Wednesday 31 August 2022

Lennie Weinrib


            On Tuesday morning I finished working out the chords for "Scènes de manager" (Unsightly Public Scenes) by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through the song in French, made some adjustments to my translation, ran through it in English, and then uploaded it to Christian's Translations to prepare it for blog publication. 
            During song practice, I heard a guy shouting and swearing very loudly in his car in the Dollarama parking lot. He got out with his shirt off, which showed that he was a muscular guy with a big beer belly. He kept swearing as he walked to the edge of the parking lot and then gave a very fast and hard series of punches with both fists to the metal parking sign. Then he walked back to his car and drove away. 
            I weighed 85.1 kilos before breakfast. 
            Around midday I finished cleaning the last of the sliding windows in the kitchen and I installed it back in the set. I started washing the window frame in the living room. The leak in the roof that the landlord will never repair has washed a lot of sediment down that has pushed the underside of the top of the window frame down. I cleaned out as much of the sediment as I could and then pushed the sagging part of the frame back up so there is less of a gap. I washed the top and sides of the frame, but I still need to wash the underside of the top of the frame and the frames of the glass before I start to actually clean the glass. 
            I weighed 84.6 kilos before lunch. That's the lightest I've been at that time in 18 days. 
            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 
            I weighed 84.5 kilos at 17:13. Again, that's the lowest I've weighed at that time in 18 days. 
            I was caught up on my journal just before 18:00. 
            I opened the audio for my July 10 song practice in Audacity and amplified it as much as possible without clipping. I imported the two videos for that same morning into Movie Maker and made them into one movie. That took almost an hour. 
            In the Movie Maker project for my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" I finished editing the Oral Roberts faith healing videos down to one minute of all his laying on of hands. There are five people he "heals", so I'll pick one of the sessions to inject into the main video tomorrow. 
            I chronologized several more hard copies of transcriptions of the Gumby Bible group poem. 
            I had a potato with gravy and a pork chop while watching the movie "1001 Rabbit Tales" from 1982. This story has more new animation than usual to thread together the old cartoons to make them part of one story. 
            Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are salesmen for a big book company, and they've just been assigned the locations for them to sell books. Bugs is being sent to Pismo Beach and Daffy will be going to Wyoming. 
            It's cold and so Daffy decides to wait for the next flock of ducks and join them on their journey south. But on the way, he gets lost in a blizzard and slams into a house. He looks through the window and it's quite a prosperous-looking house. On top of the fireplace mantle, he sees a duck and thinks he's done quite well for himself and so he decides to pay him a visit. It takes a one-sided conversation followed by a one-sided fight for Daffy to realize the other duck is dead and stuffed. He decides that this is a perfect circumstance. He'll pretend to be the stuffed duck for the rest of the winter, but when no one is looking he'll raid the refrigerator. The house is owned by Porky Pig who has a pet dog that likes to sleep by the fireplace. Time passes and Daffy is getting tired of standing still for so long and so he kicks a nearby urn off the mantle to break near the dog. The dog begins barking and Porky comes to angrily prove to his dog that he's barking at a stuffed duck. He grabs Daffy by the legs and begins banging his head on the floor before putting him back on the mantle. That night Daffy raids the fridge, but the dog sees him just after he's finished eating. Daffy however gets the dog excited over the leftover bone and tosses it out the window into the snow. The dog jumps through the window and Daffy closes it. Daffy is walking away but sees the dog looking forlornly inside. Daffy says, "I can't stand to see a dumb animal suffer!" He goes back to the window and pulls down the shade. The dog goes to Porky's office window, and he lets him in. Rover is back by the fireplace when Daffy makes it look like the stuffed duck is walking past the room. Rover attacks and tears out the stuffing. Porky says, "Now I'll have to stuff that duck all over again!" He grabs Daffy and starts filling him up with cotton. Now Daffy is sitting on the mantle all lumpy and full of cotton. A flock of ducks are flying by when they see him and decide to visit. They are all having a party when Porky discovers them. He grabs his shotgun and starts firing and so Daffy leaves with the flock. 
            Meanwhile Bugs Bunny is still on his way to Pismo Beach. He emerges from his tunnel and realizes he's not there yet but decides to camp for the night. This part blends with the story of the drunken stork who loses the baby gorilla he's been carrying. He decides to knock Bugs out and deliver him to the gorillas. After posing as a baby gorilla and dealing with the angry father, the real baby is delivered, and Bugs moves on. 
            Meanwhile Daffy is unable to keep up with the flock of ducks and he's going to crash. He radios duck traffic control and is guided down, but the voice on the other end turns out to be Elmer Fudd's as Daffy falls into his trap. Daffy runs and Elmer sends his hunting dogs after him. The dogs first draw diagrams on the ground to work out their strategy. Daffy jumps down a hole where he finds Bugs Bunny. They decide to travel underground together and wind up in Arabia where this story blends with their old cartoon about finding Ali Baba's treasure. They become separated again when Daffy goes after the treasure and Bugs comes upon a palace. 
            The palace belongs to Sultan Yosemite Sam and Sam's storyteller has just escaped and so Sam needs a new storyteller to read to his brat son Prince Abba Dabba. Shortly after this, Bugs Bunny knocks on the door to sell the book "1001 Tales for Toddlers." Sam forces Bugs at the threat of being boiled in oil to read stories to Abba Dabba. 
            The first story is "Jack and the Beanstalk." The new twist on the story is that Jack's mother throws the beans out the window and they land under Silvester Cat's bed. While he is sleeping the beanstalk grows and when he wakes up, he wanders into a gigantic palace where he finds a giant Tweety Bird. Silvester enters his cage and grabs him. Whereas before he could hold him in his fist, now he has to wrap both arms around him. While running with Tweety he hears the giant coming and so he drops the bird and hides. The giant puts Tweety back in his cage and hangs it from a ceiling hook. Silvester tries to pull himself up with a fishing pole and reel. There is no explanation of how in a giant's house there is a fishing pole that is Silvester's size. Silvester wraps the line around his tail, but it unravels, and he falls, waking the giant bulldog, who begins chasing him. Silvester next ties a screwdriver to a long pole and uses it to undo the screws of the bottom of Tweety's cage. Silvester tries to pop open a bottle of champagne and ride the cork up to Tweety's cage but he winds up in a knothole in the ceiling. He forces the cork back down, but it lands in a gun that fires him back up into the hole. When he comes back down the dog is waiting to smash him between a pair of cymbals. Silvester uses a spatula as a catapult to send him up to grab Tweety. Tweety calls for help and the giant returns. He chases Silvester down the stalk and Silvester cuts it down to send the giant falling. But the giant falls on Silvester and knocks him through the Earth all the way to China. 
