Ken Drake

            On Tuesday morning I finished revising my translation of "Que tu es impatiente la mort" (We Are So Impatient for Death) by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I'll run through singing and playing it before uploading it to my Christian's Translations blog. 

            I didn't quite finish working out the chords for the first verse of "Charlotte Forever" by Serge Gainsbourg, but I should have that done tomorrow and then start on the chorus. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice and video and audio recorded the session. I think "Megaphor" and "Time of the Yo-Yo" came through okay but I screwed up the ending of "Sixteen Tons of Dogma". The camera battery timed out while I was struggling with "Annie C's Aniseed Suckers". There are four days left in this year's recording project. On Wednesday and Thursday I'll play the Kramer electric and on Friday and Saturday I'll play the Martin to finish. 

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I've been in twenty-six days.

            I finished scrubbing and scraping the glue from the area under the third tile that I'd ripped up from the floor in front of the kitchen counter. I started on the spot where the fourth tile had been and got over half of the glue off. That takes me about midway through this floor cleaning project prior to finding and gluing down some new tiles. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. It started sprinkling lightly on my way down Yonge and a little more while going west on Queen. I started chiseling some more of the fossil rock out on the deck but only knocked off one chunk before it started to rain. 

            I started sewing the button hole from a pair of old leather pants onto the end of an old guitar strap that's torn at both ends. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos at 17:15. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:39. 

            I reviewed this morning's video of song practice. "Megaphor" and "Time of the Yo-Yo" came out okay but I screwed up the ending of "Sixteen Tons of Dogma". Most of the other songs were adequate. "Annie C's Aniseed Suckers" still needs work. I have four more sessions to record. 

            I ripped the CD on which had been written "Nothing but drums" but it turns out it only has the drum tracks for "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy". I organized the seven files that have "Sleep in the Snow" with drums and put them in order. I still haven't listened to them all, but there is only one track with just cymbals. I still think I prefer the master track with no drums but maybe if I can alter the drum track or turn it down it would be okay. 

            I scanned a set of black and white negatives from the 80s, mostly of my cat Siva, and street shots. 

            I had a potato with the last of my gravy and two eye of round steaks while watching season 2, episodes 34 and 35 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story Betty Joe has a crush on her science teacher Mr. Barrett and she's lost interest in baseball. The dog brings home a brontosaurus bone and Betty shows it to Barrett, seeing this as an opportunity to get close to him. Wanting to find where the dog dug up the bones he accepts a dinner invitation. While he's there the dog brings home another bone and then shows that he has more under the hotel. Barrett persuades Kate to let them dig up the lobby and so everybody has to camp out on the front lawn. Meanwhile the audience learns that the dog is going through an open window to the Pixley Museum and one by one removing the parts of the skeleton of a baby brontosaurus. When Clarence McGill the curator returns from vacation he sees the dog take the last piece and follows it to the Shady Rest. Kate returns the bones. Barrett elopes with the gym teacher and Betty returns to baseball. 

            McGill was played by Ken Drake, who studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. He started television acting on Sea Hunt and often played very different characters in several guest appearances. 

            In the second story Kate stops Joe from a money making scheme of stocking the lake with halibut. He thinks he can dump salt in the lake and the fish won't know the difference. Joe talks to a homeless man he knows named Hector who has a goat. He convinces Joe that the goat's milk can cure baldness. Joe buys the goat to get rich. But the goat eats the girls' dresses and the porch. Kate and Sam decide to teach Joe a lesson. Sam buys a bottle of the milk and then puts on a wig. Then Floyd puts on the same wig and they have the dog carry the wig back and forth between them so Joe doesn't suspect, until it winds up on Joe's head. Then Hector gives them a halibut he caught in the lake.