March 3, 1996: I started making a toy crossbow for my daughter

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday it was cold so my daughter and I spent the day inside at my place. I started making a toy crossbow for her out of junk I found like an old crutch and a door latch.

Liam Dunn

            On Sunday morning I continued to gather images for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I have 153 so far. 

            I weighed 90.15 kilos before breakfast. I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            Yesterday I’d forgotten to buy high acid vinegar for cleaning my warm mist humidifiers. Sunday’s my humidifier cleaning day and so around midday I rode to Freshco to buy some. I also bought some broccoli. When I got home I immediately worked on cleaning the humidifier that’s been running all week and started the other one working. Starting in about three weeks I’ll probably be using the humidifiers less and less until I won’t need to use them again until fall. 

            I weighed 90.8 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. It was cold again for the first time in a few days. Spring will be here in three weeks and probably after that there will only be one more storm before the weather starts getting warmer. 

            I weighed 90.45 kilos at 18:20. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:27. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive the song I sang while reading Rocky Capano’s lyrics at Cherry Beach Recording Studio on August 4, 1994. There were professional studio musicians backing me up. Rocky just handed me a lyric sheet and asked me to sing the song, so I made up the melody as I went along. I also got to record my song “Me and Gravity” with the same musicians. It wasn’t really the style I wanted for my song but it was interesting. It was the only time I’d ever performed in a fully professional recording studio. 

            I sautéed garlic and scallions, added some broccoli and then pho broth. I tossed in the half bowl of chili that was left over from last night. I had all two and a half bowls of soup for supper while watching episode 2 of Captain Nice. 

            The very wealthy Sheik Abdul comes to Big Town. Captain Nice saves him from an assassination attempt. Mayor Finney asks the sheik what he wants to buy in Big Town and he says he wants to buy Big Town but he’ll send back what he doesn’t use. 

            The sheik decides he wants Sergeant Candy Cane for his 120th wife. He starts the wheels in motion by first having Candy assigned as his police bodyguard (It looks like she’s a cop now and no longer a parking enforcement officer). The sheik asks Candy to marry him but she blurts out that she belongs to Carter Nash. The sheik offers Carter one of his beautiful wives in exchange for Candy but he turns him down. 

            The mayor’s sister is Carter’s domineering mother and she wants the sheik to come for lunch at her house. He accepts the invitation but plans on having Carter killed while he’s there. There are name cards and so the sheik’s servant injects poison into Carter’s pastry. But before the meal the sheik demands that his food taster sample the food. Carter feels bad that the taster only gets a few mouthfuls of food a day so he gives him his pastry which kills him. 

            The next time Candy is in the sheik’s hotel room a sack is pulled over her body, head first. He tells her that after a few years as his wife she will come to love him and then he will let her out of the sack. 

            Carter overhears the sheik’s plans to smuggle Candy out of the country and so he changes to Captain Nice (Whenever he does so he always first carefully hangs up his civilian clothes). Nice frees Candy and she places the sheik’s servant under arrest for murder, assault and attempted kidnapping. He is surprised and asks, “You arrest people for that?” Nice tells him, “This is a democracy. We can arrest people for practically anything”. 

            Mayor Finney was played by Liam Dunn, who studied at a small acting school while still in high school. He worked as a casting director for CBS and gave Warren Beatty, Steve McQueen and George C. Scott their first acting jobs. His film debut was in That’s My Man in 1947. He had a role in What’s Up Doc? and was noticed by Mel Brooks who made him part of his stock company of actors.

March 2, 1996: Brian Haddon performed with me at Spit Fridays

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday Brian Haddon and I busked together on Queen Street and in the evening he performed with me on the Spit Fridays open stage in the back room of the Cameron.

William Daniels

            On Saturday morning I continued gathering images for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I have 151 pictures so far. 

            I weighed 89.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the last of four sessions. It only stayed in tune for about five songs near the end. 

            My Snark guitar tuner displays notes for sirens going by. An approaching fire truck on Queen wailed in C, then when it turned on Dunn Avenue it toned G before going back to C. 

