June 24, 2008

"Reagan's burning in hell, and there's plenty more room there"--Huffington Post comment, written by me

Dreamed of being in the non-existent basement of the cottage near our old home in Sackville, N.B.

Didn't get out of bed till 13:45!

Dinner was roast chicken.

Saw Kevin Lynch's documentary Project:  Grizzly (for the second time) at the Cinematheque.  It's a droll portrait of John Hurtubise, a rather quixotic blowhard who developed a bear-proof armour suit for observing grizzly bears but couldn't use it in an actual expedition because the ground wasn't solid enough!  They showed it with Arrowhead, a funny short where Don McKellar tells yarns about finding a mastodon's remains on a Toronto construction site and being an ill-behaved youth.

June 23, 2008

Dreamed of visiting a non-existent theme park outside Toronto with simple, cute displays which I figured Czechs would enjoy; being a young playboy antihero in an elite family in a futuristic science fiction story.

Met Ljiliana the psychologist again for an interview for her autism research.  Mother gets worried when I do stuff like this. (Afterward I bought some Cinematheque tickets).

Dinner was fettucine alfredo (which I cooked).

Went to an Introverts Meetup at the Swan and Firkin in the West End.  There were 15 people there, a bit too much for me.

I was going to go to Canada's Wonderland with the Friends Meetup in a few weeks (hence my dream?), but it turned out to be the same weekend when the parents and I are going to Stratford to avoid the noise from the Salsa on St. Clair festival near our home. (I hope they can give my ticket to someone else.)

June 22, 2008

Dreamed of seeing Phil Collins caught by the police after sneaking off a subway train; going to prison myself, and being mistaken by a fellow prisoner for someone who'd put him away and caused him to lose his home.

Had a Lunch Club Meetup at the Butler's Pantry in Mirvish Village.  There were five people, including a new Korean couple.  I had scrambled eggs with very spicy sausages.

Dinner was pizza.  Father ordered one with onions and I had to pick them out before eating it.  I wish he'd told me that he was going to order it, then I could have come along and specified what I wanted.

Went to the first Singles Over 40 Meetup.  23 people RSVPed that they were coming, so Helene rented a room in the Carrot Common, but only ten showed up. (More women RSVPed, but more men came.) I wore my black suit.  We talked about dating, but I didn't have much to contribute.

June 21, 2008

"I chose to be alone because I was looking for peace.  But I learned that being alone has no real peace--only loneliness"--The Fall of the Roman Empire

Dreamed of skiing down a slope with a group of guys, grasping each other's arms.

Shortly after noon I went out to a Friends Meetup at the Dutch Dreams ice cream place, which is only a few blocks away.  I was talking to a woman who's travelled a lot in places like Spain.

In the afternoon Father and I moved a big chest of drawers (including a dollhouse) down to the basement.

Since Moira's gone to Kingston, we ate at the Mandarin restaurant, which she doesn't care for.  My fortune cookie said "You will soon learn a valuable lesson from a new friend." (Does that mean that I'll learn the lesson by losing the friend?)

I finally figured out a tough o'ekaki puzzle, which turned out to be a boxing champ.

June 20, 2008

Dreamed of seeing actress LeeLee Sobieski about to enter a machine that shook in every direction so you'd feel like you were in a hurricane.

Saw the DVD of the first half of Anthony Mann's The Fall of the Roman Empire. (I didn't realize the second half was on another disk.) Intelligent, if talky.  Marcus Aurelius' talk of achieving peace through power brought JFK's rhetoric to mind.

Dinner was steak.

The family saw me in Coro Verdi's end-of-year concert.  Today was Giuseppe's 70th birthday, and we sang "Happy Birthday to You" at the end.

June 19, 2008

Richard Widmark: "I represent the Public Health Service."

Reporter: "Well, I represent the public!"

--Panic in the Streets

"Baby, Methuselah is younger than me tonight!"--ibid.

Went shopping.

The StarChoice people sent a new satellite receiver, so now we'll be able to watch TV shows in the attic again.

Dinner was salmon.

Saw the DVD of Elia Kazan's Panic in the Streets (great 1950s title!). It's an efficient noir procedural where Richard Widmark has to find the New Orleans hoodlums (including Jack Palance) who killed an illegal immigrant carrying the plague, before they spread it everywhere. (Part of me was hoping that he'd fail and it would spread out of control...)

Afterward I saw the DVD of Shirley Chisholm:  Unbought and Unbossed, about the first black congresswoman and her 1972 presidential campaign, decades before Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. (She was just ahead of her time...)

