Monday 10 July 2023

Jack Pepper


            On Sunday morning I revised my translation of the third verse of "Que tu es impatiente la mort" (We Are So Impatient for Death) by Boris Vian. 
            I finished looking for the chords for "Charlotte Forever" by Serge Gainsbourg and saw that only the one set had been posted. I worked them out for the intro and the first two lines. 
            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice and video and audio recorded the session. I'll play the Martin for another two days, then play two sessions with the Kramer electric and then finish the last two days of this year's recording project playing the Martin. I did "Megaphor" in one take but took a few for "Sixteen Tons of Dogma". I was able to fit six songs into part A of the camera battery's charge and four into part B. I made it through "Like a Boomerang" but the camera timed out during my second take of "Annie C's Aniseed Suckers". 
            I weighed 85.6 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I've been in the morning in seventeen days. 
            I filled out a form to request an appointment with an academic advisor at my college's registrar's office. When I tried to do that several times on Friday the site seemed to be down but this time it went through.
            I researched half courses to enroll in tomorrow and copied down Creative Writing: Poetry; Creative Writing: Short Fiction; and Advanced Creative Writing Seminar: Long Form Writing. I see now though that the poetry course is a year long. In that case I might write in the seminar on Comedy and Sentimentality in Eighteenth-Century Literature. If I learn soon that I indeed only need one more half credit, I might drop the other courses and just take the seminar on long form writing. 
            I weighed 85.8 kilos before lunch. That's the heaviest I've been at that time in twenty six days. 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 85.1 kilos at 17:30 and I haven't been that hefty in eleven days. 
            I was caught up on my journal at 18:49. 
            I uploaded this morning's video of my song practice but I couldn't delete the video from the memory card. That would have been disastrous because I wouldn't have been able to record on Monday. But I looked it up and it seems I'd somehow locked the memory card. I unlocked it and was able to empty it. I reviewed the video. "Megaphor" and "Time of the Yo-Yo" seemed to come out okay. "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" may have had some slight errors in the end. This was generally a pretty good session but I fumbled on one note at the end of "Postcolonial Breakdown". "Like a Boomerang" needs work before I can play the chords right. Six more days of videos left to make and review before I start close-reviewing the whole month and a half of this year's recording project. 
            I tried to play the CDs I have containing versions of Sleep in the Snow with drums but the CD player on my computer wouldn't play them. I tried several other CDs with still the same result. I'd been using VLC Media Player and decided to try Windows Media Player. That worked but I'm used to using VLC to play media. I tried to convert the CDA files to MP3 in Cloud Convert but that failed and another app failed as well. Finally I found that someone online detailed how to use Windows Media Player to rip audio files from a CD and convert them to MP3. It seems though that Mike, the amateur recording engineer had recorded those five tracks of my song onto a previously used CD from a band called Octavia and so all five tracks ripped but each one had titles from the other CD, so I had to change the names and other details. I have another CD that is supposed to also have Sleep in the Snow with drums but I don't know if they are different files or just a copy. I'll rip those tomorrow too just in case. I'm still not sure if I like Sleep in the Snow with drums, at least not the way I played them. Maybe it's just a matter of lowering the volume of the drum track. 
            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episodes 30 and 31 of Petticoat Junction. 
            In the first story, everywhere Joe goes bad things happen to people. Betty Joe is practicing for a recitation contest but when Joe comes around she loses her voice. The hotel guest Mr. Harrington is expecting a bonus in the mail but when Joe delivers him a letter it tells him he's been fired. When Joe rides the Cannonball it goes off the rails. When Joe comes near Sam Drucker's printing press it falls apart. Everyone is avoiding Joe now because they think he is a jinx. He starts to think of it as a marketable super power. A company in Pixley is considering either opening a box factory in Cranwell Corners or in Hooterville. Joe offers his services to jinx Crabwell Corners but it doesn't work. While Joe is in Crabwell Corners Betty Joe's voice comes back but suddenly it goes away again while Joe is not there but the dog is. They realize that every time something went wrong before, the dog was with Joe. When Betty Joe's main competition Sarah Jane comes to visit, Kate encourages her to pet the dog.
            Mr. Harrington was played by Jack Pepper, who had been a Vaudeville performer in a song and dance act with his two sisters and his younger brother. He later performed with Frank Salt in an act called Salt and Pepper. He married a seventeen year old Ginger Rogers and during the three years of their marriage they had an act called Ginger and Pepper. He was best friends with Bob Hope and had small roles in several of his films.
            In the second story the county dog catcher Hinky Mittenfloss is after Betty Joe's dog because he suspects him of sneaking around chicken coops. Betty says he just plays with the chickens. That night the dog is late coming home and Betty waits up for him. She falls asleep on the couch and is awakened by a knock on the door. It's Hinky claiming that the dog killed three chickens. Then the dog walks in covered in chicken feathers. Hinky takes him to the pound where he will be killed. Kate and her family go to a lawyer who says dogs are not tried in court. But then he remembers one case and he lends his lawbooks to Kate so she can defend the dog in court. Luther Craig the chicken farmer says he saw the dog leaving his coop. Kate proves that his perception may be faulty by turning out the lights and having him point out the culprit in the dark but when the lights are turned back on a cat is there. A geologist has analyzed the mud from Luther's farm and found that it is unique to the region and it matches the mud taken from the dog's paws. But Kate proves that the mud from Fred Ziffel's pig farm is also the same and that is where the dog goes to play with Arnold the pig. The judge is just about to find the dog innocent when it steals Joe's chicken sandwich and begins eating it. The judge finds the dog guilty of chicken murder and is about to sentence him to the maximum penalty when Betty Joe wakes up on the couch. It was all a dream and the dog spent the night in a guest's room. The guest, Mr. Roberts is identical to Luther Craig. The dog comes downstairs covered in feathers because he'd torn apart a pillow in his sleep.

No comments:

Post a Comment