April 22, 2005

"Why, you double-crossing bobcat!"--Duel in the Sun

Dreamed of firing a machine gun.

Sore throat.

Dinner was sausages and mash.

Went to my first Meetin event:  a mixer at Therapy Lounge, which was a bit loud for my taste.  I only stayed half an hour because I had a movie to go to.

That movie was Duel in the Sun, which I saw for the second time, at the Cinematheque.  Produced by David Selznick and directed by King Vidor, it's cheesy, overblown camp.  Gregory Peck is badly miscast as a nasty badass, as is Jennifer Jones (Mrs. Selznick) as a mestiza bombshell. (Though I can't recall seeing any movies in which she was particularly good...) Even Lillian Gish is less good than usual.  Unintentionally funny, especially in the eponymous climax.  Nothing dates more surely than titillation. (How will those "lad's magazines" look thirty years from now?)

April 21, 2005

Went to the OHIP office to speak to them about my health card.  They promised to send it for real, and gave me a document I can use in its place.  To my surprise, I didn't have to wait.

Dinner was roast chicken.

Saw Bill Condon's bio Kinsey at the Paradise. (I had to see it because Dr. Laura was boycotting it!) Alfred Kinsey was a pioneering sex researcher but also a royal kook.  The movie's remarkable food for thought.

Then I went to the Bloor for a special screening, presented by the horror magazine Rue Morgue, of Mark of the Devil, an extremely cheap 1971 horror opus about witch hunts in the early 18th century.  It was a real dog, with bad dubbing and bland program music, and I left in the middle.

Before the movie started they had a 1970s horror movie trivia quiz, which I won! (I correctly guessed that the Jaws ripoff that was the top-grossing independent release of 1976 was Grizzly.) They gave me a toy figure of Creech, a monster created by Todd McFarlane of Spawn fame.

April 20, 2005

"Those who have made their case against intellect in our time have not found it necessary to originate a single new argument, since this mythology [the intellectual as subversive] is deeply rooted in our historical experience"--Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

Mimi: "Pretty....  Will I ever be pretty again?"--La Boheme

Dreamed of seeing Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.

Finally finished the 50-page introductory section of Anti-Intellectualism in American Life!  I got the impression that the book's about American intellectualism as much as anti-intellectualism.

Had another singing lesson with Giuseppe.  I'm now looking him in the eye and even smiling as I sing.

Dinner was the rest of the pork.

Went to the Art Gallery of Ontario, which is free after 18:00.  I got through it pretty quick. (There was an exhibit on one-joke artist Christo.) Then I saw King Vidor's silent movie of Puccini's La Boheme.  It was very different from the opera:  Mimi (Lillian Gish) sacrifices her health to help Rodolfo (John Gilbert) become a successful playwright, but he wrongly thinks she's cheating on him with a rich viscount...

April 19, 2005

Dreamed of taking an exterior elevator (like on the CN Tower) to the top of a tall building; the elevator swinging dangerously before coming into position at the top.

Went shopping.

Got some 1930s cartoons (quite a mixed batch), and Sunday comics from newspapers like The Daily Oklahoman.

Went to the dentist for my checkup.

Went to the doctor to treat the inflammation on the right side of my chin.  Unfortunately, my health card still hasn't arrived!  So I had to pay a $28.50 deposit.

Dinner was pizza.

April 18, 2005

"They'll hear what they see"--Beyond the Sea

Got some Joe Palooka comics and three early Menomonee Falls Gazette issues (numbers 5, 6 and 7).

Headache.

Dinner was roast pork.

Saw Kevin Spacey's Beyond the Sea at the Revue.  It's a musical about singer (and Mad magazine target) Bobby Darin.  The drama was so-so--Darin comes across as remarkably unpleasant--but the musical numbers were pretty good.  Darin did some good songs, like "Dream Lover" and the title song.

April 17, 2005

"Fling him to the ape!  Let him be torn to shreds!"--The Thief of Bagdad

Dreamed of walking home while gradually consuming my whole pill supply (I was cutting some Celexa pills in half just before bedtime); watching runners pass by in the upcoming 10K marathon; the Gordon Lightfoot song "Early Morning Rain."

Saw the Verdi opera Il Trovatore at the Hummingbird Centre.  Now there's an opera that kicks ass!

Dinner was KFC.

Saw the silent version of The Thief of Bagdad, for maybe the third time. (The DVD worked after all, on the upstairs player.) Directed by Raoul Walsh and starring the exuberant Douglas Fairbanks, it's a delightfully exotic romantic adventure.  Some really incredible sets, designed by the great William Cameron Menzies.

