Progress

            On Tuesday morning it was raining heavily when I got up and it was a lot cooler than usual. Later on the sun came out and it warmed up considerably.

During song practice I didn’t notice much difference in having my E and B strings the same gauge. Maybe the B will break sooner but I don’t know. The B should be a 17 rather than a 13 but the difference is small. My guitar actually stayed in tune better than it does habitually.

            I worked out a few more chords to “J’suis snob” by Boris Vian.

            I started memorizing “Puisque je te le dis” by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I worked on my journal.

            I moved my left speaker and washed the section of my living room floor in front of the left side of my mantle extending outward about a meter and ten boards wide. On the next session I’ll extend that strip a little further into part of the most worn section of the floor because that’s where the wheels of my computer chair have been rolling around for two decades.

            For lunch I had roasted potato and leek soup from a carton with potato chips.

            I did some exercises and took a bike ride to Ossington and Dundas, down to Queen and home.

            I cut up a chicken that I’d been thawing all day, sprinkled it with salt and cayenne and roasted it.

            I worked on a page of my bedbug diary. I still haven’t decided if it will be a poetry collection or a work of prose.

            I had nine tiny potatoes, broccoli, a chicken leg and gravy for dinner. Pieces of chicken always taste so much better when I cut the chicken up myself.

            I watched two stories from “The Veil” TV show.

            The first was kind of a “Rear Window” story with a supernatural twist. Edward Paige comes home from work and begins to make dinner. He looks out the window and sees a burglar committing a robbery in the apartment across from his in the next building. The tenant comes from another room and the thief hides. She discovers the money from her purse has been stolen. He grabs her from behind, she bites him to get free and then he hits her and kills her with his flashlight. Edward immediately goes to the police and tells them what happened. Two detectives accompany him to the woman’s apartment but they find it empty. In fact they learn that no one has lived there for a few months. Edward is taken to a psychiatric hospital. Shortly after he leaves the woman that he saw murdered stops in front of Edward’s building. His landlady is on the front steps and the woman asks her for a certain address. A few days later Edward is released from Belleview. Meanwhile the woman that he saw murdered has rented the apartment across from his and furnished it exactly as he’d described it. She puts on a cha-cha record and dances her way to the other room. The burglar arrives just as Edward had seen before and he kills the woman. When the same detectives that Edward had spoken with previously discover the murder exactly as Edward had described it they suspect that Edward had planned it all along. That didn’t explain how he knew that a woman that was in Chicago when he’d seen her in New York was going to be murdered or how he had described every piece of furniture that she was later to buy from three different stores. Edward goes through the police mug shots and remembers that the killer had a cauliflower ear. They pick up the killer and Edward tells the cops to look for a bite mark on his arm. The killer confesses.

            The murdered woman was played by Vici Raaf.

            The second story takes place in India. Santha Naidu began remembering a previous life when she was five years old. Now that she is a young woman she has full recollection that she is Sita Vernoy, the wife of Armand Vernoy, who is now in his sixties. She died after giving birth to Armand’s son Krishna who is now one year older than she is. Krishna is hoping to travel to study in the United States but Armand has invested unwisely and cannot afford it. He misses his wife who was always far better with money than he. The reincarnated Sita travels to Armand’s home in another city and presents herself to he and Krishna. At first Armand doesn’t believe but Santha knows details that only Sita would know. When she learns that they need money for Krishna’s education she reveals where in the house she had hidden the priceless jewels that Armand had given her many years ago. Armand believes she must be Sita reincarnated but does not know how to accept this much younger woman as his wife and so she leaves.

            Not a single person in this story was played by an Indian actor.

            Santha was played by Lee Torrance.

            Santha’s mother was played by Iphigenie Castiglioni.

            Krishna was played by George Hamilton in one of his first roles. I wonder if this part inspired his famous tan.

Katherine Squire

            This is the beginning of the seventh year of this journal.

            On Monday morning about two thirds of my way through song practice my high E string broke but I didn’t bother interrupting rehearsal to change it. For any other string I would have had to but since there’s a low E the chords are still complete. It just sounds a little dull.

I worked out a few more of the chords for “J’suis snob” by Boris Vian.

            I finished posting the chords for and my translation of “Encore Lui” by Serge Gainsbourg. The next song I’ll learn will be Gainsbourg’s “Puisque je te le dis” or (Just Because I Tell You).

            There was no time to work on my living room floor today.

            I wanted to call my doctor’s office to make an appointment for my annual physical but my phone gave me a message “Network not available for voice calls”. I figured that meant I had to pay for next month’s phone service so I rode over to Freedom Mobile to pay it. When I got home I got the same message, so I went back to Freedom and the clerk restarted my phone to fix it.

            I called Dr Shechtman’s office and asked for an appointment for my physical. The receptionist surprised me by offering me tomorrow. I had to remind her that OHIP requires that the physicals be a year apart. My last appointment was August 24 but that’s a Saturday this year. I asked for August 26 but she could only give me the afternoon. I told her that I wanted a morning appointment because I’d be fasting. She suggested that I just do the blood work the next day but I told her that would mean I’d have to ride downtown two days in a row. She gave me 9:15 on August 28.

            I had cannellini beans with green salsa for lunch and some yogourt with honey.

            I did some exercises for my hip in the afternoon and then took a bike ride to Ossington and Dundas, down to Queen and then home.

            I had been looking forward to getting some things down on the computer but when I got home I discovered that Windows had hijacked my computer for a major Windows 10 update without my permission.

For the next two hours I had to occupy myself with non-digital activities. I cut a leather patch and sewed it onto one of my leaking ankle weights and I put a new E string on my guitar. It occurred to me while installing the string that when I’d changed my B string a couple of weeks ago I’d mistakenly used a 13 gauge string and so now both my E and my B are 13 gauge.

I had nine tiny potatoes, broccoli, my last two drumsticks and some gravy for dinner while watching two “The Veil" stories.

The first begins with Marie telling her lover Edmond that she is leaving him to marry his publisher, Charles. As a parting gift she gives him a crystal ball, not realizing it really works. Every time he looks into it he sees what Marie is doing at that moment and she has the feeling that she is being watched. Charles is going away on a business trip and asks Edmond to visit Marie. Edmond sees that Marie has already taken a lover whom she sees every day. When Charles comes back he comes first to Edmond to announce that he has signed a contact for two more of his books. He asks how Marie is but Edmond is evasive. Charles begins to suspect Edmond of having an affair with her and so Edmond is forced to take Charles to the studio where Maria is visiting her lover. Charles steps into the studio and one assumes he kills them both. Edmond goes home and smashes the crystal ball.

