Reed Hadley

            On Wednesday morning I uploaded "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" by Boris Vian to Christian’s Translations and began preparing it for publication on the blog. 

            I blog published “Bye Bye Samantha”, my translation of “Baille baille Samantha” by Serge Gainsbourg. I started working on memorizing his song “Suck baby suck”. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first session of four. It went out of tune quite often. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I washed, scrubbed and lightly sanded the outside of my bathroom door to get it ready to paint so I can use up the rest of my primer. I might have time to prime it on Thursday. Prime time. I also glued the upper left hand corner of the outside of the door back in place with No More Nails. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before lunch. I had Ritz crackers with tzatziki and a glass of limeade. Ritz and tzatz are not a great combo. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I wore an extra layer of shirt in addition to my long underwear and two pairs of socks and I was quite comfortable. 

            I weighed 84.8 kilos at 17:30, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening in eleven days. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:19. I compared the video of my August 26 song practice performance of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” with that of August 9. August 26 is not as good and has quite a few off chords. I compared August 27 to August 9 and it is almost as good but I’m just a little more engaging in better light on August 9. I compared August 28 to August 9 and August 28 is pretty good but not as good. I compared September 1 to August 9 and September 1 is not quite as good. There are three takes of the song left to compare before I determine which is the best. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Megaphor” I inserted the clips I made from the 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday into the main video to correspond with my line, “He always gets the last waltz no matter who brings you in”. I deleted the clip of Grazia and Death dancing and just kept the clip of her approaching Death in his cloaked form to be embraced and to disappear together. I shortened that by about half as well. Then I tried to synchronize the concert video with the studio audio for my line, “And all those stars are strung like beads on an invisible thread spiralling endlessly inward…”. But I couldn’t line them up and so I started looking online for clips that might fit that line. I bookmarked a few videos that show simulations of spiral galaxies being formed and I think that’s what I’m going to go with. I’ll download some or all of them tomorrow, convert them, import them and hopefully start editing them tomorrow. There’s only about a minute left to create video for in the song. 

            I made pizza on naan with Bolognese sauce, hot salami, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 4, episodes 18 and 19 of Green Acres.

            In the first story it’s the first day for Oliver and Brian in their law partnership. The phone has yet to be installed when they get there. Although Lisa supposedly went to secretarial school in Hungary she doesn’t know how to type and doesn’t even notice when the top half of the typewriter flies off. The man comes to install the phone. He also connects a buzzer system from her desk to each of Oliver and Brian’s desks. The buzzer system was Lisa’s idea and when she presses one of two buttons a loud a fire alarm rings at their desks. When Oliver tries to use the phone it goes dead. Brian suggests Oliver take the rest of the day off and says he’ll get the phone connected. The next day they return and it’s connected and Lisa’s alarms have been removed. Now all they can do is wait for a client but Lisa is bored. Oliver suggests that she go out to buy a magazine. She goes to Sam’s newspaper office and takes out an ad advertizing Oliver and Brian’s firm, not realizing it’s against the law for lawyers to advertize. The next day they have a few people come asking for their free gifts. Oliver kicks them out but then they get a call from the bar association which plans to bring them up on charges for unethical practices. At that time it was illegal for lawyers to advertize but that changed in the mid 70s. 

            In the second story the Hooterville Young People’s Agricultural Society is flying to Washington for the national convention but Oliver won’t let him go. Finally he gives in because Eb says the rest of the Hooterville chapter is going. But it turns out that the whole chapter consists of just Eb and Arnold the pig. Oliver and Lisa drive them to the Pixley airport. The flight is on Trans Pixley Airlines with an elderly flight attendant. The plane is not a jet and there are only benches rather than seats like on a paratroop carrier. The flight attendant refuses to allow the plane to take off as long as Arnold is on the plane. Eb goes to get Oliver and Lisa. Arnold has locked himself in the washroom and while Oliver is trying to get him out the plane takes off. When they get to Washington they learn that the convention was last week. Oliver and Lisa decide to stay for a week anyway. Oliver is shocked that outside of their hotel room window they can see the Eiffel Tower. 

            The pilot was played by Reed Hadley, who was the first actor to play Red Ryder on the radio. He also played Chad Remington on the radio series Frontier Town. He played the title character in the film serial Zorro’s Fighting Legion. He co-starred in the movie Big House USA. He starred in the TV series Racket Squad and Public Defender. He was the narrator of several Department of Defense films, of the documentary Nazi Plan, and of a few Hollywood films.

November 30, 1993: Nik Beat resented my getting along so well with Marjorie Robero

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday I had been waiting a long time for a cheque from Humber College that still hadn’t arrived. I was broke and so I just hung around my place all day. I did Angeline’s astrological chart and took it with me to Mudds Cabaret for the second night of my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage but she didn’t come. I got there at 21:25 and Mary Mine arrived at around 22:00 with a bunch of writers, including John Margerm. The open stage went really well. Marjorie Robero came with Nik Beat and it was the first time I realized they were a couple. I had an amicable chat with Marjorie and Nik seemed jealous and showed a lot of resentment towards me, while I was pretty nice to him. Marjorie invited me to a party. We finished at around 0:30 on Wednesday, then Mary drove me home and came in to chat.

Al Molinaro

            On Tuesday morning I ran through singing “She Was a Poor Child of the Road”, which is my translation of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" by Boris Vian. On Wednesday I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog. I also ran through singing and playing “Bye Bye Samantha”, which is my translation of “Baille baille Samantha” by Serge Gainsbourg. I uploaded it to Christian’s Translations and started preparing it for blog publication. I should have it posted tomorrow and then move on to his next song, “Suck baby Suck”. 

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

            I weighed 86.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I painted another coat of primer on the Masonite I’d glued down in front of the kitchen counter. I think it’s pretty white now but I have lots of primer left over. I think I’ll use it to paint the outside of the bathroom door which is stained from being next to the stove. I plan to prime the whole bathroom eventually but that will be a big production that I’m not currently prepared for. I’ll need a step ladder and I’ll need to do a lot of sanding before priming the bathroom, while the door is nearby and fairly simple. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. This time I wore my long underwear and an extra pair of socks. I think I need an extra shirt to be fully comfortable next time. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos at 17:30. 

