March 20, 2007

Lone commando Donald Duck's mission: "You will surround the enemy and wipe them out!"

--Commando Duck

Dreamed of levelling a piece of ground with a lawn roller to prepare a campground; singing "Zitti, Zitti" from Verdi's Rigoletto; reading an encyclopedia summary of a (non-existent) British report from the 1930s about why pacifism wasn't in the British character, with the word "vinsplendiferously."

A mouse sneaked into my room and nibbled at a few of my comic strips, so I crammed them into two big valises. [We finally reordered them a few months ago!]

Went shopping.

Dinner was pork chops.

Finally finished the second book of hanjie puzzles.  Really fun!

Saw the DVD of Miss Firecracker.  Couldn't watch it. (Is that Holly Hunter's hair or is she on fire?)

March 18, 2007

"Does it bother you when people call you Shorty?"

"Does it bother you when people call you Retard?"

"Nobody calls me that!"

"Sure."

--Zodiac

Saw David Fincher's Zodiac at the Yorkdale.  Long and hard to follow, but it had some good 1970s atmosphere, with a funny performance by Robert Downey Jr.

Dinner was shepherd's pie.

Baked raisin bread.

March 17, 2007

"You gotta twist and turn, like the eel in the frying pan"--Pelle the Conqueror

Dreamed of living in China; getting in trouble after someone found a (non-existent) letter I wrote comparing NATO to the Gestapo; walking along the grass corridor between opposite lanes of an expressway.

Dinner was microwaved Indian food.

Headache!

Saw the DVD of Bille August's Pelle the Conqueror (for the second time). It's a beautiful, funny melodrama, long but never boring.

March 15, 2007

"It is not easy totally to master someone you've buggered behind the woodpile"--The Confessions of Nat Turner

"It's made of real fake gold"--Notes on a Scandal

"Are you interested in wine?"

"Only the drinking part of it."

--ibid.

 Dinner was lasagna.

Moira and I saw Notes on a Scandal at the Varsity. (We finally used up my 2-for-1 coupon.) It's a sharp, merciless farce.

March 14, 2007

Dreamed of Fibonacci numbers. (That's the series that starts with 1, 1, 2, 3, 5... and so on with each term being the sum of the previous two.)

Dinner was haddock.

Saw part of a DVD of World War II-era Disney cartoons.  Chicken Little had an unappealing "Believe what your government tells you!" message.  But the cartoons with Donald Duck in the army were pretty funny. (There's something subversive about the way DD always looks out for himself...)

March 13, 2007

The warm weather is here.

Started a DVD of Disneyland "Tomorrow Land" episodes about the space program. (War criminal Wernher Von Braun did some narration.) Walt Disney had a slightly sinister TV presence.

Dinner was roast chicken.

Saw the Soviet silent movie A Spectre Haunts Europe with a Meetup group.  Unfortunately, the print had no titles!

March 12, 2007

Dreamed of visiting my old home in Sackville, N.B., and finding that the new owners had turned it into a mobile home!; Stephen Targett of my opera group.

Dinner was roast beef.

Carmen hasn't returned to the choir. (I hope she does after Easter.)

March 11, 2007

Went to Karen's book club at the Masa restaurant.  Karen was late because she'd forgotten about Daylight Saving Time.  We talked about a Japanese novel  I hadn't read, and haiku.

Dinner was lobster rolls.

March 10, 2007

"See her do the dance that broke the Sultan's thermometer!"--The Unholy Three

Dreamed of getting a chance to act in a play where the actors' feet were immobilized.

Saw Tod Browning's silent melodrama The Unholy Three at the Cinematheque.  It's the one where ventriloquist Lon Chaney sells parents that don't talk, disguised as an old lady, and commits burglaries along with a strongman and a dwarf.  The climax involves a deadly ape.

Dinner was McDonald's.

March 9, 2007

Dreamed of sleeping out in the yard of my old home in Sackville, N.B, on New Year's Eve; bicycling to Canterbury, England (which I've never done in real life).

Went shopping.

Dinner was spaghetti.

Headache!

March 8, 2007

"I love me some Jimmy!"--Dreamgirls

Dinner was salmon.

The only guy who RSVPed yes for my book club meeting couldn't make it, so I cancelled the event.

Saw Bill Condon's Dreamgirls at the Varsity.  Perhaps the glitziest movie musical since All That Jazz, it was entertaining overall, though the second half got very melodramatic.  Beyonce was exactly like Diana Ross, to the point of disturbingness. (In one of the later numbers she started to suggest Cher!)

Moira's office had to deal with a $15,000 discrepancy in the accounts, but it turned out they'd just failed to allow for the GST tax.  Now she has a cold.

March 7, 2007

Now that the opera is finished, I got my hair cut. [The male choristers are encouraged to grow their hair.]

Dinner was steak and the rest of the Chinese food.

Saw Martin Scorcese's The Departed at Canada Square.  It was second-tier Scorcese, atmospheric but overlong and oddly dispassionate. (As Boston movies go, I prefer Mystic River.) Jack Nicholson was a little much:  at times he seemed to be impersonating Jimmy Durante!

March 6, 2007

"You don't know what you're doing half the time.  Trouble is, you always know what you want"--Criss Cross

Saw the DVD of Robert Siodmak's film noir Criss Cross, the one where armoured car driver Burt Lancaster has been seen with his ex-wife so he explains himself to her gangster husband by proposing a heist....  Gripping.

Dinner was takeout Chinese food.

Finally got the bread baked.

March 5, 2007

Jonny Quest (seeing Race Bannon come to after being knocked out): "Foolish question number one:  does it hurt, Race?"

