Conny Van Dyke

            On Sunday morning I looked for the chords for “Laide jolie laide” (Ugly Pretty Ugly) by Serge Gainsbourg but no one had posted them and so I worked out the first two chords of the instrumental intro. 

            I weighed 87.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I was able to have a normal morning for the first time in a few days, as my computer didn’t stall very much at all. It only kept me waiting when I was trying to get onto Twitter. 

            I read more of “The Triumph of Modernism” about Modernist Indian artists. I re-read some more of Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih. 

            I weighed 87.2 kilos before lunch. I had a slice of spinach pizza with added five-year-old cheddar and a glass of raspberry lemonade. 

            My computer started to misbehave again when I was trying to read the news during lunch. I didn’t get updated on much of anything. When I took a siesta, I had to put the PC down for a nap as well. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Shaw. I got caught in a confetti squall on my way up Brock that lasted until I was almost home on Queen Street. The snow pretty much melted as soon as it hit the ground, but it gathered on my collar and my backpack and fell to the floor when I got home. 

            My computer froze again and so I had to restart and then it functioned closer to normal.

            I read more of “The Triumph of Modernism.” This chapter is about Rabindranath Tagore who had been a renowned Indian poet but turned to painting. His untrained Primitivist style made him a darling of the European art world in the early 20th Century, especially in Germany. He later started an experimental university in India teaching students by letting them discover their own techniques and then teaching them the discipline to apply themselves to it. 

            I re-read some more of Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih. 

            I put extra-old cheddar on top of a small slice of spinach pizza and a regular slice of spanakopita and heated them in the oven. I had them with a beer while watching an episode of Adam-12. 

            I know that these stories are supposedly put together from real situations but this one seemed altogether unrealistic because it seems like several situations are patched awkwardly together. In the story, Malloy and Reed go to an apartment building where a neighbour named Abbie Jenks has called because there is a child being left alone, sometimes for a few days at a time. Abbie’s main concern seems to be that because the child has no food, she is stealing her cat’s milk. The cops knock on the door and meet six-year-old Charlie, who is indeed alone and has no idea where her mother is. She says her daddy doesn’t live there anymore but sometimes he visits when her mother isn’t there. When asked about the milk she says she needs it for Sissy. Charlie leads the cops to the bathroom where Sissy is a baby about six months old in the bathtub. Then a dandy named Phillip Bartell shows up and Charlie calls him “Daddy”, but he says he’s not her father. Malloy calls Child Services and does a check on Bartell. When they discover he has outstanding parking tickets they arrest him. Child services discovers that Charlie has been beaten with a belt and an electrical cord and she tells them that “Daddy did it.” Since Charlie calls Bartell “Daddy” they assume it was him but then they learn that Charlie’s mother Jeannette has returned home from her job as an exotic dancer. Malloy and Reed return to the apartment to find Jeannette being beaten by Charlie’s father. New assumptions are formed but it turns out he is beating Jeannette because she’s been beating Charlie. Jeannette seems unhinged from reality, and they lead her away. Later reed is confused why Charlie said that “Daddy did it.” Malloy explains, “Because she loves her mother.” 

            Abbie was played by Conny Van Dyke, who was a singer and songwriter and one of the first white people to be signed to Motown Records. She was Teen magazine's Miss Teen of the United States in 1963. In 1969 she co-starred in “Hell’s Angels.” In 1972 she released her first album. In 1974 she co-starred in “Framed” and in 1975 she co-starred with Burt Reynolds in WW and the Dixie Dance Kings. She released her second album that year. She appeared on over 1000 game shows in the 70s including Match Game and The Gong Show. 

            Charlie was played by six-year-old Dawn Lyn. She was later cast as Prudence in "Nanny and the Professor", but her contract ran out while they were waiting for the pilot to be sold. By the time it was sold she’d already gained the role of Dodie on My Three Sons. I remember her from that show. I think it was near the end of the series though. She co-starred in Shoot Out in 1971. She appeared in all of the Walking Tall movies. She auditioned for the part of Regan in the Exorcist but they considered her too young for the subject matter. She was a regular on the series Born Free and Red Hand Gang. She worked steadily into her mid-teens because she was short and could still play a child. She is the younger sister of actor, singer, and former teen idol Leif Garrett and they worked together in several movies and TV shows. She hasn’t acted for many years and has co-owned a boutique in San Francisco. 

