Del Moore

            On Saturday morning my back was sore when I got up. I think I have a little bit of arthritis there so maybe the humidity was affecting it. Also, I don’t think the Frankenstein chair I’m using made from a kitchen chair propped up with books on my old office chair is very good for my back when I’m sitting at the computer. The seat keeps shifting. Hopefully, I can find a nice office chair with no back and no armrests when the pandemic is over.

            I finally finished working out the chords for “Arthur, où t'as mis le corps?” (Arthur, Where’d You Put the Corpse?) by Boris Vian. I still have to run through it in French and English before uploading it to Christian’s Translations. That will take at least a couple more sessions. 

            I managed to transcribe the chords to “Malaise en Malaisie” (Malaise in Malaysia) by Serge Gainsbourg from the Boîte à Chansons website and Microsoft Word was a little quicker today but it still froze momentarily every few minutes. 

            I weighed 86.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday, I went down to No Frills where I bought eight bags of red grapes, dental floss, two large containers of skyr, a cotton towel, and a bag of kettle chips (I guess it wouldn’t be a bottle of kettle chips). 

            I weighed 86.3 kilos before lunch. I had a toasted slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with melted five-year-old cheese and a glass of raspberry lemonade. 

            Before I took a siesta, I started a virus scan. I slept for an extra fifteen minutes and when I got up there was one threat listed: PUP Optional Open Candy, which is apparently a very low threat. 

            I took a bike ride to Bloor and Shaw. The ghost stain of the icy spine that had been running along the centre of Maple Grove was gone because of yesterday’s rain. But there were still white Lorne Green sideburns of snow along the side. On the other streets, a lot of the snowbanks have been hammered down to flat, wide slabs of ice. 

            I weighed 86.2 kilos at 17:30. 

            I removed the PUP Optional and restarted but it didn’t make my computer behave any faster. Word documents still load slowly and there are long delays sometimes when I make changes such as italics. 

            I’d forgotten to buy beer earlier, so I went out and got a six-pack of Creemore. The cardboard case was falling apart and so the cashier fixed it with her stapler. 

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

            I wanted to start working on my keyword assignment and tried to open an old essay to use as a template but because I’d created it in Open Office, even though I’ve converted several Open Office files to Word 2003 so far, this one wouldn’t open. The window said to use the Text Recovery Converter, but I couldn’t find it. When I searched online for instructions on finding the converter it wasn’t where they said it would be. There were some complex instructions but finally, someone said just right click on the file and then at the bottom check the box that says “unblock”. The moderator argued that’s not the solution but then several others said she was right. It worked for me too. It was well after dinner before I got the problem fixed though. I took a break for dinner. 

            I made pizza on naan with marinara sauce and extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching an episode of Adam-12. 

            Every story begins with some subject of conversation for Malloy and Reed to have while they are on patrol. In this case Reed wants to buy a house for the three kids he plans on having even though his first child has yet to arrive. He plans on paying for the house over thirty years, but Malloy doesn’t understand why he is getting so far ahead of himself. 

            Most of the situations in this story are weird and unrealistic. 

            In the first they go to a domestic dispute between two female neighbours. The women seem drunk and one of them is hiding in the closet. Thelma Walker, the woman who called the cops accuses the other of stealing from her but later admits she didn’t steal money. Then her husband comes home, and she says what she’s trying to steal is her husband. Then the man tells the cops he’s got it under control, and he starts giving the two women orders about cleaning the house. The cops walk away. 

            Then they catch a guy from Texas who robs a taxi driver at knifepoint shortly after arriving in LA. 

            Then they see an illegally parked bus outside of a house and go onto the property where the owner Ted Wilson offers to pay any fines. Then suddenly a Mexican man and several children step up and start calling him “El Presidente.” He explains that he is the president of his club and they wanted to make a certain town in Mexico their sister city and so he went down there for a visit. But shortly after he returned Pepe and his children showed up on the bus thinking that he is not just the president of his club but the president of the United States. They want to throw him a fiesta before they go back to Mexico and so he’s going to let them. Malloy and Reed walk away. 

            In the final situation, a man starts shooting at two kids from his window and then he shoots at Malloy. They have to call in for vests and tear gas to get the man out and take him to a mental hospital.

            Thelma Walker was played by Eve McVeagh, who started acting in theatre in her teens and continued for 52 years. For 41 of those years, she also worked in film and television. She was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She co-starred in “3 In The Attic”, and played Miss Hammond on Petticoat Junction. She was a regular on The Red Skelton Show. 

            Ted Wilson was played by Del Moore, who was a close friend of Jerry Lewis and appeared in several of his films. He co-starred with Betty White in the sitcom “Life with Elizabeth.” He co-starred in the movie “Catalina Caper.”