            Bugs tries to leave after telling the one story, but Sam informs him he has to read all 1001 stories or else. Bugs refuses and so Sam lowers him to a vat of boiling oil and Bugs decides he'll read more stories. 
            Bugs reads the story of Hansel and Gretel that was in the old cartoon featuring Bugs and Witch Hazel. 
            Next is the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears but with Goldilocks as a mouse and the three bears as cats. Bugs explains that the bears had to be replaced in the story because they were hibernating at the time. The father cat is Silvester and as in the original story, his porridge is too hot, and the mother's is too cold, but their son simply says, "Who ever heard of cats eating porridge? Why can't we have a mouse like normal cats?" Silvester suggests they go for a walk while the porridge cools, but his is the only porridge that's too hot. It certainly establishes the family dynamic. While they are gone, Goldimouse comes out of her hole in the wall and eats the porridge. Then she gets sleepy and goes to sleep on Silvester's son's bed. When the cats come home, they find her there, but she wakes up and runs into her hole. Silvester's son begins to cry and so Silvester tries to catch the mouse, but Goldilocks hits him over the head with a hammer. Silvester's son is ashamed of his father for not being able to catch a mouse and puts a bag over his head to hide his face. Silvester tries to shoot an arrow into the hole but the arrow stays on the bow and Silvester somehow flies inside the hole that's much smaller than he is. His wife has to use a plunger to get him out. He tries to blow a dart into the hole but the mouse blows first and the dart shoots out through the tip of his tail. Silvester climbs up into the rafters to lower a piece of cheese with a lit stick of dynamite down but his son is surprised when he sees him up there and shouts. That startles Silvester and he falls onto the dynamite. Silvester designs a trap that would slam a hammer down on the mouse when she walks through the tunnel. He puts it in front of her hole and puts a hunk of cheese in front, but she walks around it to get the cheese. Silvester chases her and gets slammed by the hammer. Finally, after blowing himself up one more time Silvester pours a bowl of porridge over his son's head. 
            Then Bugs reads Little Red Riding Hood. In this story Red is taking Tweety Bird as a present from the city to her grandmother in the woods. Silvester sees her with Tweety and follows. In the woods, the Big Bad Wolf sees her coming but forgets her name. He asks her where she's going and forgets her name again, so Tweety reminds him. Both Silvester and the Wolf hear that she is going to Grandma's. The wolf kicks Grandma out and she says, "One of these days, pow! Right in the kisser!" The Wolf puts on Granny's clothes and goes to get into bed but finds Silvester already there and dressed as Granny. Red knocks and Big Bad tells Silvester to get under the bed. Big Bad tells Red to come in after Silvester reminds him of her name. The Wolf goes after Red and Silvester goes after Tweety but the two predators keep getting in each other's way. Red and Tweety leave the house and they go after them but then Red and Tweety go back into the house and lock the door. Silvester tries to use a giant slingshot and a boulder to break down the front door while Big Bad rams the back with a log. Big Bad gets through first and tries to open the door for Silvester just as he gets hit by the boulder. Red runs with Tweety to the bus stop and gets on the bus. Big Bad and Silvester run ahead to the next stop. The bus stops and they get on but are immediately punched back as it turns out that the bus driver is Granny, who says, "I told them. One of these days, pow! Right in the kisser!"
            Bugs convinces Sam that he needs a carrot break from reading and so Sam gives him five minutes. Bugs escapes on a flying carpet, but Sam goes after him on another. Bugs goes upside down and so does Sam, but Sam falls because he forgot to fasten his seatbelt. Sam's turban luckily contains a parachute. Sam gets another carpet, and this time brings a fishing pole, a line, and a hook. He catches Bugs's carpet and unravels it. Bugs falls right back into the palace where he has to read another story.
            This is about the Pied Piper of Guadalupe. The town is infested with mice and the mayor hires the piper, who happens to be Silvester. He plays a Mexican folk tune on a flute and it hypnotizes the mice one by one as they dance out to him and he hits them over the head and stores them in a big, corked bottle. He thinks he's got them all but then Speedy Gonzales tells him he will get his friends back. Silvester challenges him to try. He uncorks the bottle and thinks he'll be able to put the cork back in as soon as Speedy is inside but Speedy gets in and out with a friend before the cork is replaced. Silvester tries to hypnotize Speedy with music but he only pretends to be entranced and succeeds in getting his friends back. Silvester tries to chase Speedy, but the mouse is tireless, and Silvester becomes exhausted. Then there is a knock on the door and a very slow-talking mouse introduces himself as Slowpoke Rodrigues and asks for his cousin Speedy. Silvester lets him in but just before he can grab him, Speedy pulls him into the mouse hole. Slowpoke says he's hungry and so Speedy goes to the human's kitchen to steal food for him. He brings back four hunks of cheese, but Slowpoke says he forgot the tabasco sauce. Speedy runs to the kitchen but then Silvester puts glue on the floor, so he is caught on the way back. Silvester grabs Speedy and tries to eat him but the whole bottle of tabasco sauce gets poured into his mouth. Silvester shoots up in the air and after he crashes, he winds up in casts and on crutches. Speedy plays Silvester's flute and leads him hopping out of town. 
            Then Bugs tells the story of the singing frog. A demolition worker is destroying an old building in New York when he uncovers a time capsule. Inside of a box he finds a frog that puts on a top hat and picks up a cane and begins dancing while singing, "Hello Ma Baby" from 1899. The worker suddenly thinks that he is going to get rich with this frog. But when he takes it to an agent it just acts like a frog. It is only after the man is kicked out and they are alone that the frog dances and sings The Michigan Rag. Alone in their room, the frog sings up a storm. The man puts all his savings into renting a theatre, but nobody comes until he offers free beer. But the frog only sings on a high wire while the curtain is down and when it comes up, he does not perform. The man is placed in a psychiatric hospital where the frog sings when they are alone. The man finally puts the frog in another time capsule and leaves. 
            Bugs refuses to read any more stories and throws the book into a fire. Sam pulls the burning book out and he and his son toss it back and forth until it falls as cinders. Sam says he's going to boil Bugs in oil. Bugs says, "That's okay but promise me you won't throw me in that hole in the ground!" Sam throws him in the hole, and Bugs tunnels away and outside the palace, he bumps into Daffy. Daffy decides to go and sell books at the palace. Bugs tries to warn him away, but he won't listen. Sam pulls Daffy in and says he'll be the new storyteller, or he'll pluck all his feathers. Bugs is walking away when a now totally bald Daffy runs after him and asks if he has any suntan oil. 
            Prince Abba Dabba was voiced by Lennie Weinrib, who started out working with Spike Jones and then the Billy Barnes Revue. He was the original voice of Scrappy Doo in the Scooby Doo series. He played H.R. Pufnstuf, Grimace in the McDonald's commercials. In the mid-60s he directed three Beach Party movies: Beach Ball, Wild Wild Winter, and Out of Sight. 





