October 26, 1994: I performed a list of the things women wrote about Dannie Marx on the washroom wall

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I was supposed to be at the Islington passenger pick-up area for 12:45 to get a ride to the Etobicoke Art Group’s studio. But I was a little late and the kiss and ride section had been moved because of construction. Since no one was there when I got there I assumed that they had come and gone. I couldn’t find the number for the place but I called a few people who did have it and finally got through so someone came to get me. After posing there I got dropped off at the subway and went home for a while. In the evening I worked for the Ontario College of Art in the Stewart Building and then went to Albert’s Hall to perform on the open stage. I found out that next week they would be switching the open stage to Thursday nights. So knowing I wouldn’t be back I got Jackie Just to go into the women’s washroom and copy for me all the stuff women wrote on the walls about the host Dannie Marx, then I went up on stage and read the list as a poem. Then I performed “I Saw My Reflection in an Open Wound”: 

I Saw My Reflection in an Open Wound 

I am the spilled fresh crimson mirror 

that’s still forever at the spiral’s centre

in the open wound that is the rock and roll night 

tangling a cat’s cradle made of dying light 

I take one last suck off of a bloody sunset 

and now it’s empty for another day 

then I head up to the old Green Dolphin 

accentuating my minority 

My natural mutability 

lets me breathe the air of every culture

I don’t need to dig my roots in any 

just ride their fringes like a leper 

like a leper surfer 

The street and I are equal partners 

neither is boss and neither is slave 

It pours itself into my pen to siphon its darkness 

while I pick the bones from 

I pick the bones out of its psychic graves 

After one long beer I’m back out on the street 

where traffic threads the needle of my mind 

ready for anything and also nothing 

either could happen here at any time 

I love this place and the flowers that blossom 

on the hearts of the weeds of humanity 

and it’s a warm breezy summer evening 

with lots of action on the spinning 

on the spinning street 

The streets are in the process of fermenting 

into a torrent flood of mucous wine 

I am a bitter aphrodisiac 

thrown in the mixture for a flawed design 

Parkdale’s teeth are mirroring the moon 

 as it chews on something funky and red 

while by day it merely nibbles on a bone 

digestion echoing the groans 

The groans of its dead 

Bernice has gotten in another fight 

She’s lost her life out here upon the street 

I don’t mean that she’s a motionless corpse

she’s a very animated crack zombie 

Her spirit left her a long time ago

now she just uses a powdered instant 

From street to jail the girls will come and they’ll go 

busty Bernice remains 

She remains un-busted 

The street and I are equal partners 

Neither is boss and neither is slave 

It bums a match from me to scatter its darkness 

while I pick the bones from 

I pick the bones out of its psychic graves 

Roofless tunnels of these city streets 

house the zigzag of human endeavour 

like a hyper-spatial video-arcade

shooting cartoon targets of forever 

Now Parkdale is broken 

Parkdale has died 

and yet Parkdale jerks back to spastic life 

over on the other side

of the barbed wire nightmare 

and the narcotic lie 

We see it fanning its very own funeral pyre

in the process of waving “Goodbye” 

            I think the reaction was pretty good. The other host, Tenesia had me come up again near the end since I wouldn’t be coming back, so I did my new song “Full of You”: 

I am full of you

I was full of you when I first met you 

Full of your presence and your appetite for me 

Well I’m still full you 

Although I try I can’t forget you 

Full of your absence and indifference to me 

Full of you Full of you I’ve had it up to here with you 

Fed up with waiting and just hoping for your call 

Full of you Full of you If only I could hear from you 

Even a kind word might help to cushion my fall 

Filled up with our history and our future 

We both starved the moment 

Filled up with your pain I fed you spoonfuls of my strength 

Filled up with your strength I merely served you platefuls of my pain 

Filled with your passion I extended mine in length 

Filling me with truth what in the world was left inside of you 

Perhaps you lost your grasp and thought that I was dangerous 

Full of me Full of me You left behind your just desserts

I was still eating but you said you couldn’t wait 

Full of me Full of me So full of me it must have hurt 

To join another table where ate and ate and ate and ate and ate 

Now I’ve had my fill of trying so hard to interpret 

The fluctuations of your fickle will

Oh baby I’ve concluded you are

full

of

it

Carol Brewster

            On Thursday morning I finished working out the chords for the intro to “Allons z'enfants” (Join the Ranks Kids) by Boris Vian and the first two chords of the first line. 

            I wasn’t quite able to memorize the third verse of “Ophélie” (Ophelia) by Serge Gainsbourg but I’ll probably have it nailed down tomorrow. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the last of two sessions. I was kind of distracted and made mistakes. I turned on my new humidifier for the first time while I was playing but had to turn it off because it emits a cool mist that was uncomfortable on my back. I turned it back on after song practice.

