Mike Mazurki

            On Saturday morning I memorized the third and fourth verses of "Harley David son of a bitch" by Serge Gainsbourg. There are just two more verses left to learn. I might manage to have them nailed down tomorrow. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            I put my set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica out onto the street just in case anyone wants them between now and garbage night next Thursday. I haven't used them since I've been on the internet and so I could use the space for other books that are piling up. I'm keeping the Britannica Books of the Year that I found with the set more than thirty years ago. 

            In the late morning I went down to No Frills where I bought five bags of black grapes, an onion, some garlic, a pack of mushrooms, a pack of seven-year-old cheese, cinnamon-raisin bread, three bags of milk (all the skim milk at the front was already past its expiration date. I had to move the bags onto empty crates in order to pull from the back some milk that expires two weeks from today), margarine, hot Hungarian salami, old fashioned thick bacon, Basilica sauce, mango-lime salsa, kettle chips, olive oil, and two containers of skyr. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos before lunch. I had a toasted slice of seven grain bread with hummus, my last avocado, and Dijon. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst. I switched to my spring gloves halfway up Brock. 

            I weighed 84.2 kilos at 16:45. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:48. I worked for about two hours on my essay: 

           

            Caroline's grief is an inheritance of her father's sense of loss just as the Frankenstein sense of law is Victor's paternal legacy. She weeps bitterly also for being reduced to poverty that threatens to render her a beggar. It is the blow of being left a beggar that overcomes her more than the loss of her father and so her grief like her father's is financial in nature. She is saved by Alphonse Frankenstein because "there was a sense of justice" in his "upright mind, which renders it necessary that he should approve highly to love strongly" (Shelley 34). What he approves highly is Caroline's proper mourning over the loss of wealth, and he wants to recompense her for the sorrows she has endured as a result of this deprivation (35). To be poor from birth is far less unfair to the Frankenstein sense of justice than to be destitute from having lost one's fortune. This marriage of the rightness of wealth and the injustice of the loss of financial power allows Alphonse Frankenstein to replace Caroline's father as her benefactor and then become her husband. Alphonse places so much value on Caroline's grief over her loss of affluence as an enhancement of beauty that he immortalizes it in a prominent portrait that he commissioned and placed prominently in the Frankenstein home. 

            The painting also serves as a symbol of self-congratulation for Alphonse Frankenstein having saved a member of his class from ruin. His class, his society and that of his heir, Victor, values beauty as a sign of merit. Only the beautiful are noble and therefore deserve to be wealthy. The grief of the beautiful elevates that which is grieved over to a higher state of value. The painting that portrays the beautiful Caroline's exquisite lamentation over being deprived of money, mounts capital to towering status of importance. The poor are meant to be poor but for the rich to fall into poverty is a tragedy. We see this same sense of beauty elevating a reason to be sorrowful while at the same time being enhanced by that tribulation, when Justine is awaiting trial for murder. Justine is of the Swiss servant class but beautiful and so deserving of the love of her wealthy masters. Her sorrow is also an enhancement to her beauty as Victor observes that "her countenance... was rendered, by the solemnity of her feelings, exquisitely beautiful". This sense of the beauty of women enhanced by grief weds itself with the Frankenstein male command of justice to construct Victor. Wealth brings a command over beauty which sadness only enhances. Beautified sadness and bereaved beauty are symbolized by the Frankenstein matriarch mourning over a coffin that may as well be full of dead money. That such melancholy is personified as a cherished member of the Frankenstein family is emphasized by Elizabeth's statement that "misery has come home". Elizabeth is also part of the design of Victor's construction. 

            I sautéed garlic, onion, and mushrooms. I added the rest of the horrible almond based yogourt, but I was able to make that not only tolerable but taste pretty good with basil marinara sauce and salt and fresh ground pepper. I had it on baby shell pasta and ate dinner with a beer while watching season 6, episode 23 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            This is a continuation of the previous episode in which Granny jumped into the wrestling ring to save Rebecca of Donnybrook Farm from the Boston Strong Girl and wiped the floor with her. Gene Booth, the promoter who employs both Rebecca and the Boston Strong Girl is berating the wrestlers for having gone off script. Rebecca has spoken with Granny and she assures him that Granny really thinks that Rebecca is an innocent farmgirl from the Smoky Mountains and that's why she jumped in the ring. Suddenly Booth starts getting calls from people begging to see a rematch between Granny and the Boston Strong Girl. Rebecca and Booth go to see Granny and they also meet Jed. They think that Jed and Granny are servants in the mansion. They try to get Granny to agree to a rematch so Rebecca can pay off the mortgage on her parents' farm but Jed just writes Rebecca a cheque for $20,000. Booth is sure that Jed's cheque will bounce and thinks that when it does they'll agree to a rematch to keep Jed out of jail. When he takes the cheque to the bank and Drysdale sees Jed's name on it he tears it up. Rebecca and Booth go back to the Clampetts with actors pretending to be Rebecca's crippled father and sick mother. Then the Boston Strong Girl's father shows up demanding a rematch. Jed says they have no reason to fight but then the father grabs Granny and throws her through the door. Jed agrees they've been provoked. Jed, Granny and Elly May come to the arena as part of a tag team to fight the Boston Strong Girl and her mother and father. Granny decides to be in the ring first but the Strong Girl's family throws the referee out of the ring and refuse to separate. They knock Granny down when she thinks they want to shake hands. Granny's on the mat and they have her surrounded. Granny grabs the father's legs and starts spinning him around. She uses him as a club to knock the mother and daughter out of the ring and then she throws him out as well, thus winning the match. 

            The Boston Strong Girl's father was played by Mike Mazurki, who played minor league football in 1936. He was also a professional wrestler known as Iron Mike. His transition from wrestling to films came about after serving as Mae West's bodyguard and then appearing as an extra in one of her films. He then had a small part in The Shanghai Gesture. He spent fifty years playing thugs on screen. He tended to play uneducated men but he was a college graduate who finished in the top of his class with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He co-starred as Splitface in the 1945 Dick Tracy movie of the same name, and in Sinbad the Sailor. In the 1960s he founded the Cauliflower Alley Club to help out retired and injured wrestlers. His only starring role was in Challenge to Be Free. He co-starred in the sitcom It's About Time. He played a bodyguard in the video for Rod Stewart's song Infatuation in which he punched Stewart out. 

            For the thirty-sixth night in a row I found no bedbugs. If I don't see any in two more weeks I'll stop doing the thorough nightly searches and cautiously consider the infestation over.