Sadly I never did get to just sit outside and read. I had planned on doing that today, but it sprinkled a bit in the morning, and then rained pretty much non-stop from mid-afternoon to 8 pm. I finally went out for a short walk after the rain stopped, but it was too dark and damp to sit outside and read. Too bad. I also had thought I might swing by the Rex, but that is definitely out as well.
I spent far more time than I expected in going through old stacks of newspapers, as they had become a health and safety hazard. I also rearranged a bunch of boxes and looked through them for missing books. In the end, I did turn up Cela's The Hive and another couple of books that had been misplaced. Yea! I also added Kennedy's Ironweed to the stack of short books that I am prioritizing. I did not find a book on COVID that I had hoped would turn up, and now I am wondering if I loaned it to someone.
I'm going to have to go through a similar process for CDs, since there are a few missing items from a box set (and I can't sell it off with anything missing). I probably should book a staycation just to get through everything, but it won't be for a while now. I'll see if I can slowly take other CDs and DVDs to BMV and make a bit more space for this cleaning operation. On the flip side, I picked up some CDs from the bargain bins at Kop's Records up on the Danforth, but a couple of disks were missing from the Red Nichols' Brunswick Sessions, but they actually are available on iTunes, so at least I could listen to the music. When I have absorbed the music, I'll probably put everything out in the Little Free Library out in front.
I actually did have to do a bit more work than I expected today, but that's nothing new, I guess.
The one thing that I would like to tackle is to write up my mini-epic about the Greyhound bus ride. I think I have missed the deadline for submissions to this month's SFYS, but I should just write it up and get it in and then turn my attention to something else.
It may be worth mentioning that I got over to the TMU Image Centre (just before my trek over to BMV), as well as TIFF twice this weekend. I saw Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. I'll just say that aside from the dragging the boat up over the mountain, I didn't like this much at all. It is definitely too long, and the ending makes absolutely no sense.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
We're shown the maps time and again, and the Pongo rapids are miles and miles north of the large tract that Fitzgerald has leased (as he has landed a fair distance south of this land). We're talking about a 2 or 3 day trip up to the Pongos at the fastest under full steam, so the idea that they would float there overnight carried by the river is completely stupid. Then apparently, after his rival buys the boat back from him, he now has sufficient cash to stage an opera on the boat itself, though I assume he has financially ruined his mistress, since the lease on the land expired. Why not simply cut to the chase and hire the musicians to turn up wherever he wanted them? I just found this a completely stupid and exasperating movie, not helped at all by the fact that I hate opera...*
I was supposed to see Hitchcock's Spellbound the next day, also in the front row, but then a seat in the third row opened up at the last minute, and I snagged that. It was still too close, but a little better. This is a lesser film, though I did like Dali 's dream sequence. I did blink for a second and managed to miss the Hitchcock cameo. Oh well.
I'm glad I did take a chance on them, but neither movie really lived up to the hype. (I mean The Boy and The Heron didn't either...) Unfortunately, I think I'll have to break here, since there are still a few things I ought to do before the holiday break is over.
* Oh, and I was in the very front row due to TIFF's completely inane all-you-can-watch membership policies. At the box office, they flat out admitted to me that because they don't get any money from showing all these classics, they stuff them up onto the top floor where they have extremely limited seating. So short-sighted and stupid, and I am not going to renew my membership.
No comments:
Post a Comment