Jay Jostyn

            On Tuesday morning I revised my translation of the first three verses of "Au bon vieux temps" (In the Good Old Days) by Boris Vian. 

            I worked out the chords for the rest of the chorus and the third verse of "Le Couteau dans le play" (The Knife in the Play) by Serge Gainsbourg. The third verse has the same chords as the first and I'm pretty sure the fourth has the same as the second and so on. 

            I audio and video recorded song practice while playing my Kramer electric guitar for the fourth day of four sessions. There are ten days left in this recording project and the next two will be with the Martin acoustic, then two with the Kramer, four with the Martin and then the last two will be with the Kramer. I think "Megaphor" came out okay and "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" ended better than it sounded while I was playing it. The camera timed out while I was playing "Dance and Sing to Baby Pop". 

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I've been in the morning in eight days. 

            I finished reading all the information about the Master of Arts in Creative Writing and the scholarship application process. I downloaded a pdf of my transcripts but I still don't know how to pay for my official transcripts since the only option online is by credit card, which I don't have. I emailed Marguerite Perry about that again today but she didn't get back to me. 

            I took my Kramer to L'il Demon Guitars because I was hearing a rattling sound on the sixth fret. Gian said the humidity popped some of the frets out of the neck and so he hammered them down. He said the Kramer action has gone up since I changed my A string because I used too heavy a gage. He changed the 39 I'd put on to a 36. He said I could give him some money or not if I wanted so I gave him $10. I told him that my Jazz Chorus amp hums on reverb and he said he could fix that. I didn't know he could fix amps and so I might bring it by. 

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before lunch and it's been eight days since I've been that hefty at midday. 

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

            I weighed 85.4 kilos at 17:00. That's the most I've weighed in the evening in forty-one days. 

            I chiseled some more black quartz from pieces of the rock I found six years ago. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:36. 

            I reviewed this morning's song practice video. "Megaphor" seemed okay and "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" wasn't horrible. I'll be re-reviewing all of these songs throughout the fall and I'll work out which is the best of each. 

            I uploaded "Sleep in the Snow (with drums)" to YouTube and then posted it on Twitter and Facebook. A full day after uploading "Sleep in the Snow" it had acquired 53 hits, which is seven more than my "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" video has gotten in two months. The next video I plan to make is for "Megaphor" or "God Goes to My Head" as I called it at the time of the audio recordings. The master recording of the song has no drums but I listened to a CD with three versions containing percussion. Windows Media Player wouldn't rip the files and my trial version of Switch has timed out. Tomorrow I'll have to look for another CD ripping app. 

            I cleaned a very dirty strip of black and white negatives and scanned them. Most of the frames are damaged but there are a couple of shots of my daughter from around 1993. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a piece of pork loin while watching season 5, episodes 24 and 25 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story Billie Joe has finally cut her first record, "Who Needs Memories of Him?" but she sings the flipside which is a gender switched rendition of "The Girl from Ipanema". A press agent named Ted Swift is coming to interview her to get a profile to use for promotion. But when he comes he is not impressed with Billie Joe's life as it is and so he spins it to make her out to be a wealthy southern belle. Joe and Bobbie Joe are all for this stretching of the truth but Betty Joe and Steve don't like it and don't think Kate would like it either if she was there. Finally when he has her dressed for a photo shoot wearing a slinky gown and holding a martini glass even though she doesn't drink, Betty Joe protests and so does Steve. Up until now Billie has been going along with it but suddenly she says she doesn't want to pretend she's something she's not. They ask him to leave but on his way out he meets his boss Mr. Cameron the record company owner who had to come and meet Billie as soon as he heard her voice. He says the Shady Rest, the rural setting and the family feeling is perfect for promoting her record. 

            Mr. Cameron was played by Jay Jostyn, who was an old time radio star. He started out reading poetry on WLW in Cincinnati. He went on to have roles in several radio soap operas but he was the star of two dramatic shows at the same time: "Mr. District Attorney" and "Foreign Assignment". On television he played the judge on the late 1950s series "Night Court USA". 

            In the second story cousin Mae hears that Kate is away and assumes that Kate's daughters and Joe are helpless. But the hotel is full up and everything is running smoothly until she arrives. She causes one couple to leave after she flirts with the husband. She chases Billie Joe's agent away by telling him that Billie will only do engagements in major cities. She chases Bobbie Joe's boyfriend Jeff away by insisting that she keep him waiting. She tries to change Kate's long standing arrangement with Sam Drucker's store. She tells him she'll be paying the bill once a month but will expect a 2% discount. Sam says no and so now the hotel has to get its supplies from Pixley. Suddenly someone named Aunt Ellen arrives who everybody knows and loves but in the five years of this show the viewer has never seen. She's beginning a world tour but starting at the Shady Rest where she's arranged for all her tickets and reservations to be sent. But Mae received the tickets and reservations and sent them back because Ellen wasn't there. There is a meeting to decide what to do about Mae and Ellen suggests throwing her a farewell party. But it backfires because it makes Mae feel so wanted that she can't bring herself to deprive them of her company. But Ellen reminds Mae that the Spring Cotillion is beginning in Savannah soon and so Mae heads off.