New Meetups

Marie Windsor's last words: "This is a bad joke, with no punch line..."--The Killing

I'm now busy with Meetups most Saturdays.  First Saturday afternoon of the month is the French Culture Meetup:  this week we're going to discuss French art, so I'll talk about Gauguin, citing the Korean children's book I finished translating. Second Saturday is Reading Out Loud in English:  last month we started with Oscar Wilde's fairy tales and this month it'll be the poems of Robert Frost.  Third Saturday (in the evening this time) is a watch party for French-language movies:  last month Eric Rohmer's "tasty talk" comedy Claire's Knee, this month Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game.  Fourth Saturday is Reading Out Loud in French:  last month it was La Fontaine's fables, this month Molier's comedy L'Ecole des Femmes.  It's so long that we'll just do the first half, and leave the second half for next month. (If the month has a fifth Saturday, as happened last week, there'll be nothing then.)

I'm still reading that short biography of Jawaharlal Nehru for next week's History Meetup.  Next month the subject will be the Mexican-American War, so today I went to North York Centre library and borrowed Peter Guardino's The Dead March.

I finished the psychology issue of Lapham's Quarterly and I've almost finished the "Rule of Law" issue.

The other week John P. and I saw Denis Villeneuve's second Dune movie.  A solid follow-up, which has me looking forward to the next one.

This month they're showing Stanley Kubrick's movies at the Yonge & Dundas, even his early Grade Z efforts Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss.  Last night I saw his heist movie The Killing again.  It's intelligent and exciting, with Stirling Hayden a well-cast hoodlum--indeed, most of the roles were pretty well cast. (Though Colleen Gray had to say the line "I'm not pretty," which she definitely was!) Next week I plan to see Full Metal Jacket again.

I had to quit the Rise of Cultures game, because I was stuck at a point where you had to win battles and I couldn't figure out how.  But I'm still playing Sunrise Village, where I made my persona a guy named Aloysius.  With Candy Crush Saga I got stuck on Level 2165 for about a week, but I finally cracked it!

French Culture Meetup

On Saturday we met online for the first Culture Meetup.  I talked about The Count of Monte Cristo, Maria talked about Flaubert's "The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller," and Sylvie talked about Maupassant's "Old Boniface's Crime." Next month we'll discuss French art. (I'll talk about Gauguin.) I'll also be doing a monthly watch party for French movies!

Last week some of the people in my memoir group met for lunch at Moulins Lafayette.  And none too soon, because the place was about to close! (I liked the quiche Lorraine and Chantilly eclair.) Maria and Sergey have now joined the group too.

I've finished the book about Prussia, and my next history book will be about Nehru. (They say the Toronto library website is finally back on line!)

Today I spent some time with Maria.  I'm reading the "States of Mind" issue of Lapham's Quarterly and she mentioned St. Augustine of Hippo, and that issue had a piece written by him!

I'm now reading La Fontaine's fables, which we'll be reading aloud in my other new Meetup in a few weeks.  I tried reading some of them in the original language, which is often old-fashioned French like you see old-fashioned English in a lot of our poetry. (At one point there was an imperfect subjunctive!)

I've also started a couple of new online games: Sunrise Village and Rise of Cultures. (The miller in Sunrise Village is called Jenny Mills, a clever pun on General Mills!)

I changed my mind

Last week my History Meetup discussing the Roman Empire's fall attracted a dozen people, and I changed my mind about quitting. (Props to Maria and Sergey for encouraging me!) Next month's topic will be the Kingdom of Prussia.  I'm now reading another good history book, Sebastian Haffner's The Rise and Fall of Prussia.

In fact, I'm going to try a couple of new Meetups.  One will be on French culture, and Maria will co-organize with me.  Next week for our first event we'll each discuss a French book we liked. (I'll do The Count of Monte Cristo.) I'm also going to make another try at people coming together online and reading a text aloud.  I'll be doing both English and French texts, and start with easy stuff like children's stories. (No idea if anyone will be interested in it, but it won't add to my organizing fees.) Maria's also interested in the French reading.

My birthday was a couple of weeks ago and last week the family got together for a joint birthday party for me and Donald.  Moira baked a vegan birthday cake, but it was a bit too big and we couldn't finish it.

I finally quit the online Elvenar game after playing it for about five years.  I went back to Candy Crush Saga, where I'm at around Level 2000.  I tried to open some other games on Facebook, but they also got stuck at the "0% loaded" level!

I've gone back to watching the anime Dragon Ball Super.  I've also been watching Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, a remarkably creepy British puppet show from the 1960s that I saw a bit of when I was young.

Yesterday I had lunch with Maria, Sergey, Debi and Sylvie at What a Bagel!  We discussed my Meetup ideas.

Burnout

I've quit as organizer of the History Meetup.  Nobody came to my last monthly event, discussing the Gilded Age.  I've been doing it for a decade and I guess I'm a burnout.  I'm showing two more movies in the Friday watch party--Isadora and My Life as a Dog--and doing one more monthly event, then I'm done.

My last monthly event will be about the fall of the Roman Empire, so I've been reading Peter Heather's book on the subject. (It's pretty good!)

I've now started catching up on my long backlog of Lapham's Quarterly issues. (I'm still reading the music issue.)

A few weeks ago I saw Michael Mann's Ferrari, which was pretty effective:  Adam Driver got to show some range.  The other day I saw Noryang:  Deadly Sea, about Korean admiral Yi Sunshin's final defeat of the Japanese in 1598.  It's a sequel to Hansan:  Rising Dragon which I saw a while ago, and now I really want to see The Admiral:  Roaring Currents, about his biggest victory.  I'm a sucker for these Asian naval movies...

