A couple of nights ago I dreamed of visiting the bar from Cheers (and I'm anything but a bar-hopper); an episode of Sesame Street with Bert singing a lugubrious song while under a guillotine.
My cold was pretty bad so I still couldn't sing for the opera rehearsal. But I came to go through the stage motions. (I left early.) I felt ashamed not being able to contribute to the chorus since I know Giuseppe depends on chorus members like me.
The Coro Verdi did a concert at an old folk's home. The people at the Wagman Centre were really grateful to us. But my voice gave out in the second half. (The hall was really dry.)
I have a bit of a cold and I'll have to skip tomorrow's choir practice. I hope I'll be well enough for Tuesday's opera rehearsal.
Dinner was scalloped potatoes and ham.
Dreamed of reading the first page of a new James Bond novel; taking the train from my hometown of Sackville, N.B., to Toronto and returning that night; a murder being investigated at Beech Hill near Sackville.
Saw the Met production of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. The ballet chorus was really colourful. I got sleepy during the Underworld duet. (The guy sitting next to me shared his popcorn with me!)
Dinner was McDonald's.
Read over 50 pages of The Grapes of Wrath!
Went to a classical guitar concert by Jonah, the Karaoke Meetup organizer. (It was a Classical Music Meetup event.) One of his pieces was Bach's Goldberg Variations!
"Aren't you using me too?"
--Daisy Kenyon
"Hello, baby."
"Hi, cad"--ibid.
"I have a hunch that people who go on about how grown-up they are aren't really sure of it, O'Meara"--ibid.
Dreamed of going skiing (which I haven't done since my adolescence); going out on a balcony, reaching up and pulling a house's roof off.
Dinner was ham.
Saw the DVD of Otto Preminger's Daisy Kenyon. A good Joan Crawford melodrama, even if she was getting rather old for such roles.
Headache!
Went shopping.
Dinner was frozen Indian food (which we bought today).
My printer is working again, but it needs a new black ink cartridge.
Saw the DVD of Carlos Saura's flamenco movie Carmen (for maybe the third time). Sexy and spellbinding.
Baked multigrain bread overnight.
Tom Joad on his prison experience: "When the get to screamin' in the night, sometimes you think it's you doin' the screamin'--an' sometimes it is"--The Grapes of Wrath
Dreamed of travelling in Cape Breton on a new freeway that went straight through the centre of the island; my glasses getting broken; finding an abandoned pair of glasses that didn't fit me.
Dinner was roast chicken.
We rehearsed Carmen again. (We saw the children's chorus for the first time.) Barbara said Sergio and I were the only ones who seemed to know the whole Cenerentola score last night.
Dinner was halibut.
We went through the first on-stage rehearsal of La Cenerentola. Most of us are still using the score. (I went without, and didn't know everything. It lasted over four hours.
Saw the DVD of the silent movie Tarzan and the Golden Lion. (Boris Karloff in blackface was an African renegade!)
Dreamed of the actual Warner Brothers cartoon with the line "We're Bunny and Claude--we rob carrot patches"; going on a school field trip by boat and seeing another boat ful of illegal immigrants; being in a California beach community in the 1960s.
Dinner was spaghetti.
At choir practice we rehearsed for Sunday's concert. It turns out we're going to perform Cavalleria Rusticana as a concert this June! (We had some time to spare so we started on that.) I told Giuseppe a bestiality joke I'd read in The Grapes of Wrath. He always loves my jokes!
"School numbs my buns"--ibid.
Dreamed of hearing that the prime minister of Australia in the 1950s opened a big region of protected wilderness to commercial exploitation in the name of making it available to "the people." (I have no idea if that really happened, but it sounds depressingly plausible...)
Went to see Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler at the Cumberland. (I was going to see it with a Movie Meetup group, but I couldn't find them.) I've always like Mickey Rourke, and he was in rare form here, more Irish than ever!
John and Kathrine came over for dinner, which was pizza.
The pizza made me sick that night.
Dreamed of being on the last day of vacation and going through my luggage looking for the last pair of fresh socks; thinking "Some people can't dance, some people can't act... and some people can't teach!"
Went on a Walking Meetup along the PATH, between Union Station and the Atrium. We were combined with the Snail's Pace Meetup, and there were 16 people between us.
Dinner was McDonald's.
