February 26, 1996: My arrangements of my songs accompanied by Brian Haddon were coming together

Thirty years ago today 

            On Monday Brian Haddon came back to my place and we rehearsed my songs with me on guitar and him on recorder. The arrangements were shaping up.

George Davis

            On Tuesday I finally memorized the fifteenth verse of “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian. There are four verses left but some have repeated lines I already know and so it’s more like two more verses to learn. 

            I continued to search online for vintage photos to add to my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I’ve got 120 so far. 

            I weighed 90.2 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since February 14. 

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice and it stayed in tune about every third song. I had my voice back after the stitches came out yesterday. For the last couple of weeks I’ve had to be careful not to stretch my mouth too much while singing and I couldn’t whistle at all. 

            Around midday I painted the second coat of Blue Bliss on the undersides of my upper shelves in the bathroom. It looks like two coats are enough and so tomorrow I’ll start painting the lower shelf.

            I weighed 90.75 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 90.55 kilos at 18:30. February 13 was the last evening when I was that easy on the scale. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:38. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive a recording of my daughter Astrid and I talking and singing around Christmas of 1994. I tried it last night but thought there was something wrong so I tried again. But it came out at low volume again except that the parts that were from a pre-recorded documentary about China was loud and clear and so the problem seems to be with the original recording. Anyway it came out better than what I got from the cassette to MP3 converter. I might be able to clean it up later in Audacity. 

            I made a couple more sub-folders for photos in my SSD. 

            I boiled the good parts of three potatoes and then baked them in the oven with five-year-old cheddar on top. I had supper while watching season 1, episode 30 of Combat. 

            Saunders hurts his leg in a German attack and so he hitches a ride in an ambulance to the aid station in Orre. In the back is the doctor Captain August, his nurse and partner Lieutenant Ann Hunter, and a wounded patient on IV drip. 

            When he gets to Orre the aid station is gone but he thinks he can catch up as he splits from the ambulance. But then German bombers attack and Saunders gets knocked out. When he comes to he sees the ambulance is still there but when he goes to it there is only the patient inside. He changes the bottle on the man’s drip and then gets in the cab to start driving the ambulance out of Orre. On the way he sees the driver, August and Hunter and he orders them in the back even though he’s outranked by two of them. 

            On the road the ambulance blows a tire. Saunders confronts August about abandoning his patient. The captain argues that the soldier doesn’t have a prayer and he left to help the other men in the convoy who had a chance of survival. Saunders says he’s going to Layelle even though they have to go through German lines.

            After the tire is changed Saunders drives on but has to stop for a horse and wagon in the middle of the road. In the back is a dying old Frenchman who wants them to leave him there because he’s tired of the war. 

            Saunders explains to Jones the driver that he is risking court martial by being rough on the captain because he recognizes that he has combat fatigue and that’s the only way to get him out of it. If he gets enough spine to have Saunders arrested then he’s cured. 

            That night there is a rain storm and they get stuck in the mud. They spend the night in a nearby barn. Jones admits that he abandoned the ambulance out of cowardice. Saunders tells him it’s easy to run but if you stand your ground just once it becomes easier after that. Ann tells Saunders that August is a brilliant and dedicated neurosurgeon who before the war saved lives no one else could. She says the day of the landing at Normandy he crawled on his stomach and saved the lives of fifty men. But as the war went on and he started losing lives he gave up. 

            In the morning Saunders sees four German soldiers struggling to get the ambulance out of the mud and after they succeed Saunders guns them all down from the loft of the barn. The Germans have had plenty of opportunities to just shoot Saunders like that over the course of the war. He should be glad they were more merciful than he is. 

            On the last stretch to Layelle the Allies begin bombarding the Germans on the road but Saunders drives past them. At the hospital August is able to save his patient and himself. 

            The old Frenchman was played by George Davis who was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He started in Vaudeville and made his film debut in The Yellow Traffic in 1914. He co-starred in The Wagon Show and Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus.

