Robert Shayne

            On Thursday morning I ran through singing and playing "Que tu es impatiente la mort" (How Very Impatient is Death) by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I'll start playing my translation and might have to make some adjustments to the English.

            I memorized the third verse of Charlotte Forever by Serge Gainsbourg. There is just one verse left to learn. 

            There was a power outage probably for only a minute or two just before I started song practice and so I got started ten minutes later than usual. I returned to playing my Kramer electric guitar after two days with the Martin acoustic. It's weird how at first I have to learn where the chords are all over again until I organically remember and get back into it. I no longer spend endless takes on Megaphor and Sixteen Tons of Dogma. Even if it feels like a chord might be slightly off, if I don't fumble horribly I just continue to the end. Redoing songs too much just causes more mistakes. I almost made it through "Comme un boomerang" before the camera battery timed out. It's weird how sometimes it lasts longer. Yesterday part B of its life only lasted nine minutes which is the worst ever. Also the camera is never fully in focus. It served me well when I was still on welfare and I'm grateful to Nick Cushing for giving it to me, but I think next spring I'm going to invest in a better digital camera for video recording and for carrying around to take pictures. Something that takes better focused videos, has a decent microphone and lasts through my full song practice. 

            I weighed 84.8 kilos before breakfast. 

            I spent half an hour scrubbing and scraping the glue from the area where the third tile had been in front of the kitchen counter. As usual the first try got about half of it off and it'll take at least another hour of work to clear the rest. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos before lunch, which is the lightest I've been at that time in 43 days. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back I stopped at Freshco. I bought three bags of grapes, three bags of cherries, two packs of strawberries, a pack of blackberries, a pack of blueberries, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a box of spoon size shredded wheat, a jug of limeade, a jug of orange juice, a bag of kettle chips, and two packs of Full City Dark coffee.

            I weighed 84.2 kilos at 17:30. 

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

            I reviewed the video of my song practice this morning and I think it was one of the better ones with the electric guitar. There was lots of traffic noise though. The camera battery lasted six minutes longer in part B. I reviewed my performances of "Come Eliza" and "Eliza" from June 11, 2022 until June 18 of the same year. Of "Come Eliza" on June 11 it was cut off near the end. On June 13 the battery timed out before this song. On June 15 it was pretty good but the spit screen was on my chin. On June 16 I fumbled and kept on going without a retake. June 18 was the best yet but it was cut off just before the end. Of "Eliza" on June 14 it got cut off near the end. June 17 was not bad. 

            I deleted some of the videos of my song practice from 2022 that have not been imported to Movie Maker or if they don't have songs that I've already uploaded. Those MOV files are sometimes three gigs each so some of them are not worth keeping. 

            I uploaded the video that I made of my animation: "Electrical Snake Nest" that I'd used in my video for "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" to EZGIF. I doubled the size and made it into a gif but when I tried to download the gif it failed three times before it finally made it just before dinner. 

            I had a potato with gravy and three pork ribs while watching season 2, episodes 24 and 25 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story the hotel needs a new water heater but it would cost almost $100 and Kate can't afford it. Joe has the idea of selling stock in the hotel and writes "Shady Rest" on three shares of worthless Aztec Gold stock. I don't think one can make up one's own stock certificates let alone overwrite real stock certificates. Sam, Charlie, and Floyd want to help Kate out by lending her the money but Joe says she's too proud. So Sam, Charlie and Floyd each buy a share in the hotel for $33 each. Kate doesn't find out about the deal until the water heater is delivered. What Joe didn't consider is that if there are three shares of the hotel owned by three people other than Kate, that means that Kate no longer owns the hotel. She begins behaving like a guest and when the bathroom pipes begin to leak she relaxes and tells Sam, Charlie and Floyd that it's their problem. The first thing they do is what Kate was never able to do: they put Joe to work. Then Mr. Guerney of the bank comes to tell Kate that the Aztec Gold shares are now worth something because uranium has been found in the barren gold mine. They give the certificates back and she owns the hotel again. 

            In the second story Tad Winslow delivers a summons to Sam Drucker because Crabwell Corners is suing Hooterville for possession of a disputed Spanish-American War cannon. Later Betty Joe is in Hooterville with her dog and looking at a sign for an upcoming dog contest. Tad is there with an old bloodhound waiting for the train. The bloodhound can barely move but Tad tells Betty Joe that his dog could beat her dog in the contest. He bets her that if he wins he gets a date with Betty's sister Billie Joe. It is never mentioned what Betty would win. Kate goes to Tad's mother Martha to call off the bet but winds up betting her newly repaired sewing machine that Betty's dog will win. Then Joe goes to Tad's father to call off Kate's bet but winds up betting the cannon against the Crabwell Corners fire engine over the dog contest. But at the contest it turns out that the bloodhound is not Tad's dog but he was just taking care of it while someone was away. Tad's dog turns out to be an extremely well trained German shepherd. But Betty trains her dog and in the contest, up until the final event her dog has 96 points while Tad's dog has 98.5. The final event is jumping a three meter wall. We hear the thoughts of Betty's dog and the shepherd. Betty's dog psyches out the high strung pure breed and tells him a story of a great Dane named Rex who failed to jump a barrier. The German shepherd's thoughts are spoken with a German accent. It runs away. Betty's dog wins. Then the shepherd chases Betty's dog and he jumps the barrier several times. Hooterville wins the fire engine as long as it keeps up the payments.

            The contest judge was played by Robert Shayne, who was a part time stockbroker until the crash of 1929. Then he worked in theatre and a few film shorts starting in 1929 and throughout the 1930s before being signed by Warner Brothers in 1942. They put him in mostly two-reel westerns until he got supporting roles in feature films. He left Warner Brothers in 1946 and after a few years began to work in early television shows. He became most famous for playing Inspector Henderson on The Adventures of Superman. His biggest role in a film was as a mad scientist in The Neanderthal Man.