Les Brown Jr.

            On Monday morning I discovered that the chords for the third verse of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Street) by Boris Vian are not the same as those of the first and second verses. I worked them out for most of the first line. 

            I ran through singing and playing the 15th Century song “L'amour de moy” (The Love of My Life). I translated verses two to four and then I uploaded “L'amour de moi” by Serge Gainsbourg and “L'amour de moy” to Christian’s Translations. Tomorrow I’ll begin the editing process to prepare them for publication on the blog. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the third session of four. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I went to Freedom Mobile and paid for my November phone service. Then I went to the hardware store and bought a small can of primer, a tray-brush-roller kit, some small brushes and some painter tape.

            I weighed 85.9 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I wore a scarf for the first time this season. I wore my fall gloves but on the way back it got a lot colder and I could have used my winter gloves. When I got home it was too cold to go out on the deck and chisel black quartz. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos at 17:30, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening in thirteen days. 

            I got caught up on my journal at 18:24. In the Movie Maker project for “Le temps des yoyos (electric)” I isolated the song, added a fade to black effect, as well as the effect of cycling through the whole colour spectrum. It’s kind of a neat effect, plus it reflects the meaning of the song in that it’s about the changing of musical styles. I published it as a movie and tomorrow I’ll probably upload it to You Tube. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song Megaphor I continued moving small segments of the end to appear after one another at the beginning to make the clip go in reverse. I got past the point where the camera was lingering on all the dancers and now I’ve started to reverse the view from rolling back to zooming in. 

            I cut the colour negatives I shot of the Copa concert and put them in an envelope. I scanned two more strips of uncut colour negatives. The first looks like it might be mostly of the Corso Italia on St. Clair. The second set consists entirely of shots of the Caribana parade, probably in 1989.

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching season 2, episodes 18 and 19 of Green Acres. In the first story everybody is moving out of Hooterville Valley for Bleedwell because a rocket plant is opening up there. Oliver suggests they open a small plant in Hooterville to keep people there. The town council decides to reopen an airplane factory that was active during WWI. They decide to make Oliver president. It turns out that they had a contract to build planes for the US Army. They had a contract to build 32 planes and they only built 26 so they have six more to build. The contract was written in such a way that it is still valid until those planes are built even though the army no longer wants WWI planes. At the Pentagon, General Sloate receives a notification letter about the planes and can’t believe it. Meanwhile the Hooterville plant is in a barn. Alf and Ralph are constructing the fuselage using the plans for a model plane but blown up to life size. General Sloate asks Mr. Travis of the Attorney General’s office if the contract is valid and he says it is. Sloate decides to fly to Hooterville. The town has no airport and so he has to parachute in. Since Oliver is still in the air force reserve the general orders him back to active duty and tells him he has to be the test pilot for every plane that Hooterville builds. The day the first plane comes off the assembly line there is a ceremony and Lisa christens it with a champagne bottle, which causes the plane to fall apart. 

            A sergeant at the Pentagon was played by Les Brown Jr., who was the son of band leader Les Brown. He wrote and directed the 1997 video High Speed Police Pursuits. In 2001 he took his father’s place as the full time leader of The Band of Renown. He also hosted a national radio show. He was a rock musician and a producer who worked with Carlos Santana. He was a country music concert promoter for acts like Merle Haggard and Loretta Lynn. 

            In the second story Lisa is bored. Oliver helps her to become the chair of the Hooterville Human Humane Society. She begins to take this appointment seriously to an obsessive degree. She makes Oliver sit on the floor to read his paper because their dog Mignon is in the chair. She puts Newt Kiley out of the egg business because he’s stealing children from hens. She throws Roy Trendall’s shotgun in the lake so he can’t hunt ducks. She tells Sam he can’t use mouse traps. Oliver’s neighbours present him with a petition to run Lisa out of town. Oliver fixes the problem by buying a mink coat and telling Lisa he’s giving it to Doris Ziffel. He says he would have given it to her if she wasn’t the chair of the Human Humane Society. Lisa immediately resigns as chair so she can get the fur.

October 31, 1993: Tom Smarda and I practiced for our show while my daughter took a nap

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday afternoon Tom Smarda came over to practice accompanying me on guitar for my November 1 show at Crickets. We rehearsed while my daughter took a nap. That evening I took her back to her mother’s place.

J. Carrol Naish

            On Sunday morning I worked out the chords for the second verse of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Street) by Boris Vian. 

            I worked out the chords for “L'amour de moy” (The Love of My Life), the 15th Century song from which the melody for “L'amour de moi” by Serge Gainsbourg is taken, except that Gainsbourg only uses the melody for the first and third verses. I ran through singing and playing “L'amour de moi” in French and English. Tomorrow I’ll run through singing “L'amour de moy” in French and then I have to do a translation of verses two to four. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the second session of four. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I sanded the surface of the doors and drawers of my kitchen counter. The next thing I’ll do is buy some paint. 

            I weighed 86.2 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been at midday in ten days. I had Cheezit crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

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

            I spent about twenty minutes chiseling black quartz from a piece of the rock that I found six years ago. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos at 17:45. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:42. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my August 19 song practice I finally managed to synchronize the audio and the video. I was beginning to worry that I’d misdated the audio file. I saved the project as “Le temps des yoyos (electric) and started cutting out the part before that song. I might have that done tomorrow. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song Megaphor I continued to work on reversing part of the clip of the movie Ziegfeld Girl. But the parts that I took off the end to make them go in reverse at the beginning still don’t move because the camera is lingering. I calculated that after cutting eleven more bits off the end it will start to move in reverse. 

            I cleaned and scanned a strip of uncut colour negatives. These are all shots I took of a concert, I think at the Copa in Yorkville in the late 80s. Most of the shots are of a band I don’t recognize but the last frame looks like Gil Scott Heron. So maybe I shot the opening segment of Heron’s show. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episodes 16 and 17 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Sam, Fred and Newt need to find a livestock judge for the county fair. When Oliver walks in they appoint him but he misunderstands and thinks he’s being appointed as a judge in a legal court. He is honoured and accepts the appointment. He decides to go to New York to get some pointers from his old law professor Judge Crandall. While they are there Lisa buys him a robe, a gavel and British style judge’s wig. Meanwhile the original livestock judge tells Sam he never resigned and so Sam has to tell Oliver that his appointment has been changed to apple judge. But Oliver thinks that Lisa must have misunderstood and he assumes that when she says “apple” judge it is supposed to be “appeals” judge. He is disappointed when he finds out the truth but at the county fair he decides to own it. He puts on the robe and the wig before tasting the apples. 

