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.