Chester Morris

            On Sunday morning I reworked my translation of the second verse of "Sermonette" by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I'll run through singing and playing my English adaptation and if it needs no more adjustment I'll upload it to Christian's Translations. 

            I memorized the second verse of "Martine boude" (Martine Broods) by Serge Gainsbourg and reworked my translation of the third and fourth verses. 

            I weighed 86.3 kilos before breakfast. That's the heaviest I've been in the morning in three weeks. I guess that was a very substantial burger that I had for dinner the night before. 

            Around midday, I continued washing the grooves for the right-hand sliding windows in my living room. I got them half done and maybe I'll have time to do the rest on Tuesday since my Medieval Literature class isn't until the evening. 

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before lunch. That's the most I've weighed at that time in a week. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos at 17:15. That's the most I've weighed at that time in two weeks. 

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

            I reviewed the last two videos of me playing "The Accordion" and "L'accordion" but the B chord was sloppy on both July 14 and July 15. Then I went back and listened again to the dates of videos of this song I'd noted as being not bad, but really none of them were clean on the B chord all the way through. I quite often would hit the B firmly at first and then it would deteriorate. My conclusion is that I have to keep working on this song and try recording it again in a year or so. 

            I reviewed the video of my July 8 performance of the original French "Joanna" but I was sloppy on the bar chords. On the July 9 performance of my translation of "Joanna" my playing was better until I fumbled near the end. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" I was able to synchronize the concert video with the studio audio when I sing "... a delayed attack ..." but when I sing "... is coming around ..." it goes out of synch again. I looked for a video clip that might correspond to that line, but so far couldn't find anything. Now that school is starting I might not have time to work on this video until the Christmas break. But for future reference, I think I'll remind myself here to look for old movie footage of someone surrounded by wolves that are about to attack. 

            I chronologized a few more original pages of the Gumby Bible group poem. 

            I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with Basilica sauce, a cut-up beef burger, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the fifth episode of Ben Casey. 

            In this story, a very tough, competitive, and rich business tycoon named Walter Tyson needs to check into the hospital to be tested in the neurosurgery department. Tyson has been donating $100,000 a year to the hospital for a few years and so he is given the special treatment that he demands. But of course, he and Ben Casey lock horns because the doctor refuses to kowtow to Tyson. Tyson tries to prove his power by ordering Casey to fill his water bottle. Casey tells him he'll fill his water bottle if he donates another $50,000 to the hospital, otherwise, he'll have to get a nurse to do it. 

            Tyson's flexing of authority is contrasted with a working-class patient named Bill who is suffering from a broken neck and in traction but is extremely grateful for the help he's receiving. Bill's wife even bakes Casey cookies. 

            Tyson has kept his hospital admission a secret that only his loyal secretary Frederica knows about. He's set up an office in his room, against Casey's orders. Somehow Tyson's wife Wiletta finds out he is in the hospital. She comes to him and again demands a divorce. Tyson tells her she'll have to fight for it. Wiletta tries to get the information from Casey about exactly what her husband's condition is but Casey won't betray his patient even if he doesn't like him. But since she knows Casey is a neurosurgeon she puts two and two together. She lets it leak to one of Tyson's shareholders that Tyson has a brain condition and she ruins him before running off with the competition. 

            Tyson has been reluctant to book the surgery but Casey finally gets it through to him that it's a life-or-death situation. In surgery, it is found that Tyson has a benign tumour and so he's safe, although now broke. Tyson has gained respect for Casey and also, after fourteen years of dedication, he begins to notice Frederica as more than a secretary. 

            Walter Tyson was played by Chester Morris, who started out as a teenager acting in silent pictures and made his Broadway debut at the age of seventeen. He was one of the first actors to be nominated for an Academy Award in the second year of their existence before they were called "Oscars". The nomination was for "Alibi" which was his first talking picture. But the Academy Awards at that time did not make actors into stars because hardly anybody was aware of them. Morris became a star for a while on his own because of the film, "The Big House". The starlight dimmed for a few years until 1941 when he began to play the former criminal, turned hard-boiled detective Boston Blackie in an extremely popular series of movies. He played Blackie in fourteen films. 

            I searched for bedbugs and found one on the lower hinge of the old exit door at the head of my bed. It fell to the floor and I killed it there. I found another on the baseboard to the right of the head of my bed and about a meter away. It was the same maturity as the other and both were black, with very dark blood inside.

            I finished chronologizing the rest of the original Gumby Bible pages. Next, I need to more accurately date the poems that I wrote using Gumby Bible passages as prompts.