Patricia Blair

            On Friday after midnight I put 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 few bedbugs from the curtains. I didn’t shake out my sheet and comforter on the deck because it was still wet from the rain. I turned the heat on before going to bed at 1:30. I woke up around 3:30 to pee and turned the heat off, then went back to sleep until 5:00. 

            I memorized the fourth verse of “C’est ici (It’s Right Here) by Boris Vian. That’s about half the song. 

            I continued to sort out the text I had for “Yes Man” by Serge Gainsbourg with the transcript I downloaded from Turboscribe and with the transcript that accompanies the YouTube video for the album Bobino by Zizi Jeanmaire. YouTube transcripts are almost always nonsensical. As far as I can tell the guy in question is a “Yes” man for the singer because he has a big penis and so when I’m not sure of a possible translation I steer it in that direction. 

            I weighed 90.8 kilos before breakfast. 

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

            I weighed 91.3 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 91.15 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:32. 

            I digitized a cassette tape recording of several of my performances on the Fat Albert’s open stage mostly with some iteration of Christian and the Lions but a couple just acapella. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast beef while watching the first episode of Daniel Boone. I don’t think I ever saw this series. I got it confused with Davy Crocket, which also starred Fess Parker. Davy Crocket was ten years before Daniel Boone and had a better theme song. 

            The story begins with Daniel and his friend Tadkin huiding in the woods and watching some Mohawk warriors meeting with British soldiers. They then go to visit George Washington to find ou what’s going on. George is with Mr. Brayton. Daniel says the British are moving more troops into Boston and there are rumours of war. George asks why shouldn’t the colonies remain loyal to the king.

            Daniel and Yad leave and later George catches up with them on horseback. He says Brayton is dangerous and that war is coming. They’ll need every man in the Carolinas to man the fort at the Cumberland Gap. Daniel says Fort Cumberland won’t help if the British can win over the First Nations. George says they will. George shows them a map of Kentucke, the hunting grounds of the Wyandot, the Creek, Shawnee, and the Cherokee. George wants Dan to find where the trails meet so they can build a fort there. 

            Before going there Daniel stops off to see his wife Rebecca and their kids Jemima and Israel. They ask if George Washington has a big house. Daniel says he has 12 “people” just to take care of the inside. “People” of course means slaves. 

            Rebecca is mad that he’s planning to leave again right away but he wins her over by playing the dulcimer and singing the folk song “Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song)”. 

            Dan and Tad go to Kentucky where they see a Shawnee hunting party chasing a Cherokee. The runner turns on them and is somehow an expert at fighting with a bullwhip. Dan and Tad help him out and so they become friends. His name is Cadamingo and he was educated at Oxford. He says the British have offered all the nations guns, bullets, powder, and a bounty on colonists’ scalps. Mingo doesn’t want his people in the fight. That’s odd considering that the British were trying to stop the colonists from illegally encroaching on their land. He shows Dan where they can build a fort. 

            Dan sends Tad back to report while he stays with Mingo. They get captured by Shawnee. Dan decides to stay and meet Chief Black Fish but Mingo escapes. Black Fish has heard of Boone and his prowess and so he tests him in the gauntlet. Boone has his hands tied behind his back but grabs a spear and fights several men anyway, eventually freeing himself. Black Fish is impressed and believes now that Boone will die bravely at the stake. Colonel Brayton of the British army offers to buy Boone for a thousand scalps in order to kill the legend rather than the man. 

            Black Fish ridiculously declares Boone his son and gives him a wife named Tall Willow. They plan on attacking Fort Cumberland but Boone will be forced to stay in the village until his people are dead and then his only people will be the Shawnee. Colonel Bryton’s Mohawks are guarding Boone to keep him from going to help save the fort. But Mingo has snuck into the camp and creates a distraction, drawing the Mohawks away while Boone escapes. 

            Boone and Mingo arrive at Fort Cumberland just after the attack has begun by the Wyandot and the Creek. They didn’t wait for the Shawnee. The fort inhabitants drive them back for now but Black Fish has arrived and will hold a counsel that night to plan a better attack. 

            That night Boone and Mingo sneak into the Shawnee camp and take Black Fish as a hostage. Boone climbs Mingo’s whip into the fort and is almost shot by Tad who is on guard. They lower a ladder for Mingo and Black Fish to climb. The warriors approach the fort and Black Fish’s second in command still wants to attack despite the fact that they have Black Fish. Boone challenges him to a one on one fight. Boone wins and Bryton tries to shoot him but Mingo whips his gun away. Black Fish says there will be peace. Boone immediately says goodbye to his wife and family again and heads for Kentucky. They seem okay with his being away all the time. 