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

            I compared the video of my August 15 song practice of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” to August 9. August 9 has better light and I’m a little more engaging and expressive. I compared August 16 to August 9 and I still think August 9 is a little better. I compared August 21 to August 9, August 21 has bad lighting and it’s not quite as good as August 9. There are seven more to compare. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Megaphor” I finished editing a copy of the 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday and cut it down to ten seconds. I only need about four seconds but I’ll insert it into the main video tomorrow and then shave off whatever doesn’t fit. 

            Through my scanner I finished viewing the rest of the educational slides that I found over thirty years ago. Two of the strips were on classical art and I scanned some of the images. The last three were on dinosaurs with nothing worth keeping. I threw all five strips in the garbage. I ran through the scanner the strip of negatives that I picked up yesterday from my last roll of film. Although they were all damaged there were some images on them. I scanned my last strip of six colour negatives. I scanned an individual black and white negative that was loose in the wooden cabinet. I opened my last envelope of black and white negatives but there was no time to scan them. There are thirty five negatives and eight boxes of slides left to scan. Then I need to buy an external hard drive. 

            I had a potato with gravy and the last striploin steak while watching season 4, episodes 16 and 17 of Green Acres. 

            The first story begins with a jewellery robbery in Chicago. To escape capture the thieves break into the Crickly Wickly cereal company and stash the jewels in a grain bin. Later Lisa buys six boxes of Crickly Wickly cereal. The next morning at breakfast Eb opens up a box and checks for the prize. He finds what he thinks is just a green glass bracelet but Lisa knows jewellery and says that it has emeralds. They open the rest of the boxes and find thousands of dollars worth of jewellery. Then Fred Ziffel comes with Arnold the pig wearing a diamond choker. Oliver still doesn’t believe they could be real but he takes them to an appraiser who tells him that all of the jewels together are worth $200,000. After Oliver leaves the jeweller calls the sheriff. The sheriff arrests Oliver and Lisa and neither he nor his deputy believe their story about finding the jewels in cereal boxes. While they are being questioned the two thieves walk in claiming to be Chicago police detectives. The sheriff believes them and they are about to retrieve the jewels when Arnold comes in and grabs the diamond choker. Then one of the crooks lets it slip that they stole it and they are arrested. 

            One of the crooks was played by Al Molinaro in his first TV appearance. At the age of 19 he became a union leader at a furniture spring factory. He became the special assistant to the Kenosha city manager. It was a promising career but he gave it up after a year to move to Hollywood. He became an animator, then a bill collector. He purchased his own collection agency which he kept throughout his acting career. His first movie was Love Me Madly which he didn’t realize at the time to be X rated by 1954 standards and he was embarrassed. He produced several shows for local stations. He shot hundreds of commercials. He was cast as Murray the cop on The Odd Couple. He took an improv class with Penny Marshal who was so impressed with his talent that she introduced him to her brother Gary, who offered him the role of the malt shop owner on a new show called Happy Days but he turned it down because he didn’t want to work with kids. But after a year he was offered the part again and he took it. He was on Happy Days for ten years and on Joanie Loves Chachi for one. He got Robin Williams the part in the episode “My Favourite Orkan” which turned into the spin off Mork and Mindy.

            In the second story a young lawyer named Brian Williams asks Oliver if he would like to become partners in a law firm. Oliver thinks about it and decides he’d love to be a small town lawyer like Abe Lincoln. They rent an office from Mr. Haney. Lisa gets herself hired as their secretary but she can only do shorthand in Hungarian.

November 29, 1993: Angeline said she didn't want to see me anymore. I told her to put up or shut up

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday morning Angeline left my place early. My daughter slept until noon and Nancy came to pick her up after that. I worked from 16:00 to 19:00 at the Ontario College of Art and then went up to Angeline’s place. The Crickets open stage wasn’t happening that night. Angeline told me she didn’t want to see me anymore. I told her to put up or shut up. She said she was going to bed and so I left. I learned later that she’d gone after me but I’d walked the other way to the subway. She showed up at my door later on and spent the night but we didn’t make love.

Ronald Long

            On Monday morning I finished working out the chords to “Baille baille Samantha” (Yawn Yawn Samantha) by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through singing and playing the song in French then I revised my translation of the final verse. Tomorrow I’ll run through it in English and then I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog.

            During song practice I played my Kramer electric guitar for the first of two sessions. 

            I weighed 86.5 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning in 42 days.

            Around midday I went over to Best Image to pick up the negatives that I had developed. It looks like they didn’t turn out at all. When I came in the owner was trying to do a passport photo of a Tibetan woman and he was trying to get her to let her hair down. She let it down and then tied it back again while he shook his head in frustration. Tibetan women rarely wear their hair down. I told him that I’ve had hundreds of rolls of film developed and I’ve also worked in photo finishing but he’s the first person who I’ve ever had ask me to pay in advance. He said he does it for everybody. 

            I didn’t have time to put another coat of primer on the Masonite in front of my kitchen counter but I put another row of painter’s tape around it and above it along the base of the counter. 

            I weighed 86.2 kilos before lunch. That’s the most I’ve weighed at midday in a month. 

            I took a siesta and slept almost a half an hour longer than usual so I was twenty minutes late starting my bike ride. I wore my lined Blondo boots instead of the Blundies. One zipper handle has broken off and so I had to use pliers to zip it up. I’d planned on wearing a second pair of socks but was in a hurry to get going. I think tomorrow I will and I’ll also wear my long underwear. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos at 17:30. 

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

            I reviewed the September 15 video of my song practice performance of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” on the Kramer electric guitar. The take at 14:00 wasn’t bad but there were some wrong chords at the end. 

            I compared my August 9 acoustic performance of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” to the one from August 11. There’s more traffic noise on the 11th. Otherwise they are close to equal, so I think I’ll go with August 9 in this round. There are ten more videos of the song with the acoustic guitar to compare and eight with the electric. 

            I imported a copy of the 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday into my “Megaphor” video project. I placed it at the end of the timeline and cut it down to about a minute and three quarters. I only need about four seconds and so I’ll edit it further tomorrow and perhaps insert it into the main video. 

            I ran three strips of the educational slides through my scanner. Two of them had images of classical art and I scanned some of those. One was part of the series of slides about China and I threw those in the garbage. There are five strips of the educational slides left. 