            I did a search for bedbugs and found one in a crack in the upper right corner of the old exit door at the head of my bed and another one about halfway down the wall just to the right of the frame. The blood inside of them was fairly fresh.


August 31, 1992: On the nature trail my daughter liked to stand in open areas and spin around


Thirty years ago today

            Nancy called on Monday morning and explained that she'd gotten back from Mexico fairly late on Sunday. She said she would be coming down to the Beaches later. I arranged to meet her after the baby and I went for a walk. We went up to Kingston Road and down the nature trail to Kew Gardens. My daughter liked to stand in open areas and spin around. We were at the playground for quite a while, and I was just thinking of leaving when Nancy finally showed up. She looked pretty good, and we were getting along so well that I was even thinking that we could become involved again. We went to some toy shops where I bought my daughter a pale, a shovel, and a little car. We went for souvlaki and after the baby fell asleep, we left her at my place and went to the Fox to see "Truly, Madly, Deeply", which is like a classier version of "Ghost". We went back to my place and Nancy took the baby so that now after two weeks my daughter was gone.

Tuesday 30 August 2022

Frank Welker


            On Monday morning I woke up around 2:45 because I had to pee. My head felt wet on the right side as I walked to the bathroom. When I went back to bed I turned the light on and saw a spot of blood on my pillow. I smelled it and there was no odour of bedbugs. Then I saw blood on my right arm. I went back to the washroom and saw that I was bleeding from my ear. I don't think that a bedbug would have made me bleed so I concluded that I must have nicked my ear the morning before when I shaved and although I didn't bleed then, maybe there was a cut that got agitated by the pillow when I turned onto my right side for a while before getting up. I went back to bed and stayed on my left side so that if I bled it would be on my body and not my bed. There was no more blood when I got up at 5:00. 
            I finished memorizing "Scènes de manager" (Unsightly Public Scenes) by Serge Gainsbourg. I searched for the chords but no one had posted them and so I worked them out for the first verse and the chorus. It's kind of a droning song and so it's not very complicated musically. 
            I weighed 85.2 kilos before breakfast. 
            In the late morning I went to do my laundry. While my stuff was in the dryer I partially washed the last of my sliding kitchen windows. I'll finish cleaning it tomorrow and then install it. After that I might have time to start on the living room windows. 
            I weighed 84.9 kilos before lunch. That's the lightest I've been at that time in over two weeks. 
            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. It was a muggy day but it wasn't unbearable to be out riding in it. 
            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 17:15. 
            I was caught up on my journal at 18:00. 
            I reviewed the last seven videos of me playing "A Ham and a Fiddle". July 2 was very good, plus I was in tune and expressive; July 4 was pretty good but a truck started backing up with its beeping signal near the end; July 6 was good but my guitar was slightly out of tune; July 8 was very good, with good light, but there was a little traffic noise near the end that would need to be removed; July 10 was the best so far, I looked friendly, but there's traffic noise that needs to be removed; on July 12 I hit the final chord wrong; on July 14 my guitar was slightly out of tune. So I think I'll work on preparing my July 10 performance to be uploaded to YouTube. 
            In the Movie Maker project for my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" I edited some more of the Oral Roberts faith healing video, keeping the parts when he's laying his hands on people's heads. I have about nine more minutes of footage to look through. 
            I chronologized some more hard copies of transcripts of the Gumby Bible group poem. 
            I had a potato with gravy and a pork chop while watching the second half of the Looney Bugs Bunny Movie from 1981. 
            Where we left off was that Rocky the gangster's lawyer got him off from his previous convictions on a technicality. Now we learn that Tweety, the million-dollar bird, has been kidnapped. Bugs Bunny as Federal Agent Elegant Mess swears Silvester Cat in as a special agent to help track down the bird. While he's scouring the alleys, Silvester spies Tweety's cage in the window of an apartment on the top floor of an apartment building. Rocky is eating a banana while he and his man Nick are sitting and playing cards when Silvester passes the window on the ledge. Nick says, "Hey boss, I tought I taw a puddy tat!" Rocky responds, "You did, you did tee a puddy tat!" The banana peel is placed on the ledge in Silvester's path. He slips and falls off the building. 
            Next, Tweety escapes from his cage and encounters Silvester in the hall. He asks the cat to hide him, and Silvester says he can hide in his mouth. Tweety says, "Oh, thank you!" But he gets out because Silvester clamped down too hard. Then they hear that Rocky has discovered that Tweety is missing. Silvester hides the bird under an empty can. Rocky has Nick drag Silvester into the apartment to be searched, but meanwhile Rocky notices the can moving. He grabs Tweety and then replaces him under the can with a lit stick if dynamite. Silvester is released and takes the can, thinking that Tweety is still inside. It explodes halfway down the stairs. Silvester sneaks into the dumb waiter and elevates himself to Rocky's apartment. Suddenly the cops have the place surrounded and Nick hides Tweety in the dumb waiter. Silvester is about to run away to eat Tweety when he is surrounded by photographers and hailed as a hero. 
            Act 3 features the Oswald Awards, which is like the Academy Awards but for cartoon characters. It begins with the red-carpet arrivals while a dog reporter interviews the stars. The first star is Pepe le Pew, who stinks. Next, it's Porky Pig, accompanied by the Three Little Pigs. Then comes Big Bad Wolf, who says he's in the demolition business. Next, Foghorn leghorn arrives dancing in a top hat accompanied by two high-stepping chickens. Then comes Yosemite Sam, who pulls his guns and says he's brought along a little winner's insurance. Then Tweety Pie arrives, followed by Silvester. Then Daffy Duck arrives but only one person applauds. When Bugs Bunny gets there the crowd goes wild.
            The first nominee is Big Bad Wolf, and the 1957 cartoon The Three Little Bops is shown. The Three Little Pigs have a jazz combo that the Wolf wants to join. He steps onto the stage during their gig at the House of Straw but his trumpet playing is horrible and so they kick him out. The angry wolf blows his trumpet and knocks the club down. The pigs move on to play in the House of Sticks, but Big Bad crashes the gig again and plays badly so they toss him out again. He blows down that club as well. The pigs move on to the House of Bricks and while they are jamming the Big Bad Wolf comes in playing the Charleston on the ukulele. He is put outside again but this time can't blow the club down. He decides to blow it up but winds up blowing himself up and going to hell. There his trumpet playing becomes really good and so the pigs let his ghost sit in because "Ya gotta get hot to play real cool!" 
            The next nominees are Tweety and Silvester. We see the story in which Silvester tries to catch Tweety and then a cat from Birds Anonymous intervenes. 
            While he's watching himself on the screen, Silvester is getting hungry, so he runs to get an ice cream cone, throws the ice cream away, puts Tweety on the cone and is licking him when Granny stops him. 
            The next nominee is Bugs Bunny, but Daffy protests because Bugs is the host and Daffy thinks the contest is fixed. We see the Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam high diving cartoon. Then Bugs Bunny announces that the winner of the Oswald Award is Bugs Bunny. Daffy protests and challenges Bugs to a talent competition. We see the sixties cartoon in which they compete, which results in Daffy Duck killing himself on stage in order to win the Oswald. 
            The voices of Rocky's lawyer and the dog reporter were done by Frank Welker, who started out as a stand-up comedian and impressionist in the 1960s. His first major role was in 1969 when he started doing the voice of Fred Jones in the Scooby Doo cartoons. He continues playing the part to this day. He played Fangface in the cartoon series of the same name. He voiced Quackula and the modern versions of Heckle and Jeckle. He voiced Mr. Mxyzptlk, Darkseid, Iceman, and several of the Smurfs. He created vocal effects for the Martians in Tim Burton's Mars Attacks. He played Malbolgia in Spawn. Starting in the 21st Century he became the new voice of Curious George and Garfield. In live action, he played Captain Pace in Catch 22. In the Transformers he did the voices of several Decepticons, including Megatron. 


            I did a search for bedbugs and found none for the third night in a row. If the pattern holds, I'll find one tomorrow night.

August 30, 1992: My daughter was fascinated by the electric wheelchair of the man feeding squirrels in the park


Thirty years ago today

            When Nancy called from Mexico on Friday she asked if I would meet her at the airport with the baby, but I said no. I called her parents on Saturday to find out when she'd be coming in and they said on Sunday. But now it was Sunday, and the day went by without a call. 
            My daughter and I went up to Kingston Road and we passed an old folk's home where there were some old ladies sitting out on a bench. There was also a fountain that attracted her and so we hung around there for half an hour or so. Then we continued on until Waverley and went south to the beach. There was an old man in an electric wheelchair feeding the squirrels and my daughter was fascinated with the machine. She went into the wading pool. I took her home for a nap and then we went out again.

