Emory Parnell

            On Monday morning I memorized the third verse of “Le moi et le je” (The Me and the I) by Serge Gainsbourg. The last two verses are almost the same as the first and third verses but each has one small word change. I almost nailed down the whole song but missed the word at the end. I should have it done on Tuesday. 

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

            I weighed 87.2 kilos before breakfast. I think it’s been a long time since I’ve been that heavy in the morning. 

            I threw out the rest of the ham soup because I felt like I had a bit of food poisoning over the last couple of days. It might not have been the ham but maybe the vegetable broth I’d found that caused the problem. However I didn’t want to take any chances. 

            I used a box cutter blade to try to shorten the length of the Masonite that I want to glue down in the kitchen in front of the counter and under the stove. I was able to cut through about half the thickness but I need to put something under it so I won’t scratch the floor when I get through. Once it’s cut it should fit so it's to the right of the bathroom door frame and not slightly in front. 

            I weighed 86.3 kilos before lunch.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. They finally changed the position of the sewer grid in front of the Gladstone Hotel. The slits for years used to line up so that a cyclist could snag their front tire in the hole. Now it’s turned the other way. 

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

            I weighed 86.2 kilos at 17:30. 

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

            I reviewed the videos of my song practice performances of “Time of the Yo-Yo” and “Le temps des yé-yé” from September 5 to 10. I played “Time of the Yo-Yo” on September 5, 7, and 9. I played it on the electric guitar on September 5 and 9. On September 5 the take at 7:15 was pretty good and there was good light but a bit of traffic noise. On September 9 the take at 8:15 wasn’t bad and there was fairly little traffic noise till the end but there was bad light. On September 7 I played it on the acoustic but there was bad lighting, traffic noise and I didn’t play it very well. I played “Le temps des yé-yé” on September 6, 8, and 10. On September 6 and 10 I played it on the acoustic guitar. On September 6 the take at 11:45 was pretty good and the light was good but there was traffic noise. On September 10 the take at 9:30 wasn’t bad except for the lighting. On September 8 I played it on the electric and the take at 12:30 was okay but the guitar didn’t sound great, plus there was traffic noise and bad light. There are five sessions left to review and so I should have that done on Tuesday. I may even have time to start re-reviewing the takes that I highlighted. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song Megaphor I continued to edit my copy of the silent film Teddy at the Throttle. I deleted everything but the final four minutes when Gloria Swanson is tied to the railroad track. In the other silent film Race for a Life, Mabel Normand spends almost half the movie chained to the tracks. I should have that finished on Tuesday and then I’ll decide how much more I need to edit both films. 

            I scanned another uncut strip of colour negatives. These are mostly street shots but there are some shots of a truck driver I used to work with named Norm and of my Kenyan friend Ibrahim who I heard was murdered years ago. Because of those people in the strip I would estimate that these shots were taken around 1989. I cleaned another uncut strip, which I'll hopefully scan on Tuesday. 

            I had a potato with gravy and two pork ribs while watching season 1, episodes 22 and 23 of Green Acres.

            In the first story it has been six months since Oliver and Lisa Douglas moved from Manhattan to Green Acres. Lisa had promised to give it a try for six months and now it is her day to decide whether to go back to New York or to stay. She takes a few hours to think about it and then tells Oliver that she wants to return to the city. He is very upset but he made a promise and so they prepare to leave. Hank Kimble and Ralph Monroe both start crying. When Eb brings Eleonor the cow to say goodbye Lisa asks him what will happen to her. Eb says she’ll be slaughtered and made into pot roast. She asks what will happen to Alice the chicken and he says she will be fricasseed. Lisa doesn’t want the animals to die and so she tells Oliver that they have to stay and take care of them. 

            In the second story Oliver has been invited to give the keynote address to the annual meeting of the Harvard Alumni Legal Society in New York City. He begins by explaining how Arnold the pig has come to be one of the attendees. A few days before this Mr. Haney and Fred Ziffle had a dispute over a couch that Haney sold to Fred for $122. The couch immediately broke and so Fred refused to pay. Haney got a legal order for the sheriff to take Arnold from Fred. Fred refuses to let the sheriff in. The sheriff says he’s giving him one hour. Fred and Doris decide to go and see Oliver for legal advice. Oliver says they can appeal. Oliver tells Haney he’s advising Fred to file suit against him for fraud. Oliver tells Fred he has to turn Arnold over to the sheriff for now. Fred won’t say where Arnold is and the sheriff wants to enter the house to look for him. Oliver asks if he has a search warrant and the sheriff doesn’t know what that is. Arnold hides under Oliver’s house and Oliver gets stuck under there trying to get him out until the fire department comes and gets him out after soaking him with the hose because they think there’s a fire. In New York, Oliver and Lisa discover that Arnold has stowed away in a trunk and Lisa might have been in on it. They take Arnold to the dinner and it turns out that one of alumni has also brought their pig to the table and so Arnold has made a friend. 

            The sheriff was played by Emory Parnell, who started out as a concert violinist, then a performer on Vaudeville as a one man band playing the accordion, the snare, and the bass drum at the same time; then a booking agent; then a telegrapher. He spent eight months in the Arctic looking for gold. On the radio he was a member of the cast of The Grouch Club. He began played Billy Reed in the Ma and Pa Kettle movies and the bartender in the Lawman TV series. He started acting and narrating in Detroit industrial films at the age of 38. He became a member of Preston Sturges’s stock company of character actors. He played Hank Hawkins on The Life of Riley.