Micheline Presle

            On Monday morning I collected ten more images of Zizi Jeanmaire for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 89.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice and it went out of tune most of the time but once I made it into a third song and it was still behaving. 

            At around 12:45 I headed downtown to the U of T Graduate School of Dentistry for my bone graft surgery in preparation for the implant I hope to get. I had to pay $1200 for the procedure but they always overestimate and didn’t use as much bone as I paid for and so I’ll get a credit. It took at least two hours and Dr. Xia reapplied the bone more than once and undid the stitches once because he wasn’t happy with what he’d done and redid them. At one point he said, “I’m so stupid”. He later explained it had nothing to do with the procedure. Some periodontists do all the stitches with one thread but he did a lot of individual stitches. The assistant says people can always tell from pictures which ones are Dr. Xia’s sutures. His professor came to look and said it was perfect. There are twenty stitches and they can’t come out for at least three weeks. He says I can’t wear my denture. I have an appointment with him in two weeks and I’ll bring my other denture see if I can use that. If not he says they can get me a retainer to wear until I get the implant. He gave me a prescription for Peridex oral rinse, some antibiotics, and some Ibuprofen. He also told me to get a gel pack. 

            I went to Vina Pharmacy to fill the prescriptions and the druggist asked if I’d had oral surgery. It turns out he’s also waiting to get a bone graft towards an implant. 

            It was too late for a siesta when I got home. 

            I weighed 89.1 kilos at 18:00, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since January 19. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:18. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity side 1 of tape 2 of my third Slamnation poetry slam. But about halfway through, the audio stopped recording although there’re were green flashes on the gain dial on the audio interface and there was a small waveform in Audacity. I spent the rest of the time before dinner trying to get it working. I even restarted my computer but it didn’t help. An error message did appear indicating there was a memory problem perhaps because of too many devices operating. 

            I had potato chips even though I’m not supposed to eat anything crunchy. I tried my best to crumble them and make them soggy and ate them on the left side of my mouth. I boiled a chicken leg with a potato and had them with gravy while watching season 1, episode 15 of Combat. 

            Saunders is in Normandy searching a house when he is captured by Germans. He is put in the back of an armoured truck with two Canadian soldiers and one French civilian. The truck is ambushed by the French Resistance and it turns out the civilian is their leader. He shelters them temporarily while he tries to get gas for his truck from the proprietor of a bar but she can’t help him. A woman named Annette overhears and offers a gas certificate in exchange for a ride to Paris. When they are stopped at a German checkpoint he has a gun ready and tells her who is in the back. She is shocked and wants nothing to do with it but she keeps her mouth shut to the Germans and they are allowed to pass. 

            In a town he stops at a tavern but he is arrested. Annette wants to leave but Saunders says they need her help because they don’t speak French and one of the Canadians is wounded. Finally she agrees to drive them to Paris where they meet with a shopkeeper who had only agreed to shelter one of them while they wait for papers as he is already helping four. He begs her to take two to her apartment but she refuses. 

            Finally she agrees to take Saunders. She lets him sleep in what used to be the maid’s quarters. Saunders hides when Annette’s boyfriend arrives who is a German major who it turns out provides her with her lavish apartment. But she is not just a kept lover as she and Kurt do adore one another. He tells her he knows his country will lose the war and soon. He says his brother was just drafted and he’s only 14. The next day she goes out with Kurt and Saunders has to sit and let the phone ring all day. They come back and while Kurt is shaving she answers the phone. It’s a message that Saunders has to leave to board a garbage barge. But as he’s trying to leave Kurt points a gun at him. Annette begs him to let Saunders go but he calls the Gestapo. There is a struggle and Kurt is shot. Before he dies he tells her to go with Saunders because the Gestapo will kill her. 

            She hates Saunders for killing her lover but goes along to survive. After the barge lands they are met with two escorts, one of whom will take half to US lines and the other to British lines. Annette splits from Saunders at this point. 

