TUTS - "Newsies"

My sister-in-law and I have started a tradition (three years running) of going to Theatre Under The Stars in Stanley Park to see a musical every summer.  Now, many of you know I am not particularly fond of musicals, but I leave the theatre with a big grin on my face after these TUTS shows.  It is a perfect piece of summer time froth and I thoroughly enjoy this little dose of musical theatre once a year.  This year, we saw "Newsies" which has the possibility of being a bit more than just froth, because although it is a musical, it is about downtrodden workers trying to organize a union to fight the rich fatcats who get to call all the shots and exploit them and don't treat them fairly.  The basic premise is that there are these kids who sell newspapers ("papes") in the streets of New York and the newspaper owners pay them a pittance which suffices to feed them meagrely but forces them to sleep on fire escapes and wear rags and, if they get hurt or sick, to worry about whether they can afford to take care of themselves (gee, something like what many people face in our enlightened age!)  When the newspaper bosses decide to raise the cost of the papers, the "newsies" decide to organize a union. As a proud union member myself, I am always gratified to see people take their working lives into their own hands and banding together to demand respect in their workplaces.

This show takes on that task and a lot of the songs are about standing together and seizing the day (not "the means of production", that might be a bit radical for a musical that was originally a Disney movie!) but it blinks at the end and gives us too pat an answer for such a complicated situation.  Nevertheless, the show was very entertaining, the songs uplifting, some of the actors outstanding and the dancing was out of this world.  The dancing is always what gets me.  I like the singing and the actors always have a lot of energy, but the dancing is what puts that huge smile on my face.  The dances in this show were especially amazing with tumbling and tapping and show dancing and the chorus line was magnificent.  The lead guy was great (Adam Charles) and a couple of the newsies (a tough Asian kid who smoked all the time and an Italian looking kid with his hat turned backwards -- it's hard to figure out which actor they are) were really amazing.  A couple of the performers seemed to have slight problems with their big songs (Julia Ullrich as Katherine kept having those clogged voice problems, but she soldiered through her big number and was at least 80% successful) but the show was great -- the set looked terrific and the choreography was great in design and execution -- a great evening at the theatre.

The other show, running on alternate nights from "Newsies" is "Mamma Mia" and I'm sure, if you like ABBA, it would be great, too.  (I don't.)  The shows are very popular, so if you want to go, make sure you book ahead.

A Stroll back to the Past

Today, my son and Mr. Evans (a retired SLSS teacher) and I took in the walking tours sponsored by the Steveston Historical Society, which features performances by our talented Steveston-London actors.  The shows run on Saturdays throughout the summer -- at 1 and 3 in the afternoon (two shows a Saturday!).  Tickets are only $12.  The show begins at the museum and then you are led to the Cannery, onto the boardwalk, to a little field by the Prickly Pear nursery and then finally to the Interurban in the park.  It takes about an hour.  It is lots of fun and the performances are terrific, of course.  If you are interested, you can buy tickets here:

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/steveston-alive-walking-tour-vignettes-tickets-62762059008(link is external)​

Support your local theatre folk!  You'll be glad you did.

As You Like It

I've been reading this play and mulling over it because I have decided to do it for our first show in the fall of the next school year.  It is funny and fun and Mr. Price has all sorts of interesting ideas about the set (of course) and last year, when Bard on the Beach did it, they used Beatles songs as a kind of theme (I didn't see it because, when I was reading about the production, someone involved said something that rubbed me the wrong way -- about how the Beatles lyrics were more accessible or something, something that implied that the Beatles improved the play and although the person probably didn't mean what I took it to mean, I didn't like it and that put me off seeing the production. The reviewer was also excited that there was a wrestling match in the beginning and seemed to think that Bard on the Beach had thought of that, but of course, the wrestling is all Shakespeare).

