August 18, 2004

"So you don't blame him?" "Blaming is for God and small children"--Papillon

Dreamed of our old Electrohome TV set; a non-existent episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show in which Mary went on a date and her date threatened to strangle her with a scarf, and his relatives showed up and it turned out this was a kinky game he played with all his dates!

Got a Prince Valiant reprint and seven new Classics Illustrated comics.

Headache.

Finished the Ten Commandments comic.

Dinner was scalloped potatoes and ham.

Baked raisin bread.

Went to the Simplicity Meetup.  There was nobody else there, but I wasn't really eager anyway.

Saw Franklin J. Schaffner's Papillon at the Revue, with Steve McQueen as a convict who repeatedly escapes from Devil's Island.  Long and rather conventional, but I'm a sucker for there macho epics. (It was projected on video, and the sound could have been better.)

August 17, 2004

Dreamed of being in a motel room with my parents; the TV broadcasts ending after midnight, and signing off with the "Good Night" song that concluded The Lawrence Welk Show(?); wanting to turn off the TV  but needing to fix the remote control, so I turned the lights on, despite the parents being asleep; visiting an historical theme park in England near the Channel; waiting for a ship in the English Channel port of Southampton.

Went shopping.  I also got new pajamas.

Dinner was chicken curry.

Went to a Book Club Meetup. Someone there is organizing a group that'll meet next Monday.  We'll decide what to read then.

Went to karaoke and sang "If I Were a Rich Man," "Danny Boy," "Folsom Prison Blues" and "Hey Jude."

August 16, 2004

Dreamed of waking up early in the morning and feeling the cool autumn air; seeing the Cinematheque schedule and noticing The Searchers added at the last minute; the song "Donkey Serenade" (which I just heard them singing on The Judy Garland Show); having only an old diary to write in, which was already filled; seeing the start of the third Matrix movie but losing interest because I hadn't seen the second. [I still haven't seen either sequel.]

Got a Cinderella comic.

John and Kathryn brought over dinner.  Unfortunately, they didn't arrive until 18:30 and I had to leave before then because of the Aspergers Meetup.

It isn't my day.  The location was shown as a Starbucks at 42 Avenue Rd., #1740, but it turned out there was no such place. (Maybe it was at 1740 Avenue Rd., #42, but I still couldn't find it on the map.)

I ate at McDonald's.

August 15, 2004

Donkey (Eddie Murphy): "When this is through I'm gonna need some therapy.  Just look at my eye twitchin'!"--Shrek

Dreamed of visiting London in my college days, just before the Spring Break.

Saw Shrek again at the Bloor.

Dinner was pizza.

Saw the rest of the DVD of The Judy Garland Show.  She and Mel Torme do a stunning duet of "The Trolley Song"!

August 14, 2004

Dreamed of comparing the different stages of a computer game to different neighbourhoods in Toronto; discussing why Yasujiro Ozu's Late Spring was so wonderful.

Saw the Korean musical The Last Empress at the Hummingbird Centre.  A most unusual spectacle.  Of course, I got a headache.

Dinner was takeout Chinese food.

Saw a DVD with scenes from the early 1960s variety series The Judy Garland Show.  Its hostess looked the worse for wear by this time, but her singing was still heroic.

August 13, 2004

"Smile.  Not so much"--Eyes Without a Face

Dreamed of the teachers at my junior high school in Sackville calling me in for a visit; turning out that they thought I was dying(!).

Saw the video of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's I Know Where I'm Going.  It's a romantic story about a woman on the coast of Scotland waiting for the wind to calm down so the ferry can take her to the millionaire she's engaged to, and she meets another man....  Pretty atmospheric.

We did the July book accounts.  About $200 profit.

Baked whole wheat bread.

Saw George Franju's horror classic Eyes Without a Face at the Cinematheque, for the second time.  Creepy in a very French sort of way.

Couldn't resist bidding on some more issues of the Menomonee Falls Gazette.

August 12, 2004

Dinner was chicken (which I fried).

Went to my Geneva Centre group.  One of the people there (John) was talking about how he'd put together a video presentation.

Started the Classics Illustrated comic about the Ten Commandments.

Saw a DVD of Cecil B. DeMille's Male and Female, a silent movie starring Gloria Swanson.  It's a movie of J.M. Barrie's play The Admirable Crichton, about a butler who gets stranded with his masters on a desert island and becomes the new master.  Much titillation, in the typical DeMille style.

