They sent me a new credit card because there may have been fraudulent activity with the old one!
Went shopping.
Dinner was fettucine alfredo (which I cooked). During dinner I bit my tongue!
Moira taped the accompaniment for my songs "Pour un Baiser" and "Bella Siccome un Angelo."
Saw the second half of Unforgivable Blackness. (The Great White Hope took some liberties with the Jack Johnson story.)
Dreamed of waking up in our old house in Sackville, N.B., and seeing that there'd been a huge flood outdoors that disrupted the whole world; realizing that Mother was missing and probably dead; the Toni Basel song "Mickey." (It was raining heavily last night.)
Yesterday I put up a profile at the free dating website plentyoffish.com . (I focused on my loyalty.) I got a good reaction from one girl already, though she said she's too tall for me.
Another singing lesson. Giuseppe said C major is the hardest key to play!
Dinner was spaghetti.
Saw the first of two DVDs of the Ken Burns documentary Unforgivable Blackness, about Jack Johnson, the boxer who was the basis for the fictional character in The Great White Hope. (There was something wrong with the disc so I had to watch it on the computer.) It's a fascinating story, as he was tragically ahead of his time.
At today's singing lesson, Giuseppe raised the possibility of me doing an opera role with a few lines this coming year. (I'm open to it.) He said my voice is in good form.
Got an Ebay package of Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics, several of which I'd read in my childhood.
Donald came over for dinner, which was salmon.
Went to the Walking Meetup. We tossed frisbees around in a park, then went to an outdoor concert of Greek music at Danforth & Logan. (Julie, the organizer, is Greek-Canadian.) I ended up doing some Greek dancing, which I'd never done before!
In the Dick Tracy reprint I've been reading, I started reading the story with Boris Arson. What a great name for a villain!
Got a package of Ebay comics, including several I'd read in childhood: three Jerry Lewis issues and a Two-Gun Kid issue that had him in an adventure with the Rawhide Kid and Kid Colt! (They were Marvel Comics' three western stars.)
Dinner was pork chops.
Saw the DVD of Assunta Spina, a silent Italian melodrama filmed in Naples. They also included The Last Diva, a documentary that showed the movie's star Francesca Bertini watching it again in her old age.
"What?"
"You can find it in Balzac."
--The Music Man
"You unscrupulous flu-by-night!"--ibid.
"Gary Conservatory--that's my alma mater."
"Oh, is she?"--ibid.
Dreamed of finding snow on the ground in warm weather [at our old Sackville home].
Had a McDonald's breakfast for the first time in quite a while.
In the morning we drove around Mennonite country west of Waterloo for a while. We saw several horses and buggies there. We had a pancake lunch at Demetre's Family Eatery.
In the afternoon we saw The Music Man at the Avon. (Fiona Reid played the mayor's wife.) A great 1950s show with a lot of good dancing. First we went to a few bookstores and found several books.
On the way home, we ate at Wendy's. We got back half an hour before the Salsa on nearby St. Clair Festival ended--we'd gone to Stratford to avoid the noise from it--and I wandered around it a bit.
Father and I went to Stratford for the weekend. I got up earlier than usual, and we were underway at 08:30, getting there by 11:00.
We had lunch at A&W (I haven't eaten there for years, for good reason.) After the play, we had an early dinner at Swiss Chalet, since we were both tired.
We took a room overnight at the New Devon Inn.
"I'm from the jungle too. I listen to the drums."
--The Great White Hope
Dreamed of a non-existent scene in The Caine Mutiny where the crew is stranded on a small Pacific island with an impossibly wide range of wildlife.
Got a few more Ebay comics, including an issue of Millie the Model we had when I was young.
Dinner was churrasco chicken.
Saw the DVD of Martin Ritt's movie of the Howard Sackler play The Great White Hope, a fictional version of the story of Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion, who was prosecuted for marrying a white woman. (Interracial marriage back then--about 100 years ago--was like same-sex marriage today!) Its theatrical origins show, in a very '60s way.
Went shopping.
Picked up Barry King's latest parcel of comic strips that I'd bought on Ebay. (It was so big that I had to go get it at the post office near St. Clair & Bathurst!) It included over 20 issues of the reprint series Vintage Funnies.
Dinner was pizza.
Went to the Cinematheque and saw The Island, a famous wordless 1960 quasi-documentary about a Japanese family living on a small island where they grow crops that depend on their carrying over irrigation water from the mainland. It's one of those few movies that can make you look at everyday things differently. (It was made at a time when the old peasant ways were disappearing in japan.)
