David Tennant

            On Monday morning I searched for the chords for “Tout a été dit cent fois” (It’s Been Said a Hundred Times) but no one had posted them. I started working them out and got the intro and the first two chords. This shouldn’t take long since the song has just one verse. 

            I finished memorizing “Gloomy Sunday” by Serge Gainsbourg and searched for the chords but no one had posted them for the song as a work by Gainsbourg. But I realized while looking that the song “Gloomy Sunday” is based on a Hungarian song written in 1933 by Rezső Seress with the original lyrics making it an anti-war song. But two years later Hungarian poet László Jávor wrote his own lyrics to make it a song about suicide with a title that translated directly from Hungarian means “Sad Sunday”. Later an English version was written by Sam. M. Lewis that was made world famous by Billy Holiday. The song is also called “The Hungarian Suicide Song” because of its subject matter and because of the urban legend that it has caused many people, especially Hungarians to kill themselves. Gainsbourg wrote his French version but there is another French version called “Sombre Dimanche”. Anyway I found the chords for the Billy Holiday version and started transcribing them. I’ll find out later if they fit. 

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

            I weighed 86.3 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning in a week.

            After shaving, showering and tidying up there was no time to do any measuring for the checkerboard pattern I want to paint on the kitchen floor in front of the counter. So I just gave the Masonite that I’d glossed a wipe to prepare it for tackling the job on Tuesday. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on the way back to buy grapes. After a few months of lousy, soft grapes, they finally have some firm, tart ones that are quite enjoyable. I bought five bags. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos at 17:15.

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:06. 

            I compared the video of my September 1 song practice performance of “The Accordion” with that of August 22. I had to watch and listen a couple of times but I think September 1 has better light and it very slightly sounds better. I compared September 7 with September 1 and September 1 has better lighting and less traffic noise, so September 1 wins this round. I compared September 11 to September 1 we have a new winner. September 11 looks better and in it I’m more expressive. I compared September 13 to September 11 and September 11 has slightly better light and so September 11 will be the acoustic take of “The Accordion” that I’ll synchronize with the audio recording and upload to YouTube. Next I have seven acoustic takes of “L’accordion” to compare. 

            I searched some more for clips from silent films of women alone in cafés but nothing turned up. I settled on the scene with Greta Garbo in a restaurant in Ninotchka. I downloaded it, converted it to WMV and imported it to my “Angeline” video project. I’ll edit it down to the clip that I need tomorrow.

            I scanned another twenty four slides from the second of eight boxes. They are divided between shots of my daughter alone in a field of leaves and alone at Sunnyside Beach. There are eleven slides left in this box. 

            I had a potato with gravy and the last slice of pork loin while watching The Star Beast, the first of this season’s Doctor Who specials. In the previous episode the Doctor regenerated for the first time as one of his old incarnations, the one played by David Tennant. He tells the story of his former companion Donna Noble who took on the knowledge of a Time Lord, which would have killed her if he hadn’t wiped her memory. She goes on with her life but always feeling that there is something missing. Donna’s mother knows the Doctor and protects Donna by not revealing to her anything about her past life with him. Donna wins 200 million pounds in the lottery but gives it all away except enough to buy a house. She gets married and has a child who later comes out as transgender and changes her name to Rose. 

            At the beginning of this story the Doctor parks the Tardis and goes for a stroll in London. He sees someone overwhelmed by the number of packages she is carrying and goes to help. But when he sees it’s Donna he tries to escape but makes him stay to help. Then he meets Rose and they see a space ship crashing. The Doctor rushes to the site in a cab that happens to be driven by Donna’s husband Shaun. The ship has landed in a warehouse and the Doctor investigates while U.N.I.T. is doing the same. He meets wheelchair bound U.N.I.T. scientist Shirley Ann Bingham who recognizes him as the Doctor. U.N.I.T. forces open the ship only to be mind controlled by some energy within. Meanwhile an escape pod from the ship is found near Donna’s home. Rose is taking out the garbage when she discovers a cute and furry creature with big eyes who says it is The Meep. It tells Rose that there are hunters after it for its fur and so she hides it in her workshop shed. But Donna discovers the Meep and is freaking out. Then the Doctor arrives but avoids saying he is the Doctor. Donna’s mother Sylvia hits him in the face for coming there. The Meep tells them its story and then some large humanoid insect Wrarth warriors break in and are after the Meep. There is a fire fight in the streets between U.N.I.T. and the Wrarth warriors while the Doctor and Donna and her family escape in Shaun’s car. But before escaping the Doctor checks the body of one of the U.N.I.T. soldiers and finds it has merely been stunned. The doctor pulls into an underground parking garage pursued by the Wrarth and then suddenly he holds a trial and the Wrarth agree not to attack. We learn that the Wrarth are actually the good guys whose weapons are set on stun and the Meep is actually the monster. It is a cannibalistic war criminal driven mad by a psychedelic sun and they are trying to bring it to justice. The Meep pulls a weapon and kills the Wrarths and takes the Doctor and Donna and her family prisoner. It plans on blasting off in its spaceship which would destroy London. The Doctor and Donna and her family are rescued by Shirley whose wheelchair shoots weapons. The Doctor goes into the spaceship to try to stop it but Donna follows him. They are divided by a barrier in the control room and so the Doctor can’t reach all the switches he needs to stop the ship from blasting off. He is forced to give Donna back her memories. The first thing she feels is anger because the Doctor took her memories and she realizes that it was out of a subconscious urge to connect with the Doctor that she gave away the wealth that would have put her family on easy street. Together they stop the blast off and defeat the Meep. Donna does not die from getting her memories back because she passed some of the metacrisis through her DNA down to Rose who now also remembers everything her mother does. They both then simply release the metacrisis from their bodies and say they can do it because they are women and therefore have the ability to let things go unlike men. What the hell does that even mean? The Meep is arrested by the Wrarths but warns the Doctor that its boss will be very interested in him because he has two hearts. The Doctor persuades Donna to take one last trip in the Tardis. The Tardis is ridiculously larger now than before with ramps and levels that would only be logical if it had a large crew. It redesigned itself during this adventure and also installed a coffee machine. Donna accidentally spills coffee on the Tardis console and it begins to malfunction and goes somewhere in time and space that is out of the Doctor’s control. That is also ridiculous. Why would something as advanced and even sentient as the Tardis be that vulnerable to a coffee spill especially since it installed the machine itself right into its own console? 

            The tenth and fourteenth Doctor is played by David Tennant, who has been a Doctor Who fan since the age of four and was inspired because of it to become an actor so he could one day play the Doctor. His first professional acting job was on Scottish television at the age of 16. At the same time he became the youngest student to win a place in the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. His first starring role was in the TV series Takin Over the Asylum. He moved to London to star on the Shakespearean stage and to play lead roles in the two TV series Blackpool and Casanova. In 2005 his dream of playing The Doctor was fulfilled. He is the son in law of Peter Davison who also played the Doctor. He played R.D. Laing in Mad to be Normal. He plays Crowley in the series Good Omens. He starred in the series Staged. He played the villain Killgrave on Jessica Jones.