Music clips

Time for some more music clips:

Schubert, "Mille Cherubini in Coro." Schubert's cradle song translated into Italian, sung her by the one and only Luciano Pavarotti!

Liszt, third Liebestraum.  This is the famous one, a song about how you should love as long as you can because someday you'll be burying your sweetheart.  Margaret Price is the singer, James Lockhart the pianist.

Verdi, "O Patria Mia" from Aida.  One of my favorite arias from one of my favorite operas.  This is Leontyne Price in one of her greatest roles, in her last Met performance in 1985.

Wagner, finale from Das Rheingold.  The finale from Wagner's first Niebelung opera, where the gods enter their new castle of Valhalla, a mansion paid for with gold stolen from the Rhine maidens, who can be heard briefly. Wagner's music is a bit overwhelming, of course, but it can be remarkably pretty! (This is a 1958 recording directing by Georg Solti.)

Jacques Offenbach, Olympia's Aria from Tales of Hoffmann.  One of my favorite arias from another one of my favorite operas, sung here by Natalie Dessay. (I wish I could find out what production this is.  You don't see sights like those doll puppets every day!)

Edward Elgar, fourth Pomp and Circumstance March. This isn't the famous first one, but a nice one I first heard at Charles and Diana's 1981 wedding.

George Gershwin, Three Preludes for Piano.  One of Gershwin's classical-style compositions, but no less jazzy.  Played by Kristian Zimerman.

Franz Waxman, "Ireland" from The Spirit of St. Louis.  Billy Wilder's 1957 movie of Charles Lindbergh's flight is underrated, even if Jimmy Stewart was a bit too old. Waxman came up with a masterful score, here suggesting the anticipation that came with nearing the flight's completion. (Now I want to see the movie again.)

Loudon Wainwright III, "Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road." Wainwright's biggest hit.  What can I say--it's always made me laugh!

Dickie Goodman, "Mr. Jaws." Novelty single from 1975.

The Clash, "Revolution Rock" from London Calling.  Left-wing new age band at their 1979 peak!

Gee, I posted eleven clips this time instead of ten!  Hope you won't expect me to do that every time...

The peaceable kingdom

"Do you have guns?  Any weapons?" "The best!  But we won't need them." "Glad to hear it.  I'm taking one anyway"--Planet of the Apes

Mother (on the design of their mansion): "We based it on Versailles' Hall of Mirrors." Daughter (whispering): "And Donald Trump's bathroom!"--Crazy Rich Asians

Sunday I saw Franklin J. Schaffner's Planet of the Apes (for the third time) at the Event Screen with the Movie Meetup group.  Written by Rod Serling, it's like a long episode of his The Twilight Zone:  Serling had a genius for sneaking social comment into the "weird tales" genre. (Cleverly, it works on multiple levels.) Charlton Heston's blowhard tendencies are surprisingly suitable here. Afterward we hung out at the Imperial Pub, where I had chili.

Then I went to Dora Keogh for the Reading Out Loud Meetup.  The topic was Canadian writing, and I titled the event "The Peaceable Kingdom."  I read "Death of a Centenarian" from Mazo de la Roche's second Jalna book and Bliss Carman's poem "A Vagabond Song." A group of Celtic musicians started jamming after a while, but we were in a separate room.

Wednesday I had lunch with Pam at the Schnitzel Hub.

I've finished A Very Short History of Babylon and started reading the Discovery issue of Lapham's Quarterly.

Father got a tooth pulled and he'll have to stay off hard food for a day or two.

Today I saw Crazy Rich Asians with Puitak and Gordon at the Yonge & Dundas. Someone said it was an Asian story Americanized, yet you could also say it was an American story Asianized! Conventional but enjoyable, with a good role for Awkwafina as Her Wisecracking Girlfriend. (Wait till the Kardashians see that Singapore has rich people tackier than them!) Afterward we went to Kimchi Korea House, where I had chicken bibimbap.

