Dallas McKennon

            On Monday morning I finished working out the chords for the first verse of “Valse Dingue” (Mad Waltz) by Boris Vian and the first line of the second verse. 

            I finished posting my translation of “Toi mourir” (Then You Die) by Serge Gainsbourg. I memorized the first verse of his song “La nostalgie camarade” (Only Nostalgia My Friend). 

            I video-recorded most of my song practice and audio-recorded the whole session. For some unknown reason, I had to restart Ableton three times before it started showing a waveform during re-cording. 

            Toronto Transit has started working on the streetcar tracks in front of my place and so there was lots of noise from trucks going by, idling, and backing up. It wasn’t until the penultimate song of the session that they started up the concrete saw and made it so I literally could not hear myself. But even when it wasn’t extremely noisy outside it was distracting. If construction makes that much noise every morning I may have to extend my recording project to the end of July or until I get thirty recordings without cacophony included. 

            I didn’t make it through “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” without any mistakes this time. I think I got “Megaphor” after three tries. Some of my translated songs were okay and some fell apart. In general, it wasn’t a successful song practice. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos before breakfast. I went on the U of T website to get my enrollment start time and found it’s next Monday at noon. I guess on Sunday I’ll research what courses I’ll take this fall and in the winter. Hopefully, I’ve finished all the required courses and I can just make my own choices this time. 

            I got the stepladder down from the landing between the second and third floor and started washing the eastern wall above the window in my kitchen. Below the top of the window frame and above the top of the frame that holds the glass is a gap as wide as the window and just high enough to fit a toothbrush inside. The space for the window actually has an arched top but I guess at some point before I moved in one of the earlier landlords decided an arched window would be too expensive and so a rectangular window was installed. But in that gap is the uncovered top of the arched window space and it’s exposed to the outside. I never noticed that before in the 25 years I’ve lived here. So obviously that gap has accumulated at least fifty years of dirt. I could only wash the space with a toothbrush and with the curved brush I bought recently at the hardware store. I cleaned just that space for at least half an hour and there was still dirt on the brush each time I reached in and scrubbed. I should be able to finish the gap and the rest of the window frame tomorrow. Then I’ll start cleaning the window glass itself but I’ll save the dangerous outside for the end, though hopefully not my end. I think I’ll have to figure out a way to tether myself so I don’t fall while I’m out there. When I cleaned the windows years ago I just held on with one hand and leaned out but I’m older now and less confident that I wouldn’t lose my grip and fall. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before lunch. 

            It looked like rain but I took a bike ride downtown and back anyway and it didn’t rain after all. 

            I weighed 84.7 kilos at 17:00. 

            I uploaded the videos that I shot of my song practice this morning. There was only one song that was really imposed upon by the beeping of a truck backing up. The noise of the streetcar track renovation didn’t get intrusively loud until after the camera battery kicked out. 

            In the Movie Maker project of creating a video for my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy” I inserted the animation of neurons firing to correspond with the line, “Keep in mind that every patient has a different convulsive threshold.” Right after that Brian Haddon sings “shock therapy” and so I inserted one of the two concert clips I have of him singing that response and to keep it different each time I add a new effect. This time I made the clip look like a faded old movie. After that I tried to synchronize the concert video with the studio audio when I sing, “… so start at three-tenths of a second at ten or twenty volts” but I sing it much slower in the concert and so I can’t use it. I’ll have to find another outside video to insert there that somehow fits with that line. 

            I continued to sort through the file folder of my writing that I started yesterday. Most of the papers are some of the handwritten originals of my daily journal from before I began to type them directly to the computer. I threw away about thirty more pages. 

            I had a potato with gravy, two chicken wings, and a few other small chicken parts while watching episodes fifteen and sixteen of The Archie Show. 

