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Sunday, April 17 - 2011

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Miscellany

Published: 18 April 2011

Hits: 1940

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

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Found

Published: 14 April 2011

Hits: 1829

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

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Books

Published: 08 April 2011

Hits: 2219

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?

Link: Wiki on Peter Fleming, Brazilian Adventure