Dreamed of a notice saying that the Bloor Cinema would be closing in a couple of months; a futuristic sci-fi epic with a world-ending holocaust approaching.
Dinner was spaghetti.
Opera rehearsal went on for four hours! I got some more lines memorized, but there's still a bit left.
Dreamed of a show with two brothers returning to their home in Port Elgin near my hometown of Sackville, N.B.; one of the brothers still disliking it; meeting a potential girlfriend; the show ending with the burial of a busload of people and the departure of a ghost military formation; preparing for a graduation in a strange place.
Dinner was steak in a teriyaki marinade.
Saw This Film Is Not Yet Rated at the Bloor. It's a documentary about the secrecy and hypocrisy of Hollywood's movie rating system, very much in the Michael Moore vein.
Baked whole wheat bread.
Got stuck all day on a hanjie puzzle. When I finally cracked it, the picture turned out to be a music box.
Dinner was roast pork.
Went to my first choir practice in the new year. We're doing Pergolesi's "Stabat Mater," which is new to me. I only stayed for the first half because my cold caught up with me.
Dreamed of a 1964 remake of The Grapes of Wrath with the Joads in a ritzy condo(!) and Catherine Deneuve as one of the daughters; an ancient Chinese battle in which the forces of the Han Dynasty founder attacked their opponents with flaming arrows and made their baggage train explode because the people who should have put out the fire ran away.
Saw The Last King of Scotland at Canada Square. (I used the coupon they gave me because of technical problems at the Chinese opera cinemacast.) Forrest Whittaker was brilliant, while the movie started out funny but ended up dreary, like the real-life story. (Here's a tip: when in Uganda, don't cuckold Idi Amin.)
Donald came over for dinner, which was churrasco chicken.
Dinner was McDonald's.
This cold is really persistent! I was late to Dr. Hassan's appointment because I was slowed down all around. (I'd been hoping Father would give me a lift, but he was out.) It didn't matter anyway because I cut my appointment short, something I don't usually do.
Dinner was salmon.
I was going to see Shohei Imamura's The Ballad of Narayama, but I wasn't up to it.
"It's no man's business what goes on in my bed, including the Lord!"
--Carnivale
Dreamed of the comic book Asterix et le Chaudron (Asterix and the pot of gold), the book where he and Obelix try to earn the money to redeem a stolen pot of gold.
Saw the DVD of the last episodes of the first season of Carnivale. It's stylish enough, but a bit too cryptic for my taste. [I never did see the second season.]
Dinner was roast chicken.
The second meeting of my book club was at Cafe Neo. Unfortunately, only Aviva joined me and she hadn't read much of the book.
Dreamed of the movie A Fish Called Wanda; imagining Auschwitz at a place just west of Port Elgin near my hometown of Sackville, NB.
Went to the Forest Hill library and took out Studs Terkel's oral history of World War II "The Good War." (Note the quotation marks in the title.) It'll be the subject of my book club's third meeting.
Puitak and Gordon came over and we watched the DVD of Mina Shum's Chinese-Canadian movie Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity. (I'd been saving it for a couple of weeks.) Whimsical.
They stayed for dinner. (I cooked fettucine alfredo.)
"Yes, I think I will."
--Carnivale
Finished Pat Conroy's college basketball memoir My Losing Season.
Dinner was scalloped potatoes and ham.
At opera rehearsal we went over La Traviata then did the greater part of Rigoletto. David was finished with the Rig DVD so I lent it to Karla next. Hope I can finish learning my lines before next week's rehearsals!
Dreamed of considering The King and I and wondering how the English would feel if Asians made a movie about Elizabeth I with her keeping a harem of men and saying cute things like "et cetera, et cetera, et cetera..."
Went to Karen's Book Club Meetup at the Boathouse Grill. We talked about War and Peace, which I hadn't read.
Dinner was lobster rolls.
"Taste my kissing soup!"--ibid.
"You're a hard, scheming old woman, aren't you?"
"And ugly"
--The Man From Laramie
Dreamed of singing "Red River Valley" to a foreign woman.
Saw Tan Dun's Met opera The First Emperor at the Paramount. Pretty powerful, though it took a while to get into. Placido Domingo has a great stage presence. (I could only find a seat in the front section.)
Dinner was McDonald's.
Saw the DVD of The Man From Laramie, another Anthony Mann-Jimmy Stewart western. On second thought, it's even better than their Bend of the River!
Baked rye bread overnight.
Saw Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers at the Bloor. It's an excellent, straightforward account of the Marines thrust into the spotlight after they raised the US flag at Iwo Jima. It's mature, intelligent, unsentimental and very sad. I'm looking forward to Letters From Iwo Jima [Eastwood's other Iwo Jima movie, showing the battle from the Japanese perspective].
Afterward, I ate at Burger King. (I heard a subway busker playing a didgeridoo!)
Then I went to a Bible Studies Meetup. Ali, who was talking about the Book of Acts and the Epistles, talked a lot about the Holy Spirit. (I brought our student atlas of the Bible, which impressed him very much.)
That scary music from the gambling scene in La Traviata is going around in my head!
Got another package of Ebay comic strips from Barry King.
Dreamed of starting a long voyage on a ship with its own dentist.
Posted a second list of things whose existence is worth denying.
Dinner was lasagna.