            Annette was played by Micheline Presle, who was discovered at the age of 17 and made her film debut in Jeunes filles en détresse in 1939. She became a star early in her career. She co-starred in They were Twelve Women, Paradise Lost, Histoire de rire (released in English as Foolish Husbands), La nuit fantastique, The Beautiful Adventure, Félicie nanteuil (Twilight), Falbalas (Paris Frills), Fausse alerte (The French Way), House of Ricordi, The She Wolves, Five Day Lover, The Bamboo Stroke, Devil in the Brain, Venus Beauty Institute, . She starred in Boule de suif (Angel and Sinner), Le diable au corps (Devil in the Flesh), Les jeux sont faits, All Roads Lead to Rome, The Lady of the Camellias, Sins of Pompeii, It Happened in the Park, Les Impures, Thirteen at the Table, Beatrice Cenci, The Law of Men, and L’amour d’une femme. In 1949 she married Hollywood producer William Marshal and co-starred in Under My Skin, American Guerilla in the Philippines, Adventures of Captain Fabian, and If a Man Answers. She divorced Marshal in 1954 and returned to Europe where she co-starred in Blind Date, The Bride is Much Too Beautiful, Le baron de l’écluse, Mistress of the World, The Nun, A Slightly Pregnant Man, and Démons de midi. She starred in Good Weather but Stormy Late this Afternoon. She appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1957. She starred in the TV series Les Saintes Chéries.

February 10, 1996: My daughter liked my new place enough to spend the night there

Thirty years ago today

            I brought my daughter to my new place and introduced Helga and Peter to her. She liked it and was okay with spending the night there. For the last year or so she’d been unwilling to stay overnight in my basement apartment in the Beaches.

Rick Jason

            On Sunday morning I ran through singing and playing “Where Did All the Millionaires Go?” my translation of “Les Millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I started collecting images of Zizi Jeanmaire for a photo-video of the song. 

            I weighed 89.25 kilos before breakfast.

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice and it went out of tune most of the time.

            Around midday I started up the clean warm mist humidifier and then cleaned the one that’s been going all week. 

            I weighed 90.5 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of iced tea.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride but only as far as Dufferin and Bloor. They’d ploughed the bike lane again but it was still somewhat slippery so I turned around and headed west on the eastbound bike lane since there was no one coming east anywhere in the distance. A lone cyclist who was heading west on the north side of Bloor where the bike lane has not been cleared at all shouted that I was going the wrong way. 

            I weighed 89.8 kilos at 17:55. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:44. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive side 2 of tape 1 of the recording of my third Slamnation poetry slam. For some unknown reason I stopped playing guitar after the first set. Did people not like it or did I decide to concentrate on judging? There were a lot of poets with affected US accents.

            I created a sub-folder for photos of Eva Vortex in my SSD and deleted a lot of her pictures from my hard drive. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, oven french fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore while watching season 1, episode 14 of Combat. 

            K Company is ambushed by a tank. Vince D’Amato and Fred Wharton are some distance away from the others. D’Amato decides to try to take out the tank. As Wharton protests but follows D’Amato as he crawls along a trench until he’s flanking the tank. D'Amato kills the gunner with his rifle, runs up and drops a grenade down into the tank, then takes over the gun. He uses it to kill about twelve Germans. One German officer manages to shoot him and then the Germans retreat as K Company advances. 

            Wharton runs from cover to Vince’s body and is so upset that he runs to the tank and starts shooting the bodies of the dead German soldiers. Seeing Wharton on the tank the others from K Company think he’s the one that saved them. He at first dismisses his role. Lieutenant Haney says he’s going to recommend Wharton for a Silver Star. At that moment Wharton and the others have to move out. 

            Later Wharton gets a Dear John letter and feels like a nobody so he decides to let Haney write the letter about the Silver Star. Haney asks Wharton for details and he puts himself in the part that D’Amato really played. But later they capture one of the German soldiers who was there. He pretends to acknowledge that Wharton was the one who commandeered the tank gun and killed his comrades. Later however when they are alone the German tells Wharton he knows he was not the one and offers silence in exchange for letting him escape. Saunders walks in on the conversation and now knows Wharton was not the hero. The German tries to run and Wharton shoots him. 

