I video and audio recorded song practice while playing the Martin acoustic guitar as I'll do for a couple more days before playing the Kramer electric again for two more and so on. I did several takes of "Megaphor" and "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" until I made it to the end. I was almost finished a take of Sixteen Tons of Dogma during part A of the session but the battery timed out just before the end. So I did it again and finished it in part B. There's quite a treacherous balance between trying to have fun with a song and trying to concentrate in order not to screw it up. My French translations are less problematic to play but I also fumble them. There's a better chance that I'll have a few of those worth uploading so I can move on to new material.
I weighed 85.1 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I've been in the morning in ten days.
Around midday I used the hammer and screwdriver to rip up another tile from the front of the kitchen counter. There's one more in front of the counter and another in front of the stove.
The depression in the kitchen floor is all filled in but now I'll have to sand down the boards that are slightly higher than the floor.
I weighed 84.8 kilos before lunch.
When I got up from my siesta it was raining a bit, but it shortly let up so I started getting ready for a bike ride. Then it started a bit again and then eased off, so I headed out. It was misting as I rode up Brock and it became heavier as I went east along the Bloor bike lane. I was thinking it might get worse and was ready to head south but it came down lighter and so I continued downtown and back.
I washed and brushed the smallest of the amethyst rocks and then took it out on the deck to chisel it a bit. I unintentionally knocked off a few amethyst crystals.
I weighed 84.8 kilos at 17:30. That's the heaviest I've been at that time in a week.
I was caught up on my journal at 18:10.
I reviewed the video I shot this morning of song practice. There was one wrong chord at the end of Megaphor. My final take of Sixteen Tons of Dogma wasn't too bad. The Final takes of "The Time of the Yo-Yo", "The Accordion" and "Joanna" seemed okay.
I uploaded the video of my performance of "les sucettes" to YouTube.
In my "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" Movie Maker project, before lunch I'd copied the rest of the lightning clips and pasted them at the end of the timeline. This evening I removed the last of the snakes clip from one of the lightning clips I'd copied from the beginning of the video. I tried to see how the spin effect would work with one of the lightning clips but it doesn't because those clips have an upper and lower frame and when they spin, so does the frame and it looks odd. I went into the main video to add some effects to the clips of Brian Haddon singing "shock therapy" and I saw and heard to my dismay that the video and the audio were a couple of seconds out of sync. It showed Brian singing the final "shock therapy" shout in my voice. I had a crisis on my hands because my perfectly synchronized video was now out of whack. I tried to cut out bits of Brian's clip but then I understood that I needed to check the whole video to find out exactly where it went out of sync, so I undid the cuts. I watched the video and it didn't go out of sync until after the second instrumental, which is where I'd copied the second group of lightning clips. I was thinking that I must have accidentally cut a lightning clip instead of copying it. So I added the first clip from that batch but it didn't help. Then I stopped to think. If the video was behind the audio that means I need to remove some of the video. So I must have added clips to the video when I tried to paste them on the end of the timeline. I looked closely at the instrumental section and when I put my cursor over the first three lightning clips I saw that they were all three .57 seconds. Looking closer I saw that they were all identical. I must have accidentally pasted the first clip twice in the main video. I removed clips two and three and everything was back in sync. That was a relief. It took a lot of time though. With the last few minutes I had before dinner I listened to how many heart-like drumbeats there are at the end of the song and there are five. At the end of the timeline I looked at the pulsing brain clips and counted six pulses. Then I started putting lightning clips on each side of the pulses but I had to quit for dinner. I'll work on it some more tomorrow.
I had a small potato with gravy and three chicken drumsticks while watching season 1, episodes 36 and 37 of Petticoat Junction.
In the first story Kate receives a telegram from Vice President Brooks Webster of Groverdale Lumber, Gravel and Soft Drinks. He's coming to investigate the facilities for a possible convention of forty company salesmen. I don't think we've seen more than two or three guests at the Shady Rest Hotel in this first season of the show. Joe has found a cave that he thinks could be easily used for a wine cellar and he shows it to Kate. While she's inside he sees embedded above the entrance a horseshoe that he lost a year ago. He thinks it's a sign of good luck and he pulls it out, which causes a dirt and rock slide and a very large boulder falls down to cover the entrance of the cave. Kate is trapped and the boulder is too big for any men that Joe could bring so he has to hike to Ding Woodhouse's farm to get him to bring his tractor. But Ding is repairing his tractor and it won't be ready until the next morning. Meanwhile Webster arrives hungry and Kate is not there to work her magic in the kitchen. At another section of the cave there is a hole big enough for Kate to stick her head out of. They bring a camp stove near the cave and have Billie Joe cook a meal for Webster while following Kate's precise directions. They have to run each course from the cave to the hotel and make it look like someone is cooking it in the kitchen. Webster says it's the best food he's ever had. The next morning Kate is freed from the cave and Webster finds her outside. He says he's just the advance man and the decision about the convention is up to President Feisal and he'll be arriving in the morning. Now that Kate is free they think it will be a cinch for her to win Feisal over but on the way back from the cave Kate trips and sprains her ankle.
The second story continues exactly after the previous one. Kate is helped back to the hotel and up to her room. The doctor comes and tells her she has to stay in bed for three days. Billie Joe, Betty Joe and Joe insist they can run the hotel without her and so she agrees to let them. But with Kate out of control Joe suddenly wants to repaint the hotel fancy colours such as lavender combined with magenta like the Hilton Istanbul. Joe also hires a singer named Elgin Harner the Smoky Mountain Songbird to entertain at the convention. The hotel is a mess because of renovations but Feisal arrives a day early. The first thing he wants is a hot bath but Joe neglects to tell him he broke the water heater that morning. The food the girls cook isn't any better and Betty Joe puts too much starch in Feisal's laundry. The last chance is for Elgin to sing for Feisal but it turns out he only knows "On Top of Old Smoky" and it's the one song that Feisal hates. He checks out the next morning. The doctor comes to check on Kate and miraculously her ankle is fine but she decides to stay in bed and pretend it's not fine so as to give her family a chance to prove themselves. They put on a record and make noises downstairs to make Kate think the convention is happening but she gets up and sees otherwise. That night Feisal returns at dinnertime and says he's decided to have the convention there anyway because the salesmen are trainees and need to experience a lousy hotel with horrible food to toughen them up. But then he tastes Kate's chicken and dumplings and is very disappointed because it's the best food he's ever had.
Smokey was played by Don Dubbins, whose first screen appearance was on the 1952 TV series The Doctor. In the 1950s James Cagney took a liking to him and had him co-star as his son in Tribute to a Bad Man with also a role in another Cagney film called These Wilder Years. He then co-starred in The D.I.
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