            Jeannette was played by Bambi Allen, who played a biker chick in a few movies like Satan’s Sadists. She died at the age of 35 from complications caused by silicone breast injections.

February 28, 1992: While waiting for the moving van I talked with the customer about dream interpretation

Thirty years ago today

             On Friday I got up at around 8:00 to call Wayne. He said for me to be at 3100 Steeles East at 13:00. After going back to bed for a while I got ready and left at 11:30. I got there on time, but the guys didn’t show up with my cheque until about 14:30. So, I read all my newspapers and chatted with one of the customers about dreams and their interpretation. 

            We finished at 17:30 and I went to the Shops on Steeles Mall to call Nancy, but she wasn’t home. Since I was up there, I decided to go to her neighbourhood and try calling again. I caught the Steeles bus east but it turned on Pharmacy and so I took the lane over to Bamburgh Plaza and called again but she still wasn’t there and so I just headed home and picked up some groceries on the way.

            I got through to Nancy later and she said I could see my daughter on Sunday. I cleaned the cupboard doors and then watched TV.

Amrita Sher-Gil

            On Saturday morning my phone rang at around 5:30 while I was doing yoga. I saw it was my landlord’s number and he was probably calling to scream while blaming me for the leaking downstairs that was caused by his faulty drain.

            I finished memorizing “Laide jolie laide” (Ugly Pretty Ugly) by Serge Gainsbourg. There is a line or two near the end that are repeated, and I may not have memorized the sequence but that’s not important since I know the lines. 

            I weighed 87.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            Benji knocked on my door and told me that this morning our upstairs neighbour Caesar called the landlord to complain that Benji had turned the heat off all day yesterday. The thermostat battery had died. Nobody turned the heat off.

            Around midday I went to No Frills where I bought eight bags of grapes, a bag of oranges, a carton of soymilk, and two bags of kettle chips. 

            For lunch I heated a slice of spinach pizza with added five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of raspberry lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Ossington. It was minus four out and so there’d been some more melting of snow and the way was fairly clear. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos at 17:00. 

            I got caught up on my journal at 18:30. 

            I read some more of The Triumph of Modernism. The chapter on Amrita Sher Gil is very interesting. She was half Hungarian and half Indian and fiercely independent. It really reminded me of how strong-willed all the Hungarian women I’ve known are. She was one of the greatest female artists of the early 20th Century and a pioneer of Indian Modernism. Her family moved from Hungary to India when she was eight. She began painting at an early age. She studied art in Paris and began to gain recognition and many lovers like Malcolm Muggeridge. When she returned to India, she began a project of studying her roots and of doing modernist paintings of rural people in their ordinary lives. She died at the age of 28. 

                      

           

            I began re-reading out loud Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih. 

            I found out that starting Tuesday our Global Modernisms classes will be in person. That’s a relief. 

            I thawed out two slices of spinach pizza that my upstairs neighbour David gave me last month. I added a little sauce and some extra-old cheddar and heated them in the oven. I had them for dinner with a beer while watching an episode of Adam-12.

            In this story the character of Ed Wells is introduced. He’s a “heroic” cop who fearlessly rushes into dangerous situations and by dumb luck he tends to win. Reed is very impressed with Wells and that has Malloy worried because he wants his partner to continue living. 

            Adam-12 gets called to a domestic dispute in which the husband has a gun. Malloy and Reed arrive on the scene and Wells and his partner come in as back-up. It’s supposed to be Malloy’s call and he starts to plan things out carefully with someone going around to the back door. But Wells just decides to take over and kicks down the door. The husband fires wide because he’s drunk, and Wells easily takes him down. Malloy gets in trouble with the sergeant for letting Wells take charge. 

            Next Malloy and Reed respond to a report of a man chasing a young boy. Malloy handcuffs the man, but it turns out that he’s the boy’s father and the kid ran away because they were on their way to the barbershop. 