August 11, 2004

Dreamed of passing by a big Nazi-type rally with a band playing German music; imagining making an epic movie about the international volunteers in the Spanish Civil War.

Went shopping.

Read another Rip Kirby adventure, in which an irresponsible heiress faked a couple of crimes to get Kirby's attention, then got kidnapped for real.

Dinner was salmon.

Saw a DVD of an opera concert at the Glyndebourne Festival in England, just before they rebuilt the theatre in the early 1990s.

August 10, 2004

Dreamed of trying to finish a book at a place near a beach; spending hours on it, and having just a page or two left, then noticing it had started to rain, and deciding to finish it later; travelling through the "green belt" surrounding greater London; recalling how lame the TV show Little House on the Prairie was.

Got some Swing With Scooter and fairy-tale comics.

Read a Dick Tracy comic involving Flattop Jr. and the Rip Kirby adventure "Desert Fury."

Dinner was spaghetti (which I cooked).

Saw Francois Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid at the Cinematheque.  It's about a mail-order bride who's not what she appears to be.  An unusual movie, part film noir and part romantic comedy!

August 9, 2004

Dreamed of being on a slow-moving train from the early 19th century; fleeing it with a small group and getting cornered in a cave by Tom Cruise; recalling ho angry the bridge instructors on the cruise ship made me [this was back in 2002]; reading an adventure with Donald Duck and his nephews in a British comics annual.

Got some more Dick Tracy and Terry and the Pirates comics.

Dinner was roast pork.

Sinus trouble.

Went to a Chinese Meetup at Futures Bakery.  Nobody else showed up.

Read the Dennis the Menace annual and the RCMP comic.

August 8, 2004

"You did not say you liked or disliked anybody in the family.  They were a part of it, so you neither liked nor disliked them.  They were just there"--Centenary at Jalna

Dreamed of playing with a large helium balloon with a long leash; a late 1940's Reader's Digest article about a controversial female journalist called Willa; trying to see three movies in one night in Moncton, N.B.; becoming the new member of the 1960s soul music group The Temptations(?); describing a famous photograph of two little kids with British flags on V-E Day. [I like how it captures the mix of celebration and mourning that accompanies victory.]

Went to a picnic at Giuseppe's place in Scarborough.  His back yard is incredible--he's transformed it into a big garden with vines and pergolas and fountains and potted plants.  I talked a lot with Nabil's Austrian wife.

Parties leave me tired out.

August 7, 2004

A singer gets evaluated: "Except for the voice and the gestures, everything was perfect"--Quai des Orfevres

Dreamed of news reports of the death of JFK's father Joseph Kennedy; the song "Old Man River"; Father running for public office.

Went to a Geneva Centre group picnic on the Toronto Islands.  I got to take home the leftover sandwiches!

Finished David Foster Wallace's Everything and More.  I remembered why I didn't continue in mathematics.

Started reading Centenary at Jalna.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Saw Henri-Georges Clouzot's Quai des Orfevres at the Cinematheque. (I think the title refers to the French equivalent of Scotland Yard.) It's a terrific thriller about a murder and the subsequent police investigation.  Some great dialogue.

August 6, 2004

Dreamed of buying a share on the stock market and following its progress.

Got another British Dennis the Menace annual and a Classics Illustrated special about the RCMP.

Went to the library and borrowed Mazo de la Roche's Centenary at Jalna, the chronologically last of the Jalna books.

Puitak and I saw Irwin Winkler's Cole Porter biopic De-Lovely at the Carleton. (She cried in the sad parts.) It's an odd, semi-stylized movie, which needed just a bit more panache.  Ashley Judd was gorgeous, of course.

Afterward we ate at a Korean takeout.  I ate shrimp fried rice. (They threw in a fried egg.)

August 5, 2004

"I'll rise, but I won't shine"--The Glass Menagerie

Dreamed of meeting the first Dr. Who (William Hartnell) at Goodenough House in London and mentioning to him that almost everyone living today has as an ancestor almost everyone who had children 1200 years ago (a true fact!); goint to see foot races.

Met Dann at Mission:  Possible.  We may find a less ambitious job for now.

Got a Classics Illustrated Junior comic of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (first in the series), a Rip Kirby comic and a Super Comics issue with reprints including Dick Tracy and Little Orphan Annie.

Dinner was fish.

Baked gingerbread for Sunday's picnic.

Saw the DVD of a documentary about the 1964 World's Fair in New York City.  Then I saw one of the Katherine Hepburn version of The Glass Menagerie.  It's a very sad play! (The parents couldn't watch it.)

