Dreamed of having acted in a play on its opening night weeks before and wondering if I'd get to do it a second time.
I was going to go to Carlos Saura's dance movie Iberia in the morning, but I wasn't up to it. Hope they release it here!
Baked rye bread.
Dinner was Chinese food.
Saw The Giant Buddhas at the Cumberland, the last of my film festival movies. It's a low-key, rather meditative documentary on the loss of the Bamiyan statues. I got to thinking about how all art is doomed to be lost someday.
Dreamed of the tragedy of two siblings who took pills instead of eating, from the time they were little, ending with two airplanes colliding head-on; homemade airships; trying to will myself to wake up, and not succeeding at first; reflecting that Charlize Theron should make more period movies; a breakthrough in dentistry that briefly extended "the golden age."
Saw the first half of Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream at the Cumberland. It's a documentary about (what else?) the midnight movies phenomenon of the 1970s (stuff like El Topo and Night of the Living Dead). Pretty interesting, but I had to leave early.
Then I went for an interview about volunteering at the Parkdale Library. (I was late because I thought it was High Park.) The Leading to Reading program was directed at people too young for my interests. I'll try some other programs.
Dinner was lasagna.
I was going to attend a Meetin gathering, but I was too tired. Instead I saw a couple more episodes of The History of Rock and Roll.
Finally got that reprint of the first episodes of the comic strip Buz Sawyer.
Iraqi goatherd: "America will fail, because its behaviour is not the behaviour of a great nation"--Why We Fight
Dreamed of levitating; facing an epic duel with a human-sized fly; visiting a university campus at the northern tip of Manhattan; finding a pile of Sunday comics sections.
I was going to see Heart of the Game, a documentary about girls' sports, but my sinuses were acting up and I would have had to leave early because of my job interview.
Katherine and I went to a firm called ERA Architects, who do "cultural" architecture. (There's a woman there called Kirsten who resembles actress Chloe Sevigny.) Katherine thinks that the interview went very well and I should get a part-time job doing research for them. [Nothing happened.]
I had time to make the screening of the documentary Why We Fight at the Cumberland. Directed by Eugene Jarecki, it's an examination of the "military-industrial complex" and its influence on US foreign policy today. Telling.
Dinner was McDonald's.
Saw the DVD of the Mystery Science Theatre version of Girl in Gold Boots, a 1968 B-movie about go-go dancing.
Dreamed of the World War II era Warner Brothers cartoon Russian Rhapsody (featuring "Gremlins from the Kremlin").
Went shopping.
Saw the documentary Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela at the ROM cinema. It's a great story about a dozen heroic South Africans who went into exile in 1960, helped establish the African National Council, and waited three decades to come home. (They also had a short film of an interview with 1980s artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.)
Dinner was Harvey's.
Got a package of On Stage, Teen-Wise and Dick Tracey comics in exchange for a package I'd recently sent out.
Saw the concert movie Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man at the Varsity. It featured a number of singers (most of whom I'm unfamiliar with) singing Cohen's songs. It varied. (I recognized some songs from the soundtrack of the western McCabe and Mrs. Miller.)
I had dinner at Island Foods, a West Indian fast food place in Village by the Grange.
Went to a Common Room session. This time we were playing a budgeting game with fake money. It's my last time participating in this group for quite a while, because opera rehearsals start next month.
Dreamed of being in a group of people watching the movie The Wild Bunch from a stairway; a movie of a satirical 1930s Broadway musical, with a scene where the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VIII) dedicated a war memorial in Brooklyn, and appeared as a walking statue.
Had an appointment with Dr. Hassan. This time I had more to talk about than usual.
Dinner was shepherd's pie.
Went to the first rehearsal of the Toronto City Opera's new season. There were, including me, only three baritone-basses there! Our patron Tony Fusco appeared and told us of his big dreams for us. Giuseppe said that this year the opera will be doing Donizetti's The Magical Elixir of Love and a couple of one-act operas, including Puccini's Suor Angelica, with an all-female chorus. (The other was Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona, with no chorus.)
Dreamed of going to a fortune teller in a phone booth and asking where to find love; being told to go south to Bloor Street; the Greek couplet about the battle of Thermopylae
Go tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
Went to a Chinese Linkup event. I couldn't figure out how to pronounce "qu."
Dinner was pork chops.
Saw the first episode of the third season of Six Feet Under. That opening sequence was a bit too strong for me. [Nate's just had brain surgery and seems to be dead at first.]
Saw Ballets Russes at the Paramount. It's a very enjoyable documentary about two rival ballet companies. in the 1930s and 1940s. Several of their star dancers were still around to be interviewed. Some great characters! Frederic Franklin appeared after the movie.
Dreamed of a big bowl of ice cream with a lot of different things in it!
Baked whole wheat bread.
Saw Bob Fosse's 1972 TV special Liza With a Z at the Elgin. Liza Minnelli herself was there, in a purple suit and floor-length scarf. It was pretty incredible. [She told us she was still in contact with the show's dancers.]
Dinner was roast beef.
Went to the Karaoke Meetup. There were seven people there! The only new song I sang was "Tom Dooley."
