I ran through singing and playing my translation of “Bana basadi balalo” (While All the Wom-en Are Sleeping) by Serge Gainsbourg. I uploaded it to Christian’s Translations, edited it and then published it on the blog.
I video-recorded most of my song practice and audio-recorded the whole session. This was probably my last recording session until next summer. My guitar strap broke while I was playing the first song, so I put the peg in the next hole and extended the position of the buckle as far as it would go but the guitar was too high. I tried playing it and sometimes missed chords because they were no longer in the position my hand would normally go. The strap is tied to the neck with a shoe-lace and so I untied that and extended it as long as it would go and still be secure. That brought me back to normal and I was able to continue playing. I did a pretty good version of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” but fumbled the chord transition to the epilogue. Maybe I recovered it well enough for it not to be noticeable. I didn’t redo a lot of songs on this final session unless I made a major mistake. Sometimes a song is going well and then a siren or a thundering truck goes by and ruins the recording but there’s nothing I can do about that.
I weighed 85.9 kilos before breakfast.
Around midday I washed the underside of the bottom shelf on the eastern wall of my kitchen, then I cleaned the wall beneath it, and then I washed the top and the front of the wooden casing of the radiator. On Sunday I’ll start cleaning the radiator, and that might take me until the middle of next week.
At 12:30 I started getting ready for an early bike ride because while I was downtown I would be meeting Brian Haddon at the Wheat Sheaf. I rode to Yonge and Bloor, then south to Queen, west to Spadina, south to King and west to Bathurst. I arrived at The Wheat Sheaf pretty much exactly on time. I waited on the patio for an hour before ordering a pint of Creemore. I drank it and kept watching the southbound Bathurst streetcars to see if Brian would get off. When I finished my beer I waited for one more Bathurst car and then I left. I was pissed off but I also assumed there must have been a logical explanation since in the 27 years I’ve known Brian he’s never stood me up.
When I got home there was an email from Brian saying he had been at the Wheat Sheaf waiting for me and I hadn’t shown up and so at 14:30 he left. I responded that I’d been on the patio from 14:00 until 15:30. I assumed at this point that while I was on the patio, Brian had been sitting inside, but that seemed odd because I was pretty sure that there was an understanding that we were going to be sitting outside. Then I saw that the time of Brian’s email was 13:33. I pointed this out to him in another response and asked if he’d misread the time. He got back to me that he’d indeed made a mistake and that he’d been there at 13:00 instead of 14:00. He asked if we could try again next Friday and so I agreed. I wonder if he’d been confused by my use of the 24-hour clock.
I weighed 84.6 kilos before a very late lunch at 16:00.
I took a late siesta and got up at 18:20.
I weighed 85.2 kilos at 18:30.
I was caught up on my journal just before I started making dinner at 20:00.
I had a potato with gravy and my last sirloin steak while watching four Bugs Bunny cartoons from 1944.
The first one is pretty racist. Bugs is adrift on the Pacific Ocean inside a crate until he spies an island paradise. But on the island, he encounters a Japanese soldier. The soldier chases Bugs down a hole and then drops a bomb and buries it. He hears an explosion and then digs open the hole only to have Bugs hand him the bomb before it explodes. The soldier goes after him with his sword but suddenly Bugs is dressed as a Japanese officer and the soldier apologizes. But the soldier tells the fourth wall that he recognizes him as Bugs Bunny from the Warner Brothers cartoons. The soldier starts eat-ing a carrot and says, “What’s up honourable doc?” Bugs runs to a Japanese fighter plane and takes off. The soldier gets in another plane and also tries to fly but Bugs has tied the plane to a tree and the soldier is in the air in only the top of the plane. The soldier opens a parachute but Bugs flies in a plane next to him and hands him an anvil. Then Bugs is confronted by a gigantic sumo wrestler. Bugs wrestles with him and gets tied into knots. But then Bugs disguises himself as a geisha and flirts with him. The wrestler leans in to kiss the geisha and gets hit with a big hammer. Bugs sees hundreds of Japanese soldiers arriving and so he approaches them in an ice cream truck and sells them Good Rumour bars with hand grenades inside. The soldiers buy the bars and Bugs says racist things like “Here you are slant eyes.” Bugs kills all the soldiers with the exploding treats. He comments on how peaceful and quiet it is now but says he can’t stand peace and quiet. Then he sees a US battleship and signals it until he meets a sexy female rabbit and changes his mind.
It wasn’t until this was released as part of a box set of Bugs Bunny cartoons on VHS in 1993 that Japanese groups began to protest the cartoon. It was pulled from many future compilations.