            After the Colonial Revolution Daniel Boone owned at least 7 slaves. 

            Daniel Boone’s wife Rebecca was played by Patricia Blair, who started modeling as a young teenager. Warner Brothers became interested in her film potential after seeing her in some cheesecake photos. She made her film debut in Jump Into Hell in 1955. She co-starred in Crime Against Joe, City of Fear, Cage of Evil, She co-starred in 22 episodes of The Rifleman. Six seasons co-starring on Daniel Boone made her a star. She refused to sign a contract for season 3 unless her TV daughter Veronica Cartwright was dropped from the show because now that Veronica was an 18 year old woman Patricia was afraid she made her look too old, so they fired Veronica.

October 31, 1996: I told the Mexican stripper I'd help her figure out how to go to school in Canada

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I went back to the Club Paradise and bought some more lap dances from the Mexican cutie. She said she wanted to go to school in Toronto and was having trouble getting started. I told her I would help her look into it and we made a date for her to come over to my place the next day.

Andrea King

            On Thursday after midnight I put 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 few bedbugs from the curtains. I shook my sheet and comforter out on the deck. I turned the heat off before going to bed at 1:30. I didn’t get to sleep right away but when I did I dreamed that the graffiti guys were back. There was a guy at the top of a long ladder across the street serving as a lookout. I asked him how many people were doing it and he said just one but he was helping out. They were tracing graffiti that was being projected from the top of a building up the street and also from another building. After yoga I found a few bedbugs crawling around the baseboards. 

            I tried to sort out the text I had for “Yes Man” by Serge Gainsbourg with the transcript I downloaded from Turboscribe and with the transcript that accompanies the YouTube video for the album Bobino by Zizi Jeanmaire. Sometimes one made more sense than the other and sometimes none of them did. I got through two verses. 

            I weighed 90.95 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since October 19 though not as heavy. 

            I lint-rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room and picked up a few bedbugs.

            I weighed 91.65 kilos before lunch. October 19 was the last early afternoon when I pushed the scale so hard. 

            I took a siesta and slept for an extra 45 minutes so it was too late for a bike ride. I still went to Freshco though as I do every Thursday. Most of the grapes were too soft but I found one bag of red ones that were relatively firm. I also bought a bag of oranges, a bag of grapefruits, two packs of blueberries, some bananas, a loaf of cinnamon-raisin bread, a pork tenderloin, a Coho salmon fillet, a pack of Full City Dark coffee, a jar of salsa, and a lint roller. I did a price match on the grapes with the $4.14 a kilo price at Real Canadian Super Store. 

            I weighed 91.65 kilos at 18:15. That’s the same as the evening of October 19. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 20:15. I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast beef while watching Prescription Murder, the 1968 Columbo pilot. It wasn’t the first time Columbo had appeared on screen but it was the beginning of Peter Falk defining the role. The series wouldn’t begin until the early 70s but this was the kick-off TV movie. 

            Dr. Ray Flemming and his wife Carol are celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary but in the middle of the party he gets a call. He tells his wife it’s a patient having an anxiety attack and he has to go, but he goes to his lover Joan. It becomes fairly certain as they talk that he plans to murder Carol and Joan is going to help him. 

            He gets home at 1:00 and Carol is waiting for him. She says she knows he’s having an affair but then he reveals the reason for his secretism has been his plan to take her on a trip to Acapulco for their anniversary and they will leave tomorrow night. But just before they are to leave for the airport Ray strangles Carol. Then he smashes the balcony window, makes it look like someone broke in to rob the place, was discovered by Carol, killed her, opened all the drawers, stole her valuables and got away. Ray puts Carol’s jewellery in a suitcase along with a few other expensive things. 

            Joan arrives and Ray gives her Carol’s blue dress and gloves to wear. Joan is an actor working at a major film studio and she has secretly borrowed a wig of the same colour and style as Carol’s hair and brought along a pair of sunglasses. She disguises herself as Carol, they leave for the airport and get on the plane. Before the plane takes off they stage an argument and Joan leaves. She puts the dress in a laundry bag that has been left outside Ray’s penthouse for the cleaners to pick up. 

            Ray spends two weeks fishing in Mexico and dumps Carol’s jewellery into the ocean. When he comes home he walks in and sees the police tape outlining Carol’s body and goes to stand by the window. He’s surprised when police Lieutenant Columbo steps out of the bedroom. Ray learns that his wife is not dead but in a coma in the hospital and they go there. When they arrive outside Carol’s room he is told she’s just become conscious but then the doctor comes out and tells him she has died. The last thing she said was “Ray!”. 