February 25, 1996: My daughter and I found some interesting junk

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday my daughter and I explored a wild area near Dundas and Lansdowne between the north side of Dundas and the railroad tracks. We found an old crutch and a bunch of other stuff.

Bernard McEveety

            On Monday morning I gathered some vintage photos of sex workers for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 90.85 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it stayed in tune about every other song until the last five songs and then it fully behaved itself until the end. 

            I shaved and showered directly after song practice and then got ready for my appointment with my periodontist Dr. Xia. I got there pretty much just on time. He removed most of my stitches and said the rest are soluble and will dissolve by themselves over the next couple of weeks. He said the bone graft looks pretty good so far, so it appears like I’m on track to getting the implant. I brought my smaller denture along to see if it fits but he says it still doesn’t right now. I’m coming back in three weeks to check again. He doesn’t think it will fit because the bone graft has changed the shape of the gap. At that point if it still doesn’t fit they’ll order a retainer for me to wear for the few months until I get the implant. 

            I stopped at Freshco on the way home where I bought four bags of green grapes, a pack of raspberries, a Caribbean avocado, two containers of roasted red pepper hummus, and a container of Baba ganouj. I looked for non-dairy ice cream, which they had last year but there was none in sight this time other than in pop form on sticks. 

            I weighed 90.45 kilos at 15:50, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since February 12. 

            I took a siesta at 16:30, planning to get up at 18:00 but I slept until 18:45. 

            I weighed 91.3 kilos at 19:00. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 20:07. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity a recording of my daughter Astrid singing at around the age of 3 but the recording is very low in volume. I’ll try again tomorrow as it might be a memory issue for my computer in Audacity. Sometimes a restart will fix it. 

            I had two potatoes with margarine and two slices of five-year-old cheddar while watching season 1, episode 29 of Combat. 

            K Company is behind enemy lines and have to get back to their side within two and a half hours before Allied shelling of the area begins. While checking a barn for Germans, Kirby hears a noise and fires, just missing a baby in a basket. A dead woman they assume was the child’s mother is found outside the barn, having been killed by German mortars the night before. 

            Saunders says they have to move out and the men assume they will be taking the baby but he says no. They protest and grumble as they make their way until finally Saunders sends two men back for the baby. Since Doc is unarmed he is the only one allowed to carry the baby as they need every gun to be ready. The map shows that there is a convent not far away and so they make their way there only to find that it’s been destroyed. 

            Then they see a German patrol approaching on the road and they hide. On both sides of the road is an orchard and the Germans stop to pick apples. After a while they move on but Doc has been covering the baby’s mouth to keep it from making noise and it seems it may have killed the infant. Doc performs mouth to mouth for a long time and is almost ready to give up when the baby returns to consciousness. 

            They find a bombed out house where there is a bicycle and clothing that survived the blasts. Stroback sees a cow and goes running towards it to get milk for the baby when he steps on a mine and is killed. Since the Germans might have heard the mine, Saunders takes Brockmeier with him to recon. Meanwhile the men go against orders and sweep the field for mines so they can milk the cow. A wine bottle is washed and Doc rigs a nipple from a dropper in his med kit. When Saunders comes back Kirby lies that the cow wandered over to them so they milked it. He doesn’t believe him. 

            In the baby’s clothes they find a locket that indicates the baby had a German father and a French mother. 

            To get back to their lines they have to cross a fast river over which the only crossing is a pontoon bridge heavily guarded by German soldiers. K Company will have to try to cross where the river is rapid but they wouldn’t be able to carry the baby. Caje sees a Frenchman cross the bridge on a bicycle and the soldiers don’t ask to see his papers. He gets the idea to take the baby back to the house, change into the clothes they found and ride the bicycle with the baby in the basket across the bridge and then meet his company on the other side. He finds one German soldier goofing off by the house then sneaks up behind and strangles him. He and the baby make it across the bridge and meet K Company on the other side. 

            The Allied mortar fire begins and they have to make their way through it back to their lines while still shielding the baby. They find a convent that is happy to take the baby. All the men, including Saunders are sad to be free of the infant. 

