May 21, 2005

"Give him an inch, he thinks he's a ruler!"--Miami Vice

Dreamed of someone finding and revealing evidence that a couple he knew had murdered someone and covered it up; wondering if the couple were actually innocent; being unable to find our Toronto home on a Mississauga map; figuring out the right platform for the commuter train I wanted, but only reaching it after the train had left. 

The parents went to Kingston for the weekend.

Went to Hollywood Canteen and bought some cut-rate movie books, as well as a coffee table book about music singles that became gold records. (There have been about 1200 covers of the Beatles' "Yesterday"!)

Dinner was the rest of the lasagna.

Saw the DVD of the first episodes of the Michael Mann TV series Miami Vice.  I remember how cool the first season was 20 years ago. (Donald, of course, was onto it before anyone else.) The pilot was actually kinda lame--it'll get better when Edward James Olmos joins the cast!

May 20, 2005

Dreamed of a British sculptor in Singapore who became a World War II soldier at the start of the Pacific War; being featured among the testimonials for a website bringing people together for sex; feeling I shouldn't  be among the testimonials because I hadn't yet had sex with the woman I'd met through their website.

Deposited an interest cheque of over $2000 in my bank account. (It had been down to almost nothing.)

Not that I'm in the money again, I went to Dragon Lady and picked up some more Dick Tracy and Prince Valiant comics I'd won on Ebay. (I also received some Popeye comics.)

Dinner was lasagna.

Went to a Meetin mixer at Crocodile Rock.  Very noisy.

May 19, 2005

Dreamed of writing a spoof of Gone With the Wind.

We changed the sheets on my bed.  One of them was so threadbare that a whole lot of lint came off with it, so I vacuumed my whole room again!

We finally took down the Christmas lights!

Met Barry King again at Dragon Lady.  He sold me some more Prince Valiant and Alley Oop comics, and gave me the card of a guy he met who's looking for a proofreader.

Dinner was halibut (which I'd marinated).

Saw a DVD of early silent movies filmed by Thomas Edison's company between 1889 and 1903. (They included The Great Train Robbery and the notorious film of an elephant being electrocuted.) Lots of commentaries by film historians.

May 18, 2005

"Girlie, tough ain't enough"--Million Dollar Baby

(in a heated exchange) "Oh, I'm sorry!  Am I hitting a nerve?" "No, you're boring me"--Oz

At today's singing lesson Giuseppe taped some more exercises for me.

Went to Dr. Hassan to arrange my next appointment, and ended up seeing him then!

Stopped in at Revue Video and bought some more cheap VHS videos:  Bad Day at Black Rock, Melvin and Howard, The Palm Beach Story and Last Weekend.

Dinner was roast chicken.

Saw Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby at the Bloor.  Sobering.

May 17, 2005

"Love is the ultimate half-truth"--Oz

Dreamed of walking across a street in a traffic jam and getting stuck between cars with no room to move.

I'm now holding my back stiff while doing situps.

Went shopping.

Got most of the spuds planted.

Saw the DVD of the first episode of the third season of Oz.  What a great show!

Got some more Sunday comics.

The parents and I had dinner at the Mandarin Restaurant.  My fortune cookie said, "You will be heading for the land of sunshine." (As Mandrake the Magician would say, "?")

May 16, 2005

Did the rest of the hoeing.  The garden's now ready for planting.

Dinner was pork chops.

Choira practice was interrupted by a fire alarm going off.  We saw a fire engine arrive and some firefighters confirmed that it was a false alarm.

May 15, 2005

Went hiking on the Bruce Trail. (The Meetin group told me about the activity.) Some of us got to quit in the middle, and went back to the bus until our return.  I was one:  I quit because it was starting to rain.  I suppose I could have finished, but it just didn't seem important enough.  Unfortunately, getting back to Toronto we were later than I expected.

Dinner was KFC.

May 14, 2005

Dreamed of non-existent Tintin comic book adventures; escaping from a burning school and wondering if anyone failed to escape.

Baked rye bread.

Did some hoeing in the garden.  It's just about ready for planting.

Saw the DVD of the first episode of The Prisoner, an existential British TV series with a cult following.  Stylish but very 1960s!

Dinner was spaghetti.

Went to another Karaoke Meetup.  This time there were five people and we stayed a good three hours.

