February 12, 1996: People didn’t want to get too close to me

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday I was still in the process of moving to my new place. It was a secret because I was actually skipping out on the rent at the old place. I carried large pieces of furniture onto the streetcar and got to know one driver in particular who picked me up during several trips. At one point I wanted to write but had no journal to write in and so I grabbed a February copy of a free black culture magazine called Word I found on a streetcar seat and wrote this down on top of the text: 

            So I’m back on the streetcar on my way to the new place. The driver is the same one who took me east. He went around the loop and came back while I went to the old place to pick up a tabletop and a dresser mirror. When he saw me fishing for my Metropass he told me not to worry about it. He went as far as Connaught and it was the end of his shift, so now there’s a different driver. Now we’re at Pape, no, Leslie and I’m lost again. I can’t find my correct temperament. Where’s my friendship ring? The thing that gets me most is the fact that I’m on my own again. I thought that I’d found a group of friends and now I realize that was my mistake and it was only a non-profit business association. Like Marc Brandeis says, “People don’t want to get too close”. I think what is really true is that people don’t want to get too close to me. Maybe I’m wrong. I’ve been accused of justifying my behaviour but all I can say is what I see. I recognize my own innocence unless there truly is some form of universal behaviour towards women that’s appropriate. Who says a man or woman can’t get a spanking on stage if they want it?

Pierre Jalbert

            On Tuesday morning went to bed after 2:00. I laid on my left side and kept a cold gel pack sitting on my right cheek while I tried to sleep. I don’t think I got much if any sleep. My right cheek was so swollen I could see it in the corner of my eye. 

            After yoga I collected more images of Zizi Jeanmaire for a photo video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg while holding the gel pack against my cheek. I have 22 pictures but I think I might need 300. 

            I weighed 88.95 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since January 21. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice and it went out of tune most of the time. I couldn’t really sing because of the stitches but couldn’t play the songs unless I followed the lyrical sequence so I mumbled the words in key. 

            I weighed 89.85 kilos before lunch. 

            Around midday I finished touching up the pink areas on the grid of my bathroom exhaust fan. Tomorrow I’ll open up the wall paint and fix the blue and pink smudges below the fan. 

            I took a siesta at 14:30 and planned to sleep until 16 but didn’t wake until 16:39. 

            I took a bike ride as far as Ossington and Bloor because there was some melting today and the Bloor bike lane was clearer. I stopped at Freshco where I bought seven bags of grapes and matched them to the No Frills price of $4.34 a kilo. I also got some Pho broth, garlic chicken broth, two packs of Japanese beef noodles, a can of spicy tomato soup and a can of butter chicken soup. 

            I weighed 89.7 kilos at 18:40. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:36. 

            I tried again to record from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity but Audacity still shows no waveform and there’s no audio reaching the track even though there’s a horizontal green recording bar bouncing to indicate it’s picking up the audio. It was working fine yesterday until halfway through a tape. I tried various things until suppertime but couldn’t figure it out.

            I had a potato with gravy and a boiled chicken leg while watching season 1, episode 16 of Combat. 

            K company has liberated a French town and the villagers are celebrating them. 13 year old Gilbert, who has lost his entire family in the war, grabs his father’s rifle and approaches the men to volunteer as a US soldier. Lieutenant Hanley, rather than simply telling Gilbert he’s too young, has Caje explain in French that they are not allowed to recruit while in the field. 

           But when K Company moves out, Gilbert follows. He finds them under fire. When Hanley gets wounded and seems to have also a concussion, Saunders wants Gilbert to help Hanley back to his village until they can bring help. Caje gets him to go by telling him Hanley has made him his adjutant.

           On the way Hanley collapses and then Gilbert sees German soldiers approaching, He covers Hanley in brush and then runs so the Germans will chase him. He is caught and the Germans find him amusing. One soldier named Kurt is particularly nice to him.