Some of you might remember when we did Midsummer Night's Dream several years ago and we had the opening of the play in the lounge.  Although the kids were very unhappy about that idea, it worked extraordinarily well, and we are thinking of doing that again.  The beginning of the play is in the city and it is a corrupt place and I think it would be good to have it very noisy (like traffic going all the time) and garbage strewn and dirty feeling.  Then, once the principals leave the city and head to the forest of Arden, the audience will follow them into the theatre and the rest of the play will take place there.  The theatre will be all lush and Emily Carr and the sound will be birds and running water.  Doesn't that sound good?

The character of Duke Frederick is Trumpian to me.  I am thinking of having him wear a very blond wig.  He is impulsive and malign and does things without considering the consequences.  He has perpetrated some sort of coup which has sent the rightful duke into banishment in the forest.  The play has quite a theatrical side to it (well, of course, but I mean overtly) with the opening wrestling match, which I would like to do very WWE-style and lots of music and Touchstone, who I would like to see kind of Rodney Dangerfield (does anyone who isn't on "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" know who I'm talking about?)  And of course, as is often the case with Shakespearean comedies, there is the gender bending of Rosalind pretending to be a boy, Ganymede.  She chooses the name, Ganymede, which is the name of a beautiful youth who Zeus (in the form of an eagle) abducted and brought to Olympus to be his cupbearer, and then, when she encounters Orlando in the forest (they met briefly in the city and fell in love), she (in the guise of Ganymede) tells him to pretend that she is Rosalind and he can woo her for practice -- oh, yes, very confusing!  There are other couples who are in love, too, and it's just great fun and I know we'll have a ball putting it together.

Survival is insufficient.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was reading this book.  I finished it yesterday.  I said it wasn't as amazing as The Country of Ice Cream Star, but I did really enjoy it and thought lots of it was terrific.  There were moments while reading that I was completely shocked and surprised (and my mouth dropped wide open) and I really cared about the characters and it made me think about what you would do to survive, if everything came crashing down around you.  For example, I have an earthquake bag in our basement, and they tell us you should have at least three days worth of stuff to tide you over until things get back to normal.  But what if things never got back to normal?  Where would you get water?  (We have creeks on either side of the building, but I'm not sure if the water is good to drink.  Obviously, we'd have to see.  Daisy can drink it, but I don't think that's a good test, because dogs can drink out of puddles on the street.)  What about food?  In both Station Eleven and Ice Cream Star the people have to hunt.  We see lots of birds, but they are very fast and very wary of us.  How would you kill one?  We have no weapons and don't know how to use them if we did have them.  And I have a few edible things growing in the yard, but not enough to feed us for long.  The yard is very shady and so most vegetables don't do well.  How would you defend yourself?  If stronger people came with weapons and told us they were taking the house, we couldn't do anything to stop them.

The author of this book chose to set most of the story years after the initial pandemic that kills most of the people.  She said she did this because she was not as interested in the initial mayhem that would ensue, but more in what people would do to try to rebuild society.  The Travelling Symphony has decided to move from community to community and put on concerts and plays, because "survival is insufficient".  This is a quote from "Star Trek: Voyager" (one of my husband's favourite shows) and the main character in the book, Kirsten, says it's her favourite quote of all time and she has it tattooed on her arm (I read a review that said this was an odd "favourite" for her to have when she has all of Shakespeare, but I don't think I agree.  This quote is from something that she loved that is gone forever and it is the raison d'etre for her and her companions).  They perform Shakespeare and Beethoven because people would want the best from the world that has been, for the most part, destroyed.  In another place, a man has created a museum of civilization in which he preserves things from the old world -- cell phones and credit cards and pieces of identification.  Someone else starts a newspaper and looks after a library.  What would you treasure most if disaster struck?

It’s 33C outside in London. You can’t tell whether people are crying or sweating. We can’t do anything until we get a say – which, this time, we did not. So we beat on, against the sun, borne back ceaselessly into hell.

This is a quote from The Guardian, a British newspaper to which I have a subscription.  I like it because it gets me away from news solely focused on Donald Trump, with whom I admit I am a bit obsessed (in a very negative way).  I like the quote because it refers to a favourite quote of mine from The Great Gatsby, which everyone should read and then reread a few years later.  (There are so many great things to read and I am afraid I waste a lot of time reading mystery novels instead of stuff that's more worthwhile.)

