Howard Smith

            On Sunday morning I memorized the second verse of “Le moi et le je” (The Me and the I) by Serge Gainsbourg and made some adjustments to my translation. 

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

            I weighed 86.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            I mopped the area in front of the kitchen counter and under the stove. The water in the pale was already stone coloured just from that area but I also mopped most of the rest of the kitchen. I laid in place the Masonite that I’d had cut last week. I pried up a few sections of the base of the kitchen counter so the Masonite would slide in. The sheet is still a little long on the left end where it extends past the bathroom door frame. I’ll either try to cut it myself on Monday or Tuesday or I’ll ask David the renovator to use the electric saw again if he’s there over the next couple of days. 

            I weighed 86.3 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been at midday in a week. 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 thirteen minutes chiseling black quartz from a piece of the rock that I found six years ago. 

            I weighed 86.3 kilos at 17:30. That’s the most I’ve strained the scale in the evening in a week. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:52. 

            I reviewed the videos of my song practice performances of “Le temps des yé-yé” and “Time of the Yo-Yo” from August 31 to September 4. I played “Le temps des yé-yé” on August 1, September 2, and September 4. On August 31, I played it on the acoustic and the take at 5:00 was pretty good, with no traffic noise. On September 2 and 4, I played it on the electric. On September 2, I broke a string on the Kramer and had to play the Fibson. It didn’t sound good. On September 4 the take at 13:30 was pretty good but there was a lot of traffic noise. I played “Time of the Yo-Yo” on September 1 and 3. On September 1 I played it on the acoustic and the take at 7:30 was pretty good. On September 3 I played it on the electric and the take at 7:30 wasn’t bad. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song Megaphor I finished editing the copy of the silent film Race for a Life that I’d placed at the end of the timeline of the main video. I cut out all of the scenes that don’t show Mabel Normand being tied to the railroad track. I imported the silent film Teddy at the Throttle and started doing the same but so far there is no railroad track scene for Gloria Swanson. 

            I cut the strip of negatives that I scanned a few days ago into strips of five, put them in an envelope, then labeled and filed it. I cleaned another strip but didn't have time to scan it. 

            I had a bowl of the ham soup with a slice of toasted seven grain bread and a beer while watching season 1, episodes 20 and 21 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Oliver’s apples are ready to harvest. He learns that he can get $4 a bushel if he gets them to market early. But he also finds out that Fred Ziffle and Newt Kiley aren’t harvesting theirs until later because the Crabwell Corners farmers always rent all the trucks first. Because of that they only get $1.75 a bushel. Oliver is so sure he’ll get $4 a bushel that he agrees to buy Fred’s and Newt’s apples for $1.75 a bushel. But now Oliver has a hard time finding a truck. Eb hires a bunch of college students to pick Oliver’s apples and it happens that one of them has an old truck. I don’t know if Oliver buys or rents it but next we see him and Lisa driving in the truck to the state capital with the apples. It’s a fifteen hour drive and on the way they get a flat tire. The truck has a spare but it’s under all of the apples. Oliver unloads the apples and changes the tire and then continues on. An hour down the road a cop stops him to tell him he left his apples behind. He goes back for them and continues on but later the truck breaks down because the head gasket blows out. They walk to a diner so Oliver can call a mechanic. Lisa shows the chef how she makes hot cakes and the part she throws away looks like a head gasket so Oliver tries it and it works. The price for apples is now $1.75. 

            In the second story Ralph Monroe is sweet on Hank Kimble but he’s not interested in being with a woman named Ralph. Oliver agrees to defend her case to change her name in court but the judge tells him that since he’s New York lawyer he can’t practice in this state without passing a bar exam. He passes but by that time Ralph now has a boyfriend named Evelyn and doesn’t want to change her name. In Canada one doesn’t have to go before a judge to change one’s name. One fills out a form telling one’s reasons, pays about $145 and that’s it. 

            The judge was played by Howard Smith, who started as a concert singer and then sang and did comedy on the Vaudeville stage. His first film role was in the 1918 silent picture Young America. He acted in several popular radio shows. He played Sergeant Velie on The Adventures of Ellery Queen. He was in Orson Welles’s famous radio production of War of the Worlds. He played Will Brown on The Aldrich Family and reprised that role on television. He played Charlie in the original Broadway production of Death of a Salesman and reprised that role on film. He appeared on 27 episodes of the sitcom Hazel.