Monday 29 August 2022

Frank Nelson


            On Sunday morning I memorized the sixth and seventh verses of "Scènes de manager" (Unsightly Public Scenes) by Serge Gainsbourg. I almost nailed down the final two verses so I'll probably get the whole song in my head tomorrow. 
            I weighed 85.2 kilos before breakfast. 
            I cleaned the window screen that fits on the outside of the sliding windows of the right-hand side of my kitchen window set. I cleaned two more of the sliding windows and so now there is only one left to wash. But now I can close all the windows if I need to. Last night was a little chilly with the window open. 
            I weighed 86 kilos before lunch. I had Breton crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 
            I headed out for a bike ride in the afternoon but on Maple Grove someone had thrown out a nice looking colander. I grabbed it and took it home and then headed back out. I only lost six minutes. Around the corner on Brock Avenue, I found a stainless-steel pasta server, so I put it in my backpack and continued on. 
            On Yonge Street just south of College there was a protest march of between fifty and a hundred vegans against animal cruelty. Someone had a sign that read, "Eggs and Dairy Are A Feminist Issue". They had a drummer and a person with a megaphone leading the chant, "Animals are here with us, not for us!" But First Nations and the Inuit all have philosophies that understand that animals are here with us and yet still are tuned enough to the cycle of life to realize that killing animals and harmony with them are not mutually exclusive. 
            On Queen Street, a little girl was looking at her shadow and said, "I'm taller than I am!" 
            I weighed 85.2 kilos at 17:05. 
            I was caught up on my journal at 18:11. 
            I reviewed four more videos of me playing "A Ham and a Fiddle". June 22 was one of the days when there was crackling in the audio, and so I thought that even if this was good I wouldn't be able to use it. But it was a pretty good performance with good light and so I checked the audio file again for that day and it sounds like the crackling was only at the beginning during the first few songs. I can't hear it on this song; June 24 was pretty good but my eyes looked baggy; June 26 was quite good, spirited, and friendly, but a loud truck or bus was passing at the end. It's possible that I could remove that sound in Audacity though; June 28 was good but the final chord sounded like it was out of tune. 
            I downloaded the two Oral Roberts videos that I bookmarked yesterday which show him putting his hands on people's heads and shaking them. I converted them both to AVI and then I imported them into Movie Maker. I put them on the same timeline and rendered them both as one movie. I imported that movie into the Movie Maker project for my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy". I copied it to the end of the timeline and started cutting out everything but the laying on of hands segments. I'll work on that some more tomorrow. 
            I chronologized some more hard copies of transcriptions of the Gumby Bible. 
            I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread and had it with a beer while watching The Bugs Bunny Mystery Special from 1980 and the first half of the Looney Bugs Bunny Movie from 1981. Both of these stories use small bits of new animation to thread together old cartoons into a story. 
            The Mystery Special begins as a parody of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, with a cartoon silhouette in profile that looks a lot like Alfred Hitchcock but turns out to be Porky Pig. The story opens with a bank robbery by a tall, dark, and masked stranger. On the case is federal agent Elmer Fudd. He gets a report that the Tall Dark Stranger is about to leave the City Bank and so he heads for that location. But the stranger has already left and when he pulls up he sees Bugs Bunny, who has just taken a carrot from his safety deposit box. Elmer thinks that Bugs Bunny is the Stranger and arrests him. Bugs is placed in prison and we see parts of the story in which he outwits Yosemite Sam who is serving as a prison guard.
            After Sam releases Bugs because he is driving him insane, we see Bugs in the desert where he's set up an underground home. Meanwhile Wile E Coyote hears the radio report of Bugs's escape and learns that he is wanted eaten or alive. Then we see one of the old segments in which Wile E tries to catch Bugs Bunny. 
            Then Bugs boards a train on which is also Tweety Bird and Silvester, but also Agent Fudd and the real Tall Dark Stranger. Tweety and Silvester are in the storage car in side-by-side cages. Silvester tries to grab Tweety but is whacked by the porter, who hangs Tweety's cage from a ceiling hook. Silvester climbs up on some suitcases to grab Tweety but Tweety pulls on the emergency cord and causes the train to slam on its brakes, which sends Silvester flying into the coal furnace of the engine. Silvester grabs Tweety but hears the porter coming and so he stuffs the bird into a mail bag and hooks it on the mail catcher bag crane that the train is passing. He waits until the porter passes and then quickly runs to the caboose to retrieve the bag before the train passes it. He reaches into the bag but inside, instead of Tweety is a large and vicious bulldog. The dog pursues him on top of the train and as the train is turning a corner, Silvester waits for the dog with a club and jumps out only to get hit by the top of the entrance to a tunnel and knocked off the train. Meanwhile, Agent Fudd approaches Bugs to place him under arrest but Bugs gives him a kiss and then jumps out the window. 
           At the next station, Silvester meets the train disguised as Granny and asks for Tweety, so the porter hands the cage over. Agent Fudd sees that Tweety is missing and says, "The Tall Dark Stranger" has struck again. The newspaper says Tweety is a $million bird. Silvester is running with Tweety in his grip when reporters start taking pictures because they think he has rescued the bird. At a public event where Silvester is being honoured, he is asked to kiss Tweety for the cameras, but he can't help but try to swallow the bird. He is forced to cough him up. 
           Meanwhile Bugs is at the airport and wanders onto a plane. This is the story of when Yosemite Sam had just robbed the bank, but in the special, Sam has been hired by Agent Fudd. Sam forces Bugs to fly the plane and then jumps out with a parachute and the loot. Agent Fudd is flying with a propellor backpack and he takes the money then tells Sam he's fired. Bugs jumps out of the plane at Mount Foghorn National Monument, a parody of Mount Rushmore to fit the parody of North By Northwest that unfolds as the flying Agent Fudd pursues the running Bugs Bunny, who falls and hangs from the giant sculpture of Foghorn Leghorn. A rope is thrown and Bugs is pulled up by the Tall Dark Stranger, who reveals himself to be Porky Pig on stilts. He explains that he had to move the story along somehow. 
            The Looney Bugs Bunny Movie begins with the Academy Award winning short, Knighty Knight Bugs, which is set at the time of King Arthur. 
            Bugs Bunny then introduces the movie by talking about how the comedy that cartoons use began with slapstick in silent films. But then cartoons took over and as Charlie Chaplin once said, "How can we compete? These guys don't even have to stop to take a breath!" We see the story of Yosemite Sam's encounter with Bugs Bunny when Sam tries to swindle a rich old lady. But it ends with Sam having a safe dropped on him, causing him to die and go to hell. This segment combines the previous story of Sam going to Hades with new footage. The Devil has a slightly different voice and somewhat different lines. The Devil says he'll send Sam back if he brings someone to replace him. Sam goes to ancient Rome as he did before as a captain of the guards for Nero. When Sam jumps from a cliff to avoid lions, he lands back in hell and asks for another chance. The Devil sends Sam to Arabia where he tries to storm a fortress where Bugs Bunny is holed up but Sam winds up getting blown up and returns to hell. The Devil sends him next to the wild west where he tries to rob a train but Bugs Bunny saves it and Sam goes over an unfinished bridge to land back in hell. This time Sam decides to stay in Hell. 
            Bugs Bunny narrates an introduction to ACT 2 with live action segments from gangster movies. Then we see the story of Bugs Bunny as Federal Agent Elegant Mess, who goes after Rocky and his gang. He arrests them but in this story, Rocky's lawyer gets him off. Rocky and Mugsy rob a jewelry store. 
            Then we see a story of Porky Pig as a farmer who has discovered that one of his birds has laid a 24-carrot golden egg. But it's a mystery who laid it. We hear the goose say it was him and that he's not telling because he knows what happened to the goose in the fairy tale. The goose tells Porky that Daffy Duck did it. Daffy becomes famous. Rocky and his gang force Porky to sell Daffy to Rocky. Rocky tries to force Daffy to lay another egg and gives him five minutes. When Rocky shoots the feathers off the top of Daffy's head he miraculously lays a 24-karat egg. Daffy tries to leave but Rocky points at several egg crates and tells Daffy to fill them up. Bugs Bunny and the feds bust in just after Daffy is in stress after he has laid several more golden eggs. Bugs asks Daffy if he needs anything. Daffy says a proctologist. Rocky's lawyer gets him off again and that's halfway through the movie. 
            The Devil was voiced by Frank Nelson, who started working in radio in his teens. He moved to Hollywood where he starred in several local dramatic radio series. His first nationally broadcast work was in the sitcom "Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel" starring Groucho and Chico Marx. He became a regular on the Jack Benny Program in the 1930s where he would often play a department store floor walker or some kind of store clerk. He reprised the role on Benny's television show. He became famous for his long-drawn-out catchphrase, "Eeeeeyeeessss?" which has been much imitated long after Nelson's death, notably by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. 



            I did a search for bedbugs and found none.

August 29, 1992: I shared some fries with my daughter but when I decided she'd had enough she started screaming


Thirty years ago today

            The mother's milk ran out on Wednesday and all the bagged stuff was sour. I'd been using just the soymilk since then and now it was Saturday so it seemed to be working. 
            My daughter and I walked up to Kingston Road, then across and back down to Queen and over to Coxwell. She made me buy a big hunk of watermelon and we kept on stopping to eat it along the way. It was difficult carrying her and some of the stuff I would end up with when we went out. I bought some Kentucky Fried chicken with fries. I fed her some of the fries and decided that was enough for her, but it made her very cranky that I wouldn't give her more and she started screaming. I went to the Beer Store and bought a twelve of Connors Draft. When we got back on the streetcar, I set the case on the seat beside me and sat her on top like it was a little chair, and she enjoyed that. We went to the park, the playground, and the wading pool. The water was cold, but she went in anyway. 
            I mixed the rice, the beans, and the broccoli with spaghetti sauce and macaroni to make her like it.