Britain has just chosen a new prime minister, after Theresa May resigned last month.  They are trying to deal with Brexit and can't seem to make any progress either to leave the European Union or to have another election or another referendum to see if they should remain a member.  Boris Johnson is their "sort of" choice for prime minister (they didn't have an actual election, because Theresa May resigned without calling one and so the party chooses a new leader and because the party {in this case, the conservatives} is in power, the leader they choose is also the Prime Minister).  Boris Johnson has said that Britain will leave the European Union on October 31 (a rather inauspicious date) with or without a deal.  But of course, it's like a marriage and not so easy just to part ways without getting lawyers involved and organizing how you're going to share the wealth and who will take care of the children and things like that.  I don't know how most British people feel but certainly the Guardian (which has leftist leanings) is not optimistic about how Boris will manage things.  He has a very colourful past -- he was originally a journalist, but was embroiled in scandal for making up a quote and then attributing the quote to his godfather (he is very well connected and his godfather is a well known historian named Colin Lucas) and then was elected mayor of London (for two terms) and then entered national politics, serving in the Conservative cabinet and then resigning in protest against Theresa May's inability to get Brexit done.  He has very blond hair, and it is interesting to me that it is reminiscent of  Donald Trump's hair -- neither coif appears to me to be very attractive.  Anyway, as you can see by the quote, Hannah Jane Parkinson (the writer of the article which is topped off by this great quotation) is not hopeful.

Here in my safe corner of the world, I am sitting looking out at my view of the North Shore and watching the birds and squirrels eat the seeds and nuts I have put out for them.  The squirrels are so funny -- the way they leap from the balcony to the tree next to the house - they throw themselves into the void with their little feet curled up under them and then grab onto a branch and nimbly run into the leaves and disappear, only to return shortly for more nuts.  Daisy and I saw a lovely pileated woodpecker on our walk this morning.  I am reading another dystopian novel (recommended by my sister) called Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.  It's not as amazing as Ice Cream Star but it certainly makes you appreciate the infrastructure that we depend on -- electricity and running water and transit systems and grocery stores - which do not exist for the people in the Symphony (which is a group of travelling musicians and actors, who have survived the pandemic that has decimated the world in this book).  Last night, after aquafit, I had a delicious double chocolate raspberry ice cream cone and I don't suppose the people in Station Eleven would ever get to eat such a wonderful confection with no way to refrigerate anything.  Be grateful for the wonders that we have at our fingertips.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

This Machine Kills c02

That's the headline on the Guardian Weekly cover and the "machine" is a tree.  The Guardian article (written by Damien Carrington) says that "planting billions of trees across the world is by far the biggest and cheapest way to tackle the climate crisis".  It goes on to say that a worldwide tree planting program "could remove two thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities".

It is a rather hopeful prospect and seems simple, but of course, nothing is simple in reality, I guess.  In the same edition, it tells about the terrifying destruction of the Brazilian rainforest and that the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has said that the Amazon is "ours" (meaning it belongs to Brazil and the rest of the world should butt out) and that they can do what they like with it.  Here, at home, we have logged much of our old growth forests and we continue to debate the question of the environment vs. jobs as if you can't have one without the other.

But, when we all feel so helpless in the face of the climate emergency, it is good to know that there are things we can do ourselves, and planting a tree is always a hopeful exercise.  I have been doing a lot of work in the yard this month, and it is an amazing place.  We live right on the edge of the forest and if I don't get out there for a while, the forest starts moving in pretty quickly.  It sends out the blackberry bushes and ferns first and then follows with sprouts of a tree that I can't identify -- it has jagged edged leaves and produces a nut in a green casing that the squirrels love.  We have a large bush of this tree at the edge of the yard.  Anyway, I have a bag of play sand by our little fire bowl (which we don't use anymore because we are afraid of starting a fire that will spread and burn down all of Port Moody).  We used it to smother the fires in years gone by.  A brave shoot of whatever that bush is has grown up in the play sand.   I have decided to give the little guy a better chance and plant him in the soil by the other bush.  I hope that he flourishes and that each of us can figure out a way to plant a few trees.  If you don't have a yard, you can always give a donation to organizations like TreeCanada that plant trees or the Ancient Forest Alliance that tries to protect trees that are doing their work to save the planet right now!  Go out and hug a tree today!  You'll feel better, I promise you.