Trailer clips

Just to be different, I thought I'd post some movie trailers I found on Youtube. (None of them spoil the big plot twists, like today's trailers tend to do.)

Blood and Black Lace.  The trailer for Mario Bava's 1964 Italian slasher movie scared me when I was little. (So did trailers for westerns.)

Vengeance! You haven't lived till you've seen a trailer for a 1970 Shaw Brothers chopsocky from Hong Kong. (The music at the beginning comes from the classic western The Big Country.)

Alien.  A classic spooky trailer for Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi thriller.

Airplane!  An hilarious trailer for the relentless 1980 disaster-movie spoof.

Heaven's Gate. I remember seeing this trailer for Michael Cimino's notorious 1980 western megaflop, and it does look rather promising.  BTW, the whole movie actually isn't that bad:  the dialogue is terrible ("I'm a victim of my class, James") but some of the crowd scenes are amazing!  It might have made a great silent movie.

Johnny Dangerously.  An offbeat trailer for Amy Heckerling's 1984 gangster-movie spoof.  Never saw it, but I recall it has the Weird Al Yankovic song "This is the Life," with the line "If money can't buy happiness, I guess I'll have to rent it!"

Problem Child.  I heard this 1990 comedy hit was tasteless, but Premiere magazine loved the trailer!

When the Cat's Away.  They used the French trailer for this 1996 French comedy in its American release too. (Most people wouldn't translate "Merde!" as "Damn!") Alas, I'm told that the movie itself wasn't half as funny as what we see here.

The Muse.  Albert Brooks presents his 1999 comedy in a very offbeat trailer!

Couples Retreat.  This 2009 comedy seems to be another case where the trailer was funnier than the movie...

HEART OF DARKNESS

"I have wrestled with death.  It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine.  It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary.  If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be"--Heart of Darkness

Mother Superior to aspiring nuns: "Remember, you can very easily cheat us, your sisters, but you can never cheat yourself, or God"--The Nun's Story

I just finished reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for the Classic Book Club.  It has an inchoate, existential greatness.  (On the first page of the second chapter I noticed a quotation within a quotation within a quotation!)

Wednesday night I screened Fred Zinnemann's The Nun's Story with the History Discussion Group.  It's an emotionally powerful character study, with Audrey Hepburn at her best. (Part of it takes place in the Congo, which made it a good match for our earlier discussion.) Moira thought it picked up when the Mother Superior told her to fail her exam!  I liked the moment when she promised her father she'd make him proud but he said, "I don't want to be proud of you, I want you to be happy." I could imagine my own father saying something like that.

Last night I joined the Movie Meetup group to see a special screening of the famous Elvis '68 TV special. (It was the 41st anniversary of his death, which I remember hearing of on the radio.) I'd seen it several times before, but it's still great fun. Too bad about Elvis in the '60s:  instead of making all those stupid movies he should have been on television!

I've started digging up the potatoes.  They're pretty good this year.

Thanks to John Snow for sending me a copy of Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha! (He noticed the earlier post where I said I wanted to read it.)

Music clips

"He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified"--Heart of Darkness

Haven't posted any music clips for a while. (The summer makes me lazy, of course.)

Faure, Berceuse from The Dolly Suite.  I'm familiar with this piece because they used to play it at the end of the classical music show on CBC's FM radio, just before the news!

Lili Boulanger, "Pour les Funerailles d'un Soldat." Based on Alfred de Musset's poem "A Soldier's Funeral," this piece was first composed in 1912, on the eve of the Great War. (Lili Boulanger herself died in 1918 at just twenty-five!) You won't forget this.

Irving Berlin, "What'll I do?" A small gem by one of the great American songwriters, here arranged by Nelson Riddle and sung by William Atherton, with the opening credits of the underwhelming 1974 movie of The Great Gatsby. (But isn't that a great credit sequence?) 

