George Chandler

            On Sunday morning I memorized the fifth verse of "Au bon vieux temps" (In the Good Old Days) by Boris Vian. I memorized the second and third verses of "Pour ce que tu n’étais pas" (For Someone You Were Not) by Serge Gainsbourg. That's half the song so I should have it nailed down in two or three days. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice as I will on Monday. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I finished scrubbing and scraping the glue from floorboards eight to eleven under the stove and started on the final four. It might take one more session to finish it. 

            I weighed 85.9 kilos before lunch, which is the most I've weighed at midday in a week. I had Breton crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade mixed with orange juice. 

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

            I weighed 84.8 kilos at 17:00. 

            I spent half an hour chiseling slate to free up fossils. I have just one small piece of the second slab of slate and the third one left to break up. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:20. 

            I compared the two takes of my performance of "Megaphor" on the electric guitar on June 17 and I think the second take is better. I compared June 17 to June 20 and although June 20 looks better and is a better performance, some of the chords sound off. I compared June 17 to June 21 and on June 21 some of the chords are slightly dissonant. I compared June 17 to June 26 they both have flaws but I think that I'm hitting the chords a little more firmly on the 26th and it also looks a bit better in the light. I'm going to say that June 26 is now ahead in the competition. There are nine more sessions it has to be compared with. 

            I looked through my files for any video footage I have of Sleep in the Snow. On my computer I have no videos of the song, but it's part of a Riot Gallery concert on DVD. I had a hell of a time playing the DVD because it kept freezing but finally it worked. I could copy the concert from the DVD but since I already have the video on YouTube I'm pretty sure I have a copy of it on my external hard drive. I haven't accessed that since I bought the newer computer, but I should because I have a lot of files to back up in addition to retrieving that video. I'll try it on Monday. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce, a honey-garlic sausage and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 4, episodes 2 and 3 of Petticoat Junction. The first story introduces Steve Elliot, who will eventually marry Betty Joe. Steve crashes his crop dusting plane after seeing the Bradley sisters swimming in the water tower. They find him unconscious and take him to the hotel to recuperate. A new Doc Stuart comes to examine him and says he has no major injuries. He recovers fairly quickly but when he sees his beautiful nurses he decides to be sick for a little while longer. Meanwhile Joe examines the plane and thinks that it's equipped for aerial photography and that Steve is a Russian spy. He contacts the local air force base and a Major Corbett comes with two MPs. But it turns out that Corbett and Steve know each other from the air force. Steve tries to get Corbett to pretend he needs to be placed under surveillance at the Shady Rest but when Kate asks where she should send the bill the jig is up. Steve asks Kate if he can stay until he can pay her and she says he can.

            The new Doc Stuart was played by George Chandler, who started working professionally as a jazz violinist and performed on the vaudeville circuit as a comedian called George Chandler the Musical Nut. He co-starred with W.C. Fields in the 1933 comedy short The Fatal Glass of Beer. On television he played Uncle Petrie on 59 episodes of Lassie. He starred in the short-lived sitcom Ichabod and Me. He was the treasurer of the Screen Actors Guild before replacing Ronald Reagan as president.

            In the second story the guy from the finance company comes to get Steve's payment for the plane. Kate and the girls bandage Steve up to make his condition look extreme. He gives Steve thirty days and leaves but forgets his briefcase and when he comes back in the room Steve is partially out of the bandages. Steve needs money to fix his plane and so the Bradley family start asking around the community for donations. They raise a little but not much. But when they all go to church on Sunday and the congregation is singing "Come to the Church in the Wild Wood", Steve impresses everyone with his singing. The minister makes a donation for Steve's plane and so does everyone else. With Betty Joe's help Steve manages to fix his plane. Kate comes with a champagne bottle to christen the plane "The Spirit of Hooterville" but when she hits the propeller with the bottle she breaks the blade. Steve is not disappointed because he wants to stay. Kate reveals to Joe that she filled the champagne bottle with sand. It's fucked up that she deliberately destroyed a crucial part of his plane just to keep him there, especially since he probably would have stayed anyway.

July 31, 1993: Was she right like a broken clock or did she see my daughter's gender 19 years ahead?

Thirty years ago today 

            On Saturday morning my daughter woke ahead of me and got me up. After breakfast and a little indoor play, we got ready and headed for Parkdale. We played on Sunnyside Beach and some little girl kicked sand in her face. Then a woman with a cigarette came to comfort her. Then she asked me, "Where's her sun hat?" As it would be another nineteen years before my daughter Astrid would tell me she was a girl, I responded to the woman, "He doesn't have one". She asked, "Why do you say he? It's a she". I told her, "I know what sex my own child is!" But she argued, "I'll set you straight right now! This is a girl!" I quietly went over and took my daughter away from her because I thought that I realized the woman was insane. We went to the playground where she waded in the pool but especially played in the sand. Then while she was wading in the lake throwing stones some other busybody woman with a cigarette came up and reminded me that the lake is polluted. She ran out of diapers and so I just kept washing her plastic pants. We saw the ass end of the Caribana parade but she seemed sleepy and so we left. We couldn't walk on the footbridge to Queen Street and so we walked west along the beach all the way to Keele and then along the Queensway to Roncesvalles. We bought a tub of Haagen Dazs and caught the streetcar home. I think the ice cream woke her up because she didn't go to sleep until around 22:00 or so. I went to bed at around 1:30 on Sunday.

Sylvia Field

            On Saturday morning it was the beginning of the eleventh year of this journal. 

            I blog published "Be Sweet With Me", which is my translation of "Plus doux avec moi" by Serge Gainsbourg. I memorized the first verse of his song "Pour ce que tu n’étais pas" (For Someone You Were Not). 

            I played the Kramer electric guitar during song practice. On Sunday I'll begin two days of playing my Martin acoustic. 

            I weighed 84.8 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I've been in the morning in ten days.

            The waiting period cleared on Friday for me to try to enroll in the two Creative Writing courses I'm interested in. They gave priority to students with a Creative Writing minor until July 28, so now I'm on waiting lists for both of them and if ten students drop out of Poetry I'll be in. I'm number 22 on the Short Fiction waiting list. But these are only classes of twenty and so for ten people to drop out it might not be very likely. Maybe the course that starts in January is a bigger possibility. 

            In the late morning I walked over to the hardware store to buy rechargeable AAA batteries. The display on the thermostat in the hallway went dead yesterday but when I put the new batteries in it came back on. Not that we need it for the furnace right now but I find it convenient that it displays the temperature. The landlord owes me $17. 

