March 11, 1996: My landlady complained about my daughter's behaviour

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday my daughter and I went to the little playground in the parkette off Dundas. We played a bit in the backyard of my place. My landlady Helga complained about True’s behaviour but I didn’t see anything wrong. She behaved like the four year old she was.

Sheldon Allman

            On Monday morning I continued collecting images for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I have 196 so far. 

            I weighed 88.45 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune the whole time. 

            I deleted several photos from my hard drive. 

            I weighed 89.15 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped to pee at the McDonald’s at Yonge and College. On the way home I stopped at Freshco where all the grapes were too soft. I bought a pack of figs, several avocadoes, and a jug of orange juice. 

            I weighed 88.8 kilos at 18:45. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:36. 

            I tried to record from cassette tape to Audacity and had problems again. Over the last few weeks I’ve made many successful recordings but lately it’s become glitchy. I couldn’t get a waveform at all this time even after restarting several times. Finally after clicking that the recording device is Audacity I got a waveform. There’s a Leonard Cohen clip at the beginning of the tape but weirdly there was no wave form for it and the waveform only showed with the beginning of the recording of my band. It begins with a Christian and the Lions concert performance of “Megaphor” and then there is a rehearsal of “Me and Gravity” and “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy” with Steve Lowe on guitar and Arjan on bass. I recorded through audio interface to Audacity as usual and then exported it to my hard drive but it sounded distorted. I tried exporting it in MP3 format but that sounded worse. I’ll try again tomorrow. Maybe the fact that it didn’t show a waveform for the Leonard Cohen clip should have warned me there was a problem. 

            I ate some grapes while watching episode 11 of Captain Nice. 

            Chief Segal is in charge of guarding the city payroll with the help of Sergeant Candy Cane and several other police officers. The armoured car arrives and suddenly it is ambushed. There is a firefight between the crooks and the police. Candy Cane is never shown with a gun. She is given the task of writing down the events as they unfold. 

            Carter Nash is just on his way home when he hears the shots and runs to change into Captain Nice. 

            The police are forced to take cover and one of the gangsters drives the armoured car away. Seconds later an identical armoured car containing counterfeit money is driven up to replace it. When the shooting stops the cops emerge from cover as Captain Nice arrives on the scene. Segal claims they fought the robbers off and the payroll is safe. Candy reports that 97 rounds of ammunition were fired with no hits. The chief admits that he shuts his eyes when he shoots. 

            The next day Carter is given $5 by Mayor Finney for lab supplies. But he smells the bill and detects that one of the chemicals is wrong. He tells Arthur the new sketch artist that he’s going to run some tests on it. But it turns out that Arthur is part of the counterfeiting and payroll robbing gang. He runs to their hideout to warn them about Carter, but Gordon the boss says there isn’t going to be a test because there isn’t going to be a Carter. They go to Carter’s house and force their way in. Gordon tells Carter he wants the $5 but Carter says it’s in the safe at the lab. He tells Anthony to accompany Carter to the lab and warns Carter that everyone will be shot if he isn’t back in an hour. 

            When Carter gets there he realizes that he can’t open the safe until 8:00 because it has a time lock. He says he can jar the lock with some nitro. Anthony accidentally knocks the nitro off the safe and the explosion knocks them both out. 

            With only seconds left before Gordon shoots them, Carter’s mother Esther and Candy break free and start using martial arts on the gang. They are doing fine until Gordon regains his gun and stops them. 

            Carter regains consciousness first and takes his super power serum. Within seconds Captain Nice is at the Nash house but Gordon is pointing his gun at Esther and Candy and warns him to leave. Suddenly his gun is shot out of his hand by Mr. Nash, who apparently picked up a gun from one of the fallen gangsters. We have never seen his face as it’s always behind a newspaper and he shot the gun through the paper. For some reason he wasn’t tied up like Esther and Candy. 

            A week later the chief has a foolproof plan to protect the payroll from thieves. He puts all his cops in the back of the armoured car. Robbers ambush the guards, padlock the back door of the armoured car and drive away with it. There is no money in the back and all they got away with is a $20,000 armoured car and the entire Big Town police force. 

            Gordon was played by Sheldon Allman, who was born in Chicago but moved to Canada as a baby. He joined the Royal Canadian Air Force during WWII and was wounded. He was convalescing in a British hospital and playing piano and singing original songs when he was heard by Ted Thorpe who was putting together a show for army bases in England. Sheldon with the Maple Leaf Show began singing with the Royal National Guard. After the war he played nightclubs in Canada until he moved back to the states in 1949 to attend the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. While studying he wrote songs, played clubs, produced TV shows, and worked as a DJ. He was the singing voice for Mister Ed and the writer of the Mister Ed songs “Pretty Little Filly with the Pony Tail” and “The Empty Feedbag Blues”. He wrote “A Quiet Kind of Love”, Christmas in the Air”, “Patapan”, and the theme songs for “George of the Jungle”, “Super Chicken”, and “Tom Slick”. He co-wrote the screenplay for Monster Mash. His song “Crawl Out Through the Fallout” appears in the game Fallout 4 and in the TV adaptation of Fallout. He co-wrote the musicals I’m Sorry, the Bridge is Out, You’ll Have to Spend the Night (on which the movie Monster Mash is based) and Frankenstein Unbound. His film debut was in Inside the Mafia in 1959.