Danny Kaye and the Andrews Sisters, "Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo.)" My father used to like this song!

Johnny Otis, "Willie and the Hand Jive." A rock & roll classic, being performed in Juke Box Rhythm, a 1959 movie from prolific B-movie producer Sam Katzman.

The Beatles, "She's Leaving Home" from Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  A melancholy, underrated song from the Beatle's masterpiece album.

The Police, "Mother" from Synchronicity.  A funny song from the group's 1983 masterpiece album.

Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush, "Don't Give Up" from So.  A powerful, haunting duet by two singers in top form. (Elton John says the song helped him get sober!)

Dream Warriors, "Wash Your Face in My Sink" from And Now the Legacy Begins.  I'm not a big fan of rap, but I do like the Canadian group who did this 1991 piece.

Mark Ronson, "Uptown Funk." Here it's accompanied by a video of classic movie dancers! (How many can you name?)

THE MAN WHO LAUGHS

"At certain times, perhaps on long spring evenings, still rainy and sad, with the cold bulbs in bloom and a light too mild for promise drifting over the sea, I have opened the windows and felt the house shrink back into wood and plaster and those humble elements of which it is made, and the life in it subside, leaving me exposed, empty-handed, but feeling a fierce and lawless quiver of freedom, of loneliness too harsh and perfect for me now to bear"--Alice Munro

I refilled my Cipralex prescription last week, but was a few days late, so it affected my dreams for a while.  About a week ago I dreamed of having been in a long, successful, marriage! (Never dreamed like that before.) And the same night, I dreamed of a thriller where a human uncovered a conspiracy by sharks to recruit humans to feed other humans to them. The other night I dreamed of Xenophon's Anabasis and the famous scene where the vanguard reaches the heights from which they can see the sea.

Finally finished the home issue of Lapham's Quarterly today.

We finished the documentary series The Vietnam War.  Very fine.

Today I finally reread the Classics Illustrated version of Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs that I bought some ten years ago, for the first time since childhood. (I approached it like an appointment with the dentist.) I've actually read the book, set in England ca. 1700, which is about the deliberately disfigured boy Gwynplaine--his mouth carved into a permanent "smile"-- who turns out to be the heir to a House of Lords title.  It's one of Hugo's especially symbolic efforts: his companions are the mountebank Ursus (Latin for bear), his pet wolf Homo (Latin for man), and a blind girl called Dea (Latin for goddess).

It was the most disturbing of the Classics Illustrated comics I read when I was young. (Moira was equally traumatized.) I've seen other illustrators' work, and Paul Leni's silent movie that inspired Bob Kane to create Batman's enemy the Joker. But artist Norman Nodel's square, basic approach, lacking in "style," somehow gets to me more than they do!

Bits and pieces

"Whatever the Europeans may actually think of artists, they have killed enough of them off by now to know that they are as real--and as persistent--as rain, snow, taxes, or businessmen"--James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name

I was going to see Anne today and waited at her apartment building's reception for almost an hour, but it turns out she thought I was coming tomorrow!  Oh well, I got to catch up a bit on my Lapham's Quarterly reading.

Wednesday night was the History Discussion Group, with the Belgian Empire its subject.  We talked for over two hours, but not much of the discussion was actually about Belgium! (I'm easygoing about those details...)

Today I read the Classics Illustrated comic of Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha.  I really want to read the whole poem!  There's an article in Salon about Native Americans creating Indian superheroes for comics, yet Hiawatha and the Micmac Glooscap are pre-Columbian superheroes in themselves. (I've also read two Robert Louis Stevenson comics: Kidnapped and Treasure Island.)

Ken Burns' The Vietnam War is getting better and better!  It does seem odd that the American planners counted on North Vietnamese morale being broken, but it didn't occur to them that American morale might break sooner. I have a feeling that his writer Geoffrey C. Ward is the real genius in these documentaries...