            In the second story Oliver’s mother is suffering from exhaustion. Her doctor recommends two weeks of rest in the country and so Lisa brings her back to Hooterville. But there is lots of noise from the tractor, the phone, and the sound of Alf and Ralph working. Then suddenly a group of Sioux arrive and begin drumming and chanting. Chief Yellow Horse says they have a 99 year lease with the previous owner of the farm to come and do their bear dance ceremony every year. This demonstrates one of the many inconsistencies of this show. The Sioux are a midwestern nation but wherever Hooterville is it doesn’t seem to be in the Midwest since it never snows. Yellowhorse offers Oliver a goat and four pigs for his mother. Finally Oliver gets rid of the Sioux by feeding the chief Lisa’s hotcakes. Then a bear arrives and he gets rid of it the same way. 

            Yellowhorse was played by J. Carrol Naish, who quit school at the age of 14 to become a song plugger. Back in the days before recording music was sold in notation with the lyrics. The song plugger would sit at the piano in a department store and would play whatever song the customer was considering buying. He spent years in the merchant marine and learned eight languages as well as several dialects. He sang and danced in a musical comedy troupe in Paris. From 1930 on he became a character actor in Hollywood specializing in ethnic roles. He became so well known in this specialty that the New York Times called him a one man United Nations. Even though he was of Irish descent, Hollywood considered his complexion too dark to play Irishmen. He became the star of the hit radio sitcom Life with Luigi for six years. His first film was a small part in What Price Glory? In the movies he co-starred in Sahara, and A Medal for Benny, both of which earned him Oscar nominations. He co-starred in The House of Frankenstein. He starred in Sitting Bull, as the villain Dr. Daka in The Batman serials, and as Charlie Chan in The New Adventures of Charlie Chan.

October 30, 1993: Marie and I woke up and made love

Thirty years ago today 

            On Saturday morning Marie and I woke up and made love. She gave me a professionally photographed portrait of herself. She also gave me most of the food that was in her apartment because she would be leaving soon to winter in Florida. I took the groceries home and then went to pick up my daughter. I brought her to Tom Smarda’s place where he and I practiced for my November 1 show at Crickets. We rehearsed until my daughter fell asleep and then I took her home to bed.

Jack Bailey

            On Saturday morning I finished working out the chords for the first verse of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Street) by Boris Vian. I started on the second verse and it sounds like all the verses have the same chords. 

            I worked out the chords for “L'amour de moi” (The Love of My Life) by Serge Gainsbourg. Before I upload it to Christian’s Translations though I want to work out the chords for the second and fourth verses of “L'amour de moy”, the 15th Century song from which the melody for “L'amour de moi” is taken, except that Gainsbourg only uses the melody for the first and third verses. I won’t memorize “L'amour de moy” but I’ll work out the chords, translate it and upload it with the other song as a matter of interest on the blog post. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar for the first song practice session of four. 

            The heat came on for the first time in a week near the end of song practice. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I went to pay for my November phone plan but Freedom Mobile was closed. 

            I went to No Frills where I bought five bags of grapes, a kilo of strawberries, a pack of raspberries, a strawberry-rhubarb pie, Basilica tomato sauce, Miss Vickie’s chips, a jug of orange juice, and two containers of skyr. 

            I was unlocking the door of my building when someone called my name. It was Donna Bartkiw who I hadn’t seen in well over five years. She’s still teaching dance and movement. I put one of her performance pieces from 25 years ago on YouTube. She told me that at first she was embarrassed and was going to ask me to take it down but then some people told her it helped them. I met her mother more than ten years ago. Donna says her mother hates people but she loves me. She gave me her email and so when I got home I sent her the links to some of my YouTube videos. I recall though that we exchanged emails last time we ran into each other and she never returned a single communication. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos before lunch. I had Cheezit crackers and five-year-old cheddar with a glass of limeade. 

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

            I spent about twenty minutes chiseling black quartz from a piece of the rock that I found six years ago. 

            I weighed 84.8 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:11. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my August 19 song practice I worked on synchronizing the audio and the video. But the video always starts with "Megaphor" while the audio recording always begins earlier. So I always have to delete bits of the audio until they are lined up. However in this session there are a lot of takes of Megaphor and so it gets confusing which audio take is lining up with which video take. I had to jump ahead to “Le temps des yoyos” to see that the audio was still at least thirty seconds behind. I’ll probably have them synchronized on Sunday. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song "Megaphor" I continued to edit the clip from the movie Ziegfeld Girl. Yesterday by cutting sections from the end and placing them one after another at the beginning I was able to make the closing curtain look like it’s opening. The end shows all the dancers on the stairway after the camera had moved back. I continued to remove the end clips to follow the others at the beginning so it looks like the camera is zooming in. But in that particular part of the movie everything stands still for several seconds and so I didn’t get a reversal. I probably will tomorrow. 

            I cleaned and scanned another set of negatives. This one was mostly shots of Sunnyside Beach and of an art exhibit. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episodes 14 and 15 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Oliver wants a proper weather report so he can know when to plant his tomatoes. But the TV station only relies on a little mechanical weather house in which the woman comes out of one door with an umbrella if it is going to rain or the man comes out of another door without one if it is not. Oliver refuses to accept that it’s going to rain. But the singing weather man on the radio says there’ll be a drought. Oliver plants his tomatoes and there is frost and so he digs them all up and puts them in the house. Hank Kimball says the almanac predicted the frost but that it’ll be fair the next day. Oliver goes with that and replants his tomatoes. The next night there is another frost. Oliver uses Lisa’s hotcakes as smudge pots and saves his tomatoes. Lisa’s hot cakes are good for everything but eating. 

            The TV announcer was played by Jack Bailey, who started as a musician on vaudeville and was also a barker. He was the radio announcer for The Adventures of Ozzie an Harriet. He was the host of the game show Queen for a Day, which started on the radio and moved to television. On television it started as a local show and then went national. It was on TV for a total of sixteen years. He also hosted Truth or Consequences for two years. He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. One for radio and the other for television. 

            In the second story Lisa decides to bake bread. She buys several loaves of bread from the store and removes the bread from the plastic bags. Then she puts the dough in the bags to bake them so the bread will be already bagged when it’s done. Oliver suggests that Lisa take a cooking course at the local high school. Lisa enrolls at Hooterville High but finds she is required to take not just cooking but a full program. In Home Economics she is disruptive because she always has something to say from experience about marriage. In chemistry class she blows out a window. In history class she knows more about Hungary than the teacher. In driving class she goes through the wall of the gym. She is finally expelled.