            I grilled two striploin steaks and had one with a potato and gravy while watching season 4, episodes 14 and 15 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Oliver decides to raise chicks and orders 1000 of them and a brooder from Sam. Sam has been watching a soap opera in which a character did the same thing as Oliver. He thinks Oliver should watch the next episode before making the purchase but he doesn’t agree. The chicks and the brooder arrive. Lisa names each of the 1000 chicks. That night the brooder breaks down and Lisa saves the chicks by putting them all in the bedroom under the electric blanket. Sam can’t get another brooder for a week and so Oliver calls the Columbia Broadcasting System to talk with the lady on the soap opera and find out what she is going to do next. 

            In the second story Lisa and Oliver have been arguing. She suggests they take vacations from each other. Oliver thinks it’s a great idea and so now she’s mad because she thinks he wants to get rid of her. They decide she’s going to spend two weeks in New York but she starts calling Oliver even while she’s on her way there. He never gets any rest because she’s constantly calling. She calls from her hotel room and doesn’t know what to do. He tells her to have dinner. She calls from the dining room to ask what to order and so he tells her while he’s standing on the top of the pole in a downpour. Then she decides to eat in her room. Since he can’t get any rest he finally decides to go to New York to meet her but when he gets there he finds she’s checked out and gone home. But when he gets home he finds she went back to New York to meet him. He calls the hotel in New York and is told she left for home. Then he gets a call from her in Miami because she got on the wrong plane. He tells her to check into a specific hotel and to wait for him. But his plane is hijacked and lands in Cuba. He calls and says to wait but when she looks at his picture it has a Castro beard. 

            The waiter in the dining room was played by Ronald Long, who acted in London in the 1930s, off Broadway in the 40s and on television in the 50s. His first film appearance was in Two Loves in 1961. He played Evans Baker on the soap opera Love of Life for four years. He appeared six times on Bewitched as six different characters. He played Admiral Zahrk on Lost in Space and Karnaby Katz on Batman. He appeared in a commercial for Sunsweet Pitted Prunes.

November 28, 1993: Dania gave my daughter a toboggan

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday my daughter and I went over to Danya’s place to pick up the toboggan she was giving us. It was in the driveway with a note attached inviting me to a party on December 10. Angeline came over later but since my daughter was staying overnight in my bed again, she slept on the couch. There was a full Moon.

Ketty Lester

           On Sunday morning I finished revising my translation of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Road) by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I’ll run through playing and singing it and then upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog. 

           I worked out the chords for all but the last verse of “Baille baille Samantha” (Yawn Yawn Samantha) by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have that finished on Monday and then I need to revise my translation of the final verse. 

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

            I weighed 85.9 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning in two weeks. 

            Around midday I put painter’s tape around the edges of the sheet of white Masonite that I’d glued to the kitchen floor in front of the counter. Then I painted the first coat of primer down. I don’t know what they put onto white Masonite to make it white but it’s pretty thin and even some of it wore off while I was carrying it home. It’s definitely whiter now but it will need at least another coat. If I have any primer left over I might as well use it on the outside of the bathroom door. 

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before lunch. I had Ritz crackers with the rest of the roasted red pepper dip and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride. It was misting a bit when I started out and it got a bit heavier once I got up to Bloor. It felt like it would soon start seriously raining by the time I got to Bathurst and so I headed south to Queen and then home. I made a good call because it started coming down much harder shortly after I got here. 

            I went out and bought a six-pack of Creemore. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos at 17:00.

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:49.

            I reviewed the song practice videos of my performances of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” from September 11 to 14. From September 11 to 13 I played my Martin acoustic guitar. On September 11 the take at 13:00 was pretty good except for one fumbled chord at the end. On September 12 the take at 9:30 was pretty good but there were some wrong chords at the end. On September 13 the last take in part A was pretty good until the end. On September 14 I played my Kramer electric guitar and the take at 14:00 was sort of okay. It didn’t finish too badly. 

            I finished watching the 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday. In the second half Death as Prince Sirki has begun his first day as a guest in Duke Lambert’s home. At breakfast the Baron reads newspaper reports of battles and accidents in which no one dies. Grazia has to leave with her mother and so Alda and Rhoda both compete for Sirki’s attentions. At a casino he never loses but he gives his winnings mostly to Alda and Rhoda. On his final night there is a dance. Rhoda makes a play for the prince but finds she’s not his type. Alda feels more intensely for him but he tells her to look into his eyes and see who he really is. She does and she is terrified and repulsed. In Death’s last two hours in this world Grazia returns. They dance and declare their love for each other. In the last few minutes the duke tells his guests that Sirki is really Death. They beg Death not to take Grazia and finally he agrees. He reveals himself to her in his dark cloaked form but she says she knew it all along and loves him anyway. She chooses to go with him and he declares that love is as strong as Death. It's a great movie and the ending will work perfectly for my “Megaphor” video project to fit with my line, “He always gets the last waltz no matter who brings you in”. 

            In my scanner I looked at eight strips of slides from among the several that I found many years ago. They all seem to be educational slides, with one set on the Soviet Union and another on China. There were no images worth keeping so I threw them all away. There are eight more strips of educational slides left. Then there are about seven colour negatives and a set of black and white. After that there are eight boxes of my own slides. 

            I made pizza on naan with Bolognese sauce, tzatziki, a cut up beef burger, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 4, episodes 12 and 13 of Green Acres. 

            The first story is similar to one that was written for Petticoat Junction. Oliver is pissed off that after a year of working on his bedroom the Monroe brothers haven’t gotten anything done. They confess that they don’t even have a permit for building his bedroom. He goes to get a permit and is told that while his land and barn are in Hooterville, his house is in Pixley. Now the town of Pixley says he owes $960 in back taxes and his house has been condemned for being below Pixley standards. On top of that his telephone, his power, and his water have been cut off because he was getting those from Hooterville and now he has to pick up his mail from Pixley. He has his farm resurveyed and it is found that they made a mistake. His house is in Hooterville after all but his barn is in Pixley and his farm is in Crabwell Corners. 