            I went to Freedom Mobile to pay for my August plan and it was the first time in a long time that there was no one ahead of me. Whoever is ahead usually is either buying a phone or has some other time consuming issue. 

            I went to No Frills where the Canadian peaches are finally in and so I bought a basket. I also got five bags of cherries, two packs of blueberries, a bag of naan, dental floss, salsa, and three small containers of President's Choice skyr. They never seem to have the large containers on Saturdays. The stocker told me he put a bunch of them in the fridge a day or so ago and so I guess they are popular. I find the PC skyr to be less sour than the Siggis skyr. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos before lunch. I had Breton crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade.

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

            I weighed 84.8 kilos at 17:00. 

            I spent half an hour on the deck chiseling fossils from slate. I knocked out a couple of small pieces of green root. I'll probably be done with these rocks in a couple of weeks. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:23. 

            I compared the video of my June 25 acoustic performance of "Megaphor" with the one on July 5. Although one doesn't distinctly sound superior to the other, July 5 looks a lot better because of how the light is coming in and so July 5 wins. I compared July 5 to July 8 and July 5 not only looks better but I'm firmer with the chords and there is less traffic noise, so July 5 is still ahead. I compared July 5 to July 9 and it was hard to make a decision but I think July 5 looks a little better and has a little more power. So July 5 is still ahead. I compared July 5 to July 10 and I think July 5 sounds and looks better. I compared July 5 with July 14 and though July 14 looks pretty good it's got some flaws in the sound, and so July 5 will be the acoustic version of "Megaphor" that I'll upload to YouTube. Now I have thirteen electric guitar versions of the song to re-review and decide which one of those will go online. 

            In Audacity I synchronized the master vocal track with the one on the drum track for my song Sleep in the Snow at the point where the vocals begin after the instrumental. It was just a matter of deleting some of the calm space where the drums pause at the end. The drum track is far from perfect because I'm not a drummer but it's the only one I have. When I make the video I'm thinking that I'll make one with the drums in the soundtrack and one without. The drums don't sound as good during the instrumental and I considered isolating them from where the instrumental begins at 3:01.590 and lowering the volume or just removing them and replacing them with the snare track but I decided that might sound dumb. I think I'll go with what I have such as it is and start thinking about the video. 

            I scanned what is probably the last strip of negatives from the shots I took of my ex-girlfriend Whitefeather and her son Thomas when we went to visit him at St. John's Training School in Uxbridge in the early 1980s. I started scanning a set of colour negatives from the end of the summer of 1991 when we took my baby daughter to the Canadian National Exhibition for the first time. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce, honey-garlic sausages and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the season 3 finale and the season 4 premier of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story Betty Joe wants to buy Willie's motorbike, which is one of those old style motorized bicycles that has pedals and a chain so it can go without the motor. But Betty doesn't have the $24 that Willie is asking. There is a funny haggling process as Betty, Kate, and Willie discuss the price. Betty says he's asking $23. Willie says $24. Betty says, "But you'd take $23". Willie says $23.50. Betty says, "Mom, where could you find a motorbike like this for $22?" Willie says $23. Willie says it only goes ten kilometers an hour. Betty says she'll give him $19. Willie says $22.50. Betty tells her mother $20 for a motorbike is a real bargain. Willie says $21. Kate asks where she would get the $17 for the bike. Willie says $19. Kate says her Christmas budget is $15. Willie says $16. Then he says $15 without the headlights. Betty tries to get work babysitting for fifty cents an hour but the mother will only agree if Kate supervises and so the baby is brought to the Shady Rest. The baby always cries in Betty's arms and so Kate does all the work. More work is offered until there are eight babies under Kate's care. The dog keeps calling to be fed but it is told that babies come first. Finally all of the babies' bottles disappear and the empties are found with the dog. Betty makes $11. The dog is still being ignored and leaves. Late that night the dog comes back with Willie and the motorcycle. Willie says the dog came and coaxed him there. Willie is willing to trade his motorcycle for the dog but Betty says no.

            The second story introduces the third and final Billie Joe Bradley, although she doesn't play a prominent role in this episode. As usual, Joe has pushed forward a money making scheme for the hotel without consulting Kate. He has advertized the Shady Rest as a wedding and honeymoon haven with a free wedding and honeymoon to the couple that writes the best letter. Hundreds of letters arrive but one stands out. A couple says their families won't let them get married and so they have to elope and this contest is their only chance. It's a Romeo and Juliet type romance and so Tony and Laura are the winners. But when they arrive on the train it turns out that they are an elderly couple and that the families that won't let them marry are their adult children. The wedding is held but when the priest asks for just cause of them not getting married Tony's son Herbert and Laura's daughter Violet walk in the door to stop the wedding. They say their parents are behaving like adolescents so Kate tries to use a strategy to get Violet and Herbert to leave them alone. She tells them to treat them like adolescents and use reverse psychology, telling them they can do what they want but thinking they will do the opposite. But after Violet and Herbert leave, Tony and Laura have an argument about each other's children and now don't want to get married. Joe tries to make Tony jealous by taking Laura on a romantic canoe ride. Tony is jealous but pretends not to be. Joe and Laura return soaking wet because the canoe tipped over. Then Violet and Herbert return with the judge and say they were wrong. It becomes a double wedding as Violet and Herbert get married too. 

            Laura was played by Sylvia Field, who made her Broadway debut at the age of 17 in The Betrothal. Her first movie was the 1928 silent film The Home Girl. She married actor Ernest Truex in 1941 and in 1949 co-starred in "The Truex Family", one of the earliest TV sitcoms. She played Mrs. Remington for three years on the sitcom "Mr. Peepers". She played Aunt Lila on the Disney sitcom "Annette". She played Martha Wilson in ninety episodes of "Dennis the Menace".

July 30, 1993: My daughter slept for fifteen hours so I got lots of work done

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday I slept until around 10:30 and then went to pick up my daughter. We took her shovel and then caught the bus to the subway, then to Main and the bus to my place. We played around the house and she went to sleep at 17:00. She slept for the next fifteen hours and so I got lots of work done. I cleaned up and did some laundry.

Jack Collins

            On Friday morning I adjusted my translation of the last verse of "Plus doux avec moi" (Be Sweet with Me) by Serge Gainsbourg. I sang and played it and then I uploaded it to Christian's Translations. I almost finished preparing it for blog publication and that should be done on Saturday. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I've been in the morning in a week.

