February 17, 1996: I adapted Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks" as a tribute to my late friend Mike

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday I spent the day with my daughter at my new place and she stayed overnight. When she was sleeping I worked on learning the song “Astral Weeks” by Van Morrison. I remembered that Morrison was a favourite of my recently deceased friend Mike Copping and so I changed the lyrics as a tribute.

Denise Alexander

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

            I weighed 91.5 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning in over a year. My arms are going to be disproportionately muscular from doing chin-ups every day with my increased weight. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice and a few times it actually stayed in tune.

            Around midday I set my clean warm mist humidifier going and cleaned the one that’s been running all week. 

            I weighed 92.2 kilos before lunch. I’d have to look through old files to find when I weighed that much in the early afternoon. I had the rest of the hot Italian sausage soup that I made yesterday and added saltines. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Shaw and Bloor, east of which the Bloor bike lane is still blocked. I went south to Harbord, west to Ossington, south to Queen and west to home. 

            I weighed 91.95 kilos at 17:40. It’s been a few years since it’s been that high in the evening. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:16. 

            I started trying to record from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity but the audio wasn’t showing up as a waveform in Audacity. I tried to recheck my settings and even the connections but nothing seemed to be wrong. Finally I just restarted my computer and then it worked. I recorded what I’d labeled as “Copyright Tape”. I had mailed it to myself more than thirty years ago but the envelope had worn out and there was no sealed proof anymore, so I just recorded it. The whole tape only contains one song, which is my 14 minute long “Portrait of My Quicksilver Headdress”. So now it’s digitized. It’s one song I never recorded other than on this tape even though Brian Haddon and I performed it when I featured at the Art Bar Reading Series probably about 29 years ago. At that venue the features were required to provide copies of the poems for the audience to read and so what I did was write the whole song out on one long piece of old style perforated printer paper that was passed around the room like a snake as we performed. 

            I made some more sub-folders for photos in my SSD and deleted several more images from my hard drive. 

            I boiled three chicken legs and combined one of them with pho broth and shin ramen. I had the soup with a glass of Creemore while watching season 1, episode 21 of Combat.

            K Company is reconning a town when Germans open fire from various windows. Grenades take out the machine gun nests. A lone elderly Frenchman emerges to tell them that the Germans are holding five children, himself and the librarian in the library. Lieutenant tells his men to fall back and he contacts the command post. He learns they are going to shell the library in about three hours. 

            So Hanley goes in solo to try to rescue the children. Lieutenant Liebner is the German officer in charge. He catches the old man Marcel reading the children the history of France and orders all of the books burned. Liebner fancies the librarian Annette and takes her to the wine store for a glass. When he has finished he leaves but she lingers and Hanley comes out of hiding. She tells him to leave and runs away. 

            Hanley goes through a basement window of the library but finds the door locked from the outside. Annette sees him go in from an upper window and makes an excuse that one of the children is cold and she needs a blanket from the basement. She goes down to tell Hanley to leave. He tells her the Allies are going to shell the library. She thinks that if she tells Liebner they will leave. Marcel comes down, then a soldier. Hanley fights and stabs the soldier. Liebner comes looking for Annette. Marcel creates a distraction by attacking Liebner with a knife and Liebner shoots him. Annette says Marcel killed the other soldier. 

            The door is locked and Hanley is trapped again. Annette writes a note and gives it to the oldest child. Then she pretends to give in to Liebner’s advances and asks that they go to the wine shop and finish their drink. The boy brings the note to Hanley telling him where everyone is. While Annette distracts Liebner, Hanley rescues the children. Liebner sees them running away and fires after them. He is about to kill Annette when the shelling begins and he dies. 

           After the children are safe Hanley takes Saunders back to look for Annette but they find she’s been killed by the shelling. They claim there was no other way. Hanley reluctantly agrees. I say if even one innocent dies in war it should be considered a war crime. 

            Annette was played by Denise Alexander. She earned a Bachelors degree in Arts and Sciences. She made her TV debut in an episode of Dimension X in 1950. She made her feature film debut in Crime in the Streets in 1956. She played Susan Hunter Martin on Days of Our Lives from 1966 to 1973. When she left Days of Our Lives for General Hospital she was the highest paid daytime TV actress. She appeared in 1117 episodes of General Hospital as Dr. Lesley Webber. She played Mary McKinnon on Another World from 1986 to 1989. She was a published photographer.