            Next there is a call for Wells and his partner to deal with a man with a gun who is holed up in a house. Malloy decides to come in as backup. Wells charges toward the house and is immediately taken out by a shotgun. Malloy takes charge, first to get Wells out of there where he is lying on the lawn. Malloy takes off his leather jacket and has Reed do the same. They use them to cover the back, side windows of their car and then he has Reed lie down in the back. Malloy drives the car onto the lawn between Wells and the shooter. Shots are fired through their jackets. Malloy gets Wells in the back seat with Reed and then they drive to safety. Malloy then takes command of all the cars that arrive. He has some direct traffic away from the area and others evacuate the houses across the street. He calls for an ambulance and for the sergeant to come with tear gas. When the sergeant arrives, he uses the loudspeaker to warn the shooter of what they are about to do if he does not come out. The shooter comes out. Malloy and Reed are praised by the sergeant for their level-headedness. Malloy and Reed go to visit Wells in the hospital. Outside of his ward, they talk with Ed’s wife Betty who thanks Malloy. Inside they get no thanks from Wells who has learned nothing. He just thinks he’ll be luckier next time and is about to tell one of his many “heroic” stories about his exploits as a cop when Malloy and Reed leave. 

            Wells was played by Bing Crosby’s oldest son Gary, who was the most successful of the Crosby boys. Two of his brothers committed suicide. 

            Betty Wells was played by Barbara Baldavin, who played Angela Martine on Star Trek. She played Nurse Holmby on Medical Center. She became a casting director for Trapper John MD.

February 27, 1992: Inspired by Anne Ziegler talking about the prolificness of her teacher I resolved to work harder myself

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I got up at 5:38 and caught the streetcar at 5:50. I took the Coxwell bus to Danforth and made it to Union Station in time to buy a coffee before getting on the GO train. I got to Sheridan College in Oakville almost an hour early and read the paper. 

            I had lunch at 12:30 and ate while listening to Anne and Joe talk about art. I was inspired by their description of the prolificness of their mutual teacher and I resolved to work harder myself. 

            I worked until 17:30 and got a ride with Anne Ziegler. She confessed that she was thinking of packing it in and moving to the west. I told her that I’d do her astrological chart and tell her when she should go. She gave me both her and her daughter’s birth information. 

            I got some groceries on the way home and then watched Kids In The Hall.

Angela Greene

            On Friday morning when I got up there was snow on the streets again. It wasn’t a major snow shower but if it didn’t clear up by the afternoon, I’d be back to frustrating bike riding. 

            Bit Torrent wouldn’t shut down and so I had to manually turn my computer off. When I started back up all my torrents were gone again. I think this will happen more and more often while this computer is on its last legs. It was easier to get them back this time because I knew how, and I was able to look at them by date. One of them I had to go back to Pirate Bay and download again. Another I couldn’t find but it’s not that important. 

            I memorized the second verse of “Laide jolie laide” (Ugly Pretty Ugly” by Serge Gainsbourg. There’s just the chorus to learn now.

            I weighed 87.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            My computer was dragging so much that I had to restart three times in the morning, and it took me three hours longer than normal to do all my usual stuff. While the computer was restarting for the third time, I decided to try my laptop, but Google Chrome wanted to update and then said it couldn’t so I would have to reinstall Chrome, and so I did that. But after the third restart my computer started behaving closer to normal and I didn’t need my laptop. 

            Just before lunch I tend to need to switch off the thermostat in the hall for a while because the heat gets unbearable. But today the radiators weren’t hot, and it felt as if the furnace was cooling down. Since it was cold outside it wouldn’t have shut itself off. I went outside in the hall and saw that the thermostat was totally off. I told Benji but he said he didn’t want to mess with the furnace. I tried to call the landlord but there was no answer. He was apparently out of town but Benji got through to him and he said he would send is repair man over. 

            I weighed 87.4 kilos before lunch. 

            After lunch it had cooled down so much that I didn’t strip naked for my siesta. 

            In the afternoon I got ready for a bike ride and took my bike out, but the back wheel wouldn’t pedal. The pedal moved backwards but not forward. I couldn’t figure out what was stopping it. I walked it over to Metro Cycle, but they are closed on Fridays. What a strange day of the week to close a business! I went upstairs and turned my bike upside down. I turned the pedal back and something clicked, then I moved it forward and it worked. I have no idea how I fixed the problem since I didn’t do anything different than I did on the street other than turning the bike upside down. 

            Since my bike was working again, I rode to Bloor and Ossington. It was rough going on O’Hara and Maple Grove, but Brock was okay and the Bloor bike lane and Ossington were snowy but passable.

            I weighed 86.5 kilos at 17:15. 

