Self Portraits

            I kind of goofed off a little too much on the internet on Thursday morning before finally taking a shower and riding down to Freshco in the early afternoon. But it had been raining during my wasting of time and when I went out the sun broke through, so I felt rewarded for my lack of ambition.

            At the supermarket I got pears, bananas, four bags of grapes, Bavarian sandwich bread, coffee, lots of yogourt and petroleum jelly.

            After lunch I took a siesta and when I got up I took advantage of the western light and took some photos in the mirror using my Davidson tripod. The main point was to take pictures of the tripod for my blog but I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone. It’s so much easier doing self-portraits with a mirror and a tripod because I can see my expression. I had to clean the mirror in the area that I was shooting though.

            I watched an Alfred Hitchcock Hour teleplay starring Christopher Lee. He plays a European actor named Karl Jorla who is discovered by US director Max Rubini while watching footage of a German film about a satanic cult that raises Jorla’s character from the dead for him to be their priest. At the end of the film they sacrifice him again and he dies. Jorla’s look and presence on the screen compel Rubini to track Jorla down and to bring him to Hollywood to be in a horror film that he is making. When Jorla arrives he is unpleasantly surprised that Rubini wants him to star in the movie and that they expect him to be in publicity photos. He explains that the film they had seen was made by a real secret satanic cult and the movie was never meant to be shown to the public. He warns that the cult will try to kill him if they find out that through him they are being exposed. Rubini and his people think that Jorla is being paranoid but when the actor receives a telegram informing him that the director of the film about the cult has just been strangled to death in Paris and branded with the sign of Satan, they put a guard on him. He goes to rest in his dressing bungalow. The guard checks all the rooms to make sure it is safe and then leaves Jorla alone. He lies on the couch and while he is sleeping, an assassin with a knife emerges from a hidden place and approaches Jorla. He wakes up just in time and struggles with the killer. He fends him off for while but the assassin gains the upper hand and is about to finish Jorla when the guard comes crashing through the window to beat off the attacker. From this time on Jorla refuses to stay at the hotel room that the studio has rented for him, nor will he tell them where he sleeps at night. He explains that he does not even know where he will go and unless he keeps his location random and spontaneous he will be a goner. Every night he takes a different route and sometimes several means of transportation to find a place to sleep.

            The day comes when the movie is scheduled to begin shooting, but Jorla has been missing for three days. They begin shooting around him with the lead actress who is doing a scene where she invokes the devil. Suddenly the doors of a tomb open and standing inside in the mist is Jorla. In a droning voice he intones, “1 7 2 5 9 toe pan ga!” then the doors close. The crew rushes into the tomb but Jorla is nowhere to be found. They review the film footage that they’d just shot but Jorla does not show up, even though everyone saw him. They try to figure out what he said and finally decipher it as 17259 Topanga Canyon. They go to that address and find his branded body.

            Christopher Lee had a powerful presence on screen and striking features. I also learned that he was an operatic singer in bass. YouTube is full of the good and bad songs he did. The most famous is “Name Your Poison” for the movie Captain Invincible.