Guelph Pride 2007

I just got home from the most fun evening I've had in a long time. After our concert, a number of us went to the Guelph Pride dance, hosted at Holiday Inn.

The crowd filled the banquet hall, and Tammy was an excellent deejay as usual, playing a good mix of dance songs, new and old, that appealed to everybody. For a few minutes the dance floor cleared so Muffy St. Bernard could entertain us for two numbers. Quite a few people from the chorus were there, gradually dwindling as they got tired and went home.

There was one particularly hot young man in the room. And there was a friend I've had a crush on for a while. It so happened that friend picked up the other hot fellow. It brought home the fact that they're both 20-something, and I'm not anymore. But the benefit of being 40-something is I don't care so much.

I stuck with rye and ginger, and didn't get indigestion. I spent longer on the dance floor than I've done in ages, and closed the place down with Crystal, Colleen, Paula, Margie and Terrilyn—a hot group of lesbians I really enjoy, but rarely get to spend time with.

Driving home with Paula, we agreed it was the best dance Guelph has ever had.

One of my closer friends opted out of the event, which was fine, but did so with bitterness. In my opinion you get out of community what you put into it. It's a lot of work for people to organize such events, but invariably other people would rather criticize than get involved and influence the course of things. This is a simple fact of life that frequently escapes notice. Anyway, friends who attended the dance all seemed to enjoy themselves.

I used to hate coming home alone from dances. That, too, has changed. It's nice just sitting here, winding down, and recording another fine memory.

Maggie as Lady Macbeth

In a Salon article by Steve Vineberg, appears this reference to Maggie Smith's performance of Lady Macbeth at the Statford Festival in Ontario:

[Martin] Knelman, who chronicles the history of the Canadian Stratford Shakespeare Festival in his book "A Stratford Tempest," sees the beginning of Smith's collaboration with the festival's brilliant young artistic director, Robin Phillips, as the salvation of her career. She performed at Stratford in 1976, 1977, 1978 and 1980, often under Phillips' direction and often opposite Brian Bedford. By this time she was remarried, to playwright Beverley Cross, who was an old, pre-Stephens flame. (He helped to raise her two sons by Stephens, Chris and Toby, both of whom became actors.) I was in my 20s then, teaching high school in Montreal, and I used to make the seven-hour drive to Stratford in a state of joyfully prolonged delirium once or twice a summer to see those productions, conscious that I was watching a pair of theatrical legends and a company in a golden age. I saw her Rosalind and Lady Macbeth and Beatrice, her Queen Elizabeth in "Richard III," "The Sea Gull" and "The Guardsman," Edna O'Brien's "Virginia" and a completely reconceived "Private Lives" -- all magical, unforgettable.

This is the same Lady Macbeth I saw at the age of about 13. She was incredibly sinister.