            Around midday I went over to Freedom Mobile to pay for my March phone plan. Then I went to Vina Pharmacy to buy some Pico Salax for Wednesday the day before my CT scan. I got cranberry flavour this time. I wasn’t allowed cranberry juice before my colonoscopy but red stuff is totally all right before the CT scan since I’ll already be drinking red dye. 

            I went to No Frills where I bought five bags of red grapes, a pack of raspberries, some bananas, several avocadoes, lemon dish detergent, pho broth, vegetable broth, two jugs of cranberry juice, a jug of orange juice, and two bags of plantain chips. I did a price match on the grapes with the Freshco price of $4.39 a kilo. 

            I weighed 90 kilos at 14:35. I had plantain chips with some mashed avocado. 

            I took a siesta intending to get up at 17:00 but I forgot that and panicked when I woke up at 16:40. After brushing my teeth I realized my mistake and went back to bed for twenty minutes.

            I weighed 89.95 kilos at 17:35, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since February 11.

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:31. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive an interview with me on CIUT radio when I was promoting my chapbook Vomit of the Star Eater. I performed on my guitar “The Princess and the Pea Happy Song” and “Sleep in the Snow”. I sang acapella “Vomit of the Star Eater”. 

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

            I heated yesterday’s chili and had a bowl with a toasted slice of Bavarian sandwich bread while watching the first episode of Captain Nice. 

            Carter Nash is a mild mannered police chemist who has developed a serum that can give super powers to whoever drinks it. He provides a demonstration to the mayor and the chief of police giving the serum to a mouse and showing it knocking out a cat. The mayor however fails to see the practical application. When Carter asks him what he thought would happen if he took the serum the mayor thinks he’d only be able to beat up a cat. 

            The mayor and the chief are more concerned about the super villain and master of disguise Omnus. 

            Meanwhile Parking Enforcement Officer Sergeant Candy Cane is aggressively trying to get Carter romantically involved with her, although Carter is mostly oblivious to her advances. She takes him for a walk in the park but she is abducted by two of Omnus’s men. 

            Omnus has been spying on Carter and knows about the formula and its potential. He knows the formula is in Carter’s briefcase and is trying to get it. Carter drinks the serum so Omnus won’t be able to possess it. There is an explosion in Carter’s body that causes his clothing to be torn in such a way that it looks like a superhero’s costume. He now has super strength, invulnerability and the ability to fly and is easily able to defeat Omnus’s henchmen. 

            Carter goes home and tells his domineering mother and his father who is always hidden by a newspaper. It’s his mother who tells him he must keep making the formula so he can keep drinking it to fight crime. She says she’ll make him a better costume. 

            Carter was played by William Daniels, who was a member of the singing and dancing Daniels family and made his radio debut in 1936. He made his TV debut performing with his family in an experimental broadcast in 1943 at the age of 16. The same year he made his Broadway debut in Life With Father. He was drafted in 1945 and served in Italy as an army radio disc jockey. After the war he attended North Western University where his classmates were Paul Lynde and his future wife Bonnie Bartlett (they’ve been married for a Hollywood record of 74 years). He won an Obee award for his performance in Edward Albee’s Zoo Story in 1958. He made his film debut in Ladybug Ladybug in 1963. He co-starred in The Parallax View, All Night Long, and Her Alibi. He was the voice of the car KITT on Knight Rider. He played Dr. Mark Craig on St. Elsewhere from 1982 to 1988. He played the teacher George Feeny on Boy Meets World from 1993 to 2000. He was the voice of a hospital ship in the Star Trek: Voyager episode “Critical Care”. He starred in the movie 1776. He was president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1999 to 2001. At age 98 he appeared on Dancing With the Stars.

March 1, 1996: I probably worked somewhere

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I possibly posed for a school or an art group but I don’t know which one.

Robert Altman

            On Friday morning I continued gathering images for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I have 145 so far. 

            I weighed 89.05 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since February 11. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the third of four sessions and only about four times was it still in tune when I finished a song.