The second story is about the Haney family and their farm. James Haney left the farm in his teens, having stolen all of his father's savings. His older brother John had stayed behind to help maintain the farm and it did well. Now the father is on his deathbed and James returns hoping to get something from the will. The father dies and the will is read by the family lawyer, played by Boris Karloff. The will leaves the farm to John and Emma, his mother is happy about that because she knows John will take care of her. But James pulls from his pocket a later and therefore more valid will that leaves the property to him. He plans to sell the farm and put his mother in an old folk home. A court case ensues but it looks like James is going to win. James kicks John out of the house but he sneaks back to get some things and sees his father’s ghost, which tells him nothing but, “Genesis 27”. Genesis 27 is the story of two brothers Esau and Jacob competing for their dying father’s blessing. Jacob cheats and gets the blessing and the birthright intended for Esau. John figures that his father is talking about a family Bible. He eventually finds his father’s Bible and between the pages of Genesis 27 he finds a more valid will.

Emma was played by Katherine Squire, who was more successful on stage than on screen, but she appeared on several popular TV shows and had recurring roles on a couple of soap operas. She often acted on stage and screen with her husband George Mitchell.

Conquerors Always Think Those They Rule Are Magical

            Conquering peoples and colonists always think of the people over whom they have power as possessing secret magical powers. Indigenous people, Africans, Indians, Middle Eastern people and East Asian people are all given mystical abilities in the imaginations of their conquerors. This is how the subconscious mind deals with power imbalances. It invents unseen power in order to counteract the guilt of conquest. Someday when white people are no longer in power they will also be seen as wise shaman and will be presented as the noble teachers of heroes in movies and stories.

On Sunday morning I started working out the chords for “J’suis snob” by Boris Vian. I only managed the first two, which are D7 and G7.

I finished working out the chords for “Encore lui” by Serge Gainsbourg. I’ll start posting it on my translation blog on Monday.

I washed another section of my living room floor. Now during yoga my mat will be entirely on the bright part, although when I’m stretched out my feet still touch the dark area. I ca safely say that I’ve cleaned half of the living room floor. Next I’ll tackle the part where my left stereo speaker stands between the left side of my dresser and the north end of the mantle. That’s an area ten floorboards wide. It’ll take three sessions for me to get back to the couch and then another three to make another clean strip leading to the bookshelf that holds my stereo. Then I think it would be a good time to finally elevate the shelves so that my left speaker will fit on the bottom.

I had a toasted cheese, tomato and cucumber sandwich for lunch.

I did some exercises and took my usual bike ride to Ossington and Dundas.

I notice there’s a tattoo shop on Dundas with a sign saying that it does tattoos in “both styles”.  I couldn’t find any list online that narrows tattoos down to two styles.

I went down Queen and then home.

I got caught up on my journal.

I had a fried egg with toast and a beer for dinner while watching two episodes of The Veil. This series so far is not as good as I’d expected it to be.

In the first story Captain Elwood returns home to Massachusetts after a long voyage at sea. His ship had been infested with poisonous snakes and two of his men had died. Instead of going home he sends his first mate to take his luggage home and goes directly to the tavern where a banquet will be held in his honour. His wife comes in the back door of the tavern to buy a bottle of wine for her husband’s dinner. When the captain sees her he accuses her of spying on him. In frustration she grabs the tablecloth on the banquet table and pulls it, sending everything crashing to the floor. At home she feels guilty and begs him to forgive her. She begins to unpack his trunk and a snake bites her.

Later she is in bed and the captain has drawn out the poison and called the doctor. While she’s resting he goes back to the tavern and learns from the innkeeper that the widow Smith had just inherited 20,000 pounds from her late husband. He reminds the captain that she's has always been partial to him, so too bad he's married. The captain immediately goes home and invites Ruth on his next voyage. She has been neglected for so long she is immediately grateful. But while she is at sea he begins to slowly poison her tea. As she gets increasingly more sick the first mate doesn’t understand why the captain has set course for Jamaica rather than the nearest port where there is a doctor. Ruth dies and the captain pretends to be in grief as the widow Smith consoles him. He attends a banquet for his former first mate that has just become a captain. Suddenly the tablecloth pulls out by itself exactly as Ruth had done it. People talk of Ruth’s ghost but the captain says it’s nonsense. He tries to reset the table but it flips over by itself. Later the captain’s ship is wrecked on a calm sea and everyone survives but the captain.

Boris Karloff played the captain.

Ruth was played by Kay Stewart who was in the first issue of Life Magazine when it did a feature about her being the first female cheerleader at a major university. I’d forgotten that cheerleading used to be an exclusively male activity. Times have changed.

Bessie the barmaid was played by Eleonor Lucky.

The second story takes place in Italy. Karloff plays Dr. Carlo, the physician for a small village of peasants who depend on and trust him. Carlo’s son Angelo arrives to visit. He is now a successful surgeon in a city hospital. He wants his father to retire and move to the city with him but he says the villagers could not live without him. Carlo goes out that night to look in on one of his regular elderly patients. While he is gone a young man named Tony arrives looking for the doctor because his little sister Francesca is dying. Angelo goes out in the storm with Tony to look after the girl. But when he tells the family that he needs to operate they refuse to let him because they want the real doctor to come. Angelo sends his driver Guiseppe to fetch Carlo. Meanwhile Carlo returns home from his house call and falls asleep in his chair. When Carlo arrives at the home of the sick girl he is silent but his presence gives the family confidence to let Angelo give the child the simple tracheotomy that she needed to save her life. Angelo tells his father to go home while he finishes up. When Angelo leaves the house he finds Guiseppe trying to fix the broken down car. He walks home in the storm and finds his father sleeping in his chair. He tells Angelo that he had been there all along.

The mother of the little girl was played by Elvira Curci.

The grandmother was played by Inez Phalange.

Francesca was played by Lauren Perreau, the younger sister of Gigi Perreau who was the drama teacher of the former Meghan Markle

The Full Time Prison of Part Time Work

            On Saturday morning during song practice I watched the squirrel traffic along the power lines. Some squirrels cross to the south side of Queen to look for food and others traverse to the north. This morning one black squirrel went to the south side but after he made the jump from the wire to the pole he was attacked by a brown squirrel. The chase took the form of a spiral up and down the pole. If they’d been covered in wet paint, one red and one white they could have created a barbershop pole. The black one finally escaped to the wire and came back to the north side.