Finished THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO

I finished The Count of Monte Cristo a few days ago.  Now I'm working on a Coles Notes version (Cliff Notes for you Americans) summarizing the plot and the characters just to sort it all out in my mind!

I'm now reading The Republic for Which It Stands, a history of the U.S.A. in the Gilded Age after the Civil War, for next month's History Meetup.

Saw Ridley Scott's Napoleon movie with John P. and Debbie a few weeks ago.  It wasn't boring, but his relationship with Josephine wasn't really convincing. (Maybe they should make a movie centred on Josephine...)

Betty from my memoir group took me to lunch Sunday.  She tells some incredible stories--I think she could write a book!

Last night at the historical movie watch party I actually showed a movie I hadn't seen before:  the 1938 MGM Johann Strauss bio-pic The Great Waltz.  It wasn't so great:  the sort of movie where the hero falls for the Fast Girl but in the end she sends him back to the Nice Girl...

Sturmfrei

    My sister went to Kingston, so I'm on my own for a week or two.  Germans call that feeling of freedom when you're alone in the house sturmfrei.  I learned that from a YouTube video about German words without exact English translations. (Another is hoenigkuchepferd, which means "smiling like a gingerbread horse," referring to its wide icing smile, a bit like "grinning like the Cheshire Cat.")

    We used to have a 241 Pizza around the corner, but it closed during the Covid slump.  The neighbourhood now has a Little Caesar's, but they don't have as much variety.  There's also a Pizza Pizza, but I can't eat that:  it literally makes me sick!  Now I've found a new 241 over on Dufferin Street, and I walked there and back on Saturday to buy myself a small pizza that lasted two days. (I could have taken the streetcar, but I wanted the exercise.)

    Last month I saw John Carpenter's paranoia movie They Live for the first time.  Two weeks ago John and I saw Martin Scorsese's Killers of the August Moon, which I found rather long and depressing, not unlike his earlier The Irishman. Last week we also saw a documentary about Napoleon's artistic legacy. (On the way to the documentary, I saw a pro-Palestinian rally at Bloor & Yonge.)

    Last week I had lunch with Debbie and Maria at the nearby WhataBagel.  Afterward Maria and I walked through the neighbourhood, and I showed her Wychwood Park.  She enjoyed the sights greatly.

    For next month's History Meetup, I want to read Jonathan Spence's short biography of Mao Zedong.  Unfortunately, the Toronto library website has been taken down because of a ransomware attack!

    My DVD player has gone bust, or the connection to it or something.  I've tried to set up the downstairs player in my room but it didn't work so (surprise, surprise) I had to ask Donald to come over and figure it out!  For last week's movie, Fritz Lang's noirish western Rancho Notorious, it was on YouTube and I shared it from there.  For this week's movie Boogie Nights, I'll use Google Play like I used to.

    The newspaper this morning (we subscribe to The Globe and Mail) was soaked through in the pouring rain.  They usually have a plastic covering for it, but today they must have run out of them!

Creepy October movies

"Baby, I ain't holding your hand!"--The Evil Dead II:  Dead by Dawn

    The cool weather's finally arrived.  I've started wearing sweaters again, though I don't really need them yet.  Yesterday my Monday afternoon memoir piece group met in person for the first time in a while.  We sat in Sylvie's back yard, where she'd lit a bonfire in an outdoor stove to keep us warm!

    I'm about halfway through The Count of Monte Cristo.  I've now started reading Essential History of the Crimean War for my History Meetup.  I could only find it in Ebook form, so when I'm on the subway I'm reading The Loom of Languages, which has some big word lists for Greek and Germanic and Romance languages.

    Three weeks ago I showed There Will Be Blood in my Friday historical movie watch party--or would have, but I forgot that my computer's regular DVD player didn't work in Zoom sharing (no picture)! Now I have the VLC app which does work, and I'm showing the movie again this week.  Just as well that I'm seeing it again, since parts of it confused me, like Paul Dano playing twin characters.  They could at least have given one of them a moustache or glasses or something so we could distinguish them more easily, but maybe they wanted to make it more "challenging"...

    The other week Debbie and I had lunch at the Indian buffet restaurant Aroma.  I ate so much that when I got home I had to spend the rest of the afternoon in bed!  Maybe next time we'll do something simpler, like Whatabagel...

    I recently saw Kenneth Branagh's Agatha Christie movie A Haunting in Venice. at the Yorkdale, where I hadn't been since the B.C. era (before Covid). Pretty good, but for me the definitive Hercule Poirot is Peter Ustinov. (Ain't I finicky?) For what it's worth, I guessed who the culprit was.  At the food court afterward, along with dinner, I had a milkshake for the first time in donkey's years.

    Last week I saw Hitchcock's The Birds (for the second time) at the Yonge & Dundas.  While well-made, movies like this one and The Exorcist leave me oddly cold.  It's different with Psycho and Silence of the Lambs:  as crazy as those stories are, at least I could (just barely) imagine them happening in real life.  I suppose The Birds reflects the fears of the Cold War era, sort of like Signs deals with the fears of a post-9/11 America...

    Today I saw the cartoonish horror comedy The Evil Dead II:  Dead by Dawn at the same place, this time for the first time. (I haven't seen the first Evil Dead, but I did see the "threequel" Army of Darkness--I think I want to see it again.) It's surprisingly stylish and witty, and Bruce Campbell is pretty cool:  you could say his motto is "It works for me." I should also see Gremlins 2 and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 someday...