           When the Germans move out Gilbert uncovers Hanley. He finds an overturned cart and uses it to wheel Hanley into the village, which is now abandoned. He takes him to his family house and puts him in bed. Then he sees a squad of Germans occupy the town, setting up machine guns in several windows. Hanley manages to communicate to Gilbert that he has to go get his men. He finds them and brings them back to the village where they take out the machine gun nests with grenades. 

           Gilbert uses his rifle to kill one of the German soldiers but when he does so he is upset, especially when he discovers that the German he killed is Kurt, the one German who was nice to him. He no longer wants to be a soldier. 

           Caje was played by Canadian actor Pierre Jalbert who was the Canadian junior national ski champion, senior national ski champion and captain of Canada’s 1948 Olympics ski team. He broke his leg before the games and couldn’t compete. He studied art appreciation at the Sorbonne in Paris then joined a French film company as a production assistant. He worked for the National Film Board of Canada then moved to Hollywood in 1952 and got work as a film cutter and editor for MGM. His screen acting debut was in Ski Crazy in 1955. After ten years working for MGM he was cast as Caje in Combat. He was the voice of Jules Verne in the documentary Footprints on the Moon – Apollo 11. He returned to film editing and was an assistant editor for The Godfather. He was nominated for an Emmy award for sound editing in the 1981 mini series Shogun.

February 11, 1996: My daughter and I played in the backyard of my new place

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday my daughter and I played in the back yard of my new place.

Micheline Presle

            On Monday morning I collected ten more images of Zizi Jeanmaire for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 89.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice and it went out of tune most of the time but once I made it into a third song and it was still behaving. 

            At around 12:45 I headed downtown to the U of T Graduate School of Dentistry for my bone graft surgery in preparation for the implant I hope to get. I had to pay $1200 for the procedure but they always overestimate and didn’t use as much bone as I paid for and so I’ll get a credit. It took at least two hours and Dr. Xia reapplied the bone more than once and undid the stitches once because he wasn’t happy with what he’d done and redid them. At one point he said, “I’m so stupid”. He later explained it had nothing to do with the procedure. Some periodontists do all the stitches with one thread but he did a lot of individual stitches. The assistant says people can always tell from pictures which ones are Dr. Xia’s sutures. His professor came to look and said it was perfect. There are twenty stitches and they can’t come out for at least three weeks. He says I can’t wear my denture. I have an appointment with him in two weeks and I’ll bring my other denture see if I can use that. If not he says they can get me a retainer to wear until I get the implant. He gave me a prescription for Peridex oral rinse, some antibiotics, and some Ibuprofen. He also told me to get a gel pack. 

            I went to Vina Pharmacy to fill the prescriptions and the druggist asked if I’d had oral surgery. It turns out he’s also waiting to get a bone graft towards an implant. 

            It was too late for a siesta when I got home. 

            I weighed 89.1 kilos at 18:00, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since January 19. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:18. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity side 1 of tape 2 of my third Slamnation poetry slam. But about halfway through, the audio stopped recording although there’re were green flashes on the gain dial on the audio interface and there was a small waveform in Audacity. I spent the rest of the time before dinner trying to get it working. I even restarted my computer but it didn’t help. An error message did appear indicating there was a memory problem perhaps because of too many devices operating. 

            I had potato chips even though I’m not supposed to eat anything crunchy. I tried my best to crumble them and make them soggy and ate them on the left side of my mouth. I boiled a chicken leg with a potato and had them with gravy while watching season 1, episode 15 of Combat. 

            Saunders is in Normandy searching a house when he is captured by Germans. He is put in the back of an armoured truck with two Canadian soldiers and one French civilian. The truck is ambushed by the French Resistance and it turns out the civilian is their leader. He shelters them temporarily while he tries to get gas for his truck from the proprietor of a bar but she can’t help him. A woman named Annette overhears and offers a gas certificate in exchange for a ride to Paris. When they are stopped at a German checkpoint he has a gun ready and tells her who is in the back. She is shocked and wants nothing to do with it but she keeps her mouth shut to the Germans and they are allowed to pass. 