I continued to hunt down and cut and paste into a document different versions of the chords for “J’suis Snob” by Boris Vian. I found four versions and three of them are basically the same with slight variations such as a G chord instead of a G7 and so on. Next I’ll sit down with my guitar and see which, if any of them, work.

            I finished memorizing “Encore Lui” (Him Again) by Serge Gainsbourg. The speaker in the song is describing her walk home along various streets of Paris. She establishes in the beginning that a man is following her and at the end of each verse he is still behind. In the last verse she has rushed into her apartment and slipped into bed. She turns and he is there. There are three possibilities. One is that she is the victim of a predator. Another is that she is being followed by thoughts about a certain man. The one I went with was that this man was with her all along and they are lovers. Since this song was not popular I could not find the chords on line. I started working them out and I’ll probably finish them on Sunday morning.

            The food bank line-up was at the long end of the month because the social services cheques hadn’t been issued yet. Graham was standing at the end of the line and explained that he was a little further ahead but was holding Veronica's place while she went down the street to get pizza from the church people. He said he'd never seen someone with a rollator move so fast as she did when she heard about the pizza. She came back with two.

            Graham said that he’d probably be coming to the food bank for two more weeks because he wouldn’t get paid until after that at his new job.

            He said that on the way to his first day of work he found a dime. On the next day he found another dime and on the next one more. He didn’t find any thing on the fourth day but on the fifth he found two dimes and a nickel.

            It turns out that Veronica has done similar work in the past to what Graham is doing now, which is working with spread sheets in Excel. Veronica said she had used them to coordinate contract workers for an agency.

Graham told a story about having worked in a warehouse on contract through an agency. The company planned to take him on as an employee after the contract expired but just before the expiration the agency switched him to a different company. They didn’t want to lose their cut of his paycheque by letting him move on to a more secure position.

That reminded me of when I was working as a dishwasher in the cafeteria of Canadian Marconi in Montreal back in the mid-70s. After three months I would have been eligible to join the union but just before that they suddenly came to me and informed me that it was my last day. I went to the office to pick up my final paycheque, then I went back to the kitchen, grabbed a big stack of plates, smashed them on the floor and left.

The system seems to be designed to keep the poor working class in a full time prison of part time minimum wage work making it impossible to take time off to look for a better job or living space.

In Parkdale, every few blocks there is a barrel sized planter with flowers growing. I noticed that there was now one near where we were standing just west of the crosswalk leading to Sorauren and Queen. There’s a taller centrepiece with vertical orange-red flowers surrounded by various colours of blossoms that hang over the edge. The beauty of the display was impeded by an orange and black construction sign that was leaning against it.

At one point Veronica looked up at the sky and started talking about being a Christian and that everything in the universe is hers but she just doesn’t want it. I said, "Pardon me?" but she said she was just talking to herself. Then she said, "A lot of people think that Christians are weak minded but that’s not really true.” I wasn’t going to shatter her faith. What would be the point? If someone lives by belief and you take that belief away from them they just attach themselves to another belief. Faith is impenetrable to logic. I only argue with religious people if they try to convert me.

Marlena gave out the numbers and I got 31. I was wondering where the old man was and hoping he wouldn’t get shafted this week but then I saw him with number 12. Half an hour later he came out with his shopping bag so heavy that he dragged it along the sidewalk behind him as he headed east.

Downstairs the big guy behind the desk informed me that my Swiss Gear backpack is the same kind as his. Time will tell if it will last as long as my old Heys backpack of which I’d had three over the period of a ten-year warranty. Heys didn’t like me much when I came back for a second replacement.

The most visible item on the first set of shelves was a 397-gram bag of kettle potato chips. One bag will last me a long time but they’re nice to have around.

Larissa reached for a 175-gram bag of Oreo coconut cream, fudge dipped thin bites. She told me, “They tell me that they are very good" so I let her put it in my bag. She also gave me two hockey pucks of Laura Natural soap. Their website address was carved into each bar but I think they just use a Facebook page now. Based on the colours of the pucks and the names they have to match those colours it looks like I got their calendar petals and their summer sweet pea.

There were lots of canned beans and there was a kind I’d never tried, so I grabbed a can of cannellini beans. According to a food site they have a fluffy texture and a slightly nutty flavour.

There was a choice between a carton of cranberry cocktail and a little six-pack of 100 ml bottles of Frizz blond soda from Italy. The little bottles of pop were attractive and so I took them, but it was a mistake. I didn't read on the label that the drink is a non-alcoholic aperitif. Since it’s an aperitif and meant to be served before a meal it’s bitter in order to stimulate the appetite. This particular brand seems to be an unsuccessful fizzy alcohol-free attempt at simulating the flavour of vermouth.

Valdene the food bank manager was taking Angie’s usual place at the refrigerated section. She handed me a tower made from a 750-gram container of yogourt, a 500-gram container of 1% cottage cheese and two 125-gram quarters of garlic butter. I handed her back the yogourt and she asked if it was yogourt in general or if I wanted a particular kind. I told her I was partial to Greek yogourt and she turned to the fridge behind her and gave me six small containers of Oikos mixed berry Greek yogourt. The food bank is moving up in the world if you start to be able to choose from more than one kind of yogourt. I didn’t take any eggs, generic frozen ground chicken or hot dogs. Valdene tried to sell me on some meatless meatballs, while at the same time assuring me that she wasn’t trying to sell me on them. She said she's not into that kind of thing but they are delicious. I passed on them because I didn’t want to pass gas all weekend.

Sylvia mocked disappointment when she asked if I was going to pass on her potatoes. I explained that I still have some that she gave me before. I took four tomatoes, one of which was almost too soft. She gave me a very healthy looking big bunch of radishes and from the “take what you want” section near the door I grabbed a bunch of broccoli.

Although the haul was meat-poor and fruit-poor as usual, it wasn’t a bad haul as far as dairy and vegetables are concerned. The big bag of kettle chips was a good score as well.

I took my food home to put away and then went down to No Frills. I bought two bags of cherries. The black sable grapes are back after a two-month absence and so I got two bags of those as well. I grabbed a pack of six pork chops for $5.80. I only took one container of yogourt. Everything else I picked up were non-food items: mouthwash, garbage bags and a lint roller.

