Did Goober Invent Swamp Thing?

            On Tuesday morning I finished editing my translation of "Lola Rastaquouère" by Serge Gainsbourg in Christian's Translations and published it in the blog. Tomorrow I'll finish posting it and start learning his song "Relax Baby Be Cool." 

            I weighed 89.5 kilos before breakfast. In the late morning I took a steel brush, copper wool and a scraper to my oven rack and got most of the black, caked in grease off. I didn't take a "before" picture but there wasn't much metal showing through before. When I'm brushing black caked in grease from things it sends bits of black flying all over the counter and stove, so I had to stop and wipe all that up twice. There's still some black stuff close to the intersections of the metal rods but it should only take one more session to get the whole thing clean and then move on to cleaning the storage tray under the stove. 

            I washed a pair of shorts and put them out on the deck to dry. Half an hour later I brought them back inside just as it was starting to rain. It rained last time I washed my shorts as well, so it's possible that I have the ability to make it rain. 

            I weighed 89 kilos before lunch. I had kettle chips, salsa and yogourt with a glass of orange juice.

            In the afternoon, just before I was going to go for a bike ride it started raining again. I decided to take that opportunity, since I was already dressed, to walk over to Freedom Mobile and pay for my July phone plan. But the clerk's computer went down just as he was looking up my number and so I had to wait five minutes. When I got home it had stopped raining but it was too late for a bike ride all the way downtown, so I just rode to Ossington and Bloor. It rained a bit again while I was riding. 

            I weighed 89.2 kilos at 17:30. 

            I worked on my poem series "My Blood In A Bug." 

            I spent almost an hour tearing my old brown leather jacket along the seams, removing the lining and breaking it up into flat pieces. The plan is to use the pieces to cover my guitar amp and run wires from it to my Martian Bouquet sculpture on top to make it look a like a surreal electroshock therapy machine made of skin and rusted metal for the video I'm making for my song "Instructions For Electroshock Therapy." Maybe I'll try putting some red bike flashers inside of the sculpture while I'm shooting the video. The next few sessions of this project will be spent figuring out how to wrap the amp in leather in a way that looks sinister but not silly. 

            I colourized three more damage spots in my skateboarder photo. 

            I scanned the rest of the negatives from the roll I shot at the time of my daughter's birth and another set from the few weeks after, which includes some nice photos of Astrid's mother Nancy. 

            I had a potato with gravy and my last two chicken drumsticks while watching two episodes of "Mayberry R.F.D." 

            In the first story journalism students from the Mayberry high school are given the assignment of conducting interviews with city officials. A student named Nancy has been assigned City Councillor Sam Jones and she is expecting an old man, but when she sees him she immediately develops a crush. She begins to obsess over him and follow him around. He wants to tell her bluntly to leave him alone but both Millie and Howard agree that such an approach could cause psychological damage. Howard took a psychology course in college and he goes over his old textbooks to try to find a solution. He finds inspiration on the topic by reading about Pavlov's dogs and concludes that Nancy's crush on Sam is a conditioned response and that the way to counteract it is to replace it with another stimulous, preferably provided by a boy her own age. A picnic is organized and Emmett's athletic nephew Pete is invited, but Nancy doesn't seem impressed with Pete. Howard takes Nancy aside and tries to explain the psychology behind her feelings but the result is that she transfers her infatuation to Howard. Finally Howard just tells her to leave him alone and she finally ends up with Pete. 

            Nancy was played by Darleen Carr, who was the voice of the girl in The Jungle Book, she played Jeannie Stone the daughter of Karl Malden's character on The Streets of San Francisco, she dubbed some of the singing in The Sound of Music. She played Kathy on the John Forsyth Show, Cindy Smith on The Smith Family and was a regular on Dean Martin Presents: The Gold Diggers. She was the star of the short lived sitcom "Miss Winslow and Son." She played Ambassador E'Tyshra on Deep Space Nine. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in "Once An Eagle." In 1982 her two year old had a blood transfusion that may have been tainted with HIV resulting in his death six months later. Initially the Cedars-Sinai hospital claimed he died of a genetic immune deficiency but later admitted that he may have died of AIDS. 

            In the second story the Mayberians learn that a couple have moved into the Davidson house, but only for three months. Goober meets Frank Wylie when he stops for gas and learns he's a professional writer seeking a change of scenery for inspiration. When Aunt Bee learns that a professional writer is in town she invites him to speak at her book club. Audrey Wylie accepts on Frank's behalf. Suddenly several new people want to join the club but the members, including Howard, reject Goober's request because he's never read anything more than comic books in all his life. The next scene provides the ironic revelation that Frank Wylie is a comic book writer. Frank is still suffering from writer's block when he goes to get gas and Goober tells him his idea of a comic book in which the monster is the hero. When Frank comes to speak at the book club Goober comes as well. Frank surprises the club when he says he and Goober are collaborating and Goober gives a talk on the importance of characters with motivation. Audrey was played by Emmaline Henry, who played Amanda Bellows on "I Dream of Jeannie". 

            Goober's idea on this 1969 show of a swamp monster who is a hero is strikingly similar to what became the hit comic Swamp Thing two years later. I wonder if comic book writer Len Wein at least unconsciously got the idea from this episode.