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.)

November 1, 2007

Babe (feeling James Bond's shoulder holster): "Ouch!  Why are you always carrying that thing?"

James Bond: "I have a slight inferiority complex."

--Goldfinger

Dreamed of visiting Russia for the first time; reflecting that the Cold War was not only expensive and morally corrupting for the United States, but also had a bad effect on American identity.

We finally picked up my Mac OSX update, but when I tried to install it there wasn't enough RAM and the program got stuck.  We were lucky we managed to remove the disc and return to the old system.

Dinner was the rest of the Chinese food.

Went to the Architecture for Humanity meeting.  We had a bigger room than before, but the number who showed up wasn't any greater.

Saw Guy Hamilton's Goldfinger (for the fourth time) at the Revue.  It's the James Bond series at its most stylish.  I wish Fort Knox had been sucessfully nuked!

October 31, 2007

Finally got a notice from Purolator, for what I think is the OSX update.  Father drove me over to the shipping centre in Etobicoke, but I didn't look closely enough at the notice and didn't realize the package wasn't ready yet.

Because of this detour, shopping took longer than usual.

Dinner was Chinese food. (My fortune said, "You will get something special because of your charm.")

Went to a special Halloween karaoke at the Frog and Firkin.  I wore my beatnik costume again [turtleneck, blazer, shades, my mother's beret]--unfortunately, the beard came unglued after three hours.  Most of the crowd arrived late, so I managed to sing four songs!  They had a costume contest, and the winner was a man dressed as a pregnant nun; second place was a women in a red-stained smock holding a cleaver and a dildo; third was a man dressed as Snow White.

October 30, 2007

The Dean: "My request is final"--College

Saw the DVD of Buster Keaton's College (for the third time). The best part came at the end when he went to rescue his sweetheart and used all these different athletic skills (running hurdles, pole vaulting, shot put) that he'd failed to master before.

Dinner was halibut.

October 29, 2007

Dinner was roast chicken.

At choir practice we did two new pieces:  a Christmas lullaby and the Huron Carol.

The Mac OSX software update I ordered last week still hasn't arrived.

October 28, 2007

Went to see a Sunday matinee showing of James Bond's Dr. No at the Revue, but it turned out it wasn't on till the evening.  The only thing that bugged me was that Father had driven me to the subway, and I'd inconvenienced him for nothing.

John and Rae came over for dinner, which was vegan pizza. (Afterward I ate KFC.)

Found a website at archive.org with quite a few B-westerns old enough for the public domain.

A columnist at The Huffington Post called supporters of the US Congress' Armenian genocide resolution "knuckleheads." How come the Turks don't get described that way? (Nancy Pelosi tried to do the morally right thing for once...)

Lay awake for hours and heard Moira waking up toward 04:00. (I had to take a sleeping pill.)

October 27, 2007

Dreamed of impersonating the voice of Doctor Who's enemy the Daleks.

In the afternoon I joined Lee Bouchard at her Architecture for Humanity display at the Yes In My Back Yard festival of community groups at the Gladstone Hotel.

Dinner was quiche, which I liked more than I expected.

Saw the DVD of Eric Rohmer's A Good Marriage.  Cute.

Then I went to the Cinematheque and saw the silent movie Beyond the Rocks with Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson, which they thought for a long time was lost until it turned up in someone's collection.

Read 45 pages of The Subtle Knife.