On Saturday my daughter and I began our usual weekend together. I picked her up from her mother’s house in Scarborough and took her to my place downtown. It was a rainy day so we just played computer games.
Monday, 19 October 2026
Sunday, 18 October 2026
Yvonne de Carlo
On Saturday after midnight I laid down new carpet tape all around the edges of my mattress and almost finished the roll. I’ll have to get some more on Sunday. I lint rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room, the top of my bed and the pillow. It didn’t catch as many bedbugs as usual. I shook my sheet and comforter out on the deck, turned the heat on, and went to bed around 1:30. I got up to pee at 4:15, turned the heat off and went back to sleep until 5:00. After yoga I checked for bedbugs and there were quite a few on the carpet tape and at the bottom of the baseboards.
I finished editing “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted a Little Money) by Boris Vian in French and my translation “She Sold Her Man Out to the Undercover Cops” in my Christian’s Translations blog and published them. I looked for some more photos of Boris Vian, found three and edited them in Paint.
I worked out the chords for the first line of “L’île enchanteresses” (The Enchanted Isle) by Serge Gainsbourg.
I weighed 91.35 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Martin during song practice for the first of two sessions and it went out of tune all the time.
Around midday I went to No Frills where I found five bags of relatively firm green grapes. I also bought a pack of blueberries, two packs of raspberries, some bananas, garbage bags, olive oil, maple syrup, honey, orange juice, two containers of skyr, a bag of potato wedges, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips. I did a price match on the grapes with the Walmart price of $6.48 a kilo. My bill was still $125.
I bought a six-pack of Creemore at the liquor store.
I weighed 91.15 kilos at 14:50. I had peanut butter and five-year old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade.
I took a siesta at 15:30 and got up at 17:00, too late for a bike ride.
I weighed 92 kilos at 17:20, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening since September 29.
I was caught up in my journal at 19:55.
I digitized a cassette recording of me performing two poems, “Salvation Orgy” and one other the title for which I’ve forgotten, acapella at Fat Albert’s. The next tape I’ll digitize is a recording of Christian and the Lions at Fat Albert’s.
I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, chicken nuggets, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching the penultimate episode of Custer. It was actually the final episode that aired but not the last one to be taped.
Custer and Sergeant Bustard come upon a burning covered wagon and find the travellers dead. Bustard observes that the arrows are Kiowa but Custer points out that they are hunting arrows and not war arrows and that the victims were shot beforehand with bullets (There’s no evidence that the Kiowa used separate arrows for war or hunting). It’s as if the arrows were shot into the bodies just for show. Custer says the Kiowa wouldn’t be so wasteful as to shoot arrows into corpses. Bustard says that all the household goods the settlers had been carrying were stolen. Custer points out that it’s not like the Kiowa to steal goods used in white households. This is the fifth small party this summer murdered to the last person and stripped clean.
Suddenly there are gunshots. Custer makes his way behind the shooter and finds it’s a woman who survived the attack. When she realizes they are cavalry she gives up. She says she thought they were the raiders returning. They murdered her husband and brother. She says her name is Vanessa Ravenhill. When Custer identifies himself she’s suddenly no longer friendly and says she wishes she’d killed him.
Back at Fort Hays Custer is discussing the series of raids with General Terry when a Major Bentine arrives. It turns out that he was a prosecution witness at Custer’s court martial. Terry says Bentine has been sent by the war department to file a report on how effectively they deal with various First Nations out west. Terry gives Custer five days to solve the mystery of the raids and Bentine will be an official observer.
Custer tells Bentine that he doesn’t hold his friend War Eagle the Chief of the Kiowa responsible for these attacks.
There’s a salesman named Ostler at Fort Hays, selling goods from his wagon. Vanessa is interesting in the sewing machine he’s hawking because it is identical to the one her sister in law owned. She helped her pack it in her wagon before she headed west and was in one of the massacred wagon parties. He shows her that the name “Douglas” is on the back of the machine so she says she must have been mistaken.
Custer and his men ride out and at a certain point tells Bentine to take charge as he and Bustard ride on ahead. Custer tells Bustard that they are being watched and he wants to take their observers alive. They jump the two young Kiowa braves as they are riding away and capture them. They ride with the cavalry to a stake in the ground with an orange flag. Custer stops the men there, saying anyone who goes further starts a war. Custer and Bustard ride on to meet with Chief War Eagle.