            At around 17:30 the guy came to look at the furnace and it turned out that the thermostat just needed a new AAA battery. He went down to check the furnace to make sure it was working. I ran the tap for my afternoon glass of water. I went out in the hall to mop up the melted snow from my bike and I chatted with Benji. I went back in the kitchen and the sinks were plugged. I saw water running from under the sink. I opened it and the pipe was severely leaking. I desperately started clearing the stuff out from under the sink and began to mop up the water as it kept flowing. I put a bucket underneath the leak and finally got most of the water mopped up. Then the repairman who’d come to fix the furnace knocked on my door and asked if the heat was back on. I touched the radiator and confirmed that it was starting to get warm. He noticed the water and told me the people in Popeyes were mopping downstairs. It was lucky he was here because he also does plumbing for Raja and he went to get a snake and other plumbing tools. He was here for about half an hour snaking the drain and tightening the pipes. 

            At one point he stood up, looked very sad and commented that it was a horrible thing that was happening to the people in the Ukraine. I agreed but said it really didn’t understand what was going on. He asked rhetorically, “Why can’t people just talk things out? Why do they have to kill each other?” 

            He got my drain fixed and then he asked if I put oil down the drain. I said I don’t pour oil down the drain, but I do wash greasy pans in the sink. He told me one is not supposed to do that because it accumulates along the pipes and eventually plugs them. He said one is supposed to wipe the grease off the pans with a cloth or paper towel before washing them. All the years I’ve lived on this planet, and I never knew that one is not supposed to wash greasy pans in the sink! I felt like a dummy! 

            I asked his name and he said it’s Yogi. I told him I’m a yogi too. He said he doesn’t do yoga, but I told him there are lots of different kinds of yoga. Him helping to clear my drain could be a type of yoga if he did it for free. 

            What a day this was for things going wrong! First the computer, then the thermostat, then my bike and then the pipes leaking. It may be one for my personal record books. 

            I had a potato with gravy and some pork ribs while watching an episode of Adam-12. 

            This and the previous episode were the first times in this series when there were not several situations throughout a given night of Malloy’s and Reed’s patrol. 

            They get called to a hospital where a 15-year-old boy has suffered a drug overdose. The boy is not conscious and so they can’t interview him. They talk to the boy’s father who has a jacket belonging to his son’s friend Larry. Inside the jacket is a bag of pills. Malloy and Reed go to question Larry at his parents’ home, but Larry shoots a bullet through the upper part of his bedroom door and warns that he will shoot himself if they try to come in. Larry’s mother is very confused and surprised by her son’s behaviour. The father comes home and threatens Larry with physical discipline but of course that makes things worse because now Larry promises that he will kill himself in ten minutes. Malloy and Reed learn from Larry’s parents that Larry has just been dumped by his girlfriend Annie who lives downstairs. Reed and Larry’s mother go to get Annie and Annie tries to talk to Larry through the door, but it doesn’t help. Finally, the cops bust down the door and find that Larry is not holding the gun. They arrest him. 

            The nurse in the hospital reception area was played by Dublin born, Irish actor Angela Greene, who started out as a model. She was adopted by her uncle at the age of six and moved to New York. She played Tess Trueheart in the Dick Tracy TV series. She co-starred in the film “Night of the Blood Beast.” 

            

            Larry’s mother was played by Mary Gregory, who played Dr. Melik in Woody Allen’s “Sleeper.”

            Annie was played by Maria Grimm, who later wrote the screenplay for the movie Bad Blood. She co-starred in the film “Lost on Paradise Island.”

February 26, 1992: Nancy wanted to see a movie but she was wishy washy about which one

Thirty years ago today 

            On Wednesday I got up at around 11:30. I called Nancy, but she was still in bed. I watched TV and worked on Astro-personality research. I called Nancy again and she said she’d call me back. I made breakfast. I called Nancy again and she said she wanted to go to see a movie, but she was wishy washy about which one. I called her again and she said she wanted to go to a mall but couldn’t decide where. Finally, she said for me to just come up and get the baby and so I did. She fell asleep before I left Nancy’s place but woke up before we got to Warden Station. We had fun at my place, but she got cranky at around 19:00. I fed her some cow’s milk when nothing else helped but she was still irritated and so I got her dressed to take her back to her mother. I put her down on the bed while I put my coat on and she fell asleep. She woke up before we got on the bus.

