May 25, 1991: I waited for work at 121 Richmond East until I realized I was supposed to be on Richmond West

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday morning I was supposed to be at 121 Richmond West for 8:30 but I misread the clock and found myself downtown at 7:30 instead. I picked up a coffee and waited at the address for the other guys until I realized I was on Richmond East so by the time I got to the right place I was ten minutes late. We finished work around 15:00 and each got a $10 tip. 

            I went home and did some typing and then went to the beer store. I'd gathered up some collages to be copied and was looking for the copy place in the Beaches but I must have passed it. I went downtown to Kinkos on Spadina but it was closed and so I went up to the one on Bloor. I got $35 worth of copies made. 

            I went to the Brass Rail and had two table dancers, then I went back to Nancy and the baby at her parents' place, getting there at 22:30.

Guitar Trouble

            On Sunday after midnight the wifi went off and Sankara’s network had disappeared from the list. That's happened before and has always resolved itself later on, so I just went to bed. When I got up at 5:00 it was still off. That’s happened before as well but not very often. I think last year it was off for 24 hours at least once. 

            Without the internet I couldn’t conveniently work on translating “La java des chaussettes à clous” (The Dance of the Studded Stockings) by Boris Vian, so I just sang along with it a couple of times. It's a pretty long song. 

            I almost memorized the second verse of the original French version of “O Canada". 

            During song practice the A string broke on my Epi at the beginning of my second song. I changed it, had a hell of a time getting everything back in tune, started playing again, got through the second verse of that same second song and something happened. It felt like another string broke but none did. My A, D and G strings were suddenly too close to the fret board. My only guess is that the truss rod suddenly shifted and I don't know how to do anything about that. I had no choice but to pick up my Kramer electric and try to get it working. A couple of months ago I tried to tune it but I’d forgotten how its complicated tuning mechanism worked and ended up breaking the high E string. I used my last new acoustic E string and cut off the barrel because I couldn't see how it could fit at the bottom otherwise, then I had to look for the right Allen key to unscrew the bolt that pushes into the little metal cube that holds the string in place. By this time it was 8:30 and so song practice was a write off. It was the first time in years that I haven’t had a rehearsal. I didn’t finish tuning the Kramer and figured I’d do it later. The new E string looks frayed and it might break anyway. I might have to salvage an E string from one of the other guitars. 

            I weighed 89.7 kilos before breakfast. I still couldn’t connect through Shankar’s network but I was able to access the internet through a network called dlink. I think in the past when I tried I was able to connect to that network but there was no internet. I don’t know if someone is extending their network for a purpose or just to be nice to strangers. 

            In the late morning I wanted to continue with my oven cleaning project but I needed a functional guitar for tomorrow morning and so I worked on tuning the Kramer. With this guitar after one gets the E and A, the D and G and the B and E strings in range of their proper notes, one locks them down by screwing in the brackets for each pair at the top of the neck. Then any fine tuning needs to be done with the dials for each string at the bottom of the guitar. I recall that this guitar stayed in tune very well because of this system. Then I plugged in my Roland amp for the first time in many years and jacked the guitar into it but I couldn’t get any sound other than the electronic noise of the amp. I tried the two other electrics. The First Act wouldn’t make any noise, plus I discovered the action was too low anyway. The Rocker did work but I needed to use two jack adaptors to make the main jack fit. Later I tried the Kramer again and it did work at least sometimes. I’ll hear what happens in the morning. I have several things to make music with but they are all in need of repair. 

            It’s been well over a month since I sent my Washburn to Quebec but there’s been no word from Remenyi House of Music about it being returned and fixed. I tried to call them twice last week but couldn’t get through. My warranty runs out next week so I hope when I get it back I’ll have no more problems keeping it in tune. 

            I had saltines, five year old cheddar and a glass of lime aid for lunch. My next door neighbour Benji told me that some of our rooftop neighbours are complaining about Popeyes’ ventilation machinery on our roof making too much noise on weekends when they are open until 3:00. They might be breaking the noise bylaw. 

