December 24, 2007

"You aren't wrong, Hal, you're just maybe, uh, not that right"--Undeclared

Dreamed of seeing a "director's cut" version of Goodfellas with a non-existent deleted scene where a big gangster starts up a petition to the FBI to leave him alone.

Dinner was pizza.

Saw the DVD of the college sitcom Undeclared, by the same people who made Freaks and Geeks.  It has a lot of the same sharp wit.

Tried again to install OSX Leopard.  Again the installation failed, but this time I managed to restore things by myself.

December 23, 2007

Dreamed of the song "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"; one of the earpieces breaking off my glasses.

Went over to Mary's for a pre-Christmas party.  There were about ten people there.

Dinner was McDonald's.  I went out and got it because this time it was Father who wasn't dressed.

I finally got the printer setup fixed.  It turned out that Father had removed the computer-printer connection and forgot to restore it.

December 22, 2007

Will Ferrell (in the company mailroom): This place reminds me of Santa's workshop, except that it smells like mushrooms and everyone looks like they want to hurt me"--Elf

Saw John Favreau's Elf at the Revue.  Will Ferrell was pretty funny in it.

Dinner was pork chops.

Moira went off to Kingston for Christmas.

December 21, 2077

"Do you prefer your liquor more, uh, liquid, Steed?"--The Avengers

"It's not what you don't do, it's what you do do!"--doodoohead Davey

Dreamed of returning to my hometown Sackville, N.B., and finding it built into a huge urban complex, including facilities for cruise ships.

Started doing the puzzles in the Games magazine I bought yesterday.  Some of them are quite clever!

Dinner was Chinese food. (Moira didn't eat with us because she'd spent the whole afternoon eating at her office's Christmas party.)

Saw the DVD episode of the Avengers episode "The Murder Market." Stylish as ever.

Went to Dion Conflict's Hunka Junk Christmas show.  It had a lot of unusual Christmas stuff, including a Davey and Goliath New Year's episode and a film with bouncing-ball Christmas carols. (Several in the audience sang along, including me.)

December 20, 2007

"Being a New Yorker means never having to say you're sorry"--Lily Tomlin

Dreamed of the Von Trapp family being stuck on a steep mountain face; a non-existent Vanity Fair article on an Austrian recruited by the Nazis for a spying mission with a front as an antiquarian specializing in Korean wells.

Baked raisin bread.

Went out to the Sheppard Grande and bought Met opera cinemacast tickets.  Then I went to the World's Biggest Bookstore and bought Watchmen and Dream of the Red Chamber. (It's written by Tsao Hsueh-chin, and they shelved it under H instead of T!)

Dinner was spaghetti.

Went to a book club at the Centre for Free Inquiry.  We discussed the Christopher Hitchens book slamming Mother Teresa, which I hadn't read.

December 19, 2007

Father: "Someday you'll understand these things, when you're older."

Son: "But you don't understand it, and you are older."

--Wah-Wah

Dreamed of walking along the highways of central Nova Scotia; "waking up" lying beside the road; coming to an important junction.

An Ebay package I ordered last month still hasn't arrived.  I emailed them and it turned out they hadn't sent it yet! (I'm just glad it wasn't lost in the mail.)

Went shopping. (Our car was stuck in the snow and the owner of Ellington's Cafe helped push it free.)

Dinner was roast chicken.

Finished Deadwood.  Unfortunately, the last season was uneven.

Saw the DVD of Richard E. Grant's excellent Wah-Wah, from his memoir about growing up in a broken home in Swaziland just before independence.  It's painfully funny!

December 18, 2007

"Let me understand cunt, Lord!"--Deadwood

Dreamed of getting an origami flower made from Kleenex from a priest; getting pricked by the flower's pin.

Dinner was scallops.

Went to the first Graphic Novels Meetup at the organizer's home near Jane and Annette.  We're going to read Alan Moore's Watchmen and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis.

The other day I joined a Chinese Literature Meetup, which I'm really enthusiastic about except that it was on Monday nights, same as my choir practice.  I asked, and the organizer changed it to Tuesdays!

Got a couple more Rusty Riley comics via Ebay, along with some Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics.

December 17, 2007

The Mocking Bird: "Cover your face, you're scaring the horses!"

