Beany and Cecil

            On Tuesday morning I finished memorizing "Volontaire" by Serge Gainsbourg. I looked for the chords and found the same set on several sites. I copied them but when I worked out the chords for the intro I heard mostly different ones from the posted ones. I'll figure out the verses tomorrow. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before breakfast. I called Topcuts and found out that Amy would be in today and so I shaved and showered and then after doing the dishes, I left at 12:00 for Yonge and St Clair. It was a pleasant day for a bike ride. 

            Top Cuts was full of parents dragging their children in for haircuts to prepare them for the first day of school tomorrow. One father had apparently been there before me but had gone out with his son to get McDonald's. I was there when they got back and then Amy took me before them. 

            I was surprised when Amy told me that she spoke zero English when she came to Canada. I'd thought that everyone from Asia learned some English but maybe it's only those countries that had been British colonies. I was also surprised to learn that Thailand was never a colony of any other nation. Looking it up later I learned that, although never dominated by China, Thailand had a very close trade relationship with China for centuries that was very influential, and many Thais have some Chinese ancestry. 

            Amy asked if my hair has been falling out. I said I hadn't noticed. She said it seems a lot finer than before. I suggested it might be because of the dandruff shampoo I've been using. She said, "But you don't have dandruff!" I suggested maybe that's because I've been using a dandruff shampoo. She admitted that it was very dry the last time I was there. 

            It's not as much fun riding down Yonge Street from St Clair anymore because there is now a bike lane that winds around the patios and slows down one's descent. 

            I weighed 84.1 kilos before a late lunch. That's the lightest I've been in well over a month. 

            I took a late siesta and got up at 16:48. 

            I weighed 84.7 kilos at 18:40. 

            I was caught up on my journal just after starting to make dinner. 

            I reviewed two videos of me playing "L'accordion" and two of "The Accordion". Of "L'accordion", on June 21 it didn't sound like I was hitting the B chord firmly enough, plus I fumbled slightly at one point; June 23 was okay. For "The Accordion", on both June 22 and June 24 I continued to sing "in and" too quickly in the chorus. 

            I grilled three steaks in the oven and had one with a potato and gravy while watching the only episode of "Beany and Cecil" that I could download. I would have liked to have gotten some episodes of the critically acclaimed "Time for Beany" puppet show but this was the black and white animated series from 1965. The animation is not very good, and the stories are pretty silly. The ads for upcoming new ABC shows for the fall of 1965 were almost more interesting than the cartoons. 

            The first ad was for "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", which was one of my favourite shows.

            The second ad had Efrem Zimbalist Jr. hawking his new series "The FBI". He says that to keep the show authentic, he would be going through the same course of training as an FBI agent. 

            The first Beany and Cecil cartoon is "The Seventh Voyage of Singood". Captain Huffenpuff is sailing with Beany and Cecil to the exotic city of Ashcanistan. He is going to the market there to return his empty Persian bottles for the deposits. Suddenly the pirate Singood bumps his ship into theirs. Singood is really their arch nemesis Dishonest John. He is trying to capture their treasure of empty bottles. They go full speed backward and he chases after them. 

            Then Singood uncorks his secret weapon, Greeny the Seasick Genie. Greeny actually seems more drunk than seasick but whatever his condition, it makes him incompetent even though he has great magical powers. Singood tells Greeny to throw a brick wall in front of Huffenpuff's ship but he puts one in front of Singood's. Cecil starts shooting cannonballs at Singood, but Greeny turns them into delicious fruit and they fly directly into his mouth. But then Cecil fires a pineapple, which Greeny transforms into a cannonball that he swallows before it explodes. Singood tells Greeny to make him into a frogman so he can swim underwater to Huffenpuff's ship and destroy it with a bomb. But Singood is swallowed by a shark and the bomb explodes inside of it. Then Greeny takes all that Singood says as wishes. He says, "Get me back on my tub" and he is put naked in a tub; he says "I'll be a monkey's uncle" and the obvious transformation happens; he says "I should have stayed in bed" and he's back in bed; he says, "That genie's got me fit to be tied" and then he's tied up; he says "I give up" and he's suddenly surrendered on Huffenpuff's ship. He tells the genie, "You know where you can go!" and suddenly Singood is in hell. Greeny tells Singood, "That was your last wish!" 

