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.