I have noticed myself making mistakes in money transactions lately. Sometimes I give too little and sometimes too much. This time the bill was $55. 45. I had counted it out right before handing the money to the cashier but then I gave her two $20s, a $5 and three toonies but forgot to give her the other $5 until she pointed out that I was short.

I rode west on King. The air was fragrant coming off the lake. I turned right when King met Queen and went east without staying for the wedding. There was no line-up this time when I passed the food bank again.

I had three corn crackers with cheese for lunch and a sliver of apple pie.

I worked on my journal.

I did some exercises in the afternoon and then continued writing about my morning.

I heated a burger for dinner and had it on a toasted bagel with tomato, cucumber, ketchup, mustard, relish and hot sauce. I ate it with a glass of Creemore while watching

the first two official episodes of The Veil. It was hosted by Boris Karloff and he played a major supporting character in each story.

            The first story, set in the Victorian era, begins with druggist Hart Bosworth putting things away as he prepares to close his apothecary shop for the night. A woman walks in, pulls a derringer and kills him. Meanwhile on a ship bound from England to Paris, Hart’s brother George has a vision of his brother’s murder. At the next port he takes a ship back to England. George first goes to his fiancée Julie, who we recognize as hart’s murderer. She tells him someone he knows has already been arrested for the crime, but although George didn’t see the killer’s face he did see the hands and back and knows Albert Ketch is not the murderer. Julie urges him not to tell the police about his vision because they will think he is insane. He goes to the drug store where the police are still investigating. Karloff plays the bumbling police sergeant in charge of the investigation and Patrick MacNee, the future John Steed of The Avengers TV series, plays the somewhat smarter constable. George tells them that he knows that Albert didn’t commit the murder but that he can’t say how he knows. Later when George talks again with Julie he tells her that he is going to sell the shop and they can leave and get married. She protests that she doesn’t want to leave because now that they have the shop they can establish themselves. In an unlikely matter of fact statement she says she didn’t go through the trouble of killing his brother just to pack up and start over again. George goes for the police.

            Julie was played by Jennifer Raine.

            The second story was set in the 1950s. John Prescott is driving home to Boston when he stops to help a woman named Lila whose sports car has broken down. He finds she’s only out of gas and drives her to town. They stop for a drink but the bartender is looking at her suspiciously and when he goes to the phone to call someone named Morgan Debs she wants to leave. She says for him to drop her at a service station and to meet her that night at Lookout Point. She meets him there but a car pulls up. She says it’s Morgan Debs. John goes to confront Debs but after talking with him for a while he turns and sees Lila is gone. Debs urges him to forget about it but he can’t. He goes back to the bar and forces the bartender to tell him Lila’s last name. It’s Kirby and he finds Lila’s home. Lila’s mother invites him in and tells him to wait in the study. Lila doesn’t come but Morgan Debs does. Debs turns out to be Lila’s uncle and he reveals to John that Lila has been dead for three years. Debs had met her to talk about her father’s estate but she was upset and drove away carelessly. Her car went over Lookout Point and crashed.

            Lila was played by Eve Brent, who played Jane in the movie “Tarzan’s Fight for Life” and in one of the Tarzan TV series.

            Morgan Debs was played by Boris Karloff.

Vampira

            On Friday morning I started looking for the chords for Boris Vian’s “J’suis Snob”. As I expected, several pages offer them. So far the ones that I looked at have basically he same ones.

            I memorized verses two and three of “Encore Lui” by Serge Gainsbourg. With only one verse left I should have it finished on Saturday morning and then I’ll start looking for the chords. I suspect that for this song I'll have to figure them out for myself.

            I washed another section of the living room floor near the couch, about the same length and half the width of what I’d done the day before because it was a particularly dark area.

            I washed two pairs of shorts and hung them on the deck.

            I had the other packet of Cajun chicken with pearl barley and kale for lunch.

            I did some exercises and took a bike ride to Ossington and Dundas and then home via Queen.

            I worked on synchronizing the video of my song practice from July 28, 2017 with the audio recording. I got it to the point where the two are slightly out of sync and producing an echo effect. I might keep it that way this time but I’ll have a listen in a couple of days to decide for sure.

            I worked on my journal.

            I had nine tiny potatoes, two drumsticks and some gravy and watched a 1954 episode of The Red Skelton Show that I’d downloaded because it guest starred Vampira, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney. Red started out with a silly skit as a weatherman. The skit with Vampira was sort of a sequel to his movie The Fuller Brush Man. He played his bumbling dumb character Clem Kadiddlehopper. We see a gothic mansion and Bela Lugosi plays a mad scientist with a werewolf assistant. Vampira is on a slab. Bela says that he needs a brain that’s never been used for his experiment and just then Clem arrives. When Clem sees Vampira on the slab she suddenly screams. Red says, “Don’t adlib kid, you’re among stars!” Clem is drugged by a giant hypodermic needle and the next scene is in the graveyard. There is a musical number with dancing see-through skeletons. Clem wakes up in the graveyard as Bela prepares to transfer his brain to a robot. Vampira arrives and coldly flirts with Clem. She has very few lines, but she asks, “Would you like to go out with me after you’re dead?” “We haven’t been introduced”. “I am Vampira the ghoul. I like you.” “You do?” "Yes, you're just my type. A red blooded American boy. Why don’t you invite me over sometime when you cut yourself shaving?” “Where do you live anyhow?" "Here." "Well, I like the way you keep your lawn!" "Do you think I'm attractive?" "Well, you have your points!" He asks how old she is and she says she’s 614 years old. He says, “That’s the awkward age!" She puts him in a trance and he collapses. They transfer his brain to a robot that’s supposed to know the secret of the universe but it's just as dumb as Clem is. Clem is a monster and he attacks Bela but the show announcer comes in and stops him, explaining that he’s strong because he’s been drinking Geritol all year. That's the show's sponsor.

            Vampira was born Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi in 1922. She claimed to have been born in Petsamo, Finland, but her mother was from the States and records show that her father arrived at Ellis Island in 1910. She was raised in Oregon and graduated from high school in 1940. She modelled for Vargas and Man Ray. She changed her name to Maila Nurmi, became a showgirl and a chorus line dancer and modelled for pin-ups. In 1953 she went to a costume party dressed as Morticia Addams from the New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams. A TV producer saw her there and hired her to introduce horror films on his station. She drew her inspiration from The Dragon Lady of the Terry and the Pirates comic strip and the evil queen from Snow White. As a publicity stunt she ran for Night Mayor of Hollywood on a platform of dead issues. She was the model for Maleficent in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. She was a friend of James Dean. In the early 60s she had an antiques boutique on Melrose called “Vampira’s Attic” where she also made and sold jewellery and clothing. She worked installing linoleum, making drapes and doing carpentry. She sued Cassandra Peterson for stealing her image for her Elvira character but she lost the suit. She recorded two singles with the punk band Satan’s Cheerleaders.