            The next ad shows Forest Tucker speaking about his show "F Troop." 

            The fourth ad has Burl Ives talking about a comedy series I never heard of called, "O.K. Crackerby". His character seems to be a salt of the Earth type who also happens to be the richest man in the world. Apparently, ABC pulled the series off the air after 17 episodes. 

            In the second cartoon everyone is in love but Cecil. Beany has a girl named Baby Ruth who looks almost identical to him except that her beany has a bow instead of a propeller. Huffenpuff is singing to a portrait of his girlfriend Ida. Crowie the Crow has a girlfriend named Crow-dot (pronounced Crow Dough) but Cecil has nobody and he's lonely. Beany and Huffenpuff leave and tell Cecil they'll get him a date. Cecil says, "Make sure you take the seeds out!" 

            Dishonest John decides to play a trick on Cecil by blowing up an inflatable female sea serpent and getting inside. John uses the disguise to flirt with Cecil and Cecil falls in love. She's singing a song because John is playing a record, but it skips and says, "Me ... me ... me ..." Cecil says, "She's sure stuck on me!" Cecil gives her a bouquet of flounders. She gives Cecil a kiss and John sticks the bathroom plunger out of her mouth and onto Cecil's. Then John hits Cecil over the head with a hammer. Cecil is in heaven. Cecil keeps ducking down into the ocean to give her caviar and treasure. Cecil wants another kiss, and she says, "Okay sucker, pucker". He gets the plunger and the hammer again but this time the sea serpent doll deflates, and Cecil sees John. He throws John into the water to be chased by a shark. Beany and Huffenpuff return with a real she-serpent girlfriend for Cecil named Cecilia McCoy.

            The next ad shows Sally Field promoting her new show, "Gidget", based on the series of Gidget films that were based on the series of novels by Frederick Kohner. All of the Gidget movies had a different actor playing Gidget but the most famous was Sandra Dee in the first film. 

            The sixth ad was for the female-led detective series "Honey West", starring Anne Francis. Both because of her looks and her judo skills, she was the private eye that criminals flipped over. It was based on the series of novels by Gloria and Forrest Fickling, who published under the collective pseudonym of G.G. Fickling. 

            In the third cartoon, Huffenpuff says they can earn $20,000 if they can capture Thunderbolt the Wondercolt. Thunderbolt is a superhero horse that can fly and shoot thunderbolts. Dishonest John hears about the reward and also learns that Thunderbolt has a notorious distrust of humans. Huffenpuff sends Cecil to meet Thunderbolt but John plots to get Cecil out of his way. He lures him into a fake cave entrance that he paints onto a rock face and then after Cecil is inside, he erases it. John disguises himself as a partial horse with only horse ears and a horse tail. John tells Thunderbolt he wants to put him in the movies and takes his picture, but the camera shoots a lasso around Thunderbolt's neck. However, when John pulls the rope there is a cannon on the other end that goes off in his face. Then Thunderbolt sucks John into a vacuum cleaner and electrocutes him with a thunderbolt. John disguises himself as a sheep but the costume comes off without his awareness and Thunderbolt sends a bouncing thunderbolt after him. Then John puts on a duck costume that resembles Donald Duck, but Thunderbolt puts on a mouse costume that looks something like Mickey Mouse. John takes off the mouse mask and there is a Bugs Bunny-type mask underneath. Thunderbolt takes off the duck mask to show a Porky Pig-like mask. John takes off the bunny mask to show a Huckleberry Hound mask. Then they both have Beany masks. Thunderbolt throws John against the mountain in which Cecil is imprisoned and it breaks him out. Cecil brings Thunderbolt to Huffenpuff but then the real Cecil comes and unmasks John who is disguised as Cecil. 

            The last ad is a Cheerios commercial starring the Cheerios Kid and his sister Sue. The Kid has invented a robot named Marvin, but it goes haywire and grabs Sue. The Kid has to eat Cheerios with the big G for General Mills and the little "o" for the cereal bit to give himself "Go" power, then jumps on the wire that Marvin is crossing to punch and destroy the robot and save his sister. Sue concludes that the Kid should rewire his own brain. 

            I searched for bedbugs and for the sixth night in a row I didn't find any.