April 14, 2004

Dreamed of visiting our old Sackville house and noticing that it was sinking into the ground (either that, or the nearby street was rising).

Had a dental checkup.

Went to the National Jobs Fair at the Convention Center.  I got a pamphlet about teaching English in Japan.

Dinner was spaghetti.

Went to a Scrabble Meetup at Butler's Pantry.  Five people said they'd go, but I was the only one who showed up. [An experience that would be repeated...]

Then I went to the Cinematheque and saw Victor Sjostrom's silent melodrama The Sons of Ingmar.  It was a good story about disgrace and redemption.

April 13, 2004

Dreamed of wandering outdoors early in the morning, then returning home holding a sign with an arrow and the word "HOME"; muttering that Ann-Margret in the early 1960s was "a hot number," and being overheard by Moira; seeing a non-existent Raymond Chandler movie from the early 1950s, Tuesday Night and Wednesday Morning, with Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe [he actually played the role in The Big Sleep], ending with a young heir leaving at a safe distance a sputtering time bomb and all his electronic devices that he was suspicious of, then returning into his mansion early in the morning; a BBC drama of a married couple who meet in jail (he was visiting) and ended up in an apartment with a window on an adjacent flat.

I'm afraid I have a bit of a cold.

Went shopping.  We went to the new supermarket in the location of the old Knob Hill complex.  I got the special 30th anniversary issue of People magazine. [Why?]

Went down to the Hawkins Institute, updated my CV, and ran off five copies for the National Job Fair.  I also got a new photo ID for my TTC Metropass. (Too bad I look like a goon!)

Dinner was scalloped potatoes and ham.

Went to a Japanese Meetup at the Organic Buddha Cafe.  There were five people, none of whom spoke the language fluently.  But one suggested going to the JCSA on Saturday afternoons.

April 12, 2004

Dreamed of foreign agents about to launch a nuclear missile from a house just west of our Sackville house; a screenwriter persuaded to come out of retirement to do a rewrite and getting so enthusiastic that he was late for breakfast, causing his wife to remember why she'd persuaded him to retire; passing by a cinema in the Beaches neighbourhood and seeing that they were soon going to play Zatoichi; wondering how great a mass was transformed into energy by the first A-bombs. [Just 700 milligrams at Hiroshima, and 2.3 kg at Eniwetok, according to my online research.]

My family came back from Kingston.

Sore throat.

Read the rest of the comic books I bought last week. They were mostly Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge, but there was also a western comic featuring the Rawhide Kid.

Donald, John, Kathrine and Rae came over for dinner, which was ham and macaroni.  Kathrine liked my London photos.

April 11, 2004

Angel Clare (who's been reading too much Marx): "You were one woman; now you are another.  I thought you were a child of nature, but it turns out you are the last in a line of degenerate aristocrats"--Tess

Saw Roman Polanski's Tess (of the D'Urbervilles) at the Cinematheque, for the second time.  Nastassia Kinski is a bit too sophisticated for her peasant-girl role, but it's still terrific, one of the best films about Victorian England.  It's visually stunning--I first saw it in 1981, but remembered many of the images:  the dripping cheesecloths, the farm machines, the fox hunters in the mist, the ceiling dripping blood (that's the Polanski touch), the mounted policemen.  It seems to have been very faithful to Thomas Hardy's novel, which I'll have to read someday. [Still haven't, alas.]

Dinner was KFC.

Read the Classics Illustrated comic of G.A. Henty's In Freedom's Cause. (It's a rare edition, one of the last they published.) The story is much the same as Braveheart but centered on a warring youth.

April 10, 2004

Dreamed of returning home to an apartment in a shopping mall(?) and being greeted by several people, including my old dance teacher Cynthia; my pants falling down as I entered a cinema carrying popcorn.

Captain Video is moving to a new location next week, so I got to buy a dozen videocassettes for a song!

Saw Victor Sjostrom's The Wind (for the second time). It's a silent masterpiece in which Lillian Gish moves to the Wild West, is terrified of the wind, gets trapped in a loveless marriage, shoots a rapist and goes crazy in a windstorm.  Too bad that the studio made them tack on a happy ending where she decides she loves her husband after all, and says she's conquered her fear of the wind...

Dinner was a roast beef sandwich at Arby's.

The Adventure of English is rather glib, with sentences like, "With the 20/20 vision of hindsight it seems as if English knew exactly what it was doing..." (The 20/20 metaphor suggests knowing clearly, not just "it seems...")

April 9, 2094

Baron: "I hate clowns!" Clown: "I hate barons!"--He Who Gets Slapped

Dreamed of a non-existen scene in Lawrence of Arabia where Lawrence and company were tipped off to an Arab uprising and suppressed it off-screen, then they tried to keep the news from a (World War II-era!) Arab woman who worked at headquarters, and were given the news in an envelope as they left work; a proposal to extend the New York City subway eastward and the Boston subway westward until they met; Alice in Wonderland escorting a school group to a Melbourne convention in 1849.

