February 22, 1996: It was so much easier to teach another musician my songs now that I could play them

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday Brian Haddon started learning to play my songs on the recorder. It was so much easier to teach another musician my songs now that I could play them on guitar. Rehearsals were chaotic with the earlier ensemble of Christian and the Lions when I would just try to sing them my songs.

Hendrik Vallaerts

            On Friday at about 3:00 my upstairs neighbour Jacob was banging on something. 

            At 3:45 the fire alarm started bonking and continued for half an hour until the firemen came. I could hear them in the hall but I didn’t get up to check on whether there was actually a fire. I fell asleep and dreamed that I went out to talk with them and saw that unit 2 was totally gutted and black. Of course it wasn’t. 

            After yoga I gathered more images from the internet for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 91.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice and it didn’t stay in tune as well as yesterday but it wasn’t too bad. 

            Around midday I painted the underside of my top bathroom shelves with “blue bliss”. I also straightened out the lines where the top shelves meet the walls. It looks good but it’ll need at least one more coat, which I’ll add on Tuesday. 

            I weighed 91.8 kilos before lunch.

            I took a siesta at 14:30 as usual but didn’t wake up until 17:15. My body was probably making up for its loss of sleep while the fire alarm was sounding. It was too late for a bike ride.

            I weighed 91.95 kilos at 17:40. 

            I called my periodontist Dr. Xia and left a message to let him know I was almost finished with the Peridex mouth rinse and wondered if I could go back to regular mouthwash. He got back to me an hour later and said I could use warm salted water instead. He also said I could lightly brush the area of surgery now. I’m looking forward to getting the twenty stitches out. I can feel the ends of the threads and it feels like I’ve got a spider in my mouth. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:41. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive side 2 of the Bomb Shelter Light demo tape. The next tape I’ll digitize is one containing pre-verbal sounds my daughter made when she was small. 

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

            I boiled a potato in vegetable broth, added spinach, and five-year old cheddar. I put in a little too much salt. I ate while watching season 1, episode 26 of Combat. 

            K Company is battling the Germans in what is supposed to be an evacuated French town. Then they notice a beautiful young woman sitting in a rose garden oblivious to the gunfire and the explosions. Oddly the garden has been untouched while outside its gate the streets are torn up. The Germans retreat but will be back and they outnumber K Company. Saunders enters the garden to try to get the woman to leave. The young woman’s name is Jeannine and she is with her caregiver, the elderly Celeste. Jeannine has lost her family and now lives in a delusional fantasy of peace in the garden. Celeste speaks English and tells Saunders that divine intervention is protecting Jeannine and her garden. She says that Jeannine will die if she leaves. 

            Later Saunders comes back to try again. Although Jeannine cannot speak English she has taken a liking to Saunders and follows him when he leads her to the gate. But then she sees the devastation outside and has a panic attack. She retreats to the garden. 

            Saunders goes back to his company. The Germans begin to shell the town and Lieutenant Hanley tells Saunders to try again to get the civilians out. Jeannine is playing a record and wants Saunders to dance with her. Celeste points a rifle at Saunders and forces him to do so. He doesn’t really have to be forced. After a while Jeannine becomes very calm in his arms and he picks her up to carry her out of the garden with Celeste following. He lays her down in a stable at the command post but when she wakes up she panics. Doc gives her an injection that puts her to sleep. 

            The Germans stop firing for the night and everyone goes to sleep. Jeannine wakes up and wanders back to her garden. Saunders finds her there as German troops occupy the town. A machine gun nest is holding K Company down. There’s an abandoned tank nearby with the big gun out of commission but the machine gun works. Caje tries to get to it but is wounded. Saunders successfully gets into the tank and uses the machine gun to take out the nest. The Germans are gone from the town for now. Jeannine and Celeste are back in the garden and Jeannine gives Saunders a rose before he leaves. 

            This story was written by Hendrik Vallaerts, who started as a writer for Frank Sinatra’s radio show. He wrote the Star Trek episode “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”. He wrote six scripts of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and created the minisub they used in the series. He wrote the two episodes of Batman for which he created the villain the Bookworm.

February 21, 1996: Brian Haddon joined my band Christian and the Lions

Thirty years ago today 

             On Wednesday Brian Haddon brought his recorder to work and afterwards we went back to my place to jam. He decided he was interested in learning my songs and we made plans to start busking together as well.

J.D. Cannon

            On Thursday morning I finally memorized the fourteenth verse of “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian. There are four verses left but some have repeated lines I already know and so it’s more like two more verses to learn. 

            I continued to search online for vintage photos to add to my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I’ve got 74 so far. 

            I weighed 90.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice and after having to retune following the first song and then the second, it stayed in tune for the rest of the session. 