            Columbo wonders why Ray didn’t call out for his wife when he got home from his trip, since that’s what most husbands would do. He also wonders why Ray’s luggage was 4 kilos lighter when he came back from Mexico. Ray explains that he took several medical brochures with him to read and since most were ads he left them behind after reading them. 

            Because Columbo keeps on coming around to ask questions, Ray gets his friend the district attorney Burt Gordon to pull some strings and have Columbo taken off the case. Columbo comes to Ray’s office to inform him that he was removed but says he finds it odd. He says he’d like to become Ray’s patient because his wife says he’s chronically suspicious. They have a drink in Ray’s office and Ray discusses the type of person Columbo is pursuing, concluding that he is too smart to catch.

            Columbo begins to harass Joan and says she is a suspect of being an accessory to a murder. He has her visibly followed and someone is always staked outside her place. 

            The next day Joan misses her psychiatric appointment with Ray and when his secretary calls to inquire she learns the coroner is at her home. Ray goes there and finds them pulling a body from Joan’s pool. Columbo says she took an overdose of barbiturates and he blames himself because he rode her too hard. But he also tells Ray that he’s also to blame as it was because of her that he killed Carol. Ray says if he had killed Carol it would have been for her money and not for Joan. And also if he had killed Carol he would not have had any problem killing Joan if she became an inconvenience. Suddenly Joan reveals that she is alive and she has been listening to what Ray said. She is now willing to make a statement to the police. 

            In the beginning, during the anniversary party we meet Cynthia Gordon, the wife of Burt Gordon. She was played by Andrea King, who began acting professionally at the age of 14. During her late teens and early 20s she worked for the Lillian Gish Stock Company. She made her film debut in The Ramparts We Watch in 1940. In 1945 she was voted the most photogenic actress at Warner Brothers. She co-starred in The Beast With Five Fingers, Shadow of a Woman, The Man I Love, Dial 1119, Southside 1-1000, Red Planet Mars, The World in His Arms, Silent Fear, Hotel Berlin, Navy Nurse, My Wild Irish Rose, She starred in Outlaw Queen, She made her TV debut on Stump the Stars in 1950. She wrote children’s stories and an autobiography. She never cooked a meal or purchased groceries in her entire life, and ate all of her three meals a day in restaurants.

October 30, 1996: The Mexican strippers were very aggressive

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I went to the Club Paradise strip joint where almost all the dancers were Mexican. They were quite aggressive and okay with being touched in intimate places. I bought a lot of lap dances from one sweet girl in particular.

Chris Fisher

            On Wednesday after midnight I put 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 few bedbugs from the curtains. I shook my sheet and comforter out on the deck. I turned the heat on before going to bed at 1:40. I got up to pee at 3:30, turned the heat off and went back to sleep until 5:00. After yoga I found three bedbugs stuck to the carpet tape and another three crawling around the baseboards. 

            I memorized the third verse of “C’est ici (It’s Right Here) by Boris Vian. That’s about half the song. 

            I published the audio of “Yes Man” by Serge Gainsbourg in Movie Maker and then uploaded it to Turboscribe to get a transcript. I copied that next to the text I already have and on Thursday I’ll start sorting out which is correct. 

            I weighed 90.25 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since last Wednesday. 

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

            I vacuumed the storage container that I emptied yesterday of all my Christmas decorations. I put all my university notebooks and the hard copies of my essays in it. 

            I weighed 91.6 kilos before lunch. That’s the unkindest I’ve been to the scale in the early afternoon since October 19. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

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

            I weighed 91.1 kilos at 18:10. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 20:52. 

            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 lager while watching the 4th season finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. 

            The Enterprise is observing a white hole, which in theory is the other side of a black hole. Uhura hears music and a shockwave hits the ship, knocking her from her station. She hears Scotty screaming “mayday!” but on the ship Scotty is fine. She finds the frequency of the music she’d heard and tries to communicate, saying she is Lieutenant Uhura of the Starship Enterprise but the same voice responds, saying she is Lieutenant Uhura. The first Uhura suggests they are the same person. 

            One year in the future the Enterprise is about to send a shuttle into a newly formed black hole. Uhura has a hairstyle and makeup similar to what she will have in the original Star Trek series. There is a budding romance between her and Scotty. The captain of the Enterprise is now Captain Kirk. Erica is now teaching at the Academy but Kirk has brought her back to fly the shuttle for Uhura and Scotty. Inside the black hole there are more musical tones and a shock wave and the shuttle is destroyed but Uhura is beamed back to the Enterprise. However, when she arrives she finds the timeline has been changed. Scotty has been dead for a year but Erica is still back at the Academy and had never piloted the mission. 