Added a whole lot of DVD requests to our zip.ca queue. (We have over 300, which would last a couple of years.)

April 16, 2005

Dreamed of writing down a text in simplified note form, with each word indicated by a single initial.

Baked whole wheat bread.

Wore my green summer jacket for the first time this year.

Sang my scales to Giuseppe's recorded accompaniment for the first time.

Dinner was McDonald's.

We were going to see the DVD of Douglas Fairbanks' silent The Thief of Baghdad, but the disc was defective. Instead we watched The Love Light, a silent World War I melodrama with Mary Pickford as an Italian girl who unwittingly falls in love with a German spy.

April 15, 2005

"One must resolve still more firmly to run some slight risk of encouraging the canting and self-righteous anti-Americanism that in Europe today so commonly masquerades as well-informed criticism of this country....  The appropriation of some of this self-criticism by foreign ideologies for purposes that go beyond its original scope or intention is an inevitable hazard.  But the possibility that a sound enterprise in self-correction may be overheard and misused is the poorest of reasons for suspending it"--Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963 preface)

Dreamed of visiting New York City; quoting the famous Midnight Cowboy line (said by a country boy who's moved to NYC) "Uh, well sir, I ain't a f'real cowboy.  But I am one helluva stud!"

Headache.

Dinner was spaghetti.

Started reading Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.  Looks like it's still relevant four decades later.

Saw Hou Xiaoxian's The Time to Life and The Time to Die at the Cinematheque.  It's quite a good story about growing up in postwar Taiwan. 

April 14, 2005

Dreamed of crossing on the Englishtown ferry in Cape Breton; meeting my old dance teacher Cynthia; seeing from a graph that the dance studio's business was way down.

Got some more Heart of Juliet Jones and Li'l Abner comics and a Memphis newspaper comics section.

Dinner was salmon.

A policeman came to the Geneva Centre group and told us all about how to prevent crime.  He said a lot about scams and identity theft.  Some people will break into a car for a $1 coin!

April 13, 2005

Dreamed of going to see the opera Madama Butterfly; the show changing midway into a Broadway musical of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

At my singing lesson Giuseppe showed me how to do breathing exercises.  He also recorded the piano accompaniment so I can practice scales at home.

Finished reading Frankenstein.

Dinner was the rest of the fettucine alfredo.

Saw two movies at the Cinematheque:  Yasujiro Ozu's Equinox Flower and Lillian Gish in Annie Laurie, a silent romance about warring Scottish clans.

April 12, 2005

"God!  A 'No sir, prefer prison.' A dog"--headline of the Salon review of Todd Solondz' movie Palindromes

Dreamed of looking at a surprisingly good picture I'd drawn showing Gomez of The Addams Family being served ham in front of a mural of Charles Manson, but adding an extra detail to the mural and ruining it.

Went shopping.

Father and I found a tape recorder at Radio Shack that (unlike the one I bought previously) will record from a microphone.  I also picked up some new underwear.

Sinus headache!

Dinner was fettucine alfredo (which I cooked).

At the Common Room we did another round of the commonality exercise and wrote down our preferences for future activities. (It was our last meeting and the old Charles Street location.)

April 11, 2005

Dreamed of buying a big cinema and planning to move it(?) and show old movies there; missing a Paris train connection in a Frankfurt station because we couldn't figure out how to get to Platform 1.

Got a set of 20 Steve Canyon Sunday comics for only a penny (and shipping costs)!

Visited Dr. Hassan, who prescribed a new drug called Cipralex for me.

Dinner was the rest of the stew.

Baked white bread.

We did several new pieces at the choir, from Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana, Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, Verdi's Don Carlo and Rossini's Moses and Semiramide. (The Semiramide piece, "Bel Raggio Lusinghier," is the same piece Joan Sutherland sings on our three-LP set The Royal Family of Opera.)

April 10, 2005

Dreamed of running down a mountain into a wooded valley; the Robert Burns song "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton"; visiting our old Sackville house and asking the parents if this was the last time we'd be visiting.

Finished watching The World at War on DVD.  Didn't think the last episode, "Remember," was as good as the rest:  the narration had a didactic tone I didn't like.

Bought a tape recorder and cassettes for my singing lessons.

Printed out my August diary entries.

Opened the windows for the first time this year.

John, Kathrine and Donald came over for dinner, which was macaroni.

Saw the martial arts adventure One-Bak:  The Thai Warrior at the Paradise.  It was great fun, better than the usual chopsocky.

April 9, 2005

Dreamed of a house with the people on the first floor watching the second floor with a TV camera; Jim Hawk, the hero of the Australian comic strip Air Hawk.