            This episode was directed by Bernard McEveety, who directed 52 episodes of Gunsmoke, and 5 episodes of Knight Rider. He directed The Brotherhood of Satan, Ride Beyond Vengeance, and Napoleon and Samantha. The latter was Jodie Foster’s feature film debut at the age of 9. While shooting it she was picked up by a lion and shaken in its mouth before the trainer said “Drop it!”

February 24, 1996: My daughter and I found a nearby playground in my new neighbourhood

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday my daughter and I began our weekend together. It was fairly warm for February. We found a playground in my new neighbourhood.

Eric Braeden

            On Sunday morning I continued to collect images for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 91 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice and it went out of tune on almost every song.

            I cleaned the warm mist humidifier that’s been running all week and set the other one going. Maybe in a month or so I won’t need the humidifiers anymore and my Sundays will be freed up for painting. 

            I weighed 91.5 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar, with a glass of iced tea. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown but only as far as St George and Bloor because the Bloor bike lane was getting slippery. I went south to Harbord, west to Bathurst. south to Queen and then west to home. 

            I weighed 91.05 kilos at 18:05. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:41. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive a recording that has my daughter Astrid making mostly pre-verbal sounds. Most of the first half of one side is a CBC interview with Leonard Cohen. The rest of the tape consists of a woman reading Ontario legal documents in French. 

            I made some more sub-folders for photos in my SSD and deleted a few more images from my hard drive. I’m up to the pictures with titles that start with “L”. 

            I cubed a pack of tofu and sautéed it. I added water, spinach, two Szechuan spice packs, and two servings of noodles. I ate supper with a glass of Creemore while watching season 1, episode 28 of Combat. 

            K Company has just liberated a French town and is looking forward to rest and relaxation there when a sniper kills one of their men. They search house to house but we see a man dressed as a local walk to a bombed out factory on the edge of town and descend to a hidden living quarters in the basement. We see him don a German uniform. 

            Later he returns to the village, again dressed as a local and from another upper floor room kills another GI. The sniper easily escapes back to his hideout. Francoise the bartender goes to meet him there and we see they are lovers. 

            Kirby runs across two boys playing war. Caje learns they are looking for the sniper. They say they saw someone go into the factory. Saunders and Caje go there and meet Francoise and Hans on the way. They find the sniper’s lair. 

            After they return to the village the sniper targets Saunders but he sees the gun in the window and moves. The bullet hits the wall near Saunders’ face and partially blinds him. The sniper stops to help an old lady with her baskets just as Hanley asks if they’ve seen anybody. Through his blurry vision Saunders can see Francoise walking out of the village and he follows her. She detects him and hides. The sniper grabs one of his cached rifles and hides behind a ridge to wait for Saunders. Francoise sees this and calls out a warning so the shot misses him. Hans shoots Francoise then Saunders fires from side to side in his general direction with his machine gun until he hits and kills the sniper. He goes to Francoise as she is dying. 

            The sniper was played by Eric Braeden, who immigrated to the US as a teenager and worked as a translator, a cowhand, and a lumber mill hand in Montana and Texas. He earned a track and field scholarship to Montana State University. He and Bob McKinnon made a documentary of their successful trip the length of the Salmon River. He went to Hollywood to find a distributor and ended up being cast as the co-star in The Rat Patrol. His film debut was in Operation Eichman in 1961. He starred in Colossus: The Forbin Project, The Adulteress, and The Man Who Came Back. He co-starred in The Mask of Sheba, The Ultimate Thrill, and The Ambulance. He reluctantly accepted the role of Victor Newman on The Young and the Restless and it made him a star. He has been nominated for five Emmy Awards. He co-starred in the mini series Lucky Chances. He thinks Hollywood’s portrayal of US soldiers in WWII caused the Vietnam war.

February 23, 1996: Brian Haddon didn't want to perform with me until everything was right

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday I performed on the Spit Fridays open stage in the back room of the Cameron. I invited Brian Haddon to accompany me but he was a bit of a perfectionist and wanted us to rehearse a few more times.