Ronnie Schelle

            On Friday morning I found and copied the lyrics for “La java des chaussettes à clous” (The Dance of the Studded Stockings). A java is a type of fast waltz that was popular in France in the early 20th Century. Couples dance with their hands on each other's butts. I translated the first verse and it seems to be that the stockings take control of the person that wears them. 

            I spent another half an hour searching for a recording of the third verse of the original French "O Canada" but it doesn't seem to exist online, so I gave up and just went with singing along with recordings of the first, second and fourth verses and sang the third verse by myself a couple of times. I memorized most of the first verse. 

             I weighed 89 kilos before breakfast. In the late morning I did my laundry and was done at lunch time. I weighed 88.8 kilos. I heated up a slice of roast pork for lunch and had it with barbecue sauce and scotch bonnet sauce and a glass of orange juice. 

             I didn’t take a bike ride in the afternoon because I'd already ridden back and forth to the laundrymat a few times. 

             I worked on my poem series “My Blood in a Bug.” 

             I worked on my Movie Maker project of alternating clips of the snake pit from Indiana Jones with clips from the video I made of a pile of electrical cords that I animated by putting a vibrating machine underneath them. It's looking pretty good so far as the snakes help to make the cords look sinister and the camera closes in on one cord that is standing up with it’s head moving like a serpent. Movie Maker always freezes at least a couple of times during every session and so I have to shut it down and reopen it in order to continue working. 

            I weighed 89.2 kilos at 18:00. 

            I finished colourizing one of the brick walls in my skateboarder photo and started on the other one. 

            I digitally repaired one of the photos from a 1987 Halloween party and started on one of my ex girlfriend at the same party costumed in traditional Arabic dress. 

            I had a potato, a slice of roast pork and gravy for dinner while watching two episodes of Andy Griffith.

            In the first story Andy comes across a businessman whose car went into a ditch. He turns out to be Mr Foster from the Foster’s Furniture Polish company. Since it will take a few hours for Goober to repair the car, Andy invites Mr Foster home for lunch. Aunt Bee is a user of Foster’s polish and she gives such a natural testimony that Foster gets the idea that instead of a hired actor he could have someone normal do his TV commercials. He asks Bee to become the Foster Lady. But when the TV crew comes to shoot the commercial Bee loses her naturalness and begins to try too hard. Foster and the director decide that the way Bee is doing it is hilarious and so they will use it anyway. Andy overhears this and to save Bee from embarrassment talks with her about how when she is busy as the Foster Lady she won’t have time to keep house and so they’ll have to hire someone. Bee doesn’t want anyone else in her kitchen and so she tells Foster she doesn’t want to do it. 

            The makeup artist for the TV crew was played by Eva Kryger. 

            The director was played by Ronnie Schelle, who first wanted to play professional baseball but didn't get past the semi finals. He joined the air force and started performing there. He became a very family friendly stand-up comedian and got a gig opening for The Kingston Trio. His acting career took off when he won the role of Jim Nabors' bunk mate on "Gomer Pyle". Around the same time he also played an acting agent on “That Girl.” After the second season of "Gomer Pyle" he starred as a DJ in the sitcom "Good Morning World" with a pre-"Laugh In" Goldie Hawn, but it was not a success so he returned to Gomer Pyle.

            In the second story Goober wants to go on a vacation for a week but can’t find a replacement at the filling station. Finally his girlfriend Flora volunteers to pump gas and change oil. When Goober returns from his holiday he finds business is booming because men are coming there just to be served by the attractive Flora. Goober feels dejected and decides to go and look for another job. He tries working as a cashier in a department store but gets confused by the transactions. Since there is only one gas station in Mayberry he decides to leave town. Then there is a strange moment when Andy tries to fix things by telling Flora about a woman who had a successful business and never married. Suddenly Flora quits so Goober can have his job back. There’s a couple of things wrong with this story. First of all Goober is a mechanic and his value is his expertise at fixing cars. There’s no reason who he and Flora couldn't work at the same garage or open up a filling station together. It’s a weird message that Andy presents which seems to be discouraging women from being ambitious because it will make them unhappy.