War Eagle tells Custer that when he signed the peace treaty he broke his war lance. Custer believes that War Eagle did not order the attacks. War Eagle has his son Blue Antelope (I doubt if any First Nations person has ever had a name like that) accompany Custer as a scout to help find who is responsible.
Custer sets up a fake wagon train with soldiers in civilian clothing and some of them, including Sergeant Bustard, dressed as women. They head out and that night at camp they are raided. Blue Antelope is absent and Bentine is suspicious but Custer still is not.
Bustard discovers that Vanessa has stowed away in one of the wagons. She says she wants to be sure Custer doesn’t let the murdering Kiowa get away like he wants to. Custer says they’ll have to keep her for now but under guard. She says he doesn’t frighten her but he says she frightens him.
When Blue Antelope returns to the camp one of the troopers trips him. Custer allows them to fight and Blue Antelope wins but then rides away. Custer goes alone after him. He catches him and Blue Antelope tells him he knows who attacked his camp and they are not Kiowa. He knows where they hide but there are too many.
While Custer is away the salesman Ostler arrives in his wagon and appears exhausted. He says he was attacked by Kiowa demanding fire water in exchange for sewing machines, coocoo clocks and other such items. Later Ostler sneaks into the wagon where they are hiding their cannon. He attaches a fuse to the gunpowder and lights it. Bustard sees him and asks what he’s doing. Ostler attacks and he and Bustard fight and it lasts quite a while and that’s a bit ridiculous because Bustard is a big, muscular man while Ostler is much smaller, pudgier, and older. Just as Bustard beats him the wagon blows up.
Ostler pulls a gun and grabs Vanessa. He takes her hostage and they ride out together. Bentine has the men follow to the mountains where Ostler’s fake Kiowa are waiting in ambush.
War Eagle, Blue Antelope and the Kiowa warriors agree to help Custer fight the raiders. They arrive and turn the standoff around. Ostler is shot and killed.
Bentine tells Custer he doesn’t condone his methods but he admires his results.
Vanessa apologizes to Custer.
Vanessa was played by Canadian actor Yvonne de Carlo, who was born in Vancouver. Her father abandoned the family when she was three and her mother worked as a waiter. When she was seven she entered a poem called “A Little Boy” in a Vancouver Sun poetry contest and won the first prize of $5. She sang in the choir of St. Paul’s Anglican Church. Her mother wanted her to be in show business and enrolled her in dance and acting classes. She dropped out of high school at 15 to attend the British Columbia School of Dancing. They moved to Hollywood when she was 18 where she came in second in the Miss Venice Beach contest, which led to work dancing in chorus lines. She was arrested and deported to Canada but the nightclub owner told the government he would sponsor her and she was allowed back into the States.
Her first feature film was Harvard Here I Come in 1941. Her first role as a female lead was in Deerslayer in 1943. She starred in Salome Where She Danced (which made her famous), Frontier Gal, Flame of the Islands, Song of Sheherazade, The Contessa’s Secret, Magic Fire, La spada e la croce, Slave Girl, Black Bart, Buccaneer’s Girl, Calamity Jane and Sam Bass, Casbah (in which she sang “For Every Man There’s a Woman” which was nominated for an Oscar), The Gal Who Took the West, Hotel Sahara, River Lady, The Desert Hawk, Hurricane Smith, La Casa de Las Sambras, Blazing Stewardesses, Play Dead, and Flesh and Bullets. Cameramen voted her the queen of technicolour.
She co-starred in Criss Cross, Brute Force, The Captain’s Paradise, Happy Ever After, The Ten Commandments, Death of a Scoundrel, Raw Edge, Silver City, Shotgun, The Scarlet Angel, Sea Devils, Tomahawk, Band of Angels, Passion, Border River, The San Francisco Story, Fort Algiers, Death of a Scoundrel, Timbuktu, McClintock, Law of the Lawless, A Global Affair, Hostile Guns, Arizona Bushwackers, House of Shadows, Munster Go Home, The Seven Minutes, Arizona Slim, The Intruder, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, Satan’s Cheerleaders, Nocturna, Guyana Cult of the Damned, The Silent Scream, Liar’s Moon, American Gothic, Cellar Dweller, Mirror Mirror, and The Naked Truth.