Anne Helm

            On Thursday morning I tried to memorize the second verse of “Laide jolie laide” (Ugly, Pretty Ugly) by Serge Gainsbourg. But I needed to listen to the recording on YouTube while scrolling through the text and the text wouldn’t move at first. There was just the cursor turned into a spinning wheel indicating it was working on it. Then when I got the text in control there was a delay switching back to YouTube. I finally got them both working together but the delay made it so I only learned about half the second verse. Also, sometimes when I save documents, they go totally white as if the print has been erased but I can see the word count at the bottom and so I know it’s all still there. 

            I weighed 87.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I spent an hour reading “The Triumph of Modernism” and re-reading Untouchable. 

            I weighed 87.7 before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Montrose. I rode south to College, west to Dovercourt and then south to Queen. I stopped at Freshco where I bought eight bags of grapes, two pints of strawberries, a can of peaches, a jar of apple sauce, a jug each of orange juice and raspberry lemonade, a bag of kettle chips, and a pack of toilet paper. 

            I weighed 87.7 kilos at 17:40. 

            I read some more of “Triumph of Modernism”. There is a section on the two most prominent female Indian painters of the Modernist era. One was a privileged housewife who didn’t start painting until she was thirty. The other was a professional artist, half Sikh and half Hungarian who was educated in Paris and behaved like an independent European woman with many sexual affairs. She died at the age of 28. I have eight pages left in my re-read of Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand.

            I had a potato with gravy and three pork ribs while watching an episode of Adam-12. 

            This story is focused almost entirely on Malloy. Suddenly we learn that he’s a part-time university student, studying psychology. He sure didn’t show much psychological education in the way he dealt with the attempted suicide in the previous episode. He’s struck up a friendship with the young Professor Peg Tomkins and when he’s sitting with her in the cafeteria some students come up to invite her to a meeting. They also invite Malloy until they find out he’s a cop and then they uninvite him. Later when he’s on duty he is called with several other officers to the campus to deal with students who are protesting the fact that they are too young to vote but old enough to be sent to fight wars. They stage a sit-in which is considered disruptive and so they are arrested, with Malloy as the chief arresting officer. Peg debates with him whether the police action was justified. He says something about a line having to be drawn before the school is burned down. The next day at school Malloy discovers his Mustang has been vandalized. One professor suggests Malloy should drop out because he is creating tension. The dean tells Malloy that a timing device has been stolen. A student named Maria confesses to stealing it and that she gave it to the student leader Paul Banner. Paul has used it to make a time bomb which is scheduled to go off at 17:30. Malloy forces him to show him where it is. Paul has set the bomb in a fire extinguisher, but he has made sure he’s cleared the area so that only property will be destroyed and no people will be hurt. Malloy diffuses the bomb. With Paul under arrest, the other students now begin to include Malloy and suggest that he could learn something from them. 

            Peg was played by Canadian actor Anne Helm, who at 12 studied at the National Ballet Guild of Canada. She moved with her mother at 14 from Toronto to New York where she began studying at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School and also began modeling. At 16 she was a showgirl at the Copacabana. After starring in a TV production of Sleeping Beauty she moved to Hollywood. For a while, she was Elvis’s girlfriend after co-starring in “Follow That Dream.” She co-starred in “Iron Maiden”, the British comedy The Interns, “The Unkissed Bride”, and “Nightmare in Wax”. She played Molly Pierce on “Run for Your Life” and Nurse Mary Briggs on General Hospital. After her acting career ended in 1986, she started writing children’s books.

February 25, 1992: The streetcar waited for me at 6:05

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday I got up just before 6:00 and so I had to hurry. The streetcar at 6:05 waited for me. At Union Station I’d thought that the train was at 6:43 but it was at 7:03 so I had time to buy a coffee and the Toronto Sun before boarding. 

            At Sheridan College in Oakville, I didn’t have to start until 9:00 because the teacher was doing critiques. I posed until 11:30 and then had a lunch break until 14:00. In the afternoon the teacher showed her students a video about a bunch of women in Chile who use craft to make a political statement. I sat and got some of my own research done because the video was boring. 

            I was let off half an hour early and so I caught the 17:01 back to Toronto. I got some groceries at Kingston Road and Victoria Park.

            I made fettuccini alfredo. I drained the laundry in the tub. I cleaned the top cupboards with my papers in them.

