November 21, 2003

"Moreover, by allowing terrorism to become our principal preoccupation, we are playing into the terrorists' hands.  They are setting our priorities"--George Soros

Dreamed of driving through Cape Breton, completing a huge jigsaw puzzle, and walking a distance up Mt. Wycocomagh (an actual hill in Cape Breton); reading in a dictionary the Chinese word for looking at your hand in the night light and seeing the outline of the bones inside(?); telling my girlfriend about it.

Went to Wychwood Library and picked up Lonesome Dove, only two days after it went on hold! (I'll have to email them a compliment.)

Baked gingerbread for tomorrow's fundraiser.

Indian summer isn't over yet. (The compost pile still has flies!)

The new Atlantic Monthly has a good George Soros essay criticizing Bush's foreign policy.

Dinner was chicken (which I fried).

Went to the dance studio again.  Cynthia was glad to see me.

November 20, 2003

"Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit lately, I notice, of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish"--The Book of Merlyn

"Let them sin....  It's good for their souls....  They can repent afterward"--Viridiana

Dreamed of seeing a movie like Purple Rain, with Ben Kingsley as a married bourgeois professor carrying out perfect murders (Burgess Meredith was one of the victims); a drama like The Emperor Jones about the black tin-pot dictator of a third world nation.

Went out to the library and read the children's books What Do You Say, Dear? and What Do You Do, Dear?  They're real classics. (I remember them from childhood.)

Started typing out my September diary entries.

Started reading The Book of Merlyn, an extra book in the Once and Future King series.

Saw two movies at the Cinematheque.  The first was Luis Bunuel's Veridiana, an often brilliant satire about a young religious woman who inherits an estate and decides to take in the local paupers.  Its style reminded me of fellow Spaniards Velazquez and Goya!

The second was Fassbinder's Despair (for the second time), based on Nabokov's novel. Nice try, but Nabokov's really unfilmable.  Yet it was a great visual achievement.

November 19, 2003

"He saw the problem before him as plain as a map.  The fantastic thing about it was that it was fought over nothing--literally nothing.  Frontiers were imaginary lines....  The imaginary lines on the earth's surface only needed to be unimagined"--The Candle in the Wind

Dreamed of making a list of actors who'd shown their pubic hair in movies, including Julianne Moore (an actual scene in Short Cuts).

Went to the library and placed a hold on the book Lonesome Dove.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Creative Writing was about short stories.  One last story for next week will be about whatever occurs to us.  I think I'll retell the story Mother told me about the man who was overheard saying to his mistress, "You look good to me, dear."

Finished The Candle in the Wind.  The last chapter is really majestic.

November 18, 2003

"People who say they are no good are always the good ones....  The bravest people are the ones who don't mind looking like cowards"--The Candle in the Wind

Dreamed of adventures in a land like Oz (including one where the Scarecrow helps stop a revolving juggernaut); a crowd of people walking on a huge globe; a newspaper article showing that my real-life Hong Kong lawyer friend Yvonne Ho was a famous chef; a movie crossing the space-age The Right Stuff with a vampire story, but taking place in daytime(!); waking in a motel room I didn't remember, singing "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" and remembering the superstition "If you sing before breakfast, you'll cry before night." (I decided to test this theory by singing the song before breakfast.)

Went shopping.

Registered at www.singleswithscruples.com . (Some people never learn from their mistakes!)

Dinner was pork chops.

At opera rehearsal the soprano performed her cadenza with the chorus for the first time.

Never did cry.

November 17, 2003

U.S. President Billy Bob Thornton:"You can have anything you want, so long as you don't ask for something I don't want to give"--Love Actually

Dreamed of a man recalling how the Germans occupied his coastal village and dared anyone to cut through their security fence, and he found out the hard way that it was electrified; a Maclean's magazine survey on youth violence; a GO transit route going north from Oakville.

Baked whole wheat bread.