            In the second story Lisa’s birthday is approaching and when she says she misses horseback riding in New York, Oliver decides to get her a horse. When Haney finds this out he sells Lisa a talking horse who used to have his own TV show. The horse’s voice sounds like Rich Little’s impression of Jimmy Stewart. Oliver doesn’t want anything from Haney and tries to get his money back. Oliver talks to his mother on the phone from Paris and tells her he’s going to get Lisa a horse. She says she’ll get her a habit but Oliver tells her Lisa still has her old habit. The people listening on the party line misunderstand the word habit. Hank comes to find out what habit she has but when he arrives it’s just after Eb has cleaned out a big pile of empty bottles from when Haney owned the farm. Just then Lisa picks up an empty and breaks her shoe. Hank finds her on the ground with a bottle in her hand. Sam and Ralph try to stage an intervention about Lisa’s habit but she says she likes it. Just then Oliver enters in a state of shock after having heard the horse talk. Ralph says if she had a husband who talks to horses she’d drink too. 

            The operator who connected Oliver to his mother in Paris was played by Ketty Lester, who I think is the first black person to appear on Green Acres. She sang You Do Something To Me on You Bet Your Life. She was a singer for Cab Calloway and in 1962 was the opening act for The Everly Brothers. The same year she had a top five hit with the song Love Letters. She was nominated for a Grammy Award. She began acting and in the 70s gave up singing entirely to focus on her acting career. She won a Theatre World Award for her role in Cabin in the Sky. She was offered the lead role on the sitcom Julia but it went to Diahanne Carroll. She played Hester-Sue Terhune on Little House on the Prairie.

November 27, 1993: My daughter was surprised to find me at her mother's place when she got up in the morning

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday morning I woke up to the sound of my daughter running around and I called to her. She seemed surprised to find me at her mother’s place in the morning. Later I argued with Nancy about taking our daughter out because she thought she had a cold. I took her to work. I got a picture that someone made of me and someone gave my daughter some coloured pencils. We went back to my place.

James Cranna

            On Saturday morning I revised my translation of the eighth and ninth verses of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Road) by Boris Vian. There’s just one more verse for which to adjust my English adaptation. 

            I worked out the chords for the intro and for half of the first verse of “Baille baille Samantha” (Yawn Yawn Samantha) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I went to the Vina Pharmacy to get them to ask my doctor to renew my prescription for Betaderm. Then I went up the street to Better Image with a decades old roll of film that I found among my unscanned negatives and slides. The guy behind the counter warned me that the film will have been damaged by the rusted canister but I told him to do it anyway. I had to pay first but that might have been just for me. He does a shitload of business shooting passport photos for Tibetans and he told them they wouldn’t have to pay until they got their pictures. Maybe he thought that I wouldn’t pay if the negatives are damaged. It sounds like a shitty and inconsistent way of treating customers. 

            I went to No Frills where I bought four bags of grapes, a pack of blackberries, a pack of chicken legs, a hunk of cornmeal bacon, olive oil, two containers of skyr, a jug of orange juice, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips. I forgot to buy garbage bags but I still have one extra. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos before lunch. I had Ritz crackers with roasted red pepper dip and a glass of limeade. 

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

            I weighed 85.8 kilos at 17:30, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening in two weeks. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:15. 

            I reviewed the videos of my song practice performances of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” from September 7 to part of September 11. On September 7, 10, and 11 I played my Martin acoustic guitar. On September 7 the take at 13:30 wasn’t bad but there was traffic noise and not great light. On September 10 the take at 14:45 wasn’t bad and on September 11 I left off at the beginning of a new take at 13:00. On September 8 and 9 I played my Kramer electric guitar but on September 8 I didn’t video record a complete take because it got cut off when the battery went to sleep. On September 9 the take at 12:30 was a little off in places. 

            I watched the first half of the 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday. Duke Lambert and his family, along with the family of Grazia, his son’s intended, are travelling through mountain roads to his estate when their two cars are overtaken by a strange shadow. The Duke’s car hits a man and his horse cart but miraculously no one is hurt. They all feel they’ve had a brush with death. When they get to the estate Corrado continues to try to get Grazia to set a date for their marriage but she says she can’t get married to him until she finds a certain kind of personal happiness that she can’t put her finger on. She goes by herself in the garden but later she screams and faints. When she comes to she says she was touched by a shadow and it was cold. She goes to bed and so does everyone but the count who lingers in the dark for a while. Suddenly a black, cloaked, partly transparent figure steps out of the garden and addresses him. He explains that he is a vagabond of space, and he is the point between eternity and time. To put it simply he is Death. He says he wants to take a three day holiday from being Death and proposes that he stay as the count’s guest while doing so. He promises that no one will die while he is there. The count accepts his proposal and says that he has rooms already prepared for Prince Sirki. Death assures him that Sirki will not be coming, implying that he has already died. The count says that no one at the house besides him has ever seen Prince Sirki and so Death says he will come to stay then as Prince Sirki. Later that night he arrives as Sirki and the family is already up to greet him and they find him charming. He is about to go to his rooms when he sees Grazia on the stairs and it seems that they are both smitten with each other immediately. The next day all of the flowers that should not be blooming are in bloom, even though it is fall. So far I haven’t found anything to use from the film for my “Megaphor” video project but I suspect that there will be something at the end. I’ll probably finish the movie tomorrow. 

            I made four lean ground beef patties and grilled them in the oven. I had one on seven grain bread with chili sauce, Dijon, pickle slices, horseradish, roasted red pepper dip and a beer while watching season 4, episodes 10 and 11 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story preparations are underway for the hundredth anniversary of the founding of Hooterville. Joe Carson is in charge and a song about the founder Horas Hooter has been composed by Ralph the carpenter and Arnold the pig. Joe has sent invitations to all 52 governors of the United States in hopes that one will show up so they can serenade him. Sam declares no governor is going to come and it’s going to be a big bust like everything Joe plans. Joe responds by indignantly resigning and so they put Oliver in charge. He does research into the founding of Hooterville by Horas Hooter. He has the idea of putting on a play about the founding. Hooter came east from California to escape the gold rush with $800 to buy a farm. We see him, played by Oliver, arrive in a saloon and he meets a saloon girl named Doris, played by Lisa. She’s a card shark and almost wins all his money but she is arrested before she has a chance. But the sheriff gives Horus's money to the last person Doris ripped off. Doris decides to marry Horas and she wins him the money to buy his farm. The committee isn’t sure they like Oliver’s idea for a play but they say they have a long time to think about it because the centennial isn’t for another year. 

