Eartha Kitt

            On Wednesday morning I didn’t get to bed until a little after 2:00 and it took quite a while to fall asleep. 

            I memorized the first verses of “Les frères” by Boris Vian and “Amour puissance six” (Love to the Power of Six) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the second session of four. 

            I weighed 85.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I worked on my Critical Summary but was dozing off a lot. 

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride and since it was like summer outside I didn’t wear my heavy motorcycle jacket. It cut about ten minutes off my ride. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:07. 

            I worked on my Critical Summary and got another paragraph done. There’s only really room for a couple more paragraphs. I plan to finish it on Thursday. Here’s my recent paragraph: 

            Krieger writes that one of the most important ways that metaphor is used as a tool is to express the connectedness of opposites such as singularity and multiplicity; and materiality and spirituality. The bringing together of the familiar with the unknown in the same word creates a tension that turns over the engine of paradox. This disorients the reader and puts them off guard to be more open to deeper levels of meaning. 

            I had the usual tomato, avocado, cucumber, and scallion salad with lemon juice dressing and a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching season 2, episode 25 of Burke’s Law. 

            Burke is on vacation in Puerto Angelita, Mexico. There’s no such place but there is a Puerto Angelito, so either it’s meant to be fictional or it’s a typo. He’s vacationing with his chauffeur Henry and spending time with Samantha Scott who seems to only have just met him. Burke is holidaying incognito and so no one knows he’s a police captain. They are about to take a yacht out to sea so they can do some scuba diving. They are standing on the beach as the boat comes in and then it explodes, killing the owner Mercy Vain as well as captain and the crew. Later the police arrest Burke for murder. At the police station he is being interviewed by Chief Alvaro. A boy named Philipe who is the nephew of the boat captain is brought in and claims he saw Burke plant the bomb. Burke admits he put a package on the boat earlier that day but it contained two bottles of champagne. Alvaro is holding a lighter that Burke lost yesterday. Padre Emiliano is brought in and he says he found the lighter outside the broken door of the hut that contains the explosives. The hut was robbed last night and a case of dynamite was taken. Alvaro found the pieces of the clock that had been used for the time bomb in the wastebasket of Burke’s room. Burke suggests one of his four fellow guests at his hotel planted the evidence to frame him. Burke introduces himself as Captain Amos Burke of the Los Angeles Police Department but no one believes him. Alvaro has Burke’s wallet but all that’s inside is a card reading “Honorary Captain of Kangaroo Billy’s Space Patrol”. Meanwhile Henry writes a note to send by wire to Les. Samantha has a plan. There is an angry mob outside the station because the murdered boat captain had many relatives in town. Burke is locked in a cell and Alvaro and his men leave the station. As soon as the police leave, the crowd is about to become a lynch mob when Samantha distracts them with a dance. Meanwhile Henry drives around the back in the old car he rented and drives it through the wall of the jail to allow Burke to escape. They escape into a building that the mob doesn’t search and Samantha is waiting there. Burke decides he needs to find the real killer. Burke disguises himself as a local and goes to see Fletcher Seamway the novelist and sport fisherman. Sam arranges to go swimming with Seamway and races him out to a floating diving platform in the bay where Burke is waiting. Seamway says Mercy was a jackal. Mercy came there when a crew from Hollywood was shooting a movie so she could dig up dirt on the stars for her column. Then she stayed and became a blackmailer. Seamway suggests that Honoria Missy deWitt the anthropologist could be a suspect. Burke finds Honoria in a hut, wearing a skull mask and dancing while singing non-verbally in a falsetto voice. Burke puts on a fake Mexican accent and asks her for a love potion. She explains she’s not a witch but a scientist from New York who came there to study witches. She decides to make a potion anyway and does a dance and mixes some things. Burke begins talking in his normal voice and suggests Mercy tried to blackmail her over her having become a real witch and so she killed her. She calls him Captain Billy from the space patrol. She does a beat on the drum and says it’s a call to the police. Suddenly there’s a siren and Burke has to knock out the officer before running. Sam is searching Seamway’s room when a fishing pole falls over and the hook scratches her shoulder. She is suddenly in great pain. Seamway returns and Sam makes it out in time but she goes to her own room and collapses on the floor behind the door. Burke puts on a fake moustache for a new disguise and goes to Sam’s room but he doesn’t look behind the door and doesn’t see her. Burke goes to the room of Manfred Gonzalez and his secretary Brunhilde. He suggests Mercy knew he was a Nazi and blackmailed him. Manfred writes a note and sends it away with Brunhilde. Burke realizes she went for the cops and so he runs. He hides under the bed in another room. Then Les and Tim arrive and check into the very same room. They find dynamite caps, clock pieces and Amos’s badge in the drawer. Burke reveals himself. Tim and Les go to see Mimsy Groves who is preparing a raft for a seven month trip to New Zealand. Philippe arrives with a barrel of honey for her and collapses. He’s been poisoned but they get him a doctor. Then Burke finds Sam and she’s been poisoned too by one of Seamway’s fish hooks. Alvaro arrives and has his men take Sam to the hospital. He admits that he knew from the start who Burke was because he’d read about him in detective magazines. He arrested him because he wanted to see him work. He explains that Gringo criminal motives are too crazy for a poor Mexican cop. Burke doesn’t have to find the killer. He just waits in his room until Manfred comes for him with a gun. But Seamway knocks him out from behind, takes the gun and then points it at Burke. Seamway killed Mercy but his target was the captain of her boat because he was also the captain of Seamway’s boat when he bagged a record breaking marlin with a poison hook. Seamway had to make sure no one found out. Seamway is about to shoot when Alvaro shoots him. Burke brings Sam, Alvaro, his men, and most the other non-villain characters back to the States and decorates his home to look like Mexico to finish his vacation. 

            Honoria was played by Eartha Kitt, whose mother was a half black and half Cherokee sharecropper. Her mother gave her away and she was taken to Harlem at age 9. She quit school at 15 and worked in a factory. Then she began singing and dancing. She joined the Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe and toured Europe where she was a big hit. She performed solo in Paris nightclubs. Orson Wells called her the most exciting woman in the world. Her biggest hits were Santa Baby, Uska Dara, I Want to Be Evil, Let’s Do It, Monotonous, Love for Sale, Katibim, Under the Bridges of Paris, and C’est si Bon. Diana Ross said she based her look and sound on Eartha Kitt. She co-starred in New Faces of 1952 and St Louis Blues. She starred in Mark of the Hawk and Anna Lucasta. Her autobiography was called Thursday’s Child and it inspired a David Bowie song of the same name. She was friends with James Dean and said they were like brother and sister. She was the last of three Catwomen on the Batman TV series. She was nominated for two Tony Awards. She spoke out against the draft at the Johnson Whitehouse in 1968 and caused a scandal that killed her US career for the next ten years until Jimmy Carter welcomed her back.