June 18, 2008

Dreamed of looking through a videocassette and finding I could fast-forward or rewind it just by adjusting the hands on my watch.                                                                                          Baked raisin bread.                                                                               We saw the rest of the Norma DVD.                                                                                       Dinner was spaghetti.                                                                          A guy from Sympatico came over [at dinner time, of course] and fixed our internet connection.  It took him a long time to figure out the problem.  Lucky we didn't have to fix it on our own.                                                                      Did the dress rehearsal for the Coro Verdi concert.  Afterward I arranged to resume singing lessons with Giuseppe the week after next.                                                                                              In the two days of internet interruption we got over forty emails.

June 17, 2008

I finally finished an o'ekaki puzzle that had been stumping me for days. [I think maybe it's a 4-H competition.]                                                                                       We're still cut off from the internet.  The link should be back tomorrow.                                                                                               Moira and I saw the first half of a DVD of the Bellini opera Norma.  This version is a 1974 production with Montserrat Caballe and Jon Vickers, performed at a Roman amphitheatre in southern France. [Moira's seen the opera several times, but she says it hasn't grown on her.]                                                                                               Dinner was pork chops.                                                                      Went to the Writers Meetup.  For this event, we recited opening passages we liked.  I did the opening of Tom Sawyer. 

June 16, 2008

Dreamed of hosting a Meetup event at the (non-existent) Kukajiro coffee house; being about to take a long flight and finding a machine that allowed me to "fast forward" to get past the boring stretches.

Ljiliana interviewed me about my autism in the OISE building on the University of Toronto campus as part of her Ph.D. research. (Her first language is Serbian!) I'm meeting her next week too.

Afterward I went to my shrink Dr. Hassan, and he wrote a note confirming my Asperger's Syndrome diagnosis for Ljiliana's records. (I got caught in the rain.)

Dinner was turkey pie.

I thought tonights choir rehearsal was going to be the last before Friday's concert, but there's one more on Wednesday.

The internet connection is off because Sympatico is introducing a new kind of modem link or something like that.

June 15, 2008

"How are you going to handle it?"

"The way I always do--superbly!"

--The Bill Cosby Show

Dreamed of playing Don Jose the bullfighter in the last scene of the opera Carmen (me a tenor?) [I've become a tenor since then!]; looking so disturbed that my costar (the real-life Carmen) was scared; British and Australian TV soap operas.

Got a shock in the afternoon when I thought that today was a Lunch Club Meetup and that I'd totally forgotten it, until I realized that it wasn't till next week!

Went to Helen's new Philosophy Meetup for the first time, but it turned out that she'd cancelled it. (She didn't register the cancellation on the meetup.com website.)

Dinner was lobster rolls.

June 14, 2008

Dreamed of travelling on an ocean linter that had a lot of stowaways; getting to put a bike chain around someone's throat, for the experience(?).

Went on a tree tour of the Cedarvale Ravine.  We saw a big tree that got totalled in last night's storm.  Our MP Carolyn Bennett was there.

Dinner was McDonald's.

My Metropass disappeared, then it turned up on the coffee table.

June 13, 2008

Dreamed of meeting my idol, actress Laura Dern; being a character in a murder mystery (not the culprit).

Dinner was turkey pie.

Went to Mary's games night. (This time I brought some hickory sticks.) There were about 25 people, but most of them chose early on to play long games like Monopoly.  I played Balderdash and Scrabble.

June 12, 2008

Dreamed of considering what is real; deciding that pain and suffering are real; being unsure about one's own death, since I haven't yet experienced that, but determining that the deaths of other people are real. (I recently decided all this while awake.)

Stayed indoors all day.

Dinner was turkey casserole.

June 11, 2008

Dreamed of being in a state of fatigue; doing o'ekaki puzzles.

Went shopping.

Yesterday Father said our used book business was slow.  Today we sold five books!

Dinner was spaghetti.

Finished the first reprint of the comic strip Dondi.  I liked it more than I expected.

Baked multigrain bread overnight.

June 10, 2008

Dreamed of fooling around with our refrigerator's ice machine yet another (non-existent) movie in the Indiana Jones series reading The International Herald-Tribune and finding a non-existent comic strip about a horsewoman.

Went to see Dr. Ang and got my blood iron checked.

Afterward I went to Loblaw's to get multigrain flour.  I also ended up buying grapefruit (they have nice big ones there), Pepsi and a strawberry cake.  It cost over $30.

I agreed to let a psychologist called Liljana Vuketic interview me next week for her survey of people with Asperger's Syndrome.

Donald came over for dinner, which was turkey. (Moira made a rhubarb pie!)

June 9, 2008

Dreamed of a non-existent episode of Good Times where the father realized his bad temper was a problem; a moment where the audience laughed because the stagehand came on camera.

Dinner was KFC.

