Jack Dodson

            On Sunday my bite still felt off after the dentist ground it down on Friday. By his judgement it's now fine and he'd said something about it taking time for the bite to settle. 

            I compared the lyrics to "Marilou Reggae" by Serge Gainsbourg from 1976 with "Marilou Reggae Dub" from his 1979 reggae album and they are the same, so I moved on to his "Adieu California." There are only two verses and I memorized the first and most of the second. In the first verse the speaker accuses California of assassinating Marilyn Monroe. The song is sung by Alain Chamfort and I suspect that he wrote the music because it doesn't sound like a Gainsbourg melody. 

            One of the two pairs of shorts I have with working pockets recently wore out and now has a big hole exposing the left white pocket and so they can't comfortably be worn in public anymore. But I wore them at home while washing the other pair and drying them on the roof. 

            I weighed 89.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning I scraped the caked in black grease from the top and bottom of the grill that I put on top of my baking pan for cooking meat in the oven. I still need to clean the inside edges of the rods and their intersections, but it looks a lot cleaner now. 

            I weighed 89.3 kilos before lunch. I had wheat thins and five year old cheddar with a glass of lemonade. 

            I took a bike ride in the afternoon. There were a lot of slow cyclists on the Bloor bike lane and so I had to ride on Bloor to pass them. I rode to Yonge and Bloor and I weighed 88.9 kilos when I got back. 

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

            I finished sewing the leather cover on the front of my Roland amp towards it's role in the video I'm making for my song "Instructions For Electroshock Therapy." I still have to stitch the left side but I'll wait until my next session because that side is too close to the wall to sew it in the position it's in right now. I'll have to lift it down from the top of the book shelf and work on it in the middle of the floor. 

            I colourized three more damage spots in my photo of the skateboarder. It's taking a long time to do them all but I think it's going to look good when I'm done. 

            For dinner I made pizza on naan with Basilicata sauce, a cut up pork burger and a little bit of crumbled five year old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the last two episodes of the second season of Mayberry RFD. 

            In the first story Millie has been going to business college to learn to be a secretary. She takes her final exam and is sure she failed but she passes after all. However when she goes looking for work it's the same story of the employers wanting someone with experience alyhough one can't get experience unless one is hired. Finally she gets a call back from a company that sells magazine prescriptions over the phone and they want Millie to serve as their receptionist. But the viewer learns before Millie that her employers are in fact bookies and they've hired her as part of their front. This story is almost identical to one on the Andy Griffith Show in which Aunt Bee became a receptionist for some crooks as well, except that the previous one was funnier. Millie's bosses keep her busy by having her type all of the names under "A" in the phone book. But after one of the men also dictates a fake letter to her in which he tells someone that business is slow, Millie decides to help her struggling employers out and to get her friends to order some magazines. Sam collects the money and Millie tells him to bring it by the office, but while he's there the cops raid the place and Millie and Sam are taken to the station. After their story checks out they are allowed to leave. 

            In the second story Howard has a mynah bird named MacBeth that he's trained to answer questions like "What's two and two?" Howard has to go away for a few days to speak at a meeting of the ornothological society and Mike has asked for permission to take care of the bird. But when Mike's friend Harold removes the bird from the cage it flies out the window. The boys search but can't find MacBeth anywhere and so they chip in to buy another mynah to replace MacBeth. They try to teach the replacement all of the phrases that MacBeth knew but it can only squawk. Meanwhile Howard is invited to go on a children's show with MacBeth. Also meanwhile MacBeth shows up at Goober's filling station. Goober calls Mike and so Aunt Bee takes him to get MacBeth. But while they are gone Howard comes to get his bird to take it to the TV show in Mount Pilot. When Bee and Mike return and hear what's happened they rush to Mount Pilot. On the children's show Howard and the imposter bird are bombing. Mike releases MacBeth in the studio and he flies to Howard's other arm to save the show. It wasn't much of a season finale. 

            This was the final appearance of Frances Bavier as Aunt Bee on the series. 

            Howard was played by Jack Dodson, who got his start on Broadway. When Andy Griffith saw him there performing in the play "Hughie" he hired him immediately to play Howard on his show. He later played Mickey Malph the father of Ralph Malph on the show "Happy Days".  He played Wayne Joplin in the short lived sitcom "All's Fair." He played Dr Douglas in the film "Something Wicked This Way Comes." He was best friends with Jason Robards who always got Jack cast in any play he did so he would have a good drinking buddy after each show. He was married from 1959 until his death in 1994 to Mary Dodson, who was the art director for Murder She Wrote.