View from the natural world

Daisy let me sleep in a little this morning.  She is getting quite old and creaky and likes to lie on the day bed in my room as long as she can before she answers "the call of nature".  Usually she is anxious to get up at about 5:30 a.m. and keeps jumping off the bed onto the floor and clicking across the room, down the stairs, clicking on the kitchen floor, then up the stairs to stare at me lying there with my eyes closed, pretending to be asleep, hoping she'll buy it and get back onto her bed as well.  Sometimes it works.

This morning we slept in until about 7!  Once we get up, we have to get going for our walk before anything else happens.  Daisy can't just "do her business" in the backyard.  She has to have a walk.  (It sounds a bit like I'm her slave . . . maybe.)  I'm just as glad once we get going.  It's cool in the morning and the birds are singing and the air feels fresh.

Off we go.  Soon after we started, we could hear a murder of crows making quite a kerfuffle a couple of blocks from our house, so we headed that way to see what was up.  I am always a bit worried, because I don't want any animals to be hurt and the crows were sounding pretty worked up.  Crow babies live on the ground for several days before they can learn to fly well, and of course, they're very vulnerable when they're not able to fly to get away from predators.  Their parents do their best (if you've ever been dive-bombed by a crow, you know what I'm talking about) but there is a limit to what they can do.

Anyhow, we got to the spot and saw a lot of crows on the wires around a little house which appears to be awaiting demolition (Port Moody is busy transforming itself these days).  We looked over the fence and saw a mother raccoon and two baby raccoons (kits) in the yard.  I was afraid that we would see a struggling baby crow (chick), but we didn't -- the raccoons had some sort of plastic tray of pastries that someone had thrown out and they were feasting on it, so I guess the crows were cheesed because they wanted the pastries for themselves.  The mother raccoon seemed to feel like they had eaten all the pastry they needed and she wanted to go so she scaled the fence and walked along the top of it to leave, but the babies couldn't reach high enough on the fence to be able to hoist themselves up.  They tried but couldn't manage it.  Finally the mom came back and they disappeared into the berry bushes at the edge of the yard.  By that time, the crows had calmed down.  The pastry package was left behind, so maybe the crows can get a few crumbs now.

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee

wsj.com

I have been watching this show as an antidote to the news which I find very disturbing.  I can't just ignore it completely, so I'm going to say that my family experienced hearing the phrase "go back where you came from" many times.  My dad was Ukrainian-Canadian and he was a bit of a radical politically and many people said to him that if he didn't like Canada, he should "go back where he came from" (which would have been Tiny, Saskatchewan, where he was born, and not Ukraine).  Just because my dad thought and said that Canada could be a better country (can't we all get better?  isn't that the point of having a democracy, in which we can suggest ways we can improve and help each other and figure out the solutions to problems, collectively, instead of just struggling on our own to survive?) didn't mean he didn't love Canada.  He fought in the Canadian army in World War II.  He worked hard all his life and paid his taxes and stood up for his beliefs and he and my mom raised my sister and me and taught us to be kind and honest and work hard and respect the law and be good citizens who think about how things are done and try to make things better.  I am proud of how Canada is a nation of diverse people who try to get along and who believe that we should take care of each other, but obviously, we send people to parliament to discuss how things are going and try to come up with ways to make things better.  If they all just sat there and said how great everything was, nothing would get done.  If anyone ever says, "go back where you came from", don't let that hurt you.    That person doesn't know what they're talking about.  We need people to come here from other places.  That's what makes Canada a great place to live.