The age of Aquarius

Saturday afternoon I went to an Astrology Meetup at Withrow Park.  The organizer asked us why we got into it, and while everyone else gave complicated answers, I said: "I'm into astrology because I'm a kook." They were interested in my chart because I was born at the time of the big Aquarian stellium and solar eclipse in 1962 that had some East Indians predicting the end of the world! (Other astrologers called it the start of the Age of Aquarius after 2000 years of the Age of Pisces.)

Sunday afternoon the Classic Book Club discussed Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin.  Our next event will be at Dora Keogh in September to discuss Heart of Darkness.

Today I was at the comics store The Beguiling again, and bought the translated first volume of the manga of Sailor Moon.  I was into the TV anime twenty years ago, the one about a junior high school girl who fights super-villains dressed as a fashion model: miniskirt, opera gloves and go-go boots, along with a tiara she throws as a weapon. (I'm tempted to buy Shigeru Mizuki's manga biography of Hitler, but still haven't got up the nerve!)

We've started watching a library DVD of Ken Burns' Vietnam War documentary.  Fascinating, though it seems disingenuous to say that the United States became involved in the conflict in "good faith." (If the Cold War was seen as lacking "moral complexity," as one interviewee says, that reflects the Washington consensus' intolerance for dissent.)

Last week there was a big clan battle in the Vikings computer game and I kept getting cleaned out because I'd run out of treaty shields and didn't have the gold to buy more. But I've already made a recovery.

The latest Classics Illustrated comic I've read is about Renaissance sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. (They say his memoir has some fibs!)

Dora Kheogh

"All labor agitators who try to force men to join a union should be hanged.  In fact, just between ourselves, there oughtn't to be any unions allowed at all; and as it's the best way of fighting the unions, every businessman ought to belong to an employers' association and to the chamber of commerce.  In union there is strength.  So any selfish hog who doesn't join the chamber of commerce ought to be forced to"--Babbitt

Yesterday I went to the Celtic Reading Meetup for the first time.  The subject was Dylan Thomas, and we did quite a bit of reciting. (Future events look promising:  Angela's Ashes, Robert Burns...) The location was the Dora Keogh Irish pub near Broadview station, and we were in a room a lot like the one my groups had in the Mirvish Village Victory Cafe before it was condemned.  

I've decided to move my Meetups to this place too, though only after next week's events.  I discovered this place by accident:  we were going to meet at a Timothy's coffee shop a couple of blocks east, but it was closed because of the murder investigation there! (It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good...)

The new patio is almost finished.  I've hosed sixty tiles the last couple of days--after the noon session I forgot to turn the hose off!  John will soon be adding a back step. It's one of several improvements we'll be making before applying for a reverse mortgage. (Another is a spiral staircase to the attic.)

I've read the Classics Illustrated comic book versions of Lorna Doone--the romantic adventure set in England's west country in the late 17th century--and The Last Days of Pompeyi. (It does seem to me, that's a better way to spell it!)

The home issue of Lapham's Quarterly is excellent!  I've enjoyed the selections from V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas and Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt.

Yard work

Saturday morning John came over and rooted out all the bricks in our back yard patio. (He's going to put it back together so that weeds won't grow in it, not that I care about weeds.) That meant work for Moira and I, too:  she brushed the dust off the bricks and I hosed them down.

The catch is that we only have a short hose, so I have to tote all the bricks to the side yard where the hose can reach them.  Yesterday I toted and hosed 59 in total.  It was exhausting work, and I had to take long breaks, but nothing could stop Moira. (She runs a lot, and it keeps her in shape!) She puts me to shame...

Today it was raining so we left off the work.  Except that later I toted 24 more to hose tomorrow. (My shoes got muddy!)

The other night I dreamed of being the guest of an obnoxious Manhattan millionaire, a jerk in both his business  dealings and his personal life; seeing a Spy-style magazine devoted to saying nasty things about him, and wondering if he gave them scoops just so he'd be talked about.