The rest of the family left to visit Kingston, so I got the house to myself for the weekend.

Returned the videos.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Saw Victor Sjostrom's great silent melodrama He Who Gets Slapped at the Cinematheque.  Lon Chaney was brilliant as a clown warped by betrayal, who ultimately achieves a grotesque redemption. (Vincent Price said he played "men besieged by fate and out for revenge," and you could say the same about Chaney.) With the great sleazy actor Tully Marshall as an Italian nobleman reduced to basically pimping his daughter.

Finished The Great Freginald and started Melvyn Bragg's The Adventure of English:  Biography of a Language.

April 8, 2004

Dreamed of acting in a western with James Keach as Jesse James (he played the role in The Long Riders); coming out of our Sackville house at the end of a heavy rainfall; having a week left in London with nothing to do; writing a headline(!) for every daily entry in my diary.

Saw the DVD of Sam Wood's movie of the Thornton Wilder play Our Town, with one of William Holden's first performances.  A great play in a rather precious adaptation, which tacked on a happy ending by explaining that Emily's death was just her dreaming...

Dinner was salmon.

Went to the Geneva Centre support group for Aspies.  They had a couple of new people there.  One of them, Cynthia, is going to the National Job Fair next week, same as me.  I brought along my London photos, and I think they liked them.  I suggested we go out for karaoke someday.

April 7, 2004

Dreamed of a cat that kept growling at me, and threw up; visiting South Africa.

Saw the video of D.W. Griffith's World War I epic Hearts of the World, with Lillian Gish as an American living in France, who naturally supports the French.  Pretty shameless melodrama.

Went to a Democracy for America Meetup. (It's the successor organization to the Howard Dean campaign.) I only met a couple of people there.

Dinner was spaghetti. (I ate too much.)

Just after the Meetup I threw up. (Did last night's dream prophesy this?)

April 6, 2004

Dreamed of being alone in the Maritimes and hoping to catch a plan in Charlottetown to get home the same day as acting in the play Stalag 17 and repeating William Holden's line when someone touches his bar of soap: "Private property, Bub!"

Went to see Dr. Hassan.  Then I bought $23 worth of comics at the nearby store, and they charged me only $50!

We returned the videos and got some new ones at Revue.

Dinner was another turkey pie.

Baked raisin bread.

Saw the Jane Seymour episode of The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

Headache.

April 5, 2004

"'I was speaking metaphorically, suh,' said the rooster. 'He means he's just sounding off,' said Leo"--The Story of Freginald

"I had a rather high life--gambling debts, a lady with expensive tastes....  My wife's tastes, too, are expensive"--a sleazy surgeon in Dick Tracy

Dreamed of shoveling snow in front of our Sackville house and piling up enough to build a snow fort.

Hope this cold weather will end soon!

Went to the library and picked up The Story of Freginald, from the Freddy the Pig series.

Went to the dance studio and said hello to my former teacher Cynthia because it was her birthday.

Went shopping.

Dinner was turkey pie.

Went to my first Giuseppe Verdi Chorus rehearsal.  In June we're going to perform half a dozen opera choruses, including some famous stuff like the Drinking Chorus from La Traviata, the Slave Chorus from Nabucco, the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore and the Humming Chorus from Madama Butterfly.

Read over 80 pages of The Story of Freginald!

April 4, 2004

Dreamed of visiting our old Sackville home and finding that the new owners had built a pool house in the front yard. (I really miss the trees we planted around the house.)

Saw the Wagner Ring opera Die Walkuere at the Hummingbird Centre.  It was really long, especially the middle act.  The stage lamps were rather hard on the eyes.

John came over for dinner, which was pizza.

April 3, 2004

"When did you decide you were God?" "I was praying one day, and I noticed I was talking to myself"--The Ruling Class

Dreamed of turning on the TV and Dragnet was on, except that the signal was so weak that the picture was obscured by a computer display, and I thought the show was The Flintstones; missing a broadcast episode of The Sopranos; dancing tango.

Saw the DVD of the 1950s B-movie Thunder Road, with Robert Mitchum as a Kentucky bootlegger.  He was really cool.

Dinner was turkey.

Saw the beginning of Peter Medak's The Ruling Class, a 1972 satire of the British aristocracy in which lunatic Peter O'Toole inherits a title.  It was crudely executed, and we didn't last long.

Instead we watched The Hound of the Baskervilles, with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and Watson.  It took a few liberties with the book, but was still gripping.

April 2, 2004

"You'll never meet anyone like me again"--Monster

Baked multigrain bread.

Got the London pictures back from the developer.  The night pictures didn't come out as well as I'd hoped.