            Around midday I scrubbed and scraped floorboards eight to eleven under the stove and got most of the glue off. I should have it finished on Sunday and get a start on the last four floorboards. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride in the heat downtown and back. I stopped at the Bank of Montreal machine at the Manulife Centre to get $300. I usually get my cash from the machine at Freshco but on Thursday it just gave me a receipt saying my money had gone back into my account. One of the head cashiers explained that the machine was probably out of money. 

            When I got home I spent about eighteen minutes chiseling green fossils from slate. I didn't get much this time but I'm down to just a rock and a half of the three rocks from which I'd started. 

            I weighed 84.4 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:22. 

            I compared my performance of "Megaphor" on June 8 of this year with June 15. There's not much difference in the sound but on June 8 I look friendlier and more relaxed and so that one beats the 15th. I compared June 8 to June 22 and June 22 is better except for one chord that's slightly off. I'll say that June 8 wins again. I compared June 8 to June 25 and without a doubt June 25 is better. It was also clear from the video that I was happy to get it in one take. So June 25 beats June 8. I compared June 25 to July 4 and July 4 was better except for one chord sounding slightly off, so I'm keeping June 25. There are five more sessions with the acoustic to compare it to and so I'll probably know tomorrow which acoustic version of "Megaphor" I will render as a movie and upload to YouTube. 

            In Audacity I worked on synchronizing the vocals of the master track of Sleep in the Snow with that of the drum track. I got the wave forms as parallel as they could be but I think there's already reverb on my voice and so it's always going to sound like there are two vocals slightly but not dissonantly out of synch. But I discovered that after the instrumental when the vocal kicks back in the two vocals are too out of synch again. The master vocal comes back in at 3:37.390 whereas the one of the drum track returns at 3:37.700, so I'm going to have to work next on resynchronizing the vocals after the instrumental. There's a pause just before I sing again and the waveform is fairly flat and so hopefully if I delete some of that I can get them in synch without screwing up how the instrumentation synchs on the two tracks and without skewing the rhythm of the drum track. 

            I scanned the rest of the set of negatives of Amsterdam. In the same envelope was a black and white set of my cat Siva on my roof at Widmer Street, probably just before I left for Europe in the late spring of 1987. My friend Mike Copping stayed in my place while I was gone but the rent wasn't paid, he got kicked out and the cats became strays until I came back at the end of the summer and found them in a basement window-well. The nasty superintendent threw out a lot of my comic books too, but I recovered most if not all of them. 

            I grilled eight chicken drumsticks and had two with a potato and gravy while watching season 3, episodes 32 and 33 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story the girls realize that when they go out on dates, so does the dog and Joe goes to play checkers, leaving Kate alone. Joe suggests that she needs a companion and so the girls begin a plot to find their mother a man. They first think of the handsome new unmarried principal at Hooterville High. Betty decides to slip a bullfrog into his lunchbox so he'll call Kate to have a meeting with her about her daughter. But unbeknownst to Betty the principal is away and she puts the frog in the lunch of the married substitute teacher. Then they ask Lisa Douglas for help and she suggests a lonely hearts club, so the girls advertize that there is one at the Shady Rest. Three men come looking for their matches. Kate knows nothing about it and is puzzled when they say they won't eat until the women arrive. Finally Kate gets the truth from her daughters. After dinner Kate tries to explain to the men that there are no women, but they all say that after they've tasted her cooking they've found their match. Kate has to figure out a way to discourage each of them and so she learns from Joe what each man hates in a woman. He tells her that Mr. Rambo hates gabby women and so she talks his head off until he decides to leave. Then Kate learns that the hypochondriac Mr. Willoughby hates hearing about other people's health problems and so Kate makes up a slew of them for herself and he also decides to leave. Finally Mr. Thatcher loves to sleep late and so Kate and Joe wake him up early for the hotel exercise program. He also decides to move out. The girls promise to stay out of their mother's love life. 

            Mr. Thatcher was played by Jack Collins, who co-starred in the sitcom "Occasional Wife", and played Mike Brady's boss on "The Brady Bunch". He made many guest appearances on various TV series and played the mayor of San Francisco in "Towering Inferno". 

            In the second story Joe is excited that a lake is going to be created in the middle of Hooterville Valley. He thinks it will create tons of business for the Shady Rest until Kate looks at the map of the lake to see that the Shady Rest would be at the bottom of it and so would the railroad line on which the Cannonball runs. Kate realizes that only one person could have thought of such a plan and then in walks Homer Bedloe. Kate, her family and friends learn that they need 200 signatures for a petition against the lake. But in the whole community there are only 198 citizens. Bedloe brings in the Conservation Commissioner to settle the deal and when Floyd meets him he asks for his autograph since he's never met a commissioner. The only paper they have is the petition and so the commissioner unknowingly signs his name. Bedloe protests that Floyd didn't ask for his autograph and so he also signs his name, thereby completing the petition. With the petition they are able to have a restraining order drawn up but Bedloe has a counter restraining order all ready. But when the commissioner goes to the Shady Rest he sees that the dog has dug up a Choctaw tomahawk. Joe says there are lots more buried around and so the commissioner tears up the eviction notice because this discovery is more important than a dam. But Kate arrives and has to tell him the truth that the tomahawk was made in Japan. The commissioner will go ahead with the dam but needs a copy of the survey from Bedloe. Bedloe doesn't want to show it and then the dog runs away with it and brings it to the commissioner. He reads it and sees that the engineers recommend Willow Creek would be the best location for the dam. The main line of the C&FW Railroad runs along Willow Creek and not the Hooterville Valley. Bedloe was trying to save his job and destroy the Cannonball spur line at the same time.

July 29, 1993: Yehudah and I danced

Thirty years ago today 

            On Thursday I worked on Sonja's astrological chart and then I went out and called her at around 14:00. We arranged to meet on Sunday at Mudds Cabaret. I bought some beer for the party that Dianna Dufretes invited me to and took it with me at 22:00 to Mudds. Elizabeth put it in the fridge for me. I started the open stage because Martin didn't show up. I read the Alphabet Orgy group poem: 

Breath, life, live; so, 'cause there's a lot of beauty 

and love is just a cancer, eating gravity 

but your love Baby is just a lot of bubble snapping inside me

inside Strange feeling, woman now is the foil

as your painted face bleeds to ease backing against doors to unconscious streams

Windows must be tried when doors won't open 

many eyes are open but few can see 

activation and alien laughter-369 Act

live, died, ride up or down, goodbye 

Arms, legs, sex, soul, mind up-down, hello 

Sit still, the running goal it hurts now we're old 

In younger days I thought sex was the answer

now I know it's really a question 

yum dee luukidee lum dinga doo nik nik nee yowwoooh! 

