Chanin Hale

            On Saturday after midnight I did my usual search for bedbugs and found none. That makes it two days since I saw the last one, which was hopefully the last one. 

            I still did not have wifi directly from Shankar's network this morning. It's been more than a day and a half and I think it's the longest his network has been off for my computer. I can still pick it up on my phone and so I was able to tether. But tethering tends to time out and needs to be reset and so if this persists until Monday I'm going to be screwed for hearing all of the next Shakespeare lecture. I wonder if it's just that Shankar has used up his gigs for this month and it's slowed down until the next. The slowing down may limit the network. 

            I memorized the fourth verse of “Le vieux rocker” (The Old Rocker) by Serge Gainsbourg and struggled again with figuring out what is the last word of the first line of the second verse. 

            I weighed 88.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning I went out to pay for my November phone plan. Freedom Mobile has stopped giving paper receipts and just send them as texts now.

            After that I went to No Frills. As I was locking my bike outside the supermarket a short, skinny guy with a white beard came walking by. He gave me the thumbs up as part of a question, “Are you okay?” I nodded. He asked if I liked the weather. It was raining a bit. I shrugged and then he answered for me, “You don't care. You're on a bike.” I could figure out how riding a bike made one indifferent to the weather. 

            A woman outside the door asked if I would buy her some muffins, but I said “Sorry.” 

            Inside I bought four bags of green grapes, a half pint of raspberries, lemonade, orange juice and kettle chips. 

            I weighed 88.6 kilos before lunch. 

            I worked on editing and organizing information on Autolycus from the scenes I copied and pasted from The Winter's Tale. He's a thief because it is a family tradition but he's chosen petty thievery over highway robbery because there is less chance of being hanged. We learn more about him when he lays down as a potential pick-pocketing victim approaches and he pretends to have been beaten and robbed by a man named Autolycus. He says he knows Autolycus and tells something of his life. It's interesting that the fictional Autolycus is more violent than the real Autolycus. 

            When I got up from my siesta and posted my blog I wasn't sure if I was going to take a bike ride or not. It looked like it might be raining but when I opened the back door the puddles on the roof were not being disturbed by raindrops. So I got ready and left, but I found that it was steadily drizzling enough that if I went all the way downtown I might get wet and so I only rode as far as Bloor and Dovercourt. I weighed 88.9 kilos when I got home. 

            I finished making notes on the first appearance of Autolycus in The Winter's Tale. He has already picked Clown's pocket but now he promises to be in the next scene to begin fleecing the shepherds at the sheep sheering festival. If he does not do so he will have a bad reputation among thieves. He then sings part of the ballad ‘Jog on, jog on, the footpath way’ with a tune by Haskin’. 

 Jog on, jog on, the footpath way, 

And merrily hent (grasp to vault over) the stile-a. 

A merry heart goes all the day, 

Your sad tires in a mile-a. 

(If one does not have fun being a thief or doing anything else it will be a tiring activity). 

            I read chapter three of Daisy Miller by Henry James. Winterbourne comes to Rome to visit his aunt but at the forefront of his mind is that Daisy Miller is spending the winter there. He goes to visit a lady named Mrs Walker, who is also from the United States but is of a higher social strata than the Miller family. Daisy happens to be visiting Mrs Walker when Winterbourne arrives. Daisy intends to go to a certain high part of Rome that has a grand view of the rest and she is meeting an Italian gentleman there. Mrs Walker does not think she should go at that hour to meet a man, even though Winterbourne offers to accompany her. They go there and Daisy walks happily with both men but then Mrs Walker comes along in her carriage. She tries to impress upon Daisy that what she is doing is inappropriate but Daisy does not care. She also mentions other improper things that Daisy does, such as going to balls where she and dances with only one man. 

            I started making notes on the second appearance of Autolycus in The Winter's Tale, when he arrives at the sheep sheering festival in disguise. He arrives singing better than any instrument and the servant announces him excitedly as someone amazing for the songs and for the fabrics he is selling. Autolycus seems to be very much modelled upon the Greek god of the same name who was the son of of Mercury and the grandfather of Odysseus. The mythical Autolycus was also a master of transformation. But Shakespeare's Autolycus seems to have also some of the qualities and talents of that other son of Mercury, Pan. 

            I made pizza on naan with Roman red pepper sauce and extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching an episode of Gomer Pyle. 

            In this story Gomer, Sergeant Carter and their fellow platoon members who are in Hollywood to shoot the movie “Leathernecks of the Air” are about to do their big scene in the film. All Gomer and the others have to do is sing but Carter has one line, “Okay, let's hear it for Henshaw!” At that point a scantily clad woman is supposed to pop out of a cake and then Gomer is required to sing. But Carter gets the line or his timing wrong in every take so that after thirty two tries the director, Mr Miles calls it a day because the prop department has run out of balloons to drop. At the end of the day Miles tells his assistant not to call Carter the next day. When Gomer arrives the next day he is told that he will speak Carter's line but when he does so he looks so depressed that the director realizes he has to bring Carter back in. But when Carter arrives Miles tells him he's being given the most important part in the picture, the part of the man whose life Henshaw saved. In the scene Carter comes out covered in bandages and with one of them over his mouth. Gomer shouts the line, the girl jumps from the cake and Gomer sings “For He's a Jolly Good Fellow” followed by “Viva La Company.” 

            Norman Miles was played by the producer of "Gomer Pyle", Sheldon Leonard. He was the inspiration for the names of the two lead characters in “The Big Bang Theory”, Sheldon and Leonard.

            The special effects man was played by Jamie Farr, who would later star in “M.A.S.H.” as Corporal Klinger. 

            Gloria, the woman in the cake was played by Chanin Hale, who started out performing in theatrical touring companies out of New York. In 1963, because of her pantomime skills she got hired to work on The Red Skelton Show and was a regular for seven years. Her first movie role was as Arline in “Synanon.” She became a popular performer in USO shows in Vietnam after soldiers saw a picture of her posing as Eve in a home made costume. Thousands of copies were printed and sent to soldiers. In 1986 she married Richard Bradshaw and they did nothing but travel together to the exotic places of the world for the next 35 years. They died within two weeks of one another.