August 4, 2004

Dreamed of being a pupil in a British public school, being scapegoated for something someone else did, and making a scene; the movie The Red Badge of Courage.

Got a The World Around Us comic about famous explorers.

Dinner was pork steak.

Read three more Secret Agent Corrigan stories, in which his wife gets kidnapped by an Arabian sheikh who wants to marry her(!); a spy novelist fabricates a story that a notorious spy has faked his own death and wants to kill him (the spy turns up for real, of course); a spy plans to hand over secret papers to foreign agents on the location of a western film shoot.

Saw Luchino Visconti's movie of Gabriele d'Annunzio's novel The Innocent, about a bourgeois couple in Italy a century ago whose marriage is marred by infidelity.  I couldn't disagree with the character who said, "This atmosphere is too depressing for me."

August 3, 2004

Dreamed of a version of the Thomas Hardy novel Jude the Obscure involving emigrating to the British colonies(?).

Read two more Rip Kirby adventures with his model girlfriend Honey unwittingly transporting microfilm in a rose; and uncovering a youth formula con.

Went shopping.

Read a Secret Agent Corrigan adventure in which he took on a band of terrorists who kidnapped a bunch of missile scientists so they could build a missile of their own and hold the world to ransom.

Dinner was lasagna.

Got an old issue of Turok, Son of Stone, a comic book abou two Native Americans stuck in a valley full of dinosaurs.

Baked cheese bread.

There was a bigger crowd than usual at karaoke.  I only had time to sing three songs:  "Rock Around the Clock," Bridge Over Troubled Waters" and "Can't Help Falling in Love."

August 2, 2004

Dreamed of the theme music from the early 1970s blue-collar sitcom The Super.

Dinner was chicken (which I fried).

Rented the video of Philip Kaufman's movie of Michael Chrichton's Rising Sun.  Too unpleasant and xenophobic for my taste.  Up and left within half an hour.

Read a Rip Kirby reprint with his enemy the Mangler taking a dead man's identity and trying to steal a fortune in diamonds from the real man's daughter.

Saw the documentary Elvis on Tour, showing him in concert in his later years.  Enjoyable but rather sad.

August 1, 2004

The parents and Moira returned from Kingston.

Baked raisin bread.

Finished sorting out the junk in my room!

Dinner was pizza.

Read a reprint of the Mandrake the Magician comic strip from the 1930s, with him and Lothar pursing the villainous Cobra to his Himalayan lair.  A bit like a movie serial.

July 31, 2004

"When did you know I liked you?" "When I asked you for food and you didn't answer"--Ossessione

The parents went to Kingston to pick up Moira.

Went out to meet the Japanese students, but the place was closed.

Read the King of the Royal Mounted adventure in which someone tried to frame him as a jewel thief, then he uncovered a scientist who'd built an electronic-beam gun.

Dinner was Harvey's. (I went to the bathroom before my hamburger was finished, and they thought I'd left and threw it out.  Fortunately they gave me another one.)

Saw Luchino Visconti's Ossessione, an unofficial Italian version of The Postman Always Rings Twice.  It's the one where a drifter has sex with a married woman, they murder her husband, then stew in their own juice.  It ends up with a frightening sense of fate.

July 30, 2004

Dreamed of singing "Burning Down the House"; being in a Casablanca-type World War II movie involving airmen using ultralight flying machines.

Went down to the Dragon Lady comics store and picked up some Dick Tracy Sunday comics I'd bought on Ebay.

Started going through the junk at the bottom of my desk.  Almost all of it can safely be tossed.

We had dinner at the Mandarin restaurant.

Read the Terry and the Pirates Sundays.  They were from 1959 and 1960, and George Wunder didn't have as good a style as his predecessor Milton Caniff. (And the Soviets did not have bases in Albania.)

Saw some more South Park episodes on DVD.  Definitely uneven.

Headache.

July 29, 2004

The Duke to his soldiers: "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make"--Shrek

Dreamed of looking out from the top of the highest building in Amherst, N.S. (none of their buildings are that tall) and seeing a military battle for a power station to the southwest; arriving at the scene and staying clear of a large group of helicopters with their rotor blades running; being the pawn of some Islamic terrorists; wanting the US forces to fly me out as quickly as possible because I was afraid the whole place would blow up; living in a Halifax apartment next to an elevated highway with a couple of siblings; temperatures in our parked blue car (it's actually red) rising so high that  a pink blanket next to the steering wheel ignited in spontaneous combustion and melted.