            Around midday I added a second coat of “blue bliss” coloured paint to the top and sides of the lower shelf in the bathroom. I finished a first coat for the underside. I think the top is fine now but the underside needs another coat, which I should have time to add on Tuesday. 

            I weighed 90.3 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on the way back. Their washroom has been out of order for a few weeks but they are legally required to provide a washroom for customers. I asked one employee but he didn’t know while another simply said he wasn’t allowed to let me use the employees’ washroom. I asked to see the manager but the guy said he wasn’t there. I think I’ll call the city to complain. 

            I bought seven bags of red grapes that were on sale, a pack of raspberries that weren’t, some bananas, a bunch of scallions, and a pack of toilet paper. 

            I weighed 90 kilos at 18:50. That’s the easiest I’ve been on the scale in the evening since February 11. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:37. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive my first interview on CIUT, sometime in the middle of 1995. I was promoting the launch of Orgasmagazine. 

            I sautéed some garlic, two scallions, added two cans of kidney beans, the rest of my marinara sauce, the rest of a jar of tomato pesto and some Calabrese hot paste. I ate the chili with two slices of toasted Bavarian sandwich bread while watching the mini-documentary on the first season of Combat.

            Jo Davidsmeyer says Combat was the greatest WWII TV series. There was conflict between the producers in the first season and directors like Robert Altman. He would feature members of the squad in stories for an anthology feel but the producers wanted to feature the entire squad working together. Altman put his unique stamp on every show. There was a lot of praise for Vic Morrow’s acting and his attitude. He said he was a comet and not a star. He became Pierre Jalbert’s acting teacher during the show but Jalbert shared with Vic his technical knowledge about film making. Shecky Greene quit halfway through the first season because he was making very little money on the show compared to what he could rake in doing stand-up in Vegas. Jalbert says he still gets letters from women who say that thanks to Combat they’ve come to understand their veteran fathers better. 

            Robert Altman started experimenting with sound in high school with cheap tape recorders. After WWII he tried acting and appeared in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. He wrote a musical called The Rumours Are Flying, which ran briefly on Broadway. He co-wrote The Bodyguard, Christmas Eve, and Corn’s a Poppin. He co-created and directed the short lived TV series Pulse of the City. His feature film directorial debut was The Delinquents in 1957, which he also wrote. He started directing episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and for a while made a career of TV directing until he was offered M.A.S.H. He said M.A.S.H. wasn’t released but escaped. It was his highest grossing film. He directed That Cold Day in the Park, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, A Perfect Couple, Quintet, Short Cuts, The Long Goodbye, Brewster McCloud, California Split, Thieves Like Us, The Gingerbread Man, The Player, Gosford Park, Nashville, The Company, Images, 3 Women, A Wedding, Popeye, Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean, O.C. and Stiggs, Fool For Love, Beyond Therapy, Vincent and Theo, part of Aria, Secret Honour, The Laundromat, Ready to Wear, Cookie’s Fortune, Dr. T and the Women, and A Prairie Home Companion. He won 5 Academy Awards. He won an Emmy for directing the miniseries Tanner 88. Warren Beatty wanted to kill Altman during filming of McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Altman worked best with improvisational actors. He didn’t like the TV version of M.A.S.H. because it wasn’t anti-war. He said wisdom is knowing not to stick your finger in a light socket while love is sticking your finger everywhere. His influences were Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa, Huston, and Jean Renoir. I could see the Fellini influence when I saw Nashville. Nashville is Robert Altman’s Amarcord. He said Titanic was the worst film he’s ever seen. He co-wrote the song Black Sheep with John Anderson. He co-wrote the libretto for McTeague. His son Mike Altman, at the age of 14 wrote the lyrics for “Suicide is Painless”.

February 28, 1996: Brian Haddon and I went busking for the first time

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday Brian Haddon and I went busking together for the first time. We played in front of the defunct University Theatre on Bloor and made enough to go for supper and beer before playing together on the Fat Albert’s open stage for the first time. Mary Milne commented that we sounded good together.