Wednesday night when I was going to Debi's place to screen Peyton Place, I got off the University line at St. George station, as I usually do to get to stations on the Yonge line.  But I'd forgotten I was going to catch the King bus at St. Andrew station, so I had to wait for the next train to continue.  As it turned out I met my friend Betty-Anne (the art walk girl) on the next train, so my mistake actually worked out well for me!  When that happens I think, "What the old man does is always right." (That's the title of a funny Hans Christian Andersen story.)

Yesterday I read the Classics Illustrated comic book of Jules Verne's Michael Strogoff.  It's about a Russian scout delivering a message from the Tsar himself to the governor of Irkutsk urging them to hold out against a Tartar rebellion threatening his hold on Siberia, with various people out to stop him.

At one point the Tartars blind Stroganoff, but near the end it turns out that he isn't blind after all because the teardrops in his eyes protected them! That's a cheap narrative trick, just like in the Batman movie The Dark Knight where Commissioner Gordon got killed (an "anything can happen now" moment), but it turned out he'd faked his own death to protect his family...

Justine Moritz

"Do you think this dress is too 'old'?" "No, you're just too young"--Peyton Place

Last night I screened the DVD of Mark Robson's Peyton Place for the History Meetup. (I was going to show it last year the same month as we were discussing the 1950s, but the place was unavailable.) Too bad that the disc went haywire just ten minutes or so from the end--oh well, you can find the whole thing on Youtube! 

It's the second time I saw it, and I must say it has some fine supporting actors like Arthur Kennedy (as the drunk who rapes his stepdaughter) and Lloyd Nolan (as the wise doctor--you can tell he's wise just from his line delivery!).

That movie climaxes with Kennedy's stepdaughter on trial for killing him, of course. And coincidentally, this week I read two Classics Illustrated comics with girls hanged for a murder they didn't commit.  

One of these was (spoiler!) Esmeralda the Gypsy in Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame; the other was servant girl Justine Moritz in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. (Oops, Phoebus actually survives the stabbing of which Esmeralda gets convicted!) I'll leave off Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because I've decided to do it in my book club for Halloween.

Today I was googling Justine Moritz. (When did I develop these lurid tabloid tastes?) I found an illustration of her fate that I thought of posting at the top, but decided it would be in bad taste.

Oh, what the heck--here it is!

I tried to scan a similar image in the comic, but for some reason I can't save the scan!

...and the world well lost

Friday afternoon Miriam and I saw the documentary Always at the Carlyle at the Bloor.  It's about a high-class New York City hotel where the whole barroom was decorated by Madeline author Ludwig Bemelmans, and Bobby Short became a famous singer performing at the cafe.

This afternoon was the latest Reading Out Loud Meetup.  The topic was love, so I titled it "...and the world well lost." Eleven people turned up, the best showing in several months.

I read the part of Goodbye to Berlin where Christopher and Sally got to know Clive the rich American; the chapter in Tom Sawyer where Tom took the rap for Becky's offence; the folk poem "The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington" and Tennyson's "Lady Clare." Joanna brought a book of Yeats poems, so we read several of those too.

I've brought out my collection of Classics Illustrated comic books and started reading them.  Some of them we had when I was young, but there are quite a few that I bought in recent years and haven't yet got around to reading! (Yesterday I read the comic of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.)

THE BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ

"It was like a dogma in a newly adopted religious creed:  Sally adores Clive.  It is a very solemn undertaking to adore a millionaire.  Sally's features began to assume, with increasing frequency, the rapt expression of the theatrical nun"--Goodbye to Berlin

"You don't have much, Stroud, but you keep subtracting from it"--The Birdman of Alcatraz

At the memoir group yesterday afternoon, they were showing the movie version of M*A*S*H in the next room and we could hear the noise. (That scene where they drop the walls of Hotlips' shower tent with everyone watching is cruel, not funny!)

