I did a shortened song practice until about 7:45 then I started getting my place prepared for pest control.
I weighed 86 kilos before breakfast, but I only took the time to eat a few grapes and sip some coffee.
I had everything ready before 9:00, but I also lint rolled my futons and was sweeping the floor when Matt came at around 9:30. He would be spraying the spores again this time and so I only had to leave for a couple of hours rather than four like I would if he’d sprayed poison. I still had to change into my shorts and brush my teeth. Steve usually gets started while I’m still here but Matt stood and waited, looking a little impatient.
I took a bike ride downtown. I had to pee while I was there for the first time in months. Perhaps it was because of the hour since I tend to ride six hours later. I drink three glasses of water during song practice and then I pee several times afterward, so it makes sense that if I ride in the morning I’m going to need to urinate. I first stopped to pee at A&W and while I was locking my bike a young woman was walking by with a little terrier. It put its paws up on the other side of my bike while I was bent over so I patted it and said hello back. Maybe it was just interested in smelling my keys. The woman smiled at me.
I stopped at Freshco on the way back where I bought five bags of grapes, a pint of Ontario strawberries, a half-pint of raspberries, a loaf of sliced Bavarian sandwich bread, a whole chicken, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a bag of kettle chips, three bags of skim milk, a container of skyr, a jug of orange juice, a pack of cheap extra old cheddar for cooking, tomato sauce with ricotta cheese, and a box of saltines.
I got home at around 11:00. The floor in the bedroom was still wet from the spores. Hopefully, this would be the end of the bedbugs.
I weighed 85.4 kilos before lunch.
I weighed 85.5 kilos at 16:20.
I was caught up on my journal at 17:15.
I uploaded the videos that I'd shot of my song practice on Wednesday. I did a pretty good version of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma.” I’d been worried that singing the last word before playing the chord would sound odd, but it sounds fine.
I skimmed through all the audio recordings I’d made of my song practices in June, and found that I wasn’t getting a clean and audible sound until June 8. I recorded with Audacity until June 19 and then with Ableton from June 20 on. Some of the early Ableton recordings came out crackly, maybe because I had the gain too high on the Scarlett interface, and so I can’t use those. My plan is to have thirty recordings to pick through to find songs that are ready for YouTube, so that means that I’ll continue to record until at least the middle of July.
In the Movie Maker project of creating a video for my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy” I inserted the clip I made of the Allan Memorial Institute just after I sing, “… raise the church …” until just before I sing, “… of shock therapy.” The clip shows the aerial approach to the notorious Montreal mental hospital where the CIA did their draconian mind control experiments on psychiatric patients, combining doses of LSD with electroshock. It continues with a horizontal approach to the old building known as “Ravenscrag” and ends with the ornate doorway. The clip was too long and so I cut out the aerial view and most of the approach to the building. My final clip just shows the building and then the doorway. I then cut out a few seconds of the concert footage so that it lines up with the studio audio when I sing, “… of shock therapy.” Next there’s instrumental space but it's longer in the concert. I have to figure out whether I need to just clip the concert video some more, or insert another outside video before I sing, “Keep in mind that every patient has a different convulsive threshold.”
I sorted through some of the papers in a big folder in my four-drawer filing cabinet. This one has mostly the writing of poets who submitted copies of their work for my poetry slams. But some of the poems are doubled and so I pulled the extras out for scrap paper. A few of the papers are just hard copies of my journal that are already digitized and so I put those in the garbage. I’ve gone through about half the folder.
I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching episodes seven and eight of The Archie Show.
In the first story of episode seven the gang work together to help Archie fix up his car so it can compete in the hot rod race. In the end all there is left to do is to put in new spark plugs and tighten the wheels but everyone is exhausted. Reggie says he’s got plenty of energy and so Archie asks him to finish up. But after the gang goes to rest, Reggie can’t be bothered and just walks away. During the race, Archie’s rod is doing well until his spark plugs start to miss. They discover that Reggie didn’t put new ones in but Archie wins the race anyway because they make Reggie push.
The Dance of the Week is “The Betty”: Wiggle to the left and wiggle to the right, wiggle all around with all your might.
The Archies song of the week is “You Make Me Wanna Dance” by Jeff Barry.
In the second story, the gang gets hired by Veronica’s father to work as a rescue service at his ski lodge. But Reggie wants to get everyone but himself fired so he can have time alone with Veronica. His first dirty trick is to send a snowman-practice-ski-rescue dummy through the lodge. Mr. Lodge is angry but says he’ll give them one more chance. Next Reggie greases Jughead’s skis so he goes out of control and skis through the lodge. Archie, Jughead, and Betty all have their skis taken away as punishment. Hotdog shows Mr. Lodge the bucket of grease and then imitates Reggie to tell him who is really to blame. So Lodge and Hotdog collaborate to punish Reggie. Reggie is showing Veronica how he can jump over a mound of snow but Hotdog is inside the mound and lifts himself until Reggie goes out of control. He lands inside a large rolling snowball and winds up in a giant ice cube. Lodge holds a dance for the kids but glues Reggie to his chair.
In the first story of episode eight, Archie and Jughead have lunch at the zoo but a gorilla steals Jughead’s sandwich. Then the ape escapes and follows Jughead to school. The gorilla keeps getting Jughead in trouble so he has to find a way to get him back to the zoo. The football tryouts are that afternoon and so Jughead puts a uniform on the ape. Meanwhile, Reggie is doing very well in his tryout but we learn that he bribed a couple of players to take falls in order to make him look good. Jughead is taking the gorilla across the field when he catches the ball and shows that he can knock down the competition and score, so the gorilla makes the team.
The Dance of the Week is the Banana Split: Swing like a monkey hanging by its tail, when we say “split” change your partners. Now split.
The Archies song of the week is “Time for Love” by Mark Barkan and Ritchie Adams. It kind of feels like an imitation of the Mersey Beat style of songs.
Story two begins with Betty and Veronica having gotten a mysterious phone call to meet a secret admirer at Pop’s Choclit Shop. When Archie shows up in his hot rod they think it must be him. They all go for a drive and Reggie suggests they take Highway 102 because the desert flowers are in bloom. They see a partially covered sign that looks like it reads “Lost Mine Ahead” and so they go there to explore. The see something scary and then an empty mine car rolls up. They jump in and then their ride becomes a fantastic thrill ride through a horror show. They encounter ghosts, monsters, and unreal effects. When they get out at the other end they discover that it’s the Ghost Mine Fright Tunnel and that it is still under construction and won’t open until next week. Reggie begins to laugh because he set up the whole thing. But then a small bounding ghost comes out of the tunnel and Reggie runs away. But it’s just Hotdog covered in a sheet.
Ritchie Adams was born, Richard Adam Ziegler in New York City. In the late fifties he joined the Fireflies and sang lead on their hit “You Were Mine” and “I Can’t Say Goodbye”. He was more successful as a songwriter. With Malou René he co-wrote “Tossin’ and Turnin’”, and with Wes Farrell, “Happy Summer Days”. With Mark Barkan he co-wrote several songs for The Archies as well as the Banana Splits theme song. With Alan Bernstein he wrote “After the Lovin” and “This Moment In Time” for Engelbert Humperdinck and “The Next Hundred Years” for Al Martino.
I searched for bedbugs before bed and didn’t find any but that’s probably not because of the spores being sprayed that day, since it takes a while for the fungus to infect the bugs.
No comments:
Post a Comment