Steve Brodie

            On Friday morning I memorized the third verse of “Strike” by Serge Gainsbourg and almost the last verse. I should have the song nailed down in my head tomorrow. 

            My song practice performances feel really sloppy after a month of recording in which I focused on trying to play songs seamlessly all the way through. Now if I fumble I just correct my mistake and move on but there are still a lot of mistakes. 

            At around 8:30 the power went off for a couple of minutes. It wasn’t that big a deal this time because I wasn’t recording and even if I had been, a power outage at that time would have been after I’d finished. 

            I weighed 86.9 kilos before breakfast. My weight is creeping back up it seems. Last night I ate too many potato chips. 

            Around midday, I cleaned some of the things that I store in the northeast corner of my kitchen: the dustpan, an extra board for shelving, my darkroom easel, and my big steel square rule. The square rule is very rusty and I got a lot of it off but I think I’ll give it another try later with baking soda. 

            At 13:00 I left for an early bike ride because on the way back I was going to meet Brian Haddon at the Wheat Sheaf Tavern. We were supposed to meet there last week and we both were there but Brian had gotten the time wrong and left before I got there. This time he was there. I had previously asked him if he would consent to have me take a video of him saying “No!” for my larger video project. He hadn’t given me an answer but I brought my camera and tripod along just in case. But he decided he didn’t want to do it. We each had two pints of Wheat Sheaf pilsner, he had a Ruben sandwich and I had honey garlic wings. The bar played a lot of good funk music from the 1960s, like Sly and the Family Stone, Curtis Mayfield, and others. We caught each other up on what we’ve been doing. We talked about how much we both liked Star Trek Strange New Worlds. We talked about TV and music and various other topics. We were there for a couple of hours. He said that maybe next time we get together we could meet at the Rhino in my neighbourhood. 

            I had a late siesta at 15:00 and got up at 17:30. 

            I weighed 86.2 kilos at 17:38. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:15. 

            I coated some chicken drumsticks in olive oil, salt, and roasted garlic with herbs, and roasted them in the oven. If I’d already had some cooked meat in the fridge I would have chosen not to use the stove today because it was still pretty hot outside. 

            I reviewed five videos of me playing my song "Megaphor" from July 8 to July 12. July 8 wasn’t bad. On July 9, my second time doing the song might be one of the best. July 10 was okay, but maybe a little off at the end. July 11 was passable but I think the B chord was dull sometimes. July 12 wasn’t too shabby. 

            I tried again to download a video containing the image of the burning Vietnamese monk from 1963, but 4K Downloader still said it couldn’t parse it. So I searched for alternative video clips to correspond with my line, “meditate on the golden mean” of shock therapy”. The simulation of peyote hallucinations at the beginning of “Altered States” might work. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a drumstick while watching three Bugs Bunny cartoons from 1948 and 1949. 

            In the first story, as he’s done before, Bugs takes a wrong turn at Albuquerque while tunneling underground and ends up in a country across the ocean. In this case, it is Scotland and the first thing he sees is a man in a kilt playing bagpipes. Bugs thinks it’s a monster attacking an old lady and so he grabs the pipes and destroys them. The Scotsman goes after Bugs with a gun but finally decides to settle it with a game of golf. Bugs cheats in ridiculous ways. He hits the ball and then runs to dig an enormous hole for it to land in, then declares he has a hole in one. He nails down the man’s ball but the Scotsman gets a hole in one anyway. When he misses a put, Bugs digs a trench for the ball to follow so that it turns around and goes back to the hole. When the Scotsman accuses Bugs of cheating, Bugs cites several golf games where the exact same plays were legally done, so the Scotsman admits defeat. But then he challenges Bugs to a bagpipe competition. Bugs plays a set of bagpipes with several instruments attached and it sounds like a Dixieland jazz band. 

            In the second story, there is a boxing match going on between a big brute and a much weaker opponent in a far lower-weight class. Bugs Bunny is heckling the champion and he is forced to fight him. Bugs keeps getting knocked down until he begins to outsmart his opponent. He convinces him that he’s broken his leg. Bugs pretends to be a doctor and wraps him in bandages. Then the boxer substitutes Bugs’s resin with axel grease but Bugs uses it on his feet and skates rings around his opponent, coming in quickly to hit him as he skates. Bugs hands him a bomb that explodes. Finally, the boxer ties Bugs to a railroad track and drives a train to run him over. But the film ends and we see Bugs with scissors after having cut that scene out. 

            In the third story, a gambler in the Bowery named Steve Brodie is having bad luck and so he goes looking for a rabbit so he can cut off its foot and have a good luck charm. He can’t find a rabbit in Manhattan but he does in the wilderness of Flatbush. He pulls Bugs out of his hole by the ears and tells him he needs to take his foot for good luck. Bugs tells him that rabbits are not lucky. Just look at the lives they lead. Bugs tells Steve he needs the help of Swami Rabbitima, and gives him his card. Steve goes to the swami and it’s Bugs in disguise. Bugs asks if he wants his palm read and Steve holds out his hand. Bugs paints it red. Bugs asks if he wants the bumps on his head read. Steve says I ain’t got none. Bugs hits him a few times with a hammer and he has bumps. Steve draws a knife but then Bugs lays out some cards and tells Steve he has a meeting with a man wearing a carnation. “Keep him with you at all times because he is your good luck mascot.” On the street, Steve meets Bugs and he is disguised with a bowler hat and a mustache and he is wearing a carnation. Steve takes him to a dice game but loses. Steve goes back to the swami who spins a wheel and determines that Steve is the sign of the wolf and that he should be seeking his fortune with the ladies. On the street, he meets Bugs Bunny in drag but when he approaches her she calls the cops and he is beaten up. He goes back to the swami with his knife drawn. The swami asks why he wants his luck changed. Steve says he wants to get his hands on some dough. We’ve seen the “dough” gag before. Bugs directs him to a bakery and Steve ends up covered in dough and baked into a pie. Then Steve realizes that the baker, the woman, the swami, and the mascot are all rabbits. Then he looks in the mirror and Bugs is there making him think he’s a rabbit. Steve goes onto the Brooklyn Bridge and asks for help from a cop but the cop is also Bugs Bunny. Steve Brodie jumps off the bridge. 

            There was a real Steve Brodie who claimed to have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge on July 23, 1886, and became famous for it. Before this Brodie was a penniless, luckless gambler, but afterwards he gained a successful saloon and a profitable performing career. Some people claimed that his jump was a trick and that a dummy was thrown from the bridge while Brodie jumped from a rowboat. He was arrested in Canada in 1889 for jumping off Horseshoe Falls, even though no one saw that jump either. The judge said he’d let him go if he denied making the jump but he refused. He appeared in the vaudeville musicals “Mad Money” and “On the Bowery.” After his success, he shared his profits by often giving food to the needy and the homeless. His estate was worth $100,000 when he died in 1901, which would be $3.5 million today. 

            I got very tired after dinner and couldn’t watch more than three of the cartoons. I decided at 21:20 to take a siesta with the intention of getting up at 22:00, but I slept until 23:00. I did the dishes, and then did my usual nocturnal search for bedbugs, finding none for the fifth night in a row. I made my bed and wrote in my journal until I was too tired and then went to bed again at 0:45.