            In a town he stops at a tavern but he is arrested. Annette wants to leave but Saunders says they need her help because they don’t speak French and one of the Canadians is wounded. Finally she agrees to drive them to Paris where they meet with a shopkeeper who had only agreed to shelter one of them while they wait for papers as he is already helping four. He begs her to take two to her apartment but she refuses. 

            Finally she agrees to take Saunders. She lets him sleep in what used to be the maid’s quarters. Saunders hides when Annette’s boyfriend arrives who is a German major who it turns out provides her with her lavish apartment. But she is not just a kept lover as she and Kurt do adore one another. He tells her he knows his country will lose the war and soon. He says his brother was just drafted and he’s only 14. The next day she goes out with Kurt and Saunders has to sit and let the phone ring all day. They come back and while Kurt is shaving she answers the phone. It’s a message that Saunders has to leave to board a garbage barge. But as he’s trying to leave Kurt points a gun at him. Annette begs him to let Saunders go but he calls the Gestapo. There is a struggle and Kurt is shot. Before he dies he tells her to go with Saunders because the Gestapo will kill her. 

            She hates Saunders for killing her lover but goes along to survive. After the barge lands they are met with two escorts, one of whom will take half to US lines and the other to British lines. Annette splits from Saunders at this point. 

            Annette was played by Micheline Presle, who was discovered at the age of 17 and made her film debut in Jeunes filles en détresse in 1939. She became a star early in her career. She co-starred in They were Twelve Women, Paradise Lost, Histoire de rire (released in English as Foolish Husbands), La nuit fantastique, The Beautiful Adventure, Félicie nanteuil (Twilight), Falbalas (Paris Frills), Fausse alerte (The French Way), House of Ricordi, The She Wolves, Five Day Lover, The Bamboo Stroke, Devil in the Brain, Venus Beauty Institute, . She starred in Boule de suif (Angel and Sinner), Le diable au corps (Devil in the Flesh), Les jeux sont faits, All Roads Lead to Rome, The Lady of the Camellias, Sins of Pompeii, It Happened in the Park, Les Impures, Thirteen at the Table, Beatrice Cenci, The Law of Men, and L’amour d’une femme. In 1949 she married Hollywood producer William Marshal and co-starred in Under My Skin, American Guerilla in the Philippines, Adventures of Captain Fabian, and If a Man Answers. She divorced Marshal in 1954 and returned to Europe where she co-starred in Blind Date, The Bride is Much Too Beautiful, Le baron de l’écluse, Mistress of the World, The Nun, A Slightly Pregnant Man, and Démons de midi. She starred in Good Weather but Stormy Late this Afternoon. She appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1957. She starred in the TV series Les Saintes Chéries.

February 10, 1996: My daughter liked my new place enough to spend the night there

Thirty years ago today

            I brought my daughter to my new place and introduced Helga and Peter to her. She liked it and was okay with spending the night there. For the last year or so she’d been unwilling to stay overnight in my basement apartment in the Beaches.

Rick Jason

            On Sunday morning I ran through singing and playing “Where Did All the Millionaires Go?” my translation of “Les Millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I started collecting images of Zizi Jeanmaire for a photo-video of the song. 

            I weighed 89.25 kilos before breakfast.

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice and it went out of tune most of the time.

            Around midday I started up the clean warm mist humidifier and then cleaned the one that’s been going all week. 

            I weighed 90.5 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of iced tea.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride but only as far as Dufferin and Bloor. They’d ploughed the bike lane again but it was still somewhat slippery so I turned around and headed west on the eastbound bike lane since there was no one coming east anywhere in the distance. A lone cyclist who was heading west on the north side of Bloor where the bike lane has not been cleared at all shouted that I was going the wrong way. 

            I weighed 89.8 kilos at 17:55. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:44. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive side 2 of tape 1 of the recording of my third Slamnation poetry slam. For some unknown reason I stopped playing guitar after the first set. Did people not like it or did I decide to concentrate on judging? There were a lot of poets with affected US accents.