Unethical lawyer: "My dear lady--anything is fair if you can get away with it!"--Dick Tracy
Baked multigrain bread overnight.
I've started reading that reprint of Dick Tracy stories from 1933-4. Pretty corny.
Another singing lesson. I had to tell Giuseppe that I couldn't make it to the mass on the 20th (because of the Canada's Wonderland outing, which I didn't mention).
Dinner was spaghetti.
Went to the Non-Fiction Book Club Meetup at Central in Mirvish Village. I couldn't find The Tipping Point, so I had nothing to contribute to the discussion. But it's just as well that I came, because there were only four people there.
I got a really crazy idea, starting a forum for the mrcranky.com regulars before the original site closes down. If only someone else would do it!
Homer Simpson (writing on an application form, in a space marked "Do not write in this space"): "OK."
Dreamed of considering Steven Spielberg's actual plan to film a live-action Tintin movie; deciding that a good casting choice for Captain Haddock would be Jean Reno; travelling on the Docklands light railway in London. [Spielberg actually cast Andy Serkis as the Captain.]
Saw the DVD of some more Simpsons episodes, from the start of the fourth season.
Dinner was steak.
Went to the Writers Meetup. We were given an assignment to write a book cover blurb, so I wrote one about an imaginary gothic-romantic Regency mystery titled Mist on the Moor. (Last line: "Before the summer is over, she'll lose her innocence--and maybe her life!") The others really enjoyed it and suggested I write the whole novel! But how can I write what I don't think I'd want to read? The event lasted about three hours.
"If I'd known I was going to say all this, I'd have brought my violin"--ibid.
Had another session with Ljiliana the psychology researcher. (It was shorter than usual.) I gave her my diary from 2004, which seems to interest her.
Dinner was KFC.
Saw the DVD of Henry Hathaway's The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (for the second time). Some good action scenes, but the dramatic scenes are a bit talky and predestrian.
Saw the DVD of the first episodes of the sequel serial Batman and Robin. This time, they're up against a villain called the Wizard, who has a remote-control machine that can manipulate any object from a distance.
It turned out when I went to the island ferry terminal yesterday there were other people who had come, but I didn't meet them because I was late.
mrcranky.com, one of my favourite websites, is closing down! This happened just as I was trying to get back into it, but I can't blame them. It had been declining for quite a while.
Dinner was lasagna.
I've registered for the forums at dvdtalk.com, with fellow Mr. Cranky poster Grundle often posts at. But for some reason they don't recognize my password.
In the morning I carelessly mentioned that I was going to sing at a Meetup today and got a lot of trouble. I heard a lot about how William Parker's voice is annoying. (Does that mean my voice is annoying too?) At times like this I wish I lived anywhere else! It's important to me to have a life in the outside world and I resent it when other people in the family make it their business.
The Toronto Islands event from last week was rescheduled for today. Again I showed up but couldn't find anybody else.
In the late afternoon I went to a joint Classical Music and Opera Meetup at the Trinity United Church, in the Katherine Hocken memorial room. (I came across her biography when I was researching my Ph.D. thesis: she was a missionary in Sichuan.) I sang Tosti's "Malia" and "Ideale." Enoch sang several songs by Schubert and Richard Strauss. There was a really stunning soprano who did "Un Bel Di Vedremi" from Madama Butterfly and an aria from The Marriage of Figaro. There were also a violinist and a jazz pianist.
Afterward I ate at Burger King.
Dreamed of playing a passionate, difficult piano piece about a murderer; being scheduled to play it at a recital in Moncton, N.B.; going to see the movie Waterworld; spending most of my money on an airplane ticket to Australia.
Dinner was salmon.
"I'll write to you every day."
"And I'll knit socks for you. I can't knit, but I'll knit socks for you."
--ibid.
Went shopping.
Dinner was roast chicken.
Saw the nostalgia musical On Moonlight Bay, set in the period of World War I. It was actually pretty good. Doris Day had real star quality. Since this was the 1950s, her boyfriend ended up abandoning his early radical ideas and becoming a patriotic soldier...
Baked cheese bread overnight.
The Canada's Wonderland outing has been delayed a week. That means I can go after all!
Dreamed of a text of passages teaching Portuguese; a volume from around 1912 full of information about the state of California.
