Herbie Faye

            On Friday morning it had been three days since I found the one bedbug and I was relieved that so far another one hadn't turned up. Sometimes I think I smell bedbugs but it's the odour of rancid fat rising up through my floor from Popeyes downstairs. 

            I finished editing "J'ai des locataires" (I Am A Landlord) by Serge Gainsbourg on Christian's Translations and published it in the blog. 

            I weighed 89.8 kilos before breakfast.

            In the late morning I glued the third piece of the handle onto the "Troll" mug that my late friend William "Scooter" Baker made. There's one more piece to go and I'll probably have it done on Sunday. 

            I sewed some more of my Frankenstein's Rainbow doorstop, which is part of an old and colourful woolen blanket sewn around a concrete block. 

            I weighed 88.2 kilos before lunch. 

            I had kettle chips, salsa and yogourt with a glass of orange juice. 

            Shankar's wifi network was down at lunch time and so I used the much weaker dlink network, which I had to reconnect to every fifteen minutes or so. When I got up from my siesta his network was still gone and so I finally decided to knock on his door. He didn't open it but told me through the door that he was cleaning and that was why it was down. 

            I went for a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor. There were lots of slow cyclists out on rented bicycles. On my way home along Queen I was in the outside lane waiting for a light when someone behind shouted, "Where's your mask?" I didn't turn because they might not have been talking to me but then I heard, "Hey Christian!" I turned and it was Nick Cushing, with someone else in the car. He'd told me on Facebook earlier that he would be in town having dinner at The Rhino and offered to drop by. I offered by regrets at not being able to hang out but told him that I still wanted to socially distance until things open up more. So from behind he shouted something about wearing a mask for the fumes. After the light changed and I cleared the construction to move back into the right lane, Nick passed and called out, "Beep, beep!" A few minutes later when I was back in Parkdale I passed him and said "Hi Nick" as he was parking across from The Rhino and he said, "There he is!" 

            I weighed 88.4 kilos after my bike ride. Shankar's wifi was back on when I returned home and so I was able to post my blog. 

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

            I did another search for footage of the operation of electroshock therapy machines but still couldn't find any videos that show them being plugged in. I'll have to widen my search and see if I can just find any machines being plugged in with the female end of a cord. 

            I colourized some more of my skateboarder photo. 

            I finished digitally repairing a photo of my late friend Mike Copping's son Noah from 1987 and started working on the other photo of Noah taken a few seconds later.

            I had a potato with gravy and three pork ribs while watching two episodes of Andy Griffith. 

            In the first story Aunt Bee gets called up for jury duty in Raleigh. Andy, Opie and Goober go along to watch the trial. The defendant is a man named Jenkins who is accused of stealing several items from an appliance store. Jenkins's testimony is that his TV went on the blink and so he took it to the store to be repaired. He found the front door locked but saw a light on and went around the back where there was a door open. He went inside and saw no one there and so he left but when the owner of the store saw him leaving with a TV he realized how bad it looked and ran. Bee is the only juror who thinks Jenkins is innocent. On the second day Bee still won't vote that Jenkins is guilty and so a hung jury is called. Meanwhile there is a nervous man in the court audience who is impatient for Jenkins to be found guilty. He says that it should be obvious that Jenkins stole the TV and the radio and those other items. He also asks for a light and says he lost his lighter. Andy goes to the bailiff and asks if a radio was stolen from the store. The bailiff confirms there was. Andy asks if the radio was mentioned and it wasn't. Among the items found at the scene of the crime was a lighter. Andy takes the lighter to the nervous man and asks if it's his. He says it is and takes it, wondering where he lost it. Andy says you probably dropped it when you were robbing the store. The man tries to run but is caught and Jenkins is found innocent. 

            Jenkins was played by Jack Nicholson in his last TV role. 

            Apparently someone like Aunt Bee who lives with a sheriff or any other law officer would never really be selected as a juror. 

            In the second story Arnold gets a tape recorder with a bugging device from his father and he and Opie are playing with it. Andy warns them they can't bug private conversations. But when state police catch an alleged bank robber named Eddie Blake and have him stay in Andy's jail for a couple of days. Opie and Arnold decide that Andy's advice about bugging couldn't apply to criminals and so they bug Eddie's conversation with his lawyer. Eddie doesn't confess but tells the lawyer where he can find the $25,000 that was stolen, half of which he can have for defending him. The boys learn that the money is in a briefcase in a well at the old Ferguson farm. When Opie tries to tell Andy about the recording Andy erases the tape, telling him that recording a conversation between a lawyer and client is extremely unethical. But meanwhile Arnold goes and gets the money. Opie tells him they have to take it back but then they learn that Eddie is going to get out on bail. When Eddie is alone Opie and Arnold tell him that they know about the money and that they are going to get it before him, in which case they'll be in trouble. So they want the crook to do them a favour and confess. He does confess and so Opie and Arnold are out of trouble. 

            Eddie was played by Herbie Faye, who worked with Mildred Harris and Phil Silvers in a comedy act on Vaudeville starting in 1928. He appeared on Broadway in "Wine Women and Song" and "Top Banana" in 1951. His first major screen acting part came at the age of 56 when he played Corporal Sam Fender on 24 episodes of The Phil Silvers Show.