--King's Quest VII:  The Princeless Bride

Dreamed of the Bonnie Tyler song "Total Eclipse of the Heart"; thinking wrongly that it came from the musical Jesus Christ, Superstar.

Dinner was pork chops.

December 16, 2007

 Dreamed of a crime show where a substance got sprayed on a car windshield causing it to fog up then disintegrate just before a terrorist attack; someone getting locked in a train lavatory with a deadly monster; the Cheech & Chong skit with the exchange

"It's me, Dave!  Open up!"

"Dave--ain't--here!"

The snow is coming down fiercer than ever.  Today's Coro Verdi concert was cancelled, not to my surprise.

Baked multigrain bread.

Dinner was lasagna.

December 15, 2007

"Have you thrown the bones [dice] before, Ma'am?"

"I've caught a few!"

--Deadwood

Dreamed of pushing a shopping cart across a suspension bridge and getting exhausted; going with a girlfriend to join a crowd in a big celebration; seeing some Washington, D.C. buildings in the distance and yelling "Stop global warming, you idiots!"

I was going to go to a crepe lunch with the new Art Lovers Meetup, but cancelled because of my cold, which was just as well since I didn't get out of bed till 13:30!  Moira was going to dinner with Puitak and Gordon, and I cancelled on joining them too.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Big snowstorm!

Started playing the computer game King's Quest VII:  The Princeless Bride again for the first time in a long while.

December 14, 2007

Calamity Jane's first-draft account of being General Custer's scout: "Custer--was--a--cunt.  The end"--Deadwood

Dreamed of arriving at the Goodenough College in London (where I stayed in 1995) and meeting Mrs. Vickers (whom I knew there); computer games like King's Quest; a Sunday comics section ad promoting a TV show set in Macon County, Georgia, in colonial times; reflecting on the comic potential in the word "cunt."

The St. Clair West subway station has finally reopened!  But only the buses are coming in, not yet the streetcars.

On the Saturday Night Live DVD they had a spoof public service ad with Chevy Chase denouncing prejudice against people who drool, and starting to drool himself.  I have to admit that sort of thing makes me laugh.

Dinner was roast chicken

Rented the DVD of the first episodes of the last season of Deadwood.  It's as complicated as ever.

December 13, 2007

Dinner was roast beef.

Went to the bank and deposited the $1500 cheque Father wrote for me.  Then I went to Forest Hill library and borrowed Carl Honore's In Praise of Slow. (I also got Mondo Canuck and The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste.)

Sang in the Coro Verdi concert at Villa Colombo.  I'm trying to go easy on my voice because of my cold, so I won't go to the dress rehearsal tomorrow night.

December 12, 2007

"What do dogs do on their day off?  They can't lie around--that's their job!"--George Carlin

Went shopping.  We bought apples for the first time in months.

Donald, John and company came over and we dined at the nearby Thai restaurant.  The food was nice and spicy, at a suitable time for me since I've picked up a bit of a cold (psychosomatic?)

Afterward Donald stayed and installed the external hard drive Father brought this morning, which has a 100 gig capacity!  We now have the system back where it was ten days ago. (During the long waits when the machine was downloading, we watched the DVD of the first episode of Saturday Night Live, in which George Carlin has some brilliant moments.)

Removed Karen from my Facebook friends list.

December 11, 2007

Dreamed of spading the garden at our old house in Sackville, N.B. while the new owners were away; hearing that the neighbours next door were suing, and thinking that it wasn't our problem now; the Whittier poem "Barbara Frietchie"; the Tennyson poem "The Eagle."

Started reading Heinrich Harrer's Seven Years in Tibet.  The first chapter is already exciting!

Dinner was spaghetti.

Went to the Book Club Meetup.  I had words with Karen, and now I'm quitting. (I didn't stay to talk about The Amber Spyglass.) The bottom line is that in addition to her main event, she also has to have her series book event every single month, and is too rigid to share it with a non-fiction event of mine even once.  Hard feelings. (I hate losing friends!)

Saw the DVD of the first episodes of the Jungle Jim serial, which is pretty weak. (Hardly any Shanghai Lil!)

December 10, 2007

We went to CPUsed to see if they had the Firewire machine, but they're sold out till later this week. (We did get some moldy cheese exchanged.)

