Fatima

           

            On Sunday morning I started learning to sing Serge Gainsbourg’s song, “Marabout” in French and realized that I’d have alter my translation because it’s in chain verse, with the last word or sound in each line becoming the first word in the next. It was going to take a little longer to create the same effect in English and still retain the meaning.

            In the early afternoon I worked for the alumni at OCADU. It’s an open drawing studio with no instructor and each person has to pay ten dollars, which they give to the college to pay the model. I’ve never understood why they just don’t pay the model directly. I guess they would if the OCADU model coordinator didn’t do the booking. Maybe it’s a union issue. I don’t know.

            Nick Cushing came by to install another hard drive in my computer, but I opted for just keeping the hard drive to use externally. Given that my previous computer only lasted two years, it seemed like a hassle to put things inside my system that would work just as well externally in that they would be more easily transferable to another computer if I had to buy one.

            I watched the eleventh episode of the first season of Dragnet from 1951. All of the shows were based on true stories. This one was about a murder of a young woman and the investigators eventually found out that her religious fanatic ex-boyfriend had killed her with a lead pipe because she was a sinner. I didn’t find it particularly interesting, especially the deadpan manner of the cops. I’ve downloaded a few episodes from seasons two and three, but after watching those I won’t bother with any more.

            The sponsor of the show was Fatima cigarettes, which is a brand I’d never heard of. They had been around since the 19^th Century and had traditionally featured a Turkish woman on the cover. Jack Webb, who created Dragnet and played Joe Friday on the radio and on TV, became a poster boy for the brand, but they faded from popularity because they couldn’t compete with hipper brands.

            It felt by the end of the day that I might have been coming down with another cold. My throat felt raw and I was coughing and sniffling a bit.