In 1951 she starred in five performances of the opera Die Fledermaus at the Hollywood Bowl.
She made her TV debut in Lights Out in 1952. She guest starred on the pilot episode of Bonanza in 1959. She co-starred in the TV series The Munsters.
She played Carlotta in the original Broadway production of Follies and introduced the song “I’m Still Here”.
Her 1987 best selling autobiography was called Yvonne.
She was presented to Queen Elizabeth at the Empire Theatre in London in 1952.
She was politically conservative and believed that men should run the world.
She had affairs with Howard Hughes and Prince Abdul Reza Pahlavi of Iran .
October 18, 1996: I got stood up by a stripper
On Friday I went back to the House of Lancaster and spent a lot of money on lap dances from Amanda. I asked her out and she said she would meet me after work. I waited and waited outside until I saw her slip into a cab and drive away. I felt like a fool.
Saturday, 17 October 2026
Edward Mulhare
I uploaded “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted a Little Money) by Boris Vian in French and my translation “She Sold Her Man Out to the Undercover Cops” to my Christian’s Translations blog and started to prepare them for publication.
I finished revising my translation of “L’île enchanteresses” (The Enchanted Isle) by Serge Gainsbourg. I searched for the chords but no one has posted them so I worked them out for the intro and some of the first line.
I weighed 90.95 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Kramer during song practice and it stayed in tune almost the whole time.
I steamed my mattress and the bedroom floor where my bed goes. I also steamed the curtains between the bedroom and the living room and the left curtain rod bracket where I’m pretty sure there’s a bedbug nest underneath. I had to remove all the carpet tape from my fitted sheet again because I couldn’t get it back onto the mattress otherwise. That’s $10 worth of tape.
I weighed 91.85 kilos before lunch.
My upstairs neighbour David called to ask me to turn the heat on so I did.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.
I weighed 91.7 kilos at 18:10.
I was caught up in my journal for the first time in a month just before supper.
I had chicken nuggets and potato wedges with barbecue sauce and a glass of Creemore lager while watching the antepenultimate episode of the TV series Custer.
A British army officer named Colonel Sean Redmond arrives at Fort Hays and seeks out Custer. He says he must select six reliable men out of his regiment and have them ready for action with light combat equipment at 6:00.
Later Custer learns more about the mission from General Terry who tells him Redmond will be in complete command of the mission. Custer asks Captain Keogh to be his second in command but Redmond prefers that Keogh not come along. Custer says Keogh was knighted by the pope and is entitled to an explanation but Redmond won’t give one. Terry reminds Redmond that his orders don’t include picking the men for the mission and so Keogh gets to come along after all.
They ride out at dawn and when they make camp Redmond shows Custer a map that indicates their destination. A vast complex of caves just south of the Canadian border are being used to store a very large supply of arms and ammunition dedicated to the invasion of Canada with the avowed intention of setting up an Irish government in exile and blackmailing her majesty’s government into granting Irish independence. Keogh asks, “What’s wrong with Irish independence?” to which Redmond responds, “So you’re one of them?” Custer asks if that’s why he didn’t want Keogh to come along. Redmond says, “Precisely! At best he’s sympathetic to the Irish cause." Custer asks who would be using these arms against Canada? Redmond answers, “Irish nationalists in your country. An offshoot of the Fenian Brotherhood.” Custer asks how many there are and Redmond says, “Not many, but they have enough guns to supply two-thirds of the Sioux nation.”
As the company continues they are observed by Finn MacDiarmuid the leader of the Irish force and his man Deasy.
That night Joe wakes Custer to take him nearby to a sleeping Cheyenne camp where a red headed woman is tied to a tree. Custer, Sergeant Bustard, and Joe try to rescue her but she is awakened and in surprise she cries out, waking the Cheyenne warriors. They fight them off and take the woman back to their camp. She says her name is Brigid O’Rourke and she was on her way home from a trading post when she was attacked and captured. Custer asks why they had her strung up and she says it’s because she killed one of them. Custer says the Cheyenne would have killed her for killing one of them and wouldn’t have strung her up for torture unless they were trying to get information.
Brigid asks if she can come along with them since her home is north as well. Custer asks Redmond if he objects, but when he turns around and Brigid sees him she recognizes him, tries to grab a rifle to shoot him but is restrained. Redmond says that Brigid and her man Finn MacDiarmuid are the leaders of the Fenians. He adds that the inspector general of the Fenians was actually an officer of the British Secret Service. A man named Sean Redmond. He says MacDiarmuid with his terrorist murder and destruction has done more harm to the Irish than the British army.
