Conny Van Dyke

            On Sunday morning I looked for the chords for “Laide jolie laide” (Ugly Pretty Ugly) by Serge Gainsbourg but no one had posted them and so I worked out the first two chords of the instrumental intro. 

            I weighed 87.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I was able to have a normal morning for the first time in a few days, as my computer didn’t stall very much at all. It only kept me waiting when I was trying to get onto Twitter. 

            I read more of “The Triumph of Modernism” about Modernist Indian artists. I re-read some more of Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih. 

            I weighed 87.2 kilos before lunch. I had a slice of spinach pizza with added five-year-old cheddar and a glass of raspberry lemonade. 

            My computer started to misbehave again when I was trying to read the news during lunch. I didn’t get updated on much of anything. When I took a siesta, I had to put the PC down for a nap as well. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Shaw. I got caught in a confetti squall on my way up Brock that lasted until I was almost home on Queen Street. The snow pretty much melted as soon as it hit the ground, but it gathered on my collar and my backpack and fell to the floor when I got home. 

            My computer froze again and so I had to restart and then it functioned closer to normal.

            I read more of “The Triumph of Modernism.” This chapter is about Rabindranath Tagore who had been a renowned Indian poet but turned to painting. His untrained Primitivist style made him a darling of the European art world in the early 20th Century, especially in Germany. He later started an experimental university in India teaching students by letting them discover their own techniques and then teaching them the discipline to apply themselves to it. 

            I re-read some more of Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih. 

            I put extra-old cheddar on top of a small slice of spinach pizza and a regular slice of spanakopita and heated them in the oven. I had them with a beer while watching an episode of Adam-12. 

            I know that these stories are supposedly put together from real situations but this one seemed altogether unrealistic because it seems like several situations are patched awkwardly together. In the story, Malloy and Reed go to an apartment building where a neighbour named Abbie Jenks has called because there is a child being left alone, sometimes for a few days at a time. Abbie’s main concern seems to be that because the child has no food, she is stealing her cat’s milk. The cops knock on the door and meet six-year-old Charlie, who is indeed alone and has no idea where her mother is. She says her daddy doesn’t live there anymore but sometimes he visits when her mother isn’t there. When asked about the milk she says she needs it for Sissy. Charlie leads the cops to the bathroom where Sissy is a baby about six months old in the bathtub. Then a dandy named Phillip Bartell shows up and Charlie calls him “Daddy”, but he says he’s not her father. Malloy calls Child Services and does a check on Bartell. When they discover he has outstanding parking tickets they arrest him. Child services discovers that Charlie has been beaten with a belt and an electrical cord and she tells them that “Daddy did it.” Since Charlie calls Bartell “Daddy” they assume it was him but then they learn that Charlie’s mother Jeannette has returned home from her job as an exotic dancer. Malloy and Reed return to the apartment to find Jeannette being beaten by Charlie’s father. New assumptions are formed but it turns out he is beating Jeannette because she’s been beating Charlie. Jeannette seems unhinged from reality, and they lead her away. Later reed is confused why Charlie said that “Daddy did it.” Malloy explains, “Because she loves her mother.” 

            Abbie was played by Conny Van Dyke, who was a singer and songwriter and one of the first white people to be signed to Motown Records. She was Teen magazine's Miss Teen of the United States in 1963. In 1969 she co-starred in “Hell’s Angels.” In 1972 she released her first album. In 1974 she co-starred in “Framed” and in 1975 she co-starred with Burt Reynolds in WW and the Dixie Dance Kings. She released her second album that year. She appeared on over 1000 game shows in the 70s including Match Game and The Gong Show. 

            Charlie was played by six-year-old Dawn Lyn. She was later cast as Prudence in "Nanny and the Professor", but her contract ran out while they were waiting for the pilot to be sold. By the time it was sold she’d already gained the role of Dodie on My Three Sons. I remember her from that show. I think it was near the end of the series though. She co-starred in Shoot Out in 1971. She appeared in all of the Walking Tall movies. She auditioned for the part of Regan in the Exorcist but they considered her too young for the subject matter. She was a regular on the series Born Free and Red Hand Gang. She worked steadily into her mid-teens because she was short and could still play a child. She is the younger sister of actor, singer, and former teen idol Leif Garrett and they worked together in several movies and TV shows. She hasn’t acted for many years and has co-owned a boutique in San Francisco. 

            Jeannette was played by Bambi Allen, who played a biker chick in a few movies like Satan’s Sadists. She died at the age of 35 from complications caused by silicone breast injections.