Oh Baby, oh Baby- stop - oh Baby, oh baby, I am invisible 

I know why sometimes I get frightened 

Stop, yield, no stopping, doh! 

I need dough to knead some pizza for your party 

and seven dancing Salomes beneath a cheesy veil 

Seven veils gone and a head on a platter 

and yet the veil is only stripped away to show nothing

But nothing is nothing new, not in this state 

but if you wish to pretend, uncountable options are inevitable 

A world of choice but the moral path is not inevitably the right path 

A fork in the road or a fork in the eye

like a cry in the night like cherry pie, please don't die 

or even sleep or dream please don't die

but keep a wary eye I'm very weak and worn

and will probably die before morn

and will die saying "Yaargggh aarghh yekky gag boola

you are all covetous, covetous, covetous fools" 

She loves you ya ya ya

here's another radio station despising the ways I move under this naughty blanket 

            I read two of my poems and one of Ludwig Zeller's. I passed around the Alphabet Orgy group poem for people to contribute to it. Then I went to the party. Ray's voice answered the buzzer and Dianna opened the door. Yehudah was there. It was a mellow party. We talked, ate, and drank beer, and later Yehudah and I danced.

Molly Dodd

            On Thursday morning I memorized the fourth verse of "Au bon vieux temps" (In the Good Old Days) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished working out the chords for "Plus doux avec moi" (Sweeter with Me) by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through singing and playing the song in French. I played most of my translation but the English in the final verse doesn't feel like it fits. I'll revise the translation on Friday and then upload it to my Christian's Translations blog. 

            I finished four days of playing my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice. On Friday I'll start two days with the Kramer electric. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            Bay-Bloor Radio was scheduled to deliver my speakers between 10:00 and 12:00, but the driver called me at 9:22 to say he'd be here in twenty minutes. I rushed to tidy up, sweep the living room and to clear the area where my old speakers are. I didn't disconnect the old speakers but I moved them away from the wall. The guy arrived in twenty five minutes. There was one guy who brought my speakers upstairs and another who just handed me my paperwork and went back to the vehicle. Josh, the guy who sold me the speakers said there was free delivery and set-up, but the delivery guy said there was no set-up. Maybe "set-up" means for whole systems. 

            Since I'd interrupted my morning postings on Facebook and Twitter to prepare for the delivery, I didn't set up the speakers right away. I finished my postings, finished breakfast, did some personal stuff and then shaved and showered. I did the dishes, tidied up the kitchen and then started unpacking the speakers. 

            The speakers were fitted with metal stands that add about three centimeters of height, but I needed to fit the left speaker onto the bottom shelf of my tall bookcase to the left of the mantle. My old speakers are 83.8 cm tall while the new ones without the stands are 97.8 cm tall. Without the stand the left speaker still wouldn't fit so I had to raise the shelf above it that holds the amplifier one peg higher and then it fit perfectly. I had to remove the amplifier from the shelf. I'd been playing an Eddie Cochran album but the music stopped. I checked all the wires and everything seemed connected and so I was puzzled until I realize that the Input dial on my amp had been switched to Dock instead of CD, which is the connection to my computer. I switched the wires from the old left speaker to the new one and the distortion in the music was gone. The old right speaker was still connected and it had no distortion and so it looks like only the left speaker had blown its sub woofer. I might as well keep the right speaker and maybe figure out a way to connect it through the wall to the kitchen so I don't have to play my music so loudly when I'm working out there. 

            While I had a screwdriver in my hand I did something that had never occurred to me to do but should have done a long time ago. I removed the disk feet from my amp so it sits more evenly on its shelf. The amp is wider than the shelf and so the front feet have always stuck out, making it so I had to try to level the amp with a book. 

            I weighed 84.3 kilos before lunch, which is the lightest I've been around midday in nine days.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride through the very hot air downtown and back. 

            I weighed 84.2 kilos at 18:00. That's the least I've weighed in the evening in ten days. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:51. 

            I reviewed the videos of my performances of "Megaphor" from July 13 to July 15 of this year. On July 13 I played the electric and the take at 4:00 was okay. On July 14 and 15 I played the acoustic and on July 14 the first take was okay. On July 15 some of the chords were off. Now I have to re-review twenty three of those videos to determine which of the acoustic and which of the electric takes are the best. I'll start with the ten videos in which I play the acoustic. The first ones I'll compare on Friday are June 8 and June 15. 

            I only had a few minutes before dinner to work on my Sleep in the Snow project in Audacity. I moved the vocal waveforms of the two tracks closer together. 

            I had a potato with gravy and the last of my pork ribs while watching season 3, episodes 30 and 31 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story Betty Joe doesn't come home from school. Somebody saw her leave home with a suitcase and wearing makeup. Her sisters remember she had her favourite green dress and her nightgown. Kate finds Betty's notebook and she has written "Mrs. Betty Joe Latimer" in the margin. Then Sam tells Kate that Betty and Pete Latimer were in the store after school and he had his father's car and they were talking about heading for the state line. Now everyone is sure that Betty Joe has eloped. But then we see Betty and Pete across the state line at Schroeder's Flats playing catch. They went out there so she could coach him in private so he could prepare to try out for the team without anyone knowing he was being coached by a girl. Betty dives for a grounder and seems to sprain her ankle. Later back at the Shady Rest Kate and the girls see Pete carrying Betty into the hotel and they think they are married. But everything is explained and Pete stays for dinner. After he leaves Betty skips across the lobby because she was faking a sprained ankle so Pete would carry her. 

            In the second story Kate runs into Vera Wilson and she tells Kate that she's been dating a bookkeeper named Ronnie Beckman but he hasn't gotten romantic yet. Kate happens to run into Ronnie on the train and she talks to him about the situation. He confesses that he's never even had parents and so he doesn't know if he's ready to marry Vera and become a father for her two kids. He gets the idea to get off the train at the Shady Rest and stay with Kate and her family for a while to get a feel for family life. Kate finds her daughters quarreling over sister things and she explains the situation to them. She wants them on their sweetest behaviour in order to sell Ronnie on family life. Everyone but Joe is sickeningly sweet beacuse Joe thinks that Ronnie is after Kate and so he tries to paint a dark picture of family life and Kate's hotel. After Ronnie checks out everyone is relieved so they can argue again and they do so. But then Ronnie walks back in during the quarrel because he forgot his briefcase. Kate confesses to him what they've been trying to do. Ronnie says he first left having made the decision to not marry Vera because he couldn't possibly live such a peaceful life. But now that he knows he can blow up every now and then he feels encouraged about being part of a family. 

