Dorothy Lamour

            On Friday morning I memorized the eleventh verse of “C’est le Bebop” by Boris Vian. There are three verses left to learn. 

            I ran through playing and singing “Enemy Lines”, which is my translation of “Glass securit” by Serge Gainsbourg. I uploaded the song to my Christian’s Translations blog and began preparing it for publication. I might have it posted on Saturday. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the second of four sessions. I think I should change the G string tonight while I have time so I don’t have to do it when I have a school assignment deadline. 

            I weighed 86.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            I left for Modern Literary Medievalism class at 12:15. I was still the first one there. 

            Andrew, Aria and Marianna did the first opening dialogue. 

            The Britons inhabited England when the Romans first tried to invade and they held them back through several attempts. Finally the Romans were successful and even brought elephants. 

            Boudica was a Briton queen who led an uprising against the Romans. 

            The Romans made it against the law for Britons to carry swords. 

            Tacitus praised the Britons and Julius Caesar also was fascinated by them. 

            The Anglo Saxons had oral cultures and unlike the Britons were not Christian. The monks’ written histories of the Anglo Saxons were not objective because they had a Christian agenda. Although the Britons were Christian and the Saxons were Pagan, they mingled. 

            Sir Gawain and the Green Knight starts with the fall of Troy. Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote that Brutus defeated the giants and that the Britons were former Trojans. He was writing for the Normans. 

            I said the poem “The Ruin” is very Wordsworthian. 

            Anne Carson was considered unscholarly by some scholars. Some translators of “The Ruin” have filled in the blanks of damaged text. One is supposed to try but she didn’t. 

            Simona did her presentation on Estes’s essay. That was followed by Kenzo’s presentation. The second dialogue was between Nina, Alice and Andrew. 

            In The Buried Giant, Beatrice and Axl are refused a candle and also kept in the dark through most of the story. 

            We don't remember things the way we think we do. We fill in the blanks. 

            I said my Psychology professor had said, “Reality is a story the brain tells itself” and someone sighed impatiently it seems in response. 

            A lot of students had only read the first half of The Buried Giant because that was all that was required, so I had to keep my mouth shut to avoid spoilers. 

            I said there are a lot of blind alleys in this novel. 

            I stopped at Freshco on the way home where I bought five bags of grapes, a pint of strawberries, a half pint of blackberries, bananas, three bags of milk, a jug of limeade, a box of spoon size shredded wheat, a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips, and a big pack of Sponge Towels. I found a pack of five-year-old cheddar that had been in the bottom of my backpack for a few days. 

            I weighed 85.9 kilos at 16:42, which is the lightest I’ve been at that time since last Friday. 

            I took a siesta at 17:00 and got up at 18:30. 

            I weighed 86 kilos at 18:39. 

            I grilled a rack of pork ribs and had three with a potato and gravy while watching season 1, episode 18 of Burke’s Law. The story was pretty weak so they tried to make up for it with a lot of wacky characters. 

            A rich lawyer named Madison Cooper is staggering on a sidewalk at night. He stops to open a newspaper vending box and put something under the pile of papers. Then he calls Burke to tell him he’s been murdered. While they are trying to figure out why Cooper would be in such a crummy part of town, Wally the newspaper delivery man opens up the vending box to take out yesterday’s papers and finds $30,000. Burke sees this and takes him into custody. It turns out that years ago Cooper defended Wally’s father but only at the preliminary hearing and then passed him on to a bad lawyer. His father got life in prison but died there after six years. Burke, Tim and Les go to Cooper’s house. They find blood in the room where he was stabbed. They also find transcripts of Cooper’s old cases, including that of Wally’s father. A note says that Wally was angry. Burke goes to Cooper’s office where he finds Carole his businesslike law clerk packing up some files to send them to storage. Burke inappropriately takes Carole into custody in handcuffs. Tim has looked through Cooper’s transcripts and found four suspects. One is a former movie star named Elliot Dunning whose career was ruined over a paternity case involving a 17 year old woman. Burke goes to see Dunning after questioning Carole while she is cuffed to a chair for several hours, then he asks why she doesn’t go home before handing her the key. At Dunning’s home they hear him relating his side of the story of his alleged seduction of the teenaged Amy. Then a man calls to Dunning in a commanding voice. Dunning tells Burke the man is the owner of the house now and Dunning is his houseboy. The owner used to be Dunning’s stand-in but invested his money in several grubby little properties that now make up Beverly Hills. Burke learns that Cooper was already suffering from a terminal illness when he was killed. Burke goes to see Amy, who is now a middle aged woman. She tells her side of the story of Dunning’s seduction. She seems damaged and thinks she’s ugly though she isn’t. She gives him a paper flower from a Japanese restaurant. In a stupid turnaround Burke calls Carole and takes her out to breakfast and she’s suddenly amicable towards him despite his earlier behaviour. He asks her for the address of the Cooper client Lovey Harrington. She says she’s at the Continental Hotel. He finds her in the lounge of the hotel. She says Cooper defended her after her fifth husband fell off a building. Cooper’s private notes said he knew she was guilty. She spent 19 years in prison. She was also suspected of killing her sixth husband. Her seventh husband owns the hotel. Burke comes home to find Carole sleeping in his bed. She says she found the other suspect, Arthur Shelby’s address. Shelby is a mad chemist and they find him in his lab. He tells the story of his embezzlement trial. Cooper told him he’d get probation if he pleaded guilty so he did and got twenty years. The night he died Cooper came to Shelby and offered him $40,000, saying he owed it to him. Shelby says he didn’t need it because he’s invented a pill that can replace a two month supply of food. All the lab found in Cooper’s car was two pieces of straw. Burke goes to Shinto Gardens restaurant and finds that one of the geisha waiters in straw hats is Amy. The night he died Cooper offered her $15,000 and so she stabbed him. 

            Lovey was played by Dorothy Lamour, who quit school at 14. She won the Miss New Orleans contest at 17 and then went to Chicago to become a singer. She had a relationship with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. She sang for Herbie Kaye’s big band and also on local radio. At 19 she went to Hollywood and her first part was as a chorus girl in Footlight Parade. Three years later she starred in The Jungle Princess and became an instant success as a wild girl. She went on to star in The Hurricane, Typhoon, Disputed Passage, A Medal for Benny, The Fleet’s In, Aloma of the High Seas, The Last Train from Madrid, Her Jungle Love, Moon Over Burma, Rainbow Island, Masquerade in Mexico, Lulu Belle, The Girl from Manhattan, and Beyond the Blue Horizon. She co-starred with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in their first five “Road” pictures. She said while working with them she felt like a slice of bread between two slices of ham. She co-starred in Dixie, Caught in the Draft, St. Louis Blues, Spawn of the North, Tropic Holliday, Wide High and Handsome, Man About Town, Chad Hanna, Melody Inn, And the Angels Sing, Duffy’s Tavern, My Favourite Brunette, Wild Harvest, Lucky Stiff, Slightly French, Manhandled, and Johnny Apollo. She co-starred on the Chase and Sanborn Radio Hour and The Rudy Vallée Show. She sold so many War Bonds during WWII she became known as the “Bond Bombshell”. She was also one of the most popular pin-ups for the fighting forces. She said glamour is just civilized sex. In films she introduced a number of songs that became standards, such as “Moon Of Manakoora”, “I Remember You”, “It Could Happen to You”, “Personality”, and “But Beautiful”.