Ray Montgomery

            On Thursday I finished working out the chords to "Shanghai" by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through singing and playing the song in French. Tomorrow I'll run through my translation, think of an English title and then upload it to Christian's Translations. 

            I put my newly charged battery back inside my Martin and maybe it symbolically recharged me as well because I had a pretty good song practice, while recording it as usual. I think I might have a good take of Megaphor but I got one chord wrong at the end of Sixteen Tons of Dogma. It's the same chord I often get wrong at that point but usually I get it wrong by going high whereas this time I erred low. I've gotten it right before and I will again. Most of the other songs I got through in one good take and I broke this year's record by making it a couple of verses further into "Like a Boomerang" before the camera battery timed out. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around 12:30 I spent half an hour scrubbing and scraping the residual glue from the part of the kitchen floor where I ripped up the first tile last week. There are still some patches of glue on three of the floorboards in that space but there's a lot on the board that is closest to the kitchen counter. It's going to take at least one full session of cleaning to get that off. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. The air quality was still bad. I stopped at Freshco where I bought seven bags of grapes, a pack of blackberries, a pack of strawberries, some bananas, three small pre-seasoned steaks, a jug of limeade, a jar of salsa, a bag of kettle chips, and a pack of toilet paper. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos at 17:45. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:30. 

            I compared the video of my June 19, 2022 performance of "Laisse tomber les filles" with that of June 25 of the same year. There's not much difference between the two and so June 19 has the edge because it's already synchronized in the Movie Maker project for that date. I compared June 19 to July 3 and July 3 has more traffic noise and so I still favour June 19. I compared June 19 to July 9 and there's not enough of a difference for me not to favour June 19, so that's the one I'll upload. 

            I compared the video of my June 11 performance of "Leave the Naive Alone" to June 16 and June 16 has way too much traffic noise. I compared June 11 to June 18 and June 18 has too much traffic noise. I compared June 11 to June 26 and June 26 also has to much traffic noise. I have just June 28 and July 2 to compare and I'll do that tomorrow. 

            The next of my songs I want to make a video for is "Sleep in the Snow" but before I start that there is one more thing I want to do with part of my Instructions for Electroshock Therapy video project. I think that the video clip that I made for it of the dancing electrical cords would make a great gif and so I started looking into how to make one. The options seem to be either using Photoshop or an online gif maker like Gyphy. Although I've never really used Photoshop other than maybe once or twice, it occurred to me that I might have it. I discovered that I had an uninstalled old version of it and so I installed it. Then I opened up my Instructions for Electroshock Therapy project and saved a copy as "Dancing cords". I started deleting everything but that part but didn't finish before dinner because there are so many clips. 

            For dinner I had a potato with gravy and some pork ribs while watching season 2, episodes 10 and 11 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story it's apple harvest season and time for Kate to maker her bachelor butter, which is really just apple butter as far as I can tell. There's no reference to the condiment online other than in relation to this show. She calls it bachelor butter because she gives it to bachelors like Charlie, Floyd, and Sam as a courtesy for all the ways they help her over the year. Kate's method is not very uniform because how much of any given ingredient she adds depends the relative tartness of the apples. President Jack Crandall of HDL Foods is travelling on the Cannonball when Floyd and Charlie stop it to pick apples. He wants to go to Pixley but they tell him he'll have to spend the night at The Shady Rest while Kate makes the bachelor butter. When Jack tastes it he understands. Kate gives him two jars and later he offers her $500 for her recipe. They bring her to a state of the art lab where two food scientists try to write down the exact procedure but it's impossible because Kate's method is intuitive. For instance she says she knows the oven is hot enough when the dog rolls onto his back and sticks his legs up in the air. That doesn't make any sense considering the fact that the dog is a new addition to the family and Kate has been making the bachelor butter for decades. Finally Kate decides her recipe can't be copied and so she returns the cheque. 

            One of the scientists, Mr. Stevens was played by Ray Montgomery, who won a national public speaking contest in 1940. While still in high school he played Noel Chandler on the soap opera Dear John. He signed with Warner Brothers in 1943 but only played supporting roles, such as when he co-starred in the 50s TV series Ramar of the Jungle. That character was a good guy but he tended to be typecast as a villain on television. In 1957 he left acting to join Ad Staff Incorporated. He was the TV coordinator of the company's Canada Dry ad campaign in the west. In later years he opened his own real estate agency. It's amazing how many former Hollywood actors went into real estate after retiring. Maybe one gets a feel for locations with all the different places around Los Angeles one has to work. 

            In the second story the signs point to Billie Joe planning to elope with Dan Plout. Kate likes Dan but the problem is that he is the son of Salma Plout with whom she has been fighting for 16 years or so. We see Billie and Dan discussing marriage and Billie trying on a ring. At first Kate doesn't believe it but everyone else does and Kate gets more and more upset as the evidence becomes more obvious. Then in the middle of the night Dan brings a ladder and Billie climbs down. When Kate sees Billie the next day arrive with Dan, she has accepted it and greets Dan as her son. But then Kate is introduced to Dan's bride Emily. Billie has only been helping Dan with the arrangements. Now Kate is upset because Billie isn't getting married.