Karen Sharpe

            On Sunday morning just after midnight, before going to bed I did a search for bedbugs and didn't find any. When I got up to pee a few hours later I didn't bother to check again because I wanted to get back to sleep. 

            I finished working out the chords for "La java des chaussettes à clous" (The Dance of the Studded Stockings) by Boris Vian. I still need to run through it in French and then make some major adjustments in my English translation. For one thing, although "chausettes à clous" would literally be "studded stockings", it's really a name in French for a policeman's hobnail boots, so I'll have to change that in the chorus. 

            I worked on memorizing the second verse of "Bébé Polaroid" by Serge Gainsbourg but every time I nailed it down I forgot some of the first verse. Then when I would get the first verse again I would lose the second, and so on. I'm sure I'll get them tomorrow and those are the most difficult verses, since after that there are only four new lines in each verse. 

            I weighed 89.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I used the rest of the ready made spackle to seal the bottom of the old exit door in my bedroom. There was the tiniest crack running along there that I hadn't thought to be even big enough for a bedbug to hide but since I found one there yesterday morning I decided to cover it. When the ready made plaster ran out I dug a seven year old bag of poly filla out from under the sink that was still a quarter full. I mixed some in an old Folgers container and covered several more cracks. Most of the nice work that I'd done last year to sand that door in preparation for painting it was undone today, but I had no choice. I've got to eliminate any shelter options that bedbugs could have. 

            I weighed 89.6 kilos before lunch. I had five cream crackers with five year old cheddar and a glass of lemonade.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor. Roller bladers are hard to pass on the Bloor bike lane because they take up the whole width of the lane with the sideways thrusts of their legs. At Queen and Bathurst I was behind a white van that took three years off my life with its exhaust fumes. Finally I went up beside it so I could breathe. I weighed 88.7 kilos when I got home. 

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

            I worked on my Movie Maker project of putting together a video for my song "Instructions For Electroshock Therapy." From the clip of the concert footage of the Christian and the Lions show at The 360 I made two separate clips of my keyboardist Brian Haddon singing the words "shock therapy." I inserted the second one and synchronized it with the studio audio version at the point when Brian sings "shock therapy" at the same time as I sing "their memory." One beat after that I sing "shock therapy" again and so next I have to try to synchronize that part in the main concert video with the studio recording. "Instructions For Electroshock Therapy" is almost an eight minute song and so far I've only made a little more than a quarter of a video for it. School starts again in a little less than a month and so I don't have a lot of time to work on it. Even including a few weeks off from studies in December I probably won't be able to finish the video until late spring of 2022 at the earliest. 

            I worked on making the graffiti clearer on one brick on the wall behind the skateboarder in my "Anti Gravity's Rainbow" photo. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilicata sauce and extra old cheddar and had it with a beer while watching two episodes of Gomer pyle. 

            In the first story the colonel has told Sergeant Carter to have one of his men take the jeep into town to a certain store to buy a box of special cigars for a visiting congressman. The only man available is Gomer and he is getting ready to leave when Duke begs him to drive him to the airport to meet his flight attendant girlfriend before she leaves. Gomer knows he should just go straight to the cigar store and then straight back but he also wants to help out his friend. Duke and Gomer find Patty on the stairs to the plane just as she's finished welcoming the passengers aboard. Duke and Patty kiss and have a moment together but Gomer is impatient to leave. Just then they see Sergeant Carter drive up as he's escorting a general to the plane. Duke and Gomer hide inside the plane to wait for Carter to leave but then they feel the plane taking off and hear the pilot announce they are en route to Rome. From Rome Gomer calls Carter, who when he hears people speaking Italian in the background thinks Gomer has stopped for pizza. Patty arranges for them to fly to Paris where Gomer calls Carter again and finally to London where Patty buys them tickets back to LA with her credit card. Gomer remembers the cigars but since it's Sunday the cigar store in town outside the base will be closed and so Gomer has no choice but to buy some at the kiosk in Heathrow. But they have a different brand than the kind Gomer had been told to buy. Gomer gets back with half an hour to spare. The congressman says the cigars are not his brand but he's been looking for them all over the US because they are the finest cigars in the world. Carter tells Gomer he'll have to get the congressman that brand from now on. Gomer gives Carter three shillings as change. 

            Patty was played by Karen Sharpe, who first went to LA at the age of 12 because she wanted to be a professional ice skater. She worked as a billboard and magazine model, appearing on the cover of Cosmopolitan. Her first prominent role had her dancing on top of White Rain shampoo bottles in a popular TV commercial. In 1952 she was selected to be Modern Screen magazine's Star of Tomorrow. The same year she starred in "Strange Facination" and "Bomba and the Jungle Girl". She co-starred in "The Vanquished". In 1954 she won the Golden Globe New Star of the Year award for her role in "The High and the Mighty". She co-starred in "The Trouble Shooter". She went against studio advice and took roles on television, co starring in the series "Johnny Ringo". She was almost cast to be Larry Hagman’s fiancé on “I Dream of Jeannie” but Jerry Lewis snatched her up to play the lovesick nurse in his “Disorderly Orderly”. She married Stanley Kramer, who produced and directed “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” along with many other critically acclaimed films. After her marriage she also became a successful producer. She is now in charge of Kramer's estate and legacy. 

            In the second story Carter's platoon has been selected to guard a Marine warehouse that has been targeted by a clever gang. Gomer is trying so hard to be alert and on top of his job that he calls for the Sergeant after having heard a cat, then a rabbit and then after having seen his own shadow. Carter tells him not to bother him anymore. A truck pulls up with a captain and some soldiers and they show Gomer a requisition to expedite. Gomer is helping the disguised gang load the boxes when Carter comes to the back of the truck to give Gomer hell for not calling him. Just then the crooks close the doors of the truck, not realizing that Gomer and Carter are inside. As the truck is making a quick turn one of the boxes falls on Carter's head and knocks him out. At the hideout the gang opens the door to find Gomer who offers to help them unload the truck. While he's doing that he puts Carter's pistol in his pocket. Gomer tells the crooks that his sergeant is unconscious back there. They go to look and at that point Gomer pulls Carter's gun on the fake captain, forcing him into the back and closing the door. Gomer drives the truck back to the warehouse and tells the commanding officer that Carter trapped the gang and that it was all his idea. Carter gets a commendation without even knowing what happened.