            Since Red Skelton was a short show I watched the “pilot” episode of “The Veil”. It wasn’t officially “The Veil” for the first story but rather a story within an ongoing series sponsored by Bell called Telephone Time. The story was about the voyage of the Vestris. The ship is halfway across the Atlantic on its way to England. Captain Norrich has brought his wife Mary along but she is troubled. An old man not of the crew appears in her cabin. He is wearing a hooded fur lined coat. As he approaches her she faints. When she comes to all that is left is a slate with the words “Steer north-west” written in no hand of anyone on the ship. She has dreams in which the figure again urges her to steer northwest. She becomes increasingly ill and keeps insisting that her husband change course, which would be dangerous because of ice flows. He finally agrees and finds an ice flow with survivors of a shipwreck. One of the survivors is Dr Pierre, the man that appeared in Mary’s cabin. He treats her and she recovers.

            Dr Pierre was played by Boris Karloff.

            The Vestris was based on a recounting of what was supposedly an actual historic event by Robert Dale Owen in his Spiritualist book “Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World”, published in 1860.

            Owen was born in Scotland but came to the US in his 20s. He became a congressman and helped found the Smithsonian. Although most Democrats were pro slavery in his era he was an abolitionist and a socialist.

Slim Gaillard

            On Thursday morning I finished memorizing “Je suis snob” by Boris Vian. It took so long because I only allocate ten minutes every morning to my Vian projects compared to an hour for Serge Gainsbourg. I memorized the first verse of “Encore Lui” by Gainsbourg.

            I washed another section of my living room floor. This time I just extended a bit the area that I’d cleaned the day before in front of the dresser and evened it out.

            For lunch I cooked a frozen meal of Cajun chicken with pearl barley and kale that I got at the food bank several weeks ago. It came in two pouches that I had to boil for fifteen minutes. The kale was in a pouch by itself and it stuck to the inside after it was cooked and so I had to pull it out with a fork. The chicken was okay but the barley tasted like health food and the kale tasted like kale.

            I did some exercises in the afternoon and took a bike ride to Ossington and Dundas. I went south on Ossington where there's a restaurant called "Salt". I assume it's for people with a rock-based diet.

            I stopped at Freshco on my way home. I bought three bags of cherries. The black and green grapes were very cheap but there was only one bag of black ones left. The rest had been pulled out of their bags and picked over. I got a pack of strawberries, a tomato, some extra old cheddar, and a container of Greek yogourt.

            Now that I’ve finished another round of editing my manuscript, while I’m waiting for more critiques from Albert Moritz I can get back to my other projects. I’d forgotten where I’d left off with my YouTube project and it took me half an hour of looking through my journal to learn that I’d started a Movie Maker project for “Jeunes femmes et vieux messieurs” just before I got my manuscript back from Albert. After finding it I only had time to shave five minutes off the audio, but I've probably got to take another five off to get it synchronized with the video.

            I had potatoes and two drumsticks with gravy and watched a Steve Allen Show from August 15, 1962.

There were a lot more stunts than on previous shows. The first twenty minutes of the show takes place in the parking lot outside the studio and Steve is taken by crane to a platform at the top of a flagpole where he hosts the show. There’s a piano up there and a bucket of salamis, each with a parachute attached and he drops them down to the audience. The first guest is a singer named Bill Carey who sings a song called “Sophia” that Steve wrote for Sophia Loren. “Sophia, beautiful Sophia, now at last I speak of the love in my heart. Sophia, now I run to tell you that my every dream is coming true all because of you …” It goes on but it’s not a very good song. There are cards from the audience asking questions and one woman gets to do a piano duet with Steve. There’s a great performance of two songs on piano and guitar by Slim Gaillard. He had extremely long fingers and played the first piece not only hands down but also with the back of his hands, his elbows and his foot. In his second number he played guitar and sang his song "Cement Mixer (Put-Ti Put-Ti)", which also features his own constructed language which called “Vout-o-Reenee" and for which he wrote a dictionary.

His most famous song is “Flat Foot Floogie (with a Floy Floy)", which was a big hit for Cab Calloway. After writing those songs he became a bomber pilot in WWII. After leaving the army air force he released a song about nuclear war called “Atomic Cocktail”. He spent the last eight years of his life in London.

He claimed that he was born in Cuba but researchers dispute that and conclude that he was actually from Alabama. He said that while travelling with his father at the age of twelve he was accidentally left behind on Crete where he lived for four years, getting work on ships and learning Greek and Arabic. At fifteen he came to the United States. He said that during Prohibition he drove a hearse transporting booze in a coffin for the Purple Gang.

He wrote the Hipster anthem “The Groove Juice Special (Opera in Vout). 

Jack Kerouac mentions him in On the Road: “We went to see Slim Gaillard in a little Frisco nightclub. Slim Gaillard is a tall, thin Negro with big, sad eyes who's always saying ‘Right oroonie’ and 'How bout a little bourbonaroonie'. In Frisco great eager crowds of young semi-intellectuals sat at his feet and listened to him on the piano, guitar and bongo drums. When he gets warmed up he takes off his undershirt and really goes. He does and says anything that comes into his head. He’ll sing ‘Cement Mixer, Put-Ti Put-Ti' and suddenly slow down the beat and brood over his bongos with fingertips barely tapping the skin as everybody leans forward breathlessly to hear; you think he’ll do this for a minute or so, but he goes right on, for as long as an hour, making an imperceptible little noise with the tips of his fingernails, smaller and smaller all the time till you can't hear it anymore and sounds of traffic come in the open door. Then he slowly gets up and takes the mike and says, very slowly, 'Great-orooni … fine ovauti … hello-orooni … bourbon-orooni … all-orooni … How are the boys in the front row making out with their girls-orooni … orooni … vauti … oroonirooni …’ He keeps this up for fifteen minutes, his voice getting softer and softer till you can’t hear. His great sad eyes scan the audience.

