Ralph Manza

            On Thursday morning I worked out the chords for the fourth and fifth verses of "Au bon vieux temps" (In the Good Old Days) by Boris Vian. They were easy because they have the same chords as the second and first verse. I'm pretty sure the sixth verse has the same chords as the third verse and so on. 

            I wasn't quite able to memorize the sixth and final verse of "Le Couteau dans le play" (The Knife in the Play) by Serge Gainsbourg. There's a good chance I'll have it nailed down on Friday. 

            I audio and video recorded song practice while playing my Martin acoustic guitar. I hit a lot of wrong chords on a few songs. I finished "Megaphor" in about three takes but took several for "Sixteen Tons of Dogma". It's amazing to me that I have played that song every day for maybe about five years and I still screw it up. In some ways it's clear that I play it better now than before but the mistakes are independent of any improvement. I also redid "L'accordion" a few times. The camera timed out while I was on the third take or so of "La jambe de bois". 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            I finished filling out my profile on the Research Portal. Then I read that I needed to fill out something called a Common CV. That seems to be on another government site. I registered but I only started filling out all the information for the CV before lunch. This is such a complicated process. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. On my way out I saw my second floor neighbour Shankar sitting on the bench and stopped to chat briefly. He told me he was moving out today. He said he heard from the landlord that at first two Indian students would be moving in but now it's a Chinese tenant. I mentioned that Raja has never rented to a white tenant in twenty five years. I gave Shankar my email, shook his hand and wished him luck. 

            I weighed 85 kilos at 18:00. 

            The landlord finally came to look at my plumbing. He said that I need to buy a filter for my drain. I said it's his drain and he should have provided it. I asked who else in the building has a filter. He said I need one because I put dirt down the drain. That's his ignorant accusation to pass the buck. There are other possibilities like for instance a rat having gotten stuck in the drain or plugged it with shit or whatever. He asked me to plunge it and it started to leak. He said he knows the problem and can fix it in two weeks. I protested having to wait but he just repeated that it's my fault. I said when the bathroom sink plugs I plunge it, it clears and doesn't leak because it has metal pipes. He just said plunging is for toilets and not for sinks. He is such an asshole. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:15. 

            I reviewed this morning's song practice video. The final take of "Megaphor" sounded pretty good, as did "Le temps des yéyé". "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" was fine until the end and then it was off on a couple of chords. On "L'accordion" I might not have held the B flat chord firmly enough at least once. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for my song "Sleep in the Snow" I synchronized the concert video with the studio audio for the line, "But it takes a pretty big charge to refrigerate a bed of...". But the "of" is extended in the concert video and so I cut out some of it, although not enough yet.

            I scanned a few more of the single black and white negatives and they were all images of diverse subjects. There was a damaged one with abstract shapes, one of my ex-girlfriend Brenda, a shot of a homeless person in front of a mural of three acrobats, and another of the self portraits of me attempting to be sexy. Most of the latter look pretty gross with me aroused but in this one I kind of do look sexy. In this one I'm not nude but just standing erect with my fly down. It's going to take a while to scan all these single frame negatives. 

            I had a potato with gravy and the other T-bone steak while watching season 5, episodes 14 and 15 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story Kate is issued a traffic ticket for jaywalking in Pixley. The town has installed one traffic light that is not supposed to be working after 14:00. The cop claims that he gave Kate the ticket at 13:55 but she says it was after 14:00 and challenges the ticket in court. Kate defends herself but has no real evidence to prove the time of her crossing. Joe and Floyd present a photograph of Joe and Floyd standing in front of the light while Floyd is displaying his watch. As Floyd is a railroad man he has a reputation for always having an accurate watch. But the judge points out that behind them is the clock tower on the town hall, which reads 13:45. Then Kate mentions that she was in the beauty parlour at 13:45 with the judge's wife when she was just starting to tell Kate about her grandchildren. The judge says that his wife would not talk for less than half an hour about their grandchildren and dismisses the case. 

            The proprietor of the beauty parlour was played by Ralph Manza, who began studying medicine before becoming an actor. He was serving as a medic during WWII when he was assigned to an acting troupe. After the war he took classes at Elizabeth Halloway's School of Acting. He was one of the original cast members of General Hospital but soon moved on to character work. He played Al Bonacorsi on the short lived TV series The D.A's Man. He played Hitler in the movie Blazing Saddles.

            In the second story Joe comes back from escorting Billie Joe to a singing gig out of town and reveals that he applied to join some kind of hotel union called the Master Plan. A very snooty guest arrives named Gaylord Martindale who complains about everything and refuses to dine with the Bradley family and the other guest Mrs. Pruit. He insists on eating alone in the dining room and so Mrs. Pruit happily joins the Bradley family at the kitchen table. Joe tries to cater to Martindale's every whim because he thinks he is a spy from the Master Plan and provides French formal service for Martindale's dinner with Bille Joe and Bobbie Joe dressed in French maid uniforms. The dinner is a disaster with the shish kebob burning out of control and Martindale getting sprayed with a fire extinguisher. Later the family and Mrs. Pruit have a singalong but when Martindale complains about that the family has had enough and Joe asks him to leave. Mrs. Pruit reveals that she's the spy for the Master Plan and she loves the hotel.