October 29, 1993: I wrote a song called "Insisting on Angels" on my way to Marie's place

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday Yehudah didn’t show up to rehearse for my November 1 show at Crickets but Tom Smarda did. Later I went to Tom’s place where we practiced some more. I called Marie after 23:00 and she said to come over. On my way there I wrote a song called “Insisting on Angels”. We didn’t make love that night but talked and embraced. I sang her my song and she gave me an angel.

Elroy Schwartz

            On Friday morning I worked out the chords for the first verse of “L'amour de moi” (The Love of My Life) by Serge Gainsbourg. I’m not sure if the second verse has the same chords. I know it doesn’t start with the same one. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the second day of two. Tomorrow I’ll start a four session stretch of playing my Martin acoustic. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning in nine days. 

            Around midday I used No More Nails to glue the molding where the bottom of the kitchen counter meets the Masonite that I glued to the floor. I also glued the molding that I’d removed from the back of the stove so I could place the Masonite under it. Next I’m going to sand the veneer of the cabinets below the kitchen counter to get them ready for painting. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before lunch. I haven’t been that light at midday in ten days. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. It was a lot cooler in my apartment than it was outside so I overdressed and found I hadn’t needed to wear my motorcycle jacket at all. 

            I spent about fifteen minutes chiseling black quartz from a piece of the rock that I found six years ago. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:10. 

            I uploaded to YouTube the video of my August 11, acoustic performance of “Le temps des yoyos” and posted the links on Facebook and Twitter. I started a new Movie Maker project for my August 19 song practice from which I’ll make a video of my electric performance of the same song. I imported the two videos and the audio recording of that session. Tomorrow I’ll start synchronizing them. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song Megaphor I worked at the end of the timeline on editing the clip of Ziegfeld Girl that I’d downloaded. The curtain closes on the dancers in the clip but I cut small sections of the end off and placed each one in reverse order, causing the curtain to open instead. The opening of the curtain becomes slightly jerky in my altered version but I think that works for my video. 

            I cleaned, scanned and cut two sets of colour negatives. The first surprised me because it had shots of my ex-girlfriends Heidi and Victoria. I had no memory of ever having taken their pictures. This would have been early in 1990 just before my place was burglarized and my Nikon was stolen. I wouldn’t put it past Victoria to have been involved but I suspect it was my ex-girlfriend Whitefeather’s sons that did it. The other set of negatives are all street and people shots, I assume from the late 80s but I don’t know exactly when. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching season 2, episodes 12 and 13 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story one of Oliver and Lisa’s chickens is laying cubical eggs, but they don’t know which one. Also their toaster only goes down to start toasting when someone says out loud the number “five”. Then it comes back up again when that number is repeated. Oliver goes to Sam’s store where Fred and Newt are discussing that another farmer has a talking turkey. Oliver asks for a new toaster but learns that toasters that work when certain numbers are called are normal. Oliver wants to find out which hen is laying the cubical eggs and so he and Eb put them under surveillance in cages but nothing happens. Hank Kimbel puts him in touch with a Mr. Moody who has been trying to develop cube laying hens for years. Moody offers Oliver $1000 for all his chickens and he accepts. Lisa is very upset because she considered them her friends. Moody brings them back because none of them laid cubical eggs. The next morning Oliver gets up and tries to make toast by calling out “five” to the toaster but Lisa wants to know why he’s doing that. He goes to get eggs but none of them are cubes. He realizes he dreamed the whole story. 

            This story was co-written by Elroy Schwartz, who co-created with his brother Sherwood the short-lived sitcom Dusty’s Trail. He co-wrote the original pilot episode of Gilligan’s Island, which was lost and so that pilot never aired until it was rediscovered in 1992. He was one of the head writers for the series. He wrote for Groucho Marx, Bob Hope and Lucille Ball. He wrote episodes of The $64,000 Question, The Six Million Dollar Man, and It Takes a Thief. He was also a licensed hypnotherapist with an office in Palm Springs, California. He did past life regressions, and wrote several fiction and non-fiction books. He was also a painter. 

            The second story is a Christmas episode. Oliver has always dreamed of having an old fashioned Christmas with a real tree. This is his first Christmas since he moved to the farm and that’s what he plans to do. But he discovers that everybody in the Hooterville valley uses artificial trees. Mr. Haney tells him that there is a conservation law in that state that prohibits the cutting of trees. He has to get a permit from Hank Kimbel. Doris thinks that Oliver is right about real Christmas trees and she bugs Fred about it. The night that Oliver and Lisa decorate and light their tree the Ziffels, Hank Kimbel and Sam Drucker all come to see it. They only leave quickly when Lisa brings out the fruitcake that she made out of hotcake batter and with whole, unpeeled fruit in it like a whole pineapple and whole oranges. We don’t know where Hooterville is but it is too warm at Christmas for there to be snow.

October 28, 1993: I was a smash at the Live Poets Society reading

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I practiced with Tom Smarda for my November 1 show at Crickets. I worked in the evening at the Ontario College of Art and went from there to Mudds Cabaret. It was dead there and so Mary Milne drove me to the Live Poets Society open stage at the Café May on Roncesvalles. The core group consisted of expatriate Irish poets who had some interesting work. I read some of my poems and I was a smash!

Elon Packard

            On Thursday morning I worked out the chords for the intro and the first line and a half of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Street) by Boris Vian. 

            I continued to search for the chords for “L'amour de moi” (The Love of My Life) by Serge Gainsbourg and for the 15th Century song “L’amour de moy” from which he lifted the melody. But the only chords posted were the ones I found yesterday for “L’amour de moy” as sung by Nana Mouskouri. I started working them out and I hear entirely different chords than those posted. I finished the first line.

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the first day of two.

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            At 13:00 I met Brian Haddon in front of my place and we walked over to Mezzrows for lunch. But when we got there we learned that their kitchen doesn’t open until 15:00. So we walked west and when we got to Roncesvalles we decided to walk north. We walked almost to Howard Park before we found something interesting. We went into an Argentinian-Venezuelan restaurant called Bacan. Brian had the cachapa con queso (a folded corn pancake with cheese) and I had a steak with a fried egg on top and yuca fries. I wouldn’t have been able to tell that the yuca fries weren’t french fries if they hadn’t told me. We shared a pitcher of Great Lakes Lager because their Creemore tap wasn’t set up. Our waiter looked about sixteen but that may have been just appearance. I picked up the bill, which was almost $100. We were there for a couple of hours and might get together again at the end of November in his neighbourhood when I go up there to get a haircut. But he says there’s nothing good at Yonge and St. Clair anymore. I walked Brian to the Dundas West subway station and then walked home. 