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I sanded the lower left half of the widest part of the inside of the bathroom door frame. 

            I weighed 84.75 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on the way back. I did a price match on the grapes and raspberries with the Food Basics price. The grapes weren’t a big difference but the raspberries were $1.47 compared with the Freshco price of $3.00. I bought four bags of red grapes, two packs of raspberries, bananas, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a box of lemon pepper fish fillets, a box of spoon size shredded wheat, a pack of Full City Dark coffee, a jar of salsa (because I didn’t remember I already had some), a box of Breton crackers, and a pack of Sponge Towels. 

            I weighed 85.8 kilos at 18:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:30.

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Seven Shades of Blues” I shortened the eight frames of my rainbow wave animation to one second each. In a sense that speed follows the 4-4 beat of the song but I want to see what happens if I speed it up some more. I made and added five more frames and I might need more. 

            I reviewed the song practice video of my acoustic performance of “Like a Boomerang” on September 12 and the take at 4:45 was okay. I started reviewing the video of my electric performance of “Comme un Boomerang” on September 13. I was already eleven and a half minutes in when I had to stop for dinner. The Gibson didn’t sound good and the action might have been low through all of the electric sessions of September. I might not get a good electric take of any of the songs I did until October. 

            I had a small potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching season 2, episodes 15 and 16 of Branded. 

            In the first story McCord finds two children, Mike and Abigail out in the snow without proper clothing on a late December night. They are scared of him because they think Mr. Stoddard sent him after them but he convinces them otherwise and makes them a meal. Abigail says that Mike shot Stoddard’s son. Mike says he didn’t do it. McCord says the best way to settle it is to go back. They say Mr. Perrin takes care of them and six other orphans but Stoddard wants to drive Perrin and the kids out of town. McCord rides into New Hope with the children. Two men try to force him to give the kids to them but he knocks them down. He takes Mike and Abigail to Perrin’s tailor shop and Perrin and the other kids are glad to see them. Perrin started with a baby whose parents had died from disease and people started leaving children with him. Stoddard owns the mortgage on Perrin’s shop and wants him out next week. Although it is not overtly stated, the implication seems to be that Perrin is a Jew. Meanwhile Stoddard’s son Randy is being treated by a doctor and he keeps trying to tell his father what really happened but he keeps telling him to rest and not to talk. The doctor tells Stoddard that Randy is not doing well and may die. McCord talks with Stoddard who says Perrin’s kids are godless savages. Stoddard won’t let him talk to Randy. Stoddard tells one of his men to give Perrin a wagon, a team, and $100 but to force him and his kids to leave town tonight. McCord talks with Mrs. Stoddard and she doesn’t agree with her husband. She says she’ll try to talk to him. When McCord returns to Perrin’s shop Stoddard’s men are there trying to force them out, so he beats them up. Meanwhile Randy has gone missing but they find him and the doctor says that amazingly the boy is healing. Randy says he was on the way to Perrin’s to deliver some of his toys to the kids. Randy says he stole the gun and it accidentally went off. Stoddard has just built a Grange Hall for his fraternal order but McCord convinces him to turn it into an orphanage for Perrin to run. They all celebrate Christmas together and it’s Perrin’s first Christmas. 

            Grace Stoddard was played by Carol Brewster, who started as a model. She posed in a Ziegfeld Follies film and her movie acting debut was in The Barkleys of Broadway. She appeared in Cat Women of the Moon. She was stricken with polio in the mid 50s but overcame it and returned to acting. Her TV debut was in Alfred Hitchcock Presents. 

           

            In the second story McCord arrives in a town and he is confronted by army officers who tell him that his court martial case is being re-opened because there is now evidence of him conspiring with the Apache at Bitter Creek. He resists arrest but he is overwhelmed and placed in in a prison wagon with another traitor, the former Confederate Treasury agent Colonel Randall Kirby. The wagon stops and the prisoners are allowed to stretch but this time McCord knocks out one of them and takes his gun, shooting two more. At this point it starts to look suspicious since McCord wouldn’t shoot soldiers. Since they are chained together McCord and Kirby escape riding the same horse. After they ride away the soldiers get up unharmed and tell their major that the plan is working. It turns out that McCord is working under cover by the orders of President Grant. Kirby has $300,000 in gold hidden that his Rangers won in a raid just before Lee surrendered. That would be about $9 million now. Kirby reveals to McCord that he’s the leader of the Knights of Liberty, and its 100 members plan to start a Confederate Empire in the Caribbean. McCord attends a secret meeting of the hooded Knights and overhears two men talking about killing Kirby and getting the gold for themselves. Kirby knights McCord. Later McCord goes to get his horse at the stable but is confronted my Sheriff Gorman. McCord tells Gorman that he is working under cover, but it turns out that Gorman is one of the knights and the one who was plotting against Kirby. Gorman tells Kirby that McCord is working under cover. Kirby tells Gorman the gold is in the barrels there in the stable. Gorman shoots and mortally wounds Kirby. McCord fights and kills Gorman. One of the barrels smashes open but it is full of bags of sand. Kirby tells McCord the gold is buried at Cemetery Hill.