Anyhow, after that tirade, which has nothing to do with "Comedians in Cars", I will say that I have watched a number of these shows and they do what television is good at, which is give you something that is entertaining to watch when you feel tired or just want something easy to stare at while you recuperate from Aquafit.  Someone said that the show isn't funny, and it isn't always, because I don't think that's what it's trying to do.  I think it's more like a rather low key talk show, and Jerry just lets the person be themselves in a kind of hyper-themselves sort of way.  The best guest I've seen so far is Alec Baldwin.  I don't think of him as a "comedian" ( I don't think Jerry cares that much about their credentials) but he is an excellent actor and he is entertaining and tells good stories and makes the twenty minutes of the show just fly by.  He told this great story about Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas and he did both of their voices and even kind of looked like them when he told their part of the story.  He also told a story about a play he was in (I think it was "Entertaining Mr. Sloane", by Joe Orton) and he did his own lines and the other people's and it was terrific.  A bit of escapist fluff in a scary time.

Rainy Days and Wednesdays

I'm quoting an old song title there -- "Rainy Days and Mondays" -- and the song says the two always get her down.  It's a song by the Carpenters (a brother and sister duo) who were huge in the 70's.  Their music was what you would call "easy listening" and Karen had a very gentle kind of voice.  The lyrics of the song

Talking to myself and feeling old
Sometimes I'd like to quit
Nothing ever seems to fit
Hanging around
Nothing to do but frown
Rainy days and Mondays always get me down

seem rather ominous when you know that Karen Carpenter died in 1983 after a long battle with anorexia, but the song goes on to say that she can hang out with her friend who loves her and like most Carpenter songs, it's nice to sing along to and just seems to capture that rather appealing melancholy you sometimes feel on a rainy day.

Anyhow, that's a long intro to me saying I like days like this!  It's raining heavily and so there's nothing better to do than curl up with a good mystery novel (luckily, I have just the thing!) and drink your coffee slowly and maybe make what my husband and I used to call "a big greasy breakfast" (!)

My sister and I were talking the other day about the drudgery of cooking meals every day.  We both like food, but sometimes, the daily grind can get pretty tedious.  I don't mind cooking as much as she does and I was very encouraged because my youngest son said, not long ago, that I've never made anything he didn't want to eat (high praise).  These long easy summer days mean that I can try things that I usually don't have time for.  I made a chicken enchilada casserole yesterday and it was very nice, I thought.  I think the main thing is to cook enough so that you know you don't have to follow the recipe religiously.  I used to get caught up in measuring spices exactly and if it said shredded chicken, thinking it had to be shredded and couldn't just be cut up in small pieces.  Then I got a cookbook by James Barber and he would say "cook enough meat for two" or "pour in half a glass of wine" and then I watched the tv show "Chopped" and I learned that you could use one thing instead of another if you didn't have exactly what the recipe said.  (I know -- many of you are saying "duh" at this point, but my mom wasn't a good cook and didn't show me what she did know anyway -- my fault, not hers, because she did offer.)  Anyway, I'm much better at throwing a meal together than I once was.

Here's the recipe (kind of) for the casserole.  I'm not looking at the recipe I kind of followed, because I want to show that it's all under your own control!

You cut up two onions and a green pepper and cook them in a bit of olive oil until they're soft-ish.  Then you add three cloves of garlic, chopped up, and oregano, cumin, pepper, cinnamon and chili powder and then cook it a bit and then you add canned tomatoes (the recipe said crushed, but I didn't have that so I used spiced stewed tomatoes and it was fine).  You have to cook some chicken -- I used two breasts and cut them up into small pieces but didn't shred them like the recipe said.  You need grated cheese and you need to cut some tortillas into strips (like lasagna noodle shape).

You put some of the tomato mixture into the bottom of a square or rectangular baking dish.  Then you  layer the stuff, tortilla strips, meat, cheese, tomato stuff, strips, meat, cheese and finish with cheese on top.  Then you bake it in a 375 degree oven for about 1/2 hour.  It's like Mexican lasagna.  A nice meal for a rainy Wednesday.