March 10, 1996: My daughter stayed with me for the weekend

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday I picked up my daughter and she stayed at my place for the weekend. We stayed inside the first day and I worked on building her toy crossbow.

Noah Keen

            On Sunday morning I woke up at 5:51 and realized that I’d missed the stupid time change again. I decided to pretend it was still 4:51 and went back to bed for a few more minutes. I chose to go through my normal routine until I arrived at an hour that I could sacrifice and then change the time. 

            After yoga I gathered more images for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I have 189 so far. 

            I weighed 88.65 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice for the first of two sessions and it stayed in tune the whole time. 

            I cleaned the warm mist humidifier that had been working all week and started the other one going. While it was soaking in vinegar I changed my alarm to stupid time. 

            I weighed 89.35 kilos at 14:20. 

            I took a siesta at 15:00 and so that put me only half an hour behind. 

            I had just enough time in the afternoon to take a bike ride to Ossington and back, so then I was caught up with the time change. 

            I weighed 88.8 kilos at 18:05, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since January 16. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:52. 

            I tried to do some more recording in Audacity but even without the sound turned on when I clicked “Record” there was just a solid blue block across the timeline instead of a waveform. I tried restarting a few times and got the same thing and once no waveform at all when the tape was playing. A few months ago I downloaded a new version of Audacity that I thought the program was just going to upgrade by itself. But it turns out I was supposed to install it, so I did. Version 3.7.7 worked after a couple of tries. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive the first part of the Christian and the Lions rehearsal that I’d started last night. Tom Smarda and Steve Lowe on guitars were learning my songs “Charm and Money” (to the tune of “Love and Marriage”) and “Fallen”. Mike Martin just kept playing his bongos the same speed no matter what we were doing fast or slow. Steve claimed he no longer wanted to have sex and just wanted to play his guitar. I called bullshit. Tom and Steve didn’t agree with the premise of “Charm and Money” that potential lovers are more attracted to charm and money than they are to kindness and intelligence. The next rehearsal tape I’ll record tomorrow is more coherent as Steve had gotten a better grip on my songs.

            I had a tomato, avocado, and cucumber salad with lime juice while watching episode 10 of Captain Nice. 

            A crime syndicate fronted by a mysterious Mr. X. captures a mob that has been muscling in on their territory and now they are going to be bumped off but they say they would settle for a good scolding. They are lined up against the wall inside the Bigtown Garage as the assassin named Gunnar prepares his machine gun. Gunnar wonders when he will meet Mr. X but he is told nobody but his girlfriend Amanda Woolf has ever seen him. The beautiful Amanda is there keeping the syndicate’s records in code in a little black book. Gunnar is about to fire when Carter pulls in for gas and goes looking for an attendant. He opens the door and sees the gangsters, then he heads back to his car to change into Captain Nice. Gunnar fires but misses. Captain Nice flies in front of the next barrage. Amanda pretends to faint to distract Nice while her colleagues get away. 

            The saved mobsters are brought in but won’t talk and Amanda won’t testify. Carter and Sergeant Candy Cane are looking for clues in the garage when Candy finds Amanda’s black book. Carter says if he can crack the code he’ll find out the identity of Mr. X. 

            Mayor Finney and Chief Segal interrogate Mr. X’s suspected right hand man O’Brien. O’Brien says they can’t prove it. Finney says O’Brien deposited half a million in his account this year (which would be $5 million now) and yet he only runs a small cleaning business. O’Brien says he finds a lot of loose change in the clothing. 

            Carter arrives to announce he has the little black book and he thinks he can crack the code. Amanda sees he has her book and plots to get it back. She says she’s changed her mind and she will testify after all but needs to be in protective custody at Carter’s house. It’s unlikely that a police chemist would be assigned to watch after a material witness but they agree. Carter is warned he can’t even tell his mother the identity of Amanda. 

            Carter brings Amanda home and she has more suitcases than a luggage store. 

            O’Brien is released and puts out a hit on Amanda. He overheard at the mayor’s office that she would be staying at Carter’s place. His gang kidnaps Chief Segal and forces him to tell them where Carter lives. 

            Carter figures out that the code is based on the telephone dial with the letters and numbers representing each other. 