Sunday 28 August 2022

Paul Julian


            On Saturday morning I worked out the chords for the intro to "Sermonette" by Boris Vian. 
            I memorized the third, fourth and fifth verses of "Scènes de manager" (Unsightly Public Scenes) by Serge Gainsbourg. I might have the whole song nailed down tomorrow morning. 
            I weighed 85.1 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I've been in the morning in two weeks. 
            Around midday I went down to No Frills. As I was locking my bike a woman I didn't recognize was walking by with a guy and she said to me, "It's good to see you're still around!" Then I think she realized I didn't know or remember her and she explained, "We used to see each other all the time. Be well!" If she had stopped I might have asked her where she knew me from so I don't know if it was a case of mistaken identity. 
            The grapes in the supermarket were all too soft and there was no price on the cherries, so I didn't get any. I bought a watermelon, a pack of strawberries, another of blueberries, two plastic baskets of peaches, a pack of three striploin steaks, maple barbecue sauce, Guinness barbecue sauce, a bag of kettle chips, and a container of skyr. 
            When I got home I went back out to buy a six-pack of Creemore. 
            I weighed 85.5 kilos before lunch. I had Breton crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 
            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 
            I weighed 84.6 kilos at 17:09. That's the lightest I've been at that hour in over two weeks. 
            I reviewed seven videos of me playing my translation, "A Ham and a Fiddle". June 9 was pretty good, but my hair looked weird and I was a little close to the camera; June 11 was good too, plus the distance was right, the light was better, and my hair looked less messy; June 13 was also good but my guitar might have been slightly out of tune; June 15 was pretty good and I was smiling but the pop blocker was up to my chin; June 16 was quite good and I looked good as well; June 18 was pretty good and the distance was right; June 20 was pretty good but the light was harsh. I didn't really flub any of these performances. It's a striking contrast to two years ago when I decided that this song wasn't ready to be uploaded to You Tube. 
            I gave up on looking for videos of someone holding a brain and changed my search to old footage of tent revival preachers laying hands on people's heads to heal them. I think I can use a clip from an Oral Roberts video because he always had a camera behind him and so the person having their head grabbed was always well photographed from the front. I bookmarked a couple of old Oral Roberts videos and I'll download one of them tomorrow. 
            I chronologized a few more hard copies of my transcripts of the Gumby Bible group poem. 
            I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching two Bugs Bunny features from 1980. But the first feature turned out to be a short that was included in the second feature and so really, I only watched one feature. 
            In the first story, Bugs Bunny is lamenting that everyone else is not as loving as he is. Even the rocks and flowers don't appreciate his affections. Suddenly a carrot is dangling from a string in front of him. He bites the carrot and is drawn up into a flying saucer piloted by Marvin the Martian. The carrot is drugged and so Bugs sleeps all the way to Mars. When he wakes up and realizes where he is he demands that Marvin return him to Earth. But Marvin says that we mustn't disappoint Hugo. Bugs asks, "Who is Hugo?" just before a giant hand grabs him. Marvin explains that he caught Hugo in the Himalayas. Bugs says, "Oh no, not again!" Hugo is the same Abominable Snowman that Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck encountered many years before. Hugo is and always has been obsessed with having his own pet bunny rabbit. But Bugs tells Hugo that he doesn't want a rabbit but rather a robot and he convinces him that Marvin is a robot. He then shows Hugo how to make Marvin into the living mechanism of a wristwatch. Bugs gets into the flying saucer and then asks Hugo to throw it at the Earth like a frisbee, which he does. 
            The special is called "Busting Out All Over" and begins with the story of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd as children that I saw yesterday. 
            The second story is the one I just described featuring Bugs, Marvin the Martian and Hugo the Abominable Snowman. 
            The final segment is a Wile E Coyote-Roadrunner chase and begins with Wile E going off a cliff and entering a cloud. He lingers there until he opens the cloud and realizes he's going to fall. He sees Roadrunner on the other side of a canyon and tries to pole-vault across but falls. He tries riding a rocket several times but it either goes without him and he falls, points downward and hits the canyon bottom, or slams him into a wall. He tries to drop a safe on the Roadrunner, but it pulls him down and then lands on him. He tries to throw a frisbee with a stick of dynamite, but the dynamite falls out and explodes next to him. he lays out giant flypaper on the road but catches a very angry giant fly. He gets a box of exploding tennis balls and hits one at the Roadrunner, but it bounces off the arm of a cactus back to him. He hits it again, but it springs back after hitting a power line and lands in the box of exploding balls. He chases the Roadrunner through a pipe that gets narrower. On the other end, they have both shrunken down to miniature size. Wile E calls for the Roadrunner to go back through the pipe and so he does, returning to his normal size. But Wile E emerges still as a miniature version of himself. Wile E catches the Roadrunner even though the Roadrunner is now comparatively gigantic. But now he's too big to kill and eat. 
            The voice of the Roadrunner saying "Meep meep" was done by Paul Julian. He started out as a layout and background artist for Leo Schlesinger and became renowned for his modernist cityscapes. He painted murals on the government payroll all around Southern California. He directed the animated film, "The Hangman" which won over 15 international awards. He provided artwork for several Roger Corman films, including "Dementia 13" and "The Terror". 




            I searched for bedbugs and didn't find any. 
            I finished translating a Serge Gainsbourg song from 1964 that I'd overlooked years ago.
            I chronologized a few more hard copies of transcriptions of the Gumby Bible group poem.

August 28, 1992: I paid the $50 deposit to get my winter coat repaired


Thirty years ago today

             On Friday my daughter and I got up fairly late. We had granola for breakfast and then went for a long walk, ending up at the beach. On the way back we went to visit the lady in the variety store beside my old place. I went to the tailor and paid the $50 deposit to get my winter coat repaired. Later we went to Kew Gardens and then to the supermarket. After her nap, we had some more broccoli mixed with rice and beans. We took another walk, this time down to the boardwalk. That night Nancy called from Mexico and talked to her.

Saturday 27 August 2022

Sixteen Tons of Dogma


            On Friday morning I memorized the first two verses and the chorus of "Scènes de manager" (Unsightly Public Scenes) by Serge Gainsbourg. 
            I weighed 85.3 kilos before breakfast. That's the lightest I've been in the morning in six days. 
            I finished washing the grooves for the sliding windows on the right side of my kitchen window set. I cleaned one of the outer sliding windows and before installing it I laid down on my back on a pillow with my head outside the window and reached up with the squeegee to give the big right window another wipe on the outside. Since I have to go to the supermarket tomorrow, I might not have time to clean the other sliding windows until Sunday. 
            I weighed 85 kilos before lunch. That's the least I've weighed at that time in two weeks. 
            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 
            I weighed 85.2 kilos at 17:00. 
            In the Movie Maker project for my song "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" I finished isolating the song and published it. Then I uploaded it to YouTube. I posted it on Twitter and Facebook, and I sent a link to Brian Haddon, who used to play the song with me. I also sent a link to Dutch Jongman, who mentioned a few years ago that he liked the song. Here is the link: 