            Later when they are under fire just the two of them in a town, Saunders gets hit by a falling sign and knocked into some barbed wire. Wharton jumps in and shoots at the Germans while unclipping Saunders. A German throws a grenade. Wharton grabs it and tries to throw it back but it explodes and injures his arm. He shoots the rest of the Germans with his good arm and gets Saunders back to the post.

            The doctor says he won’t be able to use his right arm again but before they carry him to the ambulance he confesses that the Silver Star should be sent to D’Amato’s widow. 

            Wharton was played by Frank Gorshin, who would later star as The Riddler on the Batman TV series. 

            Lieutenant Hanley was played by Rick Jason, who was born rich. He got expelled from eight prep schools but finally graduated from the ninth. His father bought him a seat on the New York Stock Exchange but he sold it and joined the army during WWII. He attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and was spotted in a play in 1950 by Canadian actor, director, and writer Hume Cronyn who cast him in his play Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. For Jason’s role in it he earned a Theatre World Award and a Columbia contract. After a year he still hadn’t done a film and so he got released and was cast in Sombrero by MGM. He co-starred in The Sarecen Blade, This is My Love, Sierra Baron, Colour Me Dead, and The Witch Who Came from the Sea. He starred in Rx Murder. He played the lead in The Fountain of Youth: a TV pilot by Orson Welles that was never picked up as a series but aired in 1958 on Colgate Theatre. He starred in the 1960 detective series The Case of the Dangerous Robin (in which he was the first actor to use karate on television). The show was canceled after he injured the sciatic nerve in his back. After that he was cast in Combat. He was a regular on The Young and the Restless when the soap premiered. After retirement he ran The Wine Locker. He spoke French, Italian, Spanish and Chinese. He shot himself to death at the age of 77. His autobiography Scrapbooks of my Mind was published after his death.

February 9, 1996: I had a falling out with some of my so called friends

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday evening I performed on the Spit Fridays open stage in the back room of the Cameron. I was starting to become estranged from some of the people I’d been hanging out with and they didn’t want to be around me anymore. My blunt outspokenness alienated them. A very charismatic and big woman from Chicago resented that I’d disagreed with something she said on stage about not applauding if you don’t mean it. I said people should applaud whether they mean it or not because it’s the friendly thing to do. I was busking on Queen later as she and some of my “friends” passed by. She actually bullied Bruce for stopping to talk with me. Later I probably moved another piece of furniture to my new place and slept there.

Angela Clarke

            On Saturday morning I finished translating “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. Tomorrow I’ll run through singing and playing it in English and then I’ll start collecting images for the photo video. 

            I weighed 89.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and there were about five times out of twenty songs that it was still in tune when I finished a song. 

            In the early afternoon I went to No Frills where the grapes were very cheap but I had to pick through all of the bags to find three that were firm enough. I also got three bags of cherries, two packs of raspberries, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a rack of pork ribs without noticing they were from the US, garbage bags, a jar of tomato pesto, three bags of skim milk, a box of spoon sized shredded wheat, a jug of iced tea, a jug of orange juice, a bag of frozen wedge french fries, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips.

            It was bitterly cold outside. 

            I weighed 89.9 kilos at 14:45. I had the rest of my baguette with peanut butter, five-year-old cheddar, and a glass of iced tea. 

            I took a siesta from 15:30 to 17:15 and it was too late for a bike ride. 

            I weighed 89.95 kilos at 17:35. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:25. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and extracted to my hard drive side 1, tape 1 of my third annual Slamnation poetry slam. It was hosted again by Cad Lowlife and my co-judge was Michelle Ferman. I always picked my co-judge from one of the winners of the previous slam and so that answers yesterday’s question as to who won. I had only brought two tapes on which to record the slam that year and since there were so many stage hogs I didn’t get the finale on tape. Michelle would be a logical choice because she is (hopefully not was) a fine poet. 

           The previous year I’d had Tricia Postle on the hurdy-gurdy and Peter Fruchter on the Baroque clarinet playing background music for the poets. This year I did double duty and while acting as a judge I also fiddled with my Kramer electric to lay down sonic wallpaper for the readers. Listening to recordings of the two years I was surprised to find that my accompaniment sounded better than that of Tricia and Peter even though they are better musicians than I. It was a little more sensitive to moods of the poetry being spoken. 