            I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor. The new electric buses sound annoying. They are certainly better to sit behind on my bike because there are no fumes, but in terms of noise the brakes hiss and the motor rises in a whining crescendo that is not pleasant. I hate the roaring of the fuel burning buses when I am playing guitar at home, but out on the street the purr when they are stopped and the roar when they are rolling is quite pleasant compared with the electrics. It had been a frustrating morning and the bike ride helped to relax me a bit. I weighed 88.9 kilos when I got home. 

            I worked on my poem series "My Blood in a Bug." 

            I saved my most recent Movie Maker project as “Insertions for Electroshock Therapy" and then removed from the timeline videos 8-29 of the electrical cords I animated. I published what was left as a movie and then imported it to my main project “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy.” I had planned on showing myself from the original concert video first before inserting the movie of the lightning, snakes and cords. But in the beginning of the video what I’m doing on guitar doesn't look anything like what I'm playing in the studio recording. So I inserted the lightning, snakes and cords at the very beginning. Just by chance, when the insertion is over and I am shown again the visual for at least a moment resembles the sound and so it looks like a good introduction of me. After that brief moment showing me and my guitar I’ll have to delete about 38 seconds of the concert video in order to get it back in sync with the audio. There may be some places before and after I start singing where I will insert more clips of animated cords. 

            I made pizza on a slice of bread, with sauce and old cheddar. I had intended to chop up the other burger that I’d made last night but I totally forgot. I had my pizza with a beer while watching the first two episodes of the seventh season of The Andy Griffith Show. 

            In the first story there’s kind of a fucked up message that was somewhat typical of that era. Helen's niece Cynthia has come to stay with her for a while and she brings her over to Andy’s place. Opie is forced to play with her but he gets competitive and has the rude awakening that she’s better at everything he tries. She out cartwheels him, outruns him, and out jumps him. When they play football she intercepts a pass meant for him and he calls it interference. They argue and finally she pushes him. He pushes her back and it goes back and forth until she challenges him to push her again. He does and she gives him a black eye. There's something to be said for the argument that when a girl hits a boy she is taking advantage of the fact that boys are discouraged from hitting girls and so they tend not to do so. The fucked up part is when Helen has a talk with Cynthia about how it damages the male ego to lose to a female and so it might be a good idea for the sake of their emotional health for girls to let them win. When I was in grade school I had a health book that was probably from the 1940s that put forward the very same argument. The last time Helen went bowling with Helen she won and she could see it upset him but he said he didn’t have his own shoes on. They go out again and she deliberately plays badly. But Andy catches her and says it takes a good player to miss the pins every time. He tells her that this time he would have beaten her because he was wearing his own shoes. 

            The second story features Howard Sprague and his asshole mother again. In this episode Andy invites Howard to his lodge meeting because Howard is interested in joining. He gets along fine with the other guys and so there is a vote coming up. But if one member doesn’t want him in then he's out. Howard’s mother of course doesn't want Howard involved with anything that keeps them apart. When she hears that all it takes is one negative vote she applies her manipulative skills to the dumbest member. She goes to see Goober and spins a fake story about Howard’s father having been addicted to gambling and since she knows they sometimes play cards at lodge meetings she hopes that he won’t get in. When the anonymous voting takes place Goober blackballs Howard. Andy can’t figure out why any member would vote to keep Howard out. Andy wants to bring Howard to another meeting but when Goober sees Howard coming he tries to stop everyone at the lodge from playing cards. Finally it comes out that Goober blackballed him and he explains why. Howard says his mother lied and so the blackball is lifted and Howard joins.

            I got a general email from Albert Moritz announcing to many people that most of the projects he’d meant to help people with will need to be delayed because on May 5 he had a stroke in his left eye resulting in what is probably permanent blindness there. He had surgery but they don’t think his sight in that eye will be restored. He’s now recovering but he added a note at the bottom specifically for me saying he'll try to look at my manuscript in a couple of weeks. That was nice of him. It’s weird that his stroke happened two days after him writing to me about being able to work on my manuscript again.

