Reed Hadley

            On Wednesday morning I uploaded "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" by Boris Vian to Christian’s Translations and began preparing it for publication on the blog. 

            I blog published “Bye Bye Samantha”, my translation of “Baille baille Samantha” by Serge Gainsbourg. I started working on memorizing his song “Suck baby suck”. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first session of four. It went out of tune quite often. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I washed, scrubbed and lightly sanded the outside of my bathroom door to get it ready to paint so I can use up the rest of my primer. I might have time to prime it on Thursday. Prime time. I also glued the upper left hand corner of the outside of the door back in place with No More Nails. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before lunch. I had Ritz crackers with tzatziki and a glass of limeade. Ritz and tzatz are not a great combo. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I wore an extra layer of shirt in addition to my long underwear and two pairs of socks and I was quite comfortable. 

            I weighed 84.8 kilos at 17:30, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening in eleven days. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:19. I compared the video of my August 26 song practice performance of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” with that of August 9. August 26 is not as good and has quite a few off chords. I compared August 27 to August 9 and it is almost as good but I’m just a little more engaging in better light on August 9. I compared August 28 to August 9 and August 28 is pretty good but not as good. I compared September 1 to August 9 and September 1 is not quite as good. There are three takes of the song left to compare before I determine which is the best. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Megaphor” I inserted the clips I made from the 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday into the main video to correspond with my line, “He always gets the last waltz no matter who brings you in”. I deleted the clip of Grazia and Death dancing and just kept the clip of her approaching Death in his cloaked form to be embraced and to disappear together. I shortened that by about half as well. Then I tried to synchronize the concert video with the studio audio for my line, “And all those stars are strung like beads on an invisible thread spiralling endlessly inward…”. But I couldn’t line them up and so I started looking online for clips that might fit that line. I bookmarked a few videos that show simulations of spiral galaxies being formed and I think that’s what I’m going to go with. I’ll download some or all of them tomorrow, convert them, import them and hopefully start editing them tomorrow. There’s only about a minute left to create video for in the song. 

            I made pizza on naan with Bolognese sauce, hot salami, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 4, episodes 18 and 19 of Green Acres.

            In the first story it’s the first day for Oliver and Brian in their law partnership. The phone has yet to be installed when they get there. Although Lisa supposedly went to secretarial school in Hungary she doesn’t know how to type and doesn’t even notice when the top half of the typewriter flies off. The man comes to install the phone. He also connects a buzzer system from her desk to each of Oliver and Brian’s desks. The buzzer system was Lisa’s idea and when she presses one of two buttons a loud a fire alarm rings at their desks. When Oliver tries to use the phone it goes dead. Brian suggests Oliver take the rest of the day off and says he’ll get the phone connected. The next day they return and it’s connected and Lisa’s alarms have been removed. Now all they can do is wait for a client but Lisa is bored. Oliver suggests that she go out to buy a magazine. She goes to Sam’s newspaper office and takes out an ad advertizing Oliver and Brian’s firm, not realizing it’s against the law for lawyers to advertize. The next day they have a few people come asking for their free gifts. Oliver kicks them out but then they get a call from the bar association which plans to bring them up on charges for unethical practices. At that time it was illegal for lawyers to advertize but that changed in the mid 70s. 

            In the second story the Hooterville Young People’s Agricultural Society is flying to Washington for the national convention but Oliver won’t let him go. Finally he gives in because Eb says the rest of the Hooterville chapter is going. But it turns out that the whole chapter consists of just Eb and Arnold the pig. Oliver and Lisa drive them to the Pixley airport. The flight is on Trans Pixley Airlines with an elderly flight attendant. The plane is not a jet and there are only benches rather than seats like on a paratroop carrier. The flight attendant refuses to allow the plane to take off as long as Arnold is on the plane. Eb goes to get Oliver and Lisa. Arnold has locked himself in the washroom and while Oliver is trying to get him out the plane takes off. When they get to Washington they learn that the convention was last week. Oliver and Lisa decide to stay for a week anyway. Oliver is shocked that outside of their hotel room window they can see the Eiffel Tower. 

            The pilot was played by Reed Hadley, who was the first actor to play Red Ryder on the radio. He also played Chad Remington on the radio series Frontier Town. He played the title character in the film serial Zorro’s Fighting Legion. He co-starred in the movie Big House USA. He starred in the TV series Racket Squad and Public Defender. He was the narrator of several Department of Defense films, of the documentary Nazi Plan, and of a few Hollywood films.