Dinner was chicken curry.

Saw Patty Jenkins' Monster at the Paradise.  It was quite unnerving.  Florida looks like a terrible place to live.  It looks to me like Aileen Wuornos was insane.

April 1, 2004

Dreamed about talking with Mother about Elijah Harper, the Manitoba Indian MPP who killed the Meech Lake agreement. (The First Nations felt great pride and a sense of "empowerment," but I still believe they should have been ashamed, especially of Harper's undemocratic filibuster tactics.  Harper was on my mind because I saw some TV commercial asking "Who is your idea of a great Canadian?" and showing a picture of Harper along with people like Wilfrid Laurier.)

Saw the video of Agatha Christie's Ordeal by Innocence in the afternoon.  Pretty cheap.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Went to the Cinematheque to see Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers at 18:30, but it turned out that it wasn't till 20:30!  It was a campy, gothic comedy, too heavy-handed for my tastes.  I left after 20 minutes.

March 31, 2004

Leslie Howard: "I thought you'd never come!"--Intermezzo

We drove over to Hollywood Canteen and rented six videos for the next week.  I also picked up the book Dick Tracy:  America's Most Famous Detective.

Went out and renewed my Canadian Opera Company subscription.  I also subscribed to the Mirvish theatre season. (They're showing six plays, including A Couple of Blaguards, the two-man show that Frank and Malachy McCourt originated.)

Dinner was salmon.

Saw the video of Intermezzo, a melodrama about violinist Leslie Howard leaving his wife for accompanist Ingrid Bergman. (Since this was the 1930s, he returns to his wife in the end.) A piece of laughable hokum, overdone and shameless--especially the family dog!  I again felt sleepy as I was watching it.

Was in bed by 20:00.

March 30, 2004

Dreamed of reading a juvenile detective novel, but losing my place; walking through British museums and along British streets; trying to catch a gang of fraudsters; noticing that I hadn't shaved and had a beard like Father's. (While I was away I'd forgotten that he grew a beard.)

Went shopping.

Dinner was lasagna.

Still rather dizzy from jetlag.

Saw Roman Polanski's Macbeth at the Cinematheque.  It was quite unpleasant and a bit too slow.  I had trouble staying awake.

March 29, 2004

My return flight took off about 09:00.  I managed to get a few hours sleep on the plane.

We landed about 10:40.

Dinner was roast beef.

Was in bed by 19:30.

Woke up about 02:30, but managed to get back to sleep.

March 28, 2004

Dreamed of being in a disaster movie where you had to outrun a tsunami and reach higher ground.

Checked out of Goodenough College in the morning.  I took my bags to Paddington Station and checked them at the left luggage place.

Walked through Regent Park and visited the London Zoo.  Then I walked back through Regent Park.  I took my last two pictures in the zoo and in the park. (Of course, once my film was used up I started noticing all the shots I wished I could have taken.) It turned out that I had an extra shot, and I took one of Regent Park with a minaret in the background.

Spent the rest of the afternoon strolling through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park.

For dinner I went to a Japanese noodle place called Wagamama's.  My chili beef ramen was the best meal I had the whole time I was in London!

Went back to Paddington and picked up my luggage.  Then I took an express train from Paddington to Heathrow, which got me there in 15 minutes, just before 21:00.

Phoned home from Heathrow.

March 27, 2004

"And all this time I thought you wanted to marry me!" "Why did you think that?  I treated you with respect all the time"--Anything Goes

Went to the Tate Modern at Bankside.  I liked the surrealism and some of the political art (not to mention the scattering of impressionism). But I skipped the Constantin Brancusi and Donald Judd exhibits.

In the afternoon I went to the exhibit at the Queen's Gallery next to Buckingham Palace, of stuff related to George III and his wife Charlotte of Mecklenburg.  It was so impressive that I bought a catalogue for Mother to see.

Then I shopped at the famous bookstore Foyle's for a while.  I bought a book of cryptic crosswords from The Times for Moira, and a CD with some episodes of the 1950s BBC radio comedy The Goon Show for Father.

Phoned the parents in the late afternoon.

Dinner was Vietnamese beef curry.

Saw the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes at the Drury Lane.  It was terrific!  Lots of classic songs and some great dance numbers.

March 26, 2004

Took a picture of London from the top of the London Eye ferris wheel, and one of the City from the pedestrian Millennium Bridge.

Went to the National Portrait Gallery again and saw the Victorian section and a special exhibit of Cecil Beaton's photographs.  Then I went around the corner to the National Gallery and saw an El Greco exhibit.

Lunch was fish and chips.

Dinner was Indian pizza with chicken tandoori pieces.

Went to the Bollywood-style musical Bombay Dreams at the Apollo Victoria.  It was a bit too basic for me, and the first half was enough.  One play too many.