John Hoyt

            On Friday morning my left knee was not bending very well twelve hours after slamming it into the pavement yesterday, but it was actually more flexible than I'd expected it to be. The main problem was not being able to put my weight directly on it during yoga but that's because of the bruise. I'm leaning towards thinking that the joint is not damaged and the cap is not fractured, but I'll just have to see if it improves over the next few days. It's already a bad knee because of a work injury in 1984 but that problem is under the kneecap so one may not affect the other. 

            I uploaded "J'ai pas d'regret" by Boris Vian to Christian's Translations and started editing to prepare it for publication on the blog. 

            I finished memorizing "C’est rien, je m’en vais, c’est tout" (It’s Nothing, I’m Done, I’m Gone) by Serge Gainsbourg. Tomorrow I'll look for the chords. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            I got up to page 637 in David Copperfield. Uriah Heep reveals to Doctor Strong that his much younger wife has been cheating on him with her childhood friend and cousin. It seems that Heep's intention is to cause a scandal and to render Mrs. Strong a social outcast so that Mr. Whitfield's daughter Agnes, who Heep loves, will no longer associate with her and influence Agnes against him. But the doctor receives the news with no great surprise and forbids the news to be spread further. When they are alone David strikes Heep hard on the cheek with his open hand for having done this. Heep says he forgives him. I left off at David's wedding as he is about to marry Dora. I can't imagine it going well since she is chronically naïve and far too immature to become a wife. 

            David's friend Micawber now works for Uriah Heep and he's become a darker personality as a result. I think that Micawber might be based on Sir Richard of the Lea from the Robin Hood legends. Either that or how Sir Richard is portrayed by Ian Hunter in the 1950s Robin Hood TV series is based in Dickens's Micawber. Maybe by that time Micawber's character had become a trope. 

            I weighed 84 kilos before lunch. 

            My knee felt a lot better after a siesta than it did in the morning. I decided to try a bike ride but the bend was a little too painful for me to go any further than around the block. I might only ride to the supermarket and back on Saturday and work my way towards being able to ride to class on Tuesday. 

            I weighed 84.4 kilos at 16:15. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:28. 

            I made it up to page 693 of David Copperfield. David learns that Steerforth abandoned Emily in Naples and gave her to his butler. She escaped and so now all they know is that she is probably on her own. David and Mr. Peggotty track down Martha who they find about to throw herself in the Thames. It is hinted that she's been living a life of shame and so this translates as her being a self-righteous middle class Victorian's fantasy of a repentant sex worker. David figures that Emily might come to London and so he gives Martha a sense of purpose by looking out for her. 

            I grilled some chicken drumsticks and had two with a potato and gravy while watching season 4, episode 14 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Jethro's new kick is that he wants to go to West Point so he can be a five star general. Jed takes him to Mr. Drysdale to see if he can help him. Drysdale tells him that West Point is about 5,000 kilometers away and Jethro realizes he won't be able to eat at home. Drysdale convinces him to try Havenhurst Academy in Beverly Hills instead. Because this is a school for much younger boys, Drysdale dresses Jethro up like Little Lord Fauntleroy and tells him to walk with a crouch to make him look shorter. There is an entrance exam for the academy that Jethro probably couldn't pass but Colonel Hollis is willing to waive that because he's found out that the location of the Clampett estate is a perfect strategic location for his boys to fight from in their upcoming war games against a rival school that always wins. 

           Jethro is put into a platoon with an eight year old commanding officer named Captain Hogan who is always chewing him out. When the bus pulls up in front of the Clampett house and Jed hears they are fighting the Red Army, he thinks it's a real war and that the US army is in a sorry state if it's using kids that young as soldiers. They are fighting from the back of the house near the pool and when Jed hears they have the Red Army on the run he is especially impressed when he finds they did it with cap guns. 

            Colonel Hollis was played by John Hoyt, who was a graduate of Yale and served as an editor for the humour magazine The Yale Record. In the 1920s he did comedy routines in nightclubs doing impersonations of famous celebrities. He made his Broadway debut in "Overture" in 1931. He performed in The Rainbow Room in 1937 as The Master of Satire. He was especially known for his impersonation of Noel Coward, which led to him to star in "The Man Who Came to Dinner" on Broadway. He was a member of Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre until he left for Hollywood in 1945. His first film was "OSS". He co-starred in "The Sins of Jezebel". He appeared in both Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica. He co-starred in the sitcoms "Gimme a Break" and "Tom, Dick, and Harry". 

            For the third night in the row I found no bedbugs.