I've finished King Leopold's Ghost and now I'm reading Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin for the Classic Book Club.  The musical Cabaret is based on it, and I keep seeing Liza Minnelli and Michael York.

Tonight I saw John Frankenheimer's The Birdman of Alcatraz (for the second time) with the Movie Meetup group at the Eton House. That's the one with Burt Lancaster as a sociopathic convict redeemed by his study of birds.  It's occurred to me that Robert Stroud was autistic! Such people sometimes have a way with animals.  When I saw the panda movie on Saturday with fellow Aspie Bev, they showed a New Englander who specializes in reintroducing bears into the wild, and Bev thought that he was autistic too.

I'm now past Level 1800 in Candy Crush Saga!

Salsa on St. Clair

On a rich family's Gruenewald house: "The place is like a power-station which the engineers have tried to make comfortable with chairs and tables from an old-fashioned, highly respectable boarding-house....  Herr Bernstein probably ordered the villa from a popular avant-garde architect in a moment of recklessness; was horrified at the result and tried to cover it up as much as possible with the family belongings"--Goodbye to Berlin

This weekend was the nearby Salsa on St. Clair festival, so things were pretty noisy in our neighbourhood.  (I turned on the air conditioning since the windows were worth closing anyway!) Of course, it's just once a year.

It was a good afternoon to get away from the noise and join Bev and see that Imax movie Pandas at the Ontario Science Center that was sold out last time.  The Omnimax system gave me a headache. Afterward we had Thai food at the Lime restaurant again.

Today I just stayed home and napped quite a bit.  I was also learning about Guam on a Youtube video.  Not much to write about...

Dog days

The hot weather is here!  In recent nights I've been sleeping with the windows open. (Opening and closing them is a bit of trouble.) We haven't been using the air conditioning, but I've turned on the fan a few times to spread the cooler basement air through the house.

Today I went to Shoppers Drug Mart and refilled my Cipralex prescription.  It takes a while to get it ready for pickup, and I usually go over  to Whychwood Library to kill some time.  But that branch has closed for renovations for a year or two.

What will I do to kill time now?  I went over to the parkette on Wychwood Avenue, across the street from Wychwood Barns, and read some more of King Leopold's Ghost, about how the rubber boom began.  That book's a real jaw-dropper!

Today was Tuesday, so I went to Ali Baba's near Ossington Station and bought four falafel wraps for our dinner.  It's getting to be a Tuesday ritual for us. (I get them with lettuce, cabbage and pickled turnip--don't like onions or tomatoes--and two with the hot sauce and two without.)

KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST

"Leopold's letters and memos, forever badgering someone about acquiring a colony, seem to be in the voice of a person starved for love as a child and now filled with an obsessive desire for an emotional substitute, the way someone becomes embroiled in an endless dispute with a brother or sister over an inheritance, or with a neighbor over a property boundary.  The urge for more can become insatiable, and its apparent fulfillment seems only to exacerbate that early sense of deprivation and to stimulate the need to acquire still more"--King Leopold's Ghost

King Leopold's Ghost is a fantastic book, but very disturbing.  You may think of the Belgian Congo over a century ago as the world of the past, but I kept seeing our present-day world, with its ruthless international corporations (including Canada's notorious mining companies), bureaucratic dissembling and spin control.

Adam Hochschild has an eye for telling yet entertaining details, like suggesting that ivory was the plastic of the 19th century.  Would you believe that the book Leopold read about managing profitable Java plantations was written by JWB Money?  King Leopold is the sort of historical figure who makes me gasp:  one man can make a terrible difference! (The Germans have a word for people like him: schreibtischentaeter, which means a criminal who works from a desk, Adolf Eichmann being another prime example.) I'm reminded of that moment in Chinatown when Jack Nicholson asks, "How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?" and John Huston answers, "The future, Mr. Gittes!  The future."