 https://youtu.be/oq9y34xFms0 

            I spent a long time searching for vintage film footage of someone holding a brain. I thought there would at least be something like that in an old horror movie, but I couldn't find anything so far. 
            I grilled three pork chops in the oven and fried two in a pan with olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, apple cider vinegar, and Chinese chili sauce. I had one with honey, plus a potato with gravy while watching a Bugs Bunny Mother's Day special from 1979 and a Bugs Bunny short from 1980. 
            The special was entitled, "Bugs Bunny Baby Boomers", and as with other specials, there is new footage created just to thread the old features together. Bugs encounters Granny, who is giving out flowers to welcome newborn babies. A stork steps forward to argue that his job is also very important, and so all of the old cartoons feature baby stories that result from the stork getting drunk and delivering the wrong kind of baby animal to expecting animal parents. 
            But the first story doesn't actually involve the stork. In this case, Daffy Duck is married, and his wife has already laid an egg. She tells Daffy that it's his turn to sit on the egg and he says that's for sissies. But she says to do it or else and so he says, "Yes dear!" He sits on the nest but finds it uncomfortable and so he takes the egg out to adjust the seat, but while he's doing that the egg rolls away and lands on a pile of alligator eggs. He can't tell which is his but figures an egg is an egg and grabs one. The mother gator is distraught and so the father goes to get it back. Daffy and the gator go back and forth, stealing back the egg until finally, Daffy wins. Then the egg hatches and Daffy and his wife have a baby alligator. Mrs. Duck insists that it is just an ugly duckling. The same scenario unfolds with the alligator parents as one of their hatchlings is a duckling. 
            The next story is a Foghorn Leghorn tale in which he becomes a parent. A mischievous barnyard dog has placed a giant ostrich egg next to Foghorn while he sleeps. When he wakes up, he believes that he laid it while he was sleeping. He sits on it, and it hatches into a baby ostrich, which he raises as his own. We see that the ostrich grows to be three times bigger than Foghorn, but he still thinks it's his son.
            Then we see the story of when Bugs Bunny got mixed up with a stork's bundle and was delivered to a mother kangaroo. 
            Then Daffy confronts the stork and says that he caused the break-up of his first marriage, and now that he's happy in his second partnership he wants the stork to leave them alone. Daphne Duck however is expecting a visit from the stork. Daffy begins to arm, and booby trap his house to make sure the stork is not able to deliver the egg. There are bear traps, guillotines, and alligators waiting for the stork, as well as electronic sensors. But the drunken stork makes it in anyway. There's a trap door just inside the front door and below the snapping alligators are waiting. But the stork avoids the trap and Daffy falls in. But Daffy is successful at catapulting the stork away and he later tells Bugs that he landed in a home for unmarried female ducks. The egg ended up with forty mothers. 
            Then we see the story of the stork losing a gorilla baby and kidnapping Bugs Bunny to deliver him instead. 
            In the end, an egg that has been delivered to Daffy turns out to be a stork baby and so Daffy flies and delivers it to the stork. I think it's the first time Daffy Duck has ever flown like a duck. 
            The second feature is called "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Bunny", and it's a flashback to when Bugs Bunny was a child on the first day of summer vacation. Little Bugs says naughty is natural for little kids. Then we see a young version of Elmer Fudd, who is also just beginning his summer and celebrating by hunting rabbits with his toy cork shooting gun. He shoots Bugs in the behind and Bugs dramatically pretends to die. Then Elmer shoots at Bugs with a cork-firing cannon but Bugs rides the cork, which turns and chases Elmer off a cliff. Elmer doesn't fall because he has yet to study gravity in school and so Bugs leaves a book on gravity for him to read. While reading it and walking he absent-mindedly walks off a cliff and this time falls. Elmer confronts Bugs and calls him a vicious forest creature. But Bugs grabs the gun and says, "That's my line" Elmer says, "No that's my line" but he pronounces the "L" as he always does with a "W" sound because of his rhotacism. But for the first time in Bugs Bunny's history, he draws attention to Elmer's speech disorder and accuses Elmer of offering wine to a minor. Elmer tries to swear off hunting rabbits, but he can't and goes after Bugs with a cork machine gun. The adult Bugs says he thinks he and Elmer were the youngest people to start chasing each other but then he sees a little Wile E Coyote chasing a half-hatched Roadrunner egg with just the running legs and the head sticking out. 
            I did a search for bedbugs and following the pattern of finding one sick one every two days, I found one halfway up the left side of the frame of the old exit door at the head of my bed. 
            I felt sleepy at 22:00 and went to bed for an hour, then I got up, did the dishes, put the pork chops away, got ready for bed, and then finished writing my journal. I went to bed again at around 1:30 but didn't sleep very well.

August 27, 1992: I took my daughter to the CNE and she spent a lot of time in a tepee with an old woman who was doing beadwork


Thirty years ago today 

            On Thursday I took my daughter to the Canadian National Exhibition. It was raining and so I dressed her in boots and a windbreaker. We got there at around 15:00 and the first thing she saw was the tepees. She went inside where there was an older woman doing beadwork. She left and came back to her about ten times. Next, we saw a free stage show with singers and dancers and spent a long time watching that. I took her away to explore other things, but she didn't want to leave and at one point walked a few hundred meters all the way back to it all by herself. It was raining pretty hard, so we went inside the Better Living Centre where she found mock-ups of bedrooms and kitchens and enjoyed opening and closing cabinet doors. In the music store had fun playing with the buttons on video equipment and pressing the keys of synthesizers. Then we went to the petting zoo, but she was more impressed with the water hose she saw there. I bought a salad at the food building, but she wouldn't eat anything. We walked to the midway and she started getting cranky. We went home at around 19:00.

Friday 26 August 2022

Early Nick Cave Sounds Like Jim Morrison on PCP


            On Thursday morning I published my translation of "C'est comment qu'on freine" by Serge Gainsbourg as "That's Not the Gas it's the Brakes" Tomorrow I'll start learning his next song on my 1982 list. 
            I weighed 86 kilos before breakfast. 
            After a full shave and a shower, I only had time before lunch to clean most of the dirt from the sliding window grooves on the right side of my kitchen window set. So, the sliding windows will stay out for another day, but hopefully, I'll be able to get some or all of them cleaned and back in place on Friday. 
            I've been listening to the Nick Cave discography, beginning with his first punk band The Birthday Party. They sounded like The Doors would sound if they were overdosing on horse tranquilizer. The very first Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album is refreshingly good and creative, especially Cave's cover of Leonard Cohen's Avalanche. In the second and third albums he starts to wear the drag of his obsession with the southern United States. There are a lot of covers and their version of Lou Reed's "All Tomorrow's Parties" sounds almost exactly like that done by The Velvet Underground and so what's the point? On his cover of Wanted Man by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash he ruins the punch line. The song is supposed to make the listener think that the speaker is on the run because they are wanted by the police and then hits us with the surprise that the person is actually on the run from several former lovers. But Cave ruins it by adding another list of places where the speaker is wanted and returning to the implication that it's the law the speaker is running from. 
            On the third album, they sound a lot like the Cowboy Junkies but the album came out two months before the Cowboy Junkies' first album, so it can't be a rip-off. 
            I weighed 85.5 kilos before lunch. That's the lightest I've been at that hour in six days. 
            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown, and on the way back I stopped at Freshco. I bought five bags of cherries, a pint of strawberries, a pack of blueberries, a bunch of regular bananas, a bunch of organic bananas, three bags of skim milk, a jug of orange juice, and a jug of limeade. I was looking for Sunlight dish detergent but there was none on the shelves. I noticed a box in the upper storage area and got a nearby employee to take it down. It contained the large bottles for laundry, which I didn't want and so he took down another box that had the right ones. 
            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 18:00. That's the lightest I've been at that hour in eleven days. 
            I was caught up on my journal just before 19:00. 
            In the Movie Maker project for my June 19 song practice, I synchronized the video with the audio. Then I started a separate project for my song "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" as it was recorded that day. I trimmed everything before the third take. Tomorrow I'll cut out a little more from the minute before I start singing again, and then I'll delete everything after the finale. I'll probably have time to render the song as a movie and upload it to YouTube. 
            In the Movie Maker project for my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" I synchronized the concert video with the studio audio after the line, "We're looking for the threshold ..." when I sing "in shock therapy." But then it goes out of synch again for the line, "But if convulsive codes have not been reached". So, I'll have to find another clip that will fit that line. 
            I had a potato with gravy and two chicken wings while watching two Bugs Bunny features from Christmas of 1979. 
            The first feature was a new short that begins on Christmas Eve at the North Pole, where Santa is asking Martha Clause if his clothes are dry yet because he has to leave soon. Meanwhile, a plane is flying overhead that is transporting the Tasmanian Devil in a crate. Taz breaks loose and parachutes out, falling on the clothes line and inside of Santa's suit, then bounces off the line and into Santa's sleigh. I guess the reindeer think Taz is Santa and they take off. Meanwhile, in Bugs Bunny's house, Bugs is reading "The Night Before Christmas" to his nephew, Clyde. When he gets to the line, "Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse" we see Speedy Gonzales sitting by the fire and stirring a drink in a mug. He says, "I'm stirring, and I'm a mouse!" When he gets to the line, "Then all of a sudden there arose such a clatter ..." there arises a clatter. Bugs sends his nephew to bed because Santa Clause has a thing about kids staying up too late. When Taz comes down the chimney Bugs greets him as Santa Clause. He feeds him milk and cookies and Taz eats the plate and the glass too. Bugs reads Taz his nephew's Christmas wish list which includes, "a trip to Venus, a hockey team of world championship quality, controlling interest in IBM, Frank Sinatra's old address book ..." Meanwhile Taz is eating the Christmas ornaments, which doesn't phase Bugs. He just tells him to watch out for the green bulb because it's not ripe. He tells Taz to come over to the fireplace and he'll make him some popcorn. He hands the jar of raw popping corn to Taz and says he'll go get the popper, but Taz eats the kernels, and they begin to pop in his stomach. Bugs hands Taz a gift-wrapped present and tells him not to unwrap it there. Taz goes outside and opens it. The gift is a self-inflating life raft, which Taz eats. It inflates and Taz begins floating away. In the end, Bugs and his nephew drive Santa's sleigh back to the North Pole to return it.
            The second feature is a special called Looney Christmas Tales. It begins with Bugs Bunny conducting a chorus of carolers consisting of Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam, Pepe Le Pew and Foghorn Leghorn. 
            The first story is the "Christmas Carol" adaptation from the previous year with Yosemite Sam as Scrooge. In the end, when Scrooge turns generous, we hear Sam say that he was only play-acting and he wants his money back. 
            The second segment is a Wile E Coyote-Roadrunner chase. Wile E reads that roadrunners are easy to catch in snow and so he orders a cloud seeder that makes snowfall. But every time he uses it the machine causes a big blob of snow to bury him. No matter what distance he stands from the machine, it drops the snow on him. Then as Wile E is walking in the desert, he sees in the distance snow-capped mountains. He switches the road sign "Snow Summit" with "Desert Crossing" and the Roadrunner heads for the mountains. When the bird runs out onto a frozen lake, he stops and appears confused. Wile E dons speed skates and effortlessly skates around the Roadrunner until he isolates the bird on a circle of ice. The ice surrounding the circle sinks and so does Wile E. The Roadrunner makes the disk of ice travel like a motorboat and Wile E is frozen in an ice cube. Wile E uses jet-propelled skis and slams into a tree. Wile E orders a dogsled and twelve dogs, but when he opens the crate, the dogs pull him in and rip his fur off. Then Wile E skis down a hill on a rocking horse while twirling a lasso, which winds around and binds him as the horse goes over a cliff and lands on a railroad track and Wile E gets hit by a train. Wile E rolls a giant snowball but gets caught in it as it goes over a cliff and lands on top of him.
            The third story is the same as the first feature. 
            In the end Bugs and the carolers are riding and singing in a sleigh that is somehow being pulled by the Tasmanian Devil even though he is not attached to the sleigh but only to the reins held by Bugs. Suddenly the sleigh is gone because Taz ate it. 
            I searched for bedbugs and for the second night in a row I found none. If the pattern holds, I'll find one tomorrow and have to start the count all over again.

