Sunday 11 June 2023

Diana Millay


            On Saturday morning I finished memorizing "Que tu es impatiente, la mort" (Death You're So Impatient) by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I'll look for the chords. 
            I uploaded "Vieille Canaille" (Old Rascal) by Serge Gainsbourg and my translation, "You Bastard You" to Christian's Translations and started preparing it for publication on the blog. I should have it finished on Sunday. 
            I'm alternating guitars every two days for my recordings of my song practice, so today I returned to the electric. The cable that I bought on June 1 from Long and McQuade had been cutting out on the acoustic and I had to keep pushing in the jack. On Tuesday I took the Martin to The 12th Fret because I thought it was a problem with the pickup, but Brian was pretty sure the problem was a cable and sold me different model by the same company that is very slightly longer. Since then it hasn't cut out once. I decided I would use the Long and McQuade cable for the electric but then I noticed it was also cutting out sometimes. When the same thing happened with the Kramer today I tried the cable I bought from The 12th Fret and it hasn't cut out at all. I'm going to return the other cable to Long and McQuade today and get my money back. Practice seemed to go okay. I'm still trying to get a feel for where some of the chords are on the Kramer. On "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" at the end of each verse I do a little instrumental bit that ends up on the D#m but on the Kramer I don't always hit it because on an electric the neck goes further up while on the acoustic I can't go further than the D#m with a barred E chord so it's easier. This time I tried looking at the guitar when I reach the end of each verse since at that point I'm not singing and so I don't really need to look at the camera. It seems to work better that way but I have to make it smoother. 
            I weighed 85.8 kilos before breakfast. 
            I talked to the guy in unit 2 for the first time other than once saying hi last year. I told him about the tenants meeting on Tuesday but he said he'd be working. I introduced myself to him and we shook hands. I finally found out his name is King. He seemed stand offish before but maybe he's just shy.
            Around midday I rode down to No Frills where I bought six bags of cherries, a pack of chicken drumsticks, a bag of five naan, another bag of two artisan naan, a box of spoon size shredded wheat, and a bag of kettle chips. 
            When I got home I saw Benji in the hall and I asked if he was going to come to the tenant meeting on Tuesday evening. He very tersely responded, "No I am not!" I don't know what's up with him. I remember that 25 years ago when the landlord first bought this building from Henry and he tried to evict everybody, Benji didn't want to fight it. He's only still here because Cesar and I fought the eviction. 
            I put my groceries down and walked to Fullworth to buy four CR2032 batteries. I needed one right away for my guitar tuner but it's always good to have fresh ones around. 
            I weighed 85.7 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 had intended to return the cable to Long and McQuade but I forgot. I'll try to remember tomorrow. 
            I spent about half an hour chiseling the amethyst out of the rock. I knocked a few little hunks off that had small bits of quartz inside but no amethyst and I have yet to expose much of the amethyst that isn't already visible. 
            I weighed 85.5 kilos at 16:45. 
            I was caught up on my journal at 18:25. 
            I reviewed the video I shot this morning. I might have ended up with a useable take of "Megaphor" and a couple of other songs. I screwed up my final take of "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" when I missed the G chord and played an A flat. 
            I compared my performances of "Like a Boomerang" on June 20, 2022 and July 2 of the same year. July 2 has some traffic noise but my performance looks and sounds better. I compared July 2 and July 4 and found that July 4 almost looks as good but with less traffic noise. I compared July 4 to July 8, and heard that July 8 has more traffic noise and a slight mispronunciation, so it looks like I'll be uploading the July 4 recording. 
            I opened the July 15 audio recording of my song practice in Audacity and increased the volume. Then I imported that into a Movie Maker project along with part B of the video recording. I cut out the audio for part B and I'll try to synchronize the video and audio on Sunday.  
            I made pizza on naan with basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode seventeen of "Arrest and Trial". 
            A year ago I initiated the downloads of seven episodes of the 1963-1964 series but only two partially downloaded after a year, this one 78.6%. I usually give a torrent a year before deleting it and so I thought I'd watch this one tonight. The name of the series pretty much lays out the format. The first half of the hour involves the police tracking down and arresting someone, then the second half shows the person's trial. 
            The story begins with a party where people are having a blast but in a bedroom a pretty blonde woman named Yvonne is in shock. A man named Leigh tells her to wait a while and he'll take her home but she says she wants to go with Angela. He says it's best that she stay. Leigh goes out to the garage where William Shatner, playing a guy named Larry has finished packing a trunk. He tells Larry he'll be rewarded. Larry drives to the beach and carries the body of a young woman to the water and leaves her there. He hears a barking dog and drives away. The man with the dog finds the body and notifies the police. She died of an overdose of barbiturates combined with alcohol. She was wearing a very expensive swimming suit. Detective Sergeant Dan Kirby tracks the suit to a fashion house where the dead woman had modelled and then been given the suit, which was not yet on the market. The fashion house didn't know the woman but the designer puts Kirby in touch with a model agent who might. The cops trace the dead woman's prints and learn she was Angela DeSantis. Detective Sergeant Nick Anderson talks to the agent and interviews the models, one of whom is Yvonne, who says she didn't know Angela well and acts surprised she's dead. Anderson goes to meet Angela's landlady and learns that she and Yvonne were roommates. Anderson tracks down Yvonne. Yvonne paid for Angela's funeral and tells Anderson she didn't kill herself but no one else killed her either. Yvonne goes to meet Larry but the cops follow her. Larry runs but they catch him and he is arrested. He admits to obtaining the drug that killed Angela and disposing of her body. 
            In the second half the criminal lawyer John Egan is approached by Leigh who asks him to defend Larry. Egan goes to see Larry and asks him to write a detailed account of the events and a light history of himself. Larry's trial begins. Yvonne is moving from hotel to hotel according to Leigh's instructions. She's been drinking and she calls Leigh and tells him where she is. He calls his henchman Bull and tells him where Yvonne is. Larry has been holding back the full story from Egan until he learns that Yvonne has been badly beaten. From this point he opens up about everything. Before Angela's death there was an important meeting between companies and Larry was asked to bring some women to a party to make it more pleasurable. One of the women was Angela, Larry's girlfriend. Larry tries to talk Angela into taking the pills to make her more in a party mood to please the executives, but she says she doesn't want to. He leaves the unopened bottle of pills and walks out of the room. Later Angela is dancing with one of the executives and she collapses. She's taken to a bedroom and Larry is alone with her when she dies. Egan puts Leigh on the stand. Leigh is told that Bull has signed a confession and said he was following Leigh's orders when he beat up Yvonne. Leigh eventually admits to persuading Angela to take the pills. Egan crucifies his own client in his final remarks and declares how despicable he is but makes it clear he is not guilty of the crime with which he's been charged. He's found not guilty.
            Yvonne was played by Diana Millay, who was a professional tap dancer at seven and a beauty contestant at ten. She modeled for Sears catalogues and then became a fashion model. She did summer stock theatre for seven years. This led to roles on Broadway and guest appearances on TV series. Her first television appearance was on an episode of Star Tonight. In 1966 she was cast as Laura Collins on the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, a role that she played for three years and then reprised in the TV movie "Night of Dark Shadows". Later she became an author of books such as The Power of Halloween, How to Create Good Luck and I'd Rather Eat than Act.





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