Finished "Adventures in Science."

Dinner was spaghetti.

Saw the DVD of Shrek with the Geneva Centre group  Pretty imaginative.  Too bad that I missed some of the dialogue because people were talking.

July 28, 2004

"She reminds me of me"--John Wayne in True Grit

Woke up before 04:00.

After coming back from Dr. Hassan, I went back to bed for most of the afternoon.

Got another Terry and the Pirates book anc some 1960 Sunday comics.

Dinner was fish.

Saw Henry Hathaway's western True Grit (for the fifth time) at the Revue.  One of John Wayne's best characters.

July 27, 2004

"I've been born again all my life"--opening line, Saved!

Dreamed of the folk song "Un Canadien Errant"; seeing our Sackville house from a hill to the north, much higher than in real life.

Went shopping.  We also bought kitchen scales to weigh the books we're selling and figure out postage costs.  And I got a new shirt.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Printing out the March entries, I ran into a snag:  the ink cartridge had to be replaced.

Got the special Classics Illustrated issue "The Ten Commandments."

Saw Saved! at the Carlton.  It's a satire about teenagers in an evangelical Christian high school, including a girl who wants to "save" a gay classmate and ends up pregnant.  Not as good as it might have been, but it had some good lines.

Bid on a whole lot of Classics Illustrated issues. (And I'm going to read them all in the end!) [I got almost all of them read this year.]

July 26, 2004

Dreamed of greeting an Israeli and feeling really angry about Mordechai Vanunu; attending a summer-school seminary for people of all religions aspiring to preach; wondering what I was doing there, since I wasn't a believer; the Irving Berlin song "What'll I do?"

Got nine more issues of the Menomonee Falls Gazette, 15 Classics Illustrated issues and miniature-sized Rip Kirby reprint.

Dinner was steak.

Finished "The Story of Jesus" and started "Adventures in Science."

Finished typing the March diary entries.  I'll be able to print them out in time to bring them to Dr. Hassan Wednesday!

July 25, 2004

Had a big, elaborate dream and I dreamed I was going to remember it, but when I woke up I'd forgotten it!

Dinner was fettucine in pesto sauce (which I cooked).

We've changed our satellite TV package, so now I can watch Roger Ebert's show Sundays at 16:00 (on Talk TV) instead of waiting till 23:05.

Hardly anything to write about just now, in contrast to the March diary entries describing my London visit, which I'm now typing up.

July 24, 2004

Dreamed of Mother saying she noticed when I was under the influence of drugs.

Dinner was chicken (which I fried).

Saw Francois Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player (for the second time) at the Cinematheque.  It's a very original movie, with an unusual hero.  I didn't really understand it as much the first time I saw it.

Finished "Men, Guns and Cattle," and started the Classics Illustrated special comic "The Story of Jesus."

July 23, 2004

"When you point a gun, shoot!" "Yes, Pa"--My Darling Clementine

Dreamed of making small appearances on a morning TV show; getting the chance to act in the movies; playing Willie Nelson(?).

Went shopping.

Dinner was pork chops.

Saw more of Wiseguy on DVD.  It's a great show, cleverly written. (Annette Bening turned up in one episode.) Jonathan Banks' deadpan supervisor McPike does a lot for the show.

Saw John Ford's My Darling Clementine, for the third or fourth time.  It's one of the classic westerns.

July 22, 2004

"I swear on my father's grave!" "What good is that?  You scattered his ashes!"--Pepe le Moko

Took my February diary entries to Dr. Hassan's office.

Baked multigrain bread.

Got a newspaper comics page from the day in 2000 when every comic strip did an episode in tribute to the recently deceased Charles M. Schulz and Peanuts, as well as the Classics Illustrated comic of Tom Sawyer and reprints of Terry and the Pirates and Secret Agent Corrigan.

Dinner was fish.

Saw Julian Duvivier's Algiers underworld romance Pepe le Moko at the Cinematheque.  Jean Gabin was pretty cool.

July 21, 2004

Dreamed of a small cemetery next to a theme park; a memorial for victims of 19th-century cholera outbreaks with a display of the period's abortion instruments(?); two rival families in the funeral home business.

Got an issue of The World Around Us focusing on the history of railroads.  Read that comic and started "Men, Guns and Cattle."

Saw a DVD of the first episodes of Larry David's comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm.  Really funny.

