March 6, 2011

"I'm modelling for a photographer.  He has no heat!"--The Smallest Show on Earth

"Tell me Samoa about Samarra"--ibid.

    Performed Die Fledermaus for the last time. (I skipped the cast party afterward.) All the men (and the women in trousers roles) put on makeup goatees to pose for pictures, and I felt like a redneck!  I told Giuseppe I'm ready to start our singing lessons again.

    The Aspergers Meetup came to see the opera and enjoyed it greatly.  Beforehand they had lunch at the nearby Zembaba Ethiopian restaurant. (I only had time to go there briefly, a pity since I love Ethiopian food.) Afterward we hang at a Tim Horton doughnut place.

    Dinner was lasagna.

    Saw the DVD of the 1950s British comedy The Smallest Show on Earth, about a young couple inheriting a shoestring cinema.  English whimsy.

March 5, 2011

    Went to another Art Walk Meetup.  We met artist Travis Schilling at a Gladstone Hotel exhibit, then visited the Angell Gallery.  Betty Annes seems interested in everything I say!

    I left early to attend the first Volunteering Meetup.  Unfortunately it was at the huge Movenpick Marche restaurant--the worst kind of place for an inaugural event!--and I couldn't find the group.  The worst of it was that I had to move around everywhere and risk annoying people.

    Started reading Anne of Windy Poplars (for the second time), which I'd borrowed from the Forest Hill library.  L.M. Montgomery's in fine form in this series entry, which was written later than most of the others.

    Dinner was frozen Indian food. 

    Performed Madama Butterfly for the last time.  We're finally getting a big turnout in the last weekend.

March 4, 2011

 Dreamed of a non-existent Classics Illustrated comic book from the 1950s, of a contemporary novel set in the postwar South that became a Coen Brothers movie.

    Dinner was chicken divan.

    Performed Die Fledermaus.  Everyone's been talking about how good I was in the master class. (Giuseppe told Barbara my singing was "passionate.") Renee's Orlovsky wig almost came off at one point, which reminded me of a similar moment on The Red Skelton Show, in an episode with a Three Musketeers spoof.

March 3, 2011

    Dreamed of sleeping at the top of a steep hill in London; waking up, realizing I'd damaged the hill and sneaking away.

    Dinner was curried beef.

    Went to the second master class for singers.  There were fewer people this time.

March 2, 2011

Soldier: "I'm not going to be anyone's dead-body blanket!"--Weeds

Homer quotes:

"I don't have to be careful, I've got a gun!"

"But I swear to you, Marge, I never thought you'd find out!

--The Simpsons

    Dreamed of looking for a new TV series about gangsters with John Cassavetes-style emotional drama.

    In my break from the computer game Frontierville, I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed it!

    Dinner was salmon.

    Performed Madama Butterfly.

March 1, 2011

    Dreamed of an upcoming movie about Virginia Woolf meeting a World War I soldier called Homer who kept the British establishment supplied with morphine; a character played by Arnold Schwarzenegger saying "I had a good prom, loved all the people there, but I wanted to burn that school to the ground!"

    Dinner was roast beef.

    Went to Siuseppe's masterclass at the Bickford Centre. (Someone sang a song from Les Miserables--P.U.!) I've never sung Schumann's "Widmung" at so fast a tempo before.  I also sang "Le Veau d'Or" from Gounod's Faust, which impressed the others.  It was thrilling to notice my voice echoing in the auditorium.

    Finished the biography Merchant of Dreams.  Louis B. Mayer is still something of a mystery to me.

February 28, 2011

To a policeman: "Search his car, hit him with your flashlight, do whatever you people do!"

--Weeds

Sign: 

"Welcome to Manhattan

Home of the World-Weary Poseur"

--The Simpsons

    Dreamed of sailing northwest in the Gulf of St. Lawrence past some tiny islands that had official monuments; learning in Grade 7 geography [as I actually did] about remote places in Australia where children got their school lessons over the radio.

    Saw the DVD of a Ken Burns documentary about artist Thomas Hart Benton (for the second time).

    Dinner was tortellini.

    At choir practice we got into the rest of Rigoletto and started Theodore Dubois' oratorio The Seven Last Words of Christ again.