February 16, 1996: I heard that my friend Mike Copping had died

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday I got a call from Peter Copping, the brother of my friend Mike Copping. He told me that the previous weekend Mike had died of a heart attack in the kitchen of his home outside London, Ontario. He was surrounded by his wife and two children when he passed away. I felt very sad and cried for a few days. I picked up my four and a half year old daughter for the weekend and told her I needed a hug. We went to the Rustic Cosmo Café for a poetry open stage and Raven was there.

Marie Gomez

            On Saturday morning after I went to bed I could hear my upstairs neighbour’s dog in distress. I don’t know what Jacob was doing to it. I got the impression he punished her by locking her out of the apartment on the stairway. 

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

            I searched online for vintage photos of down and out millionaires and millionaires who act poor. Then I looked for old photos of millionaires in China. These are all for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 90.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice and it stayed in tune for almost the whole session. 

            Around midday I rode down to No Frills where I bought five bags of red grapes, three packs of raspberries, some organic bananas, mouthwash but I accidentally got the kind without alcohol, margarine with olive oil, a jug of orange juice, a jug of iced tea, a container of 4% skyr, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips. 

            I weighed 90.65 kilos at 14:45, which is the most I’ve weighed in the early afternoon in a long time. 

            I weighed 91.7 kilos at 17:35. That’s the most I’ve pushed the scale in the evening in a few years. I gained weight because of the diet after the last bone graft as well. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:12. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and extracted to my hard drive the finale of my last Slamnation poetry slam. It was hosted by Cad Lowlife who now calls himself Cad Gold Junior. There was a small turnout and so there were only one and a half tapes. I’ve now digitized all the audio recordings of all my poetry slams. 

            I made some more sub-folders of photos in my SSD and deleted a lot more from my hard drive.

            I cut up five hot Italian sausages and sautéed them. I added the last of my garlic chicken broth and the rest of a container of pho broth. I tried to cook the Japanese noodles in the steamer above the soup but it was taking too long so I just tossed them into the soup. 

            I had a bowl of the soup with a glass of Creemore while watching season 1, episode 20 of Combat. 

            K Company makes a stop at an evac hospital and all the men’s mouths are watering to see female nurses. Suddenly against orders Corporal Andy March jumps out of the jeep and runs into the tent. He approaches one of the nurses and starts kissing her. It turns out that it’s Lieutenant Amelia March, Andy’s wife. They’ve been married eight months but have only known each other for two days. Saunders tells March they have to move out but March begs for more time with his wife. Saunders says he’ll put in a request on his behalf for two days leave. 

            Kirby is jealous to find out that his friend March has a woman in his life and he tries to pick up a waiter in a local bar but Saunders tells him she’s off limits. They will have to go out on patrol the next day but that night Kirby goes AWOL to try to make it with the girl at the bar. She seems uninterested and a man with the French Resistance tells him she is engaged to his brother. That doesn’t stop Kirby and so he gets beaten up by three Maquis kick boxers and tossed unconscious out with the garbage. He’s at the evac hospital before his company finds out he’s missing. 

            March has to take Kirby’s place on patrol and he gets caught in a mortar shell explosion and is taken to evac with life threatening injuries. Kirby learns from a patient who’s been there a while that Lieutenant March is actually in a relationship with the doctor Captain Anders. The captain has to operate on March to remove the metal from his skull. 

            Amelia admits to Saunders that she’s in love with Captain Anders. She planned to tell Andy after the war but if he dies it will make her relationship with Anders impossible. Andy lives and it looks like Kirby won’t be court martialed for going AWOL. 

            The waiter in the bar was played by Marie Gomez, who was discovered by Leonard Sillman. She began her career on Broadway in New Faces of 1962. She appeared in five episodes of The High Chaparral. She made her TV debut on Dobie Gillis in 1962. She was a contestant on Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in The Professionals. In later life she did charity work for orphans in Mexico.

February 15, 1996: I got my phone connected

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I got my phone connected at my new place.

Dan O'Hirlihy

            On Friday morning swelling had definitely gone down in my right cheek. During yoga I was able to put the right side of my face on the floor for the first time since the bone graft. There’s still a bruise on my cheek but supposedly that will go away. 