We finished the second season of Top of the Lake.  It wasn't as great as the first one but still pretty good (like the second season of The Crown). Now I want to see In the Cut, another Jane Campion story about a female police detective.

Yesterday my city in the Vikings game suffered five waves of attacks!  I don't mind the loss of resources--they can refill pretty quickly--but what really annoyed me was that I kept trying to start rebuilding my defence forces only to have them wiped away in the blink of an eye. (It didn't help that Thursday I'd spent my whole gold reserve on upgrading resource production and education to accelerate training of soldiers, both of which will help in the long run...) Today I've been using one of my two treaty bonuses that make me safe from attack for a day, and the rebuilding is so complete that I won't need the second just yet.

The greatest people of the 18th century

I'll now take a stab at naming the greatest people of the 18th century.

William of Orange (1650-1702): Dutch Stadtholder and English King who played a crucial role in bringing together the Grand Alliance that checked absolutist French king Louis XIV's ambitions of continental domination, in The War of the League of Augsburg and the War of the Spanish Succession.

Peter the Great (1672-1725): The most progressive Tsar of Russia's Romanov Dynasty, he introduced many facets of western culture, increased the Russian Empire's territory and built the Baltic port of St. Petersburg from scratch.

Robert Walpole (1676-1745): British Whig politician who over almost two decades made the office of Prime Minister the centre of power in the United Kingdom.

Johann Sebastian Bach  (1685-1760): Outstanding German composer of the baroque era. His music, often dismissed as old-fashioned in his lifetime, is still widely listened to today.

Voltaire (1694-78) French man of letters who emerged as one of the leading thinkers of the Enlightenment.

Benjamin Franklin  (1706-90) Philadelphia printer who was a leader in the movement for American independence as well as a scientist, inventor and man of letters.  He was one of the Enlightenment's central figures.

Karl Linnaeus (1707-78) Swedish biologist and pioneer taxonomist, who created the modern classification system for living things, an advance that made the Theory of Evolution possible.

William Pitt Sr. (1708-78): English politician whose global strategy in the Seven Years War led to crucial victories in the annus mirabilis of 1759 and made Britain a world power.

Qianlong (1711-99): Chinese Emperor who took the empire to its territorial peak, conquering a swath of central Asia.  In his later years, however, his attraction to the corrupt official Heshen started the Qing Dynasty's decline.

Frederick the Great (1712-86): Prussian King who obtained superpower status for his kingdom through narrow victories in the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War.

Adam Smith (1723-90): Scottish thinker whose The Wealth of Nations became a founding text of capitalist economics.

Catherine the Great (1729-96): German-born Empress of Russia, who extended her realm's borders westward and southward, becoming one of the European powers.

George Washington (1732-99): Virginia planter who led the military struggle for American independence, promoted the 1787 constitution creating a federal government, and became the nation's first president.

James Watt (1736-1819): Scottish engineer who developed the first practical steam engine, helping to spur the Industrial Revolution.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809): English thinker who took the lead in calling for  American independence, then helped draft the Declaration of the Rights of Man for the French Revolution.  His publications include Common Sense, Rights of Man and the Deist tract The Age of Reason.

Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803): Haitian mulatto who led the slave colony in a long war for independence that signalled the beginning of the end for the New World's colonial slave economy.

Francisco Goya (1746-1828): Spanish painter whose style evolved into a dark, psychologically profound vision.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe  (1749-1832): A dominant figure in German literature and leader of the romantic cultural movement.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91): Outstanding Austrian composer in the classical era.  For his short life, he was unusually prolific in  many musical fields, including symphony and opera.

William Blake (1757-1827): English poet and engraver, as well as radical religious and political thinker, at the forefront of the Romantic movement.

Horatio Nelson (1758-1805): English admiral whose sheer determination and advanced tactics in the Napoleonic Wars guaranteed the British Empire's naval supremacy.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97): English author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, a treatise that started the continuing movement for women's rights.

