Category Archives: Art, Theatre, & Film

On The Contrariness Of Cats and Oscars

About a month ago we inherited a never-used sofa bed and matching recliner chair. Nice, neutral in style and colour, comfy, and miles more attractive and less uncomfortable than the tiny 30 year old sofa bed we’d picked up at a garage sale a few years ago. That sofa bed was being used as a scratching post by our three fluffy hellions, so we’ve been keeping an eye on them when they’re in the living room with the new set. If we’re in the apartment and hear that tell-tale “skrr skrr skrr pop” we yell, clap our hands sharply, or smack the offending puss on the rear (depends how persistent they’re being). Well, you can’t watch them all day, so when we noticed a thread or two hanging off the arm rest of the sofa we decided to cut further damage off at the pass.

We brought home a board wrapped in heavy jute rope and screwed it to one of our doorframes.

All three cats ignored it.

I rubbed some catnip on it. They rolled around on the floor in front of it on the bits that fell off.

One by one, I picked each of them up and carried them over to the scratching board, put them down, picked up their front paws and made little scratchy movements against the rope. They pulled their paws out of my hands and gave me injured looks.

I gave up. Another terrific idea, down the drain.

A couple of days ago, I was in the bedroom and heard the “skrr skrr skrr pop” sound. I yelled; the sound didn’t stop. I walked into the living room ready to dish out hell, and there was Maggie, on her back legs, back curved, her front claws locked in the rope, looking at me like I was an idiot human who was contradicting myself again.

Ahem.

She’s the only one who uses it, though. The other two haven’t figured it out yet. Either that, or they’ve tried and she’s defended it, having decided it’s her personal scratchy spot. My money’s on Maggie telling the other two that it’s really better for them if they use the sofa to sharpen their claws, and she’s no longer using it to give them more opportunities.

Oscar Review:

I haven’t watched the Oscars in years, namely because I’ve been so disinterested in what the world of film has had to offer. Last night we watched the back-to-back Enterprise episodes, then tuned in to the Academy Awards in time to watch Sidney Poitier receive his honorary Oscar. I missed all the LoTR awards, but by checking out the web site I’m very pleased to see that Howard Shore got a statue for his incredible score which rarely leaves slot no. 3 in our CD tray. I did have the fortune to see Randy Newman win for Best Song, however, which was long overdue.

Overall, I’m pleasantly surprised to see films like Gosford Park and A Beautiful Mind be honoured. These are films which I was excited about when I heard they were being released, then got swamped by the general raving hullabaloo once they came out and lost any desire to see them. Guess I’ll be fixing the oversight soon. Maybe I’ll rent Moulin Rouge so I can finally see that as well. Oh, and why not see LoTR again while I’m at it.

Movies I’m looking forward to this year: Possession (scheduled for July 2002, based on the novel by A.S. Byatt, which is one of my Desert Island books and one of the three focal points of my M.A. thesis – although apparently this film ruins the whole turning point of the novel by making the scholars American!), The Importance Of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde rides again!), Star Wars: Episode Two (I refuse to call it by the lame, lame title – we’ll all call it Ep2 anyway), Spider-Man, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (a title which can’t be changed for American audiences, thanks the gods), and of course, The Two Towers. Most of which are likely to be ignored this time next year.

Life Imitating Art

I walked into the living room last night where my husband was watching the late news, and he said, “The Alliance has a new leader.”

“What?” I said. I’m a Star Wars fan. I’m currently in the beginning of a kick-ass Star Wars RPG campaign that’s the sequel to another kick-ass three-year campaign. I was trying to figure out, in my sluggish, I-worked-all-day-then-fought-with-Bizet-and-treble-clef brain, what political coup someone could have pulled off to have seized control of the New Republic, and why my husband was telling me in the middle of a news broadcast. Was it being reported on local TV?

Oh. He meant the national political party.

I need more sleep. I also apparently need to stop thinking about this campaign so much.

Freedom!

I am free!!

Yes, the claddagh ring finally came off.

And, may I state here and now how much I hate Bizet’s L’Arlesienne Suite. Treble clef. They want me to sight-read treble clef.

You Know You’re In A Canadian Movie When

Men With Brooms was a riot. I highly recommend it. If you do not have a sense of humour, or have qualms about your Canadian identity, do not see it. You won’t get it.

The credits faded in and out on the black screen. There was a loon call. I murmured to my seat-mates, “Well, I know I�m in a Canadian movie — there’s a loon crying.”

Then the deep patriotic male chorus started singing about the land of the silver bush to visuals of rushing water and wind through the trees, and the hoarse calls of beaver and the wail of a bagpipe. If the audience hadn’t known by the loon that it was a Canadian movie, they had to have figured it out by then. Not that it mattered; I was crying with laughter already.