The parents and I saw the British romantic comedy Love Actually at the Varsity.  It was rather thin in a hit and miss way.  In the children's Christmas pageant they sang the horridest Christmas song of all time:  Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas"! [Bill Nighy was the best thing in it.  The scene where Colin Firth was writing outdoors without a paperweight so the wind could blow his pages into the pond and the Portuguese maid could wade in to save them in her bra was especially cheesy!]

After the movie was over we had dinner at the Swiss Chalet.

November 16, 2003

Dreamed of plotting to assassinate Ronald Reagan with a machete (in the name of justice) in a ship being towed uphill through a tunnell; the song "Santa Lucia"; a rural house putting another house in the shade of the setting sun (despite being a great distance away).

Went to the Cinematheque to see Lucino Visconti's The Damned, but left after 40 minutes.  What I was was an oddly lifeless epic about a family of Krupp-like steel magnates getting used by the Nazis.  Every scene seemed to take place in lavishly furnished by dimly lit rooms.  Cabaret did it better.

John and the girls came over for dinner, which was salmon and stuff.

Saw the first-season finale of Six Feet Under.  What a show!

November 15, 2003

Dreamed of being in a computer game set in a reconstructed historic fort (like Fort York in Toronto); setting a fire on a dinner plate; a group of women with some man trouble and imagining that one of them should tell another that that all men are jerks anyway, citing her husband as an example.

Got my hair cut.  This time I just got a small trim in preparation for the operas.

Went to Indigo Books and bought the course book Colloquial Dutch.  I also got some reduced books that my nieces and nephew might like.

Read about Dutch pronunciation. [I got interested in learning Dutch because there was this Dutch nurse in my writing course...]

John and Rae came over for dinner, which was pizza.

Saw Brian de Palma's Scarface remake at the Royal.  Brutal, dumb, slow and unpleasant.  It started out portraying wretched excess but ended up embodying it.  Howard Hawks' original version did infinitely more with less.

November 14, 2003

Alan Arkin: "No, that's not quite it. 'Please,' may I give you the doll?'"--Wait Until Dark

Dreamed of passing through a shooting gallery in a museum; the town of Dalhousie near my father's hometown of Campbellton, N.B.

Moira says that in this cold weather she'd like to hibernate, or at least wear four sweaters.

Rented the DVD of Terence Young's thriller Wait Until Dark, and watched it in the afternoon (for the second time). It was complicated but bluntly effective, with three hoodlums trying to get a heroin-stuffed doll from blind Audrey Hepburn.  Alan Arkin was scarily funny as the main villain.

Dinner was spaghetti. (I ate too much and got sick this evening.  I hate to have food left over!)

November 13, 2003

On the start of a fight between brothers: "The situation passed out of control:  they began acting like puppets, as if it had happened before--which it had"--The Candle in the Wind

Dreamed of someone digging deep around the foundations of the garage next to our Sackville house (some people have been digging at the foundations of the house next door); the anime Sailor Moon.

First snow of the season.

Went to the Royal Winter Fair.  I bought some Mennonite pastry and got some PEI potatoes. (To tell the truth, it's the spuds I come for.)

Dinner was chicken in a curry-ginger sauce.

Went to a Cinematheque lecture on the 1950s thriller classic Night of the Hunter. They showed various outtakes from the movie showing how director Charles Laughton developed his vision.  Fascinating.

November 12, 2003

Dreamed of being in a The Matrix sequel, in a fight scene on a beach involving long spider-like threads (the sort that Spider-Man shoots out); a son getting estranged from his father; going to see a movie feature and finding out they were putting on a program of eccentric English shorts instead (which I'll be seeing in a few weeks).

Warm weather again.

Had the interview at McClelland & Stewart.  I'll be doing proofreading on Tuesdays and Wednesdays starting November 25th.

Finished Freddy the Detective and started The Candle in the Wind, the fourth novel in T.H. White's Once and Future King series.

Dinner was roast beef.

At the creative writing class, Mr. Campbell tried to suggest how to go about writing poetry (Good luck!) For next week I'm going to try to write a story about a girl from the city whose family moves to the country.

November 11, 2003

Dan at Mission:  Possible arranged an interview at McClelland & Stewart tomorrow afternoon.  It looks like I'll have a job trial!

