March 12, 1996: I was on the fourth day of my annual fruit fast

Thirty years ago today

             On Monday I probably worked somewhere. I was also on the fourth day of my annual fruit fast and feeling a little weak.

Charles R. Rondeau

            On Tuesday morning I collected more images for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I have 199 so far.

            I weighed 87.75 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the first of two sessions and it actually stayed in tune half the time. All my guitars seem to like this weather.

            Around midday I took my laundry to the laundromat and brought it home at around 15:30.

            I weighed 87.6 kilos at 15:45. 

            I took a siesta at 16:30 and slept until 18:18. 

            I weighed 89 kilos at 18:25. 

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

            Once again I struggled with trying to record from cassette tape to Audacity because I couldn’t get a waveform. I tried a couple of restarts and spent a lot of time clicking around in Settings until just before dinner I saw that I had both Stereo Mix and my Scarlett audio interface enabled as input devices. I disabled the Stereo Mix and finally got a waveform when recording but by then it was suppertime and too late to record. Tomorrow I’ll try again and hopefully the settings won’t change again by themselves.

            I ate some grapes, an orange and a fig while watching episode 13 of Captain Nice. Episode 8 and 12 are missing from my download but I found them on archive.org, so I’ll watch episode 8 tomorrow and 12 on Thursday. The entire series only has 15 episodes.

            Carter Nash sees a man on the ledge who looks like he is going to jump so he ducks into an alley to change to Captain Nice. But before he can drink his super power serum he sees that the man is just retrieving a cat. He stoops down to put the serum back in his briefcase but he is in front of the back door of a business and a beautiful woman carrying packages steps out and trips over him. To make up for the mishap he offers to help her with her packages. Another attractive woman comes out and he helps her as well. She thinks he’s working with her and she tells him to come inside. He sees there are four pretty women carrying packages out to a van and continues to assist them until he sees a man tied up and realizes the four women are thieves. The girls force him into the fur storage safe and lock the door. He takes his serum but when the woman tripped over him some of it spilled and it doesn’t give him enough power to break out. 

            The next morning when Chief Segal and Sergeant Candy Cane investigate the robbery they find Carter shivering in the safe. The store owner recognizes Carter as someone who was helping the fur filchers. He is under suspicion and will be charged if the real thieves are not found. 

            Segal orders every beautiful woman in town with a police record to be brought in for the police line-up. The viewing audience of men is standing room only and the line-ups are booked up until Friday. 

            Carter’s only clue is that he found on the floor of the fur store bits of a type of floor wax that is used at dance studios. Candy does some research on her own and finds there is one dance studio with four beautiful employees who match Carter’s description of the thieves. 

            Candy goes undercover and gets a job at the dance studio but she doesn’t realize that one of the women recognizes her. They plan to use Candy as bait to catch Carter, who was the only witness to their fur robbery. They call Carter to tell him Candy needs his help. He finds Candy in studio 16 but it turns out to be rigged. A pump is being used to remove the air from the room and Carter and Candy are becoming weak. Carter feels he has no choice but to reveal his secret identity to Candy but by the time he does she is unconscious. After changing to Captain Nice he makes a run for the door but a customer opens it and he smashes through several walls until he is out in the alley. The gang of lovely ladies is rounded up and arrested. 

            This episode was directed by Charles R. Rondeau, who made his directorial debut with The Littlest Hobo in 1958. He directed 3 of the 15 episodes of Captain Nice. He directed 4 episodes of Get Smart, 44 episodes of Love American Style, 15 episodes of Room 222, 6 episodes of Tabitha, 4 episodes of Batman, 20 episodes of F Troop, 14 episodes of Surfside 6, 12 episodes of Hawaiian Eye, and 6 episodes of The Partridge Family. He directed the movies The Threat, The Girl in Lovers Lane and The Devil’s Partner.

March 11, 1996: My landlady complained about my daughter's behaviour

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday my daughter and I went to the little playground in the parkette off Dundas. We played a bit in the backyard of my place. My landlady Helga complained about True’s behaviour but I didn’t see anything wrong. She behaved like the four year old she was.

Sheldon Allman

            On Monday morning I continued collecting images for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I have 196 so far. 

            I weighed 88.45 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune the whole time. 

            I deleted several photos from my hard drive. 

            I weighed 89.15 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped to pee at the McDonald’s at Yonge and College. On the way home I stopped at Freshco where all the grapes were too soft. I bought a pack of figs, several avocadoes, and a jug of orange juice. 

            I weighed 88.8 kilos at 18:45. 

