Myrna Hansen

            On Tuesday morning I published on my Christian’s Translations blog “The Grey Life”, my translation of “La vie grise” by Boris Vian. I still need to post it on my Boris Vian and my personal Facebook pages before moving on to his next song on my list. 

            I wasn’t quite able to finish memorizing “Shotgun” by Serge Gainsbourg. The sixth verse wouldn’t fully form itself in my consciousness. I should nail it down tomorrow though. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the second of four sessions. 

            Around 10:00 I took my notice of rent increase down to the Parkdale Community Legal Clinic to have them double check to see if it’s on the up and up. I talked with Cole Webber about it and he said there might be a problem that my landlord didn’t write the year when he dated the notice. He couldn’t ask the lawyer then because he was in a meeting but said he’d email me later. In the afternoon he got back to me and said the year is posted on one of the pages and so that’s not a problem. But it might be a problem that the landlord only put my apartment number at the top of page one and not my name. He said sometimes the LTB has considered that enough to declare a notice invalid but sometimes not. I decided not to put up a fight if it’s not a sure thing. 

            I weighed 86.4 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon it was raining fairly hard and so I decided not to take a bike ride. 

            I weighed 86.7 kilos at 16:15, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening in about six months. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:41. 

            I compared the videos of my song practice performances of “Joanna Dances Lightly” on August 6 and August 10. August 6 has better light and sounds pretty much just as good. There’s a motorcycle that roars by just after I finish but I can probably edit that out if I need to. I compared August 16 to August 6 and had to listen to them both a couple of times. I think August 16 is a little more expressive although August 6 looks a little better. I think I’ll go with the 16th. I compared August 22 to August 16 and I think August 16 is much more expressive, plus I have a slightly dissatisfied look on my face at the end of the August 22 version. I compared August 26 to August 16 and although August 26 looks better I’m still more expressive on August 16. I compared August 28 to August 16 and August 28 looks a lot better but still August 16 is more expressive. I compared September 1 to August 16 and I still think that August 16 stands out for its expressiveness. I still have to compare September 7, 11, and 13 to August 16 but I might not have time to do that until April because of school. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Angeline” I added a one-second clip from the 1949 film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland of Alice falling. I did that to push the concert video back so it’s synchronized with the studio audio when I sing “and since I can’t see the bottom with this tiny flashlight beam…”. Then I needed to add another clip to push it back to line up with, “… I’ll resign myself to falling”; and then another clip to push it into synchronicity with the me ending the chorus with “… Angeline”. After that I was disappointed to see that three seconds into the second verse the concert video timed out. That song was not fully recorded at that May 8, 1998 concert at The Riot Gallery. There are two other videos of me performing “Angeline” but one of them is with the original Christian and the Lions and the arrangement doesn’t match the later studio recording. The only concert video I can use to finish this video is our June 3, 1998 show at The 360 Club. That uses the same arrangement as the studio but I play the electric guitar and it’s a much brighter video and so the mood is very different. But I have no other choice for this video project. I can probably darken the 360 video somewhat. I’ll also have to figure out a way to make a smooth transition between the two concerts at the point where the second verse begins. I don’t think I’ll have a chance to work on this again until April and so I have time to think about what I’m going to do. 

            I scanned about 14 more slides from box 4 of the last 8 boxes. That’s more than half of box 4 but I don’t think I’ll have time to scan any more until April. Most of the shots are baby pictures of my daughter but there are some of her mother and a few of her Aunt Susan. 

            I had a potato with gravy and three pork ribs while watching season 6, episodes 22 and 23 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story there is a carpenters ball coming up and Lisa wants to go but Oliver doesn’t. Ralph Monroe also wants to go and she would like Hank Kimball to ask her but he continues to not be interested and tries very hard to avoid her. Lisa thinks she can fix the situation by asking Hank to take her to the dance and then passing him on to Ralph once they are there. But the whole neighbourhood gets the wrong impression and thinks Lisa and Hank are running off together. Haney comes to Oliver and offers to rent him a Norwegian illegal immigrant named Ingrid to make Lisa jealous. Oliver tells them both to leave but now Ingrid is part of the growing rumour about Oliver and Lisa breaking up. Now Ralph is mad at Oliver because she thinks he drove Lisa into Hank’s arms. Finally Oliver agrees to take Lisa to the dance but then Hank and Ralph show up to double date, Hank with Lisa and Ralph with Oliver. 

            Ingrid was played by Myrna Hansen, who worked as a photography model in the late 1940s. She won the title of Miss Photoflash, which automatically qualified her for the Miss USA contest. She won the title of Miss USA of 1953 and was the first runner up in the 1953 Miss Universe pageant. One of her prizes as Miss USA was a seven year Universal Pictures contract. Her first film appearance was in The Purple Mask. Her first TV appearance was on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show and her eight minutes on screen on that sitcom was longer than in all 15 movies she made for Universal. In 1959 she did ads for Coppertone. 

            

            

           

            In the second story there is a rotten board on the floor of Oliver’s front porch. He puts a plank on top of it so no one will fall through. But Hank comes by and removes the plank because he thinks it’s a tripping hazard. Then he falls through the porch and sprains his ankle. Lisa bandages it with his shoe on so that when it heals he’ll already have his shoe on. She puts him in the bed and so she and Oliver they have to sleep in the barn. Hank blows on a kazoo whenever he wants something, which is often. Ralph comes to nurse Hank back to health. Then Oliver steps through the hole in the porch and sprains his ankle too and so he and Hank are both in bed together.