Busy day

Saturday afternoon I went to the big Chapters-Indigo bookstore on Bloor & Bay and bought Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost, about the Belgian Congo, to read for my August History Meetup.  It's one of those books that's hard to put down.

Sunday was the Classic Book Club, where we discussed Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.  I brought our coverless Classics Illustrated comic of the book, which amused the others.

Yesterday was busy.  First I went to the memoir group. Then I went to Miriam's place to proofread her proposal to get a booth for her business at a Kensington Market place.  Then I saw the documentary Design Canada at the Bloor. (I would have seen it with the Movie Meetup group, but I arrived at the last minute and didn't know they were in the balcony.)

Today I went to the bank to ask about getting a reverse mortgage on our house.  They referred me to some home equity specialists.

We saw the first episodes of Jane Campion's second Top of the Lake series China Girl.  It's even more unusual than the first one!

Goulash

"New York University has torn down... a home that Edgar Allen Poe once lived in. (NYU partially re-created the facade of the Poe house.  Quoth the raven:  Fuck you)"--Kevin Baker, Harper's

Wednesday I cooked goulash for the first time.  I chopped up the onion and the green pepper really fine.  And I fried the hamburger the way I'd read online, browning the bottom layer then turning it over to brown the opposite layer, only then breaking it up.  It was pretty good, but next time I'll add more tomato paste and less cayenne pepper!

Wednesday night I saw  Desiree (for the third time) on the DVD with the History Meetup.  Marlon Brando seems oddly miscast as Napoleon.

Today we got the latest issue of Harper's.  There's a very interesting Kevin Baker article about how big money is destroying New York City.

Music clips

Some more music clips today.

Humperdinck, Children's Chorus, Hansel & Gretel.  One of my favorite opera overtures!

Richard Adinsell, Beau Brummel.  This 1950s MGM production is no great shakes: Stewart Granger is an oddly stolid choice for the title role, Robert Morley's George III is a haunted-house madman, and the final deathbed scene is fiction. (He actually outlived George IV!) But it has a nice fanfare by Adinsell, who also composed the Warsaw Concerto.

Jerome Moross, The Big Country.  William Wyler's 1958 western is a classic, and Moross' musical score does it justice.

"We Won't Be Happy Till We Get It," from Babes in Toyland.  The villain's trio from the 1961 Disney movie of Victor Herbert's operetta, it's the best of the songs that Leven & Bruns added. (The main villain is Ray Bolger, best known as the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.) When I was little we owned the soundtrack album and I became familiar with these songs.  Youtube actually has the movie number, but I prefer the vinyl version.

Peter Gabriel, "Biko" from Peter Gabriel.  A musical tribute to the anti-apartheid movement's most prominent martyr, murdered by South African police in 1977. (For what it's worth, I think the movie Cry Freedom got a bad rap.) Gabriel is a singular musical talent!

Brian Eno, "1/1" from Music for Airports. Genius musical producer Eno came up with this 1978 album of new-wave ambient music. (They actually tried playing it in airports, but people found it too depressing!) It rewards patience.

Heaven 17, "Come Live With Me" from Luxury Gap.  A single from an underrated 1982 British album.

The Parachute Club, "Rise Up" from The Parachute Club.  I loved this song and video back in 1983, even before I moved to Toronto and got to know the city in the background.

The Payolas, "Where Is This Love" from Hammer on a Drum.  A 1983 song by another underrated group, this time Canadian. I especially like the moment where the kid instinctively protects the little guy!

Frank Zappa, "Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk" from Broadway the Hard Way.  When they made Frank Zappa they broke the mold. (Or as Zappa might say, they threw away the shovel.) He did this single attacking the "Christian right"--who are neither Christian nor right, IMHO--in the mid-'80s, at a time of his high-profile fight against musical censorhip.