William Christopher

            On Wednesday morning I finished editing “Mister Iceberg" by Serge Gainsbourg on Christian's Translations and published the blog. https://fromthefrench.blogspot.com/2021/05/mister-iceberg-serge-gainsbourg.html I still have to post my translation on Facebook. 

            I weighed 88.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning I taped together the shipping box and packed it with the candy I’d bought yesterday for my daughter’s birthday. I taped it up and addressed it and now it's ready to send to Montreal this afternoon. 

            I told my neighbour Benji that I would send an email to Popeyes about the loud music they play in the morning when he’s sleeping. Around midday I looked for an email address for them but there is none posted. I called them to ask for their email but the woman who answered didn’t know the email. She argued with me that it’s impossible for there to be any noise. I used to hear Indian style music very loud when I got up to pee but I haven’t heard it in the last few months. Benji says he still hears it. I couldn’t get anywhere with the person I spoke with. 

            I weighed 88.9 kilos at lunch time. 

            In the afternoon I went over to the post office to send the package to Astrid. I sent it by express since it only cost $3 more and I can track it. 

            I went for my bike ride to Yonge and Bloor. It was a warm day and when I went to the post office I’d worn my leather jacket, but that was way to much. I took it off before heading out and I wore my under shirt with an open shirt on top. The Bloor bike lane had a lot of slow cyclists. A guy looking at his phone stepped in my way and ignored me when I warned him to watch out. I was pretty sure he heard me but was just being arrogant. The warm weather brought so many people out it looked like the weekend on a Wednesday. 

            I weighed 88.5 kilos after my bike ride. 

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

            I wanted to edit some of the video footage that I’d shot on Monday but Movie Maker doesn’t like the codec for the videos I made with the Kodak. It likes the Nikon but not the Kodak, even though the files are both in .MOV format. I spent an hour converting some of them from MOV to MP4 on Cloudconvert but they only allow ten files to be converted for free in a 24 hour period, so I’ll have to do the rest over the next couple of days. 

            For dinner I made naan pizza with salsa for sauce, two chopped up pepperettes and the rest of my cheap old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching two episodes of Andy Griffith. 

            In the first story Andy, Bee and Opie are still in Hollywood. Andy has to go to the studio to take publicity photos with the glamourous leading lady Darleen Mason. There is one of Darleen snuggling up to Andy that makes it into the papers back home and so Helen becomes jealous. When Andy calls her she mentions Darleen and hangs up. Andy decides to go out with Darleen and goes over to her place . She turns out to be very nice but Andy realizes her shouldn’t be there. Meanwhile Helen feels bad about hanging up on Andy and calls his hotel. Opie innocently tells her his father went over to Darleen Mason’s place. Andy gets home shortly after that and calls again but Helen hangs up on him. Finally Andy goes back to Darleen and has her call Helen to explain the whole thing, which sets things right.

            Darleen was played by Ruta Lee, who was born in Montreal and played one of the brides in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. 

            In the second story the Taylors return home from Hollywood. Before they left Bee appeared on a popular game show called “Win or Lose" hosted by Jack Smith and won over $4000 worth of prizes, including a state of the art refrigerator, a dishwasher, a garbage disposal and a full length mink coat. Bee is perhaps a little over enthusiastic about showing off her good fortune, although not mean spirited. Her friends become jealous and distance themselves to an unreasonable degree. Meanwhile a man from internal revenue comes to Andy to tell him there is tax on the prizes that Bee won that amounts to over $1100. The tax agent tells Andy that he loves his job. In the United States prizes and lottery winnings are subject to a 30% tax while here in Canada winnings are not considered income and we get to keep all of whatever we win. When Andy goes to break the news to Bee he finds that she already knows about the taxes and has sold everything but the garbage disposal. Jack Smith was played by himself, who was already the host of a popular show called You Asked For It. He started out as a singer with The Three Ambassadors who replaced Bing Crosby’s Rhythm Boys at the Coconut Grove. He was known as the man with the smile in his voice. 

            The tax agent was played by William Christopher, who moved to New York after college where he acted in off Broadway productions before appearing on Broadway in “Beyond the Fringe” with Dudley Moore. When he moved out to Hollywood he gained guest appearances on several shows like The Andy Griffith Show, Hogan’s Heroes, That Girl, and Gomer Pyle. He would later become famous as Father Mulcahy on M.A.S.H.