Greg Morris

            On Monday morning I finished revising my translation of “La vague à lames” (The Bladed Wave) by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through singing and playing it in English. Tomorrow I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare it for publication. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. It took a little longer than usual because I was experimenting with my foot pedals. 

            I weighed 84.7 kilos before breakfast, or at least that’s what I’m settling on. My scale gave me several weights between 37 kilos and 62.5 kilos but this one makes the most sense.

            I had planned on getting a haircut today but found out on Saturday that my stylist at Topcuts, Amy is on holiday. The plan after the cut was to meet Brian Haddon in front and then walk down to The Quail for lunch. But since I wasn’t going to Top Cuts I just met Brian at The Quail. 

            There was a friendly, shaggy, miniature poodle at the table behind me. He came to visit me but his leash wouldn’t let him reach Brian. Brian was glad of that because he’s more of a cat person, even though he doesn’t want to care for cats anymore. I can identify. Suddenly the dog started barking at something beyond the patio fence that we couldn’t see. It took a few minutes but we finally saw it was a scrawny, sickly and perhaps dying young racoon. At one point it crawled through a space between the glass panels of the fence and was on the patio. It tried to go towards Brian but he shooed it away. Someone called 311 to see if Animal Control would come for it. 

            I learned that Brian is the child of a butcher, which is an interesting coincidence for my band Christian and the Lions. Another previous member of the band, Tom Smarda is also the child of a butcher. 

            Brian told me in our last get together, but I’d forgotten that his mother’s ancestor founded Streetsville. 

            Brian and I shared a pitcher of Creemore. I had the brisket on a bun with fries. They serve the fries in a miniature deep fry basket. Brian had the steak and ale pie. We were there for a couple of hours. My stylist Amy will be back on November 4 and so Brian and I have agreed to get together again that week. 

            On my way home I stopped at Canadian Tire to buy a humidifier. I settled on the Honeywell Quiet Comfort Cool Mist humidifier for $100. It just fit in my PC shopping bag and I carried it home on my right handlebar. 

            I got home just before 17:00 and took a siesta. I got up at about 18:50. I weighed 85.25 kilos at 19:00. 

            I had a large potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching season 2, episodes 9 and 10 of Branded. 

            This was a two part story and mostly a flashback. In McCord’s present he goes to a cantina where he gets some water for a rare rose and buys a bottle of Bergundy and two glasses. He goes to a grave and puts the rose on it and then a glass, which he fills with the Bergundy. Then the flashback begins as McCord comes across a camp of black soldiers in a gully. Their leader Corporal Johnny Macon is playing guitar and singing Stephen Foster’s “Comrades Fill No Glass For Me” with “Comrades” replaced by “Soldier”. McCord tells him his singing and their campfire is a beacon for an Apache attack. He says he saw smoke signals talking about their camp already. He also tells him they are sitting ducks in that gully and should move into the open immediately but before they can the Apache attack. McCord asks who his best rider is and Macon says it’s him. McCord tells Macon to ride to his fort for help. Macon leaves and the Apache attack again. Every man but McCord is killed and he is captured. He recognizes their leader to be Wateekah, who he fought at Bitter Creek. McCord calls him a renegade but Wateekah asks, “Is Sitting Bull a renegade? Is Crazy Horse a renegade?” He argues he’s a freedom fighter and that one day all of the First Nations will band together and drive the white man from their land. Meanwhile Macon has reached the fort and is talking with Major Brackham who tells him who McCord is. Brackham tells Macon he will be court-martialled for deserting his men in a battle and if found guilty he will face a firing squad. At the Apache camp Wateekah asks why the dark soldiers don’t fight on the side of the Apache. That’s a good question. McCord’s answer is lame. “They are trying to earn the new freedom they were given by President Lincoln”. Earn freedom after having been slaves? That’s fucked up. That implies that freedom was a gift they didn’t entirely deserve. McCord says the white men fought to free the black men. While it’s true that slavery was central to the war it was more central to the southern side. The north didn’t declare slavery illegal and then invade the south to free the slaves. Slavery wasn’t outlawed until after the war. The south fired the first shots. The north was fighting against secession and not primarily to free the black people. It’s like saying the war in Afghanistan was fought to free the Afghani women. Wateekah says McCord will be the bait for Macon to return so they can ask him if what McCord says is true. So McCord is strung up spread eagled to wait for Macon to rescue him. 

            In Part 2 Macon escapes and tries to rescue McCord. When he tries to cut hum down he is captured. The Apache are marvelling over Macon’s hair because it is curly like the buffalo. So they call him a buffalo soldier. That’s apparently one of the dominant theories as to how the term originated. Wateekah pits McCord in a weird duel with his best warrior. They are both tied to different pendulums and given knives. As they are swinging by each other, each tries to slash the other. McCord wins. Then they force McCord and Macon to fight each other to the death. They draw straws to decide which of them will deliberately lose and McCord gets the short straw. But Macon grabs McCord’s knife arm and forces his body over it, to be the one who is killed. Macon was played by Greg Morris, who started doing minor roles on stage in Seattle. His first professional stage role was in The Death of Bessie Smith. He began to do guest appearances on TV series and his TV debut was on Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He was cast as a co-star in Mission Impossible, as electronics expert Barney Collier. He played the part for seven years. In the 70s he co-starred in the series Vega$ as Lieutenant Nelson. He released a jazz album called For You in 1970. He was a frequent guest star on Password. He walked out of Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible film, calling it an abomination.