Lola Albright

            On Thursday morning I worked out the chords for the twelfth and final verse of "Sans blague" (No Joke) by Boris Vian. There's just a refrain to finish at the end. 

            I memorized the second verse of "Fuir le bonheur de peur qu'il ne se sauve" (I Flee Pleasure for Fear of its Removal) by Serge Gainsbourg. I discovered that in the first draft of the translation that I wrote a few years ago, I'd left out one verse, so I worked on that. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I finished reading the story "Turning Christian" by Samuel Selvon. There was tension between the freed African slaves and the indentured Indian labourers. The black people felt it was important to make sure the Indians stayed in subservience because otherwise the Africans would be made slaves again. 

            I read "Ruba dub Rhythm in a Regent Park" by Lilian Allen. It's a great performance piece but I've heard her read better poetry. It doesn't really break any literary ground. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before lunch. That's the most I've weighed at that time in 25 days. 

            I took a bike ride downtown and on the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought seven bags of grapes, two containers of raspberries, one container of blueberries, some organic bananas because they don't seem to go rotten as quickly as the other kind, and a bag of kettle chips. 

            The landlord seems to have rented a cherry picker and he has a guy finally fixing the roof. So maybe my ceiling will stop leaking when it rains. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 17:22. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:48. 

            I read the excerpts from the Ancrene Wisse that are in the Broadview Anthology of Medieval Literature. It contains instructions for anchorites, which are religious women, I think usually nuns who have taken their worship beyond the order to the point where they make themselves dead to the world. They live in a cell adjacent to the church and do nothing but worship. I'd boil the main instructions down to "wear comfortable shoes and don't whip yourself unless your confessor tells you to". 

            I read most of the writings of Julian of Norwich. She was a nun on her death bed when she had a vision of and a conversation with Jesus and then suddenly wasn't dying anymore. I blame moldy bread for at least her hallucinations but maybe also for her brush with death. She talks of Jesus as a male mother and equates the agony of crucifixion with the pain of giving birth. Jesus also personally taught her the martial art of Jhesu Jitsu and showed her his right cross so she could fight the fiends. 

            I had a small potato with gravy and a pork chop while watching episode 27 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            The story begins with Granny making her annual batch of spring tonic. Everyone lines up but no one wants to take it because it tastes so bad. Granny tests it on Elly's little terrier and he laps it up but begins barking loudly and deeply like a much bigger dog. 

            Meanwhile at the bank. Jane Hathaway introduces Mr. Drysdale to her prim, shy, conservative, bespectacled assistant, Gloria Buckles. Gloria has just updated Jed Clampett's file and knows all there is to know about Jed and his $34 million. Jane sends her to Jed's house to get him to sign some papers. But on the way she takes off her glasses, lets her hair down and changes into a form-fitting dress to reveal that she's the opposite of what she had appeared to be. As soon as she meets Jed she starts to flirt with him. Granny and Pearl think that Jed had too much spring tonic and they try to stop the love ball from rolling. She takes Jed for a drive in Jane's car and when they stop at a romantic lookout point, Gloria tells Jed that now that she's met him she will be lonely for the rest of her life because she will always compare other men with a rugged mountain man like him. Jed decides he's got what she wants.

            They go back to the mansion and she shows him how to dance the Twist. Elly and Jethro try it too and everyone is having a great time. Pearl calls Drysdale to warn him about Gloria and he rushes over. Gloria tells him to be nice to her or else after her wedding he may lose his largest account. Everyone is surprised when Jed confirms that there will be a wedding, but then he adds that it will be in three or four years when Jethro turns 21. This is obviously not what Gloria had in mind as Jethro picks her up and says, "Hot diggity dog I got me a wife!" and he runs with her out the door as she kicks and screams and Jane chases them shouting, "Bring him back!" Elly asks her father, "Ain't you gonna marry that city woman?" "Naw, us old foxes is trap-shy. Especially when the bait starts to chasing us." 

            Gloria Buckles was played by Lola Albright, who I mentioned a few times a couple of years ago when I was watching Peter Gunn, because she played Gunn's girlfriend, Edie Hart. Both of Lola's parents were gospel singers and she studied piano for twenty years. She worked for a local radio station and later became a model. Her first film appearance was in a small singing part in the 1947 movie "The Unfinished Dance". She starred in "A Cold Wind in August", co-starred in "The Love Cage", "The Good Humour Man", "The Way West", "The Impossible Years", and "Deadly Roulette". As a sultry jazz singer she recorded two albums: "Lola Wants You" and "Dreamsville". She won the Best Actress Award at Cannes for "Lord Love a Duck". She played Constance Mackenzie on "Peyton Place" when Dorothy Malone was sick. 

            

           I started my usual search for bedbugs and immediately say a mature one walking down the old exit door towards my bed. It looked like it had come from the crack in the top right corner of the door, so either there are some living there or there is some sort of pathway inside the door to my apartment from the one above.