Dinner was pork chops.

At choir practice we had the dress rehearsal for Thursday's concert. (We also went over several of the Christmas concert songs.)

Finished The Amber Spyglass.

December 9, 2007

"You had four men."

"Two of them tried to turn back."

--The Far Country

Dreamed of Buster Keaton's grave.

Donald came over with some Diskwarrior software to prepare the restoration of our computer.

He used a memory stick that Canada Post gifted us with, to save a lot of files on Moira's laptop.

Saw the DVD of The Far Country, the last of Anthony Mann's westerns with Jimmy Stewart.  Story-wise, this one was on the conventional side.

December 8, 2007

Priest Trevor Howard: "Doing nothing is a dangerous occupation!"--Ryan's Daughter

Dreamed of reading that John Lennon's parents came from the American South (I'm pretty sure they didn't); entering Hampstead in London to see a movie [the Everyman Cinema used to be there] and seeing the streets empty to allow a stately procession to pass through.

Baked rye bread (with a bit of multigrain).

We ate out at the Swiss Chalet for their Festive Special.

Saw the DVD of David Lean's Irish epic Ryan's Daughter.  I'd heard it was overblown and pedestrian, and it was.

We've now set up Moira's laptop for surfing the web.  It has a new kind of mouse where you rub your finger on a pad.

December 7, 2007

Went shopping.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Went to another games night at Mary's.  First we played Urban Myth, which was much too slow.  Then we turned to Scattergories.  After a couple of rounds, while the others continued I took to playing Jenga.  I'm reconsidering my strategy:  it's better to remove the outer pieces every seventh row instead of every fifth.  There were ten people there!

December 6, 2007

"Lord Asriel's great enterprise will fail in the end for the same reason:  we have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us there is no elsewhere"--The Amber Spyglass

"I can't choose my nature, but I can choose what I do.  And I will choose, because now I'm free"--ibid.

 Finally got my hair cut.

Dinner was the rest of the churrasco chicken.

Went to the Architecture for Humanity Meetup.

December 5, 2007

"The shadow particles knew what was happening and were sorrowful"--The Amber Spyglass

Dinner was churrasco chicken.  There was a spat about showing my last name in my Meetup file, and I got annoyed.  I'm actually not sure if I do that, but it's my business.  At least we didn't quite have a scene.

We had an extra choir rehearsal.  Frank showed up, and I mentioned that I agreed with him that we should get rid of public funding of Catholic schools.

Got an Ebay package, with another Rusty Riley comic book along with some Donald Ducks and Uncle Scrooges

December 4, 2007

Moira is letting us use her computer while we sort things out with mine.  But I'd been thinking I should take a break from the internet.

Dinner was sausages and mash.

Brought up from the basement the last of the apples we picked in October.

Went to a new Non-Fiction Book Club Meetup at the Reference Library.  We discussed A Short History of Progress, and next month we're doing In Praise of Slow.

Brought up the heating element to warm my room in the winter.

The chapter is The Amber Spyglass where they enter the land of the dead is really powerful!

December 3, 2007

Dreamed of the song "Blow the Man Down."

Dinner was lobster rolls.

Being without the computer makes me appreciate how central it is in my life, like a TTC strike.

Donald came over in the evening to check out the computer and see if he has any ideas on what to do about it.

At choir practice our music was put in a whole new order and we had to rearrange it, which caused some delays.

Father suggested I hook up my laptop, so I set it up for the first time in several years. (We're lucky it still works at all!) But when I closed the lid at one point it started demanding a power-on password which we'd never programmed. (Only a service centre can remove it.)

December 2, 2007

Dreamed of being in school, returned to a regular classroom, and repeatedly hitting an annoying classmate (who responded smugly); trying to explain it to my singing teacher Giuseppe.

I was torn between going to a western at the Cinematheque or to a giant book sale in Markham.  But the movie was at 13:00 and I didn't get up till almost 13:30; and there was too much snow to go to the book sale.

Baked whole wheat bread.

My garden club meeting got postponed because of the snowy weather!

John and Kathrine brought vegan dinner. (I sneaked out to KFC afterward.) John also installed the RAM.