            In the first story of episode fifteen, Jughead gets a detective kit in the mail that includes a Sherlock Holmes-style hat. He makes Hotdog his assistant. Meanwhile, Veronica breaks her string of pearls while dancing at Pop’s and Archie and Reggie gather them for her. She says they are genuine pearls and very valuable and so Archie and Reggie take them to the jewelers to be restrung. After they leave, Veronica confesses to Betty that they are imitations. On the way to the jeweler, Jughead overhears them talking about pearls and suspects them of being jewel thieves. So he and Hotdog follow them disguised as garbage cans. But they notice they are being followed and so they split up. Reggie takes all the pearls and Archie goes back to Pop’s. On the way, Archie figures out that it’s Jughead that’s been following them. After getting the pearls restrung Reggie disguises himself in a hat, dark, glasses, and mustache. He says his own mother wouldn’t recognize him and then his mother walks by and says, “Hi Reggie.” He says, “Oh well, mothers are sharper than crooks.” Jughead tackles Reggie and they fight until they recognize each other. Jughead makes up to Reggie by giving him his detective kit. He asks him to sign a form but Reggie picks up Jughead’s rocket pen and blasts off. 

            The Dance of the Week would not be considered appropriate nowadays. It’s called “The Indi-an”: Make believe you’ve got an arrow and a bow, draw back the arrow and let it go, and put two fingers up to your head like feathers. 

            The song of the week is “Seventeen Ain’t Young” by Jeff Barry. It was covered by Frankie Howson in 1969 and became a top 40 hit in Australia. 

            In the second story, Reggie’s bratty cousin Percy is visiting and Archie suggests they take him camping and so the whole gang takes him. Reggie neglects to inform his friends what a troublemaker Percy is. The first thing he does is blow pepper up Jughead’s nose. Once they are out in the wilderness Reggie admits that Percy was rejected by summer camp. Jughead takes Percy hiking but he comes running back because a bear is after him and Hotdog. The bear is being chased by Percy. Archie tries to talk with Percy but ends up being bound and gagged. Then Percy lets a skunk loose on everyone. That night they hear a coyote but it’s not howling at the moon, but because Percy is pulling its tail. Finally, Hotdog has had enough. He has a talk with the bear, the skunk, and the coyote, and they all gang up on Percy. Percy is scared into being a good boy. 

            In the first story of episode sixteen, Reggie is the star pitcher of the Riverdale baseball team and Jughead is his stand-in. But Jughead can’t pitch accurately at all. When he does his wind-up he ends up throwing in the opposite direction. Reggie is not worried because there is only one game left and it’s against Crosstown High. But the Crosstown boys visit and they are very big. One of them shakes and crushes Reggie’s hand. It looks like Jughead will pitch after all but while practicing he still mis-throws the ball. It goes into Dilton’s laboratory and into one of his formulas. Jughead puts his hand in the liquid and now after touching the ball it moves away from anything made of wood. So at the big game, Jughead’s pitches avoid being hit by the Crosstown bats. But then the formula wears off and they start getting hits. Jughead needs to strike one more opponent out but now he can’t. The Crosstown boys are known for stealing bases and then Archie tells Jughead to use his wind-up on the next pitch. He does so and throws away from home plate, the baseman catches it and the Crosstown stealer is tagged out. 

            The Dance of the Week is “The Milkshake”: Shake your shoulders and your hips, pat yourself on the tummy, then shake. 

            The song of the week is “Circle of Blue” by Mark Barkan and Ritchie Adams. 

            In the second story, some new neighbours move next door to Jughead. Hotdog sees what he thinks is a dog about his size sleeping on their porch but it turns out to be an enormous cat. The cat decides Hotdog has got to go and begins to terrorize him and chase him. But when Hotdog tries to mime to his friends what the cat did they don’t believe that a cat would chase a dog. Especially after the cat mimes that Hotdog has been chasing him. The cat begins to replace Hotdog on his friends’ outings. But later Jughead catches the cat pretending to be attacked by Hotdog. Then the cat jumps into Archie’s hot rod and it starts to go out of control. Hotdog has to save it by jumping in and putting on the brakes. But the cat lets the audience know it hasn’t reformed. 

            The speaking voice of Archie was done by Dallas McKennon. He was also the voice of Gum-by, and on the Woody Woodpecker show, he played Buzz Buzzard. In the 1950s he hosted a local kids’ show called Space Funnies/Captain Jet. He did a lot of voice work for Disney, playing supporting characters in movies and doing voices for some of the theme park features. In live-action, he played the innkeeper Cincinnatus on the Daniel Boone TV series. He was also an expert on the Oregon Trail and would visit schools to give lectures. 

            I searched for bedbugs before bed and found none this time.