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Sunday, April 17 - 2011
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2006
A miscellany of errands today - the boy having cancelled on our plans (he came up with "better", a shame as I was hoping to take him to see "Hobo With A Shotgun" at the Uptown...), so off - first stop the Hillhurst flea market (garage sales have begun, but I haven't found anything worth attending yet...), here a couple of books - Grey Owl and Henry Miller, a couple of thrift shops (pair of Timberland Loafers and an antique Sunburst bowl), then home for a nap, then the movie.
Not Hobo with a Shotgun, I'd like that to be an IFN pick, but I'm not sure if it's restricted or not. Instead I go to Rubber - the Movie, showing at the Plaza. First a bite to eat at Higher Ground, then the film.
Now I should have been tipped off by the abundance of tires and props adorning the outside of the theater that this was going to be a highlight of the Calgary Underground Film Festival, but I didn't think. Fortunately I was done early, and departing the Higher Ground discovered that there was a line extending around the block waiting to buy tickets. I dutifully got in line, the anticipation improves the film...
And it was - well, interesting. Gory (a staple of underground and cult films it would appear), but self-aware and he somewhat plays with, a nod and a wink, with cinematic conventions. Worth it, if your into that sort of stuff, I'd give it a worthwhile....
Now it's back to work.
Achaemenid Cup
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Found
- Hits: 1893
A man uses an old metal cup given to him by his grandfather for target practice. Man later has cup appraised, and discovers that it's made of solid gold, over 2300 years old, with an appraised value of over a quarter of a million dollars. Man sells cup.
Link: Achaemenid Cup
Peter Fleming - Brazilian Adventure
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 2314
Only about half way through (a slender, unfortunately abridged version), but as I bought it today that isn't so bad. It's terrific. The author, Peter Fleming (brother of Ian Fleming), is off in or around 1933 in search of the Fawcett expedition that vanished in Brazil in 1925.
I've read a similar account in The Lost City of Z, the book, and was intrigued when I found this closer account. It's excellent.
Excerpts:
"W made amicable and expansive gestures with our arms. We grinned. We put on every semblance of delight; "Ticanto" we cried. We had been told it was the thing to say. "Ticanto," we cried with desperate geniality, wondering what it meant."
- This upon meeting a possibly hostile tribe
"Alas the alligator is a fraud. His formidable reputation -- as empty as his skin, which mountebanks formerly hung in their booths -- is, like that skin, a hallowed device of quackery, a trick to fire imaginations which have to take the tropics on trust."
- This on alligator hunting.
"Beyond that, and forty feet below it, was the river; a river half a mile wide and more: a river so big, so long expected, and so phenomenal in every way that it seemed hardly possible to have come on it so suddenly, to have no more warning that it was waiting for us round the corner of those palms than we should have had of a dog's dead body in the road: a river fired and bloody in the sunset: a river that we loved instantly and learnt at last to hate. we gaped at this river. There was exaltation in the air."
- On first encountering the Amazon.
It's so far a great book, wonderful (although abridged) reading, and curious to note the author (like Speke in the search for the source of the Nile) died in a hunting accident. How common can that be?
L'EFFET DE SERGE
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Theatre
- Hits: 1963
The trick, of course, is to invite the boy to a play, confirm a time to pick him up and then disconnect the call.
Don't answer when he calls back. He's just looking for more information, and the more information you provide, the less likely he'll be to attend.
And so you build suspense.
The play, tonight, was "L'EFFET DE SERGE" at the Grand, the last on my season tickets. I'll be renewing....
Now the Grand has lost it's partner, The Velvet Lounge, who handled the food/drink side of the theater. It was hard, really, to see how they made it, the before and after theatre crowd aren't enough to support a business that has bills 365 days a year and shows perhaps only 50. And the position of the bar, well, chances are if you weren't seeing a play you weren't popping in for a drink. Add to these handicaps the fact that if you think restaurants are bitchy and political atmospheres, what with all the out of work actors and writers and such, imagine what it's like when the restaurant opens next to the theater, with it's employed and presumably successful actors and writers and such.
It boggles the mind.
And so the boy and I are there, in the lonely empty space occupied formerly occupied by the velvet lounge, now subcontracted to some anonymous catering company that takes the liberty of charging me $8.50 for a 3 oz. glass of wine.
All the bitchiness and politics aside, I miss the Velvet.
It's a good space, this, and I hope they find a way to make some sort of restaurant/theater partnership work. But it won't be easy...
The play, "Experimental Theatre" - well, it leaves us at a loss. Not good or bad at a loss, just taking some time to digest. It's the sum of ordinary and peculiar events in the life of Serge, part of an ongoing look into people's lives as conceived by Philippe Quesne of Vivarium Studio. It's curious, thought provoking, unconventional, these are good things.
Links: La mélancolie des dragons & La mélancolie des dragons - his next production.
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