I worked out the chords for verses five to eight of “Glass securit” (Security Glass) by Serge Gainsbourg. There are just two more to go and so I might have it finished on Thursday.
I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the second of two sessions. Tomorrow I’ll begin a four session stretch of playing my Martin acoustic guitar.
I weighed 86.8 kilos before breakfast.
I finished transcribing my handwritten notes for this week’s critical summary. Here’s the second part:
Most Medieval texts are ruined even when the texts are complete because we don’t have full knowledge of authorship. When we read Old English, Middle English or Norman French we are also sifting through ruins. Every translation of texts from these languages such as Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, etcetera, results in a new poem, often slightly different and sometimes strikingly so. We want to see the old restored and the new broken. The Leslie Spit in Toronto is made of ruins. Rusted metal is alive with texture and new living form. Rust is beautiful. It would be unsafe to ride a rusted bicycle but I have a ruined, twisted bike tire rim suspended from my ceiling to commemorate a dooring incident because the accident ruined the rim into a beautiful shape. We love ruins because we can recreate them in our minds and there is a vicarious association with their beauty. A dancing affinity because the old has faced weather and been smoothed out by wear. Perhaps wear renders architecture more feminine because of its having been rounded by wind and rain. Bricks washed by the lake for decades can be worn down until they resemble Henry Moore sculptures. We want to recreate art. All new art is a ruination of old forms.
I weighed 87.2 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. On Bloor Street in the west end there was a box of hard cover books being thrown out. I took The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer and Jean Chretien's autobiography.
I weighed 86.7 kilos at 17:30.
I was caught up on my journal at 19:00.
I started working on tying in ideas from Ruined Landscapes: Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes, Ecotheory and the Environmental Imagination with the ideas I wrote down in stream of consciousness on the topic of ruins.
I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 1, episode 17 of Burke’s Law.
A man comes in to a bank and then collapses. A doctor is there and then paramedics arrive but it turns out the doctor and the paramedics are fake and it’s a robbery. Everyone from the offices is brought out into the open including the bank owner Victor Barrows who just happens to be there. Then