Printed out the February entries in my diary, and started typing the March entries. (That part tells about my visit to London!)

We finally got the June accounts done for our book business.

Dinner was the rest of the lasagna.

Went to a Meetup promoting simple lifestyles.  There were three of us, and one (not me) talked too much.

July 20, 2004

Got another group of Classics Illustrated special comics, including "Prehistoric World," "Adventures in Science" and "The Rough Rider" (about Teddy Roosevelt).

Dinner was lasagna.

Went to a Karaoke Meetup at the Granite Brewery, but nobody else showed up.

Afterward I went to some real karaoke.  Sang "Get Back," "Eat It," "Pink Houses," "Memories," and "Blue Moon."

July 19, 2004

Dreamed that the parents found out I was going to see the movie True Grit and disapproved. (I don't know why they would!)

Got a big shipment of over a dozen issues of The Menomonee Falls Gazette, along with some more Sunday comics.

We saw Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 at the Bayview Village. Straightforward and arresting, with fewer of Moore's standard attention-grabbing gimmicks.  Sure, it's tendentious, but so is the big network news.  It's hard to imagine many people voting for Dubya after seeing this--he comes across as a clown. [If only liberals hadn't chickened out of nominating Howard Dean...]

Dinner was the Swiss Chalet.

July 18, 2004

The choir performed a mass in Etobicoke. (I got up early to be on time for it.)

I hadn't got much sleep the night before, so I went to bed again in the afternoon and slept a few hours more.

The parents returned from Kingston.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Started reading the US presidents issue of The World Around Us and the new issues of The Menomonee Falls Gazette.

Predictably, I was a long time getting to sleep that night.

July 17, 2004

Dreamed of switching through TV channels delivering neighbourhood news; being held prisoner in a trailer by a gang of criminals; drawing a straight edge in red ink on a Manila envelope.

The parents went to Kingston for the weekend.

The section of St. Clair Avenue near our house had a salsa street festival with loud music.

Dinner was Arby's.

Saw two French crime movies directed by Jacques Becker.  Touchez Pas au Grisbi ("hands off the loot") was really cool, up there with Rififi and Bob le Flambeur.  Casque d'Or, set in "fin de siecle" Paris, with an unexpected romantic sensibility, was sort of a Max Ophuls-style film noir.  Simone Signoret gives a great sexy performance.

I've been finding Everything and More rather hard to follow.

July 16, 2004

Dreamed of Huckleberry Finn's Missouri; actor Victor Mature.

Went shopping.

Got Maurice Horn's 100 Years of Newspaper Comics, along with a Prince Valiant comic, and some Menomonee Falls Gazette issues.

Read the first episodes of Prince Valiant, from back in 1937.  Great storytelling. (Who care's that it's in black and white here?)

Dinner was roast chicken.

Saw Days of Glory at the Cinematheque.  It's a documentary about the anti-fascist resistance movement in Italy in World War II.  I staryed for Luchino Visconti's La Terra Trema ("the earth moves"), a neorealist tale about a family in a Sicilian fishing village trying to better their lot.  Long but powerful.

July 15, 2004

Dreamed of walking along a Sackville sidewalk and passing the King of Spain in riding boots.

In mid-afternoon I did some more SCRIPT petitioning.  Got another dozen signatures.

Dinner was pork chops.

Brought some more cherries to the Geneva Centre meetning.

Started reading David Foster Wallace's Everything and More, a history of the mathematical concept of infinity.

Baked rye bread overnight.

Got a Classics Illustrated special issue "Men, Guns and Cattle."

July 14, 2004

Headache!

Dinner was salmon.

Went to the Scrabble Meetup at the Java Lounge on Queen Street.  I waited an hour and one East Indian girl showed up. (There may have been a couple earlier, but I didn't find them.) We played a single game, without keeping score.

Read the Dick Tracy story about the precocious, rather annoying kid who went by the nickname Peanut Butter (which I also remember reading at the time).

Got the DVD of the first episodes of the rude cartoon South Park.

Finished reading Film Flam.

Started typing up the February entries.

Put Tom Swift and His Polary-Ray Dynasphere up for auction on Ebay. [It didn't sell.]

July 13, 2004

Got up early for an appointment with Dr. Hassan.  I was going to bring him some cherries, but I forgot.

The parents also got up early and went to Markham again to pick strawberries and raspberries.  Pui and Gordon came along.

Got The Penguin Book of Comics (from the 1960s) and an issue of The World Around Us about US presidents, along with two issues of The Menomonee Falls Guardian. (which was like The Menomonee Falls Gazette, but more with gag strips).