            O’Brien and the gang invade the Nash home and tie up Carter’s mother, father, and Amanda. Carter is unnoticed but he sees them from the study. He changes to Captain Nice before the captives can be killed. Gunnar shoots Nice but the bullets bounce off to kill the entire gang, including Gunnar. 

            The next day Carter reveals that Amanda is Mr. X. I saw that coming. 

            O’Brien was played by Noah Keen, who after graduating from university worked at NBC. He made his film debut in 1957 in A Face in the Crowd. He guest starred in the Twilight Zone episodes The Arrival and The Trade Ins.

March 9, 1996: Brian and I went busking and made enough for lunch

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday Brian Haddon and I went busking and made enough for lunch. Then we performed together on the Spit Fridays open stage in the back room of the Cameron.

Bill Zuckert

            On Saturday morning I continued searching for images for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I have 183 so far. 

            I weighed 89.2 kilos before breakfast. I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune the whole time. Tomorrow I’ll begin a two session stretch of playing my Kramer. 

            Around midday I rode to No Frills where I bought five bags of grapes, three packs of strawberries, some bananas, avocadoes, two packs of cherry tomatoes, a pack of mini-cucumbers, two bottles of Garden Cocktail, a bottle of cranberry-raspberry juice, and a jug of orange juice. I did a price match on the grapes with the Walmart price of $6.55 a kilo but each bag was still about $5 each. 

            I weighed 90 kilos at 14:30. I had a tomato and avocado salad with lime juice and a glass of Garden Cocktail. 

            I took a siesta and got up at 17:00 but still felt tired so I went back to bed for another forty minutes. 

            I weighed 90.15 kilos at 17:55. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:01. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive an early Christian and the Lions rehearsal with Tom Smarda, Steve Lowe and Mike Martin. We worked on my songs “Fallen”, “Angeline”, and “Seven Shades of Blues”. Tom mentions in the session that we have a gig in about a month on May 11 and so this had to be April of 1994. Steve had yet to work out his great guitar accompaniment for “Angeline”. Mike just kept playing his bongos at a fast tempo while we were trying to slowly work out the songs and it was very distracting. The digitized recording didn’t sound as clear as previous ones. I exported the same file in MP3 and it sounded a little better. 

            I ate some grapes while watching episode 9 of Captain Nice. I watched episode 7 last night but episode 8 seems to be unavailable either in torrent form or for streaming. 

            Carter Nash is doing some important lab work late at night at the police station for Chief Segal but the night club next door is making a lot of noise. He goes over and talks with Lola the owner about them turning the music down. But in reality the band is playing loud to cover the noise of the men digging to break Doc Simmons out of jail before he is transferred to prison. Lola invites Carter to have a drink but he says he doesn’t imbibe. She offers him a non-alcoholic fruit punch and he agrees to that but the bartender drugs it and Carter is immediately unconscious. Lola has him thrown in the alley and the hatcheck girl takes pictures that are sent to the newspaper. 

            The next night Carter is trying to finish his work but the noise from the club compels him to once again confront Lola. This time he refuses a drink but Lola pretends to be faint and asks him to help her to the bar. She asks the bartender for a glass of water, which he spikes again. She pretends to take a sip and then says it tastes funny. She asks Carter to try it and he is again drugged. This time however he is semi-conscious, staggers and knocks over some garbage cans that are full of the dirt from the digging of the tunnel. He realizes there is a jail break going on but he’s incoherent and collapses. 

            Meanwhile Milton the Mole breaks into Doc’s cell. Sergeant Candy Cane catches them but they kidnap her and take her with them into the tunnel. 

            Carter wakes up again and this time manages to take his super power serum. He turns to Captain Nice but he is still drugged. He staggers and smashes through the wall of Lola’s then stumbles around causing destruction with his super strength, not knowing what he’s doing. He ends up bringing down part of the ceiling, which blocks the exit door. 

            Doc, Milton, and Candy emerge in the back room of the club but Lola tells them there’s no exit and so they have to go back into the tunnel. The bartender throws a grenade at Nice and then runs for the tunnel. Captain Nice doesn’t even know it’s a grenade when he casually tosses it away and it goes down the hole to explode in the tunnel. 

            Now Doc has no place to go but back in his cell. He is now there with Milton, Lola, Candy, and all the guests and staff from the club as the club band happily plays in the crowded cell. 

            Police Chief Segal was played by Bill Zuckert, who started acting on radio in 1941 and his voice could be heard in hundreds of dramas over the next twenty years. He co-starred in the radio drama series Crime and Peter Chambers in 1954. He made his film debut in Ada in 1961. He played Sheriff Johnny Behan in the third season Star Trek episode “Spectre of the Gun”.

March 8, 1996: I posed for artists

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I probably posed at some art school or for some art group and maybe more than one.