            The two Uhuras communicate regularly now on the frequency they found to save Scotty from a timeline that is wrong. They work together and one of the things they need is a dilithium diamond, which takes a year and so early Uhura starts it and future Uhura immediately harvests it. 

            The music Uhura heard is an alien language, which she finally deciphers to learn that they are midwives from a species that exists outside of linear time assisting the birth of a space baby that is in breach. It is the distressed birth that is causing the disturbances in space time. It is during one of those shockwaves that past and future Uhura are switched. The big giveaway in each timeline is their hair but the year younger Uhura is less confident than her year older self. The only people in each timeline that figure out their ship has the wrong Uhura are captains Kirk and Pike. 

            Both captains trust their dis-timed Uhura’s with their solution to the problem, which is to help deliver the space baby in a space walk. Each Uhura stands on the hull of the Enterprise wearing gloves that control probes that are sent into the blackhole where the baby trying to be born exists in both timelines. But something goes wrong with one of the probes in both cases and so both Uhuras untether themselves and jump into the blackhole/whitehole. They meet each other in the middle and join hands to control their probes until the space baby is turned around and born. The timeline is corrected and only past and future Uhura will remember what happened. 

            This episode was directed by Chris Fisher, who earned a law degree from the University of Southern California and worked as a corporate lawyer before taking the William Morris Agency training program. In 2001 he started the Imperial Fish production company and made his film making debut with Nightstalker. He wrote and co-produced Taboo. he co-wrote and directed Dirty. He co-wrote, co-produced and directed Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders. He directed the sequel to Donnie Darko: S. Darko, Meeting Evil, Street Kings 2, . He was executing producer for all five seasons of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds of which he directed six episodes. He was an executive producer of the series Person of Interest. He directed 8 episodes of Cold Case, 10 episodes of Warehouse 13, 16 episodes of Person of Interest, 14 episodes of The Magicians, and 6 episodes of The Equalizer. He wrote A Producer’s Guide to Virtual Production in 2026.

            I fell asleep at the computer and woke up just before midnight. I stumbled out to the kitchen to finish the dishes and looked outside to finally see the guys who’ve been doing some of the graffiti on the closed Dollarama building. There were two guys on top of the canopy with a ladder. They’d written in crowded stylized fat lettering on a yellow background, white letters with black outline two words that together spanned the width of the building: “Pages Bricks” or maybe “Pacies Bricks” whatever that means. I grabbed my camera and captured them at work just before they were done and then climbed onto the roof and to the back. A few minutes later two guys walked from the back of the Dollarama through the parking lot with one of them carrying a little ladder that must telescope into the longer one I saw. They went across the street from the Dollarama and took pictures. They were joined by a guy on a bike. Later they were all across the street from my place, Then two left and one stood there spraying his shoes with what looked like a paint can. Then the other guy joined him and they stood there for a long time like they were waiting for an Uber.

October 29, 1996: Our featured poet was Bobby Hsu

Thirty years ago today 

            On Tuesday night as always I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy open stage in the Art Bar of the Gladstone Hotel. Our featured poet that night was Bobby Hsu, who channeled some of the Beat poets in his work.

Sydney Freeland

            On Tuesday after midnight I put 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 few bedbugs from the curtains. I shook my sheet and comforter out on the deck. I turned the heat on before going to bed at 1:50. I got up to pee at 3:30, turned the heat off and went back to sleep until 5:00. After yoga I found a few bedbugs crawling around the baseboards. 

            I searched for audio containing the song “Yes Man” by Serge Gainsbourg but it was not by itself. It’s on a Zizi Jeanmaire album called Bobino and I downloaded that with Clip Grab. Then I converted it to AVI with Win X Video Converter and imported it into Movie Maker. I isolated track 5 and deleted the songs before and after. Tomorrow I’ll publish the “Yes Man” audio file. I think I’ll also upload it to Turboscribe because I’m not sure I have the right text. 

            I weighed 90.35 kilos before breakfast. 

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

            I sorted through the storage container where I’ve been keeping all my Christmas decorations. Since my daughter moved out years ago I haven’t put up a tree and I know she doesn’t do it in Montreal. So I put all the lights, the garlands, and everything else but some of the nicer ornaments in two Christmas gift bags and later I put them out on the street. It didn’t take long for someone to grab them. Now I can use the container to store the rest of my university notebooks and the hard copies of my essays. 

            I weighed 91.4 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I picked up my Raleigh from Metro Cycle. The new tire cost $119 but I didn’t have to pay the tax because I gave them cash. I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 90.85 kilos at 18:05. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast beef while watching season 4, episode 9 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. 