In the second story, Elmer Fudd is hunting Bugs Bunny with a fishing rod and with a carrot as bait. But Bugs gets the carrot and catches Elmer on the hook. Then Elmer chases Bugs with a gun out of the woods and into the stage door of a Vaudeville theatre. Elmer is enjoying the can-can dancers until he sees one of them is a rabbit and he starts shooting. Bugs is trying to get away but Elmer is there at both stage left and right so Bugs is stuck in the middle when the curtain goes up and he be-gins to tap dance. Then Elmer comes onstage inside the piano but Bugs plays it and the hammers in-side knock Elmer around. Elmer starts strangling Bugs but then realizes he’s on stage and is petrified. Bugs announces that Elmer is going to do the high dive. Elmer climbs up but then Bugs moves away the big pool of water and has Elmer dive into a little water glass. Elmer chases Bugs into a dressing room and Bugs says, “Hurry, you’re on in two minutes!” He dresses Elmer in a Romeo costume, then onstage Bugs stands behind him and makes it look like his arms are Elmer’s as he does a strip tease. Then Bugs dresses as a sheriff similar to Yosemite Sam and arrests Elmer for indecency. He is escort-ing Elmer out of the theatre when he sees they are playing a Bugs Bunny cartoon. They sit down to watch but Elmer sees Bugs in the cartoon putting on the sheriff’s costume. Elmer tries to expose the sheriff by pulling off his clothes but it turns out he really is a sheriff.
The third story begins with Elmer crying in the woods because he can never catch the rabbit. Suddenly the voice of god tells him that if at first he doesn’t succeed he should try again. Elmer says there is no point because he will never catch him. God shows Elmer the year 2000 when he is an old man with a ray gun instead of a shot gun. He reads the paper and sees that in the year 2000 smell-o-vision replaced television. Elmer goes after an elderly Bugs Bunny but Bugs knocks away the gun, kisses Elmer, and then hobbles away with his cane. Elmer shoots Bugs and he goes through a dramatic death scene. While apparently dying, Bugs shows Elmer a photo album, and inside is a baby picture of Elmer with a pop gun. He recalls their first encounter when the baby Bugs first outsmarted the baby Elmer. Bugs smashed his carrot juice baby bottle over little Elmer’s head. Elmer chased him until Bugs said it was nap time and they went to sleep together before waking up and renewing the chase. Bugs says those were the good old days. Elmer says, “What have I done!” Bugs digs a grave while Elmer cries. Bugs steps into the grave and shakes hands with Elmer. Then he pulls Elmer into the grave and steps out. Elmer continues to say goodbye as Bugs buries him. In the grave, Elmer says the rabbit is out of his life forever but then Bugs breaks through the side of the grave and says, “Well now I wouldn’t say that and hands Elmer a bomb.
The fourth story begins with a live-action introduction to Hollywood. The announcer talks about this being the night of the Academy Awards. Inside the theatre where the ceremony is taking place, the announcer asks who will win the Oscar. Seated at a table is Bugs Bunny and he is certain that he will win. But the winner is James Cagney. Bugs demands a recount. Bugs tries to prove to the audience why he should win and he shows them a clip from “Hiawatha’s Rabbit Hunt” which really was nominated for an Oscar. Then Bugs asks the audience if he gets it. An audience member asks, “Shall we give it to him?” The audience shouts “Yeah!” and they start pelting him with vegetables and eggs, but they also throw a rabbit shaped Oscar. Bugs says he’ll cherish it and even take it to bed with him every night. The little statuette asks in a Maurice Chevalier voice, “Do you mean it?” and kisses Bugs.
The racist cartoon “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips” was directed by Friz Freleng, who joined the Walt Disney studio in 1927. He found Walt Disney abusive and he quit, moving to New York where he worked on Krazy Kat. But he was unhappy in New York and went back to California to work on Loony Tunes for Leon Schlesinger. He became Schlesinger’s top director and introduced Porky Pig in “I Haven’t Got a Hat” in 1935. He directed most of the Censored Eleven cartoons that were pulled be-cause of racial stereotypes. He considered poking fun at ethnic groups to be a formula for success. In 1937 he joined the new MGM cartoon studio and directed The Captain and the Kids, based on the Katzenjammer Kids. In 1939 he returned to Looney Tunes to direct “You Ought to Be in Pictures.” He introduced Yosemite Sam (who looked a lot like Freling), Sylvester and Tweety, and Speedy Gonzales. He was a classically trained violinist and timed his cartoons on musical bar sheets. In 1964 he joined Hanna Barbara and was the supervisor for Hey There It’s Yogi Bear. He partnered with David H Depatie to form Depatie-Freleng Enterprises and their greatest achievement was The Pink Panther. In 1965 The Pink Phink won the Academy Award. They created the opening segment for I Dream of Jeannie.
I searched for bedbugs before bed and found none.
No comments:
Post a Comment