January 12, 2004

Dreamed of a western set in Civil War Texas, with a guy coming to a town whose sheriff had been in the same gang as him and now held a grudge against him; the sheriff pouring liquor on him and his assistant to frame them for drunkenness, just as a Confederate army appeared; the sheriff saying, "Asshole is as asshole does.  By this fine measure, the Confederate leaders were assholes."

Met Dann at Mission:  Possible.  We're now at the job search stage.  We went out to Indigo Books and found an issue of Quill and Quire.

Saw Jim Sheridan's In America with the parents at Canada Square.  It's a very original, Irish take on the familiar subject of poverty-stricken immigrants in New York.

Afterward we ate at the Mandarin restaurant.

January 11, 2004

Saw the Sopranos episode where Tony learned of his ex-mistress' suicide.

John and Rae came over for dinner.  It was fettucine in pesto sauce (which I cooked).

Ran out of nasal spray. (I'm still not completely over my cold.)

I've been reading a couple of later Dick Tracy adventures from after Chester Gould retired.  It's sad how the strip has declined. [It's improved somewhat since Joe Staton and Mike Curtis took over.]

January 10, 2004

Dreamed of accompanying a fox hunt on foot(?) and getting squeezed between two horses; getting a chance to speak to Little Big Man author Thomas Berger on the telephone; reading that Sir Lancelot had Asperger's Syndrome.

Baked multigrain bread.

Donald came over for dinner, which was churrasco chicken.  We discussed what computer to buy.

Saw the Sopranos episode where the feds started extracting information from Adriana.

Saw Bertrand Tavernier's sad Life and Nothing But, about a French officer trying to identify his army's unknown dead after World War I, who meets a rich war widow looking for her husband's body.  Overlong but truthful.

January 9, 2004

Dreamed of looking out the window of our Sackville house and seeing a horse-drawn trolley car(?); being about to see a film festival screening of a Bela Lugosi horror movie (a series of stills like La Grande Jetee) but skipping it because I was already too scared; someone saying that Lugosi had ulcer trouble; seeing a movie about people getting involved in crime, but leaving before they got caught. (That must be from the Dick Tracy stories I've been reading.)

Went to Revue Video and rented some stuff.

The Dick Tracy story with Junior falling in love with Model Jones could have been an opera!

Dinner was McDonald's.

Saw the Sopranos episode where Johnny Sac wanted to have Ralph killed because the latter had joked about Mrs. Sac's obesity.

Saw the first episode of the classic BBC drama The Six Wives of Henry VIII, focusing on Catherine of Aragon (for the first time since I was young). It's very entertaining despite its relatively slow pace.  Keith Michell played the King with charismatic nastiness. [The clip above is from the movie version, but it does have KM!]

Moira went off to Kingston again.

January 8, 2004

Dreamed of visiting our Sackville, N.B. house and seeing that the new owners had added a new entrance on the north side and planted a whole lot of little trees; baking bread; bicycling on through Sackville on my old coaster bicycle; a closet in the Sackville house that had turned into a swamp (with some old railway tracks running through it).

Still recovering from that cold.  I took it easy today.

Dinner was chicken curry.

Saw American Splendor at the Paradise.  It's about Harvey Pekar, a Cleveland file clerk and curmudgeon who wrote comic books about his everyday life and became famous from his appearances on David Letterman's TV show.  Quite good.  I liked their use of the Marvin Gaye song "Ain't That Peculiar." [Pekar seemed to have Asperger's Syndrome, like me.]

January 7, 2004

Dreamed of visiting Los Angeles; a documentary about shipwrecks directed by actress Daryl Hannah, including a clip of a boring conversation from an early sound film; me and my girlfriend playing a virtual-reality computer game, including an exercise where we tried to type a word with the keyboard and on our own eyeballs (both of us failed); coming into a room with lots of bright-colored decoration and telling her, "This looks so much like a playroom that you almost feel like throwing a tantrum!"

Sore throat.

Dinner was back bacon.

Went to the Howard Dean campaign's Toronto Meetup, out of curiosity.  There were about a dozen people there, but I couldn't stay long because I felt unwell. (Maybe the back bacon disagreed with me.)

Brought up the heating element from the basement to my room to make it warmer, because the heating vent doesn't work that well. [Just now we're finally renovating the room, and my brother found that squirrels had eaten big holes in the insulation!]

January 6, 2004

Dreamed of the Sam Peckinpah movie Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (which I haven't seen); visiting a friend of Margaret's in Kingston; a Noddy comic book.

Real brass-monkey weather today!

Went to see Dr. Hassan and gave him a copy of my story.  I also stopped at the travel agency and got my London plane ticket straightened out.

Went shopping.

Dinner was salmon.

Tonight was the first onstage opera rehearsal.  Choreographing the promenade was pretty fun.  My feet got a bit sore.

Baked whole wheat bread overnight.