Fistful of Kicks

I went to see these guys last night and it was lots of fun, even though I know absolutely nothing about anime.  I probably learned something about it yesterday, because this group does improv based on anime and I think I recognized some of the tropes -- like the hearts flowing from the sword -- am I right?  I can't see when they next perform, but keep your eyes open because they do improvised stage fighting which is terrific and act out a story based on an audience suggestion with lots of energy and imagination.  And of course, one of our Steveston London Theatre alums is a great part of the cast!  The group has helped me rediscover the Havana which is a restaurant with a theatre in the back and you can have a bite to eat before or after the show and then see some improv, or standup or something different from the run-of-the mill theatre (not that you shouldn't see that, too!)

Okay, I'm off to see the Alberto Giacometti stuff at the Art Gallery -- even though I somehow wrenched my back reading Ice Cream Star.  I feel like a very old woman walking along with my back bent and my arms swinging helplessly.  Very pathetic.  Help me across the street if you see me!

The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman

This is the book I'm reading right now.  It is about a dystopian future United States of America in which a disease (called WAKS -- not sure what it is supposed to be) has killed all the adults and just left only children behind.  The children only live until they're 18 or so and then die themselves of something called "posies" which exhibits itself in lesions and then weakens the person, sometimes making them confused or paranoid, and ultimately they die.

The protagonist's name is Ice Cream Star and at this point in the book, she has gone in search of a cure for the posies, because her 18 year old brother, who is the leader of her group, is succumbing to the disease and of course, everyone else she knows will soon die also.  The world is a dangerous place -- there are different factions -- the Sengles, of which Ice Cream is a member, the Christings, who hold onto Christianity but do not practice it the way people do in our society, the Lowells, who live in a town and keep the town's infrastructure going -- they have electricity and houses to live in, but they don't share it with the other groups, although they do trade, and El Mayor, the leader of the Lowells, gave Ice Cream her horse, Money.  The most dangerous of the people who still inhabit their territory are the roos (I think this might refer to Russians -- one of the roos that the Sengles captured gave Ice Cream a "Kalash" -- a gun that fires multiple times -- obviously a Kalashnikov, the Russian rifle).

The book is compelling reading and I am enjoying it a lot.  It is written in a very strange way -- the writer has tried to explore how language might evolve in this new world.  Obviously, it is not hundreds of years in the future, because they still find clothes and tins of food left from when everyone died of WAKS.  The roo that Ice Cream captured has photographs of himself in some war but so far we don't know what war it is.  So Ice Cream narrates in a kind of English, but the syntax is different and she uses lots of French words, like enfant for babies, or little children, and belle for beautiful.  Here's an example of the language:

My name be Ice Cream Fifteen Star.  My brother be Driver Eighteen Star, and my ghost brother Mo-Jacques Five Star, dead when I myself was only six years old.  Still my heart is rain for him, my brother dead of posies little.  My mother and my grands and my great-grands been Sengle pure.  Our people be a tarry night sort, and we skinny and long.  My brother Driver climb a tree with only hands, because our bones so light, our muscles fortey strong.  We flee like a dragonfly over water, we fight like ten guns, and we be bell to see.  Other children go deranged and unpredictable for our love.

I read some of it to Anthony and he said he thought the language would get very tiresome very quickly, but I'm not finding it that way.  You get into the rhythm and it helps you focus on the time and place of the story.  It is a long book (I am only halfway through after two days and I am a fast reader) but it really moves along and the characters are really interesting and I obviously want to find out what the cure for the posies is (if there is one) and whether Ice Cream will find it and who the roos are and what will happen to Ice Cream and El Mayor and Driver and Pasha Roo and Keeper and all the characters.  I would recommend it if you want a really different reading experience and if you are interested in language (I am) and dystopian fiction.

"The Guilty"

I watched this movie on Netflix yesterday afternoon while it was raining.  (Always a good way to spend a rainy day.)  It is a Danish production starring Jakob Cedergren.  It takes place in one location -- in the emergency call centre when Asger Holm has been sent to serve while he awaits trial for an officer-involved shooting.  His hearing for the shooting is to take place the next day.