Baked raisin bread.

Dinner was cod.

Dreamed of the Freddie and the Dreamers song "Do the Freddie" (a 1960s dance).

While rehearsing Lucia di Lamermoor, the director said to the soprano, "Change your mood--she's going nuts again!" It looks like we'll be performing the sextet and maybe the finale chorus at the fundraiser.  They want us to grow our hair long so we'll look like Scottish tribesmen.

Printed out my August diary entries.

November 10, 2003

Dreamed of cleaning away the dust in my room in the Sackville house with a hose; playing computer games in a ditch with a transparency projector for a screen; Oprah Winfrey interviewing a young man about his masturbation habit.

Vote around noon, then I went to the library and picked up The Once and Future King, which had been on hold for me, then went to the travel agency and booked my London flight.

Went shopping. We also went to Walmart to get a new battery for my watch, but it turned out that the watch was just turned off.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Saw two silent movies at the Cinematheque, both starring Greta Garbo and John Gilbert and directed by Clarence Brown (both for the second time). I don't care so much for Flesh and the Devil.  Two old friends fight over Garbo and are about to duel when she falls through the ice and drowns, and only then to they come to their senses and remember their friendship. (I can't stand that "the bad girl has to die" cliche...) [The movie would have been better ending there, but there's an extra scene with Gilbert ending up with the nice girl--who cares?!]

I prefer A Woman of Affairs.  La Garbo has a more interesting character, playing a self-destructive "scandalous" woman with whom Gilbert finds himself still in love even after he's married another girl.

November 9, 2003

Dreamed of being in our Sackville house and looking out at the trees in our front yard; playing the piano to a metronome; a Wonderful World of Disney show about some Inuit children and a German selling "crystal oil."

Saw two movies at the Cinematheque.  Germaine Dulac's The Artist's Soul was about a married poet falling in love with a popular stage actree.  The Fall of Otrar was a long epic about the Mongol conquest of central Asia.  Of course, I ended up with a headache.

John and Rae came over for dinner, which was vegetarian lasagna.

Excellent episode of Six Feet Under, with David handliing the funeral of a victim of a homophobic murder, and trying to deal with his own homosexuality.

November 8, 2003

"Models help people.  We make them feel better about themselves"--Zoolander

Dreamed of going to two plays on the same night, so I got into the second one about 20 minutes late.

Another headache.

Saw the DVD of Ben Stiller's Zoolander, a comedy about an airhead male model.  Really funny.

The cold weather has finally arrived!

Donald came over for dinner, which was beef stroganoff again.

November 7, 2003

"You're my creative team.  Create a reason to get rid of her, or I'll find another creative team"--Down With Love

Dreamed of a spinoff of the 1970s sitcom Good Times, with Michael the young militant loudmouth growing up and becoming a new teacher in a high school; being Michael and acquiring a girlfriend; a new Calvin & Hobbes book titled Hobbes & Calvin.

We got the fax sent this time.  (Turns out I wasn't doing it right.)

Another headache.

Dinner was pork chops.

Rented a DVD of Down With Love, a modern homage to the non-sex comedies of the early 1960s.  It was a stylish, clever pastiche.  Renee Zellwegger and Ewan MacGregor had a nice chemistry.

November 6, 2003

"Now they shall know why they are afraid of the dark!"--typical line in Conan the Barbarian

Dreamed of being in the back seat of a car driven by a Hispanic called Pedro; a specially-bred birch tree whose white bark was marked by several multicoloured outgrowths; being offered one of five DVDs and unable to choose (including the Scarface remake, which I expect to see in a cinema next week); looking in vain on a map of northern Ontario for a former boomtown called Revelstock, after hearing that the actual B.C. town of Revelstoke had been dismissed as "the new Revelstock."

Moira borrowed a CD of Frank Sinatra music from a friend.  Neither of us care for that.

My Foreign Legion story "March or Die" is two pages long!

Tried to send Goodenough Collegte a confirmation of my reservation, but I couldn't get it through.