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

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, oven french fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 1, episode 13 of Combat.

            Paul Villers of K Company has not seen his French father Dr. Emile Villers for 17 years since he separated from Paul’s mother in the US and returned to France. Now K company is in Paul’s father’s village and he is searching for him. He finds him in his house where Paul’s Aunt Clair also lives. Saunders gives Paul permission to stay for dinner and get reacquainted with his father. While he is there the French Resistance barges in and arrests Emile. They accuse him of collaborating with the Germans but Emile says he only treated a German captain for his stomach problem. The French leader Henri Fouquet says after Emile has met with the German captain members of the Maquis have died. He assures Paul his father will get a fair trial but if found guilty he will be shot. Saunders tells Paul they are not allowed to intervene. 

            A few days later Saunders has a reconnaissance mission into town and takes Paul with him. They also are supposed to meet with Fouquet but learn from his wife that he has been killed. On leaving the house they are attacked by Germans and Saunders is wounded. Paul takes him to his father who shelters them in a storage room and treats Saunders there. A patient arrives and says the Germans have searched every house. Since they haven’t searched the doctor’s house Paul becomes suspicious that his father is a collaborator. Emile admits the Germans give him extra food and gasoline because he is a doctor. 

            Paul and Saunders are getting ready to leave when the German captain arrives. While hiding in the back room the captain speaks of information Emile has provided in the past. After the captain leaves, Paul confronts his father and he admits he did what was needed to survive. Paul leaves in disgust but outside the house they are confronted by German soldiers. Emile steps out and shoots the Germans but is also shot and killed. Clair drives Paul and Saunders to near their command post. She tells Paul his father wanted to stay alive to see his son. 

            Clair was played by Angela Clarke, who didn’t make her film debut until the age of 37 in Her Sister’s Secret. Her first credited appearance was in The Undercover Man in 1949. She co-starred in Mrs. Mike. Her film career came to a halt in the mid 50s when two people ratted her out as a communist to the House Un-American Activities Committee. She admitted to the committee that she had been a member of the Communist Party from 1942 to 1949 but she refused to give them any names and so she was blacklisted. She didn’t work in films again until 1962. She made her TV debut on the premier episode of Ben Casey in 1961. She had many guest appearances on popular shows after that. She had a recurring character in three episodes of St. Elsewhere.

February 8, 1996: At night when the streetcars were empty I carried some of my furniture to the new place

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday night after the streetcars got emptier I started making trips from my old place in the Beaches to the new place in Little Portugal, carrying my biggest pieces of furniture each time.

Shecky Greene

            On Friday I memorized the twelfth 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 translated the first monologue from “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. There’s a good chance I’ll have the whole song finished tomorrow. 

            I weighed 89.75 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice and it went out of tune about three-fifths of the time. That’s better than yesterday anyway. 

            Around midday I touched up the pink sections of my bathroom exhaust fan. I fixed the border around the front of the casing and though it’s not perfectly straight, neither am I. I fixed the grid area or thought I did but later when I looked I saw that there are still some blue smudges to cover. 

            I weighed 90.55 kilos before lunch, which is the most I’ve weighed in the early afternoon in a long time. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Brock and Bloor and went a few meters east on the bike lane but I was slipping and sliding because it’s still not solid and so I turned around and rode home. I have to go downtown on Monday for my periodontal bone graft so hopefully it’ll be clearer by then. 

