Herbie Mann

            I was wide-awake at 4:30 on Thursday and so I just got up half an hour early. I decided to use the extra time to shower and shave and so I only started yoga seven minutes earlier than usual. I started to feel around that point that I might be coming down with another cold. After half an hour or so it was fairly obvious that I was in the early stages of my second virus of this fall.

            I started studying at almost exactly 6:00, mostly looking at my lecture notes and doing some reading online on specific points that I’d written down.

            By 7:45 I was tired again and so I went to bed and slept for an hour. After that I studied until 10:00 and then got ready to leave to write my exam.

            As I rode to class I did an exaggerated impersonation of Elvis singing Blue Christmas. The secret to imitating Elvis is to pretend that you have swallowed a deep fried peanut butter, cheese, sardine and pickle sandwich whole but that it’s stuck halfway down your Presley and you are trying to cough it back up while singing at the same time.

            When I got to the classroom Professor Weisman was already handing out our test booklets. We started at 11:10 and the exam ran till noon. There was a choice of two essay topics and we had to compare two authors in our essays. I picked the one about the still, sad music of humanity, which is a phrase coined by Wordsworth and so I compared William Wordsworth and William Blake. I said that Blake’s “Songs of Experience” could be seen as a parallel to Wordsworth’s still sad music, although Wordsworth is more forgiving. Experience and hearing the still, sad music both come from maturity. Certainly the very title of “Songs of Experience” suggests sad music as well except that Blake is doing the singing. I didn’t realize until after the exam was over that I’d neglected to use textual examples to support my argument and so I’ll probably lose marks for that.

            After the exam I rode directly to my doctor’s office and I was more than half an hour early for my appointment and so I just sat and wrote my account of my day so far in my lecture notebook.

            I saw Dr.Shechtman a little after 13:00. He didn’t think that the problem with my banged shin was anything worse than a bone bruise but he said it was going to take a while to heal. He's been my physician for 35 years and he’s never given me a wrong diagnosis, so I’ll take his word for it and stop worrying.

            He looked at my toenail and assured me that though there’s just a quarter each of clear nail growing out of the bases of my big toenails that the fungus is dead and the discolouration will gradually be gone each time I clip it off but it will take about a year.

            I asked him to renew my prescription for the cortisone cream that I use for psoriasis on my elbows and knees, since what I have won’t last the winter. He had me step into his office while he wrote it out and I put my socks and shoes back on. I asked him how he was and he began to complain that his shoulder had suddenly started bothering him that morning, along with his back. I said, “You exercise, don’t you?” He answered, "Not really. My wife and I go for walks, but that’s about it.” I've seen his wife. She's an attractive woman. I said, "But didn't you mention that you rode a bike?" I'm pretty sure he'd said once that he belonged to a riding club and that they’d go on excursions for a day. You know, those lines of about ten cyclists in spandex and helmets and with expensive bikes that one sees on weekends. He told me with some sadness in his voice that he hasn’t done that for quite a while either, and added, "I used to play baseball too until I blew out my right shoulder!" When I'd asked him how he was I hadn't expected to end up feeling like I was his doctor.

            On my way home I stopped at Freshco where the red grapes were a little soft, so I got some green ones, which weren’t much better. I also bought some raspberries, some cheddar cheese (why do I bother to add the word cheese? I don’t think there are cheddar rutabagas) and a jar of honey.

            It was a relief to be free from school for a month, though I will probably use my holiday to do all of next term’s reading. My relief was somewhat haunted by the fact that I’d forgotten to include textual examples in my in-class essay, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.

            Before going home I dropped my prescription off at Vina Pharmacy, but told them I’d pick it up the next day.

            I went out and bought a can of Creemore. I usually don’t drink beer on Thursdays but since I’d skipped my Wednesday beer to study, I made up for it.

            After a late lunch I took a late siesta.

            That night I ate my last three pork ribs and watched the last episode of the first season of Peter Gunn. As usual, the plot was pretty thin but they pulled out all the stops by bringing back some of the quirky characters from previous episodes. This story begins with two hoods breaking into an artist’s studio. It’s weird that all criminal activity in this show is done by guys in suits and hats. Aren’t burglars supposed to wear black so as to blend in with the night? They’ve come to steal a painting but Luther, the artist wakes up and grabs a gun that he seems to have been sleeping with and confronts the thieves. But the crooks did something clever that I’d never seen in a crime show. The taller one puts up his hands in surrender and steps in front of the shorter one. Then the shorter one pokes his gun out from under the armpit of the guy in front and kills the painter. Next we see Gunn in his apartment and the doorbell rings. An attractive blonde woman in early middle age has come to hire him. This is the first time he’s seen a client outside of Mother’s. The woman won’t give her name but tells Gunn that the painting that the thieves stole from Luther was of her. She does not say so but the implication is that it’s a nude portrait. She says, "Luther and I were …” She needs possession of the painting because her husband is a public figure and the scandal would destroy him. At Mother's, Edie is singing "Just You, Just Me" by Jesse Greer and Raymond Klages. 

            Gunn goes to Luther’s studio where a beautiful beatnik abstract expressionist painter in black named Sabrina is standing on her head. He says he’s looking for a Luther painting and she directs him to Wilbur. She tries to get Gunn to stand on his head but he says, “My change will fall out!” At Wilbur’s, Herbie Mann is playing the flute (although he is uncredited) accompanied only by a man in dark glasses gently playing two finger cymbals, though he plays them with both hands as if they were large. 

            During the solo, Wilbur’s silent girlfriend Capri goes into a trance and begins to dance to the music. It isn’t very interesting dancing though, just a lot of shaking and bending forward. Wilbur tells him that two men named Shaw and Maddox had been trying get hold of Luther’s painting before he died. Gunn goes to the warehouse district and knocks on a door where he is let inside to talk with Shaw and Maddox. They say they have no painting until he offers them $10,000. He finds out the woman’s name is Elsa Keyes. He says he’ll be back with the money. Gunn meets with Elsa and finds out that she is the wife of a state senator. Gunn goes to see the little pool shark named Babby, who has a special platform on wheels on which he stands when he’s shooting. He has appeared on Peter Gunn a few times and there is a signature piece of comical music that Henry Mancini has composed that always plays when Babby is on screen.  

            Babby tells Gunn that Frankie Barber is the one looking to buy the painting. Gunn goes back to Shaw and Maddox. They disarm him and take him in where Frankie is not happy to see him. Shaw and Maddox tell them to start bidding and Gunn says $10,000. They go back and forth until Gunn says $20,000 and Frankie pulls a gun. He shoots both Shaw and Maddox and runs out of the warehouse with the painting, firing backward at Gunn as he leaves. Gunn is still unarmed. He jumps Frankie’s convertible as he’s driving away. They struggle as the car careens down the alley and finally crashes into a pile of boxes. The cops arrive just as Gunn is knocking Frankie out and then tells them to take him away. Gunn fishes the portrait out of Frankie’s car, unrolls it to have a look and then walks away with it. It would have been funnier if the portrait had been an unrecognizable abstract expressionist painting of Elsa’s "soul" all along.

            Elsa was played by Hungarian actor Hanna Hertelendy.

            Sabrina was played by Jackie Joseph, who played Audrey in the original Little Shop of Horrors. She was also president of the Hollywood Dumpettes, a ladies group for divorced wives. 

            Again, Capri was played by Capri Candela and there is still nothing I could find out about her besides her appearances on Peter Gunn other than that she played a dancer in one episode of One Step Beyond.