Then I tried again to install the OSX upgrade.  Again it failed, for reasons I can't figure out.  And we can't figure out how to get back to the old system either!

December 1, 2007

"If I worry, will that change the future?"--Kung Fu

Dreamed of being about to go out and see the Disney movie Sleeping Beauty on the big screen; stopping to read the first chapter of the novel V becauseI was impatient to get started on it; finishing the chapter and noticing that I was already a few minutes late for the movie.

Father went to Staples and found some even cheaper RAM.  Installing it in the computer is another matter, of course.

Dinner was steak.

Finally got my Cipralex prescription replenished. (I also got some more toothpaste.)

Went to the Karaoke Meetup.  I sang "Eat It" and "Jump," also jumping several times. (Before I started someone yelled "Don't fuck up Van Halen!") I would have sung "If I Were a Rich Man" too, but I didn't feel like staying for a third song.  For some reason, my ears felt sensitive.

November 30, 2007

Chinatown quotes:

"You can't eat the Venetian blinds.  I just had them installed Wednesday."

"Are you alone?" "Who isn't?"

"You may think you understand these things, but you have no idea."

"Does it [Jack Nicholson's sliced nose] smart?" "Only when I breathe."

"Let the police handle this." "He owns the police!"

Dreamed of baking a round, black loaf of bread.

I was going to get my hair cut in the afternoon, but Father wated to go out and buy more RAM for the computer so we can install the OSX update.  So we drove out to the place in Riverdale where they were selling it cheap.  At least, Father thought the store was around there--but it's moved, and we didn't check the address before we left.  By the time we got home, it was too late to go back out.  I had two things to do that afternoon, and managed to do neither.

Dinner was quiche.

Saw the DVD of Roman Polanski's neo-noir Classic Chinatown (for maybe the fourth time). Robert Towne is one of the great Hollywood screenwriters.  I couldn't help noticing that John Huston's affably sentimental, amoral villain resembled Ronald Reagan. (Speaking of evil triumphant...) I hope the bullet Faye Dunaway put into his should caused painful, terminal gangrene!

November 29, 2007

"At the end of the day, it's a twelve-year-old boy"--The Winslow Boy

Saw the DVD of David Mamet's movie of Terence Rattigan's The Winslow Boy (for the third time, I think). It gets even better with repeated viewings!  Nigel Hawthorne and Jeremy Northam at their best.

Last night I clipped my toenails too short and they still smart!

The parents bought me a cozy new bedspread to match my new curtains.

Dinner was spaghetti.

The right-wing blog Atlas Shrugs had a post with the incredible line, "Israel has never committed terrorist acts." (I see these blog precis at salon.com in Blog Reports.) I went to the trouble of posting a comment citing Deir Yassin and Mordechai Vanunu.

November 28, 2007

"It was due to the Gang of Four and the Cultural Revolution."

"Isn't everything?"

--Farewell, My Concubine

Gunfighter (watching Caine in the lotus position): "Keep that up and you might just end up with ingrown ankle bones!"--Kung Fu

Dreamed of reading a non-existent novella by W. Somerset Maugham about missionaries in China (though he did write The Painted Veil and several missionary-themed stories); wanting to read more of them; the sitcom Get Smart; remembering when I was 18 and Donald said to me "Jamie, that's a bit rude" (which still bugs me); walking all the way across Mississauga from west to east; getting a new Latin reader and reading the hardest part at the end first.

Saw all of Farewell, My Concubine in glorious colour.  It ranks with Lawrence of Arabia as one of the great gay epics.

Dinner was pork chops.

November 27, 2007

I had an interesting dream but forgot to write it down again!

Went shopping.  We also went to Toys R Us and bought that VCR-DVD player for just $50.  Afterward I installed that machine on the attic TV and moved the superior HDD recorder-DVD player to the parents' room to replace the one that stopped showing colour.  Unfortunately, something happened to the upstairs cable connection.

Dinner was halibut.

Father gave me a cheque a week ago and I finally got around to depositing it in the evening.  I went to the ATM in the bank's vestibule and there was a homeless man there sheltering from the snow.

I now recall that my dream was about the Brady Bunch. (Maybe I had the right idea the first time...)