            Vera Wilson was played by Molly Dodd, who started her acting career on stage at the age of 18 in "The Cradle Song". She got good reviews in the performances that followed. She only appeared in four feature films and her first was Hitchcock's "Vertigo". In 1965 she and Robert Lansing formed The State Repertory Theatre. She had many guest appearances on various TV series. She was married to writer Henry Farrell who wrote "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" 

            After dinner I removed the stand from the second speaker, connected it and set it up on the right side of the mantle where the old one had been. I put all the screws from the stands in a baggy in case I need to put the stands back on in the future. I put the Sony cassette player back under the amp and now both of them are level with no need for books to prop them. I collapsed the boxes and put them behind the credenza in the kitchen. There's a little bit showing. I didn't have any place to put all the packing foam though and it made a very large pile. I decided to take a chance and put all the foam packaging out with the garbage along with the busted speaker. They were gone by morning so I assume the garbagemen took them.

July 28, 1993: The superintendent tried to take my dehumidifier away but I wouldn't let him

Thirty years ago today 

            On Wednesday I remembered what had happened a week before in a confrontation with Carl the super. He wanted to take my dehumidifier away but I said no and so suddenly he started putting pressure on me about the rent. Then he came back on Saturday, July 24 to give me back my cheque and told me it had to be certified. So a few days before this date I put the rent money in a money order. That night I went to The Café Verité for the open stage. When I arrived they were playing cartoons and so I went for a beer at Clintons and then came back. I had two turns of reading my poetry. Yehudah showed up and later I went to his place and talked.

Charles Barton

            On Wednesday morning I worked out the chords for the first verse and the first chorus of "Plus doux avec moi" (Sweeter with Me) by Serge Gainsbourg. I think that the rest of the verses and choruses probably have the same chords, so I doubt if it will take long to finish it. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I headed for an early bike ride downtown because I wanted to buy a new set of tower speakers. I went to Best Buy and it took a long time to get served. I asked one employee if he could help me with the speakers but he said, "Not really". I asked, "Who can?" and he used a hand device to ask verbally if anyone in computers could help someone with speakers. It was at least five minutes before anyone showed up. The cheapest towers they had were $500 each but I learned that they don't even have them in the store. I could order them online and they could be shipped in two to three business days. I didn't want to wait. 

            I'd overheard another customer mention Bay Bloor Radio, where I went a few years ago when I was shopping for speakers. They were too expensive then but now that I have more money I decided to ride up there. I got waited on almost right away. Their towers are a lot more expensive than at Best Buy. Josh told me that the best deal for a pair of speakers under $3000 were the Oberon 7 by a Danish brand called DALI (Danish Audiophile Loudspeaker Industries), which were on sale for $1799. 

            When I looked this up later it's actually cheaper than the same brand at Best Buy. I asked if I get a discount if I'm Danish. Josh said the cones are made from wood fibre. He showed me the black ones in the home theatre section and I listened to Start Me Up by The Rolling Stones. He found out that the only black ones they had left were the display model that I'd just listened to but they could sell them to me for $1699. After tax it was $1919.87 and the most expensive purchase I've ever made but I figure that at this point in my life I might as well have something of quality and if they outlive me then they'll make a nice inheritance for my daughter. I said I wanted them as soon as possible and he said they could either deliver them on Thursday morning or they could pack them up in the afternoon and I could come back with a taxi. I decided I could wait until Thursday. 

            In the home theatre room was an enormous TV showing an Eric Clapton concert. I thought it hilarious that there were more black people onstage than there were in the large audience. Josh said he met Eric Clapton in the store once. I told him I had pizza and beer with Robert Fripp. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before lunch at 14:45, which is the lightest I've been at that time in eight days. I had Breton crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            I took a late siesta and got up at 16:32. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos at 16:45. 

            From 17:00 to 17:25 I chiseled green fossils from slate. One piece of green root four centimeters long came off intact and only slightly coated in places by some rock. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:46. 

            I reviewed the videos of my performances of "Megaphor" from July 9 to July 12 of this year. From July 9 to 11 I played the acoustic and on July 9 I was done in one take and it sounded and looked good. On July 10 the take at 3:45 was pretty good. On July 11 a couple of chords sounded slightly off. On July 12 I played the electric and the take at 9:30 wasn't bad. I notice that in the recordings of my song practices the distortion of my speakers isn't really evident unless a truck or bus goes by. The distortion is only from low end sounds. 

            In my Audacity project for "Sleep in the Snow" I listened with the headphones because it was too distorted otherwise. I lined up the wave forms for the beginning of the music of the master track and the drum track but the vocals were slightly out of sync. I had thought the only difference between the two files was the drums but it would seem the instrumentation is slightly different. I'll try next time to line up the wave forms where the vocals start and hopefully it won't make the synth and guitar sound out of sync. 

            I only had time to scan one strip of black and white negatives from shots of Amsterdam before dinner. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce, honey-garlic sausages and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 3, episodes 28 and 29 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story a novelist named Carter Deming is staying at the Shady Rest and he finds it so inspiring that he tells Kate he wants to buy the hotel. His offer comes at a time when Kate has been turned down for a loan, and the girls and Uncle Joe express dissatisfaction about being stuck in the middle of nowhere. Deming offers Kate $10,000 for the Shady Rest, which is far more than it's worth, and Kate accepts. But when Kate tells her family they are moving to New York they are upset. They say they would love to visit there but they belong in Hooterville. Joe then plots to discourage Deming with the smell of pigs and the noise of Charlie and Floyd banging hammers. But Deming just smells fresh country air and the noise doesn't compare to the din of New York. The whole family goes into Hooterville to pick up the deed and when they come back Deming says he wants to back out of the deal. He couldn't get a word written while they were gone and he realizes that it wasn't the location that inspired him but the people. 

            In the second story Charlie and Floyd have a silly spat that begins with Floyd accusing Charlie of stealing his apple. The culprit is actually Joe but they never learn that. They make up but then argue over who is the boss of the Cannonball. Floyd goes on strike and so the train is stalled. They make up again but Joe reminds Floyd that Charlie said he has more brawn than brain and so the strike is back on. Kate invites Charlie and Floyd for dinner but the family puts on a dramatic mockery of Charlie and Floyd's dispute. The railroad men make up so they can eat. 

