Gladys Holland

            On Wednesday morning I worked out the chords for the second verse of "Que tu es impatiente, la mort" (Death You're So Impatient) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished editing the chord placements for "Lulu" by Serge Gainsbourg in Christian's Translations. All that's left to do is find a video to accompany it before publishing it on the blog. I'll have that done tomorrow and I'll move on to learn the next Gainsbourg song on my list. 

            I played the electric guitar again for my recording of song practice. I did two takes of Megaphor and both of them might be okay. After several takes of "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" I made it through to the end but it did not end well. I also did several takes of "L'accordion" before getting it right. It's funny how a song that I can usually record in one take suddenly requires a bunch. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I glued down another two pieces of fiber board side by side into the depression in my kitchen floor. A hard cover Book of the Year fit on top of both of them and I put my concrete block on top of that. I then ripped up another kitchen tile from in front of the counter using a hammer and screwdriver. 

            I searched for "pulsing brain" and found a video of an MRI of a human brain in profile pulsing in sync with the heartbeat. I bookmarked it but I'll search a little more before deciding to use that video as part of the finale of my video for Instructions for Electroshock Therapy. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I spent about half an hour brushing and chiseling the smallest of my amethyst rocks that I broke off from the big one. I don't think there's much more I can do with that piece in terms of chiseling other than to even out the base and polish the crystals. 

            I weighed 84.4 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:30. 

            I reviewed the video of today's song practice. Megaphor might be okay but Sixteen Tons of Dogma fell apart in the epilogue. Sometimes the Kramer sounds out of tune when the tuner says it isn't.

            I reviewed the videos of my performances of "Les sucettes" and "Annie C's Aniseed Suckers" from July 11 to July 15, 2022, but only July 11 got recorded and some of the chords I played sounded dissonant. So now I need to re-review the ones that I marked as okay. For "Les Sucettes" that's June 19, 21, and July 3; For "Annie C's Aniseed Suckers" that's June 20, 26, 28, July 2 and 8. I compared "Les sucettes" on June 19 and 21 from last year and June 19 looks better and has less traffic noise. I think I played it a little better as well. I compared June 19 to July 3 and I definitely played it better on June 19. Since the June 19 set is already in Movie Maker I might as well upload the take to YouTube. I'll continue to try to do a better version to upload for the future though. I compared "Annie C's Aniseed Suckers" on June 20 and 26 of last year and June 26 looks and sounds better. It's funny how it seems that when I look better I do sound better. I have three more of these to compare and I'll do that tomorrow. 

            I searched for "electrified brain" videos but found nothing and so I used 4K Downloader to download the pulsing brain video. I converted it to AVI and imported it to Movie Maker to change it to WMV, then I re-imported the changed video to my Instructions for Electroshock Therapy project in Movie Maker. I cut it down to about eight seconds. Next I need lightning but I know from past experience how hard it is to find lightning videos without watermarks and so I'll draw from what I already have. I'll copy the lightning and snakes from the beginning and edit out the snakes. Then I'll copy the lightning from about halfway through and edit out the concert video. I probably don't need it all so I'll pick the best looking lightning and then I might alter it with some effects so it doesn't look the same as where it was used before. I'll work on that tomorrow. Hopefully my plan will make an already good ending for the video sensational. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 1, episodes 32 and 33 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story President Norman Curtis of the C & FW Railroad tasks Vice President Homer Bedloe to take Norman's basset hound Fred to the Shady Rest to be invigorated by the love of Kate and her family. He specifically asks Bedloe because he also wants him to be transformed by the environment from meanness to goodness. He should know better. As soon as Bedloe and Fred get off the Cannonball at the Shady Rest stop, Orville Miggs comes driving up in the hot rod he's converted so it will drive on railroad tracks. In his flivver is a shaggy dog named Sheba who has attached herself to Orville but is not his pet. Fred and Sheba immediately come to life at the sight of one another. Bedloe tries to use Fred to try to ruin the Shady Rest and the Cannonball. Everybody at the Shady Rest loves Fred and he has taken to happy barking. Bedloe convinces Joe that the president won't like this habit of barking and it would cause him to shut down the Cannonball and thereby put The Shady Rest out of business. He gets Joe to spook Fred by jumping and barking at him and suddenly he's afraid of everybody. That seems unrealistic. Bedloe leaves triumphantly with a broken dog thinking Curtis will now shut down the railroad. But as the Cannonball pulls away Orville tells Kate about Fred's feelings for Sheba. Since Orville can't keep Sheba, Kate has her shipped to Norman and she's already in his office when Bedloe arrives with the suddenly happy Fred. Norman makes Bedloe walk both dogs three kilometers to buy them steaks and forces him to look happy while doing it. 

            In the second story an old school boyfriend of Kate's arrives to reminisce with her at the Shady Rest. Herbie is supposedly a millionaire but Joe thinks he's a conman. The closer he gets to Kate the more Joe plots to shut him down. When Kate plans a candlelit dinner with Herbie, Joe puts two plans into place. He tells the local man chaser Mabel Snark that there is a man at the Shady Rest that can't stop talking about how attractive she is. Then he notifies the sheriff that a confidence man is victimizing Kate. That night Orville is going through some old magazines and finds an article about the multi millionaire Herbie Grant. Suddenly Joe is dreaming about Herbie marrying Kate and him getting a share. He tries to reverse everything he's done. He stops the sheriff from arresting Herbie but then Sheriff Ragsdale is about to put Joe in jail when Mabel shows up. To put her off, Joe tells Mabel that he is the one who loves her but when she responds enthusiastically he begs the sheriff to put him in jail. Kate and Herbie decide their lifestyles don't mesh for romance but they will remain close friends. 

            Early on Herbie speaks on the phone to his French secretary Georgette. She was played by Gladys Holland, who started as a radio actor and was very good at doing foreign accents even though she was from Texas. Her parents were Belgian. Her first cartoon voice over job was narrating the 1952 animated short Madeline with a French accent. The cartoon was nominated for an Oscar. She did uncredited work for Walter Lance playing the sexy voiced French woodpecker Gorgeous Gal in "A Fine Feathered Frenzy" and Gaga Gazoo in "Belle Boys". She plated Melissa Duck in the Daffy Duck cartoon "Muscle Tussle" and Clara Hen in "Easy Peckins". She had small parts in "It Takes a Thief" and "The Man Who Knew Too Much".