May 24, 1991: Nancy clawed my face and left three bloody scratches

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday night Nancy called me to the kitchen after we'd changed the still nameless baby and asked me to stop answering the door and the telephone. When I told her she was going too far she got frustrated and went to claw my chest. She had earlier hit me twice and clawed my face leaving three bloody scratches and so this time I slapped her back and told her not to do it again. She asked me to take the baby before she became attached. 

            There was no work on Friday and so I was free to help Nancy with the baby but she seemed to want to do everything by herself. I had the sense that she was frustrated and maybe even resentful of the fact that I'd been working and leaving her alone, even though her mother was there most of the time.

Jesse Pearson

            On Saturday morning I memorized the first verse of the original French version of “O Canada.” I also made some adjustments to the translation and need to do more because some parts are rhythmically and grammatically awkward. 

            I weighed 89.4 kilos before breakfast.

            In the late morning I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor. There seems to be a plethora of those standing rider electric scooters this year. I’ve never seen so many on the street. On my way back along Queen, at around Simcoe there was an early middle aged guy lying on the sidewalk and propped up on one elbow while holding a small Styrofoam cup. He said to two young women who were approaching, "Excuse me, could you fuckers spare a quarter?” That’s an interesting technique. Maybe he's a scholar doing a study on whether it works or not. 

            When I got home I took a pee, tightened up my covid pony tail, cleaned off my mask with a lint roller and headed back out to the supermarket. At No Frills there were no grapes and so the only fruit I bought was a pint of strawberries and a pint of blueberries. I also got Sunlight detergent because I’ve been going through it fast during my oven cleaning project. I picked up some lemonade, skyr, Greek yogourt, salsa, pasta sauce and a pack of chicken drumsticks. 

           Since it’s my birthday on Wednesday and since because of the lockdown I still can’t comfortably go out to restaurants I was looking for special stuff that I wouldn't normally buy so I would have something interesting to eat at home that day. I bought a pack of maple candied smoked salmon, a bag of cheesy garlic breadstick favoured potato chips, vanilla ice cream and a chocolate chip pie. 

           There was a little girl shopping with her father. She was running around exploring while he just walked ahead. Later she started crying because she couldn’t find him. They found each other in seconds but it seemed a bit deliberate on his part to teach her a lesson not to wander off. 

           Before lunch I weighed 89 kilos. I had saltines with five year old cheddar and a glass of lemonade. 

           I took a siesta and slept forty minutes longer than usual. 

           I weighed 89.4 kilos at 18:00. 

           I worked on my poem series “My Blood in a Bug." 

           I worked on my Movie Maker project of alternating clips of the footage of the snake pit from Indiana Jones with clips of the videos I made of the electrical cords that I animated. I got it so the snake footage ended at the same time as video number seven of the cords. There are still almost twenty cord videos on the timeline after that. I think what I’ll do next is keep the project as it is but make a copy under a different name and in the copy I'll delete the rest of the cord videos. Then I’ll render a movie of the video clips of the lightning, snakes and cords up until the end of cord video seven and insert it into the main video project for my song Instructions for Electroshock Therapy to see how it fits with the actual performance and audio. 

            I weighed 89.6 kilos before dinner. I grilled two burgers and had one on a Montreal style bagel topped with tomato, dill pickle, ketchup, barbecue sauce, dijon and scotch bonnet sauce. I had it with a beer while watching the last two episodes of the sixth season of The Andy Griffith Show. 

