Don't Shoot the Man in the Moon

            Sunday was a very hot day. I washed a pair of shorts and three undershirts and put them out on the deck to dry. It didn’t take very long.

            I always wait until 17:00 to take my bike ride because the sunlight before that, especially on a day this hot would be too much to bear. I was sweating right away but it didn’t take long before I was absolutely greasy.

            Bloor Street was closed from Avenue Road to Bay Street for the annual Fathers Day Yorkville Exotic Car Show. I got off my bike to walk to Bay and found that it is definitely hotter to be outside and to travel on foot in this weather because one is not creating a breeze. I was very glad to get back on my velo and ride.

            There wasn’t a lot of other cycle traffic. It consisted mostly of mad dogs like me and food delivery riders working for either Uber or Foodora.

            I rode up Victoria Park again to Southmead Rd and turned right. One block in it forks into three directions. Last time I’d gone south but this time I took the middle, which was Sundridge Drive, and took that to Pharmacy.

            On the way back there was another box of books in the same location as the day before, or maybe it was the same box with different books, plus a container of pharmaceuticals, which I quickly dropped. The books were a little more interesting than the previous batch. There was a complete, illustrated Sherlock Holmes and a couple of interesting books about popular music. I’d put those three on the sidewalk at my feet with the intention of later putting them into my backpack and was looking through the rest, when I suddenly saw that there were cockroaches crawling around the box. I just left everything where it was and got back on my bike, very glad that I hadn’t put any of the books into my backpack.

            It was already much cooler, though still very warm on my way back. On Yonge Street I could see from College that Dundas was still closed off, so I took College to Bay, went down to Queen and then home. When I got there I decided to take Homer’s Iliad, which I’d found in the same location as those other books on the previous day, outside on the street. I was worried that it might have roach eggs inside. It looked pretty clean but it’s better to be safe than sorry, especially since my place has been cockroach free for a couple of months.

            For dinner I made pizza with pasta sauce and old cheddar on the last of my tortillas and had it with beer while watching two episodes of Dobie Gillis.

            In the first story, Dobie’s mother is on a contest kick and enters any and every one she comes across. The only one she wins is a “Why I’d Like A Date With Merilee Maribou Contest” and for this one she entered Dobie’s name. Zelda sees this as Dobie’s big break to make it in Hollywood. In the park she, Dobie and Maynard rehearse a song together for him to sing for Merilee. Zelda is actually playing the guitar while Maynard plays percussion on a trash can lid with a broken evergreen branch and they both do backup vocals. It actually sounds pretty good.

On the day of the date though Dobie is told he will only have eight minutes with Merilee but he ends up with just a few seconds with nobody having time to listen to his song. Merilee Maribou, who appears to be an over the top parody of Marilyn Monroe, without the brains, was played by Joyce Jameson, who was apparently the exact opposite of the dumb blonde she was typecast as. She was a talented comedian, impressionist and also did a ventriloquist act with an invisible dummy.

The second story shows Dobie and Maynard after graduation. They don’t know which direction to take. Their former teacher recommends that they take an aptitude test to assess what type of profession would fit their abilities. Each of the boys is assigned a different psychologist to test them and each boy drives his respective psychologist nuts. For every word association and Rorschach test Dobie answers “girls”. Maynard is given a hearing test and his psychologist discovers that Maynard can hear frequencies that only dogs can hear, with a beat. In the end Dobie decides to enlist in the army and Maynard follows his friend.