Dorothy Morris

            On Friday morning I basically found the right chords for “Di doo dah” by Serge Gainsbourg, although I don't agree with all the changes and positions that were posted.

            I worked a bit on my poem “Mooning the (M)(P)atriarchs”. It had originally been just “Mooning the Matriarchs” and the verses dealt specifically with women while the chorus was about the relationship between men and women. The first copy Albert Moritz had was the earlier version. I had sent him an edited version in the late spring in which I’d added verses about men and tried to make the whole thing more gender balanced, but he'd somehow missed that email and had only commented on the first version, which he didn't like. When I later pointed out that he’d missed my revision he had a look at it and was kinder. He said that as a song it should probably stay exactly as it is, but as a page poem it’s weak. "The opening is too cute in its expression and too familiar in its idea. It isn’t the strongest writing in the poem and so it muffles the start. It isn’t till later that the reader gets to the meat." He had more to say but I’m just dealing with the first stanza for now:

Man and woman are the challenge

the counterweight and balance

in the breeding ritual

When prick and pussy come to shove

they’re the acid tests of love

that sit in judgment of us all

They got us jumping through hoops

before we even know how to crawl

            Albert thought that I should eliminate the first three lines and start with “When prick and pussy …” but I feel that throws off the rhythm. I agree that those first three lines are clichéd but I would rather work to replace them rather than delete them. I spent about half an hour jotting some ideas down and I think I can come up with something better.

            I washed another section of the living room floor. I cleaned a 40cm by 150 cm area, the width going from the south end of my mantle to where it meets the dresser and the length extending into the part near the couch where I’d started cleaning in the first place a few weeks ago. The problem is that when I started I did a half-assed job and so near the couch it’s not as clean as when I started using wood soap and a brush. I’ll even it out before I go back to the east side of the room to wash behind and under the dresser. I find when I’m washing near the wall, if there is plaster some of it crumbles off and soften with the water so that I have to scrape it up from where it gets stuck to the floor.

            David came to my door to give me some take-out in one of those little folded boxes that used to be common for Chinese take-out. It was spicy chopped roast beef on a bed of lettuce. He asked me for a beer and I gave him one of the bottles of Lezajsk that he’d given me a few months ago.

            I did my afternoon exercises and went for a bike ride to Ossington and Dundas and then home via Queen.

            I finished listening to the Jethro Tull and Ian Anderson discographies last week. They really came into their creative height with Aqualung and lingered more or less at that elevation in the next few albums. They certainly were good at what they did and the video of one of their concerts from 1977 really shows what a great showman Anderson is. However, I think there’s only so much flute a person can stand to listen to and I found his baroque style of “sihahihahihinging” kind of annoying. One curious thing was that in the mid-80s for one album they changed their style entirely and put out a kind of electronic New Wave album. After that they got back into a grittier sort of folk and blues style and Anderson changed his singing so that he stopped extending his vowels over several notes and the result was that it was hard to distinguish between his voice and that of Mark Knopfler.

            I started listening to the Yes discography and from the very first song on the first album I could hear that this was where Rush came from. I would describe Yes’s early sound as fluffy hard rock with lyrics that were mostly sticky love songs. Today I listened to Fragile and it was as if they'd transformed into an artistic band overnight. Rick Wakeman was particularly experimental and the band’s vocal harmonies were outstanding with unique arrangements.

            I grilled the chicken drumsticks that I’d bought the day before. I boiled a large potato and heated some gravy. I already had the meat that David had given me and so I tipped the box onto my plate. It turned out the bed of lettuce was very thin and that the bed underneath was rice. Potato with rice and meat made for a heavy meal and so I skipped dessert.

            I watched an episode of The Untouchables. A Chicago mob boss named Luigi Renaldo leaves town for three days and puts Paolo, one of his lieutenants in charge. Renaldo’s genius accountant, William Norbert, who has a photographic memory for numbers has just quit. Paolo takes it upon himself to teach the genius a lesson and arranges for two thugs to beat him up. Renaldo is angry about this because he’d had no intention of punishing Norbert. But when he hears that Eliot Ness has visited Norbert in the hospital he decides that Norbert knows too much and so he must die. An attempted hit is made on Norbert’s life and although he had not planned on talking, Norbert now calls Ness. Although Renaldo keeps no books Norbert is a living record of Renaldo’s criminal activities. He has to first of all prove his head for numbers to a judge in order for Renaldo’s trial to move forward. While they are waiting for the trial, which keeps getting moved forward, Norbert’s wife and daughter are hiding out in a small town while Ness and some of his men travel from town to town with Norbert by train to keep Renaldo from knowing where he is. But Renaldo’s men locate Norbert’s family and a truck drives over both of his daughter Jenny’s legs. When Norbert finds out about this he escapes protection and goes to the hospital to see his daughter. The mobsters are waiting and almost take Norbert but Ness arrives just in time. A trial is set but Renaldo arranges for it to take place in a small town in Wisconsin. He brings a large number of mobsters into town and one sniper to shoot Norbert when he arrives at the courthouse. But Norbert is already there disguised as a painter. He testifies and Renaldo is sentenced to the rest of his life in Alcatraz.

            Norbert was played by Jim Backus, who got to play James Dean’s father in Rebel Without a Cause but later had to adopt Gilligan on a desert island. He was also the voice of Mr. Magoo.

            Mildred Norbert was played by Dorothy Morris who was groomed by MGM from the age of 19 but gave up acting when she married a math instructor.