Frank DeKova

            On Friday after midnight I lint-rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room, the top of my bed and the pillow and picked up a few of bedbugs from the curtains. I shook out my sheet and comforter on the deck. I went to bed at 1:30 and slept until 3:00 when I got up to pee, then slept until 4:30 and peed again, then slept until the 5:00 alarm. After yoga there were a couple of bedbugs stuck to the carpet tape on my mattress and a few on the walls and on the baseboards around my bed. 

            I finished memorizing “Yes Man” by Serge Gainsbourg. On Saturday I’ll start working out the chords. I think it’s a pretty simple song and since it has no chorus it should be pretty easy to chord. 

            I went over to Home Hardware and bought two rolls of carpet tape. I worked on my letter to the landlord about the bedbugs. Not that I think the letter will convince him, but it’s so I can show to the authorities a dated letter containing all the facts of his negligence. 

            I weighed 91.1 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 90.8 kilos at 18:15. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:48. 

            I digitized a cassette of a recording session I did at Cherry Beach Studios. I went there with Tom Smarda because Rocky Capano invited us. Rocky was paying for the session with his inheritance money. He handed me some lyrics and asked me to sing them so I made up a melody on the spot. I also got to record my song “Me and Gravity” with professional musicians though it wasn’t the sound I envisioned for that song.

            I worked on digitally enhancing one of my old photos. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg while watching episode 7 of Daniel Boone. 

            Major Peter Wellington of the British army and two Wyandot: Pushta, and Charlie Crow approach a cabin in the distance. Charlie points out Daniel Boone’s home. Peter pays him and says this must be a secret, then Pushta kills Charlie. 

            Peter walks up to the cabin and introduces himself to Boone. He says that two British soldiers have been captured by the Wyandot and he needs his help to rescue them. Boone agrees for humanitarian reasons. 

            They walk together into Wyandot territory and when they reach the cliff that overlooks the Wyandot village, Peter knocks Boone out. He takes Boone’s clothing and then rolls Boone off the cliff into the water. 

            Peter puts on Boone’s clothes and walks into the Wyandot village announcing that he is Daniel Boone (But when he was walking with Boone he was visibly smaller so it’s very unlikely his clothes would fit as well as what he’s wearing fits). He tells Chief Talakum that he is Daniel Boone and what he’s heard about Boone fighting for the colonies against the British is false. He offers a rifle for every Wyandot who takes the British side in the colonial war. 

            When Talakum is not there Peter pays Pushta for helping him. 

            But then they hear a commotion outside and look to see Daniel Boone wearing Major Wellington’s jacket and walking into the village. He says he’s Daniel Boone. 

            Talakum has the two white men compete in a trial of fire. They have a tug of war on each side of a bonfire. Each one almost pulls the other into the fire but then the fire finally cuts through the rope. Then they have a knife fight with one knife and Boone wins but doesn’t kill him. Then they have a marksmanship contest and Boone wins as well. 

            Talakum is convinced and now wants to kill Peter, but by this time Boone’s friends Mingo and Tad have arrived and they help to convince Talakum to let them take Peter with them. They take him to the cliff and tell him to jump, so he does. 

            Later Peter sends his sword as a gift to Boone’s son Israel and Peter is now a corporal. 

            Talakum was played by Frank DeKova, who gave up his career as a school teacher to become an actor. He made his Broadway debut in Detective Story and was discovered by Elia Kazan. He made his film debut in Viva Zapata in 1952. He co-starred in The Mechanic, and Heavy Traffic. He co-starred in 63 episodes of F-Troop.

November 7, 1996: I posed for Michael Gerry's class at Central Tech

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I posed from 9:00 to 11:45 for Michael Garry’s class at Central Technical School.

Émile Genest

            On Thursday after midnight I put down more carpet tape on the edges of my mattress where it had gotten less sticky but ran out of tape, so I’ll need to go back to the hardware store soon. I lint-rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room, the top of my bed and the pillow and picked up a few of bedbugs from the curtains. I didn’t shake out my sheet and comforter on the deck because it was raining. I went to bed at 1:45 and slept until the 5:00 alarm. After yoga there were a few bedbugs on the walls and on the baseboards around my bed. 

            I memorized the fifth verse of “Yes Man” by Serge Gainsbourg and finished revising my translation. There’s just one verse left to learn and I should have that done on Friday. Then I’ll start working out the chords. 

            I weighed 90.1 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since October 10. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            I started working on a letter to my landlord demanding action to eliminate the bedbugs. 

            I weighed 91.45 kilos before lunch. 

