Kevin Hagen

             On Friday I was just a line short of memorizing all of “Allons z'enfants” (Join the Ranks Kids) by Boris Vian. I should have it done on Saturday. 

             I worked out the chords for the second verse of “La vague à lames” (The Bladed Wave) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the last of two sessions and now that the action has been raised it was a good session. Tomorrow I begin a four session stretch of playing my electric guitars. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            I sanded a bit more of my bathroom door, finishing the edges between the outside of the frame and the inside. I weighed 84.55 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back I stopped at Freshco. The green grapes are on sale but only one bag had grapes that weren’t too soft. I did a price match on three bags of red grapes at the cheaper No Frills price. I also bought two packs of raspberries, some bananas, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a pack of ground chicken, a pack of Full City Dark coffee, and a jar of salsa. 

            I weighed 84.75 kilos at 18:30. 

            Richard Olafson emailed me to ask if December 1 is okay with me for the book launch. He said that if so then he’ll put together the promo for it this weekend. I told him December 1 is fine for me but I need to know how much time I’ll have on stage so I can prepare a performance. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:40. 

            I opened in Paint the rainbow wave image I created from three copies of one rainbow with the one in the middle flipped. I then doubled the length and the number of waves. Then I cut it into four sections and saved them as individual images. I imported them into my Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Seven Shades of Blues”. I pasted them in sequence into the video timeline but they didn’t work as an animation because each image has a black border on either side. I assume this is because the images need to be wider, so I removed them all. I opened two of the images in Paint and widened each one to 450 pixels. I’ll do that with the other two and then see if there’s still a border. Then I’ll put one of them back in Movie Maker and see if there’s still a border. If so I’ll keep on gradually increasing the width until I know the minimum width that’s needed for an image to have no border in Movie Maker. 

            I grilled ten chicken drumsticks and had two with a potato and gravy while watching season 2, episodes 3 and 4 of Branded. 

            McCord arrives in a small town to visit Adam and Ann Williams, a father and daughter who are old friends and publish a widely read newspaper called The Banner. But he finds that Adam has died and that Ann is being intimidated by the henchmen of the most powerful man in town, Paul Mandell. They’ve wrecked the office and attacked both Ann and her sole employee Anders. McCord chases the thugs away, but Anders has had enough and quits. Mandell has an investment company that everybody owes money to and also owns the freight service and the sheriff. Adam gathered dirt on Mandell that is ready to go to print but Mandell has political ambitions and wants The Banner to endorse him. Paul’s fiancé Teddi comes to tell McCord that Paul wants to see him. Mandell tells McCord that the territory will soon be opened up to settlers and congress will appoint someone to be in charge of the operation and he intends to be that man. McCord convinces Ann to print the evidence her father gathered against Mandell and he helps her. Two of Mandell’s men try to attack but McCord kills them. They show Mandell the headline and he and McCord have a fight that ends with Mandell beaten on the street as Ann hands out the copies of the paper to spectators. 

            Mandell was played by Kevin Hagen, whose father abandoned the family when he was 5. He was a single parent to his own son. His TV debut was in Tales of Wells Fargo. He played Inspector Kobick on Land of the Giants. He played Dr. Hiram Baker on Little House on the Prairie. Later he toured a one-man show based on the character. 

            In the second story McCord stops at a watering hole but while filling his canteen he is hit from behind by a rock wielded by an escaped convict. The man takes McCord’s horse, money, and effects and rides into town. In a saloon he grabs the saloon girl Lorrie in a rough manner and her boyfriend Tuck intervenes. He punches and knocks the man down. The convict draws his gun but Tuck is faster and kills him. In trying to find out who the man is the patrons check the saddle bags on the horse he rode in on. It is discerned from the papers that Tuck has just killed Jason McCord. Everyone is congratulating him and then a rancher named Fletcher, who lost his son at Bitter Creek gives Tuck $200 (which would be about $6000 now) and offers him a job as foreman on his ranch. This makes both Tuck and Lorrie very happy because they’ve been planning on getting married. While everybody is still celebrating McCord walks into town. He sees where his horse is tied and goes into the saloon where Tuck is holding his sabre. McCord learns his bushwhacker is dead and that they all think it was him. He tells them who he is and demands Tuck give him back his sabre. Tuck says “Make me” and McCord does that fancy spin of his rifle like Lucas McCain used to do on the rifleman. Before things can escalate the sheriff intervenes and confiscates the sabre. He then takes McCord to his office where McCord proves his identity. When Fletcher hears that McCord is still alive he is disappointed and tells Tuck to kill him if he wants to keep the money and the job. People are treating Tuck with less respect now that they know he didn’t kill McCord so he agrees to kill him. Lorrie is against it and goes to warn McCord. McCord remembers Bobbie Fletcher as the youngest soldier under his command. She wants McCord to leave but he says he won’t. McCord goes to see Fletcher who pulls a gun on him. McCord tells him that Bobbie died saving his life. At the battle of Bitter Creek McCord was hit and knocked down. The ammunition wagon was heading out of control towards him and Bobbie steered it away but it turned over and exploded, killing him. McCord has given several accounts of what happened at Bitter Creek. This is the second person who saved his life in the same battle when he had earlier claimed that he was knocked unconscious and woke up kilometers away from the battle. McCord asks Fletcher what Bobbie would think of his father killing the man his son had sacrificed his life for. When McCord gets back to town Tuck challenges him. The sheriff has McCord’s gun but several people toss their guns down for him to pick up. He refuses. Tuck says he’ll beat him to death and they fight. McCord is just getting the upper hand when Fletcher stops the fight. He says in case what he said about Bobbie was true he doesn’t want him dead. He tells Tuck he can still have the job.