I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the second of four sessions.
I weighed 87.6 kilos before breakfast.
I finished organizing one page or about forty lines of my Pearl document so it shows the Middle English opposite the modern English line by line. I re-read about 25 pages. At first I didn’t think that the narrator had revealed their gender but now I see that the speaker is definitely male. I don’t think the gender of the mourning parent is relevant though. Feeling possessive of one’s child, especially one that has died is not a gender specific issue.
I weighed 87.8 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been at midday in a week. I had two mini naan with roasted red pepper hummus and a glass of limeade.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.
I weighed 86.9 kilos at 17:15. That’s the highest it’s been since last Sunday but slightly less.
Last night I went to bed earlier than usual because I felt sleepy and so I didn’t get caught up on my journal this evening until 19:20.
I read up to page 61 of Pearl. The narrator’s dead daughter was a toddler when she died but now she is a comely maid and a bride of Christ. Somehow the speaker recognizes her by the contours of her body. The body of a two year old and that of a twelve year old are very different. In this poem there are 144,000 brides of Christ but from what I’ve read elsewhere the 144,000 chosen souls make up one bride of Christ and are also the population of the New Jerusalem. There are 14 pages left to re-read.
I had the rest of my shrimp and black bean stew with three heated mini naan and my last beer for the next month while watching season 2, episode 2 of Burke’s Law.
A burlesque comedian named Rags McGuire is telling jokes and playing xylophone while a stripper dances behind him. The humour comes from him pretending that he is unaware of the woman behind him and that he thinks that the audience’s applause is for his playing. At one point he takes a swig from his flask as part of the act but then he dies. His bourbon was laced with cyanide. There’s an old steamer trunk in his dressing room and Burke has it taken back to the police station. Danny Swift comes tap dancing into the station and all over the furniture. He says he's nephew and heir of Rags McGuire and has come to claim the trunk. But when he sees nothing of value inside he no longer wants it. Burke goes to a hotel full of vaudeville style performers. Even the hotel clerk Charlie Who is a former performer. A guy bumps into Burke and after Charlie tells him Burke is a cop he gives him back his wallet. Burke gives him back his watch. Charlie says Rags stole his act, made a bundle and never paid him a cent. He says every guy’s got to have a friend he hates. A man and a monkey come for their room key. Charlie gives them each a separate key. He tells Burke they do a great act but can’t stand each other. Burke goes to Miss Lily’s room. She is an elderly but flamboyant and sexy blonde vamp played in another great performance by Gloria Swanson. Lily has Rags McGuire’s will. She reads it to Burke. He leaves her $1000 even though she gave him $18,000. Burke goes to Miss Cathcart’s School for Young Ladies. Burke finds Miss Cathcart teaching young women how to do classic strip-tease. “Step step sway, step step sway!” She says she was the first girl in McGuire’s act. She made him and she loved him. Burke asks who would want to kill him and she asks if he has a few hours. She says talk to Gus Watt at The Golden Garter. Rags was practically blackmailing him for years. Tim and Les go to see Claude Jester who they find riding a unicycle while watering a garden and singing “Daisy”. It’s not his estate as he’s just the gardener. Rags cheated him for years. Jester uses cyanide on the bugs and Charlie uses it on rats. Burke goes to the Golden Garter which is an old fashioned show bar where the girls are dressed like saloon girls and carry blackboards with the lyrics to classic songs like “Hello Ma Baby” from 1899. Burke questions Gus who signals one of the girls. Three girls pull Burke into singing a song until he sees Gus sneaking away. Burke goes to see Herkimer Witt the accountant and former performer. He reveals that Rags had money in fifteen banks all across the country. In total he had all together about $200,000. Burke finds that Danny’s house was Rags’s permanent address and so Danny must have seen his bank statements and known Rags was rich. Burke finds Danny rehearsing alone at the Hollywood Bowl. He says he knows he killed Rags. Danny tries to get away but Burke catches him. They fight a bit but Burke twists his arm and Tim and Les arrest him.
Miss Cathcart was played by the great Gypsy Rose Lee, who still looked statuesque in her fifties. Of course Gypsy’s life story is already famous. Her mother Rose took Gypsy (then named Louise) and her prettier sister June with her into show business. The girls had a successful act but Rose squandered the money. June eloped at the age of 13 and ran away from her mother. Vaudeville was dying so Rose switched to Burlesque and had Gypsy do more risqué numbers. Rose put Gypsy on stage as a stripper at the age of 15 and her shy act became a sensation. A wardrobe malfunction became one of the principal features of her act. She never got fully naked on stage, which added to the allure. Her first movie was a small part in Ali Baba Goes to Town. Her first book was the novel The G String Murders which was made into the film Lady of Burlesque. During the Great Depression she became a labour activist and was a popular speaker at rallies. After her mother died in the 1950s she felt comfortable enough to write her autobiography. Gypsy became a best seller and later was turned into what many consider to be the greatest Broadway musical of all time. Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Max Ernst were all admirers and gave her paintings. When she was diagnosed with cancer she called it “a present from mother”. She hosted a popular daytime talk show from 1965 to 1968 with big stars as her guests.
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