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

            I tried to record from cassette tape to Audacity and had problems again. Over the last few weeks I’ve made many successful recordings but lately it’s become glitchy. I couldn’t get a waveform at all this time even after restarting several times. Finally after clicking that the recording device is Audacity I got a waveform. There’s a Leonard Cohen clip at the beginning of the tape but weirdly there was no wave form for it and the waveform only showed with the beginning of the recording of my band. It begins with a Christian and the Lions concert performance of “Megaphor” and then there is a rehearsal of “Me and Gravity” and “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy” with Steve Lowe on guitar and Arjan on bass. I recorded through audio interface to Audacity as usual and then exported it to my hard drive but it sounded distorted. I tried exporting it in MP3 format but that sounded worse. I’ll try again tomorrow. Maybe the fact that it didn’t show a waveform for the Leonard Cohen clip should have warned me there was a problem. 

            I ate some grapes while watching episode 11 of Captain Nice. 

            Chief Segal is in charge of guarding the city payroll with the help of Sergeant Candy Cane and several other police officers. The armoured car arrives and suddenly it is ambushed. There is a firefight between the crooks and the police. Candy Cane is never shown with a gun. She is given the task of writing down the events as they unfold. 

            Carter Nash is just on his way home when he hears the shots and runs to change into Captain Nice. 

            The police are forced to take cover and one of the gangsters drives the armoured car away. Seconds later an identical armoured car containing counterfeit money is driven up to replace it. When the shooting stops the cops emerge from cover as Captain Nice arrives on the scene. Segal claims they fought the robbers off and the payroll is safe. Candy reports that 97 rounds of ammunition were fired with no hits. The chief admits that he shuts his eyes when he shoots. 

            The next day Carter is given $5 by Mayor Finney for lab supplies. But he smells the bill and detects that one of the chemicals is wrong. He tells Arthur the new sketch artist that he’s going to run some tests on it. But it turns out that Arthur is part of the counterfeiting and payroll robbing gang. He runs to their hideout to warn them about Carter, but Gordon the boss says there isn’t going to be a test because there isn’t going to be a Carter. They go to Carter’s house and force their way in. Gordon tells Carter he wants the $5 but Carter says it’s in the safe at the lab. He tells Anthony to accompany Carter to the lab and warns Carter that everyone will be shot if he isn’t back in an hour. 

            When Carter gets there he realizes that he can’t open the safe until 8:00 because it has a time lock. He says he can jar the lock with some nitro. Anthony accidentally knocks the nitro off the safe and the explosion knocks them both out. 

            With only seconds left before Gordon shoots them, Carter’s mother Esther and Candy break free and start using martial arts on the gang. They are doing fine until Gordon regains his gun and stops them. 

            Carter regains consciousness first and takes his super power serum. Within seconds Captain Nice is at the Nash house but Gordon is pointing his gun at Esther and Candy and warns him to leave. Suddenly his gun is shot out of his hand by Mr. Nash, who apparently picked up a gun from one of the fallen gangsters. We have never seen his face as it’s always behind a newspaper and he shot the gun through the paper. For some reason he wasn’t tied up like Esther and Candy. 

            A week later the chief has a foolproof plan to protect the payroll from thieves. He puts all his cops in the back of the armoured car. Robbers ambush the guards, padlock the back door of the armoured car and drive away with it. There is no money in the back and all they got away with is a $20,000 armoured car and the entire Big Town police force. 

            Gordon was played by Sheldon Allman, who was born in Chicago but moved to Canada as a baby. He joined the Royal Canadian Air Force during WWII and was wounded. He was convalescing in a British hospital and playing piano and singing original songs when he was heard by Ted Thorpe who was putting together a show for army bases in England. Sheldon with the Maple Leaf Show began singing with the Royal National Guard. After the war he played nightclubs in Canada until he moved back to the states in 1949 to attend the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. While studying he wrote songs, played clubs, produced TV shows, and worked as a DJ. He was the singing voice for Mister Ed and the writer of the Mister Ed songs “Pretty Little Filly with the Pony Tail” and “The Empty Feedbag Blues”. He wrote “A Quiet Kind of Love”, Christmas in the Air”, “Patapan”, and the theme songs for “George of the Jungle”, “Super Chicken”, and “Tom Slick”. He co-wrote the screenplay for Monster Mash. His song “Crawl Out Through the Fallout” appears in the game Fallout 4 and in the TV adaptation of Fallout. He co-wrote the musicals I’m Sorry, the Bridge is Out, You’ll Have to Spend the Night (on which the movie Monster Mash is based) and Frankenstein Unbound. His film debut was in Inside the Mafia in 1959.

March 10, 1996: My daughter stayed with me for the weekend

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday I picked up my daughter and she stayed at my place for the weekend. We stayed inside the first day and I worked on building her toy crossbow.