August 26, 1992: My daughter refused to get out of bed until I did but she would cry and point out of the bedroom


Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday after midnight, Nancy called from Mexico. She hadn't realized the time difference and so she couldn't talk to the baby because she was already asleep. 
            In the mornings I noticed that my daughter wouldn't get out of bed until I did, but she would cry and point out of the bedroom. 
            I made millet for her the other day, and I was still serving it. After her nap, I always tried to find new ways to feed her broccoli, and I managed to do it somehow each time. 
            She would get restless hanging around the house and so we would go out rain or shine and walk a lot. She liked to sit on the beach and play with rocks. After dinner, we walked up to Kingston Road and then we played in the playground. She was sitting on my lap on the grass in the park eating trail mix out of the bag when all these pigeons came around. They were on my arms, on my lap with her, and one even landed on her back. They were pecking at the trail mix and so my daughter was just being one of the pigeons and pecking at it too. At one point a squirrel came and took an almond out of her hand.

Thursday 25 August 2022

Cut to the Chase


            On Wednesday morning I finally finished memorizing "Sermonette" by Boris Vian. I searched for the chords and found one set, so I copied them and pasted them below the lyrics in my document and started placing them in their proper places. That will probably take a few days at ten minutes a day.
            I finished working out the chords for "C'est comment qu'on freine" (That's How You Slam On the Brakes) by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through the song in French and English. I adjusted one of the lines of my translation and then uploaded it to Christina's Translations. I'll probably have it published on the blog tomorrow. 
            I weighed 85.6 kilos before breakfast. 
            Around midday I removed the sliding windows from the right-hand window set in my kitchen, laid on my back on a pillow, stuck my head outside and cleaned the big outer window with a squeegee four times as best as I could. Then I started washing the grooves for the sliding windows. As with the left side, the grooves are extremely dirty and so I didn't get it done today. I left the sliding windows out, taking advantage of the warm weather. Hopefully, I'll get the grooves clean tomorrow and at least one of the sliding windows. 
            I weighed 86 kilos before lunch. I had five-year-old cheddar on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with a glass of lemonade. 
            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 
            I weighed 85 kilos at 17:00. That's the lightest I've been at that time in six days. 
            I was caught up on my journal at around 18:45. 
            In the Movie Maker project for my June 19 song practice I got the video and the Audacity audio almost synchronized to the point when there's a strong echo effect. I'll edit it some more tomorrow to hear if some echo works or if I need there to be none at all. After synchronization, I'll create a separate project for my song "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" and then isolate it from the rest of the session. I might even have time to render it as a movie and then upload it to YouTube. 
            In the Movie Maker project for my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" I edited further the vintage video of convulsion therapy and inserted a short clip into the main video to correspond with the line, "We're looking for the threshold ..." The clip went for longer than the line, so I cut some off the end. Next, I started shaving away the part of the concert video where I sing that line, so I can synchronize the concert video with the studio audio when I sing "shock therapy" again. 
            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching The Bugs Bunny Roadrunner Movie from 1979. 
            Most of the ninety-minute movie consisted of Bugs Bunny shorts that I'd already seen. It begins with new animation of Bugs Bunny in his palatial home (modeled after Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water) house, as he introduces the film and each segment. He starts off talking about the post-Big Bang beginnings of the universe and then focuses on the planet Earth. It shows a caveman and woman sitting in their home looking bored as one of them asks, "What's on the wall tonight honey?" They move their heads back and forth very quickly while looking at the cave paintings to animate them. Flash forward to the early 20th Century and a similar couple is watching a silent movie, but they are still bored. And so, comedy was invented, and comedy begat pratfalls, custard pies, double takes, and most of all chases.
            Then we see the first clip, which is one of Elmer Fudd chasing Bugs Bunny. 
            Then we see Bugs Bunny's encounter with Marvin the Martian on Marvin's space station. 
            This is followed by Daffy Duck's encounter with Marvin in an episode of Duck Dodgers in the 24th Century. Dodgers is summoned by Dr. I.Q. Hi, the Secretary of the Stratosphere, on the 17,000th floor, because the world's supply of aludium phosdex, the shaving cream atom, is alarmingly low. The only remaining source is on Planet X and Dodgers is tasked with finding Planet X. Accompanying Dodgers on his quest is the ever-faithful space cadet, Porky Pig. Porky provides the solution to finding Planet X. He says they should just follow Planets A, B, C and so on until they reach X. Dodgers plants a flag and claims X in the name of Earth, but seconds later Marvin the Martian arrives and claims the planet in the name of Mars. Marvin points his disintegrator gun at Dodgers, but Dodgers tells us he is wearing his disintegration-proof vest. Marvin fires and Dodgers is disintegrated but not his vest. Porky fires a re-integrator gun to put Dodgers back together. Dodgers confronts Marvin with his own disintegrating pistol, which then disintegrates itself. Marvin chases Dodgers to his spaceship where Porky hands Marvin a lit stick of dynamite wrapped in a ribbon and says, "Happy birthday!" Marvin takes it and blows up. Dodgers seeks to observe Marvin with his super video detecto set. Marvin appears on the screen, aims, fires, and hits Dodgers. Dodgers uses his secret weapon, which fires an explosive net over Marvin's ship. But Marvin has the exact same weapon and does the same to Dodgers' ship. They each detonate their weapons and destroy the Planet X. All that is left is a basketball sized piece of the planet on which Dodgers is standing while Porky and Marvin hang on underneath. 
            Then we see the segment in which Daffy plays a bumbling Robin Hood. 
            This is followed by the cartoon in which Daffy is victimized by an animator who turns out to be Bugs Bunny. 
            Then we see the story of Bugs as a bullfighter. 
            After that is the tale of when Bugs and Daffy find the treasure of Ali Baba. 
            Then one of the stories in which Daffy tries to get Elmer Fudd to shoot Bugs Bunny. 
            Then Bugs introduces Pepe le Pew, who he says lives in France, "where all good Americans go when they die." We see two stories blended together in which a female cat gets a stripe painted down it's back and so Pepe thinks she is a skunk and amorously chases her around. 
            Then back in the present, Bugs plays the Minute Waltz in thirty seconds. 
            Then we see the story of the opera singer who breaks Bugs's banjo, leading to Bugs sabotaging his concert. 
            That is followed by the famous cartoon, "What's Opera Doc?" 
            After that is one of the stories of Wile E Coyote's pursuits of Bugs Bunny. 
            Bugs says that since Wile E couldn't catch him, he decided to pick on someone his own size, the Roadrunner. The last twenty minutes of this movie then is a collection of Wile E's many futile attempts to catch the most annoying cartoon character of all. To summarize, there are many incidents of Wile E running or stepping off cliffs, being surprised by "Meep Meep"s and jumping up into overhanging rocks, setting traps that backfire and catch hold of boulders that fall on his head, uses various gadgets to propel himself after the Roadrunner but instead slams into walls of rock, eats vitamins that make him super-fast but then he slams into one of his earlier traps that didn't work before, gains the ability to fly with a bat costume but also slams into a wall of rock. In the end, he tries a rocket sled which goes up instead of forward, then explodes and he becomes the Hunter constellation. 
            The final message is that chases are funny and maybe the whole universe is just one big chase. 
            I learned later that the phrase "Cut to the chase" comes from silent movies where the most exciting part of the film was the chase scene. 


