February 18, 1996: It was too cold to play outside

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday it was too cold to go outside so my daughter and I played in my new home.

Dick Peabody

            On Monday morning I gathered a few more images for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 92 kilos before breakfat, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning in over a year.

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the last of two sessions and it only stayed in tune all the way through one song. 

            I deleted several photos from my hard drive. 

            I weighed 92.55 kilos before lunch. That’s the most in long time for the early afternoon. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Shaw and Bloor. The Bloor bike lane is still blocked with snow from Shaw maybe to Bathurst. If they clear it I’ll start riding downtown again. 

            I weighed 92.6 kilos at 17:45. It’s been years of evenings since it’s been that high. I’m looking forward to getting off this soft diet. Soups are very fattening. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:20. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive side 1 of “Dancing to the Words”, which was my disc jockey audition tape for CKLN radio. 

            I made some more Photos sub-folders in my SSD and deleted 90 images from my hard drive. 

            I cooked a potato in chicken broth and added a cooked chicken leg. I ate the soup while watching season 1, episode 22 of Combat. 

            In a rainy European forest we see two German soldiers. Soon a lone US soldier appears and kills them. He takes their rifles and walks through the forest into some thick foliage that conceals the mouth of a very large cave. He descends to a campfire and tosses the rifles onto a pile. 

            The scene switches to K company where Lieutenant Hanley says they are going out on night patrol in two teams. The mission for each team is to take at least one German soldier prisoner and then return. Sergeant Saunders’ team consists of Caje, Kirby, Littlejohn, and Billy. 

            Saunders sends Kirby out to scout around and shortly after that he comes back with a German soldier as prisoner. Saunders says they can go home now but suddenly there is a shot and the German falls dead. The shooter is the lone soldier we saw earlier. He introduces himself as Lieutenant Joseph B. Krantz and says he got separated from his squad. When he learns they didn’t want the German dead he says he owes them one and would like to tag along to help them out. Even though he outranks Saunders he says he’ll follow his orders. But when Saunders says it’s almost time to go back Krantz suggests a fighting soldier would stay until they got what they came for. Saunders says he was told to avoid a fight and so he’s following orders. 

            Krantz wanders off and Saunders is about ready to head back when Krantz appears and says their way back is cut off by a German patrol. Saunders says they’ll have to hide for a while and so Krantz leads them to his cave. 

            Saunders places Billy and Littlejohn on guard outside the cave. Billy says he doesn’t think Krantz is an officer because he doesn’t carry himself like one. 

            Caje finds a keyring containing the dog tags of several US solders. Saunders is looking at them and reading out the names when Krantz grabs them from his hand. 

            Saunders and Kirby explore the cave and find a hot springs pool containing the bodies of nine US soldiers. The dogtags of one of them reads Lieutenant Joseph Krantz. Saunders confronts “Krantz” and he finally tells the real story. He says the real Krantz wouldn’t listen to him when he said the shouldn’t use the cave. The Germans outnumbered them and they were trapped. After some pushing by Saunders he admits that he survived because he ran. Saunders asks who he is and he says he doesn’t know. 

            Littlejohn tells Saunders there are Germans coming. They put out the fire and hide. There’s a firefight. “Krantz” tells Saunders there’s a back way out. He holds off the Germans alone and finishes them off with a grenade before being shot and killed. Saunders only reports that they found the bodies of ten US soldiers and gives Hanley the dogtags. 

            Littlejohn was played by Dick Peabody, who served in the US Navy during WWII. He studied electrical engineering under the GI Bill but switched to acting. After graduation he was making TV commercials when he was noticed by Robert Altman. He became a news anchor, a radio host, and a TV producer. He was successful but bored so he moved to Hollywood where he hooked up with Altman again, who cast him in Combat. He was a theatrical instructor at UCLA and was a founding member of the Canyon Theatre Guild. He did commercials for Lipton Tea and Paper Mate Pens. In 1985 he stopped acting because of back pain but resumed his writing. he wrote a column called Peabody’s Place for a local paper in Placerville, California.

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.