            Both of these episodes were directed by Charles Barton, whose first job in the movies was as a silent film extra at the age of fifteen. His first film as a director was "Wagon Wheels" in 1934. In the first half of the 1940s he directed westerns and B musicals for Columbia. In the second half of that decade he directed Abbot and Costello films for Universal. He directed what was considered to be their best picture in "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein" but also their worst in "Dance With Me Henry". For Disney he directed "The Shaggy Dog" and "Toby Tyler". In the second half of the 1950s he began directing for television. He was the house director for "The Amos and Andy Show". He directed many episodes of "Family Affair", "McHale's Navy", "Just Dennis", and "Hazel".

July 27, 1993: Mike Copping was critical of "The Firm" because he'd read the book

Thirty years ago today 

            On Tuesday I didn't see the baby. I called Mike Copping at work and we arranged to meet at 7:45. We went to see "The Firm". It was an interesting story but Mike was very critical because he'd read the book. We were going for a beer until he realized what time it was and then went home. I walked to Burger King and got fries and a shake before going back to my place where I watched TV for a while before going to bed.

Emmaline Henry

            On Tuesday morning I memorized the third verse of "Au bon vieux temps" (In the Good Old Days) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished memorizing "Plus doux avec moi" (Sweeter with Me) by Serge Gainsbourg and looked for the chords. No one had posted them and so I worked them out for the intro and the first two lines. 

            I played my Martin again for song practice. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I pulled the stove out and scrubbed and scraped the rest of the glue from floorboards four to seven. While I was working I listened to Black Sabbath from "Born Again" to "Dehumanizer", to "Cross Purposes". Two days ago I'd been playing my amplifier at volume 16 when my neighbour started swearing at me. I said all he had to do was ask me to turn it down and I would. He said he shouldn't have to ask and just kept on saying "Fuck off!" Yesterday I played it at 6 and today it was at 5 when I noticed the deck door was shut. I went to open it for circulation and saw Benji out there. I asked him if it was still too loud and he started swearing again. I took that as a yes and turned it down another notch, reminding him that all he had to do was ask and I would turn it down more. Over the next hour or so the door kept closing and I kept opening it and asking if I should turn it down more. I was pretty sure that this was not entirely about how loud my music was. I told him, "Whatever you've got up your ass I didn't put it there". He then told me that I'm a racist and I couldn't believe what I was hearing coming from someone who has put down just about every race during conversations I've had with him over the years. He suggested that my efforts to organize the tenants in our building is a racist attack against our landlord. I guess he includes himself in there because he's of South Asian descent. I told him that he wouldn't even be here if I hadn't fought the landlord 25 years ago. He said if he'd had to move out he would have because the landlord has the right to do whatever he wants with a building he owns. So he thinks that organizing a tenants association is just me trying to cause the landlord trouble because I'm a racist. It couldn't possibly be an effort to protect us from the many asshole things the landlord has been doing to his tenants over the years. Eventually I put the music down to level 1 but it's still probably too loud for Benji. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before lunch. 

            I took a siesta but couldn't sleep probably because of the stress of being accused of being a racist. I got up half an hour earlier than usual. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back half an hour earlier than usual. When I got home Benji came out and asked for the copy of his key that I've kept for him for years in case he locks himself out which he has done many times. He says he doesn't want any help from me, so I gave him his key. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos at 16:30. 

            I spent half an hour chiseling green fossils. I freed one that was kind of curly and ribbon like. The slate I was hitting split thickwise in two. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:55.

            I reviewed the videos of my performances of "Megaphor" from July 4 to July 8 of this year. On July 4, 5, and 8 I played the acoustic. The takes on July 4 at 3:45 and on July 5 at 1:00 were pretty good. On July 8 the take at 5:30 was okay. On July 6 and 7 I played the electric and July 6 was one of the best. July 7 wasn't bad. 

            I opened my "Sleep in the Snow" project in Audacity and it was extremely distorted. Other audio files are also distorted and so I think my speakers are blown. I can't do any quality work without knowing how things really sound and so I guess tomorrow I need to go and buy some speakers. I decided to double check by listening to "Sleep in the Snow" with the headphones and there is no distortion, so new speakers are my job for Wednesday. 

            I finished scanning the coloured photos of the boring wedding that I never shot. Then I did a set of black and whites that had a shot of my ex-girlfriend Whitefeather and some wild shots of my friend Tom Smarda looking like a blonde bushman. There were also some shots of a French speaking woman at the corner of Bloor and Bathurst happily exposing her derriere.

            I started scanning another set of black and whites of Europe. There are shots of the Alps as I was heading from Switzerland to Italy. 

            I had a potato with gravy and three pork ribs while watching season 3, episodes 26 and 27 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story Kate tells Joe that the hotel is in such dire straits that he has to go out and look for a job. He reluctantly heads out with the dog and first goes to Fred Ziffle. Joe is very happy to hear that Joe is the last person in the world that Fred would hire. He asks Lud Watson if he has any apple picking jobs but he knows it's not apple season. When Lud tells him he could pick his plums Joe tells him he didn't ask about plums. Joe goes to Pixley and spends some time in the movie theatre. Then he goes to a vacant lot to loiter until it's time to go home. While he's there the dog digs up a coffee can full of a lot of money. At first Joe fantasizes about leaving Kate and the girls to lead the good life in New York, but then he has an attack of conscience. He anonymously pays all of Kate's bills. But then he learns that they recently caught a thief who robbed the Crabwell Corners Bank a year ago. The money was never recovered and people figure he buried it somewhere in Pixley. Joe takes the money that's left back and re-buries it in the coffee can. But then he hears the news that they found the money in St Louis. He's about to go back to Pixley to retrieve it but then he learns that someone found it, and he faints. 

            In the second story Kate receives notice that a couple named Nancy and Jeff Anderson that spent their honeymoon at the hotel ten years before are now coming for their second honeymoon. Joe wants to cash in on the Shady Rest as a second honeymoon haven and so he tries to document every moment of their stay from the time they step off the train. It's very annoying for the couple because he's using a blinding flash and they can never get any privacy. Finally Kate forbids Joe from taking anymore pictures and tells him to apologize to the Andersons. While he's saying he's sorry he triggers the first argument the Andersons have ever had. Now they are in separate rooms and won't come out. Joe remembers that what brought the couple together ten years before was a thunderstorm. Joe has Floyd bang on some aluminium siding to simulate thunder while he sets off flashes in the Anderson's windows. Jeff is frightened and runs into Nancy's arms and so they come back together and enjoy the rest of their second honeymoon. 