November 26, 2007

"Maybe sometimes we don't do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous, and we don't want to look scared, so we go and do the wrong thing because it's dangerous"--The Amber Spyglass

"'Just a popularity contest'?  What's more important than popularity?"--Homer Simpson

Dreamed of seeing that a niece of mine had taken up smoking (none of them have); going out in a cowboy hat; sharing space with some difficult children; a trivia quiz of identifying magazine mottos.

Dinner was lasagna.

Went to a lecture by David Moses about eco-friendly building at the Gardiner Ceramics Museum, presented by Architecture for Humanity.

Because of the lecture, I was late for choir practice, which I rarely am.

November 25, 2077

Dreamed of being a schoolboy in Shanghai's International Settlement before World War II; escaping from a school controlled by evil Japanese; meeting Ralph Fiennes and prophesying World War II to him; being in a bus with a TV with an old-fashioned wired remote control, showing 60 Minutes at the commercial break just before the first story.

Baked some gingerbread and took it to the Columbus Centre for the Toronto City Opera fundraiser.  There was some good singing. (I donated $20.) I think Natalie got a nosejob.  Afterward I brought some cookies and stuff home.

Dinner was roast chicken. (Since I'd just snacked quite a bit at the fundraiser, that left me pretty full.)

Saw the DVD of the first hour of Chen Kaige's Farewell, My Concubine (for the second time). Never a dull moment.  Because the DVD player needs replacing, we saw it in black & white.

November 24, 2007

Crook: "Fucking crooks--no ethics!"--American Gangster

"Fuck me like a cop, not a lawyer!"--ibid.

"Did you know?...  They're all crazy in New Jersey--cops... arrest... crooks!"--ibid.

Dreamed of getting into a big fight with Margaret and alienating a lot of people; a fugitive who became a legendary fighter and rebel in a war-torn world and posthumously became a god; trying to put up a poster of Ava Gardner on my wall; reflecting that compared to her sexy sophistication I felt like a little boy; the song "Try to Remember"; thinking I should sing Van Halen's "Jump" at karaoke.

Baked white bread.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Went to see the near-great movie American Gangster with the Movie Meetup group at the Empress Walk.  It was intelligent and believable, with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe in rare form.  But Ridley Scott's direction was on the impersonal side, with a humourlessness that made me appreciate the truly great gangster movie Goodfellas.  Also, the musical score was heavy-handed and relentless.

November 23, 2007

"He does not know how to fall"--Kung Fu

Dreamed of seeing a non-existent pear tree outside our old house in Sackville, NB; "waking up" and going from day to night; the operatic aria "Depuis le Jour" from Louise (it's one of my favourites!); the audition scene in the musical movie All That Jazz; a rejected dancer deciding to leave New York without telling her roommate; me singing the scene's song at karaoke suprisingly well.

We went out to Zeller's where I got a new pair of winter boots and winter gloves.

Donald came over for dinner, which was fettucine alfredo cooked by me.  Afterward he looked at our computer and said we need to buy extra RAM to install the OSX update.

Went to see Dion Conflict's latest Hunka Junk show at the Revue.  The place was packed, so word of mouth must have spread quickly.  The shorts included a film on salesmanship for Texaco station operators, hosted by a guy who so resembled Jim Nabors that I shouted "Gol-lee!" There was also one about night shift workers where the filmmakers depended on their voices for all the special effects!  Afterwards DC told me his Trailer Trash show is coming onto DVD soon. (Woo hoo!)

November 22, 2007

Dreamed of trying to read reprints of the Mike Hammer comic strip [there actually was one!], but needing to put the volumes in the right order; reflecting that I'm an angry man; hell as a big screening room with Roger Ebert as the Devil!

We've had the first snow of the season.

Saw the DVD of Horror of Dracula, the 1958 Hammer Studios version with Christopher Lee.  In this version Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) actually has the bigger role!  It's more faithful to the book than the Tod Browning-Bela Lugosi version, and somewhat scarier.

Dinner was scallops.

Went to a Games Meetup.  There were supposed to be a dozen people, but only four came, presumably due to the bad weather.

