Emily Banks

            On Sunday morning I worked out the chords for the rest of the second verse and most of the chorus of “L’Amour à deux” (Passion for Two) by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have the pattern completed tomorrow and after that I think it’s just repeated. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio for the second of two sessions. Tomorrow I begin a four session stretch of playing my Martin acoustic guitar. 

            I audio and video recorded the session for the eighth day and will continue to do so until October 15. I spent a lot of time trying to get through “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” and finally made it but I don’t think it was a keeper. The Gibson has been going out of tune a lot since I changed the G string. Gibsons are notorious for G string problems. 

            I weighed 87.8 kilos before lunch. I had Triscuits with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of raspberry iced tea. 

            I weighed 87.35 kilos at 17:42. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:55. 

            I searched online for a video clip to use for the opening of my “Me and Gravity” video. So far all I’ve found is the 1920 French film “A Trip to the Moon”. This would be okay if I decide to go with a comical beginning but I might want something dramatic so I’ll keep looking. 

            I finished reviewing the video of my song practice from September 4. Some of the songs sound good but there are a few mistakes. I watched the first 12.5 minutes of the September 5 video. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the last two episodes of the final season of Bewitched. I was disappointed with both stories because they were more or less repeats of previously done story ideas. I love Bewitched but of the many old TV series I’ve watched so far this one has self-plagiarized far more than any other. 

            In the first story Samantha and Darrin are in a Chinese restaurant and the owner Mr. Fong gifts them with his special cocktail, “The Heavenly Himalayan”. Samantha has an almost immediate negative reaction to the drink and is so drunk after a few sips that she has to leave. When she gets home her tipsy feeling is gone but her witchcraft is malfunctioning and suddenly she has loud red vertical stripes on her face. Dr. Bombay is summoned but first his sexy receptionist Nurse Often appears to announce that he’ll be there shortly. Bombay arrives and tells her that she has Bright Red Stripes disease, which lasts for a year unless it is cured within eight hours. He can find an antidote if he learns how she got the disease. He asks her if she’s recently been on the western slopes of the Himalayas. Darrin mentions that the drink they had at Fong’s contained a Himalayan cinnamon stick. Eons ago the Tibetan monks cross pollenated a rare herb with Himalayan cinnamon and used it to drive the witches out of the Himalayas. He summons his ultravascular self-denominating powered triposcope with the super duper diagnostic predictal attachment. It looks like an old portable electric organ. The prescription pops up: eye of condor, powdered snake skin, fig newts, one pint of low fat unicorn milk and a toasted cheese sandwich on rye. Samantha goes to the apothecary and after chasing her around the store and demanding a kiss he gives her the prescription. But it doesn’t work because Bombay forgot to mention another ingredient, which is the tail feather of a dodo bird. Samantha gets her Aunt Hagatha to conjure a dodo bird from a picture in one of Tabitha’s story books. It’s the same bird costume that was used in the previous episode that this one stole from. Darrin has to chase the dodo around and fall off the roof before he acquires the tail feather. But even with the feather the antidote doesn’t work because Bombay neglected to mention that it has to be stirred with a Himalayan cinnamon stick. Everything is closed and so Darrin gets arrested getting hold of one. Finally it works. 

            In the second story Darrin is going to give Samantha a piece of jewellery in the shape of a unicorn. Endora says that when a mortal buys his wife a gift when there’s no occasion it’s because there’s been an occasion that he feels guilty about. He still has the object at work and she casts a spell on the unicorn to cause anyone near it to tell the truth. Darrin first tells his secretary Betty that he likes her tight dress. She says she bought it two sizes too small so he would notice. Then they each step away from the unicorn and apologize for their awkward comments. Then Larry wants to know about Darrin’s progress on the Cora Mae Dress account. Darrin says he’s got a lot of nerve asking that since he’s only been on the account for a day. But then he steps away from the unicorn and backtracks. That night Samantha and Darrin host Larry as well as Cora Mae Franklin and her husband Walter. Cora recites a slogan for her business that she’s come up with. Samantha is wearing the unicorn and when she stands next to Darrin he tells Cora her slogan is horrible. Larry says it’s laughable. Samantha sits next to Walter and suddenly the normally meek man begins to tell his wife off. Larry tells her they don’t tell her how to handle her dresses and they don’t want her to manage their advertising. The next day they learn that all that truthfulness had a positive effect on Cora and Walter’s relationship. 

            Darrin’s secretary Betty has been played by many actors but on this occasion she was played by Emily Banks. She earned a BA in 1959. She started as a model and was elected Miss Rheingold in 1960. Her first TV appearance was as a model on the game show Say When. Her film debut was in The Plainsman. She co-starred in Gunfight in Abilene. She played Yeoman Tonia Barrows in the Star Trek episode Shore Leave. She co-starred as Becky on the short lived Tim Conway Show.