Ena Hartman

            On Friday morning there was another snowstorm so unless they really clear the roads I might not take a bike ride later. It was hard enough to keep from sliding and falling yesterday after a relatively mild snowfall. 

            I memorized the chorus of “Malaise en Malaisie” (Malaise In Malaysia) by Serge Gainsbourg and made some adjustments in my translation to better fit the rhyme scheme. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos before breakfast. I worked on copying and pasting into a document sections from Chinua Achebe's “An Image of Africa” and Simon Gikandi's “Picasso, Africa, and the Schemata of Difference.” I'm collecting information to use for my presentation on Tuesday. 

            I weighed 86.4 kilos before lunch. 

            When I looked at the aftermath of this morning's storm I didn't think I'd be going for a bike ride in the afternoon. But when I looked out later the roads had been cleared considerably so I thought I'd give it a shot after all. Yesterday the streets had been quite slippery but despite the fact that there was more snow today it was hardly slippery at all. I think the city must have attacked the problem in a much saltier manner today. It was really only a bit slippery on Queen because the ploughs had spread out a lot of snow while removing the snowbanks. 

            I went to Freedom Mobile to pay for my phone service. They have a sign on the door saying because of armed robberies they are only taking one customer at a time, but they were actually taking two. I went to the Lucky Supermarket because I'd forgotten to buy milk at Freshco yesterday so I got a liter to tide me over until I go to No Frills on Saturday. The Lucky Supermarket has a sign that says they only take 25 customers at a time. I've never seen more than ten in there (including staff) in all the years it's been in the neighbourhood. 

            As I was walking my bike home a woman accosted me to ask if I was an artist. I said, “Yeah.” She wanted to know if I was the blonde guy who lived on Cowen and made nice paintings. I said I knew who she meant but I wasn't that guy. The thing is, a couple of years ago that same woman mistook me for that same guy in the liquor store. 

            I weighed 86 kilos at 16:45. 

            I finished collecting excerpts from Simon Gikandi's “Picasso, Africa, and the Schemata of Difference.” He thinks Modernist artists who were inspired by African art should have been aware of the cultures behind the art. I don't see how that is true. The people who took the art from Africa definitely shouldn't have but that's not the artists' fault. 

            I had a potato with gravy and two pork chops while watching the first episode of the first season of Adam-12. 

            Pete Malloy is a seven-year LAPD patrol cop whose partner died in the line of duty three weeks before. He's just been assigned a new partner in Jim Reed and he resents him because he has a lot to learn and no one to teach him because Malloy plans to resign at the end of the day. 

            Their first situation is an altercation in the middle of the highway between a truck driver and a motorist while a woman is jerking her body in an odd manner. The truck driver had stopped because it looked to him like the motorist was assaulting the woman. The motorist explains that he was putting his fingers in the woman's mouth because he thought she was having a seizure. She explains that she thought that the salamander that she bought for her son had gotten loose and crawled under her clothed. It turns out the lizard is still in its shoe-box. 

            Next they get a report of some suspicious-looking characters sitting in a car outside a liquor store. The store owner says they just missed them and gives their license plate number. They follow them and then the guys take off. I think there's one car chase in every episode. They pursue them along the Los Angeles River canal but Mallow knows the territory better than they do and they wind up crashing. 

            Next, a child that got into a dry cleaning bag has stopped breathing. Malloy gives the girl mouth to mouth but it doesn't look like the kid will make it. Malloy tells Reed to break it to the parents but while he's doing so the baby starts crying. 

            Finally there's a teenage gang shooting up a park. Mallow tells Reed to run to the next tree and then the next but then Reed takes his own initiative and keeps going. Reed captures the boys but Malloy gives him hell for not following orders. 

            In the end Malloy decides that he can't quit because he's got to keep Reed alive through his nine-month probationary period. 

            The baby's mother was played by Ena Hartman, who co-starred in the movie “Knuckle Men” or “Terminal Island.” She co-starred with Burt Reynolds in the TV series “Dan August.” She was the first black woman to be named Mayor of Universal City, which of course is not really a city but mostly a collection of film studios, hotels and a theme park. The position of mayor is ceremonial and it has been held by many movie stars over the last hundred years such as Rock Hudson and Doris Day. But it does have a sheriff and it has the only government-funded fire department on private property in the United States.