October 25, 1994: I debuted my unfinished rhyming novel

Thirty years ago today   

            On Tuesday I posed from 9:00 to 15:00 at Central Technical School and then I went home for a while. I went down to the Gladstone Hotel early so I could set up the Art Bar for my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage. I’d arranged for Adina to be there early as well so we could spend some time alone together but unfortunately Raven showed up at 20:30 too. It was a good night and we had twenty one people. I performed a new song I really liked and I debuted the beginning of my unfinished rhyming novel, which at the time I called “The Ballad of the Vancouver Trinity”: 

You first saw Dylan Luthor 

on the day you hit Vancouver

after a lazy month of hitchhiking from Montreal

He was singing by the Orpheum

with a big voice like Jim Morrison’s

just plowing through the earwax on the Granville Street Mall

He sang “The Earth is a bubble floating into space 

Yeah the Earth is a bubble floating into space

Well I guess that God must’ve blew it

it needs your pity not your praise” 

You didn’t like it and you didn’t like him

How could you after where you’d been?

That hyper-spatial paradise of life upon the road? 

Passing in or out of cities

brings a kind of beastly ecstasy

A trance inducing state you called “kinetic limbo”. 

            Mary Milne was still cold towards Adina. Dan Goorevitch, the new guy who’d been so confrontational with me the week before was as sweet as can be this time.

Gary Merrill

            On Wednesday morning I finished my search for the chords to “Allons z'enfants” (Join the Ranks Kids) by Boris Vian. There were no more than the two sets I found. I worked out the first three chords of the instrumental intro. 

            I memorized the first two verses of “Ophélie” (Ophelia) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. It feels like the action has gone up more since Brian at The Twelfth Fret raised it last week. It feels a little high but manageable so far. 

            I weighed 84.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I sanded the top and the upper half of the sides of the widest part of the inside of the bathroom door frame. Tomorrow I might have time to do the bottom half. 

            I weighed 84.75 kilos before lunch. I had a toasted slice of multigrain sandwich bread with sliced tomato and five-year-old cheddar. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 85.45 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:45. 

            I took another stab at animating the rainbow wave image that I created. I made seven copies of the original image and each time cut a finger-width section off the left side, moved the rest of the image to the left and pasted the cut image into the white space on the right end. I loaded all eight images in sequence on the video timeline of my “Seven Shades of Blues” project and when I clicked “play” it seemed to work. But the default timeline space that any images occupy in Movie Maker is four seconds, so I have to cut the time of each image to get a better idea of how the wave flows. I’ll work on that tomorrow. 

            I reviewed the song practice video of my acoustic performance of “Like a Boomerang” on September 10 and in the take at 5:15 I didn’t have a solid grip on the E flat. On September 11 I played “Comme un Boomerang” with my Martin and had a problem remembering some of the lines in the second verse. This took 15 minutes and I still sang the wrong line.

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with Basilica sauce, a sliced chicken burger, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episodes 13 and 14 of Branded. This is a two part story. 

            In part 1 McCord has been sent by the territorial governor to make a survey of the land of wealthy rancher Aaron Shields. Shields has a contract with the army to provide them with horses and so he has hired a band of Romany to break his wild horses. He is racist towards Romany people and doesn’t consider them to be human but he says they are the best bronc busters around. Shortly after McCord meets Shields, the rancher gets word that his daughter Robin has been seen going to meet Kolyan, the king of the band. This story is something of a Romeo and Juliet type scenario, except for the ending. Shields goes to teach Kolyan to stay away from his daughter. When he finds them he lets loose on him with a bullwhip until McCord cuts the whip at the handle with his sabre. In defending the Romany, McCord has made an enemy of Shields but a lifelong friend of Kolyan who invites him to stay in their camp. But Kolyan’s sister Lisa seems to hate white people as much as Shields hates Romany. But when she hears he saved Kolyan’s life she tosses him a begrudging welcome. The next day McCord is watching Kolyan break horses and when her brother is thrown Lisa challenges McCord to break the bronco. McCord rides the bucking horse until it is broken. While McCord is surveying the Shields land, Shields brings his foreman Jud to go over his figures and slow him down. Jud deliberately breaks one of the legs of McCord’s survey tripod so McCord punches him. Lisa brings food for McCord and Lazar and when she rides away Jud tries to go after her but she outrides him. That night Lisa begins to change her attitude to McCord and they kiss. Then the sheriff comes to arrest McCord on false charges made up by Shields. Kolyan tries to bail McCord out but the sheriff says bail is set at $300. This is continued. 