Tried again to get to a Games Meetup. This time I found the building, but couldn't remember the apartment's dialup code. Earlier this week I'd emailed the organizers asking for the location info, but got no reply. Maybe they've lost interest in the group, in which case they ought to resign as organizers so somebody else can organize it.
Saw a DVD showing the 50 worst movies ever made. (There didn't seem to be any from Canada's Hollywood North period.) I watched it on the upstairs DVD player and it worked fine at first, but about 3/4 through it started malfunctioning again. I'll have to watch the rest of it on the other machine.
Went out and spent the Book City gift certificate Moira gave me for Christmas. (I got a couple of Japanese puzzle books with these hanjie puzzles that are like sudoku except that they yield a picture!) Afterward I bought some Cinematheque tickets.
Dinner was salmon.
Went out to see the documentary Jesus Camp at the Bloor. But it turned out to be on at 18:30 instead of 19:00.
Those hanjie puzzles are fun!
Posted on my blog ten things I like about Toronto. (The internet is next.)
Dreamed about Prince Edward Island and a non-existent CBC special set there.
Went shopping.
On my blog I made a list under "Let's all pretend that the following things don't exist, OK?" Then I described my taking a quiz at applebeesamerica.com to see whether I'm in the "tipping tribe" (i.e. swing voters). Most of the questions were about which brand of bottled water I preferred, or monster trucks vs. wrestling etc.
Dinner was the very last of the stew.
Tonight was the new year's first opera rehearsal. We went all the way through La Traviata. Unlike in previous years, I didn't have all my lines memorized. (I was lucky to be able to sing.) I lent David the Rigoletto DVD zip.ca sent me today.
Julius Caesar: "For the immortal gods, so that those whose crimes they would punish may lament their reversal of fortune all the more bitterly, sometimes grant them better temporary fortunes and give them a longer wait before their nemesis"--The Gallic Wars (USA, anyone?)
Dreamed of a non-existent Gene Kelly musical about a group of GIs returning from Europe through Quebec and passing through a park in the wilderness [I'd recently seen It's Always Fair Weather, about a group of returning GIs that included Kelly, but they didn't go that way]; being in a Russian city near the Korean border; going outside in the morning, barely awake, and looking down a Texas road to the sea.
I'll have to miss the first choir practice of the new year. (I'm saving my voice for the opera rehearsal, as I'm still not over my cold.)
I now have a blog at canadiancommonsense.blogspot.com . My Ebay customer Carlos can't get through to my email address, so I suggested he leave his message in the blog's comments section.
Dinner was more stew (and another Christmas pudding).
Moira met Steve Nash the other night at a basketball game. She says he's a lot like Jimmy Stewart.
Dreamed of the actual TV movie where Antonio Banderas played Pancho Villa; reflecting that Banderas is better looking than the pudgy real-life Villa.
Saw the Met production of Bellini's opera I Puritani at the Sheppard Grande. (They moved it into a bigger theatre so the place wasn't full.) Moira was also there but I couldn't find her. I did meet my singing teacher Giuseppe Macina on the way out. [I recognized his voice!]
Dinner was McDonald's.
Saw the DVD of some episodes from the second season of the sitcom Good Times. Mother still likes Jimmie Walker as JJ. ("Dy-no-mite!")
Dreamed of hiking into the high snow-covered hills of Bhutan and seeing really high mountains in the distance.
I was so distracted by unexpected visitors that I returned the wrong DVD to zip.ca. (I got them to send it back.)
Father added a reinforcing beam to the bottom of my bed. (I could finally vacuum the area under it!)
Dinner was sausage and mash.
Headache!
Saw the DVD of Anthony Mann's Bend of the River (for the second time), the best of the westerns in which he directed Jimmy Stewart. Very well written.
General: "But what does that make you?"
"What do you think it makes me? An executive!"
Finished the DVD episodes of the Rocky & Bullwinkle story involving the lighter-than-air material upsidaisium. Then I saw the first episodes of the story with the six-foot metal mice from the moon stealing TV antennas.
Dinner was another turkey pie.
Puitak and Gordon couldn't come to dinner after all. (Just as well since Father has a bad cold.)
Sent Carlos in Barcelona a long email listing the Li'l Abner, Steve Canyon and Mary Perkins on Stage Sundays I have for sale and trade.
Dinner was turkey pie (which Moira made).
Saw the DVD of Jean Renoir's 1950s musical French Cancan. Cute but very French. The best part was Edith Piaf's cameo.
Saw the Metropolitan Opera production of The Magic Flute (as staged by Julie Taymor) in HDTV live at the Paramount. The place was sold out. Lots of fancy visuals, but they cut out quite a bit of it, like the line where Papageno compares Pamina to her portrait and says, "Everything's the same, except for hands and feet--according to this, you don't have any!" [They just gave it a rebroadcast!]
Dinner was McDonald's.
Saw the DVD of Buster Keaton's silent The Cameraman. The first of his MGM studio productions, it has a more conventional story than The General and Steamboat Bill, Jr., but it's still full of brilliant gags.
Under the weather. (It looks like I caught a cold from Father.)
Baked cheese bread.
Sold two more Ebay comics packages (Dick Tracy and Prince Valiant again.) But I won't be up to mailing them until the new year.
Saw the DVD of Journey to Oblivion, a National Film Board documentary about the Empress of Ireland sinking in 1914.
John and his family came over for dinner, which was lasagna.
Headache! I had a bath in the afternoon, then another in the evening. (That's my main headache treatment. They're often so persistent that pills only go so far.)
