Sunday 5 November 2023

Walter Woolf King


            On Saturday morning I finished memorizing “You’re Under Arrest” by Serge Gainsbourg. I searched for the chords but no one had posted them and so tomorrow I’ll start working them out. 
            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the second session of two. Tomorrow I’ll begin a four session stretch of playing my Kramer electric. 
            I listened to the recording from the cassette through the new device and it seems to be of more than one night at Fat Alberts because there are a couple of performances of “Angeline”. There’s also a pretty good performance by Tom Smarda of a couple of his songs. I’d like to figure out if it’s possible to just play the device directly through my computer and record in Audacity. I might already have a cord and an adaptor so I can just plug it directly into the Scarlett, so I’ll look into it later. 
            I couldn’t wait so I looked and found that I do have a cord with plugs at each end that fit the headphone jack and the adaptor jack to the interface. I moved the wire that connects the audio from my computer to my amp, plugged that into the headphone jack of my Scarlett and was able to play the cassette and hear it through my speakers. That means that I should be able to use this device as a player instead of a recorder and then record what’s played directly into Audacity, thereby making my own recordings in whatever audio format I want. Maybe I should have just looked for a usb cassette player instead of a converter but what the hell. 
            I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast.
            At around 12:45 I went to No Frills where I bought five bags of black grapes, a whole chicken, three bags of 1% milk (I wanted skim but all the 0% milk was close to its best before date), a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips, and two containers of skyr. The middle aged guy behind me with the neck tattoo told me he’d considered just walking out with his items without paying but changed his mind. 
            I weighed 85.9 kilos before lunch. I had Triscuits with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 
            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 
            I spent about 25 minutes chiseling black quartz from a piece of the rock that I found six years ago. There were quite a few sizable bits of quartz this time. 
            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 17:30, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening in a week. 
            I was caught up on my journal at 18:45. 
            I uploaded the video of my acoustic performance of “Time of the Yo-Yo” to YouTube and posted the link on Facebook and Twitter. 


            I opened the audio recording of my September 3 song practice and the part where I play “Time of the Yo-Yo” was distorted and crackling. I opened the Audacity project for that date and it sounded fine. I worked on removing the recording of the hum that happens when I turn on the reverb on my amp. That lowered the volume of the guitar and so I amplified the guitar but that brought the hum back and so I removed the hum again. I also want to experiment with adding more reverb to the guitar inside Audacity. I’ll work on it again tomorrow. 
            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song Megaphor I continued to edit my clip of the movie Ziegfeld Girl so part of it goes in reverse. 
            I cleaned a set of uncut colour negatives but didn’t have time to scan them before dinner. 
            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episodes 28 and 29 of Green Acres. 
            In the first story we hear yet another origin story of Lisa. She says that her great great grandmother was queen of the Romani people. She married someone from the US and so that’s why Lisa married Oliver. The law of the tribe states that every fourth generation must marry someone from the US or else they lose custody of the ring. As she relates the story of how her great great grandmother Lastvogel met her great great grandfather Cornelias the parts are played by Lisa and Oliver. She finds him painting in the woods and they chat. She tells him she has to steal something because today she is taking her Gypsy test. If she steals something good she can become a boy. If not she has to stay a girl and do all the work. All the boys have to do is lie around and steal. While they are talking she steals his watch, his passport, his wallet and his money. He gets them back but after she leaves he discovers she stole the workings of his watch. Cornelias goes to the Romani camps and meets Lastvogel’s father. Cornelias wants to paint Lastvogel’s picture and everyone gathers round to watch. But every time he turns to paint something has been stolen. First his paints, then his canvas, then his chair and so on until Lastvogel gets stolen. Later he agrees to marry her but the tribe says he must first steal a white chicken. Cornelias asks why they steal. Her father says it’s not their idea to steal but everybody says they do so they want to make people happy. Cornelias tries to steal the chicken and winds up in jail. His parents come to bail him out and they later meet Lastvogel. They have a Romani wedding. In the end the whole town of Hooterville is sitting in the Douglas house listening to the story. Later Oliver and Lisa keep stealing from each other. 
            Cornelias’s father was played by Walter Woolf King, who started singing professionally at an early age and after high school joined a vaudeville musical act. At 19 he made his Broadway debut in the lead role of Floradora. His first movie was a starring role in Golden Dawn. He co-starred in Embarrassing Moments, One More Spring, Spring Tonic, Today I Hang, and A Yank in Libya. He played a sadistic opera singer in The Marx Brothers film A Night at the Opera. When his career slowed down he became an actors agent. 
            In the second story Oliver is fixing a hole in the roof when he accidentally drops his hammer on Lisa’s head. She gets a strange type of amnesia in which she remembers a different life. She is also suddenly a good cook. She thinks Oliver is her butler Claude. When he tries to get ready for bed in her bedroom she begins screaming. Doc Stewart tells him he should court her all over again. She doesn’t respond well to flowers. She says Fredericks, who doesn’t exist, is taking her to the opera. Stewart says Oliver should take her. While they are there she falls over the railing of their box, hits her head. and gets her memory back. At the doctor’s office Oliver hits his head and thinks he is Fredericks.

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