Didn't get much sleep the night before, so I napped in the morning and again in the afternoon. (In the afternoon I dreamed of the Mappin terraces at the London Zoo.)

Father drove me down to the Revue so I could see Hello, Dolly.  We were in a hurry, but it turned out that it wasn't on that night. [I've still never seen it.]

Dinner was spaghetti.

There was hardly anyone at karaoke, so I got to sing six songs again: "When I'm Sixty-Four," "Dancing in the Streets," "The Wild Rover," "Dancing in the Dark," "The Heart of Rock and Roll" and "With a Little Help From My Friends." (Jim sang eight!)

July 12, 2004

On the 1977 movie Welcome to L.A.: "People stare at one another so much that eventually one gets the uneasy feeling that Michelangelo Antonioni is behind the camera.  Once again Geraldine Chaplin is made to look ridiculous and pathetic, and over and over again we are reminded that puritanism has lost the battle and that folks are pretty promiscuous these days"--Film Flam

"Drug abusers?" "What a disgusting term! Dope fiends is the name, dope fiends!"--Dick Tracy

Dreamed of being in London with Father, who hadn't planned on going; getting a life-size action figure of a boy superhero.

Got three issues of a Dick Tracy magazine reprinting episodes from 1971 and 1972 (when I was reading it first-run).

Checked our ABE Books list and considered posting some of them on Ebay.  I think I'll try some of the children's books.  There may be a market for the Tom Swift Jr. books. [There wasn't.]

Dinner was roast chicken.

Went to a choir rehearsal for the mass on Sunday.  I brought a bag of cherries, which didn't take long to disappear.

I remember the Dick Tracy stories I'm rereading now!  In the first one Lizz got put in a trunked and almost got dumped in a lake, where they found a skeleton that connected them to the Dope King.  In the second one B.O. Plenty's wife Gravel Gertie turned out to have a treasure map tattooed onto her scalp(?)

July 11, 2004

"A compulsion toward over-informedness is most apt to occur in individuals who have been arrested at a graduate school level of development....  If the desire to shine as a pupil is sustained too long it can cause even the most committed worker to work badly....  When she attends directly to her gut, [Joyce Carol Oates] writes powerfully, but the star pupils in the creative writing classes of America are more apt to get praised for fine expressions than for attending to their gut; sensibility, not force, is what teachers leap to praise, which may indirectly explain Miss Oates's almost invariable tendency to over-write"--Film Flam

Saw the Bruce Lee martial arts classic Enter the Dragon (for the second time) at the Royal.  No deep thinking, just fun. [My favorite part:  the Battle of the Guards.]

John and Kathrine came over and picked most of the remaining cherries.  They stayed for dinner, which was pizza.

We set up the VCR-DVD player with the upstairs TV.  But the satellite dish connection to the converter came loose and it took Father a while to reconnect it.

July 10, 2004

"Why are all the Sartres born on the other side?" "You like him?" "No, but I don't want him as an enemy"--The Battle of Algiers

Dreamed of getting up in the morning and having nothing to wear because all my clothes were in the wash; the scene in Six Feet Under where Nate saw on public display a candid photo his girlfriend's crazy brother had taken of him peeing against a wall while he was out jogging, making him angry.

Went to the Japanese Canadian Students Association.  I recited a couple of poems I'd translated into Japanese.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Saw Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (for the second time) at the Cinematheque.  It's a masterpiece, gripping and intelligent.

July 9, 2004

"Having been raised, myself, in oil-boom country, I have several times had the opportunity to witness what a calamity it can be, socially and morally, when an honest roustabout rents himself a little oil rig and actually strikes it rich.  Big money has a way of convincing people that they deserve it"--Film Flam

Got quite a few comics, including some Little Lulus and Disneys, and some 1956 Rip Kirby adventures, and a 1953 San Francisco Chronicle Sunday comic section.

Saw the pilot episode of Wiseguy on DVD. (The machine seems to be working again, but we can use the new one with the upstairs TV.) It's a late 1980s TV series with Ken Wahl as a G-man working undercover to infiltrate organized crime.  Ray Sharkey is brilliant as the gangster he gets close to in the first season's early episodes. (I've ordered all of them from zip.ca .)

Dinner was salmon.

Took some cherries over to the dance studio I used to take lessons at.  Unfortunately, most of the staff was away at some Ottawa competition.

Baked whole wheat bread overnight.