            It was almost 17:00 when I got home and I still needed to go to the supermarket and so I rode to Freshco. The grapes were too soft again and so I got two bags of oranges. I also bought a pack of strawberries, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, three bags of milk, a box of spoon size shredded wheat, a jug of limeade, Full City Dark coffee, and some deodorant. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 18:00. 

            I had planned on just skipping my daily siesta because it was so late but I was exhausted and so I took a nap from 18:10 to 19:40. That meant I didn’t get to work on any projects today but if I had I would have been useless anyway. I’ll get back into the grind tomorrow. 

            I had a small potato with gravy and a chicken leg while watching season 2, episodes 10 and 11 of Green Acres. In the first story Oliver is invited to join the Hooterville Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Haney tries to sell him a Hooterville Chamber of Commerce belt buckle, tie clip and the Chamber nail file. Oliver refuses but it turns out that he’s not even allowed to speak or vote at the meetings without those items. The chamber votes to bring in money by having a Hollywood movie come to town. Oliver tells them it’s absurd but his comment doesn’t count. Later Oliver is complaining to Lisa about how nothing grows on his farm even though he has followed all of the directions on the pamphlets from the Department of Agriculture. He decides to write another angry letter to Washington. Then a Mr. Gibson of the department brings the letter to James Stewart of the same department. Stewart for a long time has been thinking of making a documentary about the hazards faced by city people who take up farming and fail due to inexperience. He thinks Oliver Douglas would be a good subject. But when James Stewart calls up Sam’s store talking about making a movie, Sam, Fred and Doris Ziffel, and Newt Kylie all think it’s the film star Jimmie Stewart coming to make a Hollywood movie. They are very disappointed when Stewart arrives. Stewart points out to Oliver a lot of his farming mistakes, such as that he shouldn’t have planted corn if corn had been planted there the year before. Also that he shouldn’t have planted his soybeans until six weeks after liming the soil. Back in Washington the movie taken of Oliver’s farm is so ridiculous that Stewart burns it. 

            In the second story Oliver is so frustrated with Ralph and Alf having worked on his bedroom for nine months without getting anything done that he fires them. Then he hires an architect from Pixley to design a new home for him. Contract workers are hired but they refuse to cross Ralph and Alf’s picket line. Finally Oliver agrees to rehire Ralph and Alf and give them raises. But then the workers refuse again because Mr. Haney has an injunction to stop renovations. He says that the old house is a historical landmark built by the founder of that great (unnamed) state, who is also Haney’s ancestor. So now they can’t fix up the place at all. Also during this episode Lisa demonstrates that she can get Eleonor the cow to milk herself. She just puts a cup under her udder and asks for a cup. She turns it on like a tap at will. She also asks for butter but we don’t find out if Eleonor can actually make that as well. This episode was co-written by Elon Packard, who also co-wrote the George Burns One Man Show, 33 episodes of Wendy and Me, and the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show. He wrote one episode of Good Times, one of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, one of The Red Skelton Show, four of The Phyllis Diller Show, one of The Wild Wild West, one of My Three Sons, two of The Joey Bishop Show, two of The Real McCoys, one of Leave it to Beaver, and seven of The George Gobel Show.

October 27, 1993: I worked nine hours at the Ontario College of Art

Thirty years ago today 

            On Wednesday I worked from 13:00 to 22:00 at the Ontario College of Art.

Moldings Were Made for the Masking of Mistakes

            On Wednesday morning I finished memorizing “L'amour de moi” (The Love of My Life) by Serge Gainsbourg. I searched for the chords but the title accompanied by the English word “chords” turned up nothing. They might turn up when I look for “accords” and I’ll do that but I thought I’d see if they are posted for “L'amour de moy” the 15th Century song on which Gainsbourg’s song is based. From that search Ultimate Guitar had a set of chords from Nana Mouskouri’s version. Hers only has three verses and an outro and it turns out that the second and third verses of “L'amour de moy” are structured differently from Gainsbourg’s song and have different chords. It appears that Gainsbourg only borrowed the melody of the first and third verses and applied it to all of his verses. I assume others besides Mouskouri have done the original song and so there might be more chords for that online. I’ll look for them tomorrow. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the second day of two. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before breakfast. 

            I cleared away some of the excess, dried construction glue that squeezed out from under the Masonite that I glued down a few days ago. I went to the hardware store to but a small tube of more construction glue to glue the molding down to cover the gap between the Masonite and the bottom of the kitchen counter. I noticed that No More Nails was on sale at almost half the price of the same size tube of construction glue. I asked one of the floor staff if No More Nails is just as good for just putting on a molding and she didn’t have a clear answer, so I asked someone else. He said that it should be fine, plus it doesn’t need more than a couple of hours of being held in place. I asked as well about floor paint and found that the colours are limited. I could get white but not black. If I put another black paint down with the white floor paint for a checkerboard pattern it wouldn’t have a matching shine. I think maybe I won’t use floor paint then. He suggested I should shellac after painting but I think that might discolour the white part of the checkerboard effect. I’ll ask when I buy the paint. Anyway here's a before and after of the space without and with the molding.

           

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before lunch. I had Cheezit crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

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

            I spent about half an hour chiseling quartz from a piece of the rock that I found six years ago. I knocked off the last of the amethyst and now there’s just the black quartz left. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:24. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my August 11 acoustic performance of the song “Le temps des yé-yé” I added a fade to black effect and tried a few other effects but for each try I had to close and restart Movie Maker. I tried various effects of making the video look like old film but that didn’t look good. I settled on turning to grey scale and that looked surprisingly good with the light that was coming in that day. I published it and then I selected a couple of images from the original video to later turn to grey scale as well and to use as thumbnails for the You Tube video. I’ll probably upload it to YouTube tomorrow. Then I’ll work on synchronizing the audio and video for the electric version I selected. 

            I downloaded a clip from Ziegfeld Girl starring Lana Turner that features women in elaborate costumes, including headdresses of stars, descending a spiral stairway in a Ziegfeld Follies style grand entrance. I converted it to WMV and imported it into the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song Megaphor. I edited out everything but the women. I’m going to try to reverse some of it as it ends with the camera moving back to show all of the women on the stairway and the curtain closing. I want the curtain to open and show all of the women and then pan in to show them closer. I only need about four seconds though so I have to cut a lot more out. 