            In the end, we see Bugs lying on his stomach on the Warner Brothers emblem and saying, "Eat your heart out Boit Reynolds!" Clearly a reference to Burt Reynolds's nude centerfold in Cosmopolitan Magazine. 


            I did a search for bedbugs and found none. I get tired of these pre-bedtime hunting expeditions because if the pattern holds, in a day or two I'll find one and I'll have to keep searching. I want to find none for a month and then stop looking.

August 25, 1992: I failed my driving test because of a cold and mean examiner


Thirty years ago today

            Tom Smarda called me on Monday to say he would be available to babysit on Tuesday while I went to take my driving test. He came at around 10:50, which was cutting it close because I had nearly nothing ready for the baby. At first, my daughter was scared of him, but he got her doodling with a pen and then I snuck out. My instructor and I drove to Oshawa and practiced for two hours. It felt like I was pretty well ready for the test and my instructor told me that I had a good chance. But the examiner was a very cold person and I made two mistakes. I passed a parked car without signaling and I stayed too long in a lane that was ending, so I failed. I drove the car back to Toronto and my instructor told me that the same examiner had failed him when he first tried for his teaching license. He said that shortly after that he passed the test at another location. He agreed to make another appointment for me to be tested at a different place. The baby was asleep when I got back. Tom told me that she'd started screaming when she'd realized I was gone, but later she calmed down and they went for a walk at Kew Gardens. Tom left and my daughter woke up at around 17:45.

Wednesday 24 August 2022

Glass Half Dirty


            On Tuesday morning I finished memorizing "C'est comment qu'on freine" (That's How You Slam on the Brakes" by Serge Gainsbourg. This was a difficult one to learn and I wasn't sure if I was going to nail it down today. It's funny how I'm sometimes faced with the mountain of a final verse and then suddenly and to my surprise I'm able to breeze through the whole thing. I searched for the chords but found none and so I worked them out for the first verse and the first line of the chorus. 
            I weighed 86.2 kilos before breakfast. 
            Around midday, I finished cleaning the sliding windows on the left side of the southern window set in my kitchen. I'll clean the outside of the big right-hand window tomorrow, then the grooves for the sliding windows below it. I don't know if I'll have time to clean the actual sliding windows until Thursday. 
            I weighed 85.8 kilos before lunch. My weight in the morning and at midday on this day was exactly the same as on Monday. 
            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 
            I weighed 85.6 kilos at 17:00. 
            I was caught up on my journal at 18:15. 
            I started a Movie Maker project for the recording of my June 19 song practice and imported the video for that day as well as the Audacity audio. I always start the audio recording of my song practices before the video, so I had to cut out a lot of the beginning of the audio in order to synchronize them. I was still about five seconds off when I stopped. I should have them lined up tomorrow. 
            I converted the YouTube video of convulsion therapy that I'd downloaded yesterday from MP4 to AVI so it would import into Movie Maker. I imported the converted file into the project for my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" and copied it to the end of the timeline. I cut it down to about a minute and a half. I'll edit it some more tomorrow since I only need about two seconds. 
            I continued to date and organize the hard copies of my transcripts of the Gumby Bible group poem. 
            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching two Bugs Bunny features. 
            The first one was a special called "How Bugs Bunny Won the West" narrated by a live-action Denver Pyle in between the animated segments. 
            The first segment was the one about Nasty Canasta stealing Bugs Bunny's gold and how Bugs got it back. 
            The second was the story of Yosemite Sam trying to claim jump Bugs Bunny. 
            The third story was a Daffy Duck short that begins with Daffy crawling through the desert, desperate for water. He sees a pool and dives in, splashing it into his mouth but it's just a mirage and he's been eating sand. He tries to dig for water and finds a big gold nugget. We don't see what he does with it. 
            In the fourth story, Bugs Bunny walks into a saloon with a big bag of gold and asks for a carrot juice. Blacque Jacque Shellacque shoots Bugs's glass. Jacque is standing in front of a wanted poster with his name on it. It says he's wanted for claim jumping, pogo-sticking, and square dance calling. Jacque tries to steal Bugs's gold but when Bugs resists, Jacque suggests they gamble for it with a game of 21. Bugs stands on one card and Jacque gets two tens of spades. Bugs wins with the twenty-one of hearts. Jacque says he refuses to be beaten. Bugs says there's a guy in the other room who says he's twice as tough. Jacque goes to see and it's Bugs Bunny as a gunslinger. Bugs draws his gun on Jacque and it's a pop gun. Jacque laughs and pulls out the cork, then he gets shot in the face. Jacque demands that Bugs hand over his bag of gold. Bugs runs into a store room and switches his gold with a bag of gun powder. Jacque breaks in and demands the bag, so Bugs gives it to him, but as he does so he slits the bag with a pen knife. Jacque runs out of town and into the mountains leaving a trail of gunpowder, which Bugs lights, and we see it explode in the distance. 
            The next segment is the story of Bugs Bunny out-shooting Yosemite Sam. 
            In the next story, Daffy Duck rides into a town that's looking for a sheriff. He rides his horse Tinfoil and he's followed by his faithful deputy, Porky Pig. Daffy enters a saloon with his gun drawn and his pants down. Everyone ignores him. He goes up to the bar and orders a double pasteurized milkshake with a yogourt chaser. But Nasty Canasta shoots the glass from his hand. Daffy pulls his gun, but Canasta bites the barrel off. Canasta tells Daffy to have a drink and then he tells the bartender, "Two of the usual." The barkeep puts on a welding mask and opens an asbestos cabinet containing three bottles: cobra fang juice, hydrogen bitters, and Old Panther. He mixes the three then adds ice cubes, but the ice cubes jump out yelping and run for shelter in a bucket of water. Canasta drinks his and tells Daffy to drink the other. Daffy gets Porky to drink it and he says it's delicious and so Daffy orders another. After he drinks it he begins reciting "Mary had a little lamb" in a child's voice. 
            The final segment is the story in which Bugs Bunny stops Yosemite Sam from robbing a train.
            The second feature was an eight-minute version of "A Christmas Carol" with Yosemite Sam playing Sam Scrooge, Sylvester playing his cat, Porky Pig playing Bob Cratchit, and Tweety Bird playing Bob's son Tiny Tim. Bugs Bunny plays himself. It opens with Scrooge counting his money in a warm office while Porky freezes in the employee's section. Bugs comes in with mistletoe and kisses Sam, who kicks him out. Bugs comes back in and steals some coal from Scrooge's fireplace to put in the stove where Porky is working. But Sam catches Porky warming himself and accuses him of stealing. Bugs comes in with Pepe Le Pew, Foghorn Leghorn, and Elmer Fudd, and they begin caroling. Scrooge tosses them out and also fires Porky. After Scrooge forecloses on Porky's mortgage, Bugs says "This means war." Scrooge draws a hot bath but Bugs shovels snow into it. That night while Scrooge is sleeping, Bugs puts on a ghost sheet and rattles chains, and bangs a drum. Since there's no time for three ghosts, Bugs wakes Scrooge up and introduces himself as the Ghost of Christmas. He says he's taking him to see the man in the red suit. Scrooge says, "You mean Santa Clause?" Bugs says, "The other man in the red suit" meaning the Devil. Suddenly and way too soon, Scrooge is convinced to reform. He goes out on the street throwing money at everyone, then he makes Porky a partner in the firm. 
            I searched for bedbugs and found one in a crack in the baseboard to the right of the head of my bed. It was further away from the bed on that side than I've ever found them. It was black and the blood inside was not fresh, suggesting it was not well.