Janos Prohaska

            On Wednesday morning I worked out the chords to the rest of the intro and for the first verse of "Adieu California" by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 90 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning I cleaned an omelette skillet and the inside and top of a heart shaped cake pan. I still have to scrub the outside of the latter and then I have six more things from the tray under the stove to clean. I sure do have a lot of dirty things. I wonder if I should take it personally. 

            I weighed 89.9 kilos before lunch. I had wheat thins and five year old cheddar with a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor. There sure are a lot of people renting those green Bike Share bikes these days. I assume whomever owns the business is raking it in. When I visited Amsterdam in 1987 they had yellow bikes for sharing but it cost nothing. One would find a bike and ride it to one's destination, then leave it for the next person. I weighed 89.2 kilos after my bike ride.

            There was mail in my box from the Ontario Ministry of Finance. It informed me that based on my income I don't qualify for the Guaranteed Annual Income System. I was surprised and was ready to start an appeal but then I realized that this isn't my federal Guaranteed Income Supplement that I'm losing but rather a piddley $10 a month from GAINS. 

            I worked on my poem series "My Blood In A Bug." 

            I ripped holes in the leather covering that I've sewn for my Roland amp towards its role in the video I'm making for my song "Instructions For Electroshock Therapy." It was easy to tear a gap to expose the power switch because the leather seems to be rotten or weak in that area. I used tacky putty around the edges of the torn leather to hold them wide enough to fully show the switch and the word "Power" above. To expose three knobs at the top centre of the amp I had to use a box cutter blade because the leather is stronger there. I cut it just enough to push the leather around each knob so they are protruding. My next task in the project is to run electrical cords from rips in the leather up to the bottom of my Martian Bouquet sculpture that's standing on top of the amp. I installed one cord this time just to get things started. I haven't decided yet how many cords I'll use. After that's done I want to put some batteries in a few red bike flashers that I have so that before I shoot the video I'll have them flashing red from inside the sculpture. 

            I colourized three more damage spots in my photo of the skateboarder. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilicata sauce and five year old cheddar and had it with a beer while watching two episodes of Mayberry RFD. 

            In the first story Millie is directing a church play in celebration of spring. Goober is a tree and Emmett is Robin Red Breast. Mike has been cast as the spring lamb but is embarrassed by the costume. Sam gives him a lecture on everyone doing their part for the church and he agrees to do it. But then Millie approaches Sam with the costume of the half goat, horned shepherd god Pan and he makes excuses that he is selling tickets and putting up posters and doing his part otherwise. When Mike hears that his father chickened out, Sam fumbles to try to explain why he can't wear the costume but finally realizes he's talked himself into a corner and agrees to do it. As Pan, Sam is supposed to do a little dance but then Emmett is inspired spontaniously to show his own steps. Pan and Robin Red Breast wind up improvising a dance routine together. 

            It seems odd that the church would be okay with a play in which the only god is a pagan one.

            Jodie Foster appears again on the show, this time playing the role of a daisy in the production. She speaks to Emmett during rehearsal about how much fun it is and calls him "Robin Red Breast."

            There is a person in a bear costume dancing in the play. We don't see him out of costume but he was played by Janos Prohaska, who also played the cookie crazy bear on the Andy Williams Show. One assumes the two shows were shot near one another and Janos was already in costume so they invited him to Mayberry. He played a gorilla on Gilligan's Island. He made his own costumes and appeared as different aliens on a few episodes of Star Trek. He died in 1974 along with thirty five other crew members working on the documentary series "Up From The Ape" when their plane crashed in a mountain range in California. 

            In the second story Emmett has been getting treatments from the local barber to try to grow new hair but it's not working. Earl the barber tells him he should consider a toupee. Emmett gets his head measured and spends $125 for the Glen Campbell style but it arrives all wild. Earl says he has no experience with toupees and advises him to go to Sally at the beauty salon. He goes early so no one can see him and Sally fixes it. When Emmett shows it to Martha she says it's beautiful and tells him he looks twenty years younger. But then she goes to the mirror and begins to cry. Emmett sends the toupee back because he doesn't want to make Martha feel old. 

            Sally was played by Joanie Larson, who appeared on the TV shows "The Phyllis Diller Show", "Occasional Wife" and "Camp Runamok."