“Dean stands in the back, saying, ‘God! Yes!’ – and clasping his hands in prayer and sweating. ‘Sal, Slim knows time. He knows time.’ Slim sits down at the piano and hits two notes, two Cs, then two more, then one, then two, and suddenly the big, burly bass player wakes up from a reverie and realizes slim is playing ‘C-Jam Blues’ and he slugs in his big forefinger on the string and the big, booming beat begins and everybody starts rocking and Slim looks just as sad as ever, and they blow jazz for half an hour, and then Slim goes mad and grabs the bongos and plays tremendous rapid Cubana beats and yells crazy things in Spanish, in Arabic, in Peruvian dialect, in Egyptian, in every language he knows, and he knows innumerable languages. Finally the set is over; each set takes two hours. Slim Gaillard goes and stands against a post, looking sadly over everybody’s head as people come to talk to him. A bourbon is slipped into his hand. ‘Bourbon-orooni – thank you-ovauti ...’ Nobody knows where Slim Gaillard is. Dean once had a dream that he was having a baby and his belly was all bloated up blue as he lay on the grass of a California hospital. Under a tree, with a group of coloured men, sat Slim Gaillard. Dean turned despairing eyes of a mother to him. Slim said, ‘There you go-orooni’. Now Dean approached him, he approached his god; he thought Slim was god; he shuffled and bowed in front of him and asked him to join us. 'Right-orooni' says Slim. He'll join anybody but won't guarantee to be there with you in spirit. Dean got a table, bought drinks, and sat stiffly in front of him. Slim dreamed over his head. Every time Slim said ‘Orooni’ Dean said ‘Yes!’ I sat there with these two madmen. Nothing happened. To Slim Gaillard the whole world was just one big  orooni."

The only part of “Cement Mixer” that isn’t mostly nonsense is in the middle: “First you get some gravel / pour it in the vout / To mix a mess o mortor / you add cement and water / See the mellow rooni come out / slurp slurp slurp”.

“Gaillard’s behaviour onstage was often erratic and nerve-wracking for accompanying musicians."

Gaillard had several children and one of his daughters, Janis became the second wife of Marvin Gaye. Nona Gaye is Gaillard’s granddaughter.

Back to Steve Allen, there was a demonstration of the effects of carbon dioxide and helium.

Steve played around with some Mexican jumping beans and cut one open to show the worm inside. My uncle bought me some of those when I was a kid and they were lots of fun.

Barbara McNair sang a very aggressive and percussive version of  “It’s Alright With Me" by Cole Porter. She was a popular jazz singer in the 50s and appeared on a lot of TV shows. In the 70s she got into acting and played Sidney Poitier’s wife in “They Call Me Mister Tibbs”. She got back into singing later in life.

The show finished with a guest called Miss Measure Your Mattress Month  and she was promoting mattresses with the slogan “buy bigger and sleep better”. She said that since WWII people have added four centimetres in both length and width. Several members of the crew were bouncing on the beds before it was over. Miss McGrath got to call her husband to find how he did on his law exam and then she sang an impromptu version of “Hallelujah I Just Love Him So" by Ray Charles.

           

Washing Under Things

            On Wednesday morning I found the lyrics for “Lui Encore” by Serge Gainsbourg and started translating it. Actually more of it has to remain in French because it presents a person walking through Paris and naming the streets and landmarks, which of course have French names. Each stanza ends with her turning as she walks and noticing the same guy following her. In the last verse she is home in bed, turns and he’s beside her. I assume that this has been her boyfriend all along.

            I’ve almost finished memorizing “Je Suis Snob” by Boris Vian.

            I washed the area of the living room floor where my dresser sits and about half a meter in front of it. Either because the floor is more stained in that area or because the dresser is white the cleaned floor doesn’t look as bright next to it as it does elsewhere.

            I did some exercises and took a bike ride. Just up O’Hara was a box full of a nice set of plates and bowls but they weren’t my style. I rode to Ossington and Dundas, south to Queen and then home.

            I went out to Fullworth and bought ten CR2032 batteries. On the way home from there I stopped at the liquor store to buy a six-pack of Creemore.

            For the last twelve days I’ve been downloading all twelve episodes of an anthology horror show filmed in the 1950s called “The Veil”. It was hosted by Boris Karloff and it’s been called “the greatest television series never seen” because it was cancelled before it aired. It was not shown until 40 years later. It finished downloading today and I’ll start watching it over the weekend.

            I finished my revisions of my “Paranoiac Utopia” manuscript by adding the “marrying mutilation with / music” to the end of the last poem. I emailed Albert Moritz to see if he has the time to look at it again.

            I made a hamburger on a bagel for dinner with tomato, cucumber, a slice of pickle, ketchup, mustard and hot sauce. I had it with a beer while watching the final episode of the first season of The Untouchables.

            With Al Capone in Alcatraz and Prohibition over, his enforcer Frank Nitti has gotten into the extortion business. The story begins with the owner of a small theatre getting acid thrown in his face. Other small cinema owners begin to pay protection money and emboldened by this Nitti decides to expand. He tries to sell protection to the owner of the Star Theatre chain, which has 1000 theatres across the country and makes $100 million a year. Nitti’s salesmen are an alcoholic lawyer named Lennox and a smooth talking liaison named Rogers. They talk to Dockstone the general manager and when he refuses to comply his car is blown up. Miller, the president decides to cooperate and pay $5 million but Macintyre, a reporter for Variety Magazine finds out and begins to humiliate Miller in their headlines. Macintyre gets beaten but he’s not intimidated. Ness forces Miller to testify. An attempt is made on Miller’s life and Agent Cam Allison, who became an Untouchable halfway through the season is fatally shot. The feds find that Rogers under his real name of Bresnovitch is wanted for violation of the Mann Act. Ness arrests him. Nitti could get Rogers out right away but decides it’s safer for him to be locked up. But when things get too hot he changes his mind and orders Rogers’s release to kill him. After Lennox gets Rogers out he warns him to get out of town. Rogers calls his girlfriend Ellie and they plan on getting out of town but Nitti arrives at her apartment before she can leave. She is killed after calling Ness to get him to save Rogers. Nitti is ordered killed by the unseen mob bosses. He tries to get away but encounters Ness and during a shootout falls in front of a commuter train.

