Ned Glass

            On Monday morning I memorized the fourth verse and second chorus of "Le java des chaussettes à clous" (The Dance of the Studded Stockings) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished working out the chords for "Lola Rastaquouère" by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through it in French and English. Tomorrow I'll upload it to Christian's Translations. 

            I weighed 90.1 kilos before breakfast, I guess because of the pizza I had the night before. 

            In the late morning I finally finished cleaning the black off my oven door. Now both the oven and the door are done but I still have to clean the rack, which might take at least the next session. After that it will be the under-tray and all of the pots and that are stored there. Then I have to wash the floor under and behind the stove. I think I might be spending most of July cleaning the kitchen shelves and the areas under the sink before I finally return to my floor scrubbing project. 

            I weighed 89.4 kilos before lunch. I had kettle chips, salsa and yogourt with a glass of orange juice. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor. It was quite hot outside and a bit of an adjustment since it was quite comfortably warm and breezy in my apartment all day. I weighed 88.7 kilos when I got back. 

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

            I looked again at my video project for my song "Instructions For Electroshock Therapy" and the part in the concert video where my mouth is forming "flick the switch" doesn't seem as uncomfortably different from the studio audio where I sing "turn the switch" as I'd previously thought. So the two parts are synchronized for "Now turn the switch the light is green" and for the first half of "Why don't we wait now to warm up the machine?" They fall apart at "warm up the machine" and so I definitely need video of the machine for a few seconds. I found footage of a shock therapy machine from the 1940s but it looks aesthetically boring, as it's just a metal box with dials and switches. I have the idea to try to continue using my sculptures in the video and to perhaps find a way to make my "Martian Bouquet" sculpture as part of the machine. I mounted it on top of my Jazz Chorus amp but I need it not to be obvious that it's an amplifier while still showing switches and dials. I tried covering it in aluminium foil but it just looked silly. I ripped off a section of my old brown leather jacket and the brown leather looks quite good against the rusted sculpture. I'll try to add more leather to make it look like a leather and rusted metal machine, which might create the sinister effect I'm looking for. If not I can always use the old shock machine footage but the old stuff fits better when it's showing the actual procedure rather than the machinery. 

            I colourized three more damage spots in my skateboarder photo.

            I had a potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching two episodes of Mayberry RFD.

            In the first story Emmett is about to turn fifty and after Goober and Howard start to tease him about growing old he begins to feel old and doesn't want Martha to throw him a party. But when Millie is waiting in Emmett's fix-it shop for her hair dryer to be repaired she looks at pictures of Cary Grant in a movie magazine and tells Emmett she has a crush on him. She mentions the photos of Cary kissing Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor but Emmett comments that age will catch up to him. Millie surprises Emmett by pointing out that Cary Grant is over sixty and suddenly Emmett's attitude about aging changes. If Cary Grant can be a sex symbol at sixty then fifty is nothing. He tells Martha to throw the party af6ter all and Emmett is the life of it. The next day he's sore and regretful but Sam tells him he should stop trying so hard and just enjoy every stage of life. 

            The thing is Emmett looks much older than fifty and in fact Paul Hartman, who played him, was actually 64 at the time this show was shot. 

            In the second story, at the county fair a former Hollywood agent named Roscoe March has booked the dog act that is entertaining the crowd. But then when he sees the Miss Farmerette pageant and the crowning of Millie Swanson, he thinks he's found his ticket to get back on top. Millie is reluctant but she agrees to let Roscoe send some home movie footage of her to a Hollywood producer. The producer is impressed and gives Millie an audition for a Civil War film being shot in Richmond, Virginia. Millie flies there but it turns out she can't act. Roscoe takes Millie and Sam to lunch and tells them he is about to give up when he goes to pay the bill and suddenly sees a potential star working the cash. It turns out that this time he is right and the woman gets the part. 

            The cashier was played by Teri Garr, who had previously appeared in a non-speaking role near the end of the Andy Griffith Show. This time she got to talk. 

            Roscoe was played by Ned Glass, who started out in Vaudeville and played small parts on Broadway. He was also a theatrical production superviser. He signed with MGM in 1937 and until 1953 he just had small parts in films. He was blacklisted from movies in the 1950s. He got better parts when he started working in television, guesting on several popular shows. He was nominated for an Emmy for his appearance on "Julia" and another for "Bridget Loves Bernie." His best role is considered to be as a crook in the movie "Charade."