            I cleaned and scanned another uncut set of colour negatives. There are shots of my daughter’s mother Nancy so I assume they are from early 1990. One reason is that I think my camera was stolen in early 1990. Another reason is that Nancy looks quite beautiful in the photos and so it must have been after I took her virginity because she got really quite attractive once she was getting fucked regularly. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episodes 8 and 9 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Eb falls for Betty Joe Bradley. Oliver asks why they never dated since they grew up together. Eb says she never asked him out. We never learn anything about Eb’s background. He acts as if Oliver and Lisa are his adopted parents. Eb wants Oliver to tell him about the birds and the bees. He tells Eb about first meeting Lisa and asking her out. But a few episodes ago we heard that they met during WWII when Oliver’s plane engine conked and he had to parachute into German occupied Hungary. In this story however they meet on a ship owned by her father that is crossing the Atlantic. He asks her for a date and they go to an expensive place where they get a horrible table near the kitchen and the waiter keeps thinking Oliver is ordering more champagne. He has to buy a candle for their table from the cigarette girl. Eb asks Betty out and she says yes. Oliver tells Eb not to let the girl decide where to go. Betty suggests a movie followed by a burger. When Eb says he’s not going to let her take advantage of him she calls it off. Oliver has to talk to Betty and smooth things over. The night of the date Oliver gives Eb some roses to give to Betty. But Eb comes home saying that the date was canceled because Betty had an allergic reaction to the roses. 

            In the second story Oliver has a different business suit for every farm chore. But Fred Ziffel, Newt Kylie and Mr. Haney discuss among themselves that it’s bad for Hooterville’s image for a farmer to dress that way. They say he needs to be made to conform. They decide to show him how ridiculous he looks by doing their farm chores in suits. Finally Oliver gives in and gets some overalls but then the farmers say he has to start wearing suits again because when their wives saw how good they looked in suits, they burned their overalls. Of course they’ll all be back in overalls next episode and this story will have been forgotten by the writers.

October 26, 1993: Spirit gave me shit for the erotic message I'd left on her machine

October 26, 1993

            On Tuesday afternoon I worked for sculpture at Central Technical School. Then from 19:00 to 22:00 I worked in room 352 at the Ontario College of Art for Chinkok Tan. I called Spirit and she gave me shit for the erotic message that I’d left on her answering machine. She said, “Don’t you ever leave a message like that on my answering machine again!” I think she was mainly upset because when she played the message on speaker there were other people in the room. Her reaction was hilarious but also unattractively prudish and it turned me off, so I never wanted to make love to her again.

Arnold Ziffel

            On Tuesday morning I memorized the third verse of “L'amour de moi” (The Whole of My Love) by Serge Gainsbourg. There’s just one verse left and I doubt if I’ll have any problem nailing down the whole song tomorrow. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first day of two. I weighed 85.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I researched the books of poetry published by Guernica Editions to get a handle on what to write in a cover letter if my manuscript isn’t accepted by Ekstasis. The only two books that I think my book Paranoiac Utopia would compliment are Downtown Flirt by Peter Jickling and Songs and Ballads by Frederico Garcia Lorca. Downtown Flirt is very urban and somewhat streetwise like my poetry and Lorca’s works echo mine in that they were meant to be sung or at least spoken. About Ekstasis, I had asked Albert Moritz if I should move on to the next publisher since they haven’t responded to me since I sent my manuscript to them more than four months ago. He had said that would probably be a good idea but that he’d email the publisher first. He found out that the publisher has been sick and fell behind by a year. He told Albert he would look for my manuscript. I think Guernica’s window for submissions is the month of February so I have some time to wait anyway.

            I thought about going to the hardware store to buy some molding for the space between the Masonite that I glued sown and the bottom of the kitchen counter cabinets. Then I realized that I already have some molding that I bought about twenty years ago. I measured the length that I need and cut it. I’ll need to buy a small tube of construction glue to secure the molding in place. Then I have to think about painting. 

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I spent about twenty minutes chiseling black quartz from a piece of the rock that I found six years ago. I finished that piece and started another one that still has some amethyst on it as well.

            I weighed 84.7 kilos at 17:30, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening in twenty eight days.

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:30. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my August 11 song practice I managed to synchronize the video and the audio. Then I saved it as a new project called “Le temps des yé-yé (acoustic)”. I deleted everything but that song. I set it so it has only the audio from my Audacity recording because the camera microphone picked up too much traffic noise. Tomorrow I’ll look into adding a fade to black effect at the end and maybe another effect. I might also have time to upload it to YouTube. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song Megaphor I eliminated just the right amount of the concert video of the instrumental so it ends with me beginning the last verse and it’s synchronized for my line, “Behind the tango between Venus and the planet Mars…”. But it goes out of synch for the next, “…twists a Ziegfield folly of a zillion stars”. At this point I want to replace the concert video with a clip from the Ziegfield follies, preferably with the dancers descending a stairway. I did a bit of a search and found a couple of Ziegfield Follies clips but not exactly what I’m looking for. I’ll try again tomorrow. If I don’t show a clip very few people will get the reference. 

            I cut a chicken into legs, breasts, wings and the spine and roasted it. I poured the drippings into the gravy that I made too thick yesterday. I had some with a leg and a potato while watching season 2, episodes 6 and 7 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Oliver gets a letter telling him he owes $12.03 for the State Farm Unattached Duty Tax. Nobody knows what the tax is for but they pay it anyway. Oliver however wants to know why his money is being taken so he calls up the state capital. He asks for the State Farm Unattached Duty Tax Bureau and is told they closed at noon and will be back in a year. They just run the names through the computer once a year to mail out the taxes. He wants to talk with his community’s assemblyman but nobody knows who he is. He learns that the last person to run for Assemblyman was Sam Drucker in 1922. Election day is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in September but the word got around that it was the first Monday after the first Tuesday and so everybody showed up to vote too late and no assemblyman was elected. Oliver says that since they don’t have an assemblyman they shouldn’t be paying taxes because taxation without representation is tyranny. Oliver and Lisa go to the state capital so he can talk to the governor but he can’t get an appointment for months. Lisa finds Oliver dictating to a stenographer a letter to the governor but she tells her to leave. Lisa calls the White House and talks to Lady Bird Johnson, then seconds later the phone rings and it’s the governor telling him he’ll see him right away. Oliver suggests to the governor that everybody in the Hooterville Valley should get a tax refund for all the money they’ve paid since 1922. They all get cheques and shout hooray for Oliver. But then the governor sends everybody in the valley a bill for all the work the state has done there for infrastructure such as bridges and roads. The bill amounts to more than half a million dollars per citizen so now they want to tar and feather Oliver. 

