Marvin Miller

            On Monday morning I memorized the seventh verse of “Valse Dingue” (Mad Waltz) by Boris Vian. There’s just one verse to learn and then the song finishes with the repetition of a few lines. 

            I memorized the first verse of “Shush Shush Charlotte” by Serge Gainsbourg. When I sang my translation it made me cry. In the song he talks about how when Charlotte would cry when her diaper needed changing he would say, Shush Charlotte”, now when she’s in high school and she says, “Fuck, shit, I’m gonna be late” he says, “Shush Charlotte”, and then he talks about the future when he dies and how he doesn’t want her to cry then and so he says, “Shush Charlotte.” 

            I video-recorded most of my song practice and audio-recorded the whole thing. I recorded the audio in Ableton for the first time. The recording part was fine but then when I wanted to export the file I couldn’t see the option to do so. I tried clicking on everything to see if a menu would appear but there was nothing. Finally I saw an option to name the file and I did that. Then when I right-clicked on the name there was the option to open it in Windows Explorer. In Windows Explorer, I did a search for how to export from Ableton. People kept talking about the File tab, which I couldn’t find. I did a new search on finding the file tab and after a while, I found a post where somebody suggested to someone to press F11, and that did the trick. Apparently, I’d had Ableton on full screen and so the File toolbar didn’t show. 

            I was able to export the file but when I played it back it was extremely slow. So I had to do another search on how to speed it up. I eventually learned that in the upper left of the Ableton window I’d pressed Tap several times, which changed the speed. I remembered that the number up there had originally been 120 and so I changed it back, then I exported the file again and replaced the other one. This time it seemed to be fine. All this took me more than half an hour extra. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday, I re-scrubbed the area of the kitchen floor that I’d cleaned yesterday, and I was more satisfied with the result this time. 

            Then I started washing, brushing, and scraping the very dark area just to the left of the fridge. I got the black off but underneath is the residue of the glue that had once held down the tiles that I pulled up years ago. It’s going to take several sessions to get the glue off. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos at 17:00. 

            I got caught up on my journal at 18:00. 

            I uploaded the videos that I'd shot of this morning’s song practice. 

            Yesterday I bookmarked a collection of YouTube clips of torture scenes from various movies and TV shows, and today I started looking through them. Some of them have people tied to beds with restraints and so I bookmarked some of those. I’ll finish looking tomorrow but so far I’m drawn to one from a Japanese film called “Welcome to the Quiet Room”. It’s minimal and not overly dramatized and I only need a few seconds of footage. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast pork while watching the first seven episodes of the Aquaman cartoon series from the 1960s. 

            In the first story, Aquaman’s arch-enemy Black Manta attacks using a remote-controlled whale. But Aquaman uses his telepathic power over sea creatures to make a hammerhead shark knock out the controlling antenna. Then Manta controls some seaweed to tie up Aquaman and Aqualad but then Aquaman controls a jellyfish to poison the plant. I don’t think that’s a thing. Then Aquaman has a face-to-face standoff with Manta but the villain jumps into a vortex and escapes. 

            In the second story, reptile creatures want to conquer Atlantis so they attack a vital power station that provides its power. They capture Aqualad but Aquaman rescues him. The lizard men escape in a tunnel and when Aquaman follows he discovers a subterranean world ruled by the reptile men. They capture him and tie him up out of the water because one hour out of the water will kill him. But Aqualad saves him. The reptile men attack with their electrical powers but Aquaman commands several sea creatures to attack the reptile men. Then Aquaman and Aqualad escape and seal off the tunnel to keep the reptile men below. 

            In the third story, Aquaman and his sidekick enter a cave to escape a volcanic eruption and discover an army of undersea Vikings that have been in suspended animation for centuries. They wake and their leader is Nepto who once threatened Atlantis before being buried by an Earthquake. Nepto uses energy beams from his trident to force the heroes into a cave and ceil it. Aquaman has a giant octopus move the rocks away to free them. Nepto threatens to break the dome that protects Atlantis but Aquaman stops him and his men and puts them in an Atlantean prison. 

            In the fourth story, aliens shoot fire from their ship because for some reason they want to convert the Earth’s oceans into deserts. The water is on fire but somehow Aquaman uses water to put it out. The ships try to set fire to the water again but Aquaman has jellyfish form a barrier to absorb the fire. I don’t think that’s a thing either. The ship descends to destroy Atlantis but Aquaman has dolphins divert the missiles. Then whales come and push the alien ship back up so hard that it is propelled into space. 

            In the fifth story, another race of aliens comes, this time to gather and shrink sea creatures for their collection. When Aquaman comes to investigate, his pet walrus Tusky is sucked into the ship and shrunk to the size of a toy. The aliens unshrink a Venusian sea serpent to attack Aquaman. Aquaman ties the monster up with tough seaweed. The aliens decide to take off but they still have Tusky and so Aquaman ties the ship with seaweed and somehow he, Aqualad, and their two motorbike-sized seahorses have the strength to pull the ship down. The aliens can’t live underwater and so they release Tusky and the other sea creatures and Aquaman lets them go. 

            In the sixth story, Mera is pulled down by a plant through a portal on the sea floor. Aquaman and Aqualad follow and below is another ocean ruled by Slag, who controls the plants of this world just as Aquaman controls the creatures of his. They are captured by plants and put in a pit where Aquaman faces a three-headed monster. Some of the creatures from above have wandered through the portal and are living below. Aquaman commands them to come and help him against the monster. Then he has his seahorses pull up the bars of the oublier. They rescue Mera and escape, then put a giant clam with teeth over the portal to guard it. 

            In the seventh story, a lava creature emerges from an undersea volcano. It throws fireballs and also creates a vortex but I guess Aquaman has dolphins create a counter vortex to stop it. Riding whales, Aquaman, and his sidekick knock boulders down and bury the creature. 

            Aquaman’s deep-sea voice was done by Marvin Miller, who started out as a radio announcer, most notably for The Whistler. He won Grammy Awards in 1965 and 1966 for recordings of some Dr. Seuss stories. In the movies he often played bad guys as in "Dead Reckoning", and "Blood on the Sun". He played Sleepy Parsons in "Deadline at Dawn" and Gusty in "Johnny Angel". He played Dr. Yat Fu in the short-lived TV series "Mysteries of Chinatown". He was the voice of Boris Badenov on "Rocky and Bullwinkle". He most famously played Michael Anthony on over 200 episodes of "The Millionaire".

            Before bed, I did my usual search for bedbugs and found none.