I finished memorizing “Bana basadi balalo” (While All the Women Are Sleeping) by Serge Gainsbourg. I looked for the chords but none were posted, so I worked them out for most of the first line.
I video-recorded about half my song practice and audio-recorded the whole session. I finished my song “Megaphor” on the first try but decided to do it twice. It took three tries to get through “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” without a major mistake. I repeatedly screwed up on “Mamadou”, which I usually do in one or two takes. The thing is that when I have to do a song over I get flustered and then I perpetuate mistakes for a while until I get a grip on it and hold on until the end. As a guitarist, I constantly feel like I’m hanging on to any song I’m playing by the skin of my teeth. I’m going to record two more sessions and then start to sift through all the recordings to see if there are any keepers.
I weighed 85 kilos before breakfast.
In the late morning, up until 13:00, I washed the wall between the window and the refrigerator at the eastern end of my kitchen and the three shelves on the wall. I still have to clean all the stuff that I keep on the shelves, and then I’ll move down to the big job of washing the radiator.
Since Wondershare seems to have been a dud, I downloaded ProTools with Avid. It took a while to figure out how to install it as an administrator. I downloaded it because it was listed as something that could convert videos but now I’m not sure if it does. I’ll try later but I might have to find another converter to change the VOB file of my concert video to a format Movie Maker will accept.
I weighed 85.2 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of raspberry lemonade.
After waking up from my siesta I stretched my legs in bed and got a wicked cramp in my right shin. I was limping as I started out on my bike ride. On my way up Brock, it started to rain a bit and then increased as I was on the Bloor bike lane. I decided to head home at Dovercourt but by the time I reached College, it had stopped. I went home anyway.
I weighed 85.2 kilos at 16:50.
I was caught up on my journal at around 18:30. My leg was still a bit sore.
I uploaded this morning’s song practice videos. I saw that my second run-through of Megaphor wasn’t as good as the first and the first wasn’t that great either. After three tries, the last version of Sixteen Tons of Dogma wasn’t bad. I spent a long time on Mamadou.
I downloaded Total Video Converter and managed to convert the VTS_03_2 file to AVI but when I looked at the converted file it had a Total Video Converter watermark. Then the program asked me to register and I had the cracked serial number so I registered and then I converted the file again and the watermark was gone. But TVC wouldn’t convert VTS_03_1 and so since it’s the exact same kind of file, I figure it’s been corrupted. Tomorrow I’ll try to download the original file from the DVD and see if that works.
I made pizza on a roti with marinara sauce, a cut-up beef burger, and extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching four Bugs Bunny Cartoons.
In the first story, a scientist has developed a carrot with special super vitamins and feeds it to his lab rabbit, who happens to be Bugs Bunny, turning him into a Super Rabbit. Now that he’s super-powered he decides he can do something about Cottontail Smith who plans on wiping out all the rabbits in Texas. Bugs flies to Texas but on the way, he has to recharge with another modified carrot. When he gets to Texas he goes into a phone booth and disguises himself as a mild-mannered rabbit with glasses. He encounters Cottontail, takes his gun, removes him from his horse, rides him, and puts a feed bag on him before Cottontail realizes he’s a rabbit. Cottontail tells bugs he’s going to Drill him with bullets and Bugs tells him to wait. He changes into his Super Rabbit costume and the bullets don’t hurt him. Cottontail tries a cannon but Bugs uses the projectile for a game of basketball. Bugs takes flight and then Cottontail and his horse attack him in a fighter plane but Bugs catches the plane and Cottontail and his horse fall out. But then Bugs’s powers start to wear off. He reaches for another carrot but he fumbles and drops the case of carrots. Bugs crashes and is confronted by Cotton-tail and his horse who have eaten the super carrots and been transformed. Bugs says, “This looks like a job for a real superman” and he goes into a phone booth to come out dressed as a marine. He says he can’t play anymore because he has real work to do and heads off to the war.
The second story begins with Bugs still obsessing over his loss two years before in the race with Cecil the turtle. He knows he was tricked but he doesn’t know how. He disguises himself as an old man with a long beard and knocks on Cecil’s door. He asks Cecil to explain how he beat the rabbit. Cecil says a turtle shell is streamlined while a rabbit’s body, especially the ears, faces wind resistance. Bugs challenges Cecil to another race and in preparation, Bugs designs his own shell for streamlining and covers his ears. Meanwhile, the rabbit Mafia is putting all their money on Bugs and they plan on making sure the tortoise doesn’t cross the finish line. But since Bugs is wearing a shell, they think he is the tortoise and keep trying to stop him. Also, Cecil puts on a bunny suit. Bugs is almost at the finish line when the mob ambushes him and stops him from getting across. When they find out that what they thought was a turtle was really a rabbit, they all shoot themselves.
In the third story, two guys are adrift on a raft in the Pacific Ocean. They are starving and each is fantasizing about the other as food when they see a desert island. When they come ashore the only food they see is Bugs Bunny. They heat a pot of water and, as in a previous story, Bugs takes a bath in it until he realizes he’s on the menu. Bugs lowers a beheaded and de-feathered chicken on puppet strings and has it confront the men until the bird points out that Bugs is pulling the strings. They pull him down but Bugs gets away. Then a boat approaches and Bugs and the men say goodbye, but when the boat arrives, Bugs gets on and it sails away, leaving the men behind. They begin to fantasize about each other as food again.
In the fourth story, there is a notorious robber named the Masked Marauder terrorizing the San Fernando Valley in the old west and stealing all the carrots. But Brooklyn’s famous fighting cowboy Red Hot Ryder is on his way to catch the thief. He arrives but his horse won’t stop until he hits it over the head with a club. Bugs puts on a mask and holds Red up with a carrot in the back, then uses a magnet to take all his bullets and his belt buckle, causing his pants to fall down. Red goes after the Marauder and asks Bugs if he’s seen him. Bugs asks if it’s a guy in a mask who does this, and then he uses the magnet again. Red says that’s the guy but Bugs says he hasn’t seen him. Then a train approaches and Bugs excuses himself to go and rob it. Red still doesn’t know Bugs is the Masked Marauder. Bugs directs Red and his horse to jump the Grand Canyon and they fall deep into the ground. Red suddenly realizes that Bugs is the Masked Marauder.
Super Rabbit was directed by Chuck Jones, who worked his way up in animation, starting as a cel washer, then a black and white painter, then a tracer of animator’s drawings onto celluloid, then an in-betweener who draws the scenery between the animator’s drawings. He joined Leon Schlesinger Productions in 1933 as an assistant animator. In 1935 he was promoted to animator. But his cartoons weren’t funny and the only thing that kept him from being fired was the animator shortage due to the war. During the war, he worked with Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) to make Private Snafu educational cartoons for the army. Years later he was the animator for How The Grinch Stole Christmas and Horton Hears a Who. Jones created Marvin the Martian, Pepé le Pew, Wile E Coyote, and The Roadrunner. His animated short film, The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics, won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Jones directed the classic animated short The Bear That Wasn't. He also won a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award.
For the third night in a row, I didn’t find any bedbugs before bed.
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