May 13, 2005

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May 12, 2005

Dreamed of the new Harry Potter book; the biblical quote "I played sweet music and you would not dance; I sang sad songs and you would not weep"; being inside our old house in Sackville; seeing the new owners, and making a noise to see whether they were aware of my presence or I was just a "ghost."

Went shopping.

Dinner was pizza.

They had a firefighter at the Geneva Centre.

May 11, 2005

"They asked where he had been and he answered: 'Out there'"--One Hundred Years of Solitude

Giuseppe gave me some new singing exercises. (He told me how he met Renata Tebaldi when he was eleven.)

Got some Poughkeepsie Sunday New Yorker comics and some Prince Valiant comics.

Did the April accounts.

Finished spading the garden.  All that's left is the hoeing.

Dinner was steak.

Read over 60 pages of One Hundred Years of Solitude!

Went to meet Barry King and a couple of other comic strip collectors at the Elephant and Castle. (He's been selling me a lot of stuff from Korea, and he's visiting here just now.) I got several Menomonee Falls Guardian issues and some big lots of Doonesbury and Dondi Sunday comics.

May 10, 2005

Dreamed of looking out from our old cottage near Sackville, N.B. across the bay to Port Elgin and seeing a causeway just below the surface coming from there about all the way here; hearing about plans for yet another movie of The Great Gatsby; being about to fly home from Sackville.

Baked whole wheat bread in the morning. (I was going to bake it overnight, but I forgot to put it in the machine!)

Got some 1930s newspaper cartoons, another New York Sunday News comics section, and a whole batch of reprints of Dick Tracy, Modesty Blaise and Secret Agent Corrigan.

Saw the DVD of Blake Edwards' frantic megaslapstick comedy The Great Race, for at least the fourth time. (I first saw it when I was four--the scene where Tony Curtis entered the baron's castle scared me!) It's literally all over the place, of course.  The whole is far less than the sum of the parts.

Went to Christina's new book club.  She doesn't strike me as on the ball.  She hadn't finished reading our first book Eats, Shoots and Leaves (which she didn't like anyway). Our next book has a title that starts with Tipping, but she isn't sure what the rest of it is.

May 9, 2005

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice"--the famous opening sentence of One Hundred Years of Solitude

Dreamed of driving with the parents to Seattle; suggesting we return via Vancouver; walking on a picket line in a hallway (without carrying a sign).

We're now using the refrigerator's ice machine again!

Dinner was fettucine alfredo (which I cooked).

Got Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude from the library and started re-reading it.  It's a really wonderful "magical realist" novel. [I was reading it for the third time.]

At choir practice they were asking if we'd accept a doubled membership fee. (It looks like we will.)

May 8, 2005

Dreamed of getting dietary advice from an expert on a cruise ship.

Saw the documentary Born Into Brothels at the Paradise.  It's everything they say!  It left me feeling angry about societies that hope that if they declare zero tolerance against vices like the sex trade, it'll just go away. (Or at least out of their view...)

Started forking the garden.

John, Kathryn and Rae came over for dinner, which was macaroni.

May 7, 2005

"My life, you got a lovely girl there, Mr. Garvin!"

"Don't talk like a nit, Marky, she's not my girl....  She's the Princess."

"Eh?  Was it all right to let her in then?  She said she was an old friend of yours, Guv!"

"She is, Marky....  And anything she wants any time is always all right, see?  If she ever walks in an' asks for my 'ead on a plate--just give it to 'er"--Modesty Blaise

Dreamed of returning to Sackville, N.B., from Europe by bicycle with Moira and Puitak; finding a huge crowd on the outskirts of Sackville watching the start of a foot race; trying to continue to our old house by ultralight aircraft; John planning to make a low-budget movie version of Frankenstein.

Started reading a reprint of the comic strip Modesty Blaise.  I wish I could write as well as Peter O'Donnell!

Saw the musical Evita at the Princess of Wales.  It's about spectacle as much as politics, and you basically get out of it what you brought in. (Like Hitler, Eva Peron probably wouldn't have been as popular in the TV age.) [At one point, they used the "knee in the junk" cliche!]

Saw the DVD of the Rudolph Valentino silent Cobra.  It's a melodrama about an Italian count who comes to New York to avoid woman trouble (and of course fails!).

May 6, 2005

Dreamed of a non-existent Disney movie with Kurt Russell (along the lines of his The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes) with very fast-paced airplane stunts; a horror movie with a boat at sea approached by a ghost boat; encountering a funeral procession that included world leaders.

