.

GUNS, GERMS & STEEL

Today was a hot, lazy day for me.  I stayed in and didn't do much.

I'm almost finished Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel.  Normally I'd wait till I've finished before writing about it, but it's a slow day today!  It's a very enjoyable book, written in a clear style. ("The answer is unequivocal:  no!") I've been learning a lot about early civilizations and stuff like the Austronesian migrations that started in Taiwan and spread all the way from Madagascar to Easter Island.  I'd been wondering why the Bronze Age came before the Iron Age, and it turned out to be because smelting iron ore into steel requires bigger, more complex furnaces than just smelting copper and other ores into alloys like bronze.

One thing Diamond might have talked a bit more about is the importance of trade in the evolution of early societies.  I couldn't help noticing that the leap to alphabetic writing systems was made by the Phoenicians, who were using it for far-reaching commerce, unlike earlier systems that just served bureaucracies within a single kingdom.

I found someone on Youtube who's posted whole episodes of The Carol Burnett Show!  I just saw an episode from 1975 with Sammy Davis Jr., with a musical number built around Harold Arlen songs and the famous sketch about the no-frills airline passenger. (I remember seeing it at the time, of course.) I'm going to be looking at more of those.

This afternoon I saw an American Experience documentary about building the Panama Canal.  It's a miracle that the project got completed:  they really had to learn by doing. (Today the American nation's idea of an accomplishment is getting Osama killed.)

Toronto Film Society

This afternoon at the memoir slam, our two subjects were children's books and the family car.  On books I talked about stuff like Dr. Seuss and Tom Swift and the Little House books, and mentioned that I thought Lord of the Rings was about circuses!  On cars I mentioned that I was born in a car--that was hard to top--and that we got our latest car on September 11, 2001.

There's a new South St. Burger and New York Fries that just opened in our neighborhood. We got our dinner there today.  The fries reminded Moira of those British chips that they served in newspaper.

This evening the Classic Movie Meetup had an event at the Carlton.  We saw a double bill presented by the Toronto Film Society, which I'd never attended before.  The first movie was a 1935 MGM adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's family comedy Ah, Wilderness!; the second was a 1946 musical remake called Summer Holiday. (I once saw a British musical called Summer Holiday, with Cliff Richard and his friends driving around Europe in a double-decker London bus.)

Ah, Wilderness! was pretty conventional, though Wallace Beery had some bright scenes as the soused "black sheep" uncle.  As for Summer Holiday, Mickey Rooney had got a bit too old for those adolescent hijinks. (The movie's release was delayed for over a year, possibly because Rooney criticizes capitalism.) I left the second movie pretty early, because I felt a bit sleepy.

Classical Music Meetup

The Salsa on St. Clair Festival went through its second day today.  The noise is inconvenient, but one noisy weekend a year is a price I'm willing to pay for living in an interesting place. (Now if it were this noisy every weekend, I'd give serious consideration to moving!) And it's fun to walk through once or twice.

This afternoon I went to a Classical Music Meetup at the Granite Brewery near Eglinton & Mount Pleasant.  Because they stopped the St. Clair streetcar during the festival, it was more convenient to go to St. Clair & Oakwood and take the Ossington bus north to Eglinton West station, then take the Eglinton bus east to the Granite Brewery. (Normally I'd take the streetcar east to the Yonge subway, then go east from the Eglinton station.)

This is the first Classical Music Meetup event I've been to in a little while. (They've had to make changes because their former location has been priced out of affordability.) Like my Meetup, they're now charging a $5 membership fee.  They held a raffle, and I won a CD of Rolando Villazon singing movie songs!

I also met John D., who like me is a fan of Herodotus.  He was pleased when I told him that they've made a sequel to 300, focusing on the Athenian experience.  I didn't care for the first 300 movie--it's the kind of film where the Spartan soldiers go without chest protectors to show off their pecs, and the Oracle of Delphi is young enough to dance naked--but reading the book got me interested enough to see the second movie too.

Salsa on St. Clair

This weekend they're having the annual Salsa on St. Clair weekend just north of our house. It gets pretty noisy and I like to find things to do elsewhere.  Fortunately, there were a couple of Meetup events today.

The first one, of course, was my ROLT Meetup.  Last fall's poetry event was so successful that I did another one this time.  I read Robert Browning's "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," A.E. Housman's "Hell Gate," W.H. Auden's "September 1 1939" and Robert Frost's "Mending Wall."

Moira didn't come because she was helping to paint the living room. (Maybe I should have been doing that too.) We now have the new living room windows installed.  Our next project will be installing the new toilet with two flush levels in the main bathroom.  For the past week it's been pretty inconvenient having to use the downstairs toilet all the time.

A total of eight people came!  A new member called Heather was particularly laudatory about the group. I got the others to contribute five dollars each toward my Meetup organizing fees. (It's about $150/year, but I'll be happy if they absorb half the cost.) Next month our topic will be humorous writing.

This evening I went to a Karaoke Meetup at BarPlus.  Besides Jonah and me, there was a newlywed couple.  Jonah left a bit early, and so did I.  Didn't dare to sing anything new.

Mysteriously Yours

Last night I went to the show Mysteriously Yours with the AFACT group.  That's a dinner theatre place that puts on mystery shows. (We only came for the show, skipping the dinner.) Their mystery took a spoofy approach, set in Upton Mansion (like Downton Abbey, geddit?), with the detective parodying Columbo.

The show had six actors, with one actor playing a daughter in drag until she got killed and he came back as the detective.  Instead of being on a stage, they came out among the audience.  Some people who were their for their birthday or wedding anniversary got introduced as cameo characters!  At the end audience members got to guess who'd done it and why, but I didn't try.

I paid thirty-five dollars to see the show, and at that price it seemed thin. (Don heard the food was overpriced too:  it's basically for tourists.) But it got us thinking about the approach we want to take with our show.

The night before I sent a message to the group's other members with a link to a Youtube clip of a Carol Burnett Show episode with an Ed & Eunice skit where Eunice was rehearsing a play with Madeline Kahn. (Mama: "I used to like Ingrid Bergman till she ran off with that foreigner!")