John Alvin

            On Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:00 and went to pee. I tried to go back to sleep but I'd had enough because I'd gone to bed almost two hours early the night before. My body was aching from lying there and so I got up at 4:18. I did my yoga a half an hour early. 

            I finished working out the chords for "Fugue" by Boris Vian. I have to adjust my translation because some of the lines that I'd translated from the text turned out to be different than the recording. Also I discovered that the final line "faire lanlaire" is an antiquated expression that basically means "Go to hell" or "Go fuck yourself", so now I have to figure out a translation that fits the song. I also still have an extra three lines that aren't in the recording. I'll figure out which chords from the song fit them but I'll put them on the end as additional lyrics. Maybe down the road I'll come across a version of the song that includes them. 

            I memorized the first verse of "Hmmm hmmm hmmm" by Serge Gainsbourg and almost nailed down the second verse. There are only three so it shouldn't take long. 

            I weighed 84.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            I left for Bildungsroman class at 11:20, but the wind was strong and the going was slow. For the first time I arrived in the classroom after noon, but there were only two students there anyway. There were only eleven of us when we got started. 

            There were three presenters on Peter Pan. The first talked about the mystery of what and who is Peter Pan. Daisy talked about Peter's cruelty, and the third presenter talked about the tragedy of Peter Pan. 

            I responded to Daisy's talk of killing in Peter Pan. I said it does not feel like actual killing and more like the type of play-killing in war games that I remember acting out almost every day of my childhood from before school age until I became a teenager. We killed each other and we died thousands of times. That is the kind of killing that shines through in Peter Pan. 

            I said that Captain Hook and his pirates are teenagers. This is evident with Hook's references to proper public school behaviour. Teenagers both play at being children and adults and when they play war it is more real. 

            I said the little girl Wendy is the only kind of mother that Peter can control. 

            There was talk about Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. I said that Maimie the prototype of Wendy is a far more interesting character. I also like the fact that Peter is always naked. 

            The professor said the fact that in the Kensington story Peter starts out as a bird and can still fly when he becomes a boy, but can no longer fly after being told he is not a bird, speaks of the power of language. 

            Everybody remembers being treated unfairly. 

            I said sometimes it feels like Peter is the narrator. Oz added that Peter and the narrator are both watchers from outside. The professor said the narrator can't be anyone. 

            Politics is against freedom. 

            The professor addressed my idea of playing war and gave a quote that the battles of war were won on the playing fields of Eton. I pointed out that those games were organized sports such as rugby and football and not the same thing as pretend games of war that children enter into spontaneously. I agreed that for children to play war, war has to have existed beforehand. 

            The students presenting next week on Never Let Me Go haven't read it yet. I warned them it's extremely depressing. 

            I stopped at Freshco on my way home where I bought four bags of grapes, ten avocadoes, and eight vine tomatoes. 

            I weighed 83.5 kilos before lunch at 15:15. 

            I took a late siesta until 17:30. 

            I weighed 84 kilos at 17:45. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:53. 

            When I bought avocadoes at the supermarket I didn't pay attention to how underripe they were. Only one of them was barely soft enough to eat for dinner but I had it with three tomatoes, lemon juice and a glass of Garden Cocktail. I ate while watching season 5, episode 28 of The Beverly Hillbillies.

            Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, and the fictional version of Lester's wife Gladys, as played by Joi Lansing, have come to visit. Gladys has a screen test at Jed's movie studio and if she's successful at becoming a movie star will change her name to Gladys Delovely. Lester doesn't want Gladys to become a star and so he has sabotaged her screentest by arranging for Jethro to be the director. But when Jethro arrives on the set he lets it slip that Lester asked him to direct and Gladys realizes what Lester is up to. Jethro will ruin the screen test but Jane suggests Gladys sing to him. So Gladys sits Jethro down and overwhelms him with a sultry rendition of "All of You" by Cole Porter while the cameras are rolling. She sings: "I'd love to gain complete control of you and handle even the heart and soul of you. So love, at least, a small percent of me, do, for I love all of you". So the screentest goes well, much to Lester's disappointment, but it will take three days to find out for sure. 

            Gladys suggests they have a second honeymoon while they are waiting. So Lester tries another ploy by having them move in to the model of Jed's old cabin that is set up behind the mansion. Gladys knows what Lester is trying to do and so she is determined to out-country him. She cooks grits and other things that he has to eat and boils and shrinks his performance clothes. "Gladys, is this my red jacket?" "No, that's your white jacket. Your red jacket's on the bottom". She makes him chop wood for her and tires him out. When he complains, she sings him a song about not wanting a part time lover. A photographer comes to do some publicity shots of Lester and Earl but with Lester's show clothes shrunk, in order to match, they have to borrow some clothes from the Clampetts. The screen test is a success but Gladys decides not to be a movie star and instead to settle for being Lester's housewife because he proved he loved her by eating her horrible cooking. 

            The photographer was played by John Alvin, who studied at the Pasadena Playhouse where he met his future wife June Lewis. They were together for 62 years until he died. He played supporting roles in several movies but his favourite was "Destination Tokyo" because he found Cary Grant to be extremely generous with his time and advice. Alvin made guest appearances on several television shows and was in many commercials. 

            I haven't seen a bedbug for eleven days.