            The real Frank Nitto was born in Angri, Italy and was Al Capone’s cousin. He came to Brooklyn with his mother and stepfather when he was seven. He left home at 14 because he didn't get along with his stepfather. At the age of 27 he moved to Chicago and worked as a barber. He got to know the local gangsters. He moved to Texas and married Rosa Levitt. He worked for but had a falling out with Texas mobsters and fled to Chicago. He became a bootlegger and began working for Johnny Torrio and Al Capone. Nitto ran Capone’s liquor business and proved to be a shrewd businessman and a strong leader. He also served as Capone’s ambassador to the Sicilian underworld. When Capone went to prison he named Nitto his head of operations. In 1928 Nitto divorced Rose and married Anna Ronga. They adopted a son named Joe from the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. In 1931 Nitto went to prison for a year and a half for income tax invasion. Upon release he became the new boss of the Capone gang. Nitto branched out from gambling and prostitution businesses to control of the labour unions. In December of 1932 Detective Sergeant Harry Lang and a team of cops raided Nitti’s office. He shot Nitto three times in the back and then shot himself to make it look like Nitto had fired first. In court it was revealed that Lang had been paid $15000 to kill Nitti. He was fired from the police force but only fined $100 for assault. Nitto’s wife Anna died in 1940. In 1942 he married Annette (Toni) Caravetta. While Nitti did extort money from the film industry it was not from the theatres but from the big studios. Nitto and several other members of the organization were indicted. The mob decided that this was all Nitto’s fault and so he should be the one to go to prison for it. Nitto was chronically claustrophobic and did not think he could handle a long term behind bars. On March 19, 1943, the day before his grand jury trial Nitto had breakfast with his wife and then she went to church. He got drunk and went to a railroad yard where he shot himself in the head. Only the cops, the media and the general public called him “Nitti”.

Accideco

            On Tuesday morning I posted my adaptation of “Help camionneur” on my translation blog along with the chords. Next I have to find or try to transcribe the lyrics for Gainsbourg’s “Encore Lui" (Him Again).

            I finished re-writing the final two stanzas of “Both Sides of Love and Hate”:

Parkdale stumbles over me

as she’s blind in every other eye

and I’m sleeping in the middle

of her tunnel between lies

But as she crosses the border she

hits me hard with the back-swinging gate

and lava from my heart attack

spits on her ends of love and hate

            I washed my white mantle and the white dresser that sits in front of it. Because the wood and darker paint are exposed in patches underneath, neither of them looked that clean afterwards but the water in the pail was pretty dirty. On the next cleaning job I’ll tackle the floor underneath and behind the dresser.

            I had a can of chilli with potato chips for lunch.

            I did some exercises and took a bike ride to Ossington and Dundas. I guess because of construction somewhere along the route there are no streetcars along Dundas and so I had to follow a bus. I waited behind it at the light while three cyclists went right up alongside it on the left. I wouldn’t do that unless I was sure I could pass it. I got past the bus around Dovercourt and passed the other cyclists before Ossington. I rode south to Queen and then home.

            I wrestled with the last poem of my collection that Albert Moritz had critiques about. In "Our Less Than Solid Dude of Solitude" he thought stanza three was weak:

I still hope to find myself

a lover somewhere

who stares at the danger

of reality's teeth when they are being bared

and refuses to look down

            After over an hour of struggle I came up with:

I still hope to find myself

a lover somewhere

who stretches to the edge

of known reality and won’t even care

when all of the walls come down

            He also thought that “placid" the last word of the poem was anticlimactic. I might change it to “music” I'll have to change the line before it and I need to find the right word to counter “music".

            I grilled some chicken drumsticks but started half an hour later than I’d planned. Because I was distracted by the poem, when 19:00 came I thought it was time to start boiling a potato and heating some gravy for dinner. I didn’t realize I was an hour early until 19:30 so I turned the elements off and turned on the oven. I started the potato and gravy again at 20:15. I ate dinner while watching the penultimate episode of season one of The Untouchables.

            This was the weirdest story of the season. In some ways it was like experimental theatre. The gangsters were like cartoon versions of gangsters.

            A man sneaks into a small cafe where Eliot Ness is reading the paper and waiting for lunch after failing to convict mobster Johnny Fortunato. The man puts on a fake moustache and goes out to the kitchen. He comes out dressed as a waiter with some soup, starts eating Ness’s bread and drops his moustache in his soup. Ness finally recognize’s him as his old school buddy Franky Barber. Franky is a boxing promoter and takes Ness to the fights. It turns out that the fight is fixed by Johnny Fortunato who doesn’t show up with his men until the round he has bet on starts. The boxer takes his fall when Johnny blows up and then pops a paper bag. Franky takes Ness back to his place where he meets Frank’s very quirky girlfriend Chicky Bernstein. Frank sends Chicky out for sandwiches and while she is gone a truck pulls up in front of the building. Frank pushes Ness away from the window just as someone in the truck opens fire with a machine gun. Later Chicky brings Ness a piece of paper with nothing but “State 395A” written on it and then she leaves. US Route 395 runs from southeastern California north to the Canadian border but in this story it’s in Illinois. Based on the tip the feds set up a roadblock. They stop a milk truck and under the milk are canisters of booze. Frank and Chicky’s place is the victim of an arson attack but all evidence points to either Chicky or Frank himself having started the fire. Later still the prizefighter that is supposed to throw the fight for Johnny decides to win with a knockout and quits. Johnny is pissed off. Frank disappears and Chicky is fished out of a bullet-riddled car, barely alive. Johnny tells Ness that Frank threatened to use Ness against him if he didn’t pay out $24,000 and so he did. The money was picked up by a woman named Stella. Ness finds her at a dance marathon having not slept for 98 hours. She says she delivered the money to her ex-husband, Frank Barber. When Ness tries to question her she babbles incoherently because the speech centres in her brain have been injured. “Gaslight … ghost ... jolly celebration ... miracles in the parlour ... flytrap ... Nobody answers the front door ... Miracle, miracle, miracle, miracle … The king is dead … There's nobody at the bottom of the sea ... The bridge is falling down ... The bridge is falling down ... The skeleton's won the game … one, two, three O’Leary ... fell down Schenectady River … The church … the library’s closed …" He gets her to write on a piece of paper but she only scrawls "evil”. Later when Ness is trying to figure it out he turns the paper over and reads it from the other side. It says “live”. Ness goes to the boxing arena and finds a lame and shot up Frank living there like the phantom of the opera. There is the sound of someone else coming in but when Ness turns, Frank knocks him out with his crutch. We hear gunshots and then Ness wakes up to find Frank mortally wounded in the middle of the boxing ring holding Ness’s gun. Fortunato is severely wounded and calling out for help in the aisle between the seats. Frank dies as Fortunato shouts over and over again, “You got no heart Mr Ness...”