            In the second story Oliver is reading a book called “40 Years a Farmer” and tells the story to Lisa. Gus Thompson settles on land in Kansas and sends to Hungary for his childhood sweetheart Gladys. But Etta comes instead because Gladys is married in Hungary. So Gus marries Etta and they build a farm. She pulls the plough because Gus has no horse. When he almost has the money for a horse she insists on a new dress so he spends it. As the years go by they have seven kids and the farm prospers. But then they are wiped out by a flood. The children move away but Gus and Etta stay and have fifteen more kids. It ends with them old but together. Lisa says she still doesn’t want to be a farm wife. 

            Arnold Ziffel was played by several piglets over the six years of Green Acres. If they’d used the same pig it would have grown too big to be cute in a few months. Most of the time Arnold was played by a female pig. Arnold’s trainer, as for most of the animals on Green Acres, Petticoat Junction and The Beverly Hillbillies, was Frank Inn. Inn said that pigs require delicate psychology to accept training. If they are forced or reprimanded by a trainer a pig will refuse to even take food from them. Arnold received a lot of fan mail and also won an Emmy Award for best performance by an animal.

October 25, 1993: Tom Smarda and I planned to rehearse every day for the last week before my show

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday Nancy picked our daughter up from my place. I practiced with Tom Smarda for my November 1 show at Crickets. We planned on cramming in time for rehearsal all this last week leading up to our gig. I worked at Humber College in the evening and the instructor gave me a ride back to York Mills Station. I went from there to Crickets where I sang a couple of songs that I wouldn’t be doing in my show. Mary Milne drove me home.

Robert Foulk

            On Monday morning I searched for the chords for "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Street) by Boris Vian, but no one has posted them. I worked out the first chord for the intro. This song shouldn’t be hard to chord since there’s no chorus and no changes as far as I can tell from verse to verse. 

            I memorized the second verse of “L'amour de moi” (The Love of My Life) by Serge Gainsbourg. That’s half the song. I also made adjustments to my translation. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar for the final session of four. I had to tune it twice because it doesn’t seem to like the dryness now that the heat is on more often. 

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning in a week but far from as heavy as last Monday. 

            Last night I was too sleepy to finish my review of Green Acres and so I did it around midday. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on my way back. I bought four bags of black grapes. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:07. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my August 11, 2023 song practice I worked on synchronizing the video recording with the audio recording. They had been almost lined up yesterday and so I just removed small sections of the video to edge the two closer together. But then I noticed they were getting further apart and I remembered that yesterday I’d been removing the audio to synchronize them. So I returned to cutting the audio until I realized that part A of that song practice was missing from the timeline. I’d been trying to line the audio up with part B. I know they were both on the timeline yesterday but this time I somehow removed part A. So I inserted Part A of August 11 but they still weren’t lining up. Then I realized that I’d inserted Part A from August 11, 2022. So I removed that and inserted Part A of August 11, 2023. I removed all of the imported files from 2022 so I wouldn’t make that mistake again. I managed to get the two parts synchronized up to the point where they are just slightly out of synch and there’s an echo. I stopped there and I’ll decide tomorrow if I want an echo or not. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song Megaphor I continued to shorten the concert video of the instrumental because it’s longer than the one we recorded at Mike’s place. I got them almost lined up and quit for the day with the concert video only slightly behind. I’ll see if I can synchronize the concert video with the beginning of the last verse tomorrow. 

            I made a new batch of gravy from pork drippings I’d collected a few weeks ago but it turned out very thick. Tomorrow I’m roasting a whole chicken and so I’ll add some drippings from that to thin out the gravy. I had some of the thick gravy with a small potato and a chicken leg while watching season 2, episodes 4 and 5 of Green Acres.

            In the first story a farmer from the other side of the valley is coming to consult Oliver on a legal matter. Oliver puts on his business suit and goes to work in the field. He tells Lisa to send the farmer out to him when he arrives. But the farmer turns out to be a beautiful woman named Amy Collins. Lisa is immediately jealous and Amy doesn’t help matters when she asks her if she’s sick and tells her that her mother always wears a nightgown like hers when she’s sick. Amy finds Oliver in the field and he’s very impressed to learn that she has 1200 acres. He goes to her place to discuss her case and she gives him a tour of her impressive farm. She’s developed her own strain of corn. She cooks him dinner, pot roast, potatoes and biscuits with gravy and so Oliver comes home to Lisa quite late. She is very jealous. The next night Oliver invites Amy to their house for dinner. Lisa spends half the day learning statistics about farming from Hank Kimball and the second half learning how to make pot roast from Doris Ziffel. That night while Oliver and Amy discuss business Lisa feels more and more left out and drinks until she’s unconscious. The next day she is about to enter Sam’s store to buy aspirin when she hears Doris Ziffel inside telling someone about a man who is cheating on his wife and had the nerve to bring her home to dinner. He slipped a mickey in his wife’s drink. She hears that they have bought tickets to South America and are meeting at the bus depot to run away together. When Lisa confronts Oliver with this he doesn’t know what she is talking about. But then Doris comes to watch TV because hers is broken and she has to see her favourite show. The story she describes is exactly what Lisa heard her relate at Sam’s store. Oliver shows Lisa the show and she realizes her mistake. He reminds her that he doesn’t want anybody but her. 

            In the second story the Hooterville phone company wants to disconnect Oliver’s line because he hasn’t paid his bill in three months. He says he refuses to pay his bill as long as he has to climb a pole outside his house to make and receive calls. Meanwhile Ralph Monroe is upset because Hank Kimball keeps standing her up. She can’t work on finishing Oliver and Lisa’s bedroom because she’s crying all the time. Lisa wants to give her a makeover and it will take a few days and so Oliver has to sleep with Eb in the barn loft. It doesn’t work out well for Oliver because he injures his head on the roof and falls out of the loft and hurts his wrist. Chairman Trendall of the phone company comes to talk with Oliver and agrees to run a line into the house. Oliver asks Hank to dinner to get this problem with Ralph over with so he can sleep in his own bed again. Meanwhile Lisa tells Ralph that to catch Hank there needs to be competition. Just then Tom Blackwell arrives to put the line in for the phone but Lisa invites him to dinner. That night Tom and Hank meet a transformed Ralph with false eyelashes and makeup but one of her eyes keeps getting stuck. She does look better but they find her scary, especially when Lisa tells the men that they are in competition for marrying Ralph. Both men leave and Ralph cries but she gets over it. However, Tom runs away without connecting the phone. 

