Vince Edwards

            On Wednesday morning I worked out the chords for all but the final line of the first verse of "Volontaire" by Serge Gainsbourg. The chords I found online just show the same four chords in the same order for every line of each verse throughout the song, but I hear different chords for each line. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I cleaned two more of the sliding windows from the left-hand window set in my living room. There's just one window left to wash for that side, and I should be able to do that tomorrow, then clean the outside of the big right-hand window and start washing the grooves where the right-hand sliding windows go. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos before lunch. I had Breton crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I headed out for my usual bike ride but on Brock, just before Bloor I suddenly heard, "PSSSST ... psah ... psah ...psah" and my back tire was flat. I was not surprised because I'd been waiting for that tire to blow all summer and already have a new tire and tube waiting to be installed. I walked home, enjoying a closer look at the graffiti in and around the railroad underpass. Walking takes a long time when one is used to riding and by the time I got home it was maybe only fifteen minutes short of when I would have gotten back from a bike ride downtown and back. I decided I'll change the tube and tire when it's time for my bike ride tomorrow and if it doesn't take too long, I'll take a short ride afterward. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos at 16:50. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:30. 

            I reviewed four videos of me playing "L'accordion" and three of "The Accordion". For "L'accordion", on June 25, 27, 29, and July 1, I wasn't hitting the B chord firmly enough. For "The Accordion", on June 26, and 28 I was still not enunciating "in and" as separate words in the chorus; July 2 was the day when I started making a conscious effort to enunciate the "in and" but I lost it near the end. Plus I was still hitting the B chord too weakly. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" I edited the clip from the 1931 Dracula movie of the man fainting at the threshold of leaving Dracula's castle. I inserted it into the main video to correspond with the line, "Either the threshold has not been found." Next, I'll try to synchronize the concert video with the studio audio when I sing, "... or a delayed attack is coming around ..." 

            I managed to chronologize a few more hard copies of transcripts of the Gumby Bible group poem. I discovered that one of the pages that I'd thought was from the Gumby Bible was actually one of my own poems. It's not always easy to tell. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar and had it with a beer while watching the first episode of the 1960s medical drama "Ben Casey". I remember the series and how much my mother liked it. 

            The show always begins with someone drawing on a chalkboard the symbols: "♂ ♀ ✳ †∞" and saying, "Man, woman, birth, death, infinity." 

            Dr. Casey is the best chief resident that County General Hospital has had in twenty years. As a neurosurgeon, he is kind to patients but not to other doctors and medical staff that he deems incompetent. He has caused several nurses to quit and a good number of the other doctors want him dismissed. His ideas are new and that meets with resistance from the administration. He also orders expensive equipment that strains the hospital's budget. One child patient observes that he never smiles. There are a handful of people on his side, the greatest of which is his mentor Dr. Zorba, the chief of neurosurgery. 

            The first episode begins with a patient under respiratory arrest. Casey finds that Dr. Cain has not acted quickly enough to try to save him and now it's too late. The main patient in this story is a boy named Peter Salazar. He has a brain condition that will kill him and Casey proposes a radical new three-phase surgery that could either cure or kill the boy. Casey has already gone ahead with the first surgery against the administration's wishes. Now he is possibly up for suspension. 

            He is called to an emergency of a patient who has just been brought in. She is showing the symptoms of rabies. While trying to treat her as she struggles, Casey gets a cut on his hand and he is infected with her blood. The problem is that he is allergic to the vaccine and so he has a 70% chance of dying in thirty days. 

            Meanwhile, he still wants to save Peter. Dr. Zorba saves Casey from being suspended and Casey is given a chance to try to convince the other doctors of the viability of the surgery he wants to do. As the clock is ticking on his own possible death, he strikes up a romance with Dr. Maggie Graham. In the end, he gets to perform the surgery, and Peter is saved. Also, Casey has made it out of the danger period of contracting rabies. 

            Ben Casey was played by Vince Edwards, a star swimmer who went to college on an athletic scholarship. While training for the Olympics he was involved in school theatre productions. He studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts with Anne Bancroft, Grace Kelly, and John Cassavetes. His first film was "Mister Universe" in 1951. He starred in "Hiawatha". He co-starred in "The Killing" and "Murder by Contract" but did not become a star to the public until "Ben Casey" in 1961. As a result of his TV popularity, he recorded several music albums. After "Ben Casey" ended he co-starred in "The Devil's Brigade". He directed some episodes of the original "Battlestar Galactica". He was a compulsive gambler for many years and later tried to educate others about gambling addiction. 

            It's now been a full week since I've seen a bedbug. That's something I haven't been able to say very many times in the year and a quarter since I started seeing them again.