            I took a siesta but slept 45 minutes longer than planned. It was too late for a bike ride but I still rode to Freshco. I was prepared to do a price match on grapes to the Food Basics price of $4.15 a kilo but all of Freshco’s grapes were too mushy. I got three packs of blueberries, some bananas, a container of skyr, two packs of Full City Dark coffee, some shaving gel, and a lint roller. 

            I weighed 91.1 kilos at 17:55. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg while watching episode 6 of Daniel Boone. 

            A pioneer father, mother and daughter are on their way down river in a barge to Boonesborough when a man on shore named Lac Duquesne asks for a lift. But when they steer ashore to pick him up his pirate band emerges from the bushes and hijacks their boat. The family is put ashore where they are found by Mingo and escorted to Boonesborough. 

            When Lac first came from France he saved Boone’s life and they were friends but now Lac has turned criminal. 

            It turns out that 50 rifles they have been expecting at Boonesborough were shipped on that river raft and now Lac has them. He plans on selling them to the Shawnee and so Boone, Tad, and Mingo go after him. 

            They catch up with him when he makes camp but Lac has more men in hiding and they are able to capture Boone and his friends. They take them prisoner on the boat and then set them free in Shawnee country where their chances of survival are slim. 

            They follow the boat to where Lac meets with the Shawnee chief. They find where the rifles and gunpowder are stored and take some. Boone sabotages Lac’s armoury by running a trail of gunpowder to the cache. They recapture Lac and force him to help move the rifles back to the boat. Boone arrests Lac and makes him come on the boat but the Shawnee are following. Lac warns that they will follow all the way back to Boonesborough so Boone decides to let Lac go as they take the rifles back to the fort.

            Lac Duquesne was played by Canadian actor Émile Genest, who served in the Royal Canadian Navy during WWII. He became a bilingual sportscaster for CBC Radio. He co-starred in the CBC radio drama La Famille Plouffe and reprised his role in the TV series. He co-starred in Nikki Wild Dog of the North, and Big Red. He starred in The Incredible Journey, and a four hour film update of La Famille Plouffe.

November 6, 1996: It was my first nine hour day of work this fall

Thirty years ago today 

            On Wednesday I posed at Central Technical School from 9:00 to 15:00, then I immediately went down to the Ontario College of Art to work from 16:00 to 19:00. It was my first nine hour day this school year.

Kathryn Hahn

            On Wednesday after midnight I lint-rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room, the top of my bed and the pillow and picked up a few of bedbugs from the curtains and a couple from the bed. I shook out my sheet and comforter on the deck. I turned the heat on before going to bed at 1:30. I slept until almost 3:00 when I got up to pee then I slept until the 5:00 alarm. After yoga there were no bedbugs on the walls or on the baseboards around my bed. 

            I memorized the fourth verse of “Yes Man” by Serge Gainsbourg and revised my translation of all but the last line. There are two verses left. 

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

            I weighed 90.9 kilos before lunch, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since October 13. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride but it started raining and so I only went as far as Bathurst and Bloor. It stopped raining while I was going south on Bathurst but it started again when I was almost home. 

            I weighed 90.55 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:38. 

            I digitized a cassette recording of a rehearsal of my songs “Spool of the Moon” and “Snow on a Poppy” with Steve Lowe. We spent a lot of time on “Snow On a Poppy” because it was hard to communicate with just my voice how I wanted the song played on guitar. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with Marinara, tomato pesto, potato wedges, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore while watching the first episode of Wanda Vision with my daughter Astrid on Discord. 

            The first episode is styled like a 50s sitcom other than the fact that Wanda is a witch and Vision is an android who can pass through walls. In many ways it’s like the 60s sitcom Bewitched. The opening segment has them in their wedding clothes arriving at their new house in Westview, New Jersey. Vision tries to carry Wanda over the threshold but he walks through the wall and she hits it and falls on the outside. 

            Like any 50s sitcom housewife Wanda doesn’t work. She offers Vision a big breakfast even though he doesn’t eat. They notice on the calendar that today’s date has a heart on it but neither wants to admit to the other that they don’t know what it signifies. 

            Vision goes to work at Computational Services where he is known as “Vision” but no one knows he’s a super powered android even though he works at super speed. He is exceptionally proficient at his job although he has no idea what his company does and neither does anyone else. He learns that the heart on his calendar is there because he has invited his boss Mr. Hart and his wife home for dinner.

            Meanwhile Wanda’s neighbour Agnes comes to welcome Wanda to the neighbourhood. She helps her conclude that the heart on the calendar means it’s hers and Visions anniversary although they don’t seem to remember when they got married. Agnes gives Wanda some anniversary hints and so when he comes home with his boss and his boss’s wife she comes out in her night gown. Vision fumbles an explanation that Wanda’s dress and behaviour is Sokovian as she’s from Europe. Mrs. Hart finds it exotic. 