            In Part 2 Kolyan gives Robin an extremely valuable jewel encrusted Romany music box in exchange for the $300 he needs to get McCord out of jail. That night there is a big party in the Romany camp and Lisa dances for McCord. Shields finds out that Robin gave Kolyan the money and tells his men to attack McCord and the Romany camp. Later Shields finds that Robin has snuck out of the house to go to the same Romany camp that he’s ordered attacked, and so he heads there. Jud tries to grab Lisa and McCord punches him. The brawl ensues until all of Shields’s men are subdued or chased away. Kolyan holds Jud captive and puts a knife on the fire. He says he’s going to put out his eye as punishment for abusing his sister. Robin and McCord try to stop him, then Shields rides up. When he hears that his foreman attacked a woman he fires him. The next day Shields pays Kolyan for the horse breaking but he doesn’t return to camp. Lisa thinks Shields has harmed him and organizes her men to ride and attack the ranch. McCord finds out from Robin that Kolyan was supposed to meet her at the oak grove and so he goes there. He finds that Kolyan’s horse stepped in a hole and Kolyan was thrown, hurt his ankle and couldn’t walk so he decided to get drunk since he was stuck there. Just as Lisa and her men are about to attack the ranch, McCord rides up with Kolyan. Robin wants to be with Kolyan but he says she doesn’t belong. McCord kisses Lisa goodbye. She has him draw a card so she can see his future. Then he rides away. She shows that he drew the queen of hearts, which is her card. She seems more like the queen of spades to me. 

            Shields was played by Gary Merrill, who started acting while in the United States Army Air Forces. He began his career acting in summer stock plays. He was the voice of Batman in the Superman radio series. His film debut was in This Is the Army. He co-starred in the film Twelve O’Clock High, Witness to Murder, and Clambake. His TV debut was on the 20th Century Fox Hour. In 1950 he met Bette Davis on the set of All About Eve and they fell for each other right away. They divorced their spouses and got married in Mexico. They were together for ten years of fighting until they got divorced. He had an affair with Rita Hayworth. He later found greater financial success doing radio and television commercials than he did from movies. His autobiography was called Bette, Rita and the Rest of My Life.

October 24, 1994: I booked my band for November 27 at the El Mocambo

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday I only had to pose until 10:20 at Central Technical School because classes got canceled as a result of a chemical spill. I went home and called the guy in charge of Sedated Sundays at the El Mocambo and booked my band Christian and the Lions for November 27. Then I left messages with everybody to promote it. Adina came over. I called Johnny C the bass player and left a message asking if he would be interested in playing with us. He got back to let me know he was!

Pamela Curran

            On Tuesday morning I finished transcribing the second set of chords that I’d found for “Allons z'enfants” (Join the Ranks Kids) by Boris Vian. I’ll search for some more tomorrow. 

            I uploaded to my Christian’s Translations blog “The Bladed Wave”, my translation of “La vague à lames” by Serge Gainsbourg. I edited it and published it, then posted the lyrics on Facebook. There are ten songs left in my Gainsbourg project to translate his entire oeuvre from 1958 to 1991. I listened once to his song “Ophélie” (Ophelia) and tomorrow I’ll start memorizing it. 

            I weighed 86.3 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since October 14. 

            Between breakfast and lunch I worked on getting caught up on my journal because I fell behind on Monday. I weighed 85.6 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 86.4 kilos at 17:52. That’s the most I’ve tipped the scales in the evening since October 13. 

            I was caught up on my journal again at 19:00. 

            I worked some more on trying to figure out how to animate the image I made of a rainbow wave. I checked out a tutorial on the wave principal that’s the very basics of animation. It seems to be about overlapping each sequential wave pattern slightly after the previous one. I tried it with mine but still didn’t have a handle on it and ended up with a shorter wave each time that began at the same place. Next time I’ll try cutting a bit off the beginning of each sequence and pasting it onto the end. 

            I started reviewing the song practice video of my performance of “Like a Boomerang” on September 10 but had to stop at the beginning of the third take to have supper. 