November 21, 2007

Dreamed of walking on a snowy winter sidewalk and being unable to move more than a few steps without falling over; imagining a TV show about a group of characters working for an airline; imagining what character I'd be; thinking up a pseudonym that combined the names of Hardy Boys ghostwriter Leslie McFarlane and Nancy Drew ghostwriter Mildred Wirt.

Went shopping.

Dinner was spaghetti.

Saw the DVD of Michael Apted's 49 Up, the latest in his septennial series of biographical documentaries.  I realized that I'm a lot like Neil, the one who was homeless at one point, then became a politician.

Headache!

I think I've fixed the problem with the new HDD recorder! (Someone had accidentally pushed a button that kept in input mode.)

November 20, 2007

"If you don't want to lose your shirt, don't live off the cuff"--Fun With Dick and Jane

"God, why have you forsaken me?"

"Because I don't exist."

--La Chinoise

I was in bed around the clock again.

Saw the DVD of Ted Kotcheff's Fun With Dick and Jane, the original version from the cynical '70s.  Pretty dreadful. (Jane Fonda is no comedienne.) I rented it because the great Mordechai Richler worked on the script.

Moira came back from her Philadelphia marathon.

Dinner was pork steak.

Got some more Ebay comics from Barry King.

Went to see Jean-Luc Godard's La Chinoise at the Cinematheque.  Too strange for me.

November 19, 2007

"'Tell me now, then,' said Will. 'And remember, it's no good telling me what I should do--none of it matters to me, none.  Only Lyra matters, and my mother.  And that,' he added to Balthamos, 'is the point of all this metaphysical speculation, as you called it'"--The Amber Spyglass

Dreamed of the songs "Kokomo," "Tom Dooley" and "Up on the Roof."

Got a comic-book reprint of the comic strip Rusty Riley from Rick Larder on Ebay.  Some great artwork, I'm sure!

Baked multigrain bread.

Dinner was chicken (which I fried).

At the Coro Verdi we went over some music we've done before.  I finally submitted my membership fee, just two weeks late.  I met Giuseppe on the way in and suggested we do "The Holly and the Ivy" in next year's Christmas program.

November 18, 2007

Dreamed of travelling with Donald to the west end of the Toronto subway; seeing on a TTC map a bus line that took a slalom course to an area in souther Etobicoke with several parks; wanting to visit that area; being at the bridge of a large, unoccupied ship that had drifted out of harbour in Sydney, Cape Breton.

Went to the Book Club Meetup.  Unfortunately, Bathurst Station and the Victory Cafe are on opposite sides of Bloor Street, which was blocked off for the Santa Claus parade, so I went back to the subway, got out at Christie station, crossed Bloor Street there and walked to the Victory Cafe, where I arrived 20 minutes late. (Someone else was on time because she cut across the parade route, but I'm too well-behaved for that.) And I didn't have much to contribute because I couldn't find the book.

Afterward I went to Indigo Books because they were having a Customer Appreciation Day sale, but nothing interested me.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Saw the last two episodes of The Sopranos.  The best thing about the last season was AJ's story, in my opinion.  From seeing the last scene, it looked to me like Tony did get killed, or at least put into a coma. (Unless it was Meadow who died, like the end of The Godfather Part III.)

November 17, 2007

Dreamed of being in a group of wanted Irish terrorists hiding in a network of underground passages below my hometown Sackville, N.B.; finding a batch of Russian-language comics; driving a car and stepping on the gas when I mean to step on the brake. [I've never learned to drive.]

Dinner was the rest of the stew.

Saw three Sopranos episodes.

Started rereading The Amber Spyglass, the last of the His Dark Materials trilogy.

November 16, 2007

"Psychoanalysts and elephants--they never forget"--Caught

Dreamed of the W.H. Auden poems "Funeral Blues" and "September 1, 1939" with its line "We must love each other or die."

Dinner was beef stew.  It wasn't as good as our usual lamb stew.

I was going to attend a Meetin games night in our neighbourhood, but it was cancelled because too few people were coming. (He posted the event at too short notice.)

Instead I saw Max Ophuls' Caught at the Cinematheque.  It's the one about a trophy wife who leaves her controlling husband and goes to work for a doctor.  A good women's movie, from the time when Hollywood actually made those!

November 15, 2007

Heche on Tony: "He's the kind of guy I hire to deal with people like him"--The Sopranos

Dreamed of the movie Waterloo with Rod Steiger as Napoleon (which I haven't seen).

