Ann Delafield

            On Friday morning I memorized the first two verses of “Variations sur Marilou" by Serge Gainsbourg and almost nailed the first verse of "Bourée de complexes" (Buried in Complexes) by Boris Vian.

            I video recorded the second song practice of the new project. I elevated the camera to eye level this time and tilted it slightly down. I think I was a little less nervous with the sense of being watched but I did fumble chords sometimes that I wouldn’t normally screw up.

            Around midday I went to the hardware store to buy a bottom shelf for the southeast corner of my bedroom. I was surprised that the white fibreboard boards of the width that I wanted were $12 more than the pine boards. I’m low on money right now and so I bought the pine board, since I could always paint it white later on. I also bought two brackets to hold it up. I still need to saw it to the right length but didn't have time today.

            I had barbecue flavour sunflower seeds and Greek yogourt for lunch.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Andy decides to get a job because he’s been engaged sixty two times, thirty four of those times to Madame Queen, but women always dump him once they find out he's lazy and has no ambition. A man named Rocky hires Andy to be a chauffeur for his girlfriend while he is out of town. But the girlfriend turns out to be Madame Queen. Andy wants to quit but Madame Queen insists that he stay so she can have her revenge or she’ll tell her violent boyfriend about all of the times he jilted her. But Andy and Madame Queen wind up smooching in between the places where he drives her. Rocky has one of his men follow them and he reports back to Rocky that Andy is making time with Madame Queen. Rocky comes to see Andy with a gun and tells her that he’s been waiting for an opportunity to get rid of Madame Queen and so now he's going to force Andy to marry her.

            The sponsor for Amos and Andy beginning in 1950 was Rexall and one of the products often mentioned was the Ann Delafield Reducing Plan. There were no exercises, just vitamins and special “delicious" wafers to curb the urge to eat between meals.

            Ann Delafield was born in Great Britain in 1880 as May MacGregor. She came to the United States as part of a touring theatre company and stayed on to become a US citizen. She acted for about a decade and in the 1930s got into the personal development business. She claimed to have a Bachelor of Science, a Masters in Physiotherapy and to be a qualified dietician and physical education instructor. Her first employer in personal development was Elizabeth Arden in New York City. In the early 1950s she started her own business in partnership with Rexall, which branched out into a line of beauty products, which included vitamins. Hers was the only vitamin centred beauty line. She claimed that most cosmetics were unnecessary and so her line consisted of the vitamins, a skin cream, a skin tonic, face powder, eye makeup and lipstick. Rexall stopped selling her products in 1956 and not much is known about Ann Delafield after that point when she would have been In her mid seventies.

            I took a bike ride along Bloor. There was a female cyclist who kept getting ahead of me because she always jumped ahead just before the light turned green while I always waited for the change of colour. I would pass her and at the next light we repeated the shift in who was in front.

            It was a hot day and there were lots of slow cyclists out. There were also lots of cops because there was an anti-racism protest at University and Queen. I had to go south to Richmond and then back up York to get through. I guess the demo was just finishing because I had to pass a flood of cyclists on my way west.

            I looked at the video I’d shot that morning. The height of the camera was fine but it only showed the top two-thirds of my guitar and so next time I’ll tilt it down a little more. I think there was at least one song in which I didn’t fumble a chord or two.

            I grilled four chicken legs and had one for dinner with a potato and gravy while trying to watch “Deathwatch”, the 34^th episode of the Alfred Hitchcock produced TV series. But it had only downloaded 25% and so it jumped to the end in about fifteen minutes. The beginning was clear. A young woman named Kelly who is serving as the nanny for a gangster’s son witnesses her employer’s murder. She is placed under protective custody in a hotel but still fears for her life and refuses to eat the hotel food.

            That’s about all I could get out of it and there was no video of this episode online.

            I watched “Eye for Eye”, the 37th episode and that was only at 19% but I found it on Daily Motion littered with a lot of ads for Artemis Fowl and for a couple of Play Station games. On top of that they run each ad twice as if one wouldn’t notice it once.

            In this story, on the day of their anniversary, Carolyn, the wife of a lawyer named Ben Forbes is kidnapped by Al Guthrie. Guthrie’s motive is that Forbes helped his ex-wife Lurene divorce him and he wants her back. He tells Forbes by phone that if he does not get Lurene back in three days he will kill Carolyn. He warns Forbes that he will also kill Carolyn if he involves the police. Forbes contacts his old friend Roy Markham, who is also a lawyer but works mostly now as a private investigator. At the scene of the kidnapping Markham finds matches that Guthrie dropped that came from a sukiyaki restaurant. They set about looking for Lurene but the problem is that Forbes had advised her to change her name. They assume she kept her first name and that she kept her profession as a hairdresser. Since in Connecticut hairdressers need to apply for licenses they track her down through the license bureau. Because Forbes had worked pro bono to help Lurene get the divorce from her abusive husband, she feels grateful and wants to return the favour, as long as she doesn’t have to really go back with Guthrie. Contrary to Ben’s wishes, Markham involves the police and they are working to catch Guthrie. They secretly install a short wave radio in Forbes's car so they can track him as he and Lurene follow Guthrie’s instructions that lead them to more instructions. But finally they are told to take Guthrie's car and so Markham has to guess, based on what he has come to understand from Guthrie’s pattern of behaviour, where he would go. Forbes and Lurene meet Guthrie at an ocean dock and Guthrie lets Carolyn go to Forbes but he is forcing all of them into a boat just as Markham arrives. There is a shootout and Guthrie is killed.

            Markham was played by Ray Milland and this story was actually the pilot for the “Markham" TV series that ran from the spring of 1959 to the fall of 1960. 

            Carolyn was played by Dorothy Green who acted in several films and TV series. She was a regular on “Tammy". She was married four times and the two longest times were with dentists.