            Nancy was played by Emmaline Henry, who sang on local radio and then came to Hollywood in the 1950s to sing. She started as a member of the choruses in musicals. It was determined by producers that she was a better comedian than a singer and so she was steered in the direction of comedy. Her first TV appearance was on the series I Led Three Lives. She played Amanda Bellows in 35 episodes of I Dream of Jeannie. She co-starred in the short-lived sitcoms "I'm Dickens, He's Fenster" and "Mickey". She played Chrissy's boss on "Three's Company".

July 26, 1993: Susana Wald was impressed with my collages but said they were only unconsciously surrealist

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday I was at Susana Wald's house just after 9:00. I brought some of my collages to show her and she seemed impressed. I asked her if they were surrealistic and she confirmed they were but unconsciously. Lightning struck the house while we were sitting in the living room. We finished packing Ludwig Zeller's studio. She gave me more books, some paper, and a tape recorder. She paid me $60 and then took me for Vietnamese food with her son and his girlfriend. When I left her place I walked over to the open stage at Crickets on Bloor Street near Avenue Road. Mary Milne and Phlip Arima were there. I did a reading and sang Calendar Girl. It seemed to go over well. Mary gave me a ride home and came in for water. We talked for a while and then she went home.

Don Keefer

            On Monday morning I memorized the second verse of "Au bon vieux temps" (In the Good Old Days) by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the second chorus of "Plus doux avec moi" (Sweeter with Me) and almost nailed down the third verse. Since the last chorus only has two lines that aren't repeats I may have this song nailed down on Tuesday. 

            I played my Martin acoustic for song practice and will do so for the next three days. 

            I weighed 85.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I moved the stove and scrubbed and scraped more glue left over from floor tiles that had been there. I finished the first three floorboards and got more of the glue off the next four. 

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. On Yonge Street a guy came up to me an asked where York University is. I told him it was way up in northern Toronto at the end of the subway. He said there's a downtown campus and I said it was possible but I'd never heard of it in all my years in Toronto. I'd forgotten about the Glendon Campus, which is a little closer at Lawrence and Bayview.

            When I got home I went out and spent about twenty minutes chiseling green root fossils from slate. I finished the first piece of slate and started on the second one of two more. 

            I weighed 85.8 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:33. 

            I reviewed my performances of "Megaphor" from June 27 to July 2 of this year. On June 27, and June 30 to July 2 I played the electric. On June 27 the take at 1:15 wasn't bad. June 30 and July 1 were both pretty good but July 2 was one of the best. With the acoustic, on June 28 it got a little discordant in places near the end. June 29 was one of the best in general but one chord sounded off. 

            I started a new project in Audacity, this time starting with the drumless master track of Sleep in the Snow and then adding the full drum track. I worked on synchronizing the two but didn't get them fully lined up before it was time to make dinner. I'll try again on Tuesday.

            I scanned the rest of a set of black and white negatives that had shots of my ex-girlfriend Brenda and some street shots. I started a set of colour negatives that are mostly of a wedding that I obviously didn't shoot and I have no idea who these people are. I know there are shots of mine in there of a multi-globe street lamp with the CN Tower behind it. The sleeve is dated May 1992 so maybe the wedding is of some of Nancy's stuffy German relatives. There was nothing in my 1992 journal about it so I don't know. 

            I had a potato with gravy and three pork ribs while watching season 3, episodes 24 and 25 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story the Shady Rest Hotel is in competition with the Pixley Hotel to host a convention of the benevolent Order of Dolphins. An inspector will be coming from the organization to assess both hotels. Meanwhile Kate learns that her taxes have been raised by $6. That seems reasonable to Kate but Joe is outraged. He writes a nasty letter to the tax office and the tax man decides to come and visit. Kate and the girls go to Sam Drucker's Store to shop for material for new curtains. Joe stays behind at the hotel and in anticipation of the tax man's visit he works to make the hotel look as depressed and run down as possible. The problem is that the man who comes is Mr. Forbes the inspector for the convention but Joe thinks he's the tax man. Then in anticipation of the inspector Joe spruces up the hotel and makes it appear like a wealthy enterprise, but the person who comes is Mr. Albright from the tax office. When Kate finds out about it she heads for the tax office to set things straight but runs into the inspector for the Order of the Dolphins and convinces him to come again to see the hotel all fixed up. But while they are on their way Joe gets a message that the tax man is returning and he slums down the hotel again. Kate loses the bid for the convention but the tax man arrives and tells Kate that he looked deeper into her files and discovered that the government owes her a refund of $126. 

            Forbes was played by Don Keefer, who was the last surviving member of the original cast of Death of a Salesman on Broadway. He was the victim in "The Twilight Zone" episode "It's A Good Life" of being turned into a jack in the box by the boy who could mold reality with his mind. He was a founding member of The Actor's Studio. He appeared in ten episodes each of "Gunsmoke" and the sitcom "Angel".

            In the second story the Shady Rest is full up and turning guests away. She sends one to the Pixley Hotel, which would have been empty otherwise. Murdock Sneep, the owner of the Pixley Hotel thinks Kate is rubbing in her success by sending him a guest. He goes to Kate and tries to organize a merger but she's not interested. While he's there he learns that his best customer for fifteen years is staying at the Shady Rest. Sneep declares war and begins to pay for advertizing, paying Charlie and Floyd ten cents a run to post his ads on and inside the train. Kate pays them twelve cents and they change the signs but then Sneep offers them new uniforms. Then the hotels compete on recreation. The Shady Rest has horseshoes but the Pixley has tennis and so Kate loses guests. Then they compete for food and Kate wins by serving Thanksgiving dinner every day. Sneep comes to the Shady Rest with two suitcases and admits defeat. He asks Kate for a room and so out of sympathy she rents him one. But it's a trick and Sneep releases bees in the hotel causing all Kate's guests to leave. Joe sneaks a skunk into the Pixley Hotel. Sneep goes to Kate and asks to call of the feud but then the owner of the Crabwell Corners Hilton arrives and gives Kate a box of chocolates and Sneep a box of cigars. He encourages them to continue fighting because now his hotel is full.