Henry Beckman

            On Wednesday morning I memorized the first verse of “Laide, jolie laide” (Ugly Pretty Ugly) by Serge Gainsbourg. There’s only one verse and the chorus to learn and the rest of the song repeats those so it shouldn’t take long to learn this one. 

            I weighed 87.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            Because of my computer dragging so slowly it took a little over two hours more to do all my morning posts than it did the day before. 

            I weighed 88.2 kilos before lunch according to my digital scale. But if the pattern holds it’ll say I’ve dropped a kilo in the evening. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Shaw. There is still some ice on either side of the Bloor bike lane while across the street on the sunny north side it’s almost all clear. On Shaw the little lawns are mostly still covered with snow, some of it piled quite high. Fred Hamilton Park was a sheet of ice with islands of dead grass scattered throughout and the sun was blinding as it glanced off the ice. 

            I weighed 86.8 kilos at 17:00, having supposedly dropped even more than I predicted.

            I finished reading “Periodizing Modernism” by Friedman. She gives an interesting analysis of the novel Season of Migration to the North. I started reading “The Triumph of Modernism”, which is an odd and uninformative title since it’s about Indian Modernism. I continued to re-read Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand and I have about 38 pages left. 

            I fried a salmon fillet and had it with two small spinach pizza slices and a beer while watching an episode of Adam-12.

            In this story, Malloy and Reed are disappointed because other cars are getting the most exciting jobs while they’ve had two flat tires in the last two days. The guys in Adam-11 especially rub it in but they talk far more sophisticatedly than any cops I’ve ever heard. 

            Their first call is from a woman who wants them to adjust her TV aerial on the roof. Of course, they refer her to a different service. 

            Next, they have to put up flares around a tree that’s fallen in the middle of the street. 

            Then they go for lunch and miss an “all units” call. 

            This is followed by a situation where a swastika has been painted on a man’s lawn and the suspects are still hanging around. Their leader is wearing a German WWII helmet, jacket and a monocle. Reed finds a sock nearby with dried glue and he says to the leader, “You better start using that glue to build model airplanes. Now behave yourselves.” Reed sounds a lot like Adam West’s TV Batman. The leader responds, “What high school do you go to?” 

            Next, they stop a very drunk driver played by Hal Smith, who is best known for his character of  Otis, the town drunk on The Andy Griffith Show. They arrest him for drunk driving and read him his rights. They ask for his driver's license but he says, “I can’t give you that!” “Why not?” I haven’t got one!” What is the point of reading the rights to someone who’s inebriated? I see upon looking this up that Miranda rights do not really apply in a simple DUI case because giving up the right to remain silent would not make one any more guilty. One has been proven to have been drunk and that’s the end of it.

            Finally, there is a call about a man on a ledge threatening to jump. Malloy gets the landlord of the building to let him into the man’s room, then he removes the bullets from his gun and goes out on the ledge. Instead of being sympathetic Malloy talks tough to the guy and offers him his gun to shoot himself. When the man reaches for the gun Malloy grabs him and crashes through the window with him back into the building. He gets in trouble with the sergeant for his stunt. This was an extremely fucked up solution to be strongarming a potential suicide and forcing him to not do it. That’ll teach him to not do it in public the next time he wants to kill himself. 

            The jumper was played by renowned Canadian actor Henry Beckman, who lied his age at 17 to join the Canadian military. He was one of the troops that landed at Normandy. He played Commander Paul Richards on the Flash Gordon TV series in the 50s. He played Bob Mulligan on “I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster”, and he had a recurring role on “The X Files.” He co-starred in the movie “Blood and Guts.” In 1977 he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Medal. He was also made Sir Henry Beckman by the Knights of Malta. He co-starred in the TV series Here Come the Brides. He is best known for playing George Anderson on Peyton Place. He won two Genie Awards in Canada.

February 24, 1992: I checked the zodiac to search for why I'd been depressed for two days

Thirty years ago today 

            On Monday André called at 5:30 to tell me there was no work at Speedy after all that day. He told me I could arrange to have my cheque brought somewhere. I went back to bed and got up at around 7:00. I shaved and showered and then I called Wayne. He said I could pick up my cheque at Yamaha at 10:30 and so after doing some cleaning I headed up there. I cashed my cheque and got home at about 12:30. I managed to get my whole place cleaned up and even put some laundry in the tub. I read the newspapers. I cooked chicken and had a Caesar salad. I’d been feeling a bit depressed since Saturday night, but I didn’t know why. I decided I would check the zodiac for an explanation.

