October 24, 2011

"Mischa the dog lies dead in the bog. 

The children cry over the carcass. 

The mist chokes my heart, covers the mourners. 

At least this year we eat.

--Cheers!

"This is L.A., Chris.  Everything is about race"--Murder One

    Dreamed of visiting the old Arthur Murray dance studio that I attended almost ten years ago; not visiting a non-existent skating rink, and comparing that to the Age of Innocence ending where Daniel Day-Lewis didn't go up to see Michelle Pfeiffer; a non-existent cartoon in the actual British girl's comic magazine Bunty, encouraging girls to arrange a party where half the kids dressed up like people from the moon; Father leading the federal NDP.

    Dinner was lamb stew.

    At choir practice we were dissecting the Norma aria "Casta Diva." What wonders Bellini does with the chorus part!

    Saw the Cheers! episode "Any Friend of Diane's." (I remember the maudlin Russian poem from when I first saw it!)

October 23, 2011

    Dreamed of Mother and me driving in the U.S.A.; Mother not knowing where she was going and ending up in Louisiana; me saying she should either tell me where she was going or let me drive (in real life neither of us knows how to drive); the song "Everything Old Is New Again"; the TV cartoon Underdog.

    Saw the DVD of a Zurich Opera production of The Merry Widow.  My favorite part is the Vilja Lied.

    Dinner was meatless chili. (I sneaked out to KFC afterward.)

October 22, 2011

    Dreamed of striking matches to set grass on fire; seeing Susan Sarandon on 60 Minutes with a hairdo like a rosebush; the movie The Sting.

    Dinner was McDonald's.

    My headache is persistent.  I think I will see the doctor about it.

October 21, 2011

"Mom, you remember Roger Garfield."
"And Pearl Harbor."

--Murder One

Diane: "I can no longer hold my tongue."

Carla: "Want me to do it for you?"

--Cheers!

Coach (on Sam): "He was a great drunk!"--ibid.

    Dreamed of going to a Meetup where we played a game like Risk, but I couldn't quite figure it out; the host accusing me of rudeness, and me criticizing him too; becoming a half-witted character in a Victorian murder mystery.

    Baked rye bread. (I had to get rye flour at John Vince the night before.)

    Dinner was shrimp fettucine.

    Saw the DVD of the first episode of the second season of Murder One.  This season looks a bit more conventional than the first.

    Saw the DVD of the first episodes of Cheers!  It's still pretty funny.

October 20, 2011

    Lay awake in bed for hours. (At such times I think about everything that makes me angry.)

    When I finally got to sleep, I ended up having an unusually relentless nightmare, in which I was travelling down the St. Lawrence River with family members, we were arguing a lot, and I ended up in an out-of-control episode of The Simpsons (about a family vacation) involving jokes about polls, being on a roller coaster, and being nibbled with teeth and poked with needles in the nether regions when I closed my eyes. (Such nightmares usually wake me up, but not this time.  Should I see a doctor?)

    Went shopping.

    Headache!

    Dinner was roast chicken. 

    Started a new DVD of Popeye cartoons.

October 19, 2011

"I'm a big girl!"

"Yes... and in all the right places too!"

--North by Northwest

"Are you the gentlemen who want to murder my son?"--ibid.

    Dreamed of a comedy about a small group of cardsharp grifters always on the move; one of them sneaking into a fancy gentlemen's club and signing the guestbook with "Yog, Monster From Outer Space" (an actual Japanese movie title); a space station; Alfred Hitchcock's line "Some directors' movies are slices of life.  Mine are slices of cake."

    Headache.

    Dinner was salmon.

    Saw Hitchcock's North by Northwest yet again, at the Scotiabank with the Movie Meetup group.  What a glorious slice of cake it is!

October 18, 2011

    Dreamed of having a big pile of laundry to do while on vacation; scrubbing the bathroom floor in our old house in Sackville, N.B., and finding a deep layer of dirt; a deep snowstorm; a deer on the sidewalk of York Street in Sackville.

    Dinner was pork roast.

    I had to leave opera rehearsal early because I wasn't feeling well. (It might have been the pork roast.)