Got of portfolio of King Features comic strip art by cartoonists like Alex Raymond, and a New York Sunday News section.

Went to the Forrest Hill library and took out Daughter of God, one of the books the TO Book Club is discussing next month.  While waiting for the bus I looked at the plot description, and it was too ridiculous for me! (A thriller about an international conspiracy involving historical evidence of a female messiah executed by the Fourth-century Church...) I managed to return it before the bus arrived.  Their other book's The DaVinci Code, which I'm not even trying!

Dinner was stew.

There was no Karaoke Meetup because only Jonah and I showed up.

May 5, 2005

Dreamed of saying I didn't want to go to England with my family; the famous oak tree in Tewin, England, that grew out of Lady Anne Grimston's tomb; our old Electrohome TV set. (Do I miss it!)

Got started spading the garden. (The first time I broke ground I immediately broke the shovel too!  We had to go out and get a new one before I could continue.)

Dinner was McDonald's. (The others were going to Red Lobster, but I couldn't because of my Meetin event.)

Then I met some other Meetin members and we visited the Bata Shoe Museum.  I don't care that much for shoes but I liked meeting the people.

Since I was in the neighborhood, I went into Remenyi's and bought a book of Italian songs, including Giuseppe Giordani's "Caro Mio Ben," which I'm going to start learning.  It looks pretty easy.

Did some more spading while there was still light.

May 4, 2005

Madeline Kahn (lustily): "You're incorrigible!"

Gene Wilder: "Does that mean... you love me?"

--Young Frankenstein

Dreamed of being in a place surround by snow-capped mountains and trying to figure out where it was; the My Fair Lady song "I'm Getting Married in the Morning"; Jude Law playing Li'l Abner in a movie(!).

At my singing lesson Giuseppe suggested "Caro Mio Ben" for my first song.

Visited Mission:  Possible at their new HQ near Greenwood station.  Dann gave me an agreement to sign.

Went shopping.

Got a sheaf of Omaha World-Herald Sunday comics from 1965.

Dinner was spaghetti.

Saw Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein (for the third time) at the Bloor.  A drolly affectionate spoof, though it could have used more of Madeline Kahn. (Marty Feldman was funniest of all.)

My comic strips are tucked away in my closet in a dozen bags (except for a group I haven't yet read).

May 3, 2005

Dreamed of an earlier American version of Godzilla(?) with Steve Allen as an academic transformed into the monster but with no rampage(!).

Got another Menomonee Falls Gazette issue.

Dinner was roast beef.

Baked raisin bread.

Went to a Book Club Meetup.  We discussed Frankenstein (which I'd read) and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (which I hadn't). There were seven people there.  Unfortunately, we met at the Red Room, which was rather loud for conversation.

Almost finished resorting my comics. (For a while I had the whole floor of my room strewn with them!)

Started reading a reprint of the comic strip Rick O'Shay from its first year (1958).  It was far more "cartoonish" in the beginning than in the realistic later years.

May 2, 2005

Dreamed of visiting an African-American grocery store and thinking that Moira would like it more than I did; recalling Donald's actual observation that John Landis was a director with a poor sense of pace. (He'd pointed that with Landis' Animal House and Trading Places both movies basically came to a halt before the climactic sequence where the heroes got even.)

My new health card finally arrived.

Dinner was roast chicken.

No more new songs at choir rehearsal.

Spent a lot of time putting my comic strip collection in order, and I'm still far from finished.

May 1, 2005

Dreamed of a man climbing up the side of an abandoned ship to join a woman aboard.

Started reading another Dick Tracy reprint.  In this one B.O. Plenty got married to Gravel Gertie.

Went to the Chinese Meetup group.  Unfortunately, the place was too hard to find and I was half an hour late.  It didn't matter, however, because the place turned out to be closed on Sundays. (I visited the Reference Library instead.)

Dinner was Harvey's.

I'm part of a Tango Linkup group, so I went to a studio near Wellesley station and got a free tango lesson.  But I'm not sure I'll go back. (Many of the numbers on their tape were Vienna waltz instead of tango.)

Saw the DVD of Cecil B. DeMille's The Affairs of Anatol, a silent comedy about an upright man married to Gloria Swanson, who flirts with an incorrigible Jazz Age flapper, a larcenous country wife and an actress called Satan Synne.  Based on an Arthur Schnitzler play, it's more sophisticated than usual for Hollywood.