Our patron Tony Fusco watched the choir rehearse.  At the end when Giuseppe asked if there were any songs we still hadn't done I pointed out two and got some dirty looks. (Fortunately, he let them pass.)

Saw a Good Times episode with Jay Leno in a small role as a guy J.J. meets in an STD clinic. (They called it VD back then.)

June 8, 2008

George Carlin (responding to audience groans): "I have a theory about what makes people moan over certain jokes:  envy!"

 Lay awake until 05:00!

Went on a Linkup photography outing to the Toronto Zoo. (Rosalie considered cancelling at the last minute because of the chance of thundershowers, but it went ahead.) Michelle drove me there and ack.  We were just starting out when I looked at a zoo map for a few seconds, and when I turned around everyone had disappeared!  I hurried through the zoo in an hour and a half, then cooled my heels near the exit for over two hours.

When I got home I felt too weary to bother with dinner.

Saw the DVD of George Carlin's first HBO special, taped back in 1977

June 7, 2008

"J.J., we can't elope!"

"Why not?  It's just like a big family wedding, except we won't invite the family!"

--Good Times

Dreamed of having a globe whose cover came apart and reverted to a flat map of the world.

Moira and the parents went to Kingston overnight.

Went to a tree tour in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.  I brought a twig from the mystery tree in our back yard and they told me it was buckthorn (not benjamina).

Afterward I went to the Eaton Centre.  I bought another volume of Peanuts reprints, and one of Dick Tracy in the 1930s. (I bought so much that they threw in a free reading light, and gave me the chance to buy a $150 tote bag for $50, but I said no.) Then I ate at Arby's.

Saw another Extreme Engineering episode, about a proposal to build a bridge over the Bering Strait. (They talked quite a bit about Canada's Confederation Bridge.) I think a tunnel is a better bet.

Saw the Good Times double episode on DVD where J.J. got engaged to a girl who turned out to have a heroin problem. (It could happen to anyone...) When he revealed his engagement, his mother asked why he hadn't broken such big news when he first came in.  Because this is a sitcom, of course!

June 6, 2008

Dreamed of hearing the noise from a high school pep rally; having cold, wet feet; downloadable images from the British magazine Private Eye seeing a trailer for a Batman movie.

Today was the year's first really hot weather.

Dinner was salmon.

The choir had an extra rehearsal to make up for missing Victoria Day week.

I've done over 20 o'ekaki puzzles in the last few days!  Really addictive.

Four DVDs arrived from zip.ca.  I saw an episode from Discovery Channel's Extreme Engineering about the New York subway system.

June 5, 2008

Dreamed about Batman (the '60s TV series).

Got my hair cut.

Dinner was steak.

Went to the Book Club Meetup.  The other three liked The Wisdom of Crowds more than I did.  It looks like next month's book will be Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point (groan). I fear the organizer is too concerned with selecting "discussible" books.

June 4, 2008

"I still don't believe that his gun went off accidentally."

"He'll get along fine with nine toes!"

--Earthquake

Went shopping.

Baked rye bread.

Saw the DVD of the epic '70s disaster movie Earthquake.  Cynical fun, with the quintessential George Kennedy performance.

Dinner was shrimp.  I said I was tired of it, so we won't have it again for a while.

I've started a new book of o'ekaki puzzles.  They're my favourite puzzles by a street!

Went to the Walking Meetup. (We took basically the same route as last time.) I ended up telling Julie about my difficulties with Karen that led my leaving her book club.  Afterward we stopped at New York Cafe, where I talked to Liz for quite a while. (She'd recently visited Morocco, and I mentioned Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky, so she wrote down the title.

June 3, 2008

Railroad official (Harrison Ford): "I don't like to see that sort of thing!"

Pinkerton agent: "Then you should have stayed in Chicago."

--Kung Fu

Dreamed of a future newspaper where they put quotes into the photographs (comic-book style) instead of the text; writing down dreams; a non-existent British puppet show (like Thunderbirds) but for an adult audience; weeping.

Did some pruning on the trees.

Dinner was lasagna.

Resumed my voice exercises after a break for a year and a half.

Saw Harrison Ford on an episode of Kung Fu.

June 2, 2008

Mrs. Peel (posing as a dance instructor): "I think I need a bone graft"--The Avengers

Dreamed of considering taking up a Ph.D. course in a new subject at Dalhousie University; riding in a car that got stuck on the highway outside my hometown Sackville, N.B.

Went to the Northern District library and took out Mazo de la Roche's autobiography Ringing the Changes and James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds. I'm reading the latter for the Book Club Meetup Thursday.  (I doubt I'll have trouble skimming through it in three days.  It seems pretty glib.)

Dinner was fish sticks.