            When Wanda realizes she now needs to cook dinner for four, Agnes shows up through the kitchen back door with raw ingredients. Wanda pushes Agnes out and begins to magically float ingredients and utensils around the room. Wanda doesn’t seem to have full control over her powers as she burns a chicken, tries to correct that and turns it into a basket of eggs. The lobsters escape and the steak fails and so Wanda instantaneously serves breakfast for dinner. 

            Hart begins asking questions about their past but they are silent and so he gets frustrated with them and begins choking on his food. After Hart collapses Vision uses his powers to reach inside of Hart and pull out the obstruction. The Harts leave happy. Wanda and Vision decide to make this date their anniversary. 

            We see them from the point of view of someone watching Wanda Vision on TV and taking notes.

            The second episode is still in black and white and set in the 60s. 

            Wanda and Vision are sleeping in twin beds when they hear noises outside the house but are too frightened to investigate. After the noises go away Wanda magically makes the two beds into one. 

            The next day they rehearse their magic act for a neighbourhood talent show with Vision as the magician and Wanda as his lovely assistant. 

            Vision goes to a neighbourhood watch meeting. After Wanda kisses him goodbye she sees a red toy helicopter on the hedge. It’s the only colour we or she has seen in this black and white world. 

            She runs into her neighbour Agnes who takes her to a planning committee meeting at the home of Dottie Jones who is the dominant personality of the neighbourhood, kind of like an adult Mean Girl.

            At the neighbourhood watch meeting Vision is offered a piece of gum which he accidentally swallows, gumming up his inner android mechanisms. It causes him to behave as if he is drunk. 

            After the planning committee meeting Dottie’s radio suddenly asks Wanda who is behind her situation. Dottie’s wine glass breaks and we see red blood on her black and white hand. 

            As Vision arrives to perform the magic act with Wanda he is too stoned by the gum in his works to not use his powers and so Wanda has to secretly use magic to cover up his powers and make it appear like they are tricks. Such as when Vision starts to fly she conjures up cables attached to him. Their act is a big hit with the neighbours. Wanda uses magic to detect the gum in Vision’s body and remove it.

            When Wanda and Vision get home they discover that she is suddenly pregnant. They hear noises outside and see a beekeeper climbing out of the sewer cover outside their house. Disturbed by this Wanda rewinds the story to before they heard the noise. Suddenly their world becomes a 70s colour sitcom. 

            Agnes is played by Kathryn Hahn, who earned a bachelors degree in Theatre from Northwestern University. She then studied at the Yale School of Drama. She made her TV debut on the children’s puppet show Hickory Hideout. She made her film debut in Flushed in 1999. She was noticed by an NBC casting director while performing at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and the character of Lily in the TV series Crossing Jordon was created for her. She appeared in all but two episodes of the series. She appeared in 10 episodes of Parks and Recreation, She co-starred in the series Transparent, I Love Dick, Happyish, Wanda Vision, The Studio, The Shrink Next Door, She starred in the series Mrs. Fletcher, Agatha All Along (for which she won an Emmy Award), Tiny Beautiful Things, She starred in Afternoon Delight, Private Life, She co-starred in The Last Mimzy, Revolutionary Road, The Goods, Wanderlust, Len and Company, The Do Over, Flower, We’re the Millers, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Bad Words, This is Where I Leave You, Tomorrowland, The Visit, She’s Funny That Way, Captain Fantastic, Glass Onion, Bad Moms, A Bad Moms Christmas, Hotel Transylvania 4, Into the Spiderverse, and Fixed. She made her Broadway debut in Boeing Boeing in 2008.

November 5, 1996: Our featured writer was Hamish MacFarlane

(drawing by Rob McPhail)

Thirty years ago today 

            On Tuesday I posed from 9:00 to 11:45 at Central Technical School. In the evening, as always, I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of the Gladstone Hotel. Our feature on this night was novelist and short story writer, Hamish MacFarlane. Hamish had this enigmatic smile that was non-distinguishable from that of the Mona Lisa. He also had a tendency to play coy whenever anyone asked him personal questions, like when Cad kept on asking him if he was gay even though he wasn’t.

David Brian

            On Tuesday after midnight I put down fresh carpet tape on the edges of my mattress where it had gotten less sticky. I lint-rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room, the top of my bed and the pillow and picked up a couple of bedbugs from the curtains. I shook out my sheet and comforter on the deck. I turned the heat on before going to bed at 1:30. I slept until almost 3:00 when I got up to pee and turned the heat off. I slept until 4:00 and got up to pee again, then I slept until the 5:00 alarm. After yoga there were a lot of bedbugs on the walls and on the baseboards around my bed. 