            The Enterprise stumbles across a flat planet that travels through space. It has breathable air and life. Pike, Spock, Pelia, and La’an beam down. They see a Medieval castle in the distance and what looks like fairies are flying all around. Pelia wonders if she’s having a flashback. They are confronted by a sword wielding warrior version of M’Benga who thinks La’an is the princess and that they are her captors. They contact the Enterprise to talk to M’Benga and he tells them about the Elysian Kingdom adventure they experienced four years ago but that only he remembers. In that story they all were made by a higher consciousness to think they were part of a fairy tale from a book belonging to M’Benga’s terminally ill daughter. The sentient nebula was helping M’Benga’s daughter and he suggests that now it is helping La’an work out her recent inner conflict. This time however the characters they thought they were are now separate individuals and the crew are themselves. 

            Pike’s cowardly and foppish chamberlain Rauth is there, as well as Spock’s wizard Pollux, and La’an’s princess Thalia (but she is in the castle dungeon.) Pelia is the only one without a double because she wasn’t there in the first season. Uhura’s evil witch queen Neve and her handmaiden Lady Audrey (who looks like Chapel) are in the castle where they hold Thalia prisoner. 

            The Enterprise is visible above the planet and mistaken for The Iron Dragon in the prophecy that states whoever controls the iron dragon controls the Elysian Kingdom. The queen’s favourite spell is to imprison people inside of paintings and that’s what happens to Pike and Spock. Pelia is saved because Neve thinks she’s a fairy tale author who can write the story in her favour. 

            Rauth and Pollux realize that their doppelgangers come from the dragon. They find Pike’s communicator and allow themselves to be beamed onto the Enterprise where they comically try to imitate the real Pike and Spock. 

            La’an fights off Neve’s soldiers and is somewhat helped by the arrival of the dashing Prince Dashing who looks like Kirk and is Thalia’s boyfriend. La’an needs to get into the castle to rescue Pike, Spock, and Pelia, but she pretends to Dashing that she is Thalia and needs to enter the castle to retrieve a necklace that contains her memories. They run into Sir Adya (who looks like Ortega) who agrees to help them. She leads them to a cottage where she says lives a monster but it is really where she lives with her lover Z’ymira the Huntress (who looks like Una). Z’ymira happens to have a key to the castle and gives it to La’an. 

            Inside the castle they are confronted by Neve who creates a full moon on a flat planet that has no moon just to reveal that Dashing is really a werewolf. Thalia arrives and knows about this side of Dashing but accepts it as part of who he is. Neve puts the werewolf in a painting and steals the essence of both Thalia and her shadow self La'an, which gives her the power to turn into a fire breathing dragon, which attacks the Enterprise. 

            La’an and Thalia are unconscious but Thalia’s dog Runa comes to La’an and wakes her. Thalia wakes, jealous of La’an and they fight. They are feeling each other’s emotions and not liking it. They decide to stop fighting. They each drink from the potion that Neve made from their essences and achieve balance. 

            The ship’s weapons are useless against magic and Neve in her dragon form is winning until Pollux uses the last of his power to defeat her. Neve turns back to her human form and Una beams her into the brig. Rauth and Pollux are returned to the planet. The spell of the paintings is broken and the prisoners emerge. Dashing is united with Thalia and La’an is envious. 

            It turns out the planet is a ship and Pelia decides to stay there to study its engineering but she’s also hooked up with Neve’s master chef Max who has charmed her with his culinary skills. 

            Thalia gives Runa to La’an because Dashing is allergic (I think Runa is Christina Chong’s actual pet). 

            La’an goes on a date with Kirk and they begin dancing. 

            This episode was directed by Sydney Freeland, a transgender woman who was raised on a Navajo Reservation in New Mexico. She attended the Academy of Art University in San Francisco where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Computer Animation followed by a Master of Fine Arts in Film. She is a 2004 Fulbright Scholar. She worked as a production assistant, a writer, and a camera intern. Her directorial debut was the short film The Migration in 2008. She wrote, produced, and directed the short film Hoverboard in 2012. She directed the web series Her Story (for which she won an Emmy). She wrote and directed Drunktown’s Finest (her feature film directorial debut), She directed Deidra and Laney Rob a Train. She directed and co-wrote Rez Ball, She was a staff writer for the show Reservation Dogs and directed two episodes. She was the executive producer of the TV series Echo and directed 4 episodes. She directed two episodes of the new Little House on the Prairie series, two episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, two episodes of Nancy Drew, four episodes of Rutherford Falls, two episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and two episodes of Resident Alien.