Byron Foulger

            On Wednesday after yoga I got my thirty and five-year journals out of the way and did a shortened song practice.

            I weighed 87.4 kilos before breakfast at 8:15. 

            I took a shower without shaving and by 9:30 I was free to study for the last few hours before my exam. 

            I continued to re-read my lecture notes out loud. 

            I took a siesta from 10:30 to 12:00. 

            I weighed 86.6 kilos before lunch.

            I finished re-reading my lecture notes at around 15:00 and started memorizing the publication dates, authors and literary works with four hours before the exam and three hours before I had to leave.

            I took another siesta at 16:00 but only for half an hour. 

            When I got up I finished memorizing all the books, authors and dates. I printed my list and got ready to leave and ran through the list a few times on the way downtown. I only stopped once to look at the printed sheet because I'd forgotten Frances Harper who wrote The Slave Mother in 1854. 

            I was more than half an hour early at 55 St George and so I ran through the list some more while I was waiting. A young woman came up to chat with me. I think she's of South Asian descent but her name is Freia. She said her parents weren't into Norse mythology. They just liked the name but she's gotten interested in Norse myths because of her name. I said, “You must think of yourself every Friday."

            We started the exam at 19:10. I did the best I could in the two hours so we'll see what happens. I usually do okay. 

            I got home at 21:45. For some reason I thought heating up a frozen pizza with sauce, five-year-old cheddar and pork would be quicker, but it was cold when I started eating it. I put it back in the oven but never got it as hot as I wanted. I had it with a beer while watching two episodes of the Addams Family.

            In the first story, Lurch is playing the harpsichord when a Mr Belmont is walking by. He comes in admiring the music and when he sees the harpsichord he wants it for his museum. Gomez and Morticia decide to donate the instrument. Lurch is very upset and wants to quit. Gomez and Fester decide to make him another harpsichord in three days. They do a pretty good job. Then the movers come for it and Lurch is very upset again. The movers take the copy and Lurch thinks his harpsichord is gone. It turns out that Belmont was not a museum curator but rather a crook who tried to sell the copy and got caught. The Addamses still have the original and Lurch is happy again. 

            Belmont was played by Byron Foulger, who started acting on Broadway at the age of 21. Beginning in the 1930s he appeared in hundreds of movies. His film career got a boost after he performed with Mae West in a racy Adam and Eve sketch on the Edgar Bergan-Charlie McCarthy radio show. The sketch got Mae West banned from radio. He was married to actor Dorothy Adams from 1921 until he died in 1970. He once threatened to punch out Errol Flynn for flirting with his wife at a party. Although most of his roles were supporting ones as worried shopkeepers, bank tellers and professors, he was so familiar to audiences that they would laugh as soon as his face appeared on the screen. He played The Devil in the Bowery Boys film Up In Smoke. He played train conductor Wendell Gibbs on Petticoat Junction. His daughter is Rachel Ames who starred on General Hospital for decades.

            In the second story, Morticia and Fester overhear Gomez talking to his broker over the phone. His broker Blooker is telling Gomez about someone else who lost a fortune on the stock market but when they hear him say, “Penniless? Wiped out? That's horrible!” they think that Gomez has lost everything. The whole family secretly tries to pitch in to help Gomez in his time of need. Morticia tries to give fencing lessons, Fester and Lurch try to become escorts, Mama tries to get work as an aesthetician, and Wednesday and Pugsley set up a stand selling henbane juice. Together they all make about $1.30. Morticia decides she has no choice but to sell the family jewels. Fester blows open the safe just for fun even though it isn't locked. Inside Morticia finds a stock certificate for 100 shares of The Big Swamp and Southern Railway. They learn in the paper that a mysterious tycoon is looking for 100 more shares of that company so he can have controlling interest. Morticia calls up Blooker and of course the mystery tycoon, although Morticia still doesn't know it, is Gomez because he's tired of wrecking model trains and wants to wreck a real one. Gomez makes several offers through Blooker and they finally settle on $1 million. In the end the Big Swamp and Southern Railway sinks into the swamp but Gomez seems to have an infinite amount of money stored away in various obscure banks and Morticia realizes he is not broke after all. 

            Blooker was played by Milton Frome, who played Admiral Fangschleister in the movie adaptation of the Batman TV series. He played Dr Levee in The Nutty Professor. Mr Olsson in The Swinger. He was chairman of the USO for two years.