Jane Axell

            On Tuesday morning I memorized the third verse of "Vieille Canaille" (Old Rascal) by Serge Gainsbourg. That's halfway through the song. 

            I weighed 86.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            I spent another hour and a half trying to eliminate the delay while playing guitar in Ableton. At one point not only did I still have delay but I wound up with endless reverberation. Somehow it stopped going on continuously but there was still reverb that I couldn't stop without stopping the sound altogether. I can't get any sound when I switch to the ASIO driver, which lets me lower the buffer size. I only get sound from the Windows driver which has an unchangeably high buffer size and causes delay. If I raise the sample rate I get static along with the reverb. This is very frustrating. I'm going to try Audacity again. 

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I could have worn shorts but it's not that hot in my apartment with the breeze coming in from the lake. On my way down Yonge Street the guy who dresses as Spiderman was perched on top of a traffic light box beside the Eaton Centre. As I passed I called out , "Spadinaman!" He called back, "Spadinaman? You know it!" 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos at 17:00. 

            I got an encouraging email from Albert Moritz who said he'd planned on giving me some advice that I'd asked for before sending my manuscript to Ekstasis but he said what I arrived at was similar to what he was going to tell me: 

            What you discovered in looking up Ekstasis was more or less what I was going to mention. The publisher, Richard Olafson, who's a good poet himself, walked out of North Battleford at the age of 16 to become a Beat. Went to the Nairopa Institute, met some of the originals, was actually an associate and helper of Burroughs for a while. The press has its erudite and international side but also a Beat emphasis; it's no friend of the merely polite. As far as I'm concerned, what Exile said about your book was purely an excuse. Not a reason or a judgement at all. They weren't going to publish the book so they cobbled together something that sounded like a reason. The idea that your neighborhood isn't unique is absurd - even apart from the general fact that every neighborhood is unique is the poet can find the uniqueness, as you certainly have done. 

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

            I spent another hour and a half on solving the delay problem. I worked entirely with Audacity this time and had no problem hearing the guitar without reverb but not without a slight delay. The slight delay throws me off and all the solutions I've been following from tutorials have not worked for me. This is too frustrating and time consuming and so I think I'll have to go back to the plan of getting speakers for the interface. 

            I made a new batch of gravy with the drippings from the chicken legs I roasted a week or so ago. I had some with a large potato and my last hot Italian sausage while watching season 9, episodes 14 and 15 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            The first story picks up from where the previous one let off. The Clampetts are at Malibu Beach where they've gone to fight off the Grunion invasion that Drysdale told them about. The Grunion are actually small fish but Drysdale has convinced the Clampetts that they are people intent on taking over California. The Clampetts have captured one surfer and one beach girl, thinking they are Grunions. The surfer admitted he was a Grunion because Elly May forced him to and the young woman admitted it because she was hungry and Granny was going to feed her. The Clampetts decide this isn't much of an invasion and go home. 

            Drysdale begs Jane to come back to work for him because she always finds a solution to his problems. She is almost convinced until Helen comes and tells Drysdale that the Clampetts still believe that the Grunions are people. Drysdale decides he doesn't need Jane because his plan didn't fall apart after all. He goes to the Clampett mansion on crutches and covered with bandages. He says that he was severely wounded while invading the beach of the island of Grun. He tells Jed that the Grunion that he encountered at Malibu were weak Grun deserters but the tough Grunions remained to defend their island. He's hired an actor to pose as a Navy medic and backup his story. His plan works but then Drysdale reneges on paying the actor. 

            The Clampetts decide that the big invasion of the tough Grunions is happening that night and so they head back to Malibu to fight them. 

            Jane has decided to return to the bank to organize the secretaries against Drysdale's unfair employer practices. They call themselves The Girls from G.R.U.N., standing for Girls Resist Unfair Neglect. Jane leads them to protest at Malibu Beach that night since so many people will be there along with a fireworks display. The Clampetts are already at Malibu and Elly sees Jane and the secretaries first but she thinks that the women are Grunions that Jane captured because she hears them chanting, "We are the girls from GRUN!" Jethro captures Ulla, one of the secretaries, thinking she's a Grunion. Ulla tells them that GRUN doesn't have any men and so the Clampetts think it's an island of women. When Jethro hears that he says he's swimming to Grun and runs for the ocean. Then the fireworks start going off and the Clampetts think its the US Navy bombing Grun. 

            In the second story the Clampetts are on their way home from a disappointing night on Malibu Beach with no Grunions to fight. Jethro tried to swim to the non-existent island of Grun and ran into a shark that bit him once before he started biting back. The Clampetts go to the bank where the girls from GRUN are protesting outside. Jethro tries to carry off Ulla again but Jed makes him put her down. Another woman asks Jethro if he wants a karate chop and he thinks it's something to eat. The secretaries tell the Clampetts that the bank is like a prison and so Jed invites them to come to his house for protection. When Drysdale doesn't give them a fair answer they say they are going to the Clampetts but suddenly Drysdale changes his tune and says he will give them everything they ask for and more. He says for them to go to his office and wait for him but then he tells security to lock them in and cut off the phone. Then Drysdale steals their Grunmobile and heads for the Clampetts and walks in with a cane to tell Jed that the Grunions have brainwashed Jane. Granny says if ever a girl didn't have a dirty brain it's Jane Hathaway. Granny and Elly look at a painting on the side of the van that shows Drysdale with his foot on a secretary and holding a whip. They tell him he shouldn't do that. Drysdale argues and Granny flings him onto his back. Then Granny treats him in the parlour by giving him a spoonful of something. He jumps to his feet and runs around without a cane and complains it tasted like turpentine. Granny says it was. 

            Meanwhile the secretaries are trapped in Drysdale's office and so most of them take off their dresses and tie them together so Jane and Helen can climb down and go to warn the Clampetts against Drysdale. After they leave Granny arrives at the bank and climbs up the dress-rope to free the secretaries. Then Granny learns the whole story and returns home to fetch Drysdale and take him to the bank where the girls are outside. Granny has stripped Drysdale down to his underwear and makes him walk through the line of women to get inside. 

            Ulla was played by Jane Axell, who appeared in the 1963 Swedish film Venusberg and then starred in the 1964 German-Swedish risqué comedy movie "Maibritt, das Mädchen von den Inseln" (The Girl from the Islands). After that she seems to have only appeared in these two episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies and one episode of Love American Style. She obviously tried to make it in Hollywood but either nothing opened up for her, she became disillusioned with Hollywood, or maybe just found a relationship that fulfilled her more. Not everybody has to become a star.