I video-recorded most of my song practice and audio-recorded the whole session. It went even better today than the day before and for the second day in a row I got through my song “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” on the first try without any major mistakes.
I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast.
I finished cleaning all of the items that go on the two shelves on the wall to the right of the kitchen cabinets. I poured boiling water in the slits of the knife holder just in case it’s gotten contaminated over the years.
I weighed 85.6 kilos before lunch. I had five-year-old cheddar on spelt bread with a glass of lemon iced tea.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.
I weighed 84.7 kilos at 17:00.
I uploaded the videos that I shot of my song practice this morning. I think that next year when I start a new recording project I should take advantage of the fact that through the interface and with Ableton I can now do two tracks, and invest in another mic stand so I can mic my guitar. It sounds pretty tinny through the camera microphone.
I imported into Movie Maker the video of neurons firing and converted it into an AVI movie called “Neuron Forest”. Then I imported that into my project of creating a video for my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy”. I placed it on the end of the timeline and cut out everything but the last few seconds. Tomorrow I’ll insert it into the video to correspond to the line, “Keep in mind that every patient has a different convulsive threshold.”
I started going through another folder from the second drawer of my tall filing cabinet. So far about half of the papers are first drafts of poems and the rest are just handwritten pages of my journal from before I started writing them directly on my computer. All of the journal pages have been digitized so I can throw them away. Right now there are about a hundred pages on the floor. Later I pretty much filled the garbage can with them.
I made pizza on roti with ricotta sauce, lima beans, and extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episodes thirteen and fourteen of The Archie Show.
In the first story of episode thirteen, Jughead has taken up filmmaking and is using Hotdog as his star in a pirate movie. But Reggie suggests he use human actors and shoot his film on the abandoned shipwreck on the coast. Jughead likes the idea and makes Archie the star, but in every scene, Reggie jumps in to take over. When they tie Reggie up to keep him out of the scenes and start shooting Hotdog, Reggie bumps Hotdog away to pretend to be a dog. Then Reggie steals Jughead’s camera and starts filming himself. On the day the movie is shown Reggie discovers that Jughead forgot to remove the first roll of film for the scenes on the ship and so every scene shows Reggie with Hotdog’s head or Reggie’s head with Hotdog’s body.
The Dance of the Week is The Grundy: Step to the left and stomp, step to the right and stomp, step to the middle, and wait. Step straight ahead and stomp, step straight back and stomp, do it all over again.
The song of the week is “Rock and Roll Music” by Jeff Barry.
In the second story, both Jughead and Hotdog have been acting strangely. Soon it becomes obvious that it’s because they are smitten with a new girl in town, Paula Pingle, and her poodle. But Paula doesn’t know Jughead exists. Weeks go by and he hasn’t spoken a word to her. Finally, Reggie decides to just introduce them to each other but Paula says she and her poodle are already in love with their secret admirers, Egghead and Chilidog. That night the gang sees Jughead and Hotdog walking in their sleep. They follow them to Paula’s place where Jughead stands beneath her window and orates romantically while Paula and her poodle look down enraptured. It turns out that Jughead and Hotdog in their sleep are Egghead and Chilidog. But when Reggie turns on the floodlight Jughead and Hotdog wake up to see both Paula and her poodle in curlers and they are frightened out of love.
In the first story of episode fourteen, Reggie tells Jughead that there are strange things happening in Dilton’s lab. When they go to spy on him they see Dilton walk into a strange mechanical box and come out looking like Frankenstein’s monster. They go to warn Archie and the girls but they get there to late. When next they see them Archie, Betty, and Veronica all look like monsters as well. Jughead and Reggie force Archie, Betty, and Veronica back to Pop’s where they try to make them dance themselves back to normal. But then Dilton arrives and leads them away, saying there is a job to do. Then Jughead and Reggie attack them and knock their masks off. Dilton explains they are advertising for a horror movie.
The Dance of the Week is The Rocket Ship: Get down as low as you can, and touch the floor with your hands. After a countdown of 10 to 1 jump high like a rocket.
The song of the week is “Don’t Touch My Guitar” by Jeff Barry.
In the second story, Veronica’s father gives the gang jobs in his department store, with the promise of a bonus for the best sales. Reggie becomes obsessed with earning the bonus and steals all of Archie’s customers to convince them to buy a lot more than they’d come in for. Reggie clears the shelves and it looks like he wins but then all the customers return the items they bought. Reggie runs away but Archie does a great job cleaning up Reggie’s mess. Meanwhile, Hotdog has been pretending to be an automated toy dog and all of Lodge’s customers want one. He’s going to manufacture them and make millions, so he gives everyone a bonus.
The music producer for The Archie Show was Don Kirshner, who co-founded Aldon Music in the 1950s. The biggest names among the Brill Building songwriters were all under contract to his company at various times, including Carole King, Neil Diamond, Tony Orlando, and Bobby Darin, whose careers he launched. He also discovered the rock band Kansas. He became the manager of The Monkees for the TV series. He selected the songs they would sing and is probably responsible for their phenomenal success. But he got fired for releasing a Neil Diamond song without permission. Managing the Archies was easier because cartoons have no will of their own. He became the music consultant for both Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. One of his biggest successes was Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, which ran from 1973 until 1981.
Before bed, I found a bedbug just to the right of the frame of the old exit door at the head of my bed. It was black and didn’t seem all that healthy, so maybe the stuff pest control put down is doing its job. It was the first time I’d seen one in three days.
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