            I created a sub-folder for photos of Eva Vortex in my SSD and deleted a lot of her pictures from my hard drive. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, oven french fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore while watching season 1, episode 14 of Combat. 

            K Company is ambushed by a tank. Vince D’Amato and Fred Wharton are some distance away from the others. D’Amato decides to try to take out the tank. As Wharton protests but follows D’Amato as he crawls along a trench until he’s flanking the tank. D'Amato kills the gunner with his rifle, runs up and drops a grenade down into the tank, then takes over the gun. He uses it to kill about twelve Germans. One German officer manages to shoot him and then the Germans retreat as K Company advances. 

            Wharton runs from cover to Vince’s body and is so upset that he runs to the tank and starts shooting the bodies of the dead German soldiers. Seeing Wharton on the tank the others from K Company think he’s the one that saved them. He at first dismisses his role. Lieutenant Haney says he’s going to recommend Wharton for a Silver Star. At that moment Wharton and the others have to move out. 

            Later Wharton gets a Dear John letter and feels like a nobody so he decides to let Haney write the letter about the Silver Star. Haney asks Wharton for details and he puts himself in the part that D’Amato really played. But later they capture one of the German soldiers who was there. He pretends to acknowledge that Wharton was the one who commandeered the tank gun and killed his comrades. Later however when they are alone the German tells Wharton he knows he was not the one and offers silence in exchange for letting him escape. Saunders walks in on the conversation and now knows Wharton was not the hero. The German tries to run and Wharton shoots him. 

            Later when they are under fire just the two of them in a town, Saunders gets hit by a falling sign and knocked into some barbed wire. Wharton jumps in and shoots at the Germans while unclipping Saunders. A German throws a grenade. Wharton grabs it and tries to throw it back but it explodes and injures his arm. He shoots the rest of the Germans with his good arm and gets Saunders back to the post.

            The doctor says he won’t be able to use his right arm again but before they carry him to the ambulance he confesses that the Silver Star should be sent to D’Amato’s widow. 

            Wharton was played by Frank Gorshin, who would later star as The Riddler on the Batman TV series. 

            Lieutenant Hanley was played by Rick Jason, who was born rich. He got expelled from eight prep schools but finally graduated from the ninth. His father bought him a seat on the New York Stock Exchange but he sold it and joined the army during WWII. He attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and was spotted in a play in 1950 by Canadian actor, director, and writer Hume Cronyn who cast him in his play Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. For Jason’s role in it he earned a Theatre World Award and a Columbia contract. After a year he still hadn’t done a film and so he got released and was cast in Sombrero by MGM. He co-starred in The Sarecen Blade, This is My Love, Sierra Baron, Colour Me Dead, and The Witch Who Came from the Sea. He starred in Rx Murder. He played the lead in The Fountain of Youth: a TV pilot by Orson Welles that was never picked up as a series but aired in 1958 on Colgate Theatre. He starred in the 1960 detective series The Case of the Dangerous Robin (in which he was the first actor to use karate on television). The show was canceled after he injured the sciatic nerve in his back. After that he was cast in Combat. He was a regular on The Young and the Restless when the soap premiered. After retirement he ran The Wine Locker. He spoke French, Italian, Spanish and Chinese. He shot himself to death at the age of 77. His autobiography Scrapbooks of my Mind was published after his death.

February 9, 1996: I had a falling out with some of my so called friends

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday evening I performed on the Spit Fridays open stage in the back room of the Cameron. I was starting to become estranged from some of the people I’d been hanging out with and they didn’t want to be around me anymore. My blunt outspokenness alienated them. A very charismatic and big woman from Chicago resented that I’d disagreed with something she said on stage about not applauding if you don’t mean it. I said people should applaud whether they mean it or not because it’s the friendly thing to do. I was busking on Queen later as she and some of my “friends” passed by. She actually bullied Bruce for stopping to talk with me. Later I probably moved another piece of furniture to my new place and slept there.