Thursday, July 31, 2014

The Canadian National Exhibition

I visited the Canadian National Exhibition for the first time in 1975, when I was 13 and my family was living near Toronto.  It was the biggest thing I'd ever seen! (It was near its attendance peak then.) 

We came in on a GO train that made special stops next to the exhibition grounds.  The disc jockey Mike Cooper was trying to break a world record by staying in a Ferris wheel for the whole three weeks.  I went to a show of Scottish marching bands and a Bachmann-Turner Overdrive concert where people started lighting matches! (They had a fire truck nearby.) The big song they were playing everywhere was the Captain and Tenille's "Love Will Keep Us Together."

The food building had a special where you could buy up to 25 Pepsi drinks in these tiny cups for a penny each, attracting queues.  My brother ate a falafel for the first time, and I bought a T-shirt with French comic strip hero Asterix the Gaul.  The oil industry had an exhibit devoted to "the Big Tough Expensive Job" of searching for oil in the Arctic.  On the Midway I rode a roller coaster for the first time, and didn't like it.  I liked climbing the stairs to the top of the glass-walled Bulova Tower in the middle of the Midway. (It's a shame they tore it down in the 1980s!) There was also a flea circus, an outdoor tightrope walker and a big electric train set on display.

I moved to Toronto in 1990, but I don't visit the Ex much today. (I do it every third year or so.) Either it got smaller or I got bigger, or both.  But when I do I spend a lot of time on the Midway rides, especially the bumper cars.  And I always have to look at the butter sculptures!

Monday, July 28, 2014

My favourite thing

I suppose my favourite thing is my comics collection.  I have quite a few comic books, especially stuff like Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge and Classics Illustrated, but I especially like the Sunday funnies I used to buy on Ebay.  Stuff like Steve Canyon and Prince Valiant and The Heart of Juliet Jones and Flash Gordon and Li'l Abner.

I also have a lot of hardcover reprints of comic strips like Popeye and Peanuts and Calvin & Hobbes.  And I have a practically complete collection of The Menomonee Falls Gazette, which ran in the 1970s and reprinted whole weeks of strips like Rip Kirby and Modesty Blaise and Johnny Hazard and Mary Perkins on Stage.  Come to think of it, maybe I'll read them all again.  What great stories!

I also like our new bread machine.

Sunday, July 27, 2014

Thursdays

When I was little, I remem her liking Thursday nights because they came just before Friday, which came just before the weekend.  When I was twelve and we moved to the Toronto area, I started to get interested in what new movies were being released, though I rarely went to the movies back then, and followed the movie ads in The Toronto Star.  Thursday was the day when they showed what new movies would be released the following day.

Back in the mid-1980s, I'd  watch the sitcom Cheers on Thursday nights. (I've been watching the reruns on Netflix, and it holds up very well.) Later, they showed "must-see TV" like Larry David's Seinfeld and Friends on Thursdays, but I'v never watched Friends--the concept always struck me as deeply uninteresting--and I've only seen Seinfeld in short bits.  But I love David's more recent sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Thursday can be a good day for food shopping because they've just brought in a big load of fresh food for the weekend trade.  And for me Thursday evening at 10:00 is the time when The New York Times puts its Friday crossword puzzle online.  I don't bother with the Monday through Thursday puzzles because they're a bit too easy, but Friday and especially Saturday are nice and challenging.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Inspiration

I wish I could find more inspiration, then I'd write a lot more.  But maybe it's right there and I can't see it!  Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge.  I know a lot of stuff but I with I could imagine a bit more too.  Maybe you can know too much, or at least think that your knowledge is more important that it really is, but can you have too much imagination?

There's this British polar explorer called Ranulph Fiennes.  Someone who worked with him says that the reason he's so fearless is because he has no imagination.  That's English courage for you.  While many Americans have just enough imagination to be afraid of everything.  Does religious faith require more imagination, or less?  I guess it requires the right kind of imagination!

Monday, July 21, 2014

Weddings

I haven't been to a lot of weddings.  Both of them were in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  One was my cousin Owen Vernon when I was ten, the other was my sister Margaret when I was 23.  Needless to say, I've never got married myself.

