Jean Blake Robin

            On Friday morning I memorized the second and third verses of “Suck baby suck” by Serge Gainsbourg. There are only two verses left but really only one of those verses has new lines. I might have the whole song nailed down on Saturday. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the third session of four. It went out of tune a lot during the first half. 

            I weighed 85.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I used the rest of the primer on the Masonite that I’d glued to the floor in front of the kitchen counter and I had enough to put a second coat on the outside of the bathroom door. The problem with painting a floor is that dirt appears where you’ve painted even as you’re painting. That never happens with a wall. On Sunday I’ll probably put down the first coat of white gloss but I think I should get a new tray, roller and brush first. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before lunch, which is the lightest I’ve been in two weeks. 

            In the afternoon when I got up from my siesta it was wet snowing but I got dressed and went out to attempt a bike ride anyway. I just went around the block. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos at 16:00. 

            I started working out a melody for Leonard Cohen’s “God is Alive”. Buffy Sainte Marie tried it in her 1969 album Illuminations but it’s not very good. It’s the only wrong thing that Buffy ever did. I think mine is better. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:24. 

            I reviewed the videos of my song practice performances of “L’accordion” and “The Accordion” from August 2 to August 6. On August 2 I played “L’accordion” on the Fibson and it wasn’t good. The camera battery went to sleep before the song was recorded anyway. On August 4 I played “The Accordion” on the Kramer electric guitar but the camera was tilted up too high and the Kramer didn’t sound that great. On August 5 I played “L’accordion” on the acoustic guitar and the take at 25:30 was the first not horrible one. So far this song sounds best on the acoustic. On August 6 I played “The Accordion” on the acoustic guitar but didn’t finish my review. I’ll start with the beginning of part B of the camera battery’s life tomorrow. 

            In my “Megaphor” video project in Movie Maker I further edited the simulation of spiral galaxy formation. I’ve got the parts that I want to correspond with my line “and all those stars are strung like beads”. Then I measured the distance on the timeline from “beads” to just before the stars start forming a spiral and I plan on cutting that down to fit my line “on an invisible thread”. Then I’ll cut the spiralling part to fit my line, “spiralling endlessly inward”. Hopefully I’ll have that done on Saturday. 

            I scanned ten black and white negatives, all outdoor shots with no people. Most of them are of those hydro poles that look like twelve armed crosses. There are twenty five negatives left to scan and then there are eight boxes of slides. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg while watching season 4, episodes 22 and 23 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Oliver and Lisa remember that they never saw their marriage license from when they got married by the mayor of Budapest because her mother grabbed it. They send for it and it turns out to be a license to practice dentistry. Lisa won’t let Oliver sleep in the bedroom until after they are married so they have a church wedding. Haney comes and tries to rent him an elderly flower girl named Kitty Joy. 

            Kitty was played by Viola Dolan who was born during the Russian Empire in what is now Latvia. She co-starred in the 1921 silent film Judge Her Not. 

            In the second story there is a dance coming up in Hooterville. Meanwhile Eb is trying to raise $20 for his girlfriend’s birthday present. He asks Oliver for an advance but he is told to use his ingenuity. He starts charging people money to rent Oliver and Lisa’s clothes and Oliver’s car without their permission. Lisa doesn’t mind at all and just lends her clothes to the women that come anyway. Lisa suggests that Eb babysit. On the night of the dance Oliver and Lisa are getting ready to leave when mothers start showing up at the door with their babies. Eb has arranged to babysit ten babies at $2 a baby. Oliver and Lisa decide they can’t go to the dance because they have to take care of the babies. Oliver plays guitar and sings to them. 

            One of the mothers was played by Jean Blake Robin, who was born in a two room shack to sharecroppers in Arkansas. Her parents moved to Chicago where she was involved in school theatre. She was selected by the Chicago Tribune as the city’s most beautiful teenager and that launched her modelling career. She was Miss Illinois in the Miss America pageant. On moving to Hollywood she appeared in the TV series The D.I. She appeared in the film This Earth is Mine. She played Darrin’s secretary Betty on Bewitched. She co-starred in the short lived TV series The Case of the Dangerous Robin. She produced and co-wrote a docudrama on medical marijuana.