I had my first singing lesson in a year and a half. Giuseppe's moved his piano to a different end of the room! (On the way back it turned out I was still using my June Metropass!)
Saw the first part of another DVD of Warner Brothers cartoons. This one focuses on Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. Daffy evolved into a brilliant character!
Dinner was the rest of the pork, with rice.
Saw a news item that somewhere in Colorado it was snowing in July! (Coincidentally, a few nights ago I was dreaming of seeing snow on the ground in summer.)
Dreamed about the movie The Darjeeling Express (which I haven't seen).
Saw the last two episodes of the Dr. Who story "The Green Death." It got pretty crazy, with big mutant maggots and a brainwashing computer.
Dinner was pork roast.
Moira added about sixty DVD titles to our zip.ca queue.
Bought some comic books on Ebay. (I haven't done that for a while.) They included several I remember reading in childhood.
Dreamed of the Bering Strait the song "What Do You Get When You Fall in Love?"; travelling from Halifax, N.S., to my hometown Sackville, N.B., on a refitted British two-storey Routemaster bus; the bus stoppping overnight next to a field growing goobers.
Dinner was haddock.
Saw the DVD of the first four episodes of the six-episode Dr. Who story "The Green Death." (It's from one of the Jon Pertwee seasons in the early 1970s.)
Father and I looked at the Stratford theatre schedule and decided we'd go see The Trojan Women and The Music Man the weekend after next. (We're getting away from the noise of the nearby Salsa on St. Clair street festival.)
Dreamed of accidentally dropping into an incinerator chute a pig's head that I'd intended to pack up and carry on a journey for later eating.
I RSVPed to Patricia's Brunch Club Meetup today, but when I woke up in the morning I decided I just didn't feel like going. (I later told her I wasn't feeling well.) But I'm sure a lot of other people came.
Dinner was spaghetti.
Finished the main body of o'ekaki puzzles. (I also did the ones in the new issue of Games magazine.) Now I've been trying some extras where they give you the length of each row's filled segments but not their order! Quite challenging.
Dreamed of taking mathematics courses. I was going to meet someone from Linkup to visit the Toronto Islands with, but she cancelled because of the weather forecast. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to check my email so I went and waited for her anyway. Finished Mazo de la Roche's memoir Ringing the Changes. The best part was her talking about starting out as a writer. Our next Lunch Club Meetup is going to be at Le Papillon. But it turns out that they've changed their address, and I couldn't enter the new location because you have to include what country it's in, and the menu there is empty. Dinner was McDonald's. I was going to see the documentary The Herd at the Cinematheque, but it totally slipped my mind.
[On being offered the position of Roman Emperor] 'I wouldn't be suitable, since my first order would be to crucify all of you'--Stephen Boyd, The Fall of the Roman Empire Dreamed of avoiding the news with a sense of dread on the night of the upcoming U.S. presidential election; 'waking up' and realizing the election was still weeks away; throwing little plastic framebits [like what's left over in a model kit] at a TV set so that they disappeared into the screen; comedians Wayne and Shuster. Saw the second half of The Fall of the Roman Empire. Dinner was lasagna. Went to a Friends Meetup at Bowlerama in North York. Unfortunately, it took place after they turned on the flashing disco lights. I scored a wretched 44 in the first game, but managed 106 in the second, even bowling two strikes. Baked whole wheat bread overnight.
"We always wanted you, but it wasn't exactly clear to us."
--Little Lord Fauntleroy
Saw the first of a series of classic Warner Brothers cartoons on a series of DVDs (The first one focuses on Bugs Bunny.) Someday it'll be in the "canon" of Western culture!
Dinner was rainbow trout.
I was planning that we'd go to Stratford the weekend after next to see some plays and avoid the Salsa on St. Clair noise. But Moira isn't interested, and Mother may not be up to travelling. There's still Father and me, but he's ashamed to leave Mother behind, though I asked her and she has no problem with it.
Saw the DVD of the wonderful silent movie of Little Lord Fauntleroy, with Mary Pickford playing both the eponymous boy and his mother. She was a real natural!
Went shopping.
Dinner was pork steak.
Saw the DVD of The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (for the second time) about the life of her husband Johann Sebastian Bach. It's full of wonderful Bach music, little of which I remembered hearing before. (Moira wants to watch it again.)
Headache.
There are some really loud musicians at a restaurant near here. At least it gives me something to write about here!
