Archie

            On Friday morning I worked out the chords to the intro and part of the chorus of “Toi mourir” (Then You Die) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I video-recorded less than half my song practice and audio-recorded the whole session. I re-played “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” several times and made mistakes every time. The thing is that on the first run through it felt really good and I had a sense that I was in the groove before it fell apart and then I couldn’t get it back. I also screwed up on other songs that I usually play better. I think I got through some songs without error but it was a generally fumbly day. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I removed all the stuff from the two shelves on the northern wall to the right of the kitchen cabinets. I took down the shelves and then washed the wall from top to bottom. I cleaned the shelves and put them back in place, but I need to wash all the items that go on the shelves before putting them back. I’ll start and hopefully finish doing that on Sunday. Then I have to tackle the western wall to the left of the fridge, and risk my life cleaning the outside of the window. 

            I weighed 84.7 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 84.7 kilos at 17:15. 

            I uploaded the videos that I shot of this morning’s song practice. I managed to get through my song “Megaphor” without too many mistakes and some of the French songs might have come out okay, but this was generally a pretty flawed session. 

            I looked for videos that might fit with the line, “Keep in mind that every patient has a different convulsive threshold” from my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy.” So far the only thing considerable is an animation of neurons firing. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching episodes nine and ten of The Archie Show. 

            In story one of episode nine, it’s “Kids’ Day” in Riverdale and so students from Riverdale High are given the jobs of city officials for one day. Archie is the mayor, Betty is his secretary, Veronica is the treasurer, Jughead is chief of police, Hotdog is the dog catcher and Reggie is his assistant. Veronica puts pretty lampshades on all the streetlights, has the fire hydrants painted with stripes, the mailboxes with polka-dots, and the lines on the streets painted pink. Jughead tickets firetrucks for parking too close to fire hydrants. Hotdog rounds up all the stray dogs by running with a chain of sausages in his mouth. But he gets mistaken for a stray dog and arrested by a cop. But then Hotdog finds homes for all the stray dogs by getting cops to adopt them. 

            The Dance of the Week is “The Drag”: Take a step forward, a step back, a step forward and drag. Step to the right, to the left, to the right and drag. 

            The song of the week is “Hide and Seek” by Mark Barkan and Ritchie Adams. It has an acid rock feel to it. It was distributed as a cardboard Sugar Crisp cereal box record that actually played. 

            In the second story, Reggie has been picking on Jughead because he’s not very athletic. Archie decides to give Jughead some physical training to help build up his confidence. After a few sessions Jughead gets a little too confident and challenges the athletic Reggie to a strength competition. But then when Jughead visits science student Dilton in the school lab, he gets thirsty and drinks one of Dilton’s experiments. The result is that he gains super strength. He makes Reggie look like a weakling but then decides to set his sights higher. He challenges the state heavyweight wrestling champion to a bout. The gang is watching the fight on TV but Dilton tells them that the formula Jughead drank is only temporary. Jughead at first easily throws the gigantic wrestler but then his strength wears off and he is beaten. 

            In story one of episode ten, Jughead builds a rocket and the gang goes to see it. Jughead says it’s going to fly to the Moon and invites everyone inside. Meanwhile a real rocket crash-lands in Riverdale and the military go looking for it. When they see Jughead’s rocket in his back yard they mistake it for theirs and hook a crane to it. Inside the ship, Jughead trips and hits some levers and suddenly his ship begins to move. Reggie looks out the window and sees the Earth receding but he doesn’t look long enough to see that it’s a picture of the Earth on a billboard as the military truck drives away from it. They take Jughead’s rocket to their base and put it on the artificial Moonscape they’ve built for astronaut training. 

            When Jughead and his friends look out the window they think they are on the Moon. They go outside and think they are experiencing lower gravity but the surface is made of sponge rubber to make one bounce as one walks. Everyone but Reggie falls down a crater and when Archie sees the artificial structures that support the simulation, he realizes they are not on the Moon. But alone on the surface, Reggie still thinks they are. NASA has placed animated puppets made to look like space monsters in craters to pop up every now and then and so Reggie is scared out of his wits and faints. The gang meets the military and explains the situation. They take Jughead’s rocket back to his back yard. When Reggie wakes up he thinks Jughead has gotten him safely home from the Moon and he promises him a million hamburgers. 

            The Dance of the Week is the Angel: One has to keep one’s hands in prayer position while moving one’s feet very quickly. 

            The song of the week is “You Little Angel You” by Jeff Barry. 

            In the second story the boys are hired as caddies at Veronica’s father’s gold club. Mr. Lodge decides to play a few holes and picks Archie to be his caddy. But Reggie figures if he becomes Lodge’s caddy he’ll get to spend more time with Veronica. He tries to get Archie in trouble by substituting all of Lodge’s clubs and balls for trick versions. One club shrinks just before Lodge swings it, another club turns into an umbrella, then a ball in flight ejects a parachute and lands back on the tee, and another ball flies out of the hole and explodes. Mr. Lodge is angry at Archie until he learns that he got a score of 200 when he usually shoots a 250. Suddenly he loves Archie. 

            Archie first appeared in Pep Comics #22 in December, 1941. 

            The character was inspired by the popular Andy Hardy movies starring Mickey Rooney. 

            The characters in the first comic were Archibald (Chick) Andrews, his new neighbour Betty Cooper, and his unintelligent friend Jughead Jones. Their look was conceived by the artist Bob Montana. It was so successful that the publisher MLJ Magazines changed its name to Archie Comics five years later. 

            For the second night in a row I didn’t find any bedbugs when I looked. So far so good.