I played my Martin acoustic guitar for the first of two sessions.
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 and picked out the colour of paint I wanted for my kitchen counter. It’s called “Berry Patch”. The salesperson Mikey mixed it up for me and chatted. He remembered that I wanted to paint part of my kitchen floor in a checkerboard pattern in lieu of tiles but suggested that I check out a film set supply place called Rottblott’s. He said they have peel and stick vinyl tiles that would be more durable than paint and would only cost about $1.25 a tile. He says he knows about the place because he works in the film industry. I asked him if they sell other interesting things and he said it’s a dangerous place to shop because they have lots. Mikey complimented my motorcycle jacket and said he has one like it. Tomorrow I’ll probably paint the counter. Mikey doesn’t think I’ll need more than one coat since it’s already primed. So I might have some left over to do the ends of the counter and even the shelves.
I weighed 85.3 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown. I’d just started out on O’Hara when almost across the street from my place I saw a box with some dishes inside. I took a black plate, three dark green ones, one small crystal style plate and two martini glasses. I found that the construction that has constricted eastbound bike traffic along Bloor from Spadina to Avenue Road for the last few months is finally over and there’s a new bike lane divided off with concrete rather than posts. I stopped at Freshco on the way home where I bought five bags of grapes, two packs of raspberries, bananas, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a pack of hot Genoa salami, and Full City Dark coffee.
When I got home I realized that I’d forgotten to buy toilet paper and so I rode over to Vina Pharmacy to get some. When I got home I realized that I’d bought Sponge towels by mistake even though I already have some. I walked back and got the toilet paper.
I weighed 85.1 kilos at 18:15.
I was caught up on my journal at 19:30.
I returned to the Movie Maker project for my September 3 performance of “Time of the Yo-Yo” but it was still glitchy. It allowed me to split a section of the audio timeline but wouldn’t let me cut it. I had to save what I’d done, close down Movie Maker and open it again in order to cut the section but then it wouldn’t allow me to drag it to the beginning until I saved, shut down and returned. I was able only to do one thing at a time then keep shutting down and returning several times until I got the audio and video synchronized. But the song was still not isolated and so I had to cut more off the beginning which once again put the audio and video back out of line. This is going to take forever if it keeps behaving this way. I’m going to need to cut the video at the exact beginning I want and then since the audio always falls behind I’ll have to synchronize it. Synchronizing it in little bits will take too long. I spent extra time on this up until dinner and skipped working on the Movie Maker project for my song “Megaphor”.
I grilled ten chicken drumsticks and had two with a potato and gravy while watching season 3, episodes 8 and 9 of Green Acres.
In the first story Eb doesn’t wake Oliver up in the morning like he usually does. When Oliver goes looking for him in his room in the barn loft he finds a note announcing that he has eloped with an unknown girl. Eb sends his cousin Walter to replace him while he is away. But Walter is an out of work bartender from Stankwell Falls and knows nothing about farming. He worked at the Stankwell Falls Cocktail Lounge but it was closed down because it had a crooked claw machine. Oliver takes Walter to Sam’s store to get some farm work clothes. Walter recognizes Sam from Stankwell Falls where apparently he had a fling with Gladys the cocktail waitress. Hank Kimball comes in and Walter remembers Hank’s drink, which is scotch and goats milk with a slice of orange and two olives. When Oliver takes Walter to his corn field he tasks him with pulling up the weeds. But when Oliver returns he finds Walter has pulled up all the corn because he thought the corn stalks were the weeds. He tells Walter to drive the tractor but he ploughs up a tomato patch and drives the tractor into the Ziffel’s living room. Mr. Haney tries to sell him several items from the Stankwell Falls Cocktail Lounge including the bar, the claw machine, and Gladys the waitress. Haney mounts a neon sign reading “Cocktail Lounge” on Oliver’s porch. That night a couple sees the sign and comes in for a drink.
In the second story Oliver is complaining about the bills he receives for all of Lisa’s purchases. One of them is a bill from East River Van and Storage in New York. They’ve been getting a bill of $96 from them every year for three years but Lisa doesn’t remember what she put in storage there. There is still a hole in the roof from when Alf and Ralph ran the phone line into the house. Oliver tells them to fix the hole and they do but they disconnect his indoor phone. They say he can’t have the phone without the hole and so he has to use the phone at the top of the pole again when he calls the storage company. They won’t tell him what is being stored and so he tells them to ship it to him. An enormous crate arrives and inside is a giant sculpture made from pipes and chains. Lisa remembers when she sees it that it’s a sculpture by Stavinsky that she bought for Oliver as a birthday present. It wouldn’t fit onto their New York terrace and so she’d put it in storage. It’s a bird bath complete with cat scarer. It also hums in the wind and is a lie detector that sprays water in people’s faces when they don’t tell the truth. Hank Kimball recognizes it and says his sister has a Stavinsky that makes popcorn. Oliver wants to get rid of it and decides to donate it to the county museum. Mr. Bennett comes from the museum but tells Oliver that what he has is a fake Stavinsky. But then he looks at the graffiti reading “Karl Marx is a hothead” on the crate the sculpture was shipped in and says that it’s a genuine Dooley Higgins. Oliver tells him that he can have the Higgins as long as he takes the sculpture. But when the sculpture is gone Lisa feels bad that Oliver doesn’t have a birthday present and so three weeks later another gift arrives: a life size replica of the Eiffel Tower made entirely out of coat hangers.
Bennett was played by George Ives, who played Doc on the sitcom Mister Roberts. He played Douglas Aldrich on The Jim Backus Show. For twenty years he was the western regional director of Actors Equity. He married Faith Flagg the daughter of James Montgomery Flagg who created Uncle Sam and the original “I want you” US military recruitment poster.
After dinner I went back to the Movie Maker project for “Time of the Yo-Yo” and suddenly the program allowed me to split, cut and drag again without having to shut down. I cut the video up until the beginning of the final take of “Time of the Yo-Yo”. That put the audio a full song behind the video. Maybe I can get them synchronized tomorrow.
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