Le Poinconneur des Lilas

            On Wednesday in the early afternoon I was half an hour into a siesta when there was a knock on my open door. It was my upstairs neighbour, David, telling me that he couldn’t find a charger for the battery that was in the camera he’d given me. He didn't give me back the battery though. He offered me another guitar but I told him I didn't need any more guitars. I probably shouldn’t have put it that way because I could use an upgrade of my acoustic. He said it’s a 12-string. I told him it’s hard enough work just playing 6 strings. He asked if I had any beer. I said sure, do you want some? He said, “Yeah, give me a couple". I gave him two of the several cans of Budweiser that he’d already given me a month or so ago. He handed me $20. I told him he didn’t have to give me any money. He said it’s okay. I said, “I should give you more beer then!" He said, "No, no, it's okay!"

            I finished my nap and got up at 16:00. At 16:30 a rainstorm hit hard for fifteen minutes and then the sun came out, though I couldn’t find a rainbow. The rain came with a strong wind and several of the plant pots that David had left on the second floor fire escape got knocked over, spilling soil on the deck, quite a bit of which the wind blew through the door and down the hall in front of my apartment. I decided not to take a bike ride because there would be too many puddles to ride through and it might rain again. I’ve ridden several days in a row anyway, so it was nice to get a day off and to get some work done at home. Also the rain and wind were quite refreshing and seemed to clean up the air.            

            I did some work on my book cover.
            I finished editing a video of me singing Serge Gainsbourg’s Le Poinconneur des Lilas and published it. There’s a slight glitch where I edited an error but I was pleased to find that it looked a lot less glitchy in the rendered video. I started uploading it to YouTube and this will be my first publicly presented recording of me singing in French, so it’ll be interesting if I get some feedback from francophones. It took about three hours for it to upload.

            I was working on a translation when suddenly the document disappeared as well as my journal document, which was also open. When I tried to reopen them I got a message that said the documents were locked for editing “by Christian”. I tried deleting all my temp files but that didn’t work. Finally when I closed Word in my task manager I was able to reopen the documents.

            I made pizza with a tortilla, cheddar cheese and way too much sauce but it tasted good anyway. I had it while watching two episodes of Dobie Gillis.

            The first one seemed to be trying to make a point. Dobie’s teacher, Mr Pomfritt (played by William Schallert, who later played Patty’s father on the Patty Duck Show) has decided to quit teaching because he can make more money driving an ice cream truck. The school board, which seems to consist of all the parents, including Dobie’s, don’t want to give the teachers a pay raise. But as Pomfritt’s last day approaches all the other teachers come down with influenza (I guess having them strike on prime time television in 1960 would be too communistic). The parents decide to temporarily take on the roles of the teachers, with Mr Pomfritt supervising. Dobie’s father teaches English literature, though the only literature he knows is Casey at the Bat; Dobie’s mother becomes the girls gym teacher, but rather than callisthenics she wants to teach them interpretive dance; the wealthy Mrs Osborn teaches home economics, though she has never had to cook in her life and does not recognize the stove. Instead she teaches the girls how to handle servants and husbands. Ultimately it’s a disaster and so in the end the parents, instead of giving the teachers the extra $15 they are asking for, offer them $40 to come back.

            In the second story a sacred lion belonging to a visiting prince from a made up country similar to India, escapes from the cage where he’s being kept and makes friends with Maynard. It follows him to school and when the police arrive Maynard gets the credit for capturing it, even though they’re just hanging out together. The lion goes back in the cage but Maynard feels sorry for it and sets it free. He and Dobie try to contact the imperial prince but he is on a mission of cultural study and he can’t be located by his servants. Avoiding the authorities, Maynard takes the lion to an underground beatnik joint that one enters though the back of a phone booth. On stage playing the bongos is a beatnik named "The Imp” and I knew right away that this was the prince and that being a beatnik was his cultural study. They become friends and the lion is taken back to the prince’s country where it is released in the jungle.