            The first story was one of the best of the entire series, which is surprising considering how lame most of season six was. The local paper is sponsoring an essay contest for Opie's class on the topic of the battle of Mayberry, which famously led to the establishment of the town. The winner will have their essay published on the front page. The battle was between the settlers and the Cherokee and as Opie begins his research, everyone including Floyd, Goober and Clara has an ancestor who was a colonel and who they claim led the battle to defeat the “savages." Opie is interested to know the Cherokee perspective and so Andy takes him to see Tom Strongbow who says his ancestor was a chief who led the Cherokee against the invaders and won. Opie is confused because he can’t find two accounts of the battle that agree. Andy takes him to Raleigh where he researches the battle in old newspapers and he discovers that the truth is that there was no battle of Mayberry. Fifty settlers and fifty Cherokee were ready to do battle but changed their minds and decided instead to get drunk together. The only shots fired were when the Cherokee went to hunt some deer so they could all have something to eat but they accidentally killed one of the settlers’ donkeys. Andy is very worried that this reality is going to upset everyone for whom the battle of Mayberry is a glorious legend. Andy actually tries to manipulate Opie to alter his essay but he refuses. The result is that Opie wins and everyone is angry at Opie. That is until the governor of North Carolina reads the article and goes on the radio to commend Mayberry for knowing how to settle a dispute without fighting. Suddenly everyone is proud of Mayberry again and Opie is a hero for making it happen. 

            Tom Strongbow was played by Norman Alden, who it was disappointing but typical to learn that he was not Indigenous. In the second story a famous singer named Keevy Hazelton stops in Mayberry to do some fishing. Keevy is famous for singing songs about towns and Bee and Clara remember that they wrote a song about Mayberry three years ago. They want Keevy to hear the song and invite him for dinner but he falls asleep. They don’t give up and go to Keevy’s hotel room. Keevy says he can’t use the song but his manager thinks it’s a good idea. Bee, Clara, Andy and Opie attend a rehearsal before the show and Bee and Clara are shocked and angry that Keevy has rearranged their song into a rock and roll song. With an hour before air time they say he can’t do it. Finally Keevy compromises and does the song slowly, with backup harmony and it becomes a big hit. It’s funny how I remember this song from when I was a kid, even though I probably heard it only once, but I don’t remember the story at all. 

            Keevy was played by Jesse Pearson who played the Elvisesque rock star Conrad Birdie in the play "Bye Bye Birdie" and later reprised the role in the 1963 film that made Ann-Margret a star. He later worked with Rod McKuen and recorded a few albums. Under the name A Fabritzi he wrote and directed the adult films “The Legend of Lady Blue” and "Pro Ball Cheerleader."

May 23, 1991: Nancy hit me because I signed for a crib from Social Services

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday morning I worked at TV Ontario from out of the main studio. We moved a small set to their warehouse at Dupont and Lansdowne. 

            After work, since I was in the neighbourhood I went to my old place to check the mail. At the mailbox I met the guy who moved into my old apartment of 105. He was a bit of a queen. 

            I went home, shaved and showered, cleaned my place a bit and then headed back up to Scarborough to be with Nancy and the baby. I always started to miss my child a lot around the early afternoon. 

            At Nancy's parents' place a driver from Social Services delivered a crib and I signed for it. Nancy got really pissed off and hit me in frustration. She wouldn't listen to me about what I know and thought that social workers read the names on shipping orders.

Ronnie Schelle

            On Friday morning I found and copied the lyrics for “La java des chaussettes à clous” (The Dance of the Studded Stockings). A java is a type of fast waltz that was popular in France in the early 20th Century. Couples dance with their hands on each other's butts. I translated the first verse and it seems to be that the stockings take control of the person that wears them. 

            I spent another half an hour searching for a recording of the third verse of the original French "O Canada" but it doesn't seem to exist online, so I gave up and just went with singing along with recordings of the first, second and fourth verses and sang the third verse by myself a couple of times. I memorized most of the first verse. 

             I weighed 89 kilos before breakfast. In the late morning I did my laundry and was done at lunch time. I weighed 88.8 kilos. I heated up a slice of roast pork for lunch and had it with barbecue sauce and scotch bonnet sauce and a glass of orange juice. 

             I didn’t take a bike ride in the afternoon because I'd already ridden back and forth to the laundrymat a few times. 

             I worked on my poem series “My Blood in a Bug.” 