The next day they travel with Brigid’s hands tied. They stop to rest with Brigid given one trooper as a guard, but Finn knocks him out from behind and frees her. They escape and down the road when they rest Finn shows that he has dynamite to use against their pursuers. Brigid begs him to only kill Redmond and not Custer and his men who are innocent in their fight. She tells him freedom can’t have meaning if it’s bought with the lives of innocent men. He is not moved and goes to plant the dynamite in the rocks above the pass but he is ambushed by Custer and Joe. They capture him but suddenly some Cheyenne charge as they want the stored arms. Custer, his men, Redmond, and Brigid take shelter behind some rocks but Finn gets away in the confusion.
They let their horses go and Brigid leads them to a cave but one of the Cheyenne tosses dynamite in and the explosion traps them inside. Joe finds a torch, lights it, and the flame is pointing in a certain direction indicating an opening somewhere down the tunnel, so they go that way. They find the entrance to another tunnel and crawl through.
Finn goes to the mine where the Fenians have their hideout.
Custer, his men, and Redmond are lost in endless caves. It’s fairly certain that Brigid knows a way out. Redmond wants to torture her but Custer won’t let him and so they finally have the fight that’s been building up since the beginning. Redmond knows Siamese boxing (which is now called “muay Thai”) Custer wins the battle with Apache style fighting. He says the Apache fought with their feet when the Siamese painted themselves blue and lived in trees (This is way off. Thai civilization predates the Apache by thousands of years and they never painted themselves blue. There is also no evidence that the Apache had any tradition of foot fighting).
They hear noises coming from one of the tunnels and Brigid tries to warn Finn. They tie her hands and Joe covers her mouth with his hand but they don’t gag her for some stupid reason. They find the Fenians trying to move their arms out of the mine. Brigid shouts a warning and there is a gunfight. Finn is fatally shot but makes one last grand gesture and throws a torch on all the gunpowder. In the explosion Redmond is also mortally wounded. He refuses to take a drink of water because water should be used to keep the living alive and should not be wasted on the dying.
Custer lets Brigid go.
Redmond was played by Irish actor Edward Mulhare, who made his theatrical debut in The First of Mrs. Fraser at the Cork Opera House in 1942. He made his film debut in Captain Boycott in 1947. Nine years later he was in the Laurence Olivier produced and Orson Welles directed London production of Othello when he was spotted by Alan Jay Lerner and signed as an understudy to Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady on Broadway. Harrison dropped out in 1957 and Mulhare took over for over 1000 performances until 1960. He made his TV debut in The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1956. He co-starred in Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer (the first feature film produced in Israel), Signpost to Murder, Von Ryan’s Express, Our Man Flint, Megaforce, and Out to Sea, He co-starred in the TV series The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award) and Knight Rider. He starred in the series Secrets and Mysteries.
October 17, 1996: I posed all day at OCA
Thirty years ago today
On Thursday I posed from 9:00 to 16:00 in room 356 at the Ontario College of Art.
Friday, 16 October 2026
Robert F. Simon
I ran through singing and playing “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted a Little Money) by Boris Vian in French and my translation “She Sold Her Man Out to the Undercover Cops”. On Friday I’ll upload them to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare them for publication.
I revised my translation of half of the fourth verse of “L’île enchanteresses” (The Enchanted Isle) by Serge Gainsbourg.
I weighed 91.05 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Gibson during song practice and it stayed in tune most of the time.
I weighed 91.7 kilos before lunch.
Again I took a longer siesta than planned. I slept an extra 48 minutes so it was too late to take even a bike ride to Ossington and Bloor. But I still needed to go to the supermarket. My upstairs neighbour David just came back from a two week stay at Toronto General on Tuesday and he was walking with a cane. So I asked him if he wanted anything from the Freshco. He asked for some mortadella, salami, Swiss cheese, and French stick, so I got that. The grapes were still too soft and so I bought three bags of oranges instead. I also picked up a pack of raspberries, some bananas, some lamb shanks from Australia, and a lint roller. David’s items cost $14. he tried to give me $40 but I only took $20.
I weighed 91.25 kilos at 18:10.