April 30, 2005

"Blood may be thicker than water, but Brad Frump is thicker than anything!"--How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

Dreamed of being in a room where they removed the oxygen to test you (like that pilot-training scene in An Officer and a Gentleman.)

Saw the DVD of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, a 1960s musical satire with Robert Morse as a window washer who bluffs his way up the corporate ladder.  Some funny writing.

For some reason, downloading the New York Times crossword puzzle webpage caused my Safari software to crash.  I downloaded this weekend's puzzles with my Firefox software.

Joined the Dining Meetup for dinner at Ethiopia House. (There were eight people there.) I had a headache, so I wasn't very social.  I'd planned to go salsa dancing with some of the group afterward, but I was worn out and went home early.  Later I was sick.

April 29, 2005

The father to a gloomy-looking guest: "There's cyanide in the bathroom"--Look at Me

Dreamed of coming out of a tunnel to the brow of a hill inside the ellipse in the University of Toronto campus.

Got some Li'l Abner comics.

We drove down to Mimico Park.

Dinner was fish.

Saw the French movie Look at Me with the Movie Meetup group. (First we convened at the Fox and Firkin.) It was quite good.  The story was about a teenage aspiring singer and her father, who's a famous author and a jerk.  Most of the characters had an "attitude." [I remember a bit where the overweight girl and the Arab man talked about how neither could get into Paris clubs...]

April 28, 2005

Dreamed of realizing I'd missed my singing lesson. (Then I woke up and realized I'd cancelled it.)

Got a couple more Menomonee Falls Gazette issues.

Went to see the doctor again.  My abscess is just about gone.

Dinner was steak.

Took our DVD of The Others over to the Geneva Centre.  The other people enjoyed it.  It benefits from a second viewing, when you know the twist.

April 27, 2005

Got a couple of Menomonee Falls Gazette issues.  I'd been waiting a couple of months for them.

Stayed in all day.

Dinner was spaghetti.

Read a couple of Blondie and Dennis the Menace Sunday comics I remembered reading back when I was four!

April 26, 2005

Got some Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise comics, a whole lot of 1974 Washington Post comics, and a lot of Saint John Telegraph-Journal comics from between 1965 and 1967. (Some of the first weekend comics I read were in the Telegraph-Journal.)

Went shopping.

Headache!

Dinner was salmon.

I was going to see the Lillian Gish movie Way Down East, but because of my headache I gave my ticket to Moira instead.  And I snipped and rearranged my comics collection.

Saw a DVD of the Three Irish Tenors in concert.  Some of their songs were good.

April 25, 2005

"50 million!  Ah tried to count that high with mah fingers an' toes, but that only brung me up to 23!"--Li'l Abner

Had to cancel this week's singing lesson while I fight off this cold.

Got some Juliet Jones, Captain Easy and Doonesbury comics from Barry King in Korea.

Dinner was the rest of the lasagna.

I only went to choir practice because I had to miss last week's after it was moved to Wednesday night.  We did a new chorus from Gluck's Orfeo e Eurydice.  Turns out the chorus is having funding trouble!

April 24, 2005

"Don't worry, buddy, we won't kill the girl unless you approve." "And if I don't approve?" "Then we keep talking until you do!"--Tequila Sunrise

Dreamed of telling Father that instead of hearing about other people's adventures, I wanted to have my own.

Saw Robert Towne's Tequila Sunrise (for maybe the fourth time) on DVD.  Complex characters and really great dialogue!

Baked rye bread.

John came over for dinner, which was lasagna.

Saw Fritz Lang's Destiny (for the second time) on DVD.  It's a silent masterpiece, a multistory epic of love and death. (The first time I saw it was, appropriately enough, on the eve of my final Ph.D. examination!)

April 23, 2005

Mary Magdalene, who thinks her boyfriend Judas(?) has taken up with another woman: "What is her name?  Tell me, old Frog, or I choke thee!"--The King of Kings

Dreamed of the comic strip Secret Agent Corrigan.

Hope I'm not getting a cold!

Saw the DVD of the silent Biblical epic The King of Kings.  It was directed by Cecil B. DeMille, so the first scene shows Mary Magdalene slumming in a "den of iniquity," and the Crucifixion scene includes a big, destructive earthquake.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Saw D.W. Griffiths' silent melodrama True Heart Susie at the Cinematheque.  It was accompanied by a Tom Gunning lecture about its star Lillian Gish.  She was a radiant actress who did incredible things with her eyes!