He has a rather laisse faire attitude at first, but he gets involved in a terrible unfolding situation through an emergency call and becomes deeply invested in helping.  Most of the film is just a tight closeup of his face as he listens to the different people on the emergency line.  It was quite an extraordinary experience and something only a movie could do, but yet it didn't involve any of the trickery that I have come to find so boring in these intensely popular super hero movies -- explosions, car chases, long repetitive fights.   It just delved deeply into this one rather ordinary guy's psyche.  It takes us from the guy we see at the start, who is putting in time, waiting for his chance to get back to his "real job" to a guy who has been transformed by his experience. I recommend it highly.

I confess I am interested in seeing the new Lion King movie.  I really like Donald Glover; he's one of these real modern Renaissance people and the shots of the "live" action seem pretty inspiring, especially when you think of the terrible assaults we are perpetrating on the natural world.  BUT, I'm not sure I want to sit in a movie theatre with a lot of little kids.  That might be a prejudice of mine, but I just remember movies when I was a little kid and how the popcorn boxes were flying and stuff like that.

Of course, I also remember seeing "E.T." in a movie theatre (yes, I'm that old) -- I was an adult, but a friend of mine had a young son and we took him to see it (it seems shocking to think that that little boy would be in his forties now -  I haven't seen him since he was about 11).  He was enraptured from the moment the movie started and in the scene where the kids are frantically riding their bikes, little David was miming it along with them, he was so involved in the story.

And I also remember when I was a little girl in Weyburn and on Boxing Day, the Soo Theatre always had kids' movies and you could go and stay all day and so I went (I would have been about 10) -- all by myself, because that's what we did then -- no one ever thought that you needed a parent to come along to the all day movies for kids.  I paid my dime and went in with my popcorn.  The movie people were having trouble with the film or something and couldn't get it to work and the kids were getting restless, so they darkened the theatre and showed, of all things, "Pal Joey" which was a very grown up movie, with Frank Sinatra in the lead role of a womanizing ne'er do well who wants his own night club and Rita Hayworth playing a society woman who used to be a stripper!  But as soon as the movie started,  all of the kids (me included) settled down and watched it, just as if it was "Mary Poppins" or whatever we thought we were going to see.  Nobody left and, as far as I know, nobody complained.  And why would we?  Who wouldn't want to see Frank Sinatra and Rita Hayworth?

Rip Torn

The actor, Rip Torn, died yesterday.  He was a terrific actor, a force of nature, as they would say.  He was most famous, I guess, for getting into big fights and living a gigantic life, but on stage, he was loved for astonishing performances of Tennessee Williams' characters ("Sweet Bird of Youth" - in which he played the nasty brother of Heavenly -- you can see him in the movie, but apparently, the movie can't hold a candle to the play performance directed by Elia Kazan) and for the character he played on "The Larry Sanders Show" -- Artie, the producer.  He also played "Zed" in "Men in Black" and lots of other things.  He said that he never missed a performance -- that once he passed a kidney stone on stage on opening night of a play.

He was known for having a volatile temper.  Apparently, the reason he didn't get Jack Nicholson's role in "Easy Rider" was that he and Dennis Hopper (no shrinking violet himself) had some sort of altercation with a knife and one of them got stabbed.  (Dennis Hopper said Rip Torn stabbed him, but Torn sued him and won so I don't know what that means.)  He said this about his reputation for being "out of control".  "What do they say about all the guys that are tremendous actors? Don't they say they have a volatile temper and emotions? Yeah, sure they do! They're not saying they like a nice, mild guy. Look at Sean Penn." (that's from IMDB)

He was married to Geraldine Page (who was an extraordinary actor and played Alexandra Del Lago, a fading movie star, in the aforementioned "Sweet Bird of Youth").  He was married to her until her death and called her "his soul" and said that she taught him how to deal with the challenges of his temper -- "I learned from Gerry that all you need is time on stage.  No matter how I felt, no matter what anyone said about me, I always had the audience."

