John Wheeler

            On Saturday morning I finished memorizing “Suck baby Suck” by Serge Gainsbourg and searched for the chords. I found a set on Ultimate Guitar and transcribed most of them. I’ll finish that on Sunday and look for more but I suspect that will be the only set. I’ll start working them out tomorrow. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the final session of four.

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning in eight days. 

            Around midday I went to Freedom Mobile and paid for my December plan. Then I went to Vina Pharmacy to pick up my Betaderm prescription. Then I rode down to No Frills where I bought four bags of grapes, two packs of raspberries, a strawberry-rhubarb pie, a bag of naan, a pack of garbage bags, salsa, a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips, a big box of President’s Choice West Coast Dark coffee (I prefer the Nabob Full City Dark that they have at Freshco but they were out on Thursday), and two containers of skyr. I looked again for Arm and Hammer toothpaste but I don’t think No Frills ever sold it. They were out of it again at Freshco on Thursday. But when I left the supermarket I went next door to Parkdale Pharmacy and they had it there. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos before lunch. I had Ritz crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I didn’t need long underwear this trip. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos at 17:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:09. 

            I reviewed the videos of my song practice performances of “The Accordion” and “L’accordion” from August 6 to 10. On August 6 and 10 I played “The Accordion” on my Martin acoustic guitar. On August 6 the take at 1:30 in Part B doesn’t sound bad and looks good. It’s already been synchronized with the audio recording in Movie Maker. On August 10 the take at 16:45 didn’t look or sound too bad and was the best English acoustic one so far. On August 7 I played “L’accordion” on my Kramer electric guitar and it sounded okay but the light was not great and the camera seemed out of focus. On August 9 I played it on the acoustic and the take at 16:45 was pretty good, looked good and was the best French version so far. On August 8 I played “The Accordion” on the electric and the take at 17:00 was the best English electric one so far but the light wasn’t great. 

            In my “Megaphor” video project I continued to edit the simulation of the formation of a spiral galaxy. For the part that goes from just three stars coming together until the multiple stars are just about to begin spiralling, I cut it down to about three seconds to correspond with my line, “beads on an invisible thread”. There are just under two minutes of the growing spiral left in the simulation. I divided that into three sections, each of which I’ll cut down to about one second each, except for the last one, which I’ll leave longer to cut more precisely once it’s inserted into the main video to correspond with my line, “spiralling endlessly inward”. Hopefully I’ll have that done tomorrow, then I’ll see how much I can synchronize of the concert video and the studio recording for the finale of the song. I want to get this done soon because when it’s finished I plan to reward myself with a haircut followed by lunch with Brian Haddon who plays synthesizer on the song. 

            I scanned five black and white negatives. They are all outdoor shots except for one that I took in a donut shop that used to be at the corner of Bloor and Lansdowne. It had a great counter that formed a semi-circle. Another shot is of the old house with the Indian head and other decorations on the outside. The house is north of Bloor and between Dundas and Indian Road. There are twenty more negatives and eight boxes of slides left to scan. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce, the rest of my Calabrese salami, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 4, episodes 24 and 25 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Eb finds an old trunk buried in the barn. When he opens it up with Oliver and Lisa there are very old stock certificates for a corset company inside, plus an old corset and a diary. The diary is by Lydia Plunkett who tells the story of how she started as a corset saleswoman. On a train on her way to begin her career she meets Harry Wright who says he is the best corset salesman in the country. Harry tries to sell Lydia a corset and she doesn’t tell him she’s also selling corsets. She asks him how he does his sales and he give her his itinerary for the next town while she makes notes. The next day everywhere that Harry goes someone representing Carstairs corsets has gotten the jump on him including with Mr. Dabney at the Uptown Emporium. Later he and Lydia meet at the train station and she asks about his schedule for the next town. Once again she beats him to the punch and this time he gets fired. Lydia is promoted to sales manager. She meets him a year later finds him advertizing bilious pills on the street. She accidentally gets him fired but they get married. She becomes president of the Carstairs Corset company and Harry becomes her embarrassed but paid house husband. But corset sales are dropping until Harry protests that women shouldn’t wear the pants in the family and suddenly it gives Lydia the idea to design, manufacture and sell women’s trousers and she once again becomes rich. But Harry is still unhappy, leaves a note and disappears. Lydia goes bankrupt and doesn’t find Harry for three years until she becomes an organ grinder with a monkey and finds Harry hawking vegetable peelers on the street. Harry, Lydia and the monkey lived happily ever after. Oliver and Lisa ask Sam Drucker if he’s ever heard of Harry and Lydia Wright and it turns out that all the things in the trunk were props from a play the Hooterville Players put on called Harry, Lydia and the Monkey. 

            Mr. Dabney was played by John Wheeler, who earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Music and became a singer with the City Centre Opera in New York. He performed at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels and also on Broadway. His debut acting role was as Gav, the very first Tellerite to appear on Star Trek. 

            In the second story Mr. Ziffel and Mr. Haney try to get Mr. Drucker to invest $500 along with each of theirs in Luke Needlinger’s machine that makes milk from hay without a cow. Sam refuses and so they approach Oliver. Oliver is sure it’s a hoax but he goes to see Luke. Luke’s machine produces something that looks and tastes like milk so Oliver thinks there must be a tank inside the machine that contains milk. But Luke opens it up and there is no tank. Oliver sends a sample to his former Harvard roommate who is now a chemist. He analyzes it and it does have basically the same chemical composition as milk, except that it also contains aquanitrichyperchloride, which is very expensive. Milk produced by Luke’s machine would have to cost $40 per litre. The chemical also causes temporary baldness and we see that Fred, Hank, and Haney have all gone bald. We see Lisa is wearing a cap to hide her head and the implication is that she has also gone bald.