Race: "Only when I say 'Ouch!'"

Dreamed of reading old Star Weekly magazines; a report on Ryan O'Neal taking fencing lessons for his actual role in Barry Lyndon.

Went to Bickford Centre one last time and helped Barbara and her husband move the costumes out to the van to return them to Malabar.  I'd forgotten to retrieve our cufflinks from my La Traviata costume earlier, but it was in the first box we opened!

Dinner was sausages and mash.

Saw the DVD of the first episodes of the 1960s animated series Jonny Quest.  Pretty dorky despite the jazzy music.

I was going to bake multigrain bread overnight, but it turned out we were out of yeast.

March 4, 2007

Performed La Traviata for the last time.  I'm happy it's over, because I have a sore throat.

Afterward we went to Mattina's house in North York for a wrap party. (We went there one evening last year.) The place reminds me of that big house in Goodbye, Columbus.  We all ate Chinese food.

March 3, 2007

"Thank God it's dead!"

"What does God care about pig-killing?"

--Jude

Dreamed of an eccentric scientist Dr. Fuseguard being a character in the comic strip Doonesbury; getting separated from Father while walking into Moncton, NB; carrying my actual coffee-table book The United Artists Story (about United Artists movies) but losing it somewhere along the way.

Saw the DVD of Michael Winterbottom's movie Jude, from Thomas Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure.  Straightforward and eloquent.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Performed Rigoletto for the last time.

March 2, 2007

Dreamed of riding in a car where the driver panicked and drove dangerously; being arrested by movie star Glenn Ford; finding a portal that took you into the Roman era.

Baked gingerbread again for the opera.  Moira's been baking recently and she'd used up all the shortening, so I had to use margarine instead (and supplement the white sugar with some brown sugar).

Dinner was pork chops.

Performed La Traviata.  I handed out programs at the door beforehand and got to my position half a minute before the show started.  During the first scene I managed to kiss Carmen's hand! (Was it thrilling for her too?)

March 1, 2007

"'Insanity' is such a useless word!"--Suddenly, Last Summer

Went shopping.  We had to drive through a blizzard!

Dinner was salmon.

Saw the DVD of Joseph L Mankiewicz' movie of Tennessee Williams' Suddenly, Last Summer. (Gore Vidal worked on the script.) It's the one where Katharine Hepburn wants brain surgeon Montgomery Clift to lobotomize her niece Elizabeth Taylor, who has a scandalous tale to tell of Kate's son's death, involving pederasty and cannibalism.  A grotesque yet corny melodrama. [Basically, it's about Elizabeth Taylor as gay icon!]

The opera is so popular this season that we're in danger of running out of tickets!

February 28, 2007

Dreamed of the British comedian Terry-Thomas.

We finally did the year-end accounts for our online used book business.  There was a profit of just over $3000, as good as our first year.

Father wrote me a cheque for half of that (the rest goes to Moira) and I went to the bank and paid off most of my Visa debt.  Then I bought Palafer iron pills.

Dinner was spaghetti.

Performed Rigoletto.  This time I felt sleepy.  The parents saw it and also enjoyed it.  The misty lighting reminded Mother of the seacoast.

Wrote a first draft of the email I'll be sending to McClelland & Stewart publishers asking for a job. [I didn't get it.]

February 27, 2007

Dreamed of getting off the London subway at a normally unused station because of an emergency; being escorted by George Clooney in a military uniform; passing by my old home in Sackville, NB, and finding that the new owners had set up on the lawn miniature replicas of famous buildings like the Hagia Sophia cathedral.

Dinner was the rest of the Indian food.

Changed the name of my blog to Alec Elixir. (It was my mother's suggestion.)

February 26, 2007

Dreamed of reading in a children's book about an early anti-apartheid dissident called Wogstock.

On the way back from my psychiatrist, I picked up William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner at Deer Park library.  I'm reading it a second time for my book club.  Vividly written.

Dinner was roast chicken.

At choir practice we had a lot of trouble with "Were You There?"

February 25, 2007

"I want you to hang him!  I want you to break his little neck and bury him in quicklime!"

"That's the spirit!"

--Pennies From Heaven

Dreamed of noticing that Time magazine was always writing about India with the cliche "What the hey!"(?)

Performed Rigoletto. (There was a big enthusiastic house.) Moira saw it and liked it.  Giuseppe repeated my joke in front of the whole chorus. (Priest: "In your house, do you pray before you eat?" Little boy: "We don't have to.  Mom's a good cook!")

Tomorrow's Donald's 50th birthday, so we had him and John's family over for Indian food.

Giuseppe on the chorus we sing after kidnapping Gilda: "You're hoping the Duke will reward you by stealing your wife, so you'll be able to take up with another woman!"

Saw the DVD of the last episodes of Pennies From Heaven.  I liked it somewhat better than I expected, but still don't get why some people consider it the greatest TV series ever.  It does have a certain sensibility about Britain in the 1930s.  Maybe you have to be British to understand Dennis Potter...

February 24, 2007

"I'm not a planner, I'm a liver."

"I'm a pancreas."

--Goodbye, Columbus

Dreamed of starting a novel about a young man travelling around the world in an ocean liner during World War II.

Saw the DVD of Larry Peerce's movie of Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus. Roth is perceptive about the class issue within the Jewish-American community.

Baked rye bread.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Performed La Traviata. (This performance was dedicated to Catherin Cashore, whose funeral I attended last spring.)

On the way home, I went on the TTC detour just to pass through the lower section of the Bay station which the public normally never sees. [They sometimes film movies there.]