Twins

            On Monday morning I struggled with finding the right chords for the instrumental part of “Ma lou Marilou” by Serge Gainsbourg. There’s some pretty fancy guitar in that song.

            Around midday I called the Remenyi House of Music about the buzz on my new guitar. I was told that I could come over and they could adjust it. I packed up the Washburn and headed over there. The young guitar salesman met me at the door and looked at my guitar on the front desk. He said he didn’t think there was an unreasonable amount of buzz and he would personally keep the action the way it is. He said he could raise it so the there would be no buzz but it would make the guitar harder to play. The funny thing was that I couldn’t hear as much of a buzz there in the store as I hear at home. Maybe they have special buzz kill technology in the walls.

I asked him about the screen colour of clip on tuners and wondered if they had anything other than blue. I find that when I tune outdoors the screen gets washed out by the reflection of the sky. He said that their Korg tuners have a black screen so they might be better for playing outside. I'll consider getting one the next time I have a gig in the open.

It seemed like kind of a wasted trip downtown but then again I might have taken a bike ride later anyway. I had planned on getting back to scrubbing my kitchen floor today but I could do it on Tuesday.

I got home in time to make lunch. I had a can of tuna with salsa and kettle chips.

In the afternoon I got caught up on my journal.

I copied all of my rehearsal videos and sound recordings to my external hard drive and then deleted them from my computer.

I found the battery charger for the Nikon so I can begin shooting new videos but I still have to find the usb attachment for the memory card so I can upload them. I assume it's in the same drawer.

I finished editing the photos I took in the early fall of 1993 of my daughter Astrid playing with binoculars on the front lawn of my place in the Beaches.

            For dinner I had a potato, two chicken drumsticks and some gravy while watching two episodes of The Adventures of Robin Hood.

            The first story was the second episode from the third season and it is absent from the first torrent that I downloaded of the series. The other torrent was only at 21% and so I had to watch this episode on YouTube. This was one of those “double trouble" tropes that almost every TV series, if it’s around long enough, eventually presents. In these types of stories the identical double of a main character, but with the opposite personality, shows up and causes tension. In this case Friar Tuck's long lost evil brother Edgar presents himself in Nottingham and he seeks out Prince John to sell him the weapon that he has developed using the “devil powder” that he learned to make while living in Far Cathay. The weapon is basically a prototypical cannon. Since the prince is currently hunting in Nottinghamshire, the sheriff arranges for he and Edgar to meet at Lady Marian’s estate. As Edgar has no idea what Prince John looks like, Robin disguises himself as John to learn about the weapon. When Prince John and the sheriff are approaching, Robin ties Edgar up and has Tuck pretend to be Edgar. Tuck fumbles through a demonstration that results in Edgar’s “Death Tube” exploding into pieces. The formula had been carved into the death tube and so it is lost and the world is safe for now. Edgar is arrested.

            Edgar states that he eats nothing but raw fruit and vegetables and drinks only water and says man’s greatest folly is overindulgence. This is the opposite of Friar Tuck who loves food and wine. Twin studies show that identical twins are never opposite personalities and so it would be more realistic to simply make the character’s double coincidentally identical but not an identical twin. For one twin to be evil they would both have to be evil.

            In the second story the king of Byzantium is about to form an alliance with King Richard but the Byzantine Princess Irene has been held as a state hostage in England. She must be returned home in order for the alliance to be complete. The Byzantine ambassador has managed to take Irene out of London and is bringing her to Marian’s home in Nottingham. Prince John’s soldiers try to kill the ambassador on the road to Nottingham but Robin foils their attempt. The problem is that Irene is in love with Prince John and she makes every effort to get back to London. Robin catches her and takes her to the Blue Boar where she shows him a spice she is carrying called “pepper". She tells him of all of its uses and then blows some in his eyes. While he is blinded and in pain Irene escapes to Prince John.  Prince John finds Irene to be of diplomatic value but he only pretends to have affection for her. To prove this Robin disguises himself as the new Byzantine ambassador and tries to get John to sign a marriage contract with Irene while Marian shows Irene through a secret passage to listen to the conversation. When Irene hears that John does not want to marry her she angrily bursts in. She recognizes Robin and calls his name, which causes John to call for his guards. In the fight Robin uses pepper to fight off John's guards. Irene willingly returns to Byzantium.

            Irene was played by Monica Stevenson, who also appeared on other British TV series such as The Saint and The Avengers. She died in 1986 and was the aunt of Tiff Stevenson, who is one of the most popular British comedians.

            Robin should not have been so surprised by pepper since it had been imported to England for a few centuries before the period in which this story was set.