Jerry Maren

            On Thursday morning I worked out the chords for the first verse of "Fugue" by Boris Vian. 

            I worked out the chords for the fifth and sixth verses of "Love On the Beat" by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have it finished tomorrow. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            My landlord finally came in the late morning to install the new bathroom sink fixture. He was supposed to come on Friday. At one point he asked for paper towels and when I walked into the kitchen he was already reaching for my roll and taking some. The guy has no respect. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before lunch. 

            I worked on polishing my Frankenstein presentation, mostly looking for more evidence of the creature's extreme masculinity. 

            I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst and on the way home I stopped at Freshco where the red grapes were on sale. There was a friendly guy who sounded like he was from South America who was impressed that the grapes were from Peru. He asked me why I was squeezing the grapes and I said to see if their not too soft and therefore over ripe. I also got a pack of blueberries, a frozen rack of pork ribs, hummus, soy milk, salsa, and some margarine. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:15. 

            I went over my presentation again a couple of times and made some small adjustments. The professor said that we don't need citations unless we reference outside sources. Since I mention Tarzan of the Apes I figured I'd better download it. I got a copy from Library Genesis. It's public domain now. 

            I cut the bad parts from three potatoes and had the rest with lima beans and gravy while watching season 5, episode 16 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            The Drysdales have put up a fence covered in tarpaulin around their property and it's upsetting Granny because she wants to see what they are hiding. It turns out that it's a balloon shaped like a flying saucer. Drysdale has hired three little Italian acrobats who do a balloon act to dress up as green spacemen for his advertizing campaign. He's arranged for them to descend on the Rose Bowl during the New Year's game and a voice will boom, "Take us to your financial leader, The Commerce Bank of Beverly Hills". Drysdale also has fake one dollar bills made with his face on them. Drysdale drives the men to his house to hide until the big event. When Granny comes to the door she sees the three little green men in the window and freaks out. Jethro pokes his head under the tarp and sees them and thinks they are Martians. He wants to go back to Mars with them. Jed says they should invite them over for vittles. The men only speak Italian but we see in subtitles that they are hungry because Drysdale has left no food for them. Jethro comes and communicates eating with sign language and so they follow him. They enjoy some food and leave, saying "Grazia" and "Arrivederci". Granny is mad because she doesn't think they've said thank you or goodbye. She shoots their saucer balloon with her shotgun. Later the men are at Drysdale's bank in business suits to get paid. But Drysdale pays them in fake Drysdale dollars. 

            One of the Italian acrobats was played by Jerry Maren, who in 1938 rode a bus full of Little People from New York to Hollywood to appear in The Wizard of Oz. He said the actors who played Munchkins got $50 a week while the dog Toto got $200 a week. He played the Munchkin who handed Dorothy a lollipop while singing the welcome song. There were 120 Munchkins played by Little People from all over the world. He was the last surviving Munchkin. He played Buster Brown on radio and television and he was both Mayor McCheese and The Hamburglar in the McDonald's commercials. He was Little Oscar in the Oscar Mayer commercials. He played Boko on The Magic Lady TV Show. He was also a professional wrestler. He helped form the Little People of America. He played The Little General on The Andy Williams Show and he was a regular on The Gong Show. He played Morris the Bellboy on the short-lived sitcom No Soap Radio. 

             I searched for bedbugs and after eight days of being free of them I found one hiding near the upper right corner of the old exit door at the head of my bed. It fell when I dug it out of a crevice with my toothpick. I got down on my knees and when I found it again it had already crawled from the floor back onto the lower right hand side of the door where I killed it. There was no blood inside and its guts were dry and black so it was probably infected by the spores. I guess that's good news but I want to find zero. I don't think that's going to happen as long as Caesar won't let pest control spray the spores in his apartment.