            I started looking for vintage images related to the idea of broken millionaires. I found a few images but I’ve got to change the wording of my search. 

            I weighed 89.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it stayed in tune almost half the time. 

            I painted the tops of my upper bathroom shelves with Blue Bliss. 

            I smudged the northern wall in a few places. I’ll touch that up on Tuesday and after that I might be finished with the ladder for the bathroom as I start painting the rest of the shelves. 

            I weighed 89.95 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Shaw and Bloor where the bike lane further east is still blocked with snow. I don’t think they are going to bother clearing that section. I went down Shaw to Harbord, west to Ossington, south to Queen and then west to home. 

            I weighed 90.3 kilos at 17:40, which is the most I’ve weighed in the evening since February 2. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:55. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity, then extracted to my hard drive side 2 of tape 1 of my fourth and last Slamnation poetry slam, hosted by Cad Lowlife. The tape ends about halfway through the readings by the finalists. 

            I deleted about 65 images from my Photos folder. 

            I boiled a potato and added it to the ground beef soup that I’d made with the pho broth a few days ago. Earlier at lunch I added a can of butter chicken soup and it was quite good. I ate supper while watching season 1, episode 19 of Combat. 

            Doc is caring for a very badly wounded Lieutenant Hanley, plus Braddock and Corporal Cording. Jackson is driving them to a hospital according to the directions he’s been given but they arrive at a French chateau. The owner Count de Gontran resents their presence because he wants to keep the war far from his home. He lets them take the wounded in his ballroom but tells them they only have two hours. 

            Jackson tries to speed away to get help but is killed by German soldiers led by Major Richter who then arrives at the chateau and impresses Gontran with his gentlemanly manner and cultured ways. He encourages his daughter Gabrielle to be nice to Richter. When the US soldiers are discovered Richter allows doc to continue to treat his wounded but reminds them they are now prisoners of war. Doc can leave the room for medical purposes but if the others leave they will be shot.

            Braddock and Corporal Cording plot for one of them to escape to get help. They do rock paper scissors and Cording loses. He strangles their guard and tries to make it out but gets caught in the foyer and Richter shoots him. 

            Meanwhile Gontran sees Richter’s soldiers removing the priceless paintings from the walls of his chateau and complains. Richter claims he is only protecting them because the chateau is now a military target. Gabrielle begs Richter to at least leave the most precious painting. Richter finds Gabrielle charming and desirable and when he makes a list of the paintings for Gontran to sign he leaves out the one that Gabrielle mentioned. 

            But Gabrielle finds her father beside the unsigned list and he has committed suicide. Gabrielle comes to Richter’s room and behaves seductively but she has a knife in the pocket of her dress and stabs him when he comes to kiss her. She takes Richter’s gun and puts it beside her father’s body, then she tells Richter’s secretary that Richter does not want to be disturbed but has asked him to allow the US medic to look at her father, who is not feeling well. When Doc comes she secretly passes him the gun to transfer to his med kit. Doc, Hanley and Braddock are taken to a cage vehicle to be transferred to a prison camp. 

            On the road Braddock shoots the driver and the lock and they escape. They notify Allied command of the occupied chateau and bombers are sent. Gabrielle sits there smiling while her home comes down on top of her. It’s a fucked up ending. Neither side has respect for history. 

            Richter was played magnificently by Irish actor Dan O’Hirlihy. He studied architecture and published political cartoons. Although he earned the architectural degree his interest shifted towards acting and he found work on the stage as both actor and set designer and on the radio as a voice actor. His first lead was in Red Roses for Me in 1944. His film debut was in Odd Man Out in 1947. He co-starred in Orson Welles’ Macbeth in 1948. He starred in the Luis Buñuel production of Robinson Crusoe in 1954 and was nominated for an Oscar for his performance. He co-starred in Kidnapped, Invasion USA, Sword of Venus, That Woman Opposite, Home Before Dark, A Terrible Beauty, The Young Land, Imitation of Life, One Foot in Hell, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Big Cube, The Carey Treatment, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Robocop, Robocop 2, The Dead, He co-starred in the TV series The Travels of Jamie McPheeters and The Long Hot Summer.

February 14, 1996: I moved the rest of my stuff to the new place

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday Scooter and his car helped me move the rest of my things from the old apartment to the new one. Then we probably went to the Art Bar reading series for the open stage.