Moira went to Kingston.

Went shopping.

Dinner was pork chops.

Went to a meeting at City Hall for volunteers interested in LEAF, a group for supporting trees in Toronto.

I've been reading the Menomonee Falls Guardian now that my set is complete.  It has several comic strips that I originally read at the time (mid-1970s), including Mickey Finn, Beetle Bailey, and Winthrop (which my newspaper still called by its original title Morty Meekle). Three decades later I remember some episodes from seeing them the first time!

November 14, 2007

Tony Soprano: "'Remember when?' is the lowest form of conversation"--The Sopranos

Dreamed of a story about a man with a plan to seek his fortune and a woman who married him and joined in his search, resulting in complete failure; the wife dying first and the husband on his deathbed reflecting that he'd failed to provide for her; being at an airport where a plane carrying a civil servant from Washington, D.C., sent to investigate racial discrimination, crashed into a building, causing many deaths; wanting to leave the airport but finding long queues waiting for transport; finding myself with a crowd of people next morning in a parking garage that was floating(!) over a flooded plain; the Sharon Stone movie Sliver (which I haven't seen--I'd just read an obituary for Ira Levin, who'd written the book).

The parents and I saw Jonathan Demme's documentary Jimmy Carter:  The Man From Plains at the Carlton.  Mother's a great admirer of Carter, and I still think that he was more sinned against than sinning.

Afterward we dined at the Golden Griddle, where I ate spaghetti and meatballs.

November 13, 2007

Dinner was Chinese food. (My fortune cookie said "You will always be welcome at any gathering.")

At the Book Club Meetup we discussed The Subtle Knife.  Unfortunately, there was a big group at the same place and I couldn't hear myself think!

November 12, 2007

Dreamed of the actress Laura Dern; the song "That Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze"; a non-existent movie where Cary Grant was captain of a decrepit tramp steamer and pretended it was a handsome shipping line to impress his rich father-in-law.

Went to Dr. Hassan's to book a new appointment.  While there, I went to the nearby Paradise Comics, for the first time in years, and bought a reprint of the Classics Illustrated special issue The War Between the States.

Dinner was salmon.

At the Coro Verdi we sang "In the Bleak Midwinter." But the melody in this version was different from Gustav Holst's.

November 11, 2007

Carmela: "You two [her son A.J. and his girlfriend] have a fight?"

A.J.: "I don't know."

--The Sopranos

I felt well enough to go to the Brunch Club Meetup.  This time we went to the Golden Griddle near Lawrence Station.  I had an English breakfast and a lot of pastry.

That History of Progress book is fascinating!

Dinner was pork chops.

Now that my Zip consignment of 16 DVD for the month is largely finished until the 16th, I rented the DVD of the first episodes of the final season of The Sopranos, which is turning into Samson Agonistes!  Tony's dysfunctionality is coming to resemble Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm, without the belly laughs.

I rented it from Captain Video, which is selling off its videocassettes at $2.50 apiece, so I bought the Cagney gangster movies The Public Enemy, The Roaring Twenties and White Heat, and the Bogart movie Key Largo.

November 10, 2007

 I intended to go to a Dungeons and Dragons Meetup today, but Father deleted the email with the address on it. (I'd even bought pencils and graph paper yesterday.  Anyway, it's just as well because I have a bit of a cold and have to take it easy.)

Dinner was McDonald's.

November 9, 2007

Dreamed about a report on the nation of Fiji; Joan Collins; stepping into thistles behind our old house in Sackville, N.B.; a wall map of France showing its river systems.

Dinner was lasagna.

Went to a Meetin games night at Mary's in the same building where I went to last year's Halloween party.  We played The Amazeing Labyrinth and Scrabble, as well as a game called Jenga, where you take a tower of building blocks and take turns moving a log from a lower leve to the top until it falls down. (We got from 17 levels to part of a 25th.) It was thrilling!

November 8, 2007

Bereaved fiance: "At least she has peace now."

Vincent Price: "Has she?"

--Fall of the House of Usher

Dreamed of being outside our old house in Sackville, N.B.; feeling the rain on my face and wondering whether this was real.