            In the second story Lisa doesn’t want to go out because it’s Tuesday the 12th which is very unlucky in Hungary. She says it will only counter the bad luck if Oliver wears his hat sideways. They go to pick up their mail and Lisa receives a letter containing a blue feather. She says it’s a Romani curse. She fills a green handbag with sauerkraut, cream cheese, egg whites, and chicken fat and has Oliver hang it outside the house to counteract the curse. But when Eb sees it he says that will put a curse on Hooterville and bring a month and a half drought. He plots with Hank on counteracting the hex. They fill a red handbag with jelly, bicarbonate and three hairs from a cow’s tail and hang it with the green handbag. Now Lisa thinks the curse on her is back again. Then two hippies knock on Oliver’s door asking for a handout. They are driving a horse drawn wagon similar to a Romani wagon. Oliver tells them he’ll give them $5 if they take away both handbags. He tells Lisa that the Romani lifted the curse and all she has to do is burn the blue feather so she does. The hippies hear on the radio that the blue feather was a promotion for Blue Feather nail polish. 

            One of the hippies was played by Chris Ross, who was a member of the improv group The Committee. He had a skit in which he would dress like an orthodox Jew and sing These Boots Are Made for Walkin in a Yiddish accent. He had another character called Danny D’Marko who was a lounge singer who would sing I Am the Walrus as a slow love song. The members of the Committee performed live and also did sketches on a short lived show called The Music Scene. He died of a heroin overdose in 1970. 

            The other hippy was played by James Cranna, who was also a member of The Committee. He went on to write and perform in advertizing and also to teaching improv. He did voice work for animated segments on Sesame Street such as the voice of Cyrus the Magpie. He did voices for The Ewok Adventure movie and the Ewoks TV series. He played a liquor store thief in American Graffiti and was a story editor for Lavern and Shirley. Some called him the Ferlinghetti of improv.

November 26, 1993: With her mother away Nancy made me take the garbage 1 km away so her mother couldn't find it

Thirty years ago today 

            On Friday I worked from 9:00 to 15:00 at West Toronto Secondary School. That night I had to go up to Nancy’s because she and our daughter were all alone. I got there at around 19:30 and we went walking about three kilometers into Markham to find a supermarket that was open. But before we left Nancy snuck garbage out of the house that her mother would have opened up and gone through if she’d been home. She made me carry some of it for a kilometer away from the house while at the same time I was carrying our daughter. She fell asleep in my arms before we got to Fortino’s. It was cold so we split a cab for the return trip and I put our daughter to bed. Then I watched TV while Nancy apathetically made something for me to eat. I watched Letterman and Conan and then went to bed.

Jimmy Bond

            On Friday morning I finished memorizing “Baille baille Samantha” (Yawn Yawn Samantha) by Serge Gainsbourg. I searched for the chords but no one has posted them and so I worked the first two out for the instrumental. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the last of four sessions. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I washed, scrubbed and scraped the sheet of Masonite that I’d glued down onto the kitchen floor in front of the counter to prepare it for priming. I’ll probably put down the first coat of primer on Sunday. 

            At 13:00 I went for lunch with my neighbour David. We stayed local this time and went to A Taste of India at Queen and Lansdowne. He had curried chicken with rice and I had the shrimp vindaloo in a roti with a bottle of Steam Whistle. I had another Steam Whistle and ordered more roti to sop up the sauce. It wasn’t bad. David says he wants to open an upscale coffee shop on his father’s land back in Ethiopia. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I think I’ll start wearing extra socks and long underwear soon. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:12. 

            I reviewed the videos of my song practice performances of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” from September 5 to 6. On September 5 I played my Kramer electric guitar and the take at 16:15 had a lot of wrong chords. On September 6 I played my Martin acoustic guitar and the take at 13:30 wasn’t bad but there was a lot of traffic noise. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio audio recording of my song “Megaphor” I finished adding the effect of spanning the colour spectrum to the last third of the sections of the video of the twirling Nadaraj 3D object. I then copied it and inserted it into the main video to correspond to my line, “Siva comes twirling cross the ballroom sky”. I only had to delete the last four sections. I then synchronized the concert video with the studio audio for my line, “to tap a nova on the shoulder time for death to cut in” but then it goes out of synch for, “He always gets the last waltz no matter who brings you in”. I started looking for video clips to correspond with that but found nothing on YouTube. I suspect though that the 1934 movie Death takes a Holiday might have what I’m looking for and so I downloaded it from Pirate Bay. It downloaded pretty quickly and so tomorrow I’ll look through it. I think I’ve seen the movie but don’t remember the imagery. 

            I cut and filed the strip of negatives that I’d scanned last night. I cleaned, scanned, cut and filed another set, mostly of outdoor shots and shots I took from a moving vehicle. The next two canisters I grabbed held strips of slides of a presentation of the 1972 novel Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack by M.E. Kerr. Later on it was made into a movie. It’s about an eating disorder and has nothing to do with shooting smack. Apparently Dinky just says she’s going to shoot smack to get her mother’s attention. The slides are just simple illustrations of the action and probably were accompanied by an audio recording. There was nothing worth keeping from it so I threw the slides away. I opened two more canisters containing more strips of slides. These were part of an educational series of slides on The Soviet Union with Part 1 being on “The Land” and Part 7 on the Cold War. These slides had photos but none were interesting enough to keep. There are twenty more strips in canisters and I suspect they are mostly also educational slides. I think I found the whole bunch in the garbage perhaps at a school. So there are a lot fewer negatives from shots I took myself than I thought there were. It won’t take long to go through those and start of the eight boxes of my own slides. Then I need to buy an external hard drive to back them up.

            I had a potato with gravy, two chicken wings and a spine while watching season 4, episodes 8 and 9 of Green Acres.