Dreamed of Patrick McGoohan scheming in the TV show The Prisoner; a wristwatch coming apart; my family moving back to Sackville, N.B.(!); Father planning to drive Moira and me there, then drive right back to pick up Mother; my pleading with him to get some sleep before driving back.
Mailed off some Dick Tracy, Li'l Abner and Little Orphan Annie comic strips as part of a trade.
Dinner was KFC.
Read a Jonathan Raban article in the latest New York Review of Books on the "War on Terror" as seen from a Seattle perspective.
We got our last issue (I think) of The Atlantic before our subscription runs out. I've hardly ever done their cryptic crossword before--usually it's Moira who does it--but this time I completed the whole thing! [The cover shows a photo of a pre-1860 Abraham Lincoln with the headline "Lincoln's Great Depression."]
Saw the documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill at the Paradise. It was about a San Francisco man whose life had no direction until he discovered the local parrots and started observing and taking care of them. He reminded me a bit of myself.
Saw the DVD of the movie of Horton Foote's play 1918 (for the second time), the third in the trilogy that started with The Elopement and On Valentine's Day. It's the best of the three, with Matthew Broderick in fine form as the irresponsible younger brother. I liked the scene where the wife (a Southern belle) was playing the piano and started playing it fast and loud, the closest she could get to blowing her top.
I was supposed to meet Katherine to visit the local libraries, but she had to delay it to next week.
Stayed home all day.
Dinner was McDonald's.
Saw the DVD of Paul Leni's silent movie of Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs. (I still haven't got around to reading the Classics Illustrated comic book version I bought last year.) [I finally read it a couple of years ago.]
Saw Ross McElwee's PBS documentary Bright Leaves, about his North Carolina family and the legacy of his great-great grandfather, an ultimately unsuccessful tobacco magnate. Articulate and compelling.
Dreamed of being in high school; going to the wrong classroom; other people calling me Jamie instead of James; not liking it, but not knowing what to do about it.
Got my hair cut.
Dinner was salmon.
Went to the Canadian Opera Company's free concert at the Harbourfront Stage. It was a Linkup event, but I couldn't find the others. It started to drizzle in the later part.
Dreamed of the parents and me driving around the area of the New Brunswick-Nova Scotia border near my hometown; seeing a few cemeteries, an inferior ice cream factory, a building which reminded me of the woman looking through binoculars in the Alex Colville painting; seeing snow on the ground despite it being August.
Started looking at some more Menomonee Falls Gazette issues I hadn't got around to reading before.
There was a big crowd for dinner, which was churrasco chicken.
Dreamed of an actual joke I read when I was little, which I'll have to tell my singing teacher Giuseppe:
A priest tells his congregation, "For my sermon next Sunday I'd like all of you to read Chapter 16 of the Book of Mark." The next Sunday he asks, "Before I start my sermon, how many of you read Chapter 16 of the Book of Mark?" All the hands go up. He says, "My sermon is on honesty. The Book of Mark has only 15 chapters."
Saw some Gumby cartoons on DVD. I remember seeing the bit where he was in a spaceship and approaching an unfriendly asteroid on TV when I was a kid.
Baked multigrain bread.
Dinner was fettucine alfredo (which I cooked).
Started reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables.
Went to the dance studio. There were few people there.
Dreamed of the actual Time magazine review of the movie of Fiddler on the Roof that compared the photography to gravy.
Went shopping.
Dinner was chicken curry.
Saw the DVD of the first two episodes of the documentary series The History of Rock and Roll. It interviews a lot of famous artists. Pretty interesting so far.
Janis Joplin (on the party aboard her train): "I've finally found someone who throws a better party than me!"--Festival Express
Started translating Julius Caesar's account of the Gallic Wars (the one that starts "Greater Gaul is divided into three parts") from Latin into English, and also Chinese and Japanese.
Dinner was McDonald's.
Rented the DVD of Festival Express, a documentary about a 1970 concert tour of Canada by train with some of the days leading rock acts. Janis Joplin was stunning! (Her accidental O.D. wouldn't have happened if heroin had been legal...)
"Seems it always happens. Whenever we get too high-hat, too sophisticated for flag-waving, some thug nation decides we're a pushover, all ready to be blackjacked. And it isn't long before we're looking up mighty anxiously to make sure the flag's waving over us"--Yankee Doodle Dandy
"Eddie Foy. The star with the big show down the street with a chorus of 70." "Why, I thought they looked a little younger than that!"--ibid.
Sharhal and I came to an agreement to exchange Terry and the Pirates Sunday comics. Since my strips are filling some of his collection's few remaining gaps, he's giving me twelve for my six!
Dinner was shepherd's pie.
Baked raisin bread.
Saw the DVD of Michael Curtiz' Yankee Doodle Dandy (for the fourth time). It's a musical biography of George M. Cohan, the song and dance man and Broadway composer. Patriotic wartime hokum, with James Cagney as entertaining as ever.
"What happened to you?" "I ran into someone--someone's fist"--Broken Flowers
The parents and I saw Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers at the Bayview. Bill Murray has a delicate touch.
Dinner was pizza.
Saw Louis Malle's Lacombe, Lucien, about a young punk in the French occupation who joins the collaborationists because he can't get into the Resistance. Grim but convincing.
