Parley Baer

            On Friday morning I worked out the chords for the fifth verse of "Que tu es impatiente la mort" (How Very Impatient is Death) by Boris Vian. There are two verses left. 

            I ran through singing and playing "Bamboo Kiss", which is my translation of "Shanghai" by Serge Gainsbourg. I uploaded it to Christian's Translations and started preparing it for publication on the blog. I might have it posted on Saturday. 

            I began the first day of a four day stretch of playing the electric guitar during song practice and video and audio recorded it. I started ten minutes later than usual because I had to tune the Kramer. Before the string broke it stayed in tune for an amazing amount of time but it seems to have to settle in before getting back to that stability. I had to stop and tune the E string again halfway through. I got through Megaphor in a couple of takes. It's a lot harder to hear what I'm playing with the electric because I don't want to turn it up too loud since I would also need to turn the microphone up and I don't want to disturb anyone. I do increase the volume gradually as the session progresses. My first take of Sixteen Tons of Dogma went smoothly until the seventh verse and then several retakes were pretty horrible until I finished it at the beginning of part B of the camera battery's life. I got the chords right that I often get wrong at the end but then got some other chords wrong. I only completed three songs. I kept on fumbling a word of "L'accordion" in a way that I never have before. It's supposed to be "Il passe un nuit tranquile" but I kept saying "Il passe un nuit tratile". It's weird how that happens because I know that the next time I do it I'll get it right without even trying. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I've been in the morning in forty one days. 

            Around midday I did my laundry and I was done just in time for lunch. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 84.1 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:00. 

            I reviewed the video I recorded of song practice this morning. I don't sing as well while playing the electric guitar I guess because I don't hear it as clearly. The final take of Sixteen Tons of Dogma would have been fine if not for falling short of the D sharp minor chord. I can feel where it is on the acoustic but on the Kramer it has yet to become organic. 

            I compared the video of my June 11, 2022 performance of "Leave the Naive Alone" with the one from June 28 of the same year. I think June 28 is better but there's more traffic noise. I compared them to July 2 and it's also good but no better than the other two. I compared June 11 with June 28 in the synchronized versions in Movie Maker and decided that I prefer June 11. I saved a copy of the project as a new project called "Leave the Naive Alone" and isolated it, then I made it into a movie. On Saturday I'll do the same to my June 19, 2022 song practice recording and isolate "Laisse tomber les filles" to make into a movie. I always upload the French version to YouTube first since it's the original.

            In Movie Maker I also finished removing all of the "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" clips from my "Dancing Electrical Cords" project for making a gif. I made that into a movie but when I played it back it kept on going after the video had stopped. It took a while for me to figure out that there was a little piece of audio sticking way out on the timeline and so the video kept going to meet it. After I deleted that it closed at the end of the video timeline. But then I noticed that even though the finished movie had the file name of "Dancing Electrical Cords", the title displayed on the screen was "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy". I figured that was because the file that the dancing cords was copied from was "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" and it was still called that on the timeline. I started making supper and when I came back the power must have been off and just come back on. After I started the computer the Wi-Fi was off and I couldn't see a list of networks and so I restarted and then I was back online. In Movie Maker I deleted the video that had the title "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" on the timeline and imported the movie with the title "Dancing Electrical Cords". Then I made that into a movie but it still showed the wrong title on the screen. Finally I went into properties in VLC and changed the title. 

            I went onto my YouTube channel to see what I already have of my song "Sleep in the Snow" and found two files. There's a concert video from the Riot Gallery in 1998 and there's a file with the studio audio but no moving video. I'll check tomorrow if I have any more videos on discs of that song. I assume we must have played it in our 1998 concert at The 360. I don't think it's on the video of our Parkdale Festival performance. I used the Riot Gallery show for my "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" video mostly because that was the only concert version of the song that wasn't online. Since there's already a Riot Gallery video online I'm reluctant to draw from that same footage for a music video using the studio audio. I'll look through my files before deciding what to use. 

            I had a potato with the last of the gravy and a few pork ribs while watching season 2, episodes 12 and 13 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story soldiers are playing war games in the area of The Shady Rest. Three of the members of the Blue Army come up to Billie Joe, Bobbie Joe, and Betty Joe while they are sunbathing. The soldiers are pointing their guns at them and asking for their phone numbers until Kate comes out with a shotgun. After they understand they will be following her rules she invites them in. They party with the girls until General Patterson arrives. The three soldiers Hank, Tod and Stu put on scarves and dresses but Patterson sees their army boots. He is about to reprimand them when they point their rifles at him and say he's captured since he's a Green Army general. Kate makes the general wash dishes. As more and more soldiers from both armies hear about the girls they descend on the Shady Rest and there is a big party with dancing and the best food they've ever had. It becomes ridiculous as some parachute in and then absurd when a sailor shows up even though they are probably at least a thousand kilometers from any ocean. 

            In the second story Joe, Sam, Charlie, Floyd, Ben Miller and Newt Kiley are trying to form a volunteer fire department but they have no money for equipment. So they have formed a horrible band to try to raise funds but even most of the members can't stand how they sound. Finally Kate takes it upon herself to fund raise and makes $62. She wants to ask for outside help from Henry Phillips who runs a fire equipment company in another town. Joe resents her wanting to use outside help and promises he can get all the equipment they need with the $62. He gets a tarpaulin to use for a safety net, a broken axe, a half a ladder, and several cases of fireworks to use as alarms. Kate makes Joe store the fireworks at Hooterville station and she writes to Phillips after all. He comes and tells Kate that the solution is the Cannonball to be equipped with a hose and to serve as a fire vehicle. But Joe organizes a false alarm to test the volunteers. He has newt set off a rocket but it falls over before it can blast into the sky and shoots sideways into Hooterville station to set off all the other rockets. The station burns down and the Cannonball is derailed. 

            Henry Phillips was played by Parley Baer who worked in radio from the 1930s, starting as an announcer. He was a captain in the US Army who served in the Pacific during WWII earning seven battle stars and a presidential citation. He started out as a circus ringmaster and owner and that’s where he met his wife Ernestine Clark who was a bareback rider. They were together for 54 years. Her father was the first trapeze artist to do a triple somersault. Baer was the voice of Ernie Keebler, of the Keebler cookie elves. He played Chester on the Gunsmoke radio series. He said radio was a perfect actor’s medium because if you play to five million listeners you are giving five million performances.