            In the first story it is old mail day at Sam Drucker’s post office. It’s the day that after cleaning up once a year Sam gives out all the mail that he finds got misplaced. Fred Ziffel receives a draft notice from 1917. Oliver gets a stock notice telling him he lost $300 because he didn’t respond to their previous letter, which Sam also gives him a year later. Oliver is now angry that the mail is not being delivered and so he writes to Washington. The result is that Sam’s post office status has changed and now he is required to spend all day delivering the mail by bicycle. Because of that he has to keep his store closed since he has no time to run it. Everybody is hungry and they want to tar and feather Oliver. He writes another letter but in doing so mentions that there are 28 families that depend on Sam’s post office. But the rules state that any community with less than 32 families does not warrant a post office, so now everybody has to get their mail in Pixley. 

            In the second story Hank Kimball learns that a county agent trainee named Terry Harper is coming to work with him. He thinks that Terry is going to take his job away until he finds out that Terry is a beautiful woman and then he doesn’t care. Everyone is smitten with Terry and Sam, Fred, Hank, Haney, and Eb all think they are taking her to the dance. She suggests they all go together but none of them wants to share and so she goes to the dance with Arnold the pig. 

            The bass player for the soundtrack of Green Acres was Jimmy Bond, who was well known in the world of jazz, rock, blues, and folk. He attended the Juilliard School and studied orchestration and composition. He played with Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Zappa, Randy Newman, Linda Ronstadt, Henry Mancini, Nina Simone, Tony Bennet, and B.B. King. He was a member of The Wrecking Crew group of studio musicians.

November 25, 1993: I blew everyone away with my poem "Phallus in Wonderland"

Thirty years ago today   

            On Thursday I worked at West Toronto Secondary School until 15:00 and went home for a while. That evening I went back downtown to pose at the Harold Uplis studio. Angeline didn’t show up. Then I went to Eric Britton’s show at his studio near Dundas West Station and had a couple of beers. It was a great show. Then I went to the Café May on Roncesvalles and blew everybody away with my poem “Phallus in Wonderland”. Then I read “Scat Has Nine Lives”: 

When I was a little bitty baby

they fed me cow's milk out of a dildo 

that was hollow with a nipple on the end 

It was a mother-father composite 

with a tit to suck and a cock to grip 

and so my mother's breasts failed to be my friend 

So when her milk dried up and parted 

I couldn't be broken hearted 

When you ain’t had none then you don't know how none feels 

Then for years her breasts were vacant 

till they were rented out by Satan 

and turned into cancer-terminals on wheels 

Then there was that other fake nipple 

although it gave nothing for all of my sucking 

but they plugged it in whenever I cried 

I guess they couldn't handle the purity

(Because there's nothing purer than a baby's scream) 

'cause soon all that scat wonder-jazz died 

Then while my vocal act was frozen

my young ears were left wide open 

and they poured in words until my head was full 

so that when they pulled the nipple-plug out

the words came tumbling out of my mouth 

and my crazy scat-jazz-riff turned to the blues

But Scat has nine sweet laughing lives 

It'll slide out from under piles of jive 

and rusting metal heaps of angular sound 

With a body made of crying, laughing and breathing 

it'll slither through where the language ain’t even 

and those cracks abound in every language around 

Then as soon as I could swallow 

their instructions grey and hollow 

they hooked me up to another instrument 

whose psycho electric machinery 

kept me spinning constantly 

and they called it 

reward and punishment 

            Angeline showed up at the end and later she read some great poems of her own. Afterwards we went up to The Range and split some chicken. We got on the subway and she got off at Yonge but came to my place later and we worked on a collage together.

Frederic Downs

           On Thursday morning I memorized the third verse of “Baille baille Samantha” (Yawn Yawn Samantha) by Serge Gainsbourg and revised my translation of that verse as well. 

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

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning in a week.

            Around midday I went over to the hardware store to inquire about paint for my floor. Since I couldn’t get both white and black floor paint I opted to get a glossy white and a glossy black latex. I asked if I should get shellac and the guy said it would dull any shine I was aiming for. He said gloss paint is more durable than matt. He also talked me into buying another can of primer because even though I’m painting white Masonite he said it would be more durable and the gloss paint would stick better on top of primer. The three cans cost me almost $100. I might prime it tomorrow but I’ll clean it first. The always sad looking cashier asked how I was and I said, “I’m okay, how are you”. She said, “I’m alive”. 

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on my way back. I bought five bags of black grapes, a pack of blueberries, a pack of raspberries, bananas, five-year-old cheddar, a kilo of lean ground beef, a jug of limeade, a jar of Basilica sauce, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s because she’s Canadian and never got married. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos at 17:30. 

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

            I reviewed the videos of my song practice performances of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” from September 2 to part of September 5. I played my Kramer electric guitar on all of those dates but on September 2 it didn’t get recorded. On September 3 the take at 18:15 wasn’t bad but the ending was a bit off. This session is already in Movie Maker. On September 4 the take at 16:45 wasn’t horrible. On September 5 I fumbled at the last minute and started another take. I’ll review the take at 16:15 tomorrow. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Megaphor” I continued cutting the rotating clip of the computer generated Nadaraj statue. I got it from ten seconds down to three. Then I used the effect of speeding up each segment and copied the whole rotation twice so in four seconds it almost makes three rotations. I think I could have done that without cutting it up now that I’m aware of what the speeding up effect does. Then I started adding the effect of having each segment span the colour spectrum so it looks more interesting than the brass coloured Shiva that was in the original video. I have about a third left to colour. 

            I scanned another set of colour negatives. Most of the shots are of concerts and I think they were free concerts I saw with my ex-girlfriend Brenda at Harbourfront. A couple of shots were of the twin Harper sisters, known as Syren, years before Lea Harper came to do a feature at my open stage. I never personally met Lynn but I think she died a few months ago. There are 25 full sets of negatives left to scan. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching season 4, episodes 6 and 7 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Lisa comes out and calls for Oliver while he’s fixing the tractor. It sounds like an emergency and so he rushes to come to her and has several accidents along the way. The problem is that the light has gone out in the refrigerator. Then she wants him to hang a picture. He shows her how to change the light bulb and then gives her a hammer and a nail and instructions on how to hammer it into the wall. She makes a large hole big enough to stick one’s head through. Oliver says that he wishes she were more handy and so she decides to get lessons on being handy from Ralph Monroe. But during her training she causes a lot of damage to Ralph and Alf’s home. They then take her on a job to fix Mr. Harrison’s roof. She ends up breaking his window and hammers a spike through the wall and into his coffee pot. She hands Oliver the hammer and Harrison thinks it was Oliver that did it and so he punches him in the nose. Later Lisa tries to show Oliver what she has learned by hammering a nail in the wall and the whole wall of their house falls down. 