            I memorized the fifth verse of “C’est ici (It’s Right Here) by Boris Vian. There are only two and a half verses left to learn. 

            I wasn’t quite able to nail down the fourth verse of “Yes Man” by Serge Gainsbourg but I should have it in my head on Wednesday. 

            I weighed 90.2 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since October 21. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the last of two sessions and it went out of tune all the time. 

            I called Toronto City Bylaw Officer Jamal Logan and finally got through. He says he’s yet to reach my landlord. I pointed out that the landlord is way past the thirty days he was given to comply with the order to treat my place for bedbugs. He surprised me by saying that the invoice the landlord sent him from Orkin saying they were in the building knocking on doors on a certain date may fit the compliance requirement, in which case he would close the file. That’s pretty fucked up since the landlord is legally required to give tenants notice before pest control comes and Orkin was only in the building for 14 minutes. Neither myself or David in unit 7 heard any knock on the door. Jamal said if it is determined that the landlord isn’t complying it’s a long process before he would be fined and it could take up to a year. I’ve obviously got to find an alternative to going through the bylaw officer. He told me what he would do in my position is just hire pest control myself and then bill the landlord. He must make a lot of money. He’d mentioned Rent Safe but I looked it up and it’s only for buildings with ten or more units while mine only has 7. The only other option may be to file a complaint with the Landlord-Tenant Board. I emailed Parkdale Legal to make an appointment to get some advice on how to proceed.

            I weighed 91 kilos before lunch. That’s the kindest I’ve been to the scale in the early afternoon since October 13. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back stopped at Freshco where I bought four bags of red grapes and one bag of green grapes and price matched them to the Real Canadian Superstore price of $4.14 a kilo.

            I weighed 90.35 kilos at 18:25. July 15 was the last evening when I was that light. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:52. 

            I digitized a cassette recording of Tom Smarda and I rehearsing several of my songs, for some of which I don’t think there are other recordings. I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t recorded on my little tape machine so maybe we did it at Tom’s place at the time near Coxwell and Queen. The next cassette I digitize will be of a rehearsal of my songs with just Steve Lowe. 

            I grilled four chicken legs and had one with a potato and gravy while watching episode 5 of Daniel Boone. 

            Boone takes his daughter Jemima on a camping trip to show her the land he’s set aside for her when she grows up and gets married. But while marking a tree his hatchet slips and he severely wounds his leg. She goes out with his rifle and kills a bear for food and for fat to put on the wound. But when she gets back the wound has become infected. Jemima has to build up the courage to cut the infection out of his leg. 

            Meanwhile back near Fort Boonesborough Tad and Mingo find the tracks of a man’s military boots and they go to the fort to tell Boone. But they find only Rebecca and Israel. Rebecca is worried because Daniel and their daughter are overdue. She begs Tad and Mingo to look for them. 

            Boone still can’t travel because of his injury. Then a man walks into their camp and Jemima is happy because she thinks he can help. But it turns out he is Major Horton, a British officer there to recruit the 5 nations to fight for the British when the colonial war comes. He is accompanied by Tice Fowler, a disreputable man to serve as an interpreter and a handful of Wyandot. Horton says his mission is a secret and he can’t leave any witnesses. Boone is clubbed with a rifle and left to die while they take Jemima who Horton intends to drop her off at Fort Detroit. But the Wyandot warriors have other ideas for Jemima. Horton tries to defend her but is stabbed. 

            Boone makes a splint for his leg and uses another stick for a cane and heads after his daughter. His canoe has been sabotaged and so he enters the river and floats while clinging to a log. The kidnappers have gone down river but overland and so he takes the shorter route by going through the rapids and over the falls. he reaches their camp and begins to pick off the Wyandot by hand. Jemima gets hold of a fallen pistol and points it at Fowler but he knocks it away. Horton however is still alive enough to shoot him before dying. One last Wyandot is aiming at Boone when Mingo shoots him.

            Horton was played by David Brian, who entered show business as a song and dance man on vaudeville and in night clubs. He made his film debut in Flamingo Road in 1949. He starred in Intruder in the Dust, The Great Jewel Robber, Inside Straight, Fury at Gunsight Pass, Accused of Murder, The White Squaw, and Ghost of the China Sea. He co-starred in The Damned Don’t Cry, Beyond the Forest, This Woman is Dangerous, Springfield Rifle, Dawn at Socorro, Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison, Million Dollar Mermaid, A Perilous Journey, Ambush at Tomahawk Gap, Timberjack, No Place to Hide, Castle of Evil, The Destructors, and Childish Things. He starred in the radio series Mr. District Attorney and then reprised his role in the TV series.