Tristram Coffin

            On Sunday morning I worked out the chords for the ninth verse of "J'ai pas d'regret" (I've No Regrets) by Boris Vian. There's one verse left and I might have it the whole song chorded tomorrow. 

            I worked out the chords for all but the final verse of "OK pour plus jamais" (Okay for No More Always) by Serge Gainsbourg, but I'm pretty sure the last verse has the same chords as the other two, so I might actually have the song uploaded to my Christian's Translations blog tomorrow. 

            I weighed 83.9 kilos before breakfast. I spent about an hour and a half reading Jane Eyre and I'm about three-fifths finished. Rochester asks Jane to marry him and she thinks he's playing another trick. When she believes him she says yes. He wants to dress her like a society queen and shower her with diamonds but she rejects that idea. He sings her a song about his love for her but mentions them dying together and she makes it clear that's not part of the plan. They will be married in a month and she plans to be harsh with him during that time to test his love. That sounds pretty fucked up. 

            I think I weighed 84 kilos before lunch but forgot to write it down. I had rice crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of half lemonade and half cranberry juice. 

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

            I weighed 83.7 kilos at 17:15. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:01. 

            I read another forty pages of Jane Eyre, so now there are only about 160 left. On Jane's wedding day to Edward Rochester, at the moment when the priest asks if anyone has any reason why the marriage should not happen, someone speaks up and reveals that Rochester is already married. It turns out that his wife is a madwoman who has been locked away on the third floor of his house for years. Because of her insanity he had not considered himself married to her. 

            I had a fried egg, sunny side up with a warmed up naan and a beer while watching season 4, episode 2 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            This story stems from two circumstances involving Mr. and Mrs. Drysdale. Milburn has bought a mynah bird to give to Elly May for her birthday. While in the Drysdale home the bird has begun to repeat every word Margaret says and in her voice. At the same time Margaret is on an astrology kick and following whatever her book of the zodiac tells her to do on a given day. On this day it tells her to be kind to her neighbours and so she goes next door and tries to be nice to the Clampetts. But when Granny hears her naming astrological signs she thinks she's messing with black magic and chases her away. Jed tells Granny to go over and apologize. 

            Back at the Drysdale home Margaret has gotten tired of hearing the bird repeat her every word and releases it from its cage. It lands in the Drysdale garden and when Granny approaches the house and hears the bird talk in Margaret's voice she thinks that Mrs. Drysdale has accidentally turned herself into a crow. She calls up a veterinarian and the receptionist takes down her number to have the doctor call back about the sick crow. Granny goes to a big medical building in Beverly Hills but because she is talking about the bird as a woman she is sent to a psychiatrist. 

           While Granny is away the vet calls Jed and tells him that Mrs. Drysdale is a very sick bird. He asks about her feet and when he is told she has shoes on he thinks Jed is another pet owner who puts human clothes on their pet. He says for him to take the shoes off, put her in a cage, feed her sunflower seeds and make sure she flaps around. 

            Meanwhile the psychiatrist tells Granny that there is no medicine for her problem and what she needs is love and understanding. Granny takes the bird to Drysdale and gives the bird to him, threatening to have Jed take his money out of his bank if he doesn't love and care for it. Jed lets Margaret out of her cage just as Granny gets home. Margaret looks at her astrology book and realizes she got the wrong date. The real advice was to stay home because this was a day of bad luck. 

            The psychiatrist was played by Tristram Coffin, who started acting in high school and earned a degree in Speech from Washington University. Before being offered film parts he was a news and sports caster. He was almost immediately typecast as a villain but he co-starred as a hero in "The Case of the Missing Brides". He co-starred in "The King of Rocket Men", "Chasing Trouble", and the TV western series "26 Men". He appeared in the very first episode of The Lone Ranger. He is inadvertently famous for an episode of the TV series "Climax" in which he played a corpse that got up and walked away on camera, even though it wasn't supposed to. This was in the days of live television and he thought that he'd been told the scene was over even though they were still shooting. 

            I found a bed bug just to the left of the old exit door at the head of my bed, about a meter up. When I killed it the explosion squirted in my face.