Read some adventures of The Spirit.  It's a 1940s strip about a mysterious crime fighter, reprinted in Menomonee Falls Gazette.  The tone is tongue in cheek.

Headache!

Dinner was penne with chicken.

Went to Wayne's for the Aspergers Meetup. (He's the new organizer.) He lives pretty close, on Wychwood Avenue.  There was nobody else, as I expected, and I only stayed for half an hour.

I was going to see a movie, but my headache stopped me.

April 8, 2005

"I hate to hit a man when he isn't looking, but you didn't look so good to me in the first place!"--Batman

Dreamed of a disaster movie with Chicago menaced by a tsunami from Lake Michigan(?), which hit a Chicago beach and left a very deep hole(!); being given a 'cello to play in a string orchestra that included my dance studio friend Genny.

Baked multigrain bread.

Did the March accounts.  We made a profit of about $250!

Saw the last of the silent French serial Les Vampires.  Pretty crazy!

There was a blackout in the late afternoon.

Dinner was McDonald's. (Moira was going to cook it but the blackout screwed things up.)

April 7, 2005

Got some Kerry Drake comics and three Boston Herald comics sections.

Went to Dragon Lady Comics and picked up some Dick Tracy and Prince Valiant comics I'd won on Ebay.

Dinner was stew.

Started typing up my diary's entries from last August.

April 6, 2005

Dreamed of reading a 1995 newspaper; a vacuum cleaner sucking up big piles of dust; the Dusty Springfield song "Son of a Preacher Man."

Went to Giuseppe's house in Scarborough and had my first singing lesson.  My big challenge was avoiding listening to my own voice. (Counterintuitive!)

The weather's warm enough for spring cleaning, so I vacuumed my whole room. (Hence the dream.) Then I cleaned my windows.  Either of the parents would have done it for me, but I was afraid they'd put the panes back in, in the wrong order.  I'm bushed!

Dinner was pizza.

Late in the evening I ended up taking the windown panes out and fooling around for 20 minutes until I figured out the right way to put them in.

April 5, 2005

"I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth--Frankenstein

Today, I got up around 08:00 this time!

Went shopping.

Got soome Sunday episodes of Li'l Abner, Prince Valiant and The Heart of Juliet Jones from Korea, and a book of Rick O'Shay episodes from the first year!

Started reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  It has quite an unusual beginning, with an Arctic explorer rescuing the monster's creator and hearing his story.

Visited the dance studio and greeted my old teacher Cynthia, whose 30th birthday is today.  She was pleased.

Baked raisin bread.

Dinner was shrimp with rice.

Saw Yasujiro Ozu's family drama The End of Summer.  Did I say that Ozu was a wonderful director?

April 4, 2005

Dreamed of visiting Detroit; writing down some dreams and finding out that they were "real life" experiences; getting up and finding the time was 14:30 (I actually got up about 13:00); translating into Chinese  and Japanese Humphrey Bogart's line from The Caine Mutiny:

There are four ways of doing things aboard my ship. The right way, the wrong way, the Navy way and my way.  If they do things my way, we'll get along.

Dinner was roast beef.

Got two more Dick Tracy reprints.  I started reading one of them, with the part where the industrialist Diet Smith got introduced, and B.O. Plenty ended up marrying Gravel Gertie.

At choir practice we did the part of Verdi's La Forza del Destino that comes just before La Vergine dell' Angeli. (We're doing the latter again with it, along with Nessun Dorma and the Don Pasquale serenade.  It's nice to know the pieces already.) I spoke with Giuseppe Macina and arranged to take singing lessons from him.

April 3, 2005

Dreamed of being about to watch a video in our Sackville, N.B. house; seeing trailers for films such as the ballet movie Tales of Beatrix Potter (which I've never seen); one of my nieces coming in and distracting me; getting exasperated that I couldn't watch the video in peace; reflecting that several of the buildings on the Mount Allison campus were ugly [actually, they aren't so bad]; meeting journalist Christopher Hitchens, who was enthusiastic about meeting me.

Read some Batman adventures from a 1940s comic strip version reprinted in Menomonee Falls Gazette.

Dinner was roast chicken.

Today was the last snowfall this winter (I hope!).

April 2, 2005

Dreamed of visiting a ground-level revolving restaurant on the Toronto waterfront; winning an Ebay auction for the video "Computers Flying Themselves," featuring computer systems so accurate that they could fly drone aircraft; escaping from a Czech house besieged by German soldiers (through crawlspaces) and running nonstop for miles, into the city; the melody from "Time to Sleep" in Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs, which they played in the movie The Year of Living Dangerously. [It starts at 3:15.]

Baked whole wheat bread.

Dinner was spaghetti.

