Ketty Lester

           On Sunday morning I finished revising my translation of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Road) by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I’ll run through playing and singing it and then upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog. 

           I worked out the chords for all but the last verse of “Baille baille Samantha” (Yawn Yawn Samantha) by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have that finished on Monday and then I need to revise my translation of the final verse. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the second session of two. 

            I weighed 85.9 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning in two weeks. 

            Around midday I put painter’s tape around the edges of the sheet of white Masonite that I’d glued to the kitchen floor in front of the counter. Then I painted the first coat of primer down. I don’t know what they put onto white Masonite to make it white but it’s pretty thin and even some of it wore off while I was carrying it home. It’s definitely whiter now but it will need at least another coat. If I have any primer left over I might as well use it on the outside of the bathroom door. 

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before lunch. I had Ritz crackers with the rest of the roasted red pepper dip and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride. It was misting a bit when I started out and it got a bit heavier once I got up to Bloor. It felt like it would soon start seriously raining by the time I got to Bathurst and so I headed south to Queen and then home. I made a good call because it started coming down much harder shortly after I got here. 

            I went out and bought a six-pack of Creemore. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos at 17:00.

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:49.

            I reviewed the song practice videos of my performances of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” from September 11 to 14. From September 11 to 13 I played my Martin acoustic guitar. On September 11 the take at 13:00 was pretty good except for one fumbled chord at the end. On September 12 the take at 9:30 was pretty good but there were some wrong chords at the end. On September 13 the last take in part A was pretty good until the end. On September 14 I played my Kramer electric guitar and the take at 14:00 was sort of okay. It didn’t finish too badly. 

            I finished watching the 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday. In the second half Death as Prince Sirki has begun his first day as a guest in Duke Lambert’s home. At breakfast the Baron reads newspaper reports of battles and accidents in which no one dies. Grazia has to leave with her mother and so Alda and Rhoda both compete for Sirki’s attentions. At a casino he never loses but he gives his winnings mostly to Alda and Rhoda. On his final night there is a dance. Rhoda makes a play for the prince but finds she’s not his type. Alda feels more intensely for him but he tells her to look into his eyes and see who he really is. She does and she is terrified and repulsed. In Death’s last two hours in this world Grazia returns. They dance and declare their love for each other. In the last few minutes the duke tells his guests that Sirki is really Death. They beg Death not to take Grazia and finally he agrees. He reveals himself to her in his dark cloaked form but she says she knew it all along and loves him anyway. She chooses to go with him and he declares that love is as strong as Death. It's a great movie and the ending will work perfectly for my “Megaphor” video project to fit with my line, “He always gets the last waltz no matter who brings you in”. 

            In my scanner I looked at eight strips of slides from among the several that I found many years ago. They all seem to be educational slides, with one set on the Soviet Union and another on China. There were no images worth keeping so I threw them all away. There are eight more strips of educational slides left. Then there are about seven colour negatives and a set of black and white. After that there are eight boxes of my own slides. 

            I made pizza on naan with Bolognese sauce, tzatziki, a cut up beef burger, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 4, episodes 12 and 13 of Green Acres. 

            The first story is similar to one that was written for Petticoat Junction. Oliver is pissed off that after a year of working on his bedroom the Monroe brothers haven’t gotten anything done. They confess that they don’t even have a permit for building his bedroom. He goes to get a permit and is told that while his land and barn are in Hooterville, his house is in Pixley. Now the town of Pixley says he owes $960 in back taxes and his house has been condemned for being below Pixley standards. On top of that his telephone, his power, and his water have been cut off because he was getting those from Hooterville and now he has to pick up his mail from Pixley. He has his farm resurveyed and it is found that they made a mistake. His house is in Hooterville after all but his barn is in Pixley and his farm is in Crabwell Corners. 

            In the second story Lisa’s birthday is approaching and when she says she misses horseback riding in New York, Oliver decides to get her a horse. When Haney finds this out he sells Lisa a talking horse who used to have his own TV show. The horse’s voice sounds like Rich Little’s impression of Jimmy Stewart. Oliver doesn’t want anything from Haney and tries to get his money back. Oliver talks to his mother on the phone from Paris and tells her he’s going to get Lisa a horse. She says she’ll get her a habit but Oliver tells her Lisa still has her old habit. The people listening on the party line misunderstand the word habit. Hank comes to find out what habit she has but when he arrives it’s just after Eb has cleaned out a big pile of empty bottles from when Haney owned the farm. Just then Lisa picks up an empty and breaks her shoe. Hank finds her on the ground with a bottle in her hand. Sam and Ralph try to stage an intervention about Lisa’s habit but she says she likes it. Just then Oliver enters in a state of shock after having heard the horse talk. Ralph says if she had a husband who talks to horses she’d drink too. 

            The operator who connected Oliver to his mother in Paris was played by Ketty Lester, who I think is the first black person to appear on Green Acres. She sang You Do Something To Me on You Bet Your Life. She was a singer for Cab Calloway and in 1962 was the opening act for The Everly Brothers. The same year she had a top five hit with the song Love Letters. She was nominated for a Grammy Award. She began acting and in the 70s gave up singing entirely to focus on her acting career. She won a Theatre World Award for her role in Cabin in the Sky. She was offered the lead role on the sitcom Julia but it went to Diahanne Carroll. She played Hester-Sue Terhune on Little House on the Prairie.