Pat Boone

            On Tuesday morning I finished memorizing "Quoi" by Serge Gainsbourg and looked for the chords. I found a set right away on Ultimate Guitar and started transcribing them. I should have that done tomorrow, finish the rest of my search, and then maybe start working them out. 

            I think the action is too high on my new Martin. Chords that I was able to get a clean sound from sound buzzy despite sounding better in tone than the Washburn. After my Kramer is fixed I might take it to L'il Demon to be set up. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I cleaned most of the eastern wall of my bathroom and about half the toilet. I won't have time to work on the rest until Friday and then I should get the east wall finished and start on the lower part of the north. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 85.2 kilos at 17:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:43. 

            I reviewed the recordings of me playing "Mamadou" and "Post Colonial Breakdown" from July 5 to July 13 but all of them end on the A chord and I don't like how that sounds and so I can't use them. I have one more session of each song to review and I think that on July 15 I end on a C7, which sounds better but I'll just have to hear how the whole thing sounds to know if I want to keep it. I end the songs entirely with picking now and I think that's musically more pleasing. I might have to look to the next recording session, maybe this summer for good versions of these songs. 

            In the Movie Maker project for creating a video of my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" I worked on synchronizing the concert video with the studio audio after the line, "for the rest of their life they will be walking slow from shock therapy". After "shock therapy" I showed a bit more of the patient in grand mal seizure, then I added a second of me playing guitar, followed by another second of the seizure. Next I sing, "For details on injections of amatol and other drugs in case you want to reduce the violence of these convulsions". In the concert video it shows just the guitar when I start singing "For details on injections" and so I added that part to the timeline. But now I see that in that Riot Gallery performance I jumped the gun when I started singing, then stopped and sang "For details" again, this time with the camera showing me singing. Maybe I repeated it because I saw that Aldo had been just filming the guitar and so when I saw the camera back on me I sang the line again. I don't know, but now I need to see if I can synchronize the concert video at that point with the studio audio as I'm singing on camera. I'll try again next time. 

            I scanned more colour negatives from the 80s. I know they're from the mid-80s this time because there are shots of my cat Siva on the roof behind my place on Widmer Street in the Spadina and Queen area. These shots would have been taken with the Pentax I had back then, which was later stolen in Italy. 

            I had a potato with gravy and my last two chicken drumsticks while watching the season 7 finale and the season 8 premier of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            In the first story Milburn Drysdale is selling his house although he plans on buying the mansion across the street which is eight meters closer to the Clampetts. A very famous potential buyer named Pat Boone has come with his accountant to look at the house. But before he can enter the house he catches the fragrance of something cooking that he hasn't smelled since he left Tennessee fourteen years ago. Pat leaves his accountant to deal with Margaret Drysdale while he follows his nose to the collard greens and fatback. He finds Granny in the back yard of the Clampett mansion stirring a big cauldron and singing about collard greens and fatback. Pat comes up behind her and sings along. Granny and Jed have never heard of Pat Boone and for some reason they get the impression that he's a drifter when he tells them that he sings for a living. That's an odd reaction since they have plenty of famous friends who sing for a living. They invite Pat for vittles that night as long as he sings for his supper. Then a policeman comes to tell Granny she can't cook over an open fire in Beverly Hills, but forgets about that when he sees Pat Boone who he says he recognizes from his pictures and records. Jed and Granny think he means his police record and his pictures in the post office. Meanwhile Margaret is worried that Pat won't buy the house after he meets the Clampetts and so she lowers the price from $200,000 to $10,000. When Milburn finds out he tells her he is going to strangle her. Pat decides he's not going to buy the house but he comes for dinner and sings a song that I guess he was trying to promote. It's far from the style of music that characterized his biggest hits and more like that Countrypolitan style that was popular in the late 60s. 

            In the second story Granny reads in the Silver Dollar City News that Elverna Bradshaw's unattractive daughter is getting married. That makes Granny think that after seven years in Beverly Hills Elly May has a better chance of finding a husband back home. They decide to head back to the hills. Meanwhile Jethro says he's going to college. Jed asks him to bring home some college boys to meet Elly. He brings back three who all have similar long hair and dark glasses, and wear hippy style clothes. He introduces Jed to Mitch and tells him Mitch has been to twelve colleges. Jed asks what he studies but he doesn't understand the question. They are not actually college students but rather college protestors. Jethro tells Elly he'd like her to meet three guys but one of them says she's a girl. The guy in the middle says "Really? You wanna swing?" She says yes and they go off together leaving only Mitch behind. He asks Elly if she wants to go to college. She says yes. He says, "If we leave now we'll be on time for the twelve o'clock cafeteria break. At twelve o'clock we're gonna break the cafeteria". Jed, Granny and Elly decide to go back to the hills but Jethro doesn't want to go and so they take a plane and leave him with Drysdale. 

            Pat Boone of course played himself. He started out as the emcee of a teenage talent show on the radio and then television in Nashville. He won the Ted Mack amateur hour show and the Arthur Godfrey talent show. His first record was made in 1955 and he had a string of hits including "Ain't That a Shame", "Tutti Frutti" and "Long Tall Sally". He turned down a television offer when he learned the sponsor was a cigarette company. His recording success led to several movie roles, He turned down a role in which he would co-star with Marilyn Monroe because she was too sexy. His first movie was Bernardine and it was a hit. April Love and Journey to the Centre of the Earth were also successful. In 1997 he put out an album of heavy metal covers and it was a hit. He says that he is the great-great-great-great-grandson of Daniel Boone. He married the daughter of country legend Red Foley and they were together until she died sixty-six years later.