            I weighed 89.95 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:12. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive side 2 of the second tape of my 2nd Slamnation poetry slam, hosted by Cad Lowlife. Unfortunately the two tapes did not capture the entire slam because so many poets hogged the stage and took up a lot of time. This was the night that had the disastrous end because my co-judge Simon Orpana who agreed to be a judge for the event decided at the end that he couldn’t pass judgement and so he held up what was his half of the prize money that was supposed to reward a poet for their talent and he just simply asked who wants it. Evangeline Marsh quickly said she would take it and so the only actual winner of the slam that night was the poet I selected. It was such an asshole move on the part of Simon. I know he’s a Marxist but no Marxist society would just offer awards on a first come first serve basis, which would be the opposite of Socialism and more like survival of the fittest. Agreeing to be a judge and then not judging is like saying you will cook a meal and then when everyone comes to eat declaring you can’t cook. If you can’t judge, don’t take on the role asshole! I forget who won that slam and it’s not on tape. Maybe someone who was there remembers. I would usually pick a previous winner to be my co-judge and so it may be revealed when I listen to the third year tape. 

            I deleted a large number of photos from my main hard drive because I already had copies in my SSD. 

            I had a potato with gravy and my last slice of roast pork while watching season 1, episode 12 of Combat. 

            Braddock is a mildly slimy character in that he takes advantage of others in some small ways such as trading dead batteries for another soldier’s rations. He is acting as a runner for Lieutenant Hanley. The batteries are dead on the radio and so Hanley sends Braddock back to Company to let them know they are stuck. 

            Braddock makes it through and the captain is surprised to see him having done the dirty job as a runner because Braddock has a reputation to find an easy way to do everything he has to do. While he’s there Braddock hears that Colonel Clyde requires a driver. Braddock, perhaps to avoid making his way back to Hanley volunteers to be Clyde’s driver. 

            The gruff Clyde insists on driving the jeep and drives at top speed as he used to be a race car driver. Braddock has to hold on for dear life. Braddock starts sneezing and says he caught a chill and so Clyde lends him his coat. 

            Clyde is speeding down the road when he has to swerve to avoid a cow. The jeep flips and lands upside down in the river while Braddock is thrown to lie unconscious in the middle of the road. 

            He wakes up surrounded by German soldiers who salute him because they think he is a colonel as he is wearing Colonel Clyde’s coat and the helmet he accidentally puts on when he gets up is also Clyde’s. He at first tries to convince them that he’s a private and not a colonel but they think he’s joking. They essentially treat him like royalty with good food and cognac, so he stops denying that he’s a colonel. 

            They are transporting him to a command post when he sees they have three US prisoners. He demands that they be fed and also lets them have some cognac. They were going to make the men walk to the command post but Braddock insists they ride in the car with him. 

            Back at US lines it is reported that the Germans have captured a colonel and Clyde’s men think it’s him, since he’s missing. 

            At the German command post the officers have detailed information on Clyde and figure out that Braddock is not him. But they want him to continue posing as Clyde because they want to exchange him for Colonel Hoffman, who has been captured by nearby Allied forces. They send one of the prisoners back to Allied lines to deliver the message about the proposed exchange. The Germans will trade Clyde and the two prisoners for Hoffman and his aide. 

            Suddenly Clyde walks in, all dirty from the accident but very much alive. When he hears about the exchange he starts laughing because he figures out that Braddock is the prisoner they think is him. Clyde gets the uniforms of Hoffman and his aide and dresses two German privates in their clothes to make the exchange. Braddock and the two US soldiers are exchanged and shortly after realizing the ruse the Germans begin firing. 

            Braddock asks Clyde if he’s going to get court martialed for impersonating an officer. Clyde says it depends on how well he did it. He demands that he show him his impersonation. He does and gets the captain to salute him. 

            Braddock was played by Shecky Greene, who liked to sing Strauss and started a drama club in high school. At first he planned on becoming a gym teacher but after performing stand-up in Chicago he began steering towards a career in comedy. He was in a comedy team with Dick Sterling. He served in the US Navy during WWII. He was a headliner at the Tropicana Hotel from 1957 to 1962. His salary at one point was $150,000 a week. In 1962 he became part of the cast of Combat. He co-starred in The Love Machine. Between 1968 and 1979 he appeared 68 times on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, sometimes as a guest host. After that they had a falling out and he was no longer invited. He owned several nightclubs. He says Frank Sinatra once saved his life when some hoods were beating him up. Frank saved him by saying, “That’s enough”. He was inducted into the National Comedy Hall of Fame in 2020.