Nancy Priddy

            On Friday morning I ran through my translation of "Adieu California" by Serge Gainsbourg. I uploaded it to Christian's Translations and published it, then posted the lyrics on Facebook. The next Gainsbourg song I work on will be "Manu Manuréva", which is about the famous disappearance of a ship on the ocean. 

            I weighed 89.3 kilos before breakfast. Around midday I scraped most of the black off the bottom of my heart shaped cake pan. Next there's a square baking pan that's going to take a lot of work. 

            I weighed 88.9 kilos before lunch. I had kettle chips, mango-lime salsa and yogourt with a glass of orange juice. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor. It was surprisingly hot outside considering how pleasant it was in my apartment. On my way back along Queen I had to weave around cars to get past cyclists that didn't want to venture into the narrow spaces between vehicles and construction cones. I weighed 88.6 kilos when I got home.

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

            At 18:00 I pulled my couch out and moved the book shelf kitty corner to the northwest wall. I centred the leather shock therapy machine that I've dressed up my Roland amp to be and set up the Nikon on the tripod. I shot the video at a couple of heights and with different lighting, sometimes with my reading lamp shining upwards and sometimes off. I did some with the red bike flashers inside my Martian Bouquet sculpture and some without. But all of this was in ambient light from sunset filtering into the room. I still needed some footage when it's darker and so I turned the camera off, hoping the battery would still have enough charge to shoot some more. 

            But after writing the above I realized that while waiting for sunset I could just remove the battery and charge it, so I did that at about two hours before sunset. But I was hoping the room would be fairly dark before then. 

            I colourized three more damage spots in my photo of the skateboarder. The battery was charged just after 20:00. It was a little bit dimmer because there was no direct sunlight outside but it wasn't quite dusk. I did some of the same light effects as before. Then I decided to close the curtains and that seemed to make it as dark as I wanted it to be. The machine looked sinister enough with the red flashes shining out of the sculpture. I'll have a look at the video after I upload it tomorrow and see how it turned out. 

            I moved everything back into place but when I moved the couch one end of the wooden base of the futon frame broke off from the back. So the couch was slightly lopsided. I managed to straighten it out for sitting by propping the back against the wall and pushing the base as far as I could. Sometime soon I'll have to pull it out again to see what can be done. It's possible the back doesn't even need to be attached as long as it's against the wall and the base is in between the boards. I might have to consider getting a new couch soon, but next time I might not get a futon. But then again if my daughter ever comes to visit she would need something to sleep on. 

            I had a potato with gravy and my last two chicken drumsticks while watching two episodes of Mayberry RFD. The bag of New Brunswick potatoes I bought are not very good. They almost turn to liquid once they're cooked. I don't recall my father growing shitty potatoes like that.

            The first story begins with an unlikely scenario. A local elderly rich man named Mr Fremont rolls up to Goober's gas station and asks him to take care of his house and drive his car for two weeks. There is no back story set up to indicate why Goober would be his choice even though that wouldn't be difficult to do. It turns out that Goober has never even been inside the man's house so what would explain the trust when there are probably many choices of people in Mayberry that could do the job? That just seems like fucking lazy writing to me. Since Goober is driving the Rolls Royce around he decides to play the part and put on his best clothes. He also drives to a fancy restaurant looking for pheasant under glass but since they don't have it he orders a pork sandwich and a glass of chocolate milk. Alone at the table next to his is a pretty young woman named Diane Willoughby and the waiter gets her tuna salad mixed up with his pork sandwich. Goober suggests they eat together and so she joins him. Then Diane's mother arrives and is somewhat disinterested in Goober until the waiter mentions his Rolls Royce. When she asks what business he's in he exaggerates his gas station by saying he's in oil. He invites the mother and daughter to come and see the house where he's living. On the way Sam sees him and calls to him. Goober stops but introduces his friend as "Farmer Jones." Emmett turns out to be at the house because Goober had asked him to fix the garbage disposal but Goober calls him "Mr Clark." Goober begins seeing a lot of Diane and they are happy together but Diane wants to get something off her chest and confesses that she and her mother are broke. Goober still hasn't got the nerve to be honest with her but later he invites Diane and her mother and Sam and Emmett to the house and tells the women that Sam and Emmett are his friends. When he confesses that the house and car are not his the mother faints while Nancy smiles. Then Mr Fremont comes home early and Diane's mother comes to. She begins to flirt with Mr Fremont. We learn that Goober still hasn't told Diane the whole truth as he switched to another lie and said he was an undercover FBI agent. 

            Diane was played by Nancy Priddy, who is the mother of Christina Applegate. She is also a singer-songwriter and in 1968 put out a psychedelic folk album called "You've Come This Way Before." She was a backup singer for Leonard Cohen's first album and Stephen Stills wrote the song "Pretty Girl Why" for her when he was with the Buffalo Springfield. In 2007 she recorded "Christina's Carousel". 

            In the second story Millie has a dream that something horrible is going to happen to Sam and Howard on their upcoming fishing trip. Niether Sam nor Howard put much stock in dreams but Howard starts to become swayed when Millie lends him a book by a psychologist on the evidence of prophetic dreams. She also tells Howard that she had a dream that he came into some money and he did in fact just get a $58 bonus cheque from the government. Suddenly Howard starts to worry. He takes a hard hat and a sword with him on the fishing trip. Other than Howard stepping into a deep hole in the lake and going under for a few seconds, nothing really happens. The next day Sam drops Howard off at his place and Millie is waiting at Sam's house to make sure he got home okay. But while Sam is distracted by Millie he smashes through the barn door. 

            This was a variation of a story from The Andy Griffith Show. In that case it was Warren who had the dream.