Dennis Morgan

            On Wednesday morning I uploaded "Au bon vieux temps" by Boris Vian to my Christian's Translations blog and started the editing process to prepare it for publication. 

            I memorized the first verse of "Une chose entre autres" (One Thing Among Others) by Serge Gainsbourg and made some adjustments to my translation. There are only two more verses to learn. 

            I audio and video recorded song practice while playing my Martin acoustic guitar for the last time in this year's project. I was nervous because it was the final acoustic session and I so I ended up doing several takes of "Megaphor", "Sixteen Tons of Dogma", and "The Accordion" to try to get them right. I think I did okay with "Megaphor" and "The Accordion" but there was one wrong chord at the end of "Sixteen Tons of Dogma". The camera timed out during a retake of "Post Colonial Breakdown". There are two days left in this year's recording project and for those I'll be playing my Kramer electric guitar. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I sanded some more of the boards that I glued down to fill the depression in the kitchen floor in front of the counter. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos before lunch. I had whole wheat crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and wore my jeans and a long sleeved shirt for the first time in months. I probably would have been okay in shorts and my undershirt once I got going. I stopped at Freshco to buy bananas and a couple of bags of grapes. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:43. 

            I reviewed this morning's song practice video. I think the final take of "Megaphor" was okay, as were some of my translations, but "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" definitely had one wrong chord at the end. Two more of these reviews and then I'll be reviewing the whole project song by song. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for my song "Megaphor" I managed to synchronize the concert video with the studio audio for my line "It fills me and it shapes me so I'm stretched down the road to a long thin forever where I might crack the code". But I can't seem to line up "of the enemy's secret but the spies in my brain". I looked for a video from which to harvest a clip to fit in there and found Fritz Lang's silent film "Spies". I watched the first 25 minutes and there might be something I can use. 

            I scanned two or three single black and white negatives of street shots from the mid 1980s. 

            I made pizza on seven grain bread with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 6, episodes 10 and 11 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story an old flame named Dennis Roberts comes to see Janet Craig and wants her to marry him. While many people wanted to get rid of Dr. Craig before, now everybody wants to keep her. Joe gets Sam to try to seduce her so she won't leave with the other guy. She's impressed but not interested. Finally she tells Dennis to suspend his proposal for now. Then there's a musical number by the Bradley sisters. One can hear a whole band backing them up but they are supposed to be singing acapella in the hotel lobby and it looks corny. Then around the piano they all sing "Shine on Harvest Moon", which Dennis Morgan made famous in the film of the same name. 

            Dennis Roberts was played by Dennis Morgan, who started as an opera singer. He became a radio announcer and a radio singer. He had small parts until he co-starred with Ginger Rogers in "Kitty Foyle". He co-starred in "My Wild Irish Rose", "God is My Co-Pilot", "The Very Thought of You", "Royal Flush", "Two Texas Knights", "It's a Great Feeling", "Mama Steps Out", "Song of the City", "Waterfront" , "No Place to Go", "Three Cheers for the Irish", "Tear Gas Squad", "Flight Angels", "River's End", "Affectionately Yours", "Kisses for Breakfast", "Bad Men of Missouri", "In This Our Life", "Wings for the Eagle", "The Desert Song", "One More Tomorrow", "Two Guys from Milwaukee", "Two Guys from Texas", "The Time, the Place, and the Girl", "Cheyenne", "To the Victor", "One Sunday Afternoon", "It's a Great Feeling", "The Lady Takes a Sailor", "Perfect Strangers", "Pretty Baby", "Raton Pass", "Painting the Clouds with Sunshine", "This Woman is Dangerous", "Cattle Town", "The Gun that Won the West", "Uranium Boom", "Pearl of the South Pacific", and "Christmas in Connecticut". He received more fan mail than any other star in the 1940s at Warner Brothers, was the company's top singer and its highest paid actor. On television he played Dennis Chase on "21 Beacon Street". Upon retiring from acting he became a successful businessman.

            In the second story Steve wants to take Betty Joe out to dinner but Betty doesn't want the baby to be left with a sitter. Dr. Craig intervenes and says a night out would be good for them both. She says if they bring Kathy Joe to the Shady Rest, she, Joe and Bobbie Joe can all babysit. They do that but later Jeff comes to remind Bobbie that they have a date, so they leave. Then Mrs. Finch comes because her husband fell off the hay wagon and so Janet has to leave the baby alone with Joe. Then Wendell comes to tell Joe that he is needed in Hooterville to vote on the watershed control bill. Joe takes the baby and the men vote, followed by a poker game. Then Brisbane Sneed of the Pixley Picayune arrives and is mad because the vote went through without him. He gets the sheriff to arrest them for contributing the delinquency of a minor by playing poker in front of the baby. Janet and Bobbie return home to hear from Wendell that Joe and the baby are in jail. Janet tells Sneed that Sam could write a headline: "Crusading Editor Sends Innocent Baby to Jail". Brisbane tells the sheriff to let them out. They get the baby back before Betty and Steve return and don't tell them what happened.