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

            I weighed 91.05 before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride and for the first time since before the big storm the Bloor bike lane was clear enough for me to ride all the way downtown. I was almost disappointed because I’d gotten used to these shorter bike rides over the last few weeks. It was quite tiring riding downtown and back without practice. I stopped at Freshco on my way back where I bought seven bags of grapes but stuffed them all into four bags just in case the cashier wanted to be strict about the four item limit for price matches. I also got two packs of raspberries, some bananas, a carton of soy milk, a pack of Full City Dark coffee, two cans of kidney beans, Sensodyne toothpaste, and shaving gel. 

            The price match on the grapes was with the No Frills price of $4.14 a kilo. For some reason Jeremy the cashier disputed that and got out his calculator to work out a much higher price per kilo. I said, “You didn’t get $4.14 a kilo?” He said that’s not what $2.99 a pound works out to. I informed him, “It’s not $2.99 a pound, it’s $1.88 a pound!” When he looked at my flyer he’d been looking at the price for the item below the grapes. He fixed his mistake but I’ll probably avoid Jeremy’s counter from now on. 

            When I got home I saw that I’d forgotten the bananas and they weren’t on my receipt. I took them out of my basket when I was putting the seven bags of grapes into four bags and then must have forgotten to put them back in.

            I weighed 90.95 kilos at 19:15. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 20:35.

            There was no time to work on any projects tonight. 

            I boiled the good parts of two potatoes in vegetable broth. On another burner I heated what was left of the chicken and potato soup I’d made yesterday and added two slices of five-year-old cheddar. To the main soup I added spinach and after about ten minutes added yesterday’s soup. The finished product was delicious. 

            I had supper while watching season 1, episode 25 of Combat. This story had the feel of a back door pilot. The star, Rick Jason did very little while the episode was driven by the guest star, J.D. Cannon, playing superspy Ted Slocum. AI says that there is a considerable group of fans and critics that agree with me that this was probably a back door pilot. Espionage shows were very popular at that time but it would have been unique to have one set during WWII.

            In the middle of being shelled by Germans in France, Lieutenant Hanley gets orders to report to a cocktail lounge in London. They fly him out still dirty from night patrol. He gets cleaned up at the hotel and soon he’s in uniform enjoying a drink in the lounge. 

            At the bar two men are debating and then finally betting on how many companies a German infantry regiment has. The British man says 15 and the Middle North American argues it’s 12. They see Hanley and recognize by his uniform that he would know and so they agree that he can settle the bet. Hanley says 15 so the Middle North American pays a pound. He sits with Hanley and asks what outfit he’s with but he won’t say. The Middle North American shows his credentials and he’s Ted Slocum of the Washington Foreign Press but Hanley still won’t give out any information.

            Slocum leaves and then Hanley gets a phone call to go to a certain address. He enters a dark room lit by one candle where a man named Williams at a table tells him to sit down and look at a photograph on the table. Hanley recognizes the Barole family. There is Raymond, who was Hanley’s college roommate, Raymond’s little sister Marie and their father Dr. Barole the physicist. Williams says that Dr. Barole is in hiding in occupied France to avoid being forced to serve the German war effort. He is hiding in a town near the Swiss border. 

            An attempt was made to help him escape but it failed because someone tipped off the Gestapo and Raymond was killed. Barole needs someone he can trust so he will cooperate with a new escape plan. Williams says that Hanley would be accompanied by an experienced spy who has jumped into occupied territory many times. Only Marie knows where her father is but the Maquis would lead them to her. 

            Hanley agrees to the mission and then a light comes on revealing that nearby is sitting Ted Slocum, the spy who will lead the mission. Hanley is impressed because he found Slocum very convincing as a news correspondent when he met him in the bar. 

            Slocum takes Hanley to get their papers. A man who was recently in prison for counterfeiting is now the expert in charge of that department. They get suited up with French citizens’ clothing of the region in question. 

            They jump and are met by two men and one woman of the Maquis. Two Germans are approaching and Slocum immediately tells the other men to hide, then he grabs Lily, throws her down on the ground and begins kissing her. The German soldiers just think it’s a couple of French lovers and they let them go. 

            They go to Marie and she is happy to see Hanley again. It turns out that Dr. Barole is hiding in Marie’s cellar. Slocum tells him they have to leave tonight. Barole says he needs his notebook, which he’s hidden in the wine cellar of a local bar that is frequented by German soldiers. 

            Slocum burgles a uniform store and dresses as a German officer. He walks into the bar and asks for wine but acts disgusted by what he tastes. So the bartender takes him to the basement where Slocum “accidentally” breaks the wine bottle the bartender hands him and while the proprietor goes upstairs for a mop, Slocum finds Barole’s notebook. On his way out the other German officers are leaving and he learns that they are going to the church where he, Hanley and the Baroles are supposed to rendezvous. He goes back to Hanley and says there is a traitor among the three Maquis they are working with. Slocum tells each of the three a different location for their next rendezvous. Then later he says they are going to the church tower to watch and see which location the Gestapo go. That way they will know who the traitor is. Lily suddenly jumps out of the car and runs. Slocum drives after her but she runs into an area under curfew and the Germans shoot her. 

