November 18, 2003

"People who say they are no good are always the good ones....  The bravest people are the ones who don't mind looking like cowards"--The Candle in the Wind

Dreamed of adventures in a land like Oz (including one where the Scarecrow helps stop a revolving juggernaut); a crowd of people walking on a huge globe; a newspaper article showing that my real-life Hong Kong lawyer friend Yvonne Ho was a famous chef; a movie crossing the space-age The Right Stuff with a vampire story, but taking place in daytime(!); waking in a motel room I didn't remember, singing "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" and remembering the superstition "If you sing before breakfast, you'll cry before night." (I decided to test this theory by singing the song before breakfast.)

Went shopping.

Registered at www.singleswithscruples.com . (Some people never learn from their mistakes!)

Dinner was pork chops.

At opera rehearsal the soprano performed her cadenza with the chorus for the first time.

Never did cry.

November 17, 2003

U.S. President Billy Bob Thornton:"You can have anything you want, so long as you don't ask for something I don't want to give"--Love Actually

Dreamed of a man recalling how the Germans occupied his coastal village and dared anyone to cut through their security fence, and he found out the hard way that it was electrified; a Maclean's magazine survey on youth violence; a GO transit route going north from Oakville.

Baked whole wheat bread.

The parents and I saw the British romantic comedy Love Actually at the Varsity.  It was rather thin in a hit and miss way.  In the children's Christmas pageant they sang the horridest Christmas song of all time:  Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas"! [Bill Nighy was the best thing in it.  The scene where Colin Firth was writing outdoors without a paperweight so the wind could blow his pages into the pond and the Portuguese maid could wade in to save them in her bra was especially cheesy!]

After the movie was over we had dinner at the Swiss Chalet.

November 16, 2003

Dreamed of plotting to assassinate Ronald Reagan with a machete (in the name of justice) in a ship being towed uphill through a tunnell; the song "Santa Lucia"; a rural house putting another house in the shade of the setting sun (despite being a great distance away).

Went to the Cinematheque to see Lucino Visconti's The Damned, but left after 40 minutes.  What I was was an oddly lifeless epic about a family of Krupp-like steel magnates getting used by the Nazis.  Every scene seemed to take place in lavishly furnished by dimly lit rooms.  Cabaret did it better.

John and the girls came over for dinner, which was salmon and stuff.

Saw the first-season finale of Six Feet Under.  What a show!

November 15, 2003

Dreamed of being in a computer game set in a reconstructed historic fort (like Fort York in Toronto); setting a fire on a dinner plate; a group of women with some man trouble and imagining that one of them should tell another that that all men are jerks anyway, citing her husband as an example.

Got my hair cut.  This time I just got a small trim in preparation for the operas.

Went to Indigo Books and bought the course book Colloquial Dutch.  I also got some reduced books that my nieces and nephew might like.

Read about Dutch pronunciation. [I got interested in learning Dutch because there was this Dutch nurse in my writing course...]

John and Rae came over for dinner, which was pizza.

Saw Brian de Palma's Scarface remake at the Royal.  Brutal, dumb, slow and unpleasant.  It started out portraying wretched excess but ended up embodying it.  Howard Hawks' original version did infinitely more with less.

November 14, 2003

Alan Arkin: "No, that's not quite it. 'Please,' may I give you the doll?'"--Wait Until Dark

Dreamed of passing through a shooting gallery in a museum; the town of Dalhousie near my father's hometown of Campbellton, N.B.

Moira says that in this cold weather she'd like to hibernate, or at least wear four sweaters.

Rented the DVD of Terence Young's thriller Wait Until Dark, and watched it in the afternoon (for the second time). It was complicated but bluntly effective, with three hoodlums trying to get a heroin-stuffed doll from blind Audrey Hepburn.  Alan Arkin was scarily funny as the main villain.

Dinner was spaghetti. (I ate too much and got sick this evening.  I hate to have food left over!)

November 13, 2003

On the start of a fight between brothers: "The situation passed out of control:  they began acting like puppets, as if it had happened before--which it had"--The Candle in the Wind

Dreamed of someone digging deep around the foundations of the garage next to our Sackville house (some people have been digging at the foundations of the house next door); the anime Sailor Moon.

First snow of the season.

Went to the Royal Winter Fair.  I bought some Mennonite pastry and got some PEI potatoes. (To tell the truth, it's the spuds I come for.)

Dinner was chicken in a curry-ginger sauce.

Went to a Cinematheque lecture on the 1950s thriller classic Night of the Hunter. They showed various outtakes from the movie showing how director Charles Laughton developed his vision.  Fascinating.

November 12, 2003

Dreamed of being in a The Matrix sequel, in a fight scene on a beach involving long spider-like threads (the sort that Spider-Man shoots out); a son getting estranged from his father; going to see a movie feature and finding out they were putting on a program of eccentric English shorts instead (which I'll be seeing in a few weeks).

Warm weather again.

Had the interview at McClelland & Stewart.  I'll be doing proofreading on Tuesdays and Wednesdays starting November 25th.

Finished Freddy the Detective and started The Candle in the Wind, the fourth novel in T.H. White's Once and Future King series.

Dinner was roast beef.

At the creative writing class, Mr. Campbell tried to suggest how to go about writing poetry (Good luck!) For next week I'm going to try to write a story about a girl from the city whose family moves to the country.