Baked raisin bread.

Our email box was full and we had to delete a lot of stuff.

Went to the Davenport library and borrowed Ronald Wright's A Short History of Progress.  It looks interesting.

Dinner was steak.

Went out to a scheduled Games Meetup, but it had apparently been cancelled.

Went to the Goodenough College's website and made a provisional booking for April, when I plan to visit London.

Saw the DVD of Roger Corman's Fall of the House of Usher, the first of the Poe movies he made with Vincent Price.

November 7, 2007

 Had a dental checkup.

Dinner was roast chicken.

The DVD of A Good Marriage still hasn't got back to Zip, and I've reported it stolen.

November 6, 2007

"Her last conscious thought was disgust at life; her senses had lied to her.  The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude.  Living was hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe this was the first and last and only truth"--The Subtle Knife

"Is this what I'm doing on a Sunday?"

"Those shitbags don't keep store hours, Charlie."

"Yeah, but the dead will still be dead tomorrow."

--Lonely Hearts

Dreamed of the actual 1960s pop song "Do the Freddy."

Saw the DVD of Lonely Hearts, a thriller about the real-life "honeymoon killers." I saw it mostly because Salma Hayek is so hot!

Dinner was spaghetti.

Went to a Swing Dancing Meetup at Dovercourt House.  It was an intermediate class and I'd rather start at the beginner's level, but I watched out of politeness.

Finished The Subtle Knife.  Can't wait to read the third book The Amber Spyglass!

November 5, 2007

"'Makes no sense,' she said. 'Do it anyway'"--The Subtle Knife

Went shopping.

Dinner was scallops.

At choir practice we did an English neo-classical chorale "Gloria in Excelsis Deo."

The chapter in The Subtle Knife depicting Lee Scoresby's last stand is thrilling!

November 4, 2007

Saw Nicholas Ray's Party Girl at the Cinematheque.  Cyd Charisse was quite attractive.

Then I went to the Over 40 Philosophers Meetup at Niki's house. (This time I remembered the street number.) We discussed "the nature of reality," but I didn't have much to contribute because I had a headache, and I left early.  One of the women there looked a bit like Cyd Charisse.

Dinner was Harvey's.

Went to the first meeting of the Ward 21 gardening group, at Susan's house on Everden Road.  We talked about things like learning how to make low-water gardens and getting together for a perennial exchange.  I suggested starting a Meetup group.

November 3, 2007

"Man, I wish I was an adult and could break the rules!"--Bart Simpson

Dreamed of returning to our old home in Sackville, N.B.; seeing that Father had started mowing the lawn when there was already snow on the ground; visiting a London museum (a composite of actual museums) and being unable to concentrate; an actual line in an Encyclopedia Brown mystery book I recently read that Wilford Wiggins was "lazy as a curbstone."

Baked whole wheat bread.

Saw the DVD of the first of Max Fleischer's stylish Popeye cartoons. (They had a disclaimer at the start putting their distance from the racist humour!)

Dinner was lobster rolls.

Saw the DVD of the Prince musical Purple Rain (for the second time), a great soundtrack album with a pretty crude movie attached.  Morris Day steals the show as a rival musician.

November 2, 2007

"In fact, a swirl of cloudy colours seemed to live just under the surface of the metal:  bruise purples, sea blues, earth browns, cloud grays, the deep green under heavy-foliaged trees, the clustering shades at the mouth of a tomb as evening falls over a deserted graveyard....  If there was such a thing as shadow-coloured, it was the blade of the subtle knife."

--The Subtle Knife

Dreamed of visiting Goodenough College [where I stayed in London back in 1995] and meeting my old friend Philip Chang; the Fiddler on the Roof song "Sunrise, Sunset"; going out in the morning in my hometown of Sackville, N.B. and feeling a cool breeze on my face; overseeing a skirmish in the Spanish Civil War; the house we used to own in Halifax, N.S.

Dinner was lasagna.

Went to the Karaoke Meetup at the Fox & Fiddle.  But a rugby group rented the place and it wasn't going to start till an hour later than usual, and tonight I wasn't up to staying that long. (Mary of the Classical Music Meetup was there, telling Jonah about her difficulties leading an ensemble whose members had varying levels of commitment.)