Kenneth Washington

            Early Thursday morning the heat from the radiators was unbearable. I had to open all the windows. At about 4:00 I went out and turned the heat off. By the time I got up at 5:00 it was almost tolerable and it was okay by the time I started song practice. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar for song practice in the fourth of four sessions. It was a pretty good session. On Friday I'll play my Martin acoustic. 

            I memorized the first verse of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Street Youngster) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished working out the chords "Une chose entre autres" (One Thing Among Others) by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through it in French and English, uploaded it to Christian's Translations, edited it and published it on the blog. On Friday I'll start learning his song "Lost Song". 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I went over to the hardware store and bought a sea sponge. Then I used the sharp point of a compass from a geometry set to poke holes in a baggy and put the sponge inside. Now I have a third home-made humidifier to use on my Martin guitar when the humidity drops below 45, which will be soon now that the heat is going on at night. 

            I sanded some more of the boards that I glued down to fill the depression in my kitchen floor. There's one section that is taking a long time to get fully flush with the floor. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back I stopped at Freshco. I bought five bags of green grapes, a pack of blackberries, a pack of raspberries, some bananas, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, Miss Vickie's chips, a whole chicken, a bag of frozen shrimp, a jug of orange juice, a box of spoon size shredded wheat, Full City Dark coffee, and a jar of Basilica tomato sauce. 

            I notice the Mary Brown's chicken place in Parkdale that has had the "Coming Soon" sign up for two years now has a sign saying they are opening on September 27. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos at 17:30.

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:16. 

            I reviewed the videos of my performances of "Megaphor" from August 28 to 31. On August 28 and 31 I played the acoustic guitar. On August 28 the take at 1:15 was pretty good, with good light, but one chord might be slightly off. On August 31 the take at 2:00 was pretty good. My performances with the electric guitar on August 29 and 30 were both pretty good. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for my song "Megaphor" I watched and then cut out another eighteen minutes of Fritz Lang's silent film Spies. 

            I scanned five strips of my last sheet of negatives. Most of them are chemically damaged to the point of being abstract and also need a lot of cleaning before I can scan them. On some of them I dirtied two alcohol dipped cotton balls to clean one strip. There are two strips left and then I have to start scanning hundreds of slides. 

            I grilled four pork chops in the oven and steamed two on top of the stove. I had one grilled pork chop and a potato with gravy while watching the sixth season finale and the seventh season premiere of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story Steve has bid for a government crop dusting contract and he gets a telegram saying his bid has been accepted. But then he gets another telegram from William R. Blake, who he knew in the air force, and it tells him to hold off executing the contract until he gets there. Steve says they called him "by the book Blake" and he was always trying to limit Steve's progress. Steve decides to go ahead and start dusting the government field because his contract says if he's started the job they can't back out. Bill arrives and points out that Steve had a decimal point wrong and offered a bid of $200 instead of $2000. Fortunately Bill had drawn up another bid with the decimals in the right place. It turns out that being by the book made Bill always right. 

            Blake was played by Kenneth Washington who is the first and only black actor to appear on Petticoat Junction. So far all of these 60s sitcoms waited a few years in to ever show black people. Washington played Sgt. Baker on the final season of Hogan's Heroes. He played Officer Miller on Adam 12. His first movie was an uncredited part in The Birds and the Bees. His first TV appearance was on Daktari. He played engineer Watkins on the third season Star Trek episode "That Which Survives". 

            In the second story, with a second baby on the way, Betty Joe and Steve decide their cottage isn't big enough and so they are going to move back into the Shady Rest. But with the one year old Kathy Joe there, everyone is paying attention to her and pushing Dog away. Dog runs away, first to spend the night with Sam Drucker and then down the tracks make friends with a hobo. The hobo is about to catch a freight train south and invites Dog along but he decides to stay. (That part doesn't really make sense because one of the main premises of the show is that there is only one track and one train and they've both been isolated by the collapse of a railroad bridge that would have connected it to the rest of the line). Everyone is looking all over for Dog and when he finally comes home they treat him equally as well as they do Kathy Joe. They even have a crib for him and buy him a toy French poodle to play with.