Judith Lowry

            On Wednesday morning I memorized the eighth verse of “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian. There are nine verses left to learn but some of them have repeated lines and so it might be more like seven verses remaining. 

            I memorized the third set of five lines of the first monologue in Zizi Jeanmaire’s performance of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I have to sort out the original text that I transcribed from an internet post from the AI transcription and then there may be only five more lines in the first monologue. 

            I weighed 88.45 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the first of two sessions and it only went out of tune once. 

            My Libbey Gibraltar iced tea glasses finally arrived and I was of course naked when the Canpar driver knocked downstairs. I threw on my sweat pants and went down to get the package. I’m pretty sure these are the same as the glass that broke several years ago. Nick Cushing had accidentally kicked my fragile kitchen table and it collapsed, causing the very durable glass to finally break after years of being dropped. It was the only one I had as they sold it alone at Winners and never had it again. Nick tried to replace it with two very similarly shaped Duralex Picardie glasses but they were only 500 ml and while they hold a can of beer they don’t do so comfortably and not if there’s the slightest amount of foam. The Gibraltar glasses are 595 ml and easily hold the contents of a can of Creemore. 

            Around midday I finished touching up the paint where the wall meets the lower bathroom shelf and where the vertical half of the shelf brackets bend to horizontal. I then touched up where the wall meets the trim above the tiles on the north side of the bathroom. On Friday I’ll do the east and north sides and maybe I’ll have time for the edge of the wall where it meets the left and top of the door frame. If I get that done then next Tuesday I’ll buy the “Blue Bliss” coloured paint to do the shelves and the door. 

            I weighed 89.5 kilos before lunch. I had Sky Flakes with peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar with a glass of iced tea. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back stopped at Freshco where I bought two bags of green grapes. My front flasher battery needed recharging last night but I forgot to do it and so I grabbed a dollar store flasher that I happened to have. I started recharging the main one when I got home. 

            I went over to the liquor store and bought a six pack of Creemore. 

            I weighed 88.85 kilos at 18:35. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:34. 

            I recorded side 2 of part 2 of the cassette recording of the pre-finalists part of my 20,000 Poets Under the League slam that was hosted by Sahara Spracklin. This was the one when after Ed Keenan read a poem about his girlfriend making the bed wet with her orgasms, Sahara suggested that his girlfriend has a yeast infection. I recorded it through my audio interface into Audacity, then exported it to my computer. 

            I made four burger patties from ground New Zealand grass fed beef. I grilled them and had one very rare on two halves of a toasted slice of multigrain sandwich bread with ketchup, Dijon, horseradish, and a sliced gherkin. I had it with a Creemore in one of my new glasses while watching season 2, episode 20 (I should have watched 19 but forgot) of Car 54 Where Are You? 

            Conrad Nagel hosts a TV show called Police File, featuring true crime stories from the files of the NYPD. He comes to the 53rd precinct because he wants to feature one of the greatest pieces of police work ever performed by a precinct captain. In 1919 Muldoon’s father Patrick was captain of the 53rd when he single handedly nabbed the Baby Face Gordon Gang after they robbed the federal reserve of $12 million in gold. They’d changed into regulation police uniforms for their getaway. Nagel needs to learn how Patrick Muldoon knew they were not cops and he asks his son Francis, but he doesn’t know. 

            His father left an old trunk in the basement and so that night Muldoon goes through it to see if there’s a clue. He finds a diary that tells the whole story. Baby Face had spent two years planning the robbery. His gang consisted of the acrobat Swifty Swanson, Harry “the Hawk” Carson was the lookout, Muscles McGirk, and Trixie LaTouche the decoy. Trixie pretends to trip and hurt her ankle in front of the guard and so he takes her inside. She makes out with him while Harry cuts the alarm and opens the door. Swifty jumps the wall and lets them into the vault area. They blow the vault with nitro and take the gold. Then they change to police uniforms and escape. Patrick Muldoon recognized right away they weren’t cops because that was the day that the police were supposed to change from their summer to their winter uniforms but they still had the summer garb on. Muldoon’s not going to tell Nagel because it’s too embarrassing but he’s got to find out how the gang could make such a dumb mistake. 

            He tracks Baby Face down to a retirement home and learns that he hadn’t even known that was his mistake. After Muldoon and Toody leave, Baby Face calls up the gang and says they’re going to make the heist again but without the same mistake. All the men are played by the same actors but made up to look old. The older Trixie is played by an elderly woman. They do everything as before except that instead of making out with the now elderly guard, Trixie plays checkers with him and they show each other pictures of their grandchildren. They blow the safe but the gold is too heavy for them now so just to prove they did it they change into the cop uniforms and get away. The only problem is that they are the kind of cop uniforms that were worn in 1919. 

            The older Trixie was played by Judith Lowry, who made her stage debut in 1913 with a stock company. In 1921 she gave birth to the first of nine children and didn’t act again until the youngest turned 18. She co-starred in the original off Broadway production of The Effect of Gamma Rays On Man in the Moon Marigolds. She was in the original Broadway production of J.B. She played Mother Dexter on the sitcom Phyllis.