Went to Indigo Books and bought a book about British comics and another about the French language. (I also bought a half-priced astronomy calendar.)
Went to a Life Enthusiasts Meetup, but only briefly. I had to get to a Classical Music Meetup where we saw a demonstration of oriental healing sounds. (It was like tickling my ears.) On the way home I was talking to a Chinese girl called Laura.
Dreamed of having dirt in my throat; looking out a window and seeing several buffalo running through the back yards of some rural homes; the Cabaret song that goes "Maybe this time it's gonna happen."
Our house was just outside the area affected by the west end blackout. Donald's house was affected, so he brought over his cat Licorice to have a warm place to stay.
Dinner was KFC.
Went to the Trash Palace cartoon show. They had a couple of British fairy-tale cartoons by silhouette animator Lotte Reiniger (who did the German silent feature The Adventures of Prince Achmed)! The TV cartoon of Gilligan's Island was painful.
I went out to that show, and also to the drugstore to fill my prescriptions. Being outdoors now feels like being inside a freezer!
"For nitrates are not the land, nor phosphates, and the length of fiber in the cotton is not the land. Carbon is not a man, nor salt nor water, nor calcium"--The Grapes of Wrath
Dreamed of finding a statue of Barack Obama about 100 yards from our old home in Sackville, N.B.; wondering when it got put up.
Went to see Ljiliana again, who interviewed me on my autism for her doctoral thesis. We spent almost three hours going over the transcript. She bought one opera ticket.
Dinner was pork.
I was going to have the first Life Enthusiasts boock club event at the Victory Cafe. But nobody showed up! (I was expecting five people, including me.)
Got a ticket for tomorrow's Trash Palace show. They're no longer selling them at Tequila Bookworm, so I had to go to Eyesore Video.
My computer's printer is on the blink.
Dreamed of using a magnet to pick up paper clips.
Went shopping.
Dinner was pork chops.
I was going to see Slumdog Millionaire at a Meetup event, but when I got there I couldn't find anyone and the show was sold out anyway. (We should have gone to the 19:30 show instead of 18:25.)
Jean Renault (on his plan to murder Audrey): "Well, you like a nice steak on your plate, but you don't want toknow how it got there"--Twin Peaks
Dreamed of an anthropologist who was the victim of a whispering campaign by the Pope; trying to think of his name; a computer game about a fairy tale prince who doesn't have a girlfriend, including a broken mask in one part.
Dinner was fish.
Brass-monkey weather!
At opera rehearsal we went through the rest of Carmen. I gave Franco the cassette with our recorded lines and he reciprocated with two blank cassettes and a box of chocolates! I got ten more tickets to sell from Barbara. (This year I may end up selling a lot.)
"Thinking about stuff like that don't feed the kids"--The Grapes of Wrath
"I was mean like a wolf. Now I'm mean like a weasel"--ibid.
John came over and worked on the kitchen sink, which hasn't been draining right.
Dinner was pizza.
At choir practice we started rehearsing for a concert a week Sunday. (It's all stuff we know.) There's a new guy called Giovanni sitting next to me.
"A star was born and died, on the same night"--La Rondine
"I know you're hoping for the best, but I think you should prepare for the worst"--Twin Peaks
Saw the Met opera production of Puccini's La Rondine. The story was on the thin side. The maid was really funny. Beautiful 1920s design.
Dinner was McDonald's.
Went to 2Q and rented the DVD of the first episodes of the second season of Twin Peaks. It was increasingly cartoonish but still unique.
Bart Simpson (writing 100 times on the blackboard): "I am not endearingly saucy."
Dreamed of the Neil Simon Broadway musical They're Playing Our Song (which I've never seen); an episode of the 1970s detective show Cannon where a group of people landed on the moon!
Started reading the learning issue of Lapham's Quarterly.
Went to see my shrink Dr. Hassan. He was pleased about my involvement in the Depressed but Enthusiastic group.
On the way back I stopped at the Maria Shchuka library and borrowed Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
Dinner was pork roast.
Finished recording our lines for Franco.
Grampa Simpson: "I feel the clammy hand of death on my shoulder--wait, that's my hand!"
Dreamed of being a preacher who'd been in politics and was now a long-shot applicant to fill a faculty post at a university; joining the other applicants in a hall where the ceiling had a fading map of the world painted on the same corrugated metal they make Quonset huts out of; the applicants being challenged with a whodunit mystery where the culprit turned out to be the academic who knew foreign languages.
