Alvin Hammer

            On Monday morning I finished posting my translation of “Le vieux rocker” by Serge Gainsbourg and memorized the first verse of his song “Belinda.” 

            I weighed 89.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            Since this is reading week there was no Shakespeare lecture this morning, but I used the time between 9:00 and 11:00 to work on organizing some of my notes on Autolycus for my Shakespeare essay. 

            I weighed 89.1 kilos before lunch. I took a siesta with the windows open because it was warm outside and dreamed that one of the cars going by was playing a punk version of “Jog on, jog on, the footpath way” from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. I think it could work. 

            When I got up at 15:30, rather than posting my blog I decided to get ready for my bike ride so there would be less chance of being caught riding after dark. My batteries hadn't finished charging for my front flasher and so I put two CR2032 batteries in the front flasher that Nick Cushing gave me a few years ago. I left a little before 16:00 and made it home before it got dark. It's amazing what a difference half an hour makes. I left at 16:30 yesterday and it was pitch black under a clear sky when I got home. 

I weighed 88.5 kilos this time. 

            I finished lumping together my notes on Autolycus and then began to edit them. 

            I grilled three steaks in the oven and had one with a potato and gravy while watching an episode of Gomer Pyle. 

            This story was similar to one that appeared a couple of seasons before. It's reenlistment time and Carter is trying to discourage Gomer from signing up again. He figures he's found the solution when he gets the idea to convince Gomer to marry Lou Ann, even though Lou Ann is out of town and won't be back for a few days. For most Marines who are not officers marriage is not a good mix with the service and so Carter is sure Gomer won't reenlist if he is getting married. Carter buys the ring and the store owner thinks at first that he and Gomer are getting married. Carter pays for a honeymoon package in Guam, buys Gomer a suit and then gets him a dilapidated cottage. Then, with the help of Bunny, three possible wedding dresses are selected. But in the dress shop Gomer can see that Bunny is swept up in the romance of marriage. She tells Gomer that if one loves somebody like she does Carter, they are worth waiting for. Now Gomer knows what to do. He puts the cottage and the honeymoon into Carter's name, gives him the ring and then reenlists. He tells Carter that he had planned on not joining back up but Carter convinced him. This way he can save money to marry Lou Ann further down the road. This was a very similar outcome to the previous story about reenlistment. 

            The jewellery store owner was played by Alvin Hammer, who in 1938 was a member of the comedy troupe The Revuers. They consisted of Hammer, Betty Comden, Judy Holliday, Adolph Green and sometimes they were accompanied on the piano by Leonard Bernstein. They played at The Village Vanguard in New York.