July 25, 1993: I had a confrontation with my neighbour when his Rottweiler grabbed my daughter's food from her hand

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday my daughter got up around 10:00, a little after me and we had eggs for breakfast. We went out and played in the backyard for a while and there was a confrontation between me and Karl when his Rottweiler Adolph grabbed my daughter's food from her hand. We walked down the street where she played with Chagall for a quite a while in her next door neighbour's flower bed making mud pies. Then we went down to Queen and I called her mother. We went to the wading pool at Kew Gardens and checked out the Beaches Jazz Festival, then she played in the sandbox. She ran out of diapers and I had her in just her pants but she shit in them. We checked out a concert and then I took her home.

Frank Aletter

            On Sunday morning I memorized the first verse of "Au bon vieux temps" (In the Good Old Days) by Boris Vian.

            I memorized the second verse of "Plus doux avec moi" (Sweeter with Me). There's one verse and two choruses left to learn. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I've been in the morning in forty-one days. I ate a lot on Saturday. 

            I finished scrubbing and scraping the glue from the tiles I'd ripped up in front of the stove. I moved the stove and started working on the glue from the rest of the removed tiles. I got most of it up from the first three floorboards and there are twelve left. Most of the boards under the stove don't have as much glue as the ones at the front, so it shouldn't take as long. 

            While I was working I was listening to some partial downloads of Jimmy Buffet recordings that had been on my torrent list for a year. He's a good but not very interesting songwriter and has a good band and so after listening to each album I removed the torrent and deleted the file. At one point I looked down the hall and saw that the door to the deck had been closed and so I went out to open it. Benji was out on the deck and when I opened the door again he complained that I was disturbing everybody. I told him all he had to do was ask me to turn my music down and I would have and I said I would now. But he started swearing at me and I reminded him that I don't swear at him. He said, "Fuck off a million times!" I reminded him that I've always been nice to him and he accused me of deliberately playing my music loud to bother him. I've been playing my music loud for twenty five years and all anybody had to do was to ask me to turn it down. I reminded him that I have asked him from time to time over the years if my music was too loud and he had said no, but now he denied that I had ever asked him. His behaviour seems extremely passive aggressive. I told him again that it's a very simple thing to just ask me to turn it down but I think he is indignant that I couldn't read his mind. Anyway I turned my amplifier down from 16 to 8. 

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before lunch and that's the most I've weighed at midday in forty days. I had Breton crackers and five-year-old cheddar with a glass of limeade. 

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

            I weighed 85.8 kilos at 16:52. I haven't been that hefty in the evening in forty one days. 

            I went out on the deck to chisel some more fossils but only got a small piece done before it started raining. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:56. 

            I reviewed the videos of my performances of "Megaphor" from June 23 to June 26 of this year. From June 23 to June 25 I played the acoustic. On June 23 the take at 12:00 was quite good but one of the chords near the end sounded discordant. On June 24 the take at 4:30 was pretty good. June 25 was one of the best and it was clear that I was happy to get it in one take. On June 26 I played the electric and the take at 6:45 wasn't bad. This was the first time I was able to review four sessions rather than three of "Megaphor" in half an hour and so my performances were obviously improving by the end of June. 

            In Audacity I tried to work on my project of Sleep in the Snow with drums and then I noticed that the file has some distortion. I tried the effect of removing clipping and it lowered the volume to an extreme degree and when I raised the volume the distortion returned. I listened to the other files of the song and they all have the same distortion, including the master file on the compact disc. I wondered if the problem was my speakers but other recordings sound fine through them. Since I never noticed it before maybe it's not that noticeable. 

            I finished scanning the last two individually cut frames of black and white negatives from spring of 1988. I scanned a sleeve containing two strips. One had my friend Tom busking and the other had my ex-girlfriend Brenda sitting by the water down by Harbourfront. Another sleeve I started has more shots of Brenda and some random stuff.

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce, honey-garlic sausage and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 3, episodes 22 and 23 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story Joe wants the Shady Rest to get some of the business of putting up juries that the Pixley Hotel has. He calls up the Pixley Hotel and scams them by saying that he's the head of the Order of Buffaloes and wants to book the hotel for their convention. The Pixley Hotel then pushes the jurors out and so the court has no choice but to put them up at The Shady Rest. Kate and Joe have to give up their beds to jurors and the dining room has been confiscated for both eating and deliberating. The jurors go through an incredible amount of food. Then Kate has to care for the baby of a juror and the livestock of some farmer jurors. Days go by until finally Kate gets an order from the judge saying that the jury need to either come to a decision or start eating at the Pixley Diner. They make a decision right away. It turns out they'd been stalling in their deliberations because they wanted to keep enjoying Kate's cooking. 

            In the second story a Mr. Benton arrives as a guest and he claims that he is with a Mr. Dobble but Kate sees only Benton. Kate wonders if she is losing her mind and keeps trying to see Mr. Dobble to prove otherwise. No one else has seen Dobble either but Kate is the only one who has been in a room when Benton is talking to Dobble. It's driving Kate nuts and so finally she asks Benton to leave. He says he booked the room for two weeks and won't have the money to pay before then. She tells him he won't have to pay. Later a detective from the Hotel Association comes to Kate with a picture of Benton and says they know him as Skip Tracy. He goes to hotels claiming to have an invisible friend and then when he's asked to leave he just moves to another hotel, never having to pay. But later Kate and Betty hear saxophone music coming from the now vacant Mr. Dobble's room and they run. 

            Benton was played by Frank Aletter who worked first in theatre on Broadway. After playing Stefanowski in "Mr. Roberts" he was asked to play Gerhart in the film version. He appeared in very few films but worked a lot on television. He starred as an astronaut in "The Twilight Zone" episode "The Parallel". He also played an astronaut in the short lived sitcom "It's About Time". He was married for sixteen years to Lee Meriwether. He also starred in the sitcom "Bringing Up Buddy". He co-starred in the serial drama "Danger Island", which was part of "The Banana Splits Adventure Hour". He played a supporting role on the sitcom "Nancy".

July 24, 1993: I didn't buy beer because I had a funny feeling in my head from drinking draft in a bar

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday I think I picked up my daughter from Nancy's place but I'm not sure. Maybe she brought her down in the morning or maybe even the day before. I didn't buy any beer because I had a funny feeling in my head from drinking draft in a bar. I didn't take my daughter to the Beaches Jazz Festival. She went to sleep at around 18:00 and didn't get up for the next fifteen hours. While she was sleeping I cleaned up a bit but not much, I watched TV, and I did some writing.