Phyllis Davis

            On Tuesday morning I finished posting my translation of “Malaise en Malaisie” (Malaise in Malaysia) by Serge Gainsbourg. I’ll start learning the next of his songs from 1980 tomorrow, the title of which translates as “Ugly, Pretty Ugly.” 

            I weighed 87.8 kilos before breakfast. 

            Since this was reading week there was no Global Modernisms class today but I spent the normal time when the lecture would have happened reading “Multicentric Modernism and Postcolonial Poetry” by Stilling, the beginning of “Periodizing Modernism” by Friedman and I continued re-reading Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand. The Stilling essay talks about how Modernist poetry has influenced Postcolonial Poetry and how the latter has branched out in other directions. 

            I weighed 87.7 kilos before lunch. 

            I continued to try to figure out how to make my computer faster. I looked into disk cleanup online because it’s been so long since I’ve used it, I’ve forgotten how to find it on my system. A lot of sites offer downloads to clean up systems. That seems ridiculous. Why would I put more junk on my computer when I’m trying to clean it up? I finally found how to get to disk cleanup through System. 

            I ran it while I took a siesta, but I didn’t sleep much. I know I slept some because I dreamed about playing a very frustrating table hockey game in which I couldn’t move my goalie very well and my opponent was about to score. 

            I supposedly cleaned up about five gigs of junk, but my computer never showed that any space was freed, even after I restarted. I looked into defragging, but I think Windows 10 does that sometimes automatically. Maybe I should do it, but it looks like I’ll have to switch to Administrator to do so.

            I didn’t take a bike ride because it was raining but I spent a lot of time trying to get my computer running better. But not with any success. 

            I read more “Periodizing Imperialism” and Untouchable. The Friedman essay debates whether Season of Migration to The North is a Modernist novel. 

            I weighed 87.4 kilos at 18:00. 

            I had a potato with gravy and three pork ribs while watching an episode of Adam-12. In this story Malloy, who always does the right thing from a policeman's viewpoint, screws up a few times. 

            In the first situation, Malloy and Reed get called to a bar. The owner Cal complains that the guy at the end of the bar refuses to pay for drinks and he’s verbally abusive to customers. Malloy reminds Cal that he can’t arrest the man on a misdemeanour that he hasn’t witnessed. Cal asks him to talk to him, so although it’s against policy Malloy goes up to him and leans in only to be sucker-punched and knocked to the floor. The guy runs out the back. 

            Next, they stop a car that almost hit a pedestrian. The driver, James Walker is very cooperative but while Reed is writing him a ticket Malloy does a background check. Suddenly there is a call about a man threatening a woman with a knife and they take off without waiting for a response to the check. At the address, the neighbour says she was looking for her cat on the porch of the house across the street when she heard a man inside saying to a young woman, “I have a knife and I’m going to kill you. But when Malloy knocks on the door it turns out that the couple is rehearsing a play.

            Adam-12 gets called back to the station where they find out that the man whom they’d left for the false alarm is wanted for armed robbery. They are in trouble but told for now to go back out on patrol. 

            They get called to a rooming house where a man is trying to get up the stairs to his sister’s room, because she threatened suicide on the phone. But the landlady is blocking his way and threatening him with a broom because she doesn’t want men the women in her rooming house. Malloy has to kick open the young woman’s door, but they are too late. The young woman is dead at 24 and Malloy comments that the nasty landlady will probably live to be 100. 

            Malloy is determined to track down James Walker to make up for his mistake. He picks up a file from Flo in the records department. From it they find that Walker has three girlfriends in the area where they’d stopped him. At the address of the third girlfriend, they see his car. Malloy has Reed go to the back door while he covers them from the kitchen window. They arrest Walker and it seems to make everything okay with their superiors back at the station. 

            Some other officers catch the guy that punched Malloy and he turns out to be a little person. 

            The female actor was portrayed by Phyllis Davis, who played Betty Benson on Love American Style. She played Beatrice Travis on “Vega$” on every episode of the series. Before Hollywood she was a flight attendant for Continental Airlines. She co-starred in “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”, “Terminal Island”, She starred in “Sweet Sugar.” She had a long-term relationship with Dean Martin in the 1970s.