            Mr. Harrison was played by Frederic Downs, who toured with Lotte Lenya in the Three Penny Opera. He was in the original cast of Fiorello on Broadway. He wrote the play Lincoln’s Scrapbook. 

            In the second story Eleonor is not giving any milk. Hank Kimball tells Oliver it’s because she needs to calf and so Oliver goes looking for a stud bull for her. They go to see Otis Cowan but Lisa doesn’t think that Eleonor likes his bull Dudley. Later Haney comes by with a ragged looking bull named Olé Sanchez. Eleonor seems to like him but Oliver doesn’t. The next morning they discover that Eleonor has broken out of the barn and run away. Haney says that Olé has also disappeared. Lisa concludes they have eloped.

November 24, 1993: A sculpture student thought the pose with me holding my penis was too goofy

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I worked in the sculpture department at the Ontario College of Art until 16:00. It was the beginning of a pose that would continue over a few sessions and so I tried out several poses so the students could vote on which one they liked the best. Most of the students liked one pose in which I was standing and dramatically holding my penis but one student found it too sexually aggressive but didn’t have the guts to admit it. She made an effort to save face by pretending to put herself above it and declaring that it was “too goofy”. I thought that every person with a penis in the room should have been insulted. I was pissed off for the rest of the day. After work I went for coffee and then I went to pose at Western Technical School. I worked until 21:30 and then got a ride to Woodbine and Queen. Angeline was there when I got home.

Skip Young

            On Wednesday morning I revised my translation of the seventh verse of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Road) by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the second verse of “Baille baille Samantha” (Yawn Yawn Samantha) by Serge Gainsbourg and revised my translation of the first two verses. 

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

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I rode to Rottblott’s on Adelaide between Bathurst and Spadina. Mikey at Home hardware had told me that they have peel and stick tiles. They had a few but only ones with a kind of a stone wall pattern and no solid black and white ones. That means I’m back to the other plan of painting the kitchen floor area in front of the counter in a checkerboard pattern to resemble tiles. I might go and buy the paint tomorrow and maybe some clear shellac if it doesn’t dry too yellow. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before lunch. I had Triscuits with roasted red pepper dip and a glass of limeade. 

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

            I weighed 85.3 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:08. 

            I reviewed the song practice videos of my performances of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” from August 31 to September 1. In both sessions I played my Martin acoustic guitar. On August 31 the take at 19:00 was pretty good but the beginning of the ending was off. On September 1 the take at 12:15 wasn’t bad but the ending was a little off. 

            I downloaded the YouTube video of the computer generated 3D object of a Nataraj statue turning 360 degrees. I converted it to WMV and imported it to the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio audio recording of my song “Megaphor”. I placed it at the end of the timeline and began cutting it down so the rotation happens more quickly. I got it down from 25 seconds to 10 seconds but I only need half that and so I’ll work on it tomorrow. This previously crashed project is still functioning normally. 

            I cleaned and scanned an uncut strip of colour negatives. These were mostly of the Picnic For South Africa that I went to with Heidi in Queen’s Park in the summer of 1990. If I was with Heidi it would have been 1990 but I think Apartheid was already over by then, so I don’t know. There are 26 full sets of negatives left to scan. 

            I made pizza on naan with Bolognese sauce, roasted red pepper dip, hot salami and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 4, episodes 4 and 5 of Green Acres.

            In the first story Eb gets engaged to Lorelei Appleby after meeting her a day before and borrows Oliver’s convertible to drive to her place so he can ask for her hand in marriage. Mr. Appleby is fixing his truck so he can take his cabbages to market, which are already starting to smell. Eb tries to help him and causes the engine to drop out. So he lends Mr. Appleby Oliver’s car but he forgot to put gas in it and it stalls on the way to market. So now Mr. Appleby can’t earn the $180 he needs for his mortgage payment. Eb says he’ll get the money and Mr. Appleby says if he does they can talk about him marrying Lorelei. Eb gets the money by pawning Oliver’s cow Eleonor. Mr. Appleby tells Eb that if he stays away from his house for six months he’ll let him ask permission to marry her again. 

            In the second story Oliver gets two flat tires because of the poorly maintained road that runs through the county. He finds out that the person in charge of the roads is the state district representative Ben Hanks. Oliver tries to go to a Ben Hanks meeting to complain about the roads but Ben doesn’t really have to do anything. He stays in office by buying votes with gifts and so he is extremely popular. Oliver tries to run against him and gets no support. In fact he gets booed whenever he says anything negative about Hanks. 

            Ben’s campaign worker was played by Skip Young, whose first film appearances were at the age of four. He served as a Photographer’s Mate (Now called Mass Communication Specialist) in the US Navy during the Korean Police Action. Ozzie Nelson saw him performing at Knott’s Berry Farm and hired him to play Wally Plumstead on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Plumstead was Skip’s real last name. In 1973 he moved to Apple Valley, California where he became a radio personality and a judge of beauty pageants and cook offs.

November 23, 1993: It was the first night of my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday morning Angeline left fairly early. I spent the day at home and was looking forward to that night because it was going to be the debut of the Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage that Mary Milne and I started at Mudds Cabaret. But I was disappointed that I couldn’t be there be there for the kick off because I had to work. I got picked up by Marco at the subway and he drove me to the Don Valley Art Club. His wife booked me to come there on Sunday to pose for photos that she could use as models for painting. Marco told me that if the computer that Spirit gave me is IBM compatible he could give me a word processing program. After the session Marco drove me straight to Mudds Cabaret where the turnout for the first night of the Orgy had been low. Mary was there with Diana Scala and only three people had read. Mary gave me a ride home and came in to chat.

John Van Dreelen

            On Tuesday morning I revised my translation of the seventh verse of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Road) by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the first verse of “Baille baille Samantha” (Yawn Yawn Samantha” but “Baille” is pronounced like “Bye” so he’s playing with a double meaning). 

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

            I weighed 85.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I had planned on going to Rottblott’s to shop for peel and stick tiles but it was raining pretty hard so I’ll go on Wednesday. 