            Trendall was played by Robert Foulk, and he made a total of sixteen appearances as that character on Green Acres. He became interested in acting while studying architecture. He became a casting agent for Broadway productions and became friends with legendary producer George Abbott, who cast him in a string of Broadway hits. Bette Davis helped him get hired as a dialogue director at Warner Brothers. During the war he enlisted in the US Army and was assigned to a unit that made training films. His first Hollywood film as an actor was Road House in 1948. He appeared on three episodes of Tombstone Territory. Meanwhile he continued as an architect and designed houses in Hollywood. He played Sheriff Miller on the 1950s Lassie TV series. He was on thirteen episodes of The Loretta Young Show. He played Ed Davis on Father Knows Best.

October 24, 1993: I left a message on Spirit's machine that I could still taste her pussy on my mouth

Thirty years ago today 

            On Sunday I had my daughter all day and overnight, even though Nancy was supposed to pick her up. While she was sleeping I went out and called Spirit. She wasn’t home and so I left a message on her machine saying that I’d had the taste of her pussy on my mouth all day after the night we’d made love.

Ray Teal

            On Sunday morning I finished memorizing "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Street) by Boris Vian. It took me by surprise that I was able to nail down the final verse so easily. Tomorrow I’ll search for the chords. 

            I memorized the first verse of “L'amour de moi” (The Whole of My Love) by Serge Gainsbourg. It has a baroque melody so I was guessing Gainsbourg lifted it from Bach. But after writing this I looked it up and found that the melody is based on an old French folk song from the 15th Century called “L’amour de moy”:

L’amour de moy s’y est enclose 

Dedans un joli jardinet 

Où croît la rose et le muguet 

Et aussi fait la passerose 

Ce jardin est bel et plaisant 

Il est garni de toutes flours 

On y prend son ébattement 

Autant la nuit comme le jour 

Hélas ! Il n’est si douce chose 

Que de ce doux rossignolet 

Qui chante au soir, au matinet 

Quand il est las, il se repose 

Je la vis l’autre jour, cueillir 

La violette en un vert pré

La plus belle qu’oncques je vis 

Et la plus plaisante à mon gré 

Je la regardai une pose 

Elle était blanche comme lait 

Et douce comme un agnelet 

Et vermeillette comme rose 

            Gainsbourg’s first verse is pretty much the same as the original but then he takes it to a darker place about the love interest being a murdered sex worker. The original was found among one hundred and two other songs in the Bayeux Manuscript in the 16th Century. Apparently Gainsbourg wrote his version sometime between 1950 and 1952. I guess I’ll write an English version of this as well. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the third session of four. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before breakfast.

            I returned the two unused tubes of construction glue to the hardware store and got $21 and change back. But it hadn’t occurred to me that I wouldn’t be getting cash back and so I had to go home and get my debit card to complete the transaction. I should have realized that since I’d paid by debit I would get my refund that way as well.

            I started looking into Guernica editions to get an angle on what kind of cover letter I should write when I send them my manuscript. Albert Moritz said he went to their recent launch and a couple of works made him think that mine might be a good fit. I’ll have to ask him which ones. Their window for submissions seems to only be the month of February. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before lunch. I had Cheez-it crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I had to stop to pee at McDonalds at Yonge and College. 

            I spent about ten minutes chiseling black quartz from the rock that I found six years ago.

            I weighed 85.6 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:45. 

            I opened a Movie Maker project for the video and audio recordings of my August 11 song practice. I managed to almost synchronize the video and the audio. I should have that done tomorrow and then I’ll create a separate project for that date’s take of “Le temps des yé-yé”. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song Megaphor I removed the images of flying gods that I’d inserted and then just reinserted three of them: Anteros, Helios, and Mercury; this time more carefully fitting the beat of the line, “spirals endlessly inward to …” Then I synchronized the concert video with the studio audio for when I shout, “god in my head”. What follows is the instrumental, which is longer in the concert video, so after the camera pans from me to Brian on the keyboard, while it’s panning back to me I need to cut some of the video. I removed some of it but I need to take out more before I start singing the last verse. I might have that done tomorrow.

            I cut the strip of colour negatives that I scanned yesterday into strips of five, put them in an envelope, then labeled and filed them. I’m going to need some new envelopes soon. I pulled out another uncut strip but didn’t have time to clean it before dinner. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episodes 2 and 3 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Haney’s well is dry and he hires Willy the Witcher to find another one. He does locate one but the minute the water goes on at Haney’s place the water goes off at Oliver’s farm. Oliver hires Willy and digs another well but that causes the well to go dry at the Ziffel place. When Oliver loses his water again he calls a meeting and proposes they build a reservoir. Hank Kimball conducts a survey and finds that the best location for a reservoir in the valley is on Oliver’s farm. Obviously Oliver doesn’t want to sacrifice his farm for a reservoir so he comes up with an alternative. A pipeline is built from the reservoir in the nearby town of Pixley and a pump is set up to send the water through. But the day that the pump is switched on it blows out the power throughout the valley and so Hooterville returns to the old system of using Willy to find wells that compete with one another. 

            In the second story the Ziffels decide to take a second honeymoon and the Douglases agree to take care of Arnold the pig while they are gone. They bring his crib, his TV, and a list of dietary instructions but as soon as they leave Oliver throws all that out the window and tries to treat Arnold like a regular pig. He makes him sleep in the barn and Arnold cries very loudly. In the middle of the night there is a knock on the door. Oliver answers it and Arnold comes running in to sleep in his crib. The next day Arnold receives a letter from the draft board telling him to report for service. Oliver ignores the letter since Arnold is a pig but Mr. Grimes and Mr. Collins of the Selective Services Board don’t know that. They think they’ve finally gotten their first draft dodger and try to track Arnold down. They talk to Lisa and she says Arnold is a pig but they say they don’t care about his table manners and he still has to report. Oliver is amused and decides to take Arnold to the draft board to show them what a dumb mistake they made. But the desk sergeant thinks Oliver’s claim that Arnold is pig is an elaborate cover up for the real Arnold Ziffel. The FBI comes to investigate and warn Oliver that if he tells them one more time that the pig is Arnold Ziffel they’ll put him in jail. He does and they do. The Ziffels are called in Niagara Falls and although they just got there they head back to Hooterville. That problem is cleared up but then Ralph Monroe gets a draft notice too. Oliver takes Ralph to the draft board and the sergeant thinks she’s just a guy in a dress. He tells her to take off her clothes and she starts to do so but Oliver stops her. Ralph asks if she can be in the same outfit with her cousin. The sergeant asks, “What’s his name?” and she says, “Louise”. The sergeant thinks he’s going crazy. 