Flying Ant Days

I'm sure you've seen some of these characters around lately.  I was at Aquafit yesterday at the Port Moody Pool and the pool was full of them!  The poor instructor (who was really good and led an excellent workout) was being swarmed by them -- in her mouth and eyes and all over her.  But she kept going to her credit.  When we arrived at the pool, there were only a few of them and so I rescued them and put them on the pool deck outside of the water, but once the workout started, more and more arrived and by the end of the hour, the pool was full of them!

I know that these ants appear in large numbers at certain times of the year and I remember previous summers doing aquafit and trying to save them by getting them out of the pool.  Apparently, they get wings when they're ready to mate.  The females will lose their wings after they've successfully mated and then they proceed to build a nest for themselves and their babies.  The males die shortly after they take to flight, whether they mate or not.  They're just regular ants -- Wikipedia calls them "pavement ants", I think.  It also says that they are beneficial, providing food for birds and helping in the garden.  They won't be around for long and now that I know about them, I'm not as freaked out by their numbers and I guess I won't worry too much about those poor individuals who get stuck in the pool, although it seems pretty tough to think that some of them get this one chance to fly and then, their lives are over.  Is that a metaphor?  I think everything's a metaphor or it could be.

EVIL (East Vancouver Improv League)!

Last night, a friend and I went to the Havana Theatre on Commercial Drive to see some improv.  EVIL (see above) was performing and it was great fun and if you're trying to think of something to do, go to the Havana and have dinner and then take in a show.  They have a little theatre behind the restaurant and there is something going on there most evenings.  It's on Commercial Drive, too, and that is such a great street with little shops and places to have coffee and watch all the cool people stroll by.  It is so much more interesting than some of the streets in the downtown area, because it feels like people are having lively conversations all around you and the shops are all different and unique and people are friendly and dressed in ways that you think "oh, I should wear that" and the atmosphere is just very appealing.

Next Sunday, it's more improv with "Fistful of Kicks" with an alumnus from SLSS in the cast.  This group does anime-based improv, so that should be very exciting.  I don't know much about anime (maybe I'll do some research over the week!) but I'm excited to see the performance.

Tonight is the first aquafit class of the summer.  I always do aquafit at our local outdoor pool as much as I can in the summer.  I don't like to go indoors to pools, but it is nice to be outside in the fresh air and exercise in this non-threatening environment.  I feel like I have managed to get a bug (or something) in my ear and I hope that won't stop me from bouncing around in the water tonight.  I think I will try to see the doctor and see if he can take a look in my ear to see if there's anything there.  It's not buzzing or anything, but it feels kind of like there's something crinkly just inside the ear lobe.

Belated "Happy Canada Day" Wishes!

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Well, it's still Canada after all and aren't we all glad we live in this nice peaceful country with a good standard of living and a diverse population and free medical care for everyone?  Yay, Canada!

I went to the Salmon Festival Parade in Steveston on Canada Day and it was very nice.  There were lots of people marching (including some of the kids who will be performing those historical vignettes in Steveston all summer, on Saturdays at 1 and 3 -- buy your tickets now!  Here's the link:  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/steveston-alive-walking-tour-vignettes-tickets-62762059008 -- it will be lots of fun and you'll learn stuff about Steveston!)  This is what happened to me at the parade.  I found a nice spot to stand -- near a flower box and in the shade.  When I saw the kids coming, I put my hat on the flower box and stepped forward to wave at them as they marched by.  They looked great in period costumes from the museum.  They were handing out information about the walking tours.  Then I went back to the flower box to get my hat.  It was gone!  I looked under the flower box.  Not there!  A man was standing nearby and said, in a friendly voice, "are you looking for your hat?"

"Yes!" I said.

He smiled.  "I gave it to a little kid who was going by in a stroller."

"What?"

"Sorry.  I gave it to a little kid."

Was it your hat?  No.  Whatever possessed you?  He said he was sorry several times, but that doesn't get my hat back.  Tsk!  Canadians, eh?