Dinner was beef stroganoff. (Moira made it, and says it's easy.)

Saw some more silent films by Germaine Dulac.  Her sophisticated sensibility about women seems ahead of its time.

Saw John Milius' Conan the Barbarian (for the second time--I went through an Arnold Schwarzenegger phase in my early twenties) at the Royal.  Pretty fatuous and cheesy. [One critic said it was set in "the Stoned Age"!]

November 5, 2003

Dreamed of visiting our cottage near Sackville, N.B., and finding some old books there, including some of Enid Blyton's Noddy books; playing "Country Gardens" on a piano with the damper pedal down for resonance; visiting the tomb of advice columnist Ann Landers, with the sarcophagus in the form of a porch swing that could be rocked back and forth. [She actually gave her body to science, I think.]

Went to Paramount Travel and arranged to fly to London in March.

Baked multigrain bread.

Went shopping.

Started Freddy the Detective.  Another clever book.

Dinner was shepherd's pie.

There were only four people at Creative Writing!  The teacher seems to admire my stories.  For next week, I think I'll write a story about a French Foreign Legionnaire lost in the desert.

November 4, 2003

Dreamed of acting in a swashbuckling adventure in which I played a comic relief character who couldn't handle a sword; waking up and finding myself in a car which Father had driven to a beach near Sackville; entering a store near where we lived for a year in Glasgow (in the Burnside district of Rutherglen) and collecting Father's TV licence fee refurnd in cash (all small change); Tom Brown's friend Harry East (now in the 20th century) having to deal with his fiancee's homicidal ex-boyfriend (I was thinking of Ed Harris in The Human Stain and of crazy brother Jermey Sisto in Six Feet Under); mixing the dry ingredients for a huge cake.

I've decided to visit London in March.  I booked a reservation at the Goodenough College.

Went to the Wychwood library and borrowed Freddy the Detective (from the Freddy the Pig series).

Dinner was spaghetti.

Quite a few people were late for the opera rehearsal. (But all the sopranos seemed to be on time.)

Finished Tom Brown's School Days.  The second half, all about the improvement of Tom's character, was rather slow.

November 3, 2003

Dreamed of finding on a bookshelf a huge cartoon encyclopedia; visiting a small library for the first time, being accosted by a big guy and defensively thrusting my elbow into his chest.

Dinner was tacos.

We went through our 34 videocassettes and found that just over half were free for taping.

November 2, 2003

Dreamed of meeting someone I didn't recognize who remembered meeting me in Campbellton, N.B. (my father's hometown).

Saw Germaine Dulac's La Belle Dame Sans Merci.  A complex tale of love and cruelty, in a very French sort of way.

Dinner was McDonald's.

On Six Feet Under they went to a convention in Las Vegas.

Big headache.

Finally started typing the August entries of my diary.

November 1, 2003

"Fighting with fists is the natural and English way for English boys to settle their quarrels"--Tom Brown's School Days

Went on a Mensa walk in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.  I learned that the old Montage editor is returning, so I won't be getting the job.

Dinner was salmon (which I fried).

Finished the hoeing and scattered the rest of the compost.

October 31, 2003

Dreamed of the Eddie Murphy movie Trading Places (and of an actual comment in Pauline Kael's review in The New Yorker, "It's like watching a Christmas movie on a broken TV set"); trying to finish a crossword puzzle.

Indian summer has returned.  I did some hoeing in the garden.

Dinner was chicken (which I fried).

Went to a lecture on Germaine Dulac, a female director of French silent movies, at the Cinematheque.  They showed some abstract movies she'd made, which were pretty strange.  The lecture itself was rather boring.  There was also part of a newsreel she made in the early sound era, showing the yo-yo craze sweeping France.

Went to a dance party at the Arthur Murray studio for the first time in three months, because it was Halloween and a chance to wear last year's beatnik costume again.  Only a handful of us were wearing costumes.

Baked whole wheat bread overnight.

October 30, 2003

Dreamed of waiting in a parking lot near a subway station on the Bloor-Danforth line (to the west) for a friend to drive me home; Pierre Trudeau's 100th birthday (he only lived to be 81).

