Renie Riano

            On Wednesday morning I couldn't open the document that contains my Boris Vian lyrics and chords. I kept clicking on it but it wouldn't come up. Finally I went into the Task Manager and had to close about a hundred copies of the link to Open Office before Boris Vian opened, but by then I had to move on to Serge Gainsbourg. I memorized the first verse of his song "Relax Baby Be Cool." This probably won't take long since the song is mostly the repeated title and there are only three new lines in each of verses two to four. 

            My Washburn still goes out of tune a lot, especially in damp weather. 

            I weighed 89.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            I called Top Cuts to make an appointment with Amy and it was Amy who answered the phone. She said she's doing reception on Thursday and so I made an appointment for 11:00 on Friday. Amy referred to herself as "Amy" when she confirmed my appointment. That will make it exactly a year since my last haircut. 

            In the late morning I finished scraping the black off my oven rack. There are still some tiny bits of caked in grease at the intersections of the rods but I would need to perform microsurgery to get that stuff off. I started cleaning the pots and pans in the storage tray under the stove. I don't think it's possible to get the brown stains off my Pyrex casserole dish but I realized it's about time for me to give a real cleaning to my main baking pan. There was so much caked in black grease on top of the rim and halfway down on the inside and outside that I was surprised to discover that there are holes for hanging at both ends of the pan. All I managed to get done this time was to scrape the black off of half the top of the rim. It will probably take at least one full session of cleaning to get the whole pan done and I won't have time for that until Sunday. 

            I weighed 88.5 kilos before lunch. I had Ritz crackers with five year old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I finished posting my blog later than usual and so by the time I headed out for my bike ride it was fifteen minutes later than yesterday when I'd decided it was too late to ride all the way downtown. But I felt I needed the exercise and besides it was a nicer day without rain. On Bloor Street in the Annex a guy on a motorcycle pulled up beside me at the red light and said, "Ride a bicycle! Not a motorcycle!" I went to Yonge and Bloor and only got home twenty minutes later than I normally would. I weighed 88.2 kilos after my bike ride. 

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

            I spent about half an hour on transforming my Roland Jazz Chorus amp into a surreal electroshock therapy machine made of leather and rusty metal. I put two pieces of old, brown leather on top and topped that with my Martian Bouquet sculpture. I wrapped a strip of leather around the bottom of the sculpture and pinned it at the back to make it look like it's more connected to the leather part of the machine. I'm going to see how it looks to have wires extending from inside of the leather and up into the sculpture. I dug through my drawer of electrical and computer wires and pulled out several that I think might work. I have to put more leather around the bottom part of the amp and figure out a way to hold all the leather tightly in place. Perhaps I can secure them with more electrical cords but I've also kept the strips from the leather jacket that have snaps on them, which could perhaps be used to wrap the rest of the leather covering. I also need holes ripped in the leather so that some of the amp's knobs are visible. When I shoot the video I'll put several red bike flashers inside the sculpture. 

            I colourized three more damage spots in my skateboarder photo.

            I rubbed two beef burgers with olive oil, salt and freshly ground pepper and grilled them in the oven. I had one for dinner in a sandwich topped with sliced dill pickle, ketchup, dijon, and piri piri sauce. I had it with a beer while watching two episodes of Mayberry RFD. 

            This was actually a two part story that begins with Aunt Bee suddenly deciding to take a Caribbean cruise. Before embarking she gets off on the wrong foot with the captain by mistaking him for the steward and asks him to take care of her bags. When next she meets him she sees him bring his African violet out on deck to catch the afternoon sun. She points out to him that the leaves are wilting and it's because African violets need only morning sun and also he's been overwatering his plant. He bristles but after taking Bee's advice his violet thrives and suddenly she has all his attention throughout the rest of the cruise. By the end he's asked her to marry him and says he wants to retire from sailing and buy a farm. 

            In part two Charles comes to Mayberry as plans for the wedding are underway and he finds a farm to buy. Goober, Howard and Emmett are suspicious of Charles but warm up to him. One night Bee watches a movie about a sea captain leaving his love because his first love will always be the sea. Suddenly she has her doubts about Charles's ability to settle down. When he goes back to his ship to pick up his belongings he is smitten once again by the romance. When Bee hears Charles tell Mike that once one has gone to sea it gets into one's blood she gently confronts him about it. They agree that they love each other but he agrees that a woman like Bee shouldn't have to share a man's love. The wedding is off but Bee doesn't seem all that broken up about it. These two episodes were the most boring ones on this show so far. 

            One of Bee's table mates on the ship was played by Violet Carlson. The other was played by Cecil Eliott. 

            Captain Charles Wolford was played by Will Geer, who had a Masters Degree in Horticulture and had the habit of raising all of the plants mentioned by Shakespeare. His best known role was as Grandpa Walton on "The Waltons". He was also a political activist, a communist and folksinger who travelled with Woody Guthrie and Burl Ives on tours of the work camps in the 1930s. He introduced Woody Guthrie to Pete Seeger. He was blacklisted for refusing to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He was the former boyfriend of gay activist Harry Hay. He created the role of Mr. Mister in the play "The Cradle Will Rock." He received a Tony nomination for his role in "110 In The Shade." He played Mephistopheles in the radio play "The Plot to Overthrow Christmas" and acted in the radio soap opera "Bright Horizon." He played the part of Bear Claw in "Jeremiah Johnson."

            Suddenly Bee has a new old Mayberry friend named Ella, who was played by Renie Riano. Both of her parents were Vaudeville performers and acrobats and she started out when she was a small child performing as "Baby Irene" in an act with her mother. She debuted on Broadway at the age of six as Florette in "A Society Circus". She continued with theatre until the age of 38 when she started to act in movies. She played the maid Effie Schneider in four films of the Nancy Drew series. She brought the comic strip character Maggie Jiggs to life in five "Jiggs and Maggie" movies.