I audio and video recorded song practice while playing my Kramer electric guitar for the first time after four sessions with the Martin acoustic. As usual playing a different guitar after a few days took some getting used to and I fumbled on some of the chords that I wouldn't on the acoustic. I think most of the songs came out all right on the audio playback. I really like the noise reduction effect as it takes away the hum from my amp when the reverb is turned up. With all the retakes I didn't get as many songs on video as usual.
I weighed 85.3 kilos before breakfast.
I spent more than an hour around midday reading about how to apply for the Master of Arts in Creative Writing at U of T. I registered with the School of Graduate Studies but the program won't have an application available for another month. I ordered my transcripts but they cost $18 and the only option for payment seems to be by credit card, which I don't have. I'm confused though by the transcript requirement and wonder if they are only required if one is entering U of T from an outside institution. It seems to me that U of T would have access to my transcripts since they made them and so I shouldn't have to provide them. I emailed Marguerite Perry to ask but she didn't get back to me today. I'm also supposed to apply for grants but so far I haven't found any that apply to my prospective program of study and my situation.
I weighed 85.5 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I decided shortly after starting my trip to count the number of manual bikes compared to the number of electric bikes and scooters. In some cases I couldn't always tell what was an electric bike but of the ones that were obvious I counted 129 manual bikes and 62 electrics. So about half are electric and I noticed there were more than half in the downtown core. The number of manual bikes climbed back up when I was in the west end.
I chiseled some more black quartz from the pieces of the rock I found six years ago. Most of the black quartz crystals are the size of sequins but some are in clusters and the size of small diamonds that one might see on cheaper diamond rings.
I weighed 85.1 kilos at 17:30.
I was caught up on my journal at 18:30.
I reviewed this morning's song practice video. I've got to do something about the rattling sound when I play the B flat chord on the sixth fret. I notice that the A string is slightly frayed so maybe that's what's rattling. I won't have time to change it before Wednesday's practice but maybe I can change it on Friday since I'll be playing the electric again four sessions in a row starting this Saturday. It's weird that I don't hear the rattle in the audio playback. I made it through "Mamadou" after a few takes but the camera timed out during a retake of "La jambe de bois".
I searched for a video clip to fit my line, "It takes a pretty big charge to refrigerate a bed of snow". I don't need anything very long because it's just something to push the concert video in synch with the studio audio. Maybe a vintage fridge commercial just at the moment when the well dressed fifties housewife is opening the fridge door.
I scanned some black and white negatives from 1987. Some are shots of Mike Copping's kids Rachel and Noah interacting with the bust of a mannequin. I found a lot of loose black and white negatives at the bottom of a file folder that seem to have shaken loose from their plastic sleeves. A lot of them have been cut, probably because I made prints of them years ago. I scanned two self portraits of myself naked and aroused I guess because I'd planned on sending the pictures to a kinky personals magazine. I don't remember if I ever did. It'll take a couple of sessions to go through the loose negs, which number about a hundred. After that there are about three hundred more negatives and then I can start on all the slides.
I grilled two T-bone steaks and had one with a potato and gravy while watching season 5, episodes 10 and 11 of Petticoat Junction.
In the first story Betty Joe and Steve are on a cruise ship bound for Hawaii. They send a telegraph from the boat to Sam Drucker with a message that they will be calling Kate at the store the next night. Sam is very excited because he's never received a call from as far away as Hawaii. When he tells Sarah the phone operator she faints. She is so flustered that she plugs one of her knitting needles into the switchboard. Sam wears a suit for the occasion as does Joe, and Kate and the girls also come dressed up as if they were going to a special event. But Grandpa Miller arrives with his cymbals thinking it's band practice night. No one can explain anything to him because of his bad hearing and a tendency to mis-hear everything anybody says and so he crashes his cymbals at inappropriate moments. Then Mrs. Quincey arrives to shop. Sam tells her to help herself and so she starts grinding coffee very loudly. Then some fish is delivered followed by several loud cats. In the end the only connection Betty gets is from the veterinarian thinking that he's calling Ben Miller about his sick bull. Later that night Kate wakes up Sam and asks to use his phone. She calls Betty and Steve in their hotel room and gets through. Betty says she's going to send a get well card from Hawaii to Ben Miller's bull.
In the second story it's Kate's birthday and everybody has a present for her but Betty is still in Hawaii and hasn't sent anything. Meanwhile Betty Joe and Steve are cutting their honeymoon short by a week so they can go home and deliver Kate's present, which is a Hawaiian muumuu. But Betty keeps forgetting the present. She jumps onto the luggage belt in Hawaii to make sure it's in the suitcase. Then in Chicago she forgets it on the plane and has to hold up the flight. Joe and Sam think the post office in Pixley must have misplaced a package from Betty Joe. They get arrested for tampering with the mail. Kate arrives to try and get them out and then Betty and Steve arrive at the jail. Steve made Betty wear the muumuu for the rest of their trip so she wouldn't lose it again.
The airline clerk was played by Dick Wilson, who was born in England but moved to Canada as a child. At the age of fifteen he worked as a radio announcer for CHML in Hamilton. He learned to fly at 16 and became a bush pilot, delivering supplies to Canadian mining camps. He graduated from the Ontario College of Art having studied sculpture. He was an acrobatic comic dancer on Vaudeville. He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during WWII as a fighter pilot. He appeared in 38 movies and 18 episodes of Bewitched, seven times as a drunk, even though he never drank. He is best known as the character of Mr. Whipple, who was a grocery store owner in over 500 Charmin toilet tissue commercials, repeatedly urging his customers, "Don't squeeze the Charmin!" and then being always caught in the end squeezing it himself. He worked about two weeks a year on the commercials and earned $300,000 a year.
No comments:
Post a Comment