Gale Storm

            On Monday morning I dreamed I was moving some of my possessions. There were a couple of people helping me and my stuff was all on tables outdoors like at an outdoor flea market. I was very organized and separating the books from the record albums which I wanted to take last. 

            I memorized the first two verses of “Dispatch box” by Serge Gainsbourg. That’s a third of the song.

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the first session of two. 

            I weighed 87.7 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning in a long time. 

            I called Financial Aid at U of T because I’d recently received a notice from the Noah Meltz bursary regarding my application and asking for more information. But I couldn’t tell what information they wanted because for some reason the letter was blank. But the person I spoke with was able to see the letter and the issue is that their records show that I already have enough credits to graduate and so that would disqualify me from the grant. But I told her that my academic profile in the Degree Explorer shows that I am half a credit short of being eligible to graduate. She told me to send the Noah Meltz people a screen shot of the Degree Explorer page, and so I did that. 

            I also called up my registrar’s office to confirm that they know I’ve requested to graduate this year. I put in the request to graduate a couple of weeks ago but was confused by the box that asks if I want to graduate in the convocation ceremony and I clicked “No”. But clicking “No” almost looks like I’m choosing not to graduate. It’s a good thing I called because they have no record of my request and so I was told to request to graduate by email to Winnie Wong, and so I did that. I got a message back that she’s away until Wednesday. 

            While thinking about graduation I wondered if I’ll still be able to use U of T libraries after graduation. It turns out I can but I’ll have to buy an alumni library card for $70 a year. That’s probably worth it considering the resources available. 

            I weighed 87.7 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 86.9 kilos at 17:30, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening in twelve days. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:22. 

            I finished re-reading “Monuments, Unreal Spaces and National Forgetting” by Yugin Teo. I then wrote three handwritten pages in stream of consciousness on the idea of mass forgetting. I started transcribing them. 

            I had my last potato with gravy and some pork ribs while watching season 1, episode 21 of Burke’s Law. 

            At a banquet attended by expatriate Russians the guest of honour, the Grand Duke Maximilian appears asleep but falls forward dead. Burke knows him and comments that he was probably the greatest phony of all time. Max carried pills and Burke orders them analyzed. His digestive tablets had been replaced with belladonna. His place of business was The Connoisseurs’ House and the manager’s name is Smith. Burke goes there and finds Smith is a beautiful woman. The duke’s reputation was based on an emerald necklace that was fake. Real emeralds burn but fake ones don’t. I think they melt because emeralds are not formed from heat but rather solution. She handled his accounts and money. Burke sees a page in a typewriter. Smith explains that Max was having his autobiography ghost written by Archie Lido. Burke talks with Archie. Max’s old pills are found down his drain and so the killer must have been on his appointment list. They go to see Gus Leeps, the chef at the Café Shaslik. He’s a former vaudeville performer and met his wife Honey on the stage as well. He says she’s the boss. They talk with Honey. She says Max was always bringing them caviar, paté foie and champagne but he never had money to buy bread. Suddenly Gus comes out and accuses Honey of flirting. They argue until they hear their cue and then suddenly they are in costume and performing a vaudeville style rendition of “Baby Face” for the restaurant clientele. Burke takes Smith on a date. She’s wearing the emerald necklace but Burke takes it as evidence. Tim and Les interview Ronald “Touchy” Touchstone a former safe cracker who now deals in dolls. He sold rare dolls to the duke. The duke held the mortgage on his shop. Touchy takes belladonna pills. Burke visits Monica Crenshaw and the butler lets him in. Monica is shooting craps by herself with loaded dice. She used to be married to the duke but that only temporarily spoiled their friendship. Tim and Les go to see Anatole Gregory who says he’s the most expensive unemployed director in Hollywood. He owed the duke $6000. Anatole sold his own furniture at auction, the duke bought it and rented it back to Anatole. Throughout the story they have been trying to track down Charlie Prince and they finally find him in a skid row flophouse. He says Max was his first cousin once removed. He says he really is a prince and the grand duke really was a grand duke. He played the greatest hoax of all by pretending to be pretending to be a grand duke. There is the copy of the emerald necklace but there is also a real emerald necklace that has been in the family for generations. He says he chooses to live as a bum. Burke gets Touchy to open Max’s safe but there are no emeralds. Burke checks and finds Charlie’s story is probably true. Burke goes back to The Connoisseurs’ House to look around. He finds the real necklace hidden in the chandelier. Archie arrives and Burke accuses him of murder. Burke pulls the necklace from his pocket and tosses it into the fire. Archie jumps to recover it. Burke shows he still has the real emeralds and Archie attacks him but Burke knocks him out. 

            Honey was played by Gale Storm who took drama in high school. Her teachers encouraged her to compete in a radio talent contest in Houston called Gateway to Hollywood. Gale won and then went to compete in and win the national contest. They changed her name to Gale Storm and her first movie was Tom Brown’s School Days in 1940. She co-starred in Freckles Comes Home, Take the Stage, The Dude Goes West, The Underworld Story, The Crime Smasher, Stampede, Between Midnight and Dawn, and The Corpse Vanished. She starred in Sunbonnet Sue, G.I. Honeymoon, and Swing Parade of 1946. Her first TV series My Little Margie was a hit and ran for three years. After that she starred in Oh Susanna: The Gale Storm Show for four years. She opened her own Vegas nightclub and began a recording career. Her first hit was “I Hear You Knocking”. She struggled with alcoholism and talked about it in her 1981 autobiography I Ain’t Down Yet. She became a lecturer on recovery. She served two years as the honorary mayor of Sherman Oaks, California. She has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.