            I checked the course enrollment site at U of T and found I’m down to number 3 on the waiting list for the Creative Writing course in January. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos before lunch. 

            It was still raining when I got up from my siesta but after about half an hour it eased off so I decided to give a bike ride a try. I rode as far as Bloor and Gladstone and then south. The northbound one-way streets of Gladstone north of Dundas didn’t used to have “Bicycles Excepted” signs and so I’d always avoided taking it south from Bloor until today. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos at 17:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:05. 

            I reviewed the song practice videos of my performances of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” from August 28 to 30. On August 28 I played my Martin acoustic guitar and the take at 7:00 was pretty good until the end, which was not horrible. On August 29 and 30 I played my Kramer electric. On August 29 the take at 15:15 was one of the best electric ones but not one of the best endings. On August 30 the take at 11:45 in Part B wasn’t bad, even the ending. 

            I continued my search for video clips that show an animation of Shiva Nataraj’s Tandava dance. I found a couple of things that might work but what I found yesterday might be better. I’ll download at least one of the clips tomorrow and see how it looks after editing. 

            I scanned two sets of colour negatives and one set of slides. The first set of negatives had shots of the Caribana parade, I assume from 1988, since I got back from Europe too late in 1987 for Caribana. There were some amazing costumes. The other set of negs had mostly street shots but there were some of my late friend Mike Copping’s child Noah. The slides were very dim and had mostly shots of my daughter around 1992. There are 27 full sets of negatives left to scan. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching season 4, episodes 2 and 3 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story there is a charity rummage sale approaching and Oliver and Lisa are going through their things to find something to donate. This story seems be an excuse for flashbacks because Lisa refuses to throw away any of her very large wardrobe of dresses and gowns and every dress evokes a memory and a story. One dress was the one she wore when she eloped with Oliver. A sweater is the one Oliver wore when he broke his leg falling from the ski lift during their honeymoon in Switzerland. The longest flashback comes from a dress she refuses to donate because it was the one she wore when they threw their housewarming party upon moving into their penthouse in New York. Mrs. Wilson is wearing the same dress and so Lisa changes. Then someone else is wearing the dress she changed to and so she changes again. Several workmen show up to do work on the apartment while the party is going on. The plumber’s wife comes wearing the same “designer” dress that Lisa and Mrs. Wilson were wearing except that she got hers from a discount store. In the end Lisa can’t donate anything and so they buy a rummage bundle that Haney is selling. 

            An old boyfriend of Lisa in the Switzerland flashback was played by John Van Dreelen, who escaped from a Nazi concentration camp in Holland by stealing a German soldier’s uniform from a cloak room. He played Captain Von Trapp in the first national tour of The Sound of Music. He was Richard Rodgers’s first choice to play the role in the movie. His first Hollywood film appearance was in A Time to Love and a Time to Die. He was the first Dutch actor to star on television in Shadow of a Man. He was fluent in several languages. 

            The temporary butler they hired for the party was played by Ronald Long. 

            In the second story there is a meeting of the volunteer fire department. Oliver says the department needs a major overhaul. They vote to fire Joe Carson but that wasn’t what Oliver wanted. Then they vote for Oliver as the new chief but that wasn’t what Oliver wanted either. Lisa thinks Oliver stabbed Joe in the back to get his job. Oliver decides to make everybody want to vote him out and so he goes around giving very strict inspections of people’s homes and businesses and issuing steep fines for infractions. His plan works and Joe is hired back.

November 22, 1993: I sang my Penis song and the song I wrote for Angeline

Thirty years ago today 

            On Monday I posed from 13:00 to 19:00 at the Ontario College of Art. After work I met Angeline at the Express. When I finished my coffee I went over to her place because she wanted me to be with her while she called her mother. She didn’t talk to her for long but she was very depressed afterwards. She asked me to go ahead to Crickets, so I did and she came an hour later. I didn’t get on the open stage until late. I sang the song I wrote for Angeline and my penis song: 

Angeline 

When I saw you in the café there

You seemed nervous and alone

Like a short circuit with your heart frayed bare

Until you stood to read your poem 

I felt fire I felt ice attack 

I felt the ripping of a hole 

Deep in my chest and even further back 

Toward that place they call a soul 

Oh Angeline

I feel I’m falling through your sadly spoken dream 

But since I can’t see the bottom with this tiny flashlight beam 

I’ll just resign myself to falling Angeline 

You weren’t quite what I was looking for 

Though I’d been looking hard and long 

But my machinery felt a search of power 

That night I listened to your song 

My skin felt all electrical 

My mind unraveled with the tape 

My heart then tumbled into a free fall 

That it’s reluctant to escape 

Oh Angeline

I feel I’m falling through the soundtrack of your dream 

But since I can’t see the bottom with this tiny flashlight beam 

I’ll just resign myself to falling Angeline  

You’ve problems heavy as a mountain range 

Yet you have joys that brush the skies 

I didn’t know how these two interfaced 

Until your paintings blessed my eyes 

You showed hopeful nights of restless prayer 

Restless days of hopeless sleep 

There was so much information there 

I hope my mind will always keep 

Oh Angeline

I feel I’m falling through your painful painted dream 

But since I can’t see the bottom with this tiny flashlight beam 

I’ll just resign myself to falling Angeline 

And since I can’t see the bottom I’ll resign myself to falling 

And since I can’t see the bottom I’ll resign myself to falling 

And since I can’t see the bottom I’ll resign myself to falling

Angeline 

Love Song 

I love my penis

I love it so 

I love to squeeze it love to please and make it grow 

but the church of my penis

needs a priestess 

don’t ya know oh oh oh oh 

I love my foreskin

every vein

I roll it back a sharpened wave fellates my brain 

But the tide of my foreskin 

needs a shoreline

to wash away 

Well the world’s not big enough for me and my cock 

We crave a quaking planet made of lava and rock 

where we’ll penetrate some crater till the comets come home 

to wrap their wide ellipse around my glistening dome 

Yeah the world’s gonna have to face 

my penis is the zenith of the human race 

I love my phallus 

I watch it rise 

to nail my lust into a cross-bound paradise 

But my wandering phallus 

Needs a palace 

To occupy 

            They went over pretty well. When we left Angeline came to my place.