Read the seventh issue of Cartoonist Showcase, with reprints of Tarzan, Secret Agent Corrigan and Modesty Blaise from the 1960s.

Saw Yasujiro Ozu's Record of a Tenement Gentleman at the Cinematheque.  It's a wonderful story about a widow who gets stuck with an abandoned child.

April 1, 2005

"Got a match, buddy?" "No." "Well, I have, pal.  My knuckles and your fat belly!"--Peter Scratch

Dreamed of flying in a small Cessna airplane; one of the plane's doors flying open; an academic course seeking intellectual meaning in the poems of Edward Lear(?).

Went to Dragon Lady and picked up a 1944 comics section from The Boston Herald.  I also got a set of New York Sunday News comics sections.

Moira returned from Kingston.

Dinner was scalloped potatoes and ham.

Went to the Karaoke Meetup at XO. There were over half dozen people. Jonah, the new organizer, likes Bee Gees songs.  We were there for almost three hours.

March 31, 2005

"Insomniacs are people who can't sleep....  Me?  I'm asleep around the clock and dreaming one juicy nightmare"--Peter Scratch

Dreamed of seeing in Bedford Basin north of Halifax a bathtub-sized boat going to the city loaded with books; gathering the books that had fallen overboard and trying to put them back on the boat; Father getting me to ask them to carry our fox too.

I've been inquiring about volunteering at the libraries.

We had dinner at the Mandarin Chinese buffet restaurant.  Something I ate disagreed with me (shrimp?).

Read another Dick Tracy reprint, concerning Sparkle Plenty's birth and the founding of a group for young crimestoppers (which was emulated in real life).

At the Geneva Centre we played Scrabble (the others were suspicious when I put down "pyx"), then we told jokes.

March 30, 2005

"When in doubt, see a blonde, I always say"--Peter Scratch

"You never think about air--until you run out of it"--ibid.

Dreamed of taking a swimming class and enjoying it so much that I went back in time and started it at an earlier date; realizing that starting it earlier meant that the conditions under which I originally started it would no longer exist; an Irish boy in the late 19th century becoming King Fagan I in a realm on the eastern border of Persia.

Read some Peter Scratch stories in Menomonee Falls Gazette.  It's a "hard-boiled" detective strip, benefiting from its tongue-in-cheek first person narration.

Dinner was salmon.

March 29, 2005

Dreamed of the famous boxer Joe Louis; a circle of connected houses surrounding an open-air inner court.

Went shopping.

The warm weather has arrived.  The back yard is really muddy!

Read some The Seekers stories in Menomonee Falls Gazette.  It's a British strip about two detectives working for an agency specializing in missing people.  My favourite character is their veteran minder Duffy.

Went to Dragon Lady and bought some Dick Tracy Sunday comics I won on Ebay.  I also got some Lone Ranger comics.

Dinner was steak.

Saw the start of the DVD of the 1915 French serial Les Vampires, about a reporter pursuing a gang of spooky criminals.  Kinda slow.

March 28, 2005

"Freedom at the cost of a life is no freedom!" "Life at the cost of freedom is no life!"--The Sea Inside

Dreamed of arriving at an airport and realizing I didn't have my passport.

Got a Washington Post comics section and a couple of issues of the comic strip reprint Golden Funnies.

Read some stories in the mystery strip Paul Temple in Menomonee Falls Gazette.  Very English.

Dinner was ham.

Saw Alejandro Amenabor's The Sea Inside at the Paradise.  It's a compelling movie about a quadriplegic (a triumphant Javier Bardem) who wants to die.  Surprisingly life-affirming and even funny at times, with a wonderful dream sequence set to Puccini's "Nessun Dorma."

March 27, 2005

Dreamed of being about to fly home from Moncton, N.B., but there'd been some accident that complicated my plans; a fire in the fireplace of our house in Sackville, N.B.; the song "I was drunk last night, dear Mother."

Saw In the Realms of the Unreal at the Paradise.  It's a documentary about Henry Darger, a reclusive Chicago drudge who wrote and illustrated a huge eccentric novel over his lifetime.

Finished my taxes.

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

Baked cheese bread overnight.

March 26, 2005

"One for you, three for me"--Thoomas Haden Church shares condoms with Paul Giamatti in Sideways

Dreamed of rollerskating along a street in Sackville, N.B.; opening a huge bottle of white wine, causing it to slowly fizz over; a movie scene where a group of people jumped off a cliff into an icy lake.

The parents and I went to see Alexander Payne's Sideways at the Bloor. (The TTC system is a mystery to Mother.) It's a smart, funny character study.

Dinner was pork chops.

We found the missing statement and I got a start on figuring my taxes.