Drella

            On Wednesday morning when I got up there was lightning and thunder directly overhead but with no rain. 

            I worked out the chords for most of "Démodé" (Out of Style) by Serge Gainsbourg but struggled with the bridge. I should have it done tomorrow. 

            I weighed 89.9 kilos before breakfast.

            In the late morning I finished scraping the black from all the sides of my square baking pan but I still have the bottom left to do. I didn't expect this pan to take so long to clean. 

            I finished watching the film "Songs For Drella" in which John Cale and Lou Reed offer a musical tribute to the late Andy Warhol. Most of the lyrics to the songs that each of them wrote seem to have been mostly derived from excerpts from Warhol's diaries. One of the pieces by Cale isn't really a song at all but rather a piano piece he plays while reading selections from the diary. There's a part where Warhol writes about Lou Reed getting married but not inviting him to the wedding because he was afraid he'd bring too many people. He says, "I really hate Lou Reed ... I'm so proud of him!" 

            I weighed 89.6 kilos before lunch. 

            I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor on another hot day. I rode down Yonge to Richmond and then to avoid the construction on Queen I rode west to Duncan, then up to Queen. On Queen I was passing a line of cars that were turning right and a car that was turning left onto Queen blared its horn at me as if I didn't have the right of way. 

            I weighed 88.9 kilos when I got home. 

            I checked earlier and saw that the Noah Meltz bursary application has just been posted. So when I got home from my bike ride I photographed my notice for this year from the Toronto Transitional Housing Allowance so I could turn it into a pdf and upload it with my grant application along with the pdfs I already have of my proofs of payment from the Canada and Old Age pensions. But when I tried to upload the images from my camera I got a notification that Windows doesn't recognize the device because the last device I plugged in malfunctioned. After a few tries it showed the camera on my PC but it said it was empty. After a few more tries it finally accepted the camera and read its contents. I uploaded the image of my TTHAP notice to Cloud Convert and converted it to a pdf. Now that I have all the financial info they require I'll apply for the grant tomorrow. 

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

            I trimmed a little bit of the video clip of a patient being strapped down that I'd inserted yesterday into the main video that I'm making for my song "Instructions For Electroshock Therapy." I cut off just enough so that the concert video is in synch with the studio audio when I sing "for shock therapy." Next I need a short clip to correspond to the line, "They can't do any harm without their memory" and so I'll probably show someone with catatonia. Also when I sing "their memory" in the studio recording my keyboardist Brian Haddon sings "shock therapy" in a low, death metal voice. But he doesn't sing in the concert video I've been using because he had a sore throat that night, as I recall. I may try to add clips of him from other concerts for some of the moments when he sings "shock therapy." 

            I made two beef patties and grilled them in the oven. I had one between two pieces of toast topped by ketchup, mustard, pickle and piri piri sauce. I ate it with a beer while watching two episodes of Gomer Pyle. 

            In the first story, at mail call all the soldiers, including Gomer, get letters from women, but Sergeant Carter doesn't. Gomer notices his disappointment and decides to try to do something about it. He goes to the library and finds a book of love poems, and then he copies "How Do I Love Thee" into a letter, signs it "The mysterious Miss X" and buys some seductive perfume to scent the envelope. He sends it to Carter who is very happy about receiving it. But then Carter starts becoming obsessed with finding out who Miss X could be. He asks Gomer for suggestions and he says it could be Shirley at the PX lunch counter, Adelaide the hatcheck girl at Club Ha Ha, or Marilyn at the USO. Carter goes to each of these girls and sweettalks them to try to get one of them to admit she wrote the letters. But Shirley seems too puzzled by his inquiries. He asks Adelaide to recite her favourite poem but she begins with "There was a young girl from Pomona ..." and Carter realizes it isn't her. Marilyn wears the same perfume that's on the envelopes and knows Browning's poem by heart but when Carter sees that her finger has been in a splint for a month he realizes she couldn't have written the letters. Carter keeps receiving the letters and bragging to his buddies but they challenge him to bring the woman who wrote them to the USO dance. When Gomer hears this he decides he has to write one last love letter and so he copies a loving break up poem and sends it. However after Carter reads it his disappointment is short lived as he receives a letter from Shirley, one from Adelaide and another from Marilyn. 

            In the second story Carter has a big date lined up with his dream girl Geraldine but pulls Sergeant of the Guard duty at the last minute and can't leave the base. Geraldine is so beautiful that he needs someone trustworthy, dumb and uninteresting to take her out so no other guy can move in. He picks Gomer who is happy to help out his sergeant. But the problem with Geraldine is that she is so easily distracted and Gomer is so polite that when he says complimentary things to her she takes them as words of love. The next day she sends Carter a "dear john" letter. Carter has to find out who Geraldine has left him for and so he asks Gomer to take her out again and to be very watchful of other guys. Gomer is so watchful during the date that all he does is look around for other guys and stare suspiciously at any that come near. When he takes her home she says she'd like to "spend days like this forever" and asks him if he would too. When he says yes she throws her arms around him and says she accepts his proposal. When Gomer talks to Carter he says the other man is coming back tomorrow night. Gomer meets with Geraldine at her place to try to break it off but she grabs him and kisses him just as Carter walks in having followed Gomer to find out who his rival is. When Geraldine finds out Carter was using Gomer to spy on her she tells them both to leave. Carter wants to beat Gomer up but first Gomer explains that Geraldine is fickle and distracted by any sweet talk from any man and so he's better off without her. Carter realizes it's true and takes Gomer for coffee.