I was still one blog post behind and worked on catching up.
I heated chicken nuggets and potato wedges and had them with barbecue sauce while watching episode 14 of the TV series Custer.
An old Sioux spirit woman named Watoma is running from Sioux men who want to kill her. She’s wearing a polka dot top of all things. One warrior jumps in front of her with a spear. She grabs the head of the spear and pulls the point against her chest, challenging him to kill her. He falls to his knees and can’t do it. She runs on as the Sioux chief confronts the kneeling brave, then kills him for not killing Watoma. She arrives at Fort Hays but collapses outside the gate. Custer and California Joe recognize her. They bring her inside and she insists on only talking to General Terry. Custer tells him Watoma is more than a person to the Sioux but a symbol of their spirit and more important than Crazy Horse.
An old trapper named Eldo who lives at Fort Hays is drunk and Custer helps him to his tent. As usual he starts talking about his wife and son who were taken by the Sioux 2 years ago. He insists they are still alive but Custer tells him he should accept that they are dead.
Watoma tells Terry she is there against the will of the Sioux because she wants to end the fighting. She says Custer killed her child and her man Black Beaver, second only to Crazy Horse, at White River (There’s no record of a battle at a place called White River involving Custer). She says she wants the white leaders to make up a final fair treaty so she can bring it to her people and there can be peace. She comes now because she had a vision in the sacred smoke of her people gone from their lands, driven away by the white soldiers. She saw many frozen to death in the snow.
Terry wires General Sheridan to ask what he recommends. General Sheridan wires back that he wants to see Watoma at Fort Dodge in three days, so Terry puts Custer in charge of getting her there.
That night a Sioux warrior climbs over the wall of the fort, kills a soldier and puts on his uniform to sneak into where Watoma is staying and kill her. Custer happens to be there and they fight until Custer kills him. Watoma sings a death chant for him and Eldo hears it, thinking it’s his lost wife.
They are ready to take Watoma to Fort Dodge and Custer finds her in the tack room reading the future in sand. He asks if she sees his future but she says it’s not always wise to know. She sees him and his men dead not soon but not long from now.
They make camp and Eldo shows up, claiming he’s there to check his traps. He says he has to buy some traps at Fort Dodge and asks if he can come along with them. Watoma comes out of her wagon sensing someone is in trouble. Then they hear a Sioux calling for help. They find him trapped in a cave after a rock slide. Custer rescues him but when he sees Watoma he runs away to tell the Sioux where she is.
Later Eldo goes to Watoma’s wagon and takes her captive. He threatens to shoot her and makes Custer and his men disarm. He says he’s going to sell her back to the Sioux in exchange for his lost wife and child and leaves with her. Custer and his men follow his trail. Eldo takes Watoma into Sioux country and is killed by the first Sioux he finds. Watoma tries to get away but his captured. Custer finds Eldo’s body.
Watoma is tied to a tree in a circle of Sioux warriors with oner of them drumming and the leader walking around in the middle waving a knife in a ritualistic manner and taking closer and closer swipes at Watoma. Custer and California Joe see them from the rocks. Custer tells Joe to start shooting when he hears the charge. Custer goes to get his men and they ride towards the circle. The bugler calls the charge and Joe starts shooting. There’s a battle and Watoma is rescued. Custer fights with the chief who falls on his knife. Watoma sings a death chant and performs a ritual for all the dead.
Watoma was played by Agnes Moorhead.
General Terry is played by Robert F. Simon. He and Moorehead could be seen together sometimes on Bewitched as he played Darren's father and she played Samantha's mother. Even though he was married there was some flirtation.
Simon who took up acting to overcome his shyness. He trained at The Actors Studio and made his Broadway debut in Clash by Night in 1942 both as an actor and stage manager, working steadily there for ten years. He moved to LA in 1954 to work in film and on television. He made his film debut in Where the Sidewalk Ends in 1950. He co-starred in Roogie’s Bump, Spring Reunion, Face of Fire, Pay or Die, Private Duty Nurses, and Spiderman Strikes Back (as Jonah Jameson). He co-starred in the Twilight Zone episode No Time Like the Past.
October 16, 1996: I became enamoured with a dancer named Amanda
Thirty years ago today
On Wednesday I went to the House of Lancaster where I became enamoured with an Argentinian dancer named Amanda. I spent a lot of money on lap dances.
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