I video and audio recorded my song practice while playing the Kramer electric. I was feeling out of it today. I got through "Megaphor" in one take. There were probably mistakes but I felt they'd be worse if I redid it. It took me several takes to get through "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" because it kept going off the rails around the end of the eighth verse. I didn't finish it until part B of the battery's charge. When I started playing "The Accordion" a little ways into the song my B string broke. It's been years since I changed a string on the Floyd Rose tuning mechanism and I had a hell of a time getting the old string out because the little metal cube kept tilting instead of sliding out. I tried various things like sticking a narrow nail down and finally I got the string out and put a new one in. I need to get new high strings for both the Kramer and the Martin. Altogether changing and tuning the string took about an hour and so the rest of song practice was a write-off. Even though I didn't get to do a full set with the Kramer I did both of my own songs and so I'll consider that completing my two days with the electric and I'll play the Martin for the next two.
I weighed 85 kilos before breakfast an hour later than usual.
Around midday I used the hammer, the screwdriver and the putty knife to tear up the last of the tiles under the stove. They didn't seem to have been glued down very heavily compared with the ones I'd ripped up from the front of the counter. Large sheets of tile just lifted right off. It took me less time to remove those four tiles than it took to pull up one tile at the front. So now all the tiles that were left in the apartment are gone. Next I need to wash and scrub or maybe sand the residual glue from where the tiles had been.
I weighed 84.9 kilos before lunch.
When I got up from my siesta it was raining a bit, but I flossed, sulkaed, mouthwashed and brushed anyway. By the time I was done it had let up and so I got ready and went out for my bike ride. Halfway along Maple Grove I realized I'd forgotten to put in my denture so I went back. Then I rode up Brock but the rain started coming down a little harder and so I decided to turn around just before Bloor and head home. It seemed to ease off again when I got back to College and so I stopped and considered going north again. But then it increased and so I continued home. When I got to Queen it was starting to pour. I like it when I have good instincts.
I weighed 85.1 kilos at 16:30, which is the heaviest I've been in the afternoon in eleven days.
The rain let up at around 17:00 and so I took one of the amethyst rocks out back to chisel off some of the yellow. Two parts with crystals attached broke off and so I sent about half an hour breaking those up. I still have a rock about the size of a tennis ball with a good cluster of amethyst at one end and another that's three times bigger that is pretty much ringed by the crystals. That one probably needs to be broken up into two or three.
I was caught up on my journal at 17:42.
I reviewed what there was of the video of song practice that I shot this morning. I played "Megaphor" okay but my singing wasn't that great. I spent endless takes on "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" but the final one wasn't bad. The string broke just after I'd sung "In accord with the chords..." in the song "The Accordion". I should have turned the camera off sooner and not left it on to record my struggles with getting the old string out. But I wouldn't have had time to record by the time I was done anyway.
I reviewed the videos of my performances of "Laisse tomber les filles" and "Leave the Naive Alone" from June 17 to June 25, 2022. For "Laisse tomber les filles" on June 17 I paused at one point before continuing, the spit screen was on my chin, and there was traffic noise; on June 19 I played one of takes of the song up to this date, plus it's already synchronized in Movie Maker; on June 21 there was traffic noise and a couple of chords were off; on June 23 the battery had timed out on the previous song; on June 25 I played a pretty good version. For "Leave the Naive Alone" on June 18 the take I did was not bad but there was traffic noise; on June 20
I fumbled and finished it without a retake; on June 22 the camera battery had timed out before this song; and on June 24 there was too much traffic noise at the beginning.
In my "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" Movie Maker project I made one small change to my video. I switched the final lightning flash to one that was more horizontal and centred in the frame. Then I deleted all the extra clips from the timeline and published the movie. I uploaded it to YouTube and I hope people watch it and comment. I'm very proud of this movie because I put a lot of work and a lot of creative energy into it and also because it's a very successful representation of the meaning of the song. I plan to make videos of all of the songs that Brian and I recorded in the studio.
I barbecued two racks of pork ribs and had four or five with a potato and gravy while watching season 2, episodes 6 and 7 of Petticoat Junction.
In the first story Betty Joe wants to enter her nameless dog in a contest in which the winner gets $500 and appears in a dog food commercial. A picture of the dog is taken and Billie Joe takes it to be developed at the drug store. Henry the clerk is also entering his collie in the contest and he offers to send in the picture of Betty's dog. Betty receives word that her entry is one of the five finalists and the commercial director arrives with his cameraman. But then they learn that there's been a mix-up because Henry sent in the picture of his collie by mistake in Betty's envelope and it's his dog that was selected as a finalist. However, after staying at The Shady Rest and meeting Kate's charming family the director has the idea to use the Bradleys and their dog in a different dog food commercial. But when they finally shoot it after all of the problems that Joe causes by pretending to be an expert, the dog, who has always been fed fresh meat, backs away after smelling the dog food. Kate smells it and also finds it disgusting but Joe starts eating it with a spoon and tries to sell the director on a different commercial with the idea that if humans like it dogs will too.
In the second story Joe buys a buffalo with the idea of turning the Shady Rest into a hunting lodge for buffalo hunters. He contacts a famous big game hunter named Lord Faversham who has said the only game he has yet to hunt is the American buffalo. Faversham arranges to come to the Shady Rest. Joe has the girls dress in stereotypical First Nations attire while he's dressed like Davy Crockett as they wait for Faversham to arrive on the train. But Joe gets excited as the Cannonball is approaching and fires his gun, which spooks Bill the buffalo and he runs away. For the next three days Joe stalls Faversham. On the first day when Faversham wants to go buffalo hunting at 7:30 Joe tells him the herd comes down from the mountains at sunrise, grazes a while and then returns to the mountains. The next day Joe tells him they can't hunt buffalo because the wind is coming from the south east. Meanwhile Joe keeps looking for Bill but then learns that the girls already caught him and have been hiding him because they don't want him shot. So on the day of the hunt Joe loads Faversham's rifle with blanks and arranges for him to shoot from the Cannonball. When he shoots it Joe explains that he won't fall right away because of his thick hide and that the Native guides will gather the body. The girls keep leading Bill further along the tracks so that Faversham keeps thinking he's shooting a different buffalo each time. But after Faversham shoots him a third time the dog jumps out of the train window and goes to bark at the buffalo and Faversham sees the girls chasing him. To prevent Faversham from suing Joe he is given Bill to take back to England alive and to donate him to a zoo.
Faversham was played by Reginald Gardiner who after graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts became a star of the London stage. His first film appearance was as a dancer at a ball in Alfred Hitchcock's silent classic The Lodger. In 1935 he moved to the United States and performed in two Broadway plays and then a Broadway show called An Evening with Beatrice Lillie and Reginald Gardiner in which he did comical imitations of inanimate objects like wallpaper and lighthouses. His first Hollywood film was Born to Dance in which he played a traffic cop conducting an imaginary orchestra. He co-starred in The Doctor Takes a Wife, and The Flying Deuces. In the 60s he co-starred in the TV sitcom The Pruitts of Southampton. His monologue "Trains" was so famous that King George VI had him perform it for him at Buckingham Palace.
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