Only our row was laughing in the whole theatre. We must have all been curlers or something. Or patriotic. With a wicked sense of humour.

CURRENT READING:

Well, Men With Brooms, actually, because I had to buy something that wasn’t a fashion magazine at the tiny bookstore near Zellers while I was waiting for my husband to come back and pick me up from my haircut (took him over an hour). Contains a couple of scenes cut from the movie that explain later scenes, and classic descriptions of Canada like, “an endless stretch of blacktop heading deeper and deeper into a land that comprised nothing but rocks, trees, lakes, rocks, trees, lakes, rocks, oops there’s a moose, trees, lakes, rocks and more rocks.” (p.196) And then there’s the opening paragraph, which goes like this:

“Once upon a time, there was a very cold country full of rocks. One particular province of this country, known as the Province of Ontario in the Dominion of Canada, was simply chock full of cold and rocks. The rocks, being rocks, didn’t mind the cold. They just carried on, being rocks, until someone (an immigrant from a not-quite-so-cold but just as full of rocks place called Scotland) disturbed their peace.

“Canada has never been quite the same.” (p.1)

Cello Bits

I finally got the URL for the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra web site last night, so you can check that out. There are still some terrific pictures that have yet to go up – namely the formal “black” photo taken at our last concert in December, and the informal casual dress photo taken last November at one of our rehearsals.

I noticed again last night that the fingers on my left hand are getting black again from working on the fingerboard of my cello. While I’d love to assume that it’s due to my impassioned playing, I rather think that it’s the stain on the fingerboard starting to come off. It’s only a student cello after all. Although the last time I was at Shar in Toronto getting my strings changed, they looked at it and told me that it was a rather high quality student model – apparently it’s not plywood, its solid carved wood. When my stand-mate tried it a couple of weeks ago he exclaimed over how easy it was to get sound out of it, so I guess that dreamy, mellow, 350 year old cello I tried during the same trip to Shar which made me sound like Amanda Forsythe still isn’t a necessary replacement. Ah well.

Today is the official Drink Much In Honour Of Rob day – to Hurley’s we will go!

Significant Events

Two significant events took place yesterday:

1 – I finally had my appointment with the osteopath – hurrah! I felt so comfortable, even though a little voice in my mind kept saying, “This is a sports clinic, look at all these real sports people being treated, you’re just a tense cellist with a little curve to her spine”. My appointment lasted two hours (which made the stiff charge worth it) and there was noticeable improvement which surprised even the osteopath. It’s a wonderful treatment that involves gentle extension of the spine, loosening of the muscles adjoining the vertebrae, stretches, and so forth – less aggressive than a chiropractor. She took a whole forty minutes and talked to me about my life, my headaches, dizziness (in my case all probably connected to spinal problems – wow) and when she asked if I were active, I told her no, but curling competitively for six years as a teen probably didn’t help my back much. Turns out her brother was my first skip. Small, small world, especially when you grew up in the West Island. Unfortunately, she’s so busy that my next appointment isn’t until April! I’m on her cancellation list, though, and I’ll grab whatever comes up, even if I have to get to work late. To avoid this problem of discontinuity, I planned ahead by scheduled three more appointments scattered evenly through April and the beginning of May. Ha.

2 – Last night marked my triumphant return to the Nebula Book Club! Now in its third year, this is an intellectual and social exercise that I’ve been deprived of while I was doggedly practicing the cachucha for The Gondoliers. Now I’m back, and wow, last night really reminded me of how much I’d missed it.

Actually, there was a third significant event: I actually saw an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer that I’d seen before, thereby ending my three-month streak of discovery. It means I’m getting to the point where I started watching it semi-regularly the first time Space started the reruns. There are still tons of episodes I haven’t seen in the third season, but now I’ve got a relatively complete score-card for all the other seasons (except for the newest season, of which I’ve seen all of three episodes). I love this show – campy, yes, and very 90’s teen, but it’s well-written, has terrific characterization, and a sense of humour. Oh, an an over-arching storyline – always impressive. Other than The West Wing, it’s the only show I follow.

CURRENT READING:

When you weren’t looking, I read How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen, a short but poignant examination of what access to books and literacy in general brings people. I’m currently in the middle of Kushiel’s Dart, a rather sensual debut novel by Jacqueline Carey about the training of a courtesan-spy. I’m enjoying the first-person courtly style in which the narrator tells the story (odd, because I often have no patience in artificially elegant writing styles) as well as the varied interpretations of the ideal of love this book raises. It’s really not the type of book I usually like, so I’m quite taken aback to realise that I’m probably going to buy it in hardcover while it’s still available, and the sequel when it’s published in a couple of months too.