Larry D. Mann

            On Sunday morning I looked for a YouTube audio posting for “La tour de verre” (The Tower of Glass) by Boris Vian but there was none to be found. However for the next song on my Boris Vian list, “Tout a été dit cent fois” (It’s Been Said a Hundred Times) I found more than one. In one video a woman played it on piano but sang it very quickly without a microphone and so it was hard to follow. But I found a professional recording in which the person sings it very clearly. It’s an extremely short song of just seven lines and so I memorized it in a matter of minutes. My initial translation is: “It has been spoken many times / by better poets than I am / but when I put it into verse / it is so much fun / It is so much fun / It is so much fun / blowing you those farts / again”. 

            I almost memorized the final verse of “Gloomy Sunday” by Serge Gainsbourg and should have it nailed down on Monday. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the final session of four. 

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            I had planned on starting painting the black squares on the Masonite on my kitchen floor or at least starting to measure off the tape to make the lines I need to follow to paint the checkerboard pattern. But somehow the morning got away from me and so I only had time to go buy some more painters tape at the hardware store. I decided to try Frog Tape this time and I asked the cashier if this was a good tape for securing hostages if they are painters. She seemed to think it was funny. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been at midday in a week. I had a few triangles of roti with hummus and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 86 kilos at 17:15 and that’s the most I’ve squeezed out of the scale in the evening in two months. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:12. 

            I compared the video of my August 12 acoustic song practice performance of “The Accordion” with that of August 10. I play it a little better on August 12 but the light isn’t as good and there is louder traffic noise, so August 10 is still in front. I compared August 16 to August 10 and on August 16 I didn’t hit the B flat chord firmly enough and so August 10 continues to be the winner. I compared August 22 to August 10 and August 22 looks and sounds better so we have a new leader in the race. I compared August 26 to August 22 and August 26 is pretty much just as good in look and playing but there is more traffic noise and so I’ll keep August 22 as the front runner. I compared September 1 to August 22 but I couldn’t decide tonight. I need to listen to them both again tomorrow. 

            I continued searching for video clips of women alone in cafés from old movies. I’m just going to look at a few more but it looks like I’ll probably go with Greta Garbo in Ninotchka.

            I finished scanning the first of eight boxes of slides. They were mostly of my daughter around her second birthday but there were also a few of a cute art student of Asian descent. I started on the next box but only scanned one slide, which showed a woman in a studio with a very large high contrast charcoal portrait of me. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce, a cut up slice of pork loin and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 5, episodes 14 and 15 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Haney tells Oliver and Lisa the story of Calvin and Tessie Whittaker who were the original owners of the house that Oliver bought from Haney. Calvin and Tessie are newlyweds and Calvin wants to be a dairy farmer. He orders a cream separator from a catalogue but they get the order wrong and send him a magic lantern. It has one slide, which is of Abraham Lincoln but Calvin puts it in upside down and thinks that he has made an amazing discovery. He rents a butcher shop to use at night for a theatre and people come and pay to see Lincoln on his head until the slide breaks. But then he accidentally discovers that he can make shadow puppets with his hands and people pay to see that. He decides to take his act to Hollywood but the producer Sam Fogel is not impressed because they already have movies. However the producer makes Tessie a movie star until talking pictures come and no one can understand her accent. 

            Fogel was played by Canadian actor Larry D. Mann, who started out as a DJ for CHUM radio in Toronto in 1949. His first job on camera was having conversations with a puppet on the CBC children’s show Let’s See in 1953. He co-starred in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer doing the voice of Yukon Cornelias. He played Watkins in the 1967 film In the Heat of the Night. He starred in a Bell Canada series of television commercials called The Boss for ten years. He played Fred Rutherford in The New Leave it to Beaver. 

            In the second story Oliver’s friend Mort Warner comes to visit. He is a correspondent for a magazine and has just come back from covering the Vietnam War. His nerves are jittery from all the violence and so he needs a place to rest and relax. But all of the things that Oliver has barely gotten used to about life in the Hooterville Valley serve only to put Mort on edge. Lisa’s syrupy coffee, showering outdoors with no control over the water, Eb, Hank Kimball and Mr. Haney all drive him nuts. Oliver lends him his car to go for a relaxing drive but doesn’t tell Lisa. She reports it stolen and Mort is arrested by the local sheriff. Lisa tells him to let Mort go but the sheriff has lost the keys to the handcuffs. Mort gets on the next plane to return to the city where he can relax.