             I worked on my Movie Maker project of alternating clips of the snake pit from Indiana Jones with clips from the video I made of a pile of electrical cords that I animated by putting a vibrating machine underneath them. It's looking pretty good so far as the snakes help to make the cords look sinister and the camera closes in on one cord that is standing up with it’s head moving like a serpent. Movie Maker always freezes at least a couple of times during every session and so I have to shut it down and reopen it in order to continue working. 

            I weighed 89.2 kilos at 18:00. 

            I finished colourizing one of the brick walls in my skateboarder photo and started on the other one. 

            I digitally repaired one of the photos from a 1987 Halloween party and started on one of my ex girlfriend at the same party costumed in traditional Arabic dress. 

            I had a potato, a slice of roast pork and gravy for dinner while watching two episodes of Andy Griffith.

            In the first story Andy comes across a businessman whose car went into a ditch. He turns out to be Mr Foster from the Foster’s Furniture Polish company. Since it will take a few hours for Goober to repair the car, Andy invites Mr Foster home for lunch. Aunt Bee is a user of Foster’s polish and she gives such a natural testimony that Foster gets the idea that instead of a hired actor he could have someone normal do his TV commercials. He asks Bee to become the Foster Lady. But when the TV crew comes to shoot the commercial Bee loses her naturalness and begins to try too hard. Foster and the director decide that the way Bee is doing it is hilarious and so they will use it anyway. Andy overhears this and to save Bee from embarrassment talks with her about how when she is busy as the Foster Lady she won’t have time to keep house and so they’ll have to hire someone. Bee doesn’t want anyone else in her kitchen and so she tells Foster she doesn’t want to do it. 

            The makeup artist for the TV crew was played by Eva Kryger. 

            The director was played by Ronnie Schelle, who first wanted to play professional baseball but didn't get past the semi finals. He joined the air force and started performing there. He became a very family friendly stand-up comedian and got a gig opening for The Kingston Trio. His acting career took off when he won the role of Jim Nabors' bunk mate on "Gomer Pyle". Around the same time he also played an acting agent on “That Girl.” After the second season of "Gomer Pyle" he starred as a DJ in the sitcom "Good Morning World" with a pre-"Laugh In" Goldie Hawn, but it was not a success so he returned to Gomer Pyle.

            In the second story Goober wants to go on a vacation for a week but can’t find a replacement at the filling station. Finally his girlfriend Flora volunteers to pump gas and change oil. When Goober returns from his holiday he finds business is booming because men are coming there just to be served by the attractive Flora. Goober feels dejected and decides to go and look for another job. He tries working as a cashier in a department store but gets confused by the transactions. Since there is only one gas station in Mayberry he decides to leave town. Then there is a strange moment when Andy tries to fix things by telling Flora about a woman who had a successful business and never married. Suddenly Flora quits so Goober can have his job back. There’s a couple of things wrong with this story. First of all Goober is a mechanic and his value is his expertise at fixing cars. There’s no reason who he and Flora couldn't work at the same garage or open up a filling station together. It’s a weird message that Andy presents which seems to be discouraging women from being ambitious because it will make them unhappy.

May 22, 1991: When my sister in law Ann heard how big our baby was she said, "Holy Smokes!"

Thirty years ago today 

            On Wednesday I went down to the job site at St Clair and Spadina for 8:30 but the job had been cancelled. That was okay by me since I would get paid anyway. I went home and worked on a collage before heading back up to Scarborough to be with Nancy and the baby. 

            Since I'd returned to work yesterday Nancy now had to do a lot more of the tasks I'd been helping her with and she was finding it hard and she couldn't sleep. Even once I arrived she couldn't just sit back and let me do the chore of doing the washing, the changing and the fetching of food because she'd gotten used to it. 

            My ex-sister-in-law Anne called on Sunday to tell me that they would have a trailer for Nancy, the baby and I to stay in by ourselves when we came up to Peterborough for my niece Kelly's wedding in August. When I told her how big the baby was she exclaimed, "Holy smokes!"