Father and I did the book-selling accounts for the first months of last year. Only April had a big profit.
Dinner was chicken.
Went out to the Socrates Cafe Meetup but nobody else showed up.
Started recording our opera lines for Franco.
Dreamed of flying a kite with a double string; the Squeeze song "Cool for Cats" (which I might sing at karaoke someday).
Dinner was roast chicken.
Plenty of snow today!
Saw a Dr. Who DVD with another story from the season where they were pursuing pieces of the Key to Time. This one involved a circle of druidic stones that shifted around looking for human blood, and a prison ship in hyperspace.
Dreamed of visiting Prince Edward Island.
Went shopping.
Dinner was spaghetti.
We had our first opera rehearsal for the new year. We went on stage to learn our movements for the first part of Carmen. Franco still doesn't have a lot of his lines learned so I agreed to make a tape recording of them. When this Carmen (the one who isn't Beatrice) put her hand on my shoulder during the Habanera, I must have looked uncomfortable because Barbara asked me afterward if that was OK with me. (I said "The show must go on.")
Finished the nature issue of Lapham's Quarterly. The learning issue is next.
"You talk different, sure, but your drive is just the same!"--ibid.
"I don't chat on a date"--ibid.
"Apu, are you going to stop selling tainted meat in your store?"
"No.... I mean, yes.... I mean, uh-oh!"
--The Simpsons
Dreamed of the Mozart music they played in Out of Africa.
Dinner was the rest of the Chinese food.
Saw the DVD of Otto Preminger's The Fallen Angel. Good film noirs don't date--if anything they get better with age!
Baked whole wheat bread overnight. (First I had to go out and buy molasses.)
Dreamed of visiting Seattle with Father; being told that Lord Stanley [a Governor-General of Canada] was in my family tree(!); seeing a children's book with a Michael Jackson connection, showing a simple maze with a red cap as the treasure in the middle; improving the maze by making a couple of points where you could only pass in one direction; saying "It's what's under the cap that's important."
I think I have most of my opera chorus lines learned.
Dinner was Chinese food. (My fortune cookie said "You have someone looking out for you." Hope he isn't a stalker!)
I've finally finished going through the transcript of my conversations with Ljiliana. [She was a psychologist interviewing my on my autism for her doctoral thesis.]
FBI agent: "Who's in charge here?"
Officer Bar Brady: "I am but I don't want to be."
--South Park
Dreamed of accidentally dropping my camera into the quarry near our old Sackville home. (It must come from the right lens on my glasses coming loose when the rim screw got loose...)
John and family came over and brought lunch: vegan haggis! (And you thought that was an oxymoron?) It turns out that Kathrine was adopted.
Dinner was McDonald's.
Saw some more South Park episodes on DVD. The one where they gave Butters a fake deformity to get him on The Maury Povich Show was actually pretty good.
Got the latest Cinematheque schedule. This time, I don't think I'll see anything. (There's a Carl Dreyer series, but I've seen all that before.)
Dreamed of being caught in a hailstorm (though I was wearing a helmet); British people at the start of World War I.
Went shopping.
Moira made dinner, which was spaghetti in tetrazzini sauce.
Saw the DVD of Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa (for the second time). Beautifully made and intelligent, though the romantic stuff is on the conventional side. Robert Redford is the weak link.
Dreamed of finding Donald in bed with a mannequin; admitting to him that I thought I'd seen two dummies; hearing that Hillary Clinton had resigned as Obama's Secretary of State (I wish!); "waking up" and being unable to find my diary to write down my earlier dreams.
Went to a Classical Music Meetup event at an apartment building just north of Finch station. Mary invited us to a rehearsal for her Allegria chamber music group. She play the harpsichord, and there were two violinists as well. (There's also a cellist, but her arm is injured at the moment.) Diverting.
Dinner was lobster rolls.
Baked rye bread overnight.
The night before last I dreamed of acting in a live-action version of the actual comic strip Dondi; playing the strip's grandfatherly character Pop Fligh.
Went to a Movie Meetup at the Varsity. We saw John Patrick Shanley's Doubt. It raised a lot of questions and kept my attention.
Dinner was turkey.
I love this mild, foggy winter weather!
