Joan Elan

            On Friday I recorded another song practice, this time in English. In some ways I play better when I’m recording but it isn’t a very relaxed situation to be standing in one place and looking at the camera. On one song I only made one mistake but when I watched the video later I saw that I was too far forward again and so my hair was over the top of the frame. Also the microphone is still not recording loud enough so I went to my settings and boosted it to +20dB from +10dB to see if that helps next time.

            In the late afternoon I took a bike ride. I passed some kind of odour pocket of cheesy garbage that smelled like vomit that had been fermenting inside of a foreskin for three months.

            There were a couple of fast riders that passed me on the Danforth. One of them had a child’s seat on the back of his bike. I’ve often noticed that people with child seats are quite fast when the child seats are empty. He was riding hunched over with his elbows in the air and really pushing it like it mattered for a while. I was imagining that he was late to pick up his kid from his estranged partner since it looked like anger was driving him forward. But he tuckered out after a while and so did the guy in front of him, so I passed them both.

            When you’re nearsighted, sometimes rubber mats thrown out on the street look like road kill until you’re closer.

            I went back to Woodbine, then north to O’Connor, across Taylor Creek and this time turned right on Glenwood Crescent. The houses are various degrees of middle class and very few of them are the same as any other. I went as far as Rexleigh and then turned back. I’ll follow Rexleigh next time from where it starts going south off of St Clair.

            On the way back I stopped at the second Starbucks because that’s the one that had the washroom without the punch codes. But now they have punch codes as well. I think it was 7569.

            I had no money to stop at the supermarket so I just went straight home. I drank a litre of pineapple flavoured coconut water when I got in and it was very thirst quenching but I chased it with a tall glass of water from a tap that I’d kept running for half an hour.

            I saw David in the hall and talked to him about the plates that he wants me to sell. I wanted to tell him that no one online is selling them for more than $40. I thought he’d be disappointed but it didn’t seem to matter. I wouldn’t be surprised that if I sell them he’ll refuse to take a cut.

            Later he knocked on my door and gave me a bottle of Wolf Blass Black Label 1995 Shiraz South Australian wine. I think it’s worth about $100. I still haven’t opened the other bottle he gave me. I guess I could clean up my place and throw a party.

            I watched an episode of Maverick that started with James Garner’s character stumbling out of the Wyoming desert onto the doorstep of a ranch owned by a titled British family. They nurse him back to health but the butler burns, along with his clothes, the $1000 bill that Maverick keeps pinned inside his coat. With no money to buy a horse he goes to work for the family but finds himself to be a lousy ranch hand. The three family members: the marquis, his nephew and his daughter, Ellen, decide to use Maverick as a guide while they go on safari. Unfortunately though they are robbed by bandits and are left with nothing in the desert. The marquis insists that they walk home through the desert, which Maverick tells them would take ten days and that they would not survive. He tells them they have a better chance by walking three in the opposite direction to where he is sure the bandits have their hideout in the mountains. The marquis refuses and so Maverick goes along with them until nightfall, at which point he takes his knife out and puts his foot down. He takes charge and declares martial law, insisting that for their own good they will have to go with him. They eat rattlesnake and get water from a cactus and they survive. They find the bandits and manage to kill them all in a spectacular shootout after stealing half their guns while they slept.

            The actress, Joan Elan, looked something like Bjork. She never achieved much success in the film or television industry. It’s interesting how that works out.