I'm not sentimental enough to enjoy weddings.  Some people say the weddings industry is a big ripoff, and I wouldn't want to spend a lot of money on getting married.  Your basic city hall wedding would satisfy me, assuming I'd go all the way to marriage in the first place.  And is being married really any better than living together?  I've never cohabited either, so I really don't know.

I remember that when I was 19 I got up early in the morning to watch Prince Charles and Lady Diana's wedding live.  In hindsight it seems lame to go to that much trouble to see people you don't know get hitched.  If you ask me, monarchy is silly.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Gangsters

I've never met a real gangster, fortunately, but some of my favourite movies involve them.  I love those 1930s Warner Brothers productions with James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart wearing fedoras and acting tough.  In more recent years, I've loved the Godfather movies, Goodfellas, Miller's Crossing and Donnie Brasco.  I also like the TV show The Sopranos--though the first season was the best--and parts of Boardwalk Empire.

As far as real-life gangsters go, I think we should legalize and regulate drugs and the sex trade to get rid of the violent racketeers.  But most North Americans haven't learned their lesson from the failure of Prohibition.

Monday, July 14, 2014

Gypsies

What's a gypsy?  I've never knowingly met one (I've heard of gypsy moths.) I remember hearing the Irish Rovers singing "The Gypsy Rover," about a lady of quality falling for a gypsy's charms. In my opera group I've done chorus parts in Bizet's Carmen, in which a gypsy woman leads a soldier astray and gets knifed by him in the end.  And in my choir we sang Verdi's Il Trovatore once, which also involves gypsies.  

Gypsies appeal to operagoers because we see them in romantic terms, though in real life they sometimes get discriminated against. (Some got murdered by the Nazis!) I once read a Tintin comic book that dealt with anti-gypsy prejudice.  Some gypsies prefer being called Roma, so I'll keep that in mind if I ever meet one.

Friday, July 11, 2014

Agendas

What are my agendas?  Just now, I've set out to read every novel that was made into a Classics Illustrated comic book. (I've recently read The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, King of the Mountains and Waterloo.) Sometime I'm going to put my comics  collection into better order.  

I've played several Facebook games of the Sim City type, where you build cities and it takes time to develop different resources so you have to plan.  I like that kind of challenge where it's in a virtual world and your mistakes don't hurt anyone.  

I've been slowly working my way through the book Teach Yourself Ancient Greek:  there are 25 chapters, and I recently finished the twentieth.  I've also been translating Julius Caesar's famous Latin narrative of the wars in Gaul, the one that begins with the line "All Gaul is divided into three parts..." (Actually, for my translation I prefer "Greater Gaul is divided...) I've reached the part where he's fighting the Germans, but run into a tough passage, so I'm leaving it alone a while for now.

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Dirt Roads

When I was growing up in rural New Brunswick, there were still some dirt roads. (When driving on them during dry summer weather, you'd have to close the windows.) There were also roads lined with gravel, and some with a pink mcadam that wasn't full paving. (Sometimes when a road needs repairing you'll see spots worn pink, down to the mcadam layer.) Even the Trans-Canada Highway was undivided in my area back then.

Now that I live in the big city, do I get nostalgic for dirt roads?  Not really.  Some people will say you can get nostalgic for anything, but I don't miss outhouses.  Maybe the world is getting better, at least for the better-off people.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

The late show movie

When I was little, the local TV station called its Saturday late show movie "Top Hat Theatre." (They also gave their Thursday night movie the imaginative name "Thursday Night at the Movies"!) But that was past my bedtime back then.  Later, there was also a channel that played the naughty Carry on movies on the Sunday late show.

In the 1980s the CBC showed a lot of classic Warner Brothers movies on the late show.  For me they were a revelation, way better than the MGM factory.  Angels With Dirty Faces introduced me to James Cagney and the Dead End Kids.  They had a lot of movies with Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart, including The Maltese Falcon!  There were also musicals like Green Pastures and westerns like They Died With Their Boots on.

I'd watch these movies while waiting till David Letterman's show started.  I lived in the Maritimes then, so while the movie began just before midnight Letterman would start just after 1:30.  This gap was long enough that the movie would usually be over by the time for Letterman. (Most movies were shorter back then.) But I missed the ends of G-Men and Dark Victory and The Life of Emile Zola.  I've seen all of G-Men since then, but not Dark Victory because I can't bear to watch any movie with Ronald Reagan in the cast.