            Slocum, Haney, the other two Maquis and the Baroles make it across the Swiss border and then Hanley and Slocum head back to London so Slocum can buy Haney a drink. 

            Slocum was played by J.D. Cannon, who started his studies at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts before WWII and finished them after. He was a founding member of the New York Shakespeare Festival. His TV debut was on the Phil Silvers Show. He starred in the original off-Broadway production of Blood Knot in 1964. His film debut was in An American Dream in 1966. He co-starred in Cool Hand Luke, He appeared in 5 episodes of Alias Smith and Jones. He played Police Detective Peter B. Clifford on McCloud from 1970 to 1977 (a role that his producers said was the closest thing to a living Dick Tracy).

February 20, 1996: I met my fellow model and musician Brian Haddon

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday I took my guitar to work with me at the Ontario College of Art. Sometimes I would pose with it for paintings. At lunchtime I would sit in the models’ lounge and in those days the school had a nice one with a big couch where models could hang out and get to know each other. That day I met Brian Haddon who it turned out was also a musician and had studied at the Royal Conservatory. He said he played recorder and we talked about getting together and playing to find out if he’d like to join Christian and the Lions.

Garry Walberg

            On Wednesday morning I gathered more images from the internet for my phot-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 91.05 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune most of the time but not as much as yesterday. Tomorrow I’ll begin a two session stretch of playing my Kramer and we’ll see how the new tuner works on that. I tuned my Martin acoustic with it earlier and it was difficult. I find it needs to be slightly below dead-on the notes for the B and the high E. I was used to finding where that was with the old tuner. 

            I weighed 91.6 kilos before lunch. I had some of the potato and chicken soup that I made yesterday and added saltines. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride but because of the storm O’Hara was too slippery so I just went straight to Freshco along Queen. That was difficult as well but not as bad. I had to walk around a couple of cars. At the supermarket I bought three bags of cherries, some spinach, some broccoli, two packs of tofu, one container of Compliments vegetable broth and another of Campbells just to see if there was a difference. Once again I couldn’t find my Scene card at the cash. 

            I weighed 91.6 kilos at 17:40. 

            I spent an annoying hour trying figure out how I could access my Scene card without looking in my Gmail. I kept getting trapped in the Scene website and couldn’t get out. That happened several times. Finally I was able to put my card in Google Wallet and then I had to figure out how to have Google Wallet easily accessible. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:41. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive side one of Bomb Shelter Light’s demo tape. Bomb Shelter Light featured at least once at my The Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage. The songs seem derivative of Nick Cave. 

            I cubed a pack of sautéed tofu, added the rest of the pho broth, and some chopped broccoli. After the broccoli was cooked I added a pack of kimchi ramen noodles and the herbs and spices that came with it. I had supper with a glass of Creemore while watching season 1, episode 24 of Combat. 

            Three journalists come to observe K Company in action. The most aggressive among them is Eleanora Hunt, who will do anything to get a story. Captain Smith tells Hanley and Saunders to look out for Hunt as she can do the war a lot of good. She’s one of the best magazine photographers in the business. 

            She goes out to an observation post with Saunders and Billy and complains she’s yet to hear a shot or see a dead German. Suddenly they are attacked by two Germans, who are killed. She jumps into a car carrying two resistance fighters and so Saunders gets in too as he’s been ordered to watch out for her. They drive back to the command post. 

            That night Eleanora sneaks off with the Maquis fighters to the nearby village of Trois Anges. K Company has to go after her. The people of the village misunderstand Eleanora’s presence there as being part of the liberation of the town. Everyone comes out to celebrate, which could tip off potential traitors who now would know who among them was with the resistance. Later they learn that the town has been occupied and Hanley and Saunders lead a squad to do reconnaissance. Eleanor tries to tag along in a commandeered jeep but agrees to wait outside the town. 

            A jeep is attacked and one of the men is killed. The two resistance fighters are found, one of them dead and the other dying. Eleanora is brought in and Saunders shows her the dead in a school and three members of the resistance hanging from church bells. 

            Later Eleanora mails Saunders a copy of the magazine containing her article and pictures. 

            One of the other journalists was played by Garry Walberg, whose film debut was in Gangster Story in 1959. His TV debut was on Rawhide in 1959. He played Sergeant Sullivan on five episodes of Johnny Stacatto. He appeared in the very first episode of The Twilight Zone. He played Sergeant Goddard in 33 episodes of Peyton Place. He played Hansen in the Star Trek episode “Balance of Terror”. He played Oscar’s poker buddy Homer on the sitcom The Odd Couple. He played Police Lieutenant Frank Monahan on all seven seasons of Quincy.

December 19, 1996: My landlady felt right about her pregnancy

Thirty years ago today 

             On Monday I chatted with my new landlady Helga Schlatter about her pregnancy. She said that she’d been pregnant once before but had gotten an abortion because she’d had a premonition that the baby would be evil. Considering that the one she did have is now in prison for murder, maybe she got her psychic wires crossed.