Tuesday, 5 November 2019

Half Sleep on the Half Light



            On Monday morning I wasn’t as dizzy as the day before and only really felt it during the first few head rolls while doing yoga.
I started memorizing "Par hazard et pas rasé" (By Hazard and Unrazored) by Serge Gainsbourg. Despite having translated it I haven’t quite figured out what it’s about. He’s playing with words a lot more so than aiming at meaning but there’s a lot of stuff about tombs, graveyards and dancing with death.
I found the article about the Ojibwa winning the war against the Iroquois. I keep forgetting that as a U of T student I have free access to JSTOR.
I washed the middle section of my bedroom floor. Now more than half my bed is in the clean area. I’ll probably be done with the bedroom before Christmas.
I did more than two hours of research on the history of the Mississauga before and after their war with the Iroquois.
I had a drumstick and some yogourt for lunch.
I started charging my phone and I boiled a potato before leaving for work. I turned the stove off and headed out. When I got to OCADU I realized I’d forgotten my phone while it was charging. If you overcharge your smart phone it becomes too smart and begins to plot against you.
I looked for room 412 all over the fourth floor of the main building until I realized it must be across the street. The actual room number is 1412, even though it's on the fourth floor and so I don't know why they don't just list that number when I’m booked.
I worked for Echo Railton. She told me her students would just be drawing my head and so I wouldn't have to take my clothes off, "Unless you want to".  I told hr that I’d forgotten my timer and so she was kind enough to let me use her phone, which has a better timer than mine. I just did one pose for the night but they did two drawings with my head lit for one from below and for the other from above. Echo is a kind person with a very sweet face.
I got home at exactly 22:00. I heated my potato, two drumsticks and some gravy and had a late dinner while watching The Schlitz Playhouse of Stars from the 1950s, which finally completed downloading a week ago after six months. At first I tried to watch a Naked City episode called “Beyond Truth” that was at 70.8% after a year but the audio must have been with the other 29.2%. The same thing happened with two other Naked City episodes that I tried and they were both silent.
The Schlitz Playhouse story was about a sideshow barker named Joe Martin who runs a funhouse along with his wife Peg who takes the tickets at the door. A man named Louis Barrett comes up and offers Joe $50 to let him go into the funhouse and leave by the back door because someone is on his tail. Joe takes the money. Shortly after that a plain-clothes detective named Lieutenant Kovacs asks about the man. Joe says he hasn’t seen him. Kovacs says he hasn’t even described him yet. Kovacs says he’ll be back. Joe goes in the back and finds Barrett dead. He is worried because four years ago he spent three years in prison for a crime he had no part in. He gives his brother in law Charlie the night off and for the rest of the night he makes Barrett’s body part of the show as a victim of the wax murderer. After closing time he takes the body to a remote point and dumps it. When he returns he realizes he’s lost his initialled watch. He gets a call from someone saying he has the watch and they need to talk. Kovacs picks up Joe for questioning. He is there for several hours before Joe tells Kovacs the whole story. Kovacs tells him what he knows. Peg’s brother Charlie owed Barrett $400 and he’s the one that killed him. Worried about Peg they both head back to the midway. Charlie runs into the funhouse with a gun. An unlikely part is when Kovacs lets an unarmed Joe go in after Charlie ahead of him, let alone with him. They both draw Charlie’s fire until Kovacs sneaks up and knocks him out.
Peg was played by Canadian actor Dorothy Patrick from St Boniface, Manitoba. She was also a model and dancer and became known as the Chesterfield Girl. She mostly starred in B movies.





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