At choir practice we got the final list with the order of our concert pieces. (I got the hiccups.)

June 1, 2008

Went to the plant auction.  The cherry saplings I'd donated didn't survive, which doesn't surprise me since most of their root was lost.  One of the saplings is a benjamin, and we have a bigger one in the back yard.

The latest Lunch Club Meetup was at the Queen of Sheba.  Unfortunately, I'd given the wrong street address because the internet was unreliable.  But we still got eight people.

John and Kathrine came over and made dinner, which was pizza. (I sneaked out to KFC afterward.)

May 31, 2008

"The colonel looked scared.  Men usually did, if you [a woman] hurt them a little"--Streets of Laredo

Went on a tree tour in New Toronto.  There were close to fifty people there!  We got cut short a bit by rain at the end.  It went through Samuel Smith Park and the grounds of a former mental institution.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Finally finished Streets of Laredo.  In its own way, it's a great book. Oddly, the epilogue stretched over 50 pages in some thirty chapters! (I can believe that Larry McMurtry had trouble letting go of his characters...)

Saw the DVD of the Kung Fu episode "The Way of Violence Has No Mind," which I remembered seeing back in the 1970s. (It's the one about a gang of Chinese-American outlaws.)

May 30, 2008

"Breasts are the new cleavage; nipples are the new breasts"--Rick Salutin, The Globe and Mail

We moved the new TV to the parents' room and put the older set in its place in the attic.

Dinner was roast chicken.

Harvey Korman just died. (I remember him from The Carol Burnett Show.)

The Movie Meetup had a social event at the Bedford Academy.  I went there for about half an hour. (There were almost twenty people.)

May 29, 2008

"Maria [his mother] had given up trying to understand the hatreds Joey felt.  His hate was just there, as fire is there, as blood is there, or desire, or sorrow, or sadness, or death"--Streets of Laredo

"The greatest man... is nobody"--Kung Fu

Dreamed of being in junior high school and going to a school band rehearsal with an elaborate toy guitar; also carrying a rifle that was heavy because it was fully loaded.

Went shopping.

Dinner was spaghetti.

We've started mowing the lawn!

Went to the Royal for the first time in a while.  I saw the Toronto film This Beautiful City with the Movie Meetup group.  That sort of movie is too depressing for my taste. (I had a chance to meet the director with the rest of the group at a restaurant after the movie, but I didn't stay long enough.

May 28, 2008

Japanese villain: "I suggest you adopt an attitude of fatalistic resignation"--Batman

Batman (to a crook imprisoned in the Bat Cave): "Don't be afraid of my little friends [bats], they don't bite--that is, unless I tell them to."--ibid.

"Puerto Ricans are a gay people, fond of music and dance"--Only One New York

Dreamed of being in a bedroom in the basement of our old house in Sackville and seeing that someone had her office in the well of that room's window (which didn't really have a well); the song "The Heart of Rock and Roll"; hearing that Vanity Fair magazine was suspending publication.

Baked whole wheat bread.

Saw the DVD of the first episodes of the 1943 serial Batman. (The campy narration clearly influenced the TV show.)

Dinner was pork chops.

Went to the Revue and Dion Conflict's presentation of Only One New York, a fascinating 1964 documentary emphasizing the city's ethnic communities. (Before that they had an ESP show by someone called Mysterion.  I went to the lobby during the noose stunte.)

May 27, 2008

Grandmother (to grandson): "You're your fahter's son!"

Sheriff (overhearing): "That's got many a man into trouble."

--Kung Fu

Dreamed of being in Miami; quipping that what distinguishes the USA from a banana republic is that the US has the most bananas; deciding I should start a career in standup comedy.

This little bolt on the rim of my glasses has come loose so I went to my eye doctor's office and they tightened it for me.

We got the garden completely planted.  Father connected the hose and I gave it a good soaking in the evening.

Puitak and Gordon invited Moira and me over for dinner, which was spaghetti.  We looked at a DVD of The East Is Red, a Chinese propaganda opera-ballet from the early 1960s. (I noticed Gordon reading an updated version of How to Prosper in the Coming Bad Years.)

May 26, 2008

Dreamed of travelling in the Canadian north with Father and Moira; getting angry because we had to stay overnight in a town in Nunavut and I was in a hurry.

Used a round tool to punch some 25 holes in the garden.  We're now completely ready for the planting.

I'm now wearing my summer jacket and hat!

Dinner was the rest of the pork roast (with rice).

At choir practice we're now finished with introducing the new pieces, and we went through the whole program, including the older stuff.

Visited my shrink Dr. Hassan.

Found the website goldenagecomics.co.uk, with a lot of scans of old public-domain comic books.  But I had to download the right software to open them.