Noah Keen

            On Sunday morning I woke up at 5:51 and realized that I’d missed the stupid time change again. I decided to pretend it was still 4:51 and went back to bed for a few more minutes. I chose to go through my normal routine until I arrived at an hour that I could sacrifice and then change the time. 

            After yoga I gathered more images for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I have 189 so far. 

            I weighed 88.65 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice for the first of two sessions and it stayed in tune the whole time. 

            I cleaned the warm mist humidifier that had been working all week and started the other one going. While it was soaking in vinegar I changed my alarm to stupid time. 

            I weighed 89.35 kilos at 14:20. 

            I took a siesta at 15:00 and so that put me only half an hour behind. 

            I had just enough time in the afternoon to take a bike ride to Ossington and back, so then I was caught up with the time change. 

            I weighed 88.8 kilos at 18:05, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since January 16. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:52. 

            I tried to do some more recording in Audacity but even without the sound turned on when I clicked “Record” there was just a solid blue block across the timeline instead of a waveform. I tried restarting a few times and got the same thing and once no waveform at all when the tape was playing. A few months ago I downloaded a new version of Audacity that I thought the program was just going to upgrade by itself. But it turns out I was supposed to install it, so I did. Version 3.7.7 worked after a couple of tries. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive the first part of the Christian and the Lions rehearsal that I’d started last night. Tom Smarda and Steve Lowe on guitars were learning my songs “Charm and Money” (to the tune of “Love and Marriage”) and “Fallen”. Mike Martin just kept playing his bongos the same speed no matter what we were doing fast or slow. Steve claimed he no longer wanted to have sex and just wanted to play his guitar. I called bullshit. Tom and Steve didn’t agree with the premise of “Charm and Money” that potential lovers are more attracted to charm and money than they are to kindness and intelligence. The next rehearsal tape I’ll record tomorrow is more coherent as Steve had gotten a better grip on my songs.

            I had a tomato, avocado, and cucumber salad with lime juice while watching episode 10 of Captain Nice. 

            A crime syndicate fronted by a mysterious Mr. X. captures a mob that has been muscling in on their territory and now they are going to be bumped off but they say they would settle for a good scolding. They are lined up against the wall inside the Bigtown Garage as the assassin named Gunnar prepares his machine gun. Gunnar wonders when he will meet Mr. X but he is told nobody but his girlfriend Amanda Woolf has ever seen him. The beautiful Amanda is there keeping the syndicate’s records in code in a little black book. Gunnar is about to fire when Carter pulls in for gas and goes looking for an attendant. He opens the door and sees the gangsters, then he heads back to his car to change into Captain Nice. Gunnar fires but misses. Captain Nice flies in front of the next barrage. Amanda pretends to faint to distract Nice while her colleagues get away. 

            The saved mobsters are brought in but won’t talk and Amanda won’t testify. Carter and Sergeant Candy Cane are looking for clues in the garage when Candy finds Amanda’s black book. Carter says if he can crack the code he’ll find out the identity of Mr. X. 

            Mayor Finney and Chief Segal interrogate Mr. X’s suspected right hand man O’Brien. O’Brien says they can’t prove it. Finney says O’Brien deposited half a million in his account this year (which would be $5 million now) and yet he only runs a small cleaning business. O’Brien says he finds a lot of loose change in the clothing. 

            Carter arrives to announce he has the little black book and he thinks he can crack the code. Amanda sees he has her book and plots to get it back. She says she’s changed her mind and she will testify after all but needs to be in protective custody at Carter’s house. It’s unlikely that a police chemist would be assigned to watch after a material witness but they agree. Carter is warned he can’t even tell his mother the identity of Amanda. 

            Carter brings Amanda home and she has more suitcases than a luggage store. 

            O’Brien is released and puts out a hit on Amanda. He overheard at the mayor’s office that she would be staying at Carter’s place. His gang kidnaps Chief Segal and forces him to tell them where Carter lives. 

            Carter figures out that the code is based on the telephone dial with the letters and numbers representing each other. 

            O’Brien and the gang invade the Nash home and tie up Carter’s mother, father, and Amanda. Carter is unnoticed but he sees them from the study. He changes to Captain Nice before the captives can be killed. Gunnar shoots Nice but the bullets bounce off to kill the entire gang, including Gunnar. 

            The next day Carter reveals that Amanda is Mr. X. I saw that coming. 

            O’Brien was played by Noah Keen, who after graduating from university worked at NBC. He made his film debut in 1957 in A Face in the Crowd. He guest starred in the Twilight Zone episodes The Arrival and The Trade Ins.

March 9, 1996: Brian and I went busking and made enough for lunch

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday Brian Haddon and I went busking and made enough for lunch. Then we performed together on the Spit Fridays open stage in the back room of the Cameron.