Norris Goff

            On Monday morning I worked out the chords for the second verse of "La java des chaussettes à clous" (The Dance of the Studded Stockings) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished working out the chords for the introduction and the first line of "Démodé" (Out of Style) by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I weighed 90.5 kilos before breakfast.

            I got an email from Albert Moritz about my issues trying to submit my manuscript to Exile Editions. He said he'd written to them about that and about another issue of his own and he's annoyed that they haven't gotten back to him. He said I could either wait or think about submitting to Guernica or Ekstasis. I said that since he's also waiting to hear from Exile I would piggy back my issue on his for now. 

            It was a very hot day so I decided to take advantage of that to wash my shorts and hang them out on the roof in the sun so they'd be dry for my bike ride in the afternoon.

            In the late morning I scraped the black from another side of my square baking pan. I have two sides and the bottom left. 

            I weighed 89.8 kilos before lunch. 

            My shorts were pretty much dry before my bike ride. When I went out to the deck to get them Benji and Shankar were out there chatting. I told Shankar I didn't want to interrupt his satsang with Swami Benjamananda. Benji told me the "Om" symbol I put on my door is wrong. I have a yoga teacher's diploma that says otherwise. 

            On the Bloor bike lane I came up behind a middle aged cyclist rocking out to "A Little Respect" by 80s synth pop band Erasure. I passed him but I could hear the song behind me almost all the way to Bathurst. 

            I rode to Yonge and Bloor. The streetcar track construction along Queen has extended from Bay past York to University but there was still a space to ride my bike after I came up York from Richmond. I think it might be closed soon and so next time maybe I'lI continue on Richmond to Peter and then use that to turn left on Queen. I weighed 89.7 kilos when I got home. 

            I worked on my poem series "My Blood In A Bug" reworking the poem "The Odour" which explores the various perceptions of the smell of bedbugs. 

            I made another attempt to change the playback speed for the video of someone being strapped down for shock therapy. I was able to slow it down to normal but inadvertently slowed all my other videos to half speed and so I had to undo the change. I did another search online and found out that I could do it in Windows Video Editor. I'd ignored trying that app after I found out it couldn't crop videos. I tried to open my cropped video in the video editor but it wouldn't recognized the .ts file. So I went to Cloudconvert and uploaded the file to convert it to .wmv. Once that was done I was able to import the new video to the video editor and change it to half speed. 

            While the video was exporting I repaired my computer chair. The seat has been hanging onto the base by one bolt for the last several weeks. The first of the screws came off a few years ago. I still had all three and it only took me three tries to find the right size Allen key. 

            The video finished exporting shortly and so now it should be ready to import to Movie Maker to trim and then insert in the video I'm making for my song "Instructions For Electroshock Therapy." 

            I colourized two more damage spots in my "Anti Gravity's Rainbow" photo. 

            I had a potato with gravy and two small pork chops for dinner while watching two episodes of Gomer Pyle. 

            In the first story every private in Carter's platoon has to try to act like a sergeant and put the other men through their drill. Gomer wants out of it because he doesn't think he has leadership ability. Meanwhile Grandpa Pyle comes to visit Gomer. Grandpa had been a sergeant in the US calvary during WWI. He tries to help Gomer build his confidence so he can take command, but Gomer fails when Carter calls him forward. Grandpa tries one more thing by giving Gomer a good luck charm that he says Gomer's great grandfather had in his pocket while charging San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt. The charm is a piece of metal in the shape of the word "excelsior." Then he goes to see Carter and tricks him into giving Gomer another chance by suggesting that he's smart for not giving the men second chances because that way none of them can show him up. Gomer is filled with confidence while he's carrying the good luck charm and he takes command with great authority. Later in his grandpa's trailer he tells him he couldn't have done it without the charm. But grandpa tells him he did do it without a charm and shows him that "excelsior" is just the chrome logo he removed from his refrigerator. 

            Grandpa Pyle was played by Norris Goff, who was a radio star from 1931 to 1954 for his portrayal of Abner Peabody and several other characters on "Lum and Abner" with his partner Chester Lauk. The show was on four broadcasting networks over those years. They also portrayed the same characters on screen in "The Bashful Bachelor", "Dreaming Out Loud", "Lum and Abner Abroad" and four other films. Before their radio success they had also been blackface entertainers. 

            In the second story Gomer receives a coupon for one free dance lesson in Mayberry. He approaches a local studio to ask if they have a similar deal. The manager Fred and the instructor Ginger at the Fay Dance Studio are husband and wife. After his free lesson Gomer is told that he can't just walk away because they can't survive as a studio by giving nothing but free lessons. There are various contracts and the longer they run for the cheaper the monthly payments are. Gomer takes the lifetime contract so all he has to pay is $10 a month. When Carter learns of this he tells Gomer he's been had and accompanies him to the studio to demand they tear up the contract. But Fred and Ginger comment about how cat-like Carter is as he walks and then Ginger begins to seductively dance with him. Carter winds up signing a five year contract. But shortly afterward he receives a bill for $250 and he wants out. Fred tells him he has to pay and so Carter goes to a lawyer who tells him the contract is legal. Finally Carter gets an idea and arranges for every man in his platoon to sign a contract. They all show up at the dance studio and begin passing Ginger back and forth as a dance partner until she is exhausted and quits, tearing up all the contracts. 

            Ginger was played by Sylvia Lewis.

            Maybe it was the heat but I felt very tired almost an hour before my usual bedtime and hit the sack.