            I had a potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching season 2, episodes 11 and 12 of Branded. In the first story McCord is at the PT Barnum Circus when his surveying partner encourages him to go into the ring with Samson for the $50 prize. McCord beats Samson easily but has a hard time getting the money. He is taken to Barnum who wants to hire him as his new fighter. McCord turns him down and says he just wants his money. Barnum pays him but is sure he’ll be back. Later McCord starts seeing advertizements posted by Barnum for an attraction that re-enacts the Battle of Bitter Creek and with the headline “See Jason McCord turn tail and run from the attack of the savage Indians”. McCord is trying to track down Barnum to get him to stop. He visits the Allied circus where he encounters its main act Princess Salome the dancer and also meets the owner of the circus, who says they have a circus code to not give out information about each other. He wants to do business with Barnum but all Barnum wants is Salome. When McCord goes to leave, Salome comes after him. earlier she had what sounded like an Italian accent that I think was supposed to be Middle Eastern but now she sounds like she’s from New York City. She says if he stays for her show then she’ll tell him where he can find Barnum. Later he confronts Barnum who tells him the guy playing McCord in his show is getting rich. Barnum says Bitter Creek is part of history and so Jason McCord is public property. McCord threatens to sue but Barnum tells him a lawsuit would be great promotion for his circus. McCord offers to get him Salome in exchange for him dropping the Bitter Creek act and Barnum agrees. Salome arrives with the owner of the Allied Circus. The owner’s name is J.A. Bailey and though Barnum is offering $10,000, Bailey is taking Barnum’s advice to never sell a good thing outright. Barnum tries to get out of it but finally agrees to give Bailey 10%. Of course this is the fictional beginning of the famous Barnum and Bailey Circus. 

            Salome was played by Pamela Curran who was born and raised in New York City and attended an exclusive school. She was on the cover of Life Magazine in the November 24, 1947 issue. She made her film debut with a minor role in Desk Set in 1957. She co-starred in Mutiny in Outer Space. She played Vanessa Vane in a two part Green Hornet story. When she retired from acting she became dedicated to finding homes for stray dogs and apparently saved over a hundred. 

            

            

            

            In the second story McCord has just led a cattle drive and sold the herd to earn $10,000 for his employer (that would be about $300,000 today). McCord takes a bank draft for $10,000 to the bank and gets the cash, but while he’s there it’s robbed by Frank Ross’s gang. McCord has the money in a case and handcuffs it to his wrist, telling the robbers that the key is in Durango, 500 km away. One of the crooks knocks McCord out and shoots the briefcase free. They take a bank customer named Callie Clay hostage. Meanwhile Tiny Bradford, who helped plan the robbery but was cut out by Frank heads with his gang for Frank’s hideout to get a share of the money. At the same time McCord has trailed Frank to the shack. Frank’s rival tells his men to let McCord warm things up before they move in. McCord bursts into the cabin and holds the crooks at gunpoint while he has Callie take their guns. But it turns out that Callie is Frank’s girlfriend and I saw that coming from the start. She pulls a gun on McCord and disarms him. Bradford and his men open fire. Frank tells McCord that if he can get their horses for him he’ll give him back his $10,000. He gives McCord a pistol with three bullets. After McCord takes shelter in a wagon, Frank sends out one of his men who is killed by Tiny. McCord takes out one of Tiny’s men. Frank sends out another man who is also killed. McCord takes out Tiny and his last man. Frank and Callie try to leave but McCord stops them. Frank knows there are no bullets left in McCord’s gun and is about to kill him but Callie grabs his arm and struggles with him long enough for McCord to knock him out. Callie tries to get McCord to run away with her with the money but he takes her and the money to town. He tells the sheriff that Callie was in cahoots with Frank but that she did save his life. When McCord leaves, Callie is trying to sweet talk the sheriff.

October 23, 1994: I took my daughter to a play about schizophrenia

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday I had my daughter with me but her mother’s parents didn’t bring her until late because they took her to church with them. It turned out that they’d decided they were going to take her to church with them every Sunday and eat up more of my time with her. When she got there we played and carved a pumpkin and then went downtown to the Café Verité to meet Adina. We walked to the play together and it wasn’t bad, especially the part about schizophrenia. But I thought the audience participation was pretty boring. Tom Smarda and Mary Milne were also there. Mary was still cold towards Adina, it seemed because she thought she was too young for me. I played with my daughter in the auditorium, then Tom came with Adina and I to hand my daughter back to Nancy in the subway. Then Adina, Tom and I went to the Green Room and talked. When we left I walked Adina to the subway and Tom went the other way.