Baked gingerbread in the convection oven for the first time. (Father had to show me how.)

Dinner was pot roast.

Opened a new pair of contacts.  I had to open two left lenses because I lost one of them.

Saw Peter Mullan's The Magdalene Sisters at the Music Hall, about "impure" teenage girls doing slave labour in an abusive Irish convent.  It was well made, but basic and unsubtle in a not unpredictable way.  It's more than just an indictment of the Catholic church; it indicts Irish society as a whole.  From seeing this and reading Angela's Ashes, I get the impression that the Irish are a "little" people.  Graham Greene said that Catholics are capable of greater evil than other people.  Geraldine McEwan, who played the nasty Mother Superior, had an odd resemblance to Alan Cumming. [If people think they're saving you from the fires of hell, whatever they do to you will seem like the lesser evil...]

October 29, 2003

Dreamed of violinist Isaac Stern writing a list of famous things that originated in Norway, including corn on the cob(?).

Saw Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill:  Volume I at the Yonge-Eglinton Silvercity.  It's a stylish, well-made and original take on the violent revenge genre.  I enjoyed it but felt rather dirty for doing so.  This genre is a kind of pornography, really.  Paradoxically, seeing someone get his arm cut off seems more violent than seeing him beheaded.  No wimpy stuff here about redemption like there was in Pulp Fiction. (At least not in this half.)

Dinner was spaghetti.

Only five people at Creative Writing.  My story for next week will be a centenarian reminiscing about the street he's lived on.

October 28, 2003

Dreamed of being in a movie where Russell Crowe protects a future colony of people on a foreign planet menaced by fantastic creatures; taking a chemistry course but finding it conflicted with something else; a Sailor Moon episode involving Vietnam(?).

Saw Sophia Coppola's Lost in Translation at the Cumberland.  It was quite good, in a low-key sort of way.  Bill Murray played it straight this time.

Dinner was steak (which I fried).

At the opera rehearsal we went over Don Giovanni for the first time. (It has only three choruses.) During the break I helped move set pieces and props upstairs to the stage.  We brought some plywood statue cutouts, but it turned out that they weren't wanted, so we had to take them back downstairs.

October 27, 2003

Dreamed of maintaining a fire in the fireplace of our Sackville house; bicycling with my manager to a meeting with Hollywood people along York Street in Sackville; the Gordon Lightfoot song "Canadian Railroad Trilogy."

Went shopping.

For dinner we went to the Mandarin restaurant to celebrate my finishing the first phase of the Mission:  Possible program.

Did an online jigsaw puzzle in the easy mode.  It only took about 20 minutes.

Saw Fassbinder's Martha.  It was one of the creepiest movies I've ever seen!  It's about a woman who marries a control freak and goes around the bend, but it's really a perverse comedy.  At the end of it I was thinking, "It's only a movie!" One of those movies I do not want to see a second time. [I remember a scene with actresses walking in high heels in this echoing

room where the heels made resonant clicking sounds!]

October 26, 2003

Dreamed of crossing the north Atlantic on a ship, looking out and seeing islands; staying at Goodenough College and picking up the British magazine Private Eye; a future entry in the Harry Pottter series involving his pet monkey; seeing preacher Jim Bakker on TV.

Saw Fassbinder's Effi Briest.  Restrained and intelligent, with beautiful black & white photography.

John and Rae came over for dinner, which was vegetarian lasagna.

In Six Feet Under Brenda's brother went off the deep end, or looked close to it.

October 25, 2003

"Bill looks 32.  He looked 32 five years ago.  He'll look 32 twenty years from now.  I hate men!"--Bette Davis in All About Eve

Dreamed of being a character in an anime-like show involving a rather comic family that didn't get along very well and a struggle with powerful demons; acting in a skit where I was crowned Roman Emperor.

Saw Joseph Mankiewicz's brisk All About Eve (for the second time) at the Cinematheque.  Some great dialogue from the time when they still made "women's pictures."

Dinner was Burger King.