            Mr. Grimes was played by Ray Teal, who worked his way through college playing saxophone in local bands. He had his own band for ten years. He played Little John in a 1946 Robin Hood picture. He had a recurring role as a cop on the sitcom Where’s Raymond? He played Sheriff Roy Coffee on Bonanza.

October 23, 1993: My daughter had chicken pox

Thirty years ago today 

            On Saturday morning Spirit and I talked in bed. I was scheduled for a photo shoot and I’d planned on bringing my daughter but when I called her mother I found out she had chicken pox. Nancy said that she was going to bring her down later by car. Spirit drove me home after picking up Jake and said she might come by my place later. Nancy brought my daughter in the early afternoon. Later I found out that when we were both sleeping Jake knocked on my door while Spirit waited in her van to see if I was home, but we didn’t hear.

Oscar Beregi Jr.

            On Saturday morning I memorized the tenth verse of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Street) by Boris Vian. There is one verse left to learn. 

            I uploaded “Le moi et le je” by Serge Gainsbourg and my translation, “The I and the My” to Christian’s Translations, edited it and published it on the blog. Tomorrow I’ll start learning his song “L'amour de moi” (The Whole of My Love), which is the final song in the 1986 Gainsbourg file. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the second session of four. 

            I weighed 85.9 kilos before breakfast. I removed all the weights from the Masonite that I’d glued to the kitchen floor the day before. There’s some construction glue that squeezed out around the edges so I’ll have to clean that up. There’s a bit of space between the bottom of the kitchen cabinets below the counter and the Masonite. I can cover that by gluing down some molding. I plan to paint the Masonite in a black and white checkerboard pattern but I might as well paint the kitchen cabinets below the counter first to cover up that ugly fake wood veneer. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos before lunch. I had Cheez-it crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

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

            I spent about twenty minutes chiseling black quartz from a piece of the rock that I found six years ago. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:25. 

            I compared the September 3 song practice video of my electric performance of “Time of the Yo-Yo” with the one from August 14. September 3 looks just as good, plus there is very little traffic noise by comparison. So September 3 has nudged out yesterday’s winner. It’s too bad because I already have the August 14 song practice synchronized in Movie Maker. I compared September 5 to September 3 and September 5 has more traffic noise and doesn’t look and sound quite as good. I compared September 9 to September 3 and September 9 has really bad light, plus there’s a motorcycle idling at the end. So September 3 will be the electric version of my translation that I will upload to YouTube. 

            I compared my electric performances of “Le temps des yé-yé” on August 17 and August 19. On August 19 the guitar sounds better and there is less traffic noise. So August 19 will be the French version that I’ll upload to You Tube. So now I’ve selected the acoustic and electric performances of both the French and English versions of this song. I’ll start a project in Movie Maker on Sunday for my acoustic performance of “Le temps des yé-yé”. 

            I collected some images of flying gods and inserted them into the main video of my Megaphor Movie Maker project. I cut them according to the wave form but I think I need to remove them and cut them again so they fit the beat better. 

            I cut the negatives of Parkdale that I scanned on Friday into strips of five, put them in an envelope, then labeled and filed it. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce, a cut up beef burger, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the first season finale and the second season premiere of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Oliver’s nephew Charles is coming to visit. Oliver hasn’t seen him since he was a little boy but he arrives as a young man on a motorcycle and Oliver is appalled that he is a long haired Beatnik. He bunks with Eb in the barn, which is the first time we’ve seen where Eb sleeps. He has turned the hayloft into a pretty nice bedroom. Oliver expects Chuck to help out on the farm but he is a very bad influence on Eb and teaches him the fine art of goofing off. It turns out however that Chuck is useful for something as when he finds Oliver struggling with fixing his ancient tractor he not only fixes it but supes it up. When Oliver tries to drive the tractor it takes off like a shot and before he can stop it he is arrested for speeding. Later Mr. Haney’s truck breaks down in front of Oliver’s house and Chuck fixes it but in doing so he removes the engine from Oliver’s car. Oliver hops on Chuck’s motorcycle to get his engine back but the bike takes off and Oliver is arrested for speeding again. Chuck decides to leave and Oliver is glad to see him go but then he sees that Eb is wearing a wig like Chuck’s. 

            In the second story Eb discovers that Oliver’s corn crop is being devoured by bugs. Meanwhile Sam, Fred, and Newt elect Oliver to be the Grand Marshall in the Veterans Day parade. Lisa tells the story of how they met. In the flashback, he is flying his plane over Nazi occupied Hungary when his engine conks out and he radios to the base that he has to jump. The radio operator tells him that if he gets captured to ask to be taken to Stalag 13 and to look for a chap named Hogan. So it turns out that Green Acres is in the same universe as Hogan’s Heroes. His parachute gets caught in a tree and he is hanging helpless when he is found by Lisa and Janos, who are fighters in the Hungarian resistance. Lisa is a sergeant and the one in charge. At first she wants to shoot Oliver because he might be German but when he starts talking fresh she knows he’s from the US. Then they see a German tank and Lisa takes off her coat to reveal a sexy gown. The Germans poke their heads out of their tank and while they are doing so Janos lobs a grenade. Lisa says that was the sixth tank they’d blown up that day. The day before they got twelve because she was wearing a bikini. Anyway they fall for each other. In the present Hank Kimball informs them that the pest eating the crops is the bing bug. He says they could be saved by crop dusting if they had a pilot. Everybody elects Oliver but the only plane is a WWI plane owned by Haney. The plane loses control and Oliver has to jump, catching his parachute once again in the trees. But the crashing plane saves the valley because it lands in Oliver’s corn field and burns his whole crop, which was where the bing bug is contained at this stage. 

            Janos was played by Hungarian actor Oscar Beregi Jr., whose father was a famous Hungarian actor. They left Hungary together but the son couldn’t get into the States. He ran a restaurant in Chile for several years before he was able to get a Visa to enter the US. He worked as a salesman for a few years while he learned English and then finally was able to enter his father’s profession at the age of forty. He played mob boss Joe Kulak in The Untouchables. He starred in three episodes of The Twilight Zone. He was a successful breeder of white Komondor sheepdogs.