            It was certainly the quirkiest of The Untouchables stories of the first season.

            Chicky was played by prolific character actor Madlyn Rhue, who started out at 17 as a dancer at the Copa in New York. She played Khan’s love interest, Marla in the Star Trek episode, “Space Seed”. The director wanted her to reprise the role in “The Wrath of Khan” but she'd developed MS and couldn’t do it. He didn’t want anyone else and so the part was written out of the story.

Peter Falk

            On Monday I positioned the chords for “Help camionneur” by Serge Gainsbourg. The only real difference musically between this song and Gainsbourg’s “Le canari est sur le balcon” is in the introduction.

            It was a cooler day than we’d had recently. It was still just warm enough to wear shorts, a tank top and bare feet but not enough to turn the fan on.

            The only cleaning I did in the living room was to pull out the dresser, grab all the big dust balls and then to vacuum the area. I think I must not have cleaned behind there since I had cats because after handling the “dustballs” my hands smelled like cat body odour.

            I had chickpeas with flaxseed oil and garlic powder for lunch.

            I got caught up on my journal.

            I took a bike ride and when I got back I was greeted by a homeless guy that talks to me sometimes. He usually calls me “Commissioner” but this time he addressed me as “Old Timer". I asked how he was and he said he's looking for winter. He asked, "When was the last time you saw winter?" I said, "March”. He told me, "I haven't seen it for eleven years!" He then added, "Terrorist activities!"

            I had one small potato, three tiny potatoes, two drumsticks and some gravy while watching The Untouchables.

            This story was about the underworld bank. The feds are trying to find out where it is and to break it. The feds are following two small time hoods in hopes that they will lead them to the bank. One is Tony Zagano, who borrowed money from the bank set up an insurance business front. The other is Duke Mullen, who borrowed money to organize the theft of $1 million in furs and is waiting for the bank to settle his account. For Tony, with the feds on his tail all the time he can’t pull any jobs and so he can’t pay back his loan. This leads to him being bumped off. Johnny the Enforcer from the bank comes to see Tony’s wife and tells her she has to sell her house to pay off her husband’s loan. She goes to Eliot Ness and he arranges to help her pretend that she’s sold her house, providing her with the money so they can tail her and find out the bank’s location. But the bank is onto the feds, arrange to block the tail and Mrs Zagano is killed. It isn’t mentioned that the feds are responsible for both of these deaths.

            Duke Mullen finally gets his return from the bank but it is only $5000. He decides to rob the underworld bank. His girlfriend Louise happens to be the niece of Milo Sullivan, who is president of the underworld bank. With her help he hopes to walk in and take $500,000 when it isn’t being watched. But Milo decides to work late and Duke is caught when he gets there. He’s being worked over when the feds arrive but for some stupid reason he grabs a gun and starts firing at the cops. He dies in the shootout.

            Duke was played by Peter Falk, who was kind of a handsome guy in 1960 despite his artificial eye. He had cancer at the age of three and his eye was surgically removed. He was his class president in high school. He earned a masters degree in public administration. He became a certified accountant. He volunteered to fight for Israel in 1948. He said it wasn’t because he was passionately for Israel or against Egypt but he just wanted some excitement. The war ended before he could ship out. His daughter Catherine, with whom he was estranged, is a real life private detective.

Reflecting Can Make Us Feel Small

            On Sunday morning I finished memorizing “Help camionneur” by Serge Gainsbourg. I would normally search for or start working out the chords after a song has been committed to memory, but since I’d already worked out the chords to “Le canari est sur le balcon", which has the same melody, I just started copying those chords onto this song. I would run through it the next day to make sure it fit.

            It was another hot, fan-on day.

            I spent a lot of time writing about Saturday’s Food Bank Adventure.

I cleaned the bottom half of the two-meter high mirror in my living room but it still looks dirty on the other side. The reflective surface has just gotten worn in places over the years and looks smudged, yellowed and speckled with dirt even though it isn’t.

I had three corn crackers with cheese and a sliver of apple pie with whipped cream for lunch.

I did some exercises in the afternoon and took a bike ride to Ossington and Dundas.

I had a fried egg with a piece of toast and a beer for dinner while watching The Untouchables.

In this story Prohibition is still going on. The feds are investigating how some of the legal alcohol being manufactured for drugs and perfume is being diverted into the illicit booze trade. They trace it to a large food distribution company called Brawly Mills. It turns out that the president, E Carlton Duncan and vice president Brooks Wells are in the pockets of Al Capone’s original boss and mentor Johnny Torrio. The feds go over the Brawly books and find that they are delivering alcohol to the Lorelei Perfume Company, which they know to be a front for a bootlegging business. The feds raid the place and one of Torrio's men is killed. Torrio roughs up Duncan for having let Ness look at the books. He’s going to make him pay extra. Wells is a drunk and very upset about Torrio’s treatment of Duncan. He begins ranting in a bar and so they knock him off. The feds uncover that Duncan and Wells were actually brothers and former convicts with the last name Britanno. Duncan is arrested and Torrio arranges for him to be hit before he can talk. The gunmen are killed by the feds and Duncan can’t testify but the booze operation has been crippled, as if that was important.

The real Johnny Torrio came to New York at the age of two with his widowed mother. As a teenager he joined a street gang and quickly became the leader. He joined the Five Points Gang and became one of its lieutenants. Capone also joined and worked for Torrio. Torrio was invited to Chicago by Big Jim Colosimo to help fight the Black Hand extortionists. He did so and stayed on after his success. When Prohibition began Torrio urged Colosimo to get into the bootlegging business but he refused. Torrio had Colosimo assassinated and took over his criminal empire. When the rivalry between Torrio’s Outfit and O’Banion’s North Side Gang was insurmountable, Torrio had O’Banion killed. This started a war that resulted in Torrio being severely wounded in an assassination attempt. After getting out of the hospital he spent a year in prison. He was frightened and in 1925 he retired and moved back to Italy. He came back to New York in 1928 because of Mussolini’s pressure on Mafia elements. He got back in the bootlegging business and helped organize several mobs into the National Crime Syndicate. In 1939 he was arrested for income tax evasion and spent two years in prison. When he got out he retired and spent his time quietly in Brooklyn and Florida until he died in 1957.

Torrio’s main nickname was The Fox. One crime journalist said that Torrio was the closest thing to a criminal mastermind that the United States ever had.