Tommy Roe

            On Wednesday morning in Christian’s Translations I blog published “She Was a Poor Child of the Road”, which is my translation of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I’ll post it on my Boris Vian Facebook page and my personal Facebook page. 

            I ran through singing and playing “Going Download”, which is my translation of “Suck baby suck” by Serge Gainsbourg. I uploaded it to Christian’s Translations and began preparing it for publication on my blog. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the second session of two. Tomorrow I’ll begin a four session stretch of playing my Kramer electric guitar. 

            I’ve been excited all morning about finally having finished my “Megaphor” video and I’m looking forward to publishing it and uploading it to YouTube. I’m hoping there will be no major adjustments when I also try to make a version of the same video with the drum track. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before breakfast. Around midday I painted another coat of white gloss on the Masonite that I’d glued to the kitchen floor in front of the counter. I’ve used up half the can and since I have no use for white gloss other than this project I might as well just keep painting more coats on the Masonite until the can is empty. 

            I published my "Megaphor (God in my head)" video and it looks good. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before lunch. I had the rest of my Ritz crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a can of ginger ale. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I was back in my long underwear for the first time in a few days. At the corner of Yonge and College an old man was playing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” on the erhu and it sounded pretty good. 

            I weighed 84.1 kilos at 17:30, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening in seventy days. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:08. 

            I reviewed the videos of my song practice performances of “The Accordion” and “L’accordion” from August 28 to September 2. On August 28 and September 1 I played “The Accordion” on my Martin acoustic guitar. On August 28 I didn’t always hit the B-flat chord and had my bar finger between the B-flat and the B. On September 1 the take at 18:00 was pretty good. On August 29 and September 2 I played “L’accordion” on my Kramer electric guitar. On August 29 the take at 21:30 was okay. On September 2 nothing past “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” got recorded. On August 30 I played “The Accordion” on the Kramer but the camera battery went to sleep 30 seconds into this song in Part B. On August 31 I played “L’accordion” on the Martin and the take at 0:30 in Part B wasn’t bad. 

            In Movie Maker I copied my “Megaphor (God in my head)” video project and named the copy “Megaphor (God in my head with drums)”. I deleted the audio timeline, except for the part at the end that comes from the concert video, and replaced it with the studio audio track with the overdub of me playing the drums. That track begins slightly sooner but I compared it with the old project and then moved the whole audio timeline a split second later and that lined it up so it wasn’t skewed with the video. The end is more than a second longer and I deleted some of it but I couldn’t paste the audio from the concert video in exactly the same place as the other project without abruptly cutting off the distortion hum at the end and so I just added it slightly later. The drumless project has the applause and Michelle calling out “That was great!” while my face can still be seen but in this case the video goes black just before that audio part, but it works fine that way. I published “Megaphor (God in my head with drums)” then I uploaded both my published videos to YouTube and posted them on Twitter and Facebook. I sent links to both videos to Brian Haddon who can be seen playing keyboard on them and asked about getting together in his neighbourhood of Yonge and St. Clair next week when I go up there to get a haircut. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce, a cut up beef burger, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 5, episodes 6 and 7 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story there is a very dusty road that goes past Sam Drucker’s store in Hooterville, Fred Ziffel’s farm and the Douglas farm. But that doesn’t fit with the transportation infrastructure of the way the Hooterville valley is set up in Petticoat Junction. Sam’s store is in downtown Hooterville and that’s where the paved road meets the train track. Also on Petticoat Junction there is no road going by Fred’s farm as his only transportation is by way of that single train track. The Douglas place came in later and must be accessible by way of the road that goes the long way around to Pixley since Oliver has almost always travelled to Hooterville by car. Anyway, in this story there is a road and it’s suddenly a very dusty one that is presented as having always been very dusty. Oliver wants to get the road paved and he learns that the citizens of the valley appropriated the money to pave the road thirty years ago but it was never paved. Oliver wants to complain to the county but Fred doesn’t want him to because whenever he complains to government officials about something in Hooterville it causes things to get worse. But Oliver goes to the county office only to find out it has been moved, so he goes to the state senator and tells him about the problem. He is given the impression that the road will be paved but soon learns that they want to tear down Fred’s house to straighten the road. Mr. Haney tells Oliver to mention his cousin Big Joe Haney who runs a hot dog stand at the state capital when he goes back there to complain to the senator. Oliver has no intention of mentioning Joe but when the senator says there is nothing he can do, Lisa mentions Big Joe and suddenly the senator says, “Why didn’t you say so?” and Fred’s farm is saved. But in the end the state wants to charge each farm several $ million to pave the road and so everyone wants to tar and feather Oliver. There was a similar ending to another story in the previous season. 

            In the second story Eb’s childhood friend Tadpole Talbot comes to visit in his big mobile home. He is now a successful rock star. He hires Eb to plug his songs for him when he goes on tour and so Eb goes away. But he finally returns since plugging Tad’s songs meant plugging in his electric guitar and the rest of the time he had to maintain the mobile home and cook Tad’s meals and so he spent all his time indoors. Then Eb plugged Tad in the wrong way and blew out everything. He returns to Oliver and asks for his old job back. Tad was played by real rock star Tommy Roe. His first number one hit was the song “Sheila” in 1962. In 1963 he had two top ten hits with “Everybody” and “The Folk Singer”. He moved to England for several years. In 1966 he had two top ten hits in Canada with “Sweet Pea” and “Hooray for Hazel”. In 1969 he hit number one again with the hit song “Dizzy”, which is considered by some to be the first song of the “Bubble-gum” genre. In 1970 his last top ten hit was “Jam Up and Jelly Tight”. He wrote all of his hits except for The Folk Singer. I got sleepy after dinner and went to bed early.