Hall the Decks

            On Thursday morning I made a few more small adjustments to my English translation of “La complainte du progrès” by Boris Vian.

I posted “Sensuelle et sans suite” (Sensual and Senseless) by Serge Gainsbourg on my Christian’s Translations blog. That completes 1973 in my project of translating all of Gainsbourg’s songs from the beginning in 1958. I moved on to his 1974 song “Doctor Faust” but I still haven’t found the lyrics posted anywhere. I’ll try to work them out from listening to the video but chances are I won’t be able to get them all that way. If I can get some of the lyrics down the rest might turn up in the search but that’s rare.

I worked on “My Blood in a Bug”.

I washed another section of my kitchen floor up to the beginning of the hallway that leads to the door.

It had been snowing all morning and I really didn’t want to go anywhere but just after noon I put on my winter clothes and rode my bike down to Freshco. I drove very slowly and carefully and didn’t slip once. I got three bags of grapes, two packs of raspberries, a bag of cranberries, a pack of pork chops on sale, a box of spoon size shredded wheat and a bag of kettle chips.

I had a can of chickpeas with olive oil and garlic for lunch.

When I went out in the hall to mop the melted snow from around my bike my neighbour Shankar was coming in from putting out his garbage on the deck. I commented that even though it’s Thursday I couldn’t smell him burning incense in his room as he does once a week. I asked if he does a puja but he said, “Not a big puja. Just a thought for five minutes.”

In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. This story begins with Sapphire about leave to visit her mother for a while. She says her friend Lula May from Georgia is coming to New York while she’s gone and she wants Kingfish to find her a husband. The problem is that she is extremely obese. Kingfish later reads of Lula May in the society column that she’s just inherited $20,000. He tells Andy he’s now a marriage broker and that he needs to get married because there is a shortage of women. He says within ten years if the shortage of women keeps up one out of five babies will be born without a mother. He says he will hook Andy up with Lula May for half the money. Andy poses as a Texas millionaire and begins dating Lula May. They become engaged but Andy feels the need to say goodbye to all his old girlfriends and Lula May catches him smooching one of them in the movie theatre. In order to get back together with her he pretends he’s leaving to join the French Foreign Legion. He says they are so tough that if you stay long enough with them to be discharged they shoot you as a coward. Lula May gets back with Andy and the wedding is on again but then Sapphire returns and reveals that she posted a lie about Lula May having $20,000 so she could attract a husband. She really hasn’t got a nickel.

I spent almost an hour synchronizing the microphone audio with the camera audio of the recording of my July 20, 2017 rehearsal. It may still have too much echo but I’ll listen with a fresh brain tomorrow and decide whether to shave a smidgen off the front of the mic audio.

I did a French grammar exercise and a few translations.

For dinner I had three small potatoes, a piece of roast beef and some gravy while watching Racket Squad. This one told the story of a pretty interesting con game that is supposed to be based on a true story. Crippled war veteran Jim Edwards arrives in the small town of Fairview looking to settle down. He tells Mary Higgens, the local real estate agent that he wants a place with trees and a stream nearby. Mary feels sympathy with him because of his extreme limp and goes out of her way to try to help him find a place. He rejects everything she offers until as a last resort she shows him a broken down house on a property with trees and a stream, but also a swamp taking up a fair amount of the land. He loves it and since the bank has been trying unload it for years he gets a great price. He fixes up the house quite nicely and in a short time makes friends with everyone in town. He begins to limp just a little less and one day Mary finds him soaking in the mud behind the house. He tells her that he thinks it has healing properties. His limp gradually goes away and other townspeople begin coming out to soak in the mud. Soon word gets out beyond Fairview and men in the big spa resort business arrive to test the mud. They offer Jim a large sum of money and he is about to sign the papers when Mary walks in. She had expected him to let her handle the deal and storms away when he dismisses her. After she leaves the hotel room she hears Jim arguing with the men about how the scam should unfold and he says that he had faked a limp for so long he almost got one. Realizing they’ve been shouting one of the men checks the door and sees Mary running away. Jim goes after her but she calls the police before he catches up. He takes her to their hotel and ties her up. Some local businessmen come and talk to Jim’s partners offering them $50,000 for the property. After they get the large cheque for the worthless land the racket squad arrives and arrests them.

Mary was played by Linda Leighton, who got her start when she won the Gateway to Hollywood contest in Texas. She starred in the first nationally broadcast television soap opera, “One Man’s Family”. She retired from acting in the 1960s.