Ogden Nash

            On Saturday morning I memorized the third verse of "C'est comment qu'on freine" (That's How You Slam on the Brakes) by Serge Gainsbourg. There's just one verse left to learn. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before breakfast. That's the lightest I've been in the morning in six days.

            Around midday, I went down to No Frills where I bought five bags of grapes, a watermelon, a plastic basket of peaches, five-year-old cheddar, a pack of pork chops, cinnamon-raisin bread, white corn and black bean salsa, Basilica sauce, plain skyr, vanilla-cinnamon skyr, spoon size shredded wheat, and kettle chips. I was checked out by Jessica, the always sweet middle-aged cashier with the piercings. She went to check for me if they had the big recyclable bags but they didn't. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before lunch. I had the last of my saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of lemonade. That's the last time I'll buy PC lemonade. It tastes horrible. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown. At Huron, Bloor Street was closed eastbound and so I went south and then across Queen's Park to Wellesley. But then at Bay Street, Wellesley was closed, so I went south to Grosvenor and across to Yonge, then south to Queen and west to home. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos at 17:00. 

            I got caught up on my journal just before 18:00. 

            I reviewed for the second time, five videos of me playing my song "Sixteen Tons of Dogma". I listened to the take from June 19 and compared it to the one on June 29; on the 29th I was a bit off on the D# and a little too fast. I played this better on June 19; I listened to July 3 and I think June 19 might be slightly better but I should listen again; on July 7 there was a loud motor outside my window near the end, so I don't think I can use this one; I don't think July 10 was as good as June 19. I still have July12 and 13th to listen to for a second time and then have a third review of June 19 and July 3. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" I inserted a clip from the 1940s to correspond with the line, "Secure the jaw and force the shoulders down". Then I worked on synchronizing the concert video with the studio audio at the point when I sing "shock therapy" again. 

            I worked on trying to organize my transcripts of the Gumby Bible chronologically but I only had time to put a date on one of the pages. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce, a cut-up beef burger, and extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the 1976 Bugs Bunny special, "Carnival of the Animals". 

            It opens with Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny in their dressing room preparing for their concert. They are the pianists and the vocalists and there is a live orchestra with the very expressive conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. They are performing a musical piece written by a French composer named Camille Saint-Saëns in 1922, with lyrics by Ogden Nash. There are musical pieces for lions, chickens, kangaroos, birds, elephants and fossils, followed by a grand finale. Bugs and Daffy introduce each animal segment with a humorous poem. One of the gags is that Bugs gets a lot of applause but when Daffy tries to entertain, the theatre is so quiet that one can hear crickets. Each animal segment has its own animation, which is much simpler in movement but more artistic than the animation of Bugs and Daffy. Most of the animations are in pastel colours but fossils are done in watercolour. At the end, when the lights come on, Daffy sees that the entire audience is made up of rabbits. 

            In the late 1940s, Goddard Lieberman of Columbia Records and conductor Andre Kostelanetz had the idea to add poetry to Saint-Saëns's "Carnival of the Animals" and Ogden Nash was their first and only choice as the poet. He wrote the poems and the first recording was made in 1950: 

            

            "Camille Saint-Saëns was wracked with pains 

            when people addressed him as Saint Sains 

            He held the human race to blame 

            because it could not pronounce his name 

            So he turned with metronome and fife 

            to glorify other forms of life 

            Be quiet please, for here begins 

            his salute to feathers, fur, and fins." 

            Each segment is accompanied by one of Nash's poems. Here's part of one of them: 

            "I could not eat a kangaroo 

            but many fine Australians do 

            Those with cookbooks as well as boomerangs 

            prefer them in tasty kangaroo meringues." 

            The city of Nashville, Tennessee was named after Francis Nash, the brother of Ogden Nash's direct ancestor Abner Nash. Ogden published his first book of poems "Hard Lines" in 1931. From his poem "Common Sense" are these lines, "Why did the lord give us agility / if not to avoid responsibility?" He wrote the lyrics for the Broadway Musicals "One Touch of Venus" with music by Kurt Weill, featuring the song "Speak Low". He also wrote the lyrics for the revue "Two's Company". 

            I worked on translating a Serge Gainsbourg song from the 60s that I overlooked. It's a very difficult one with references that are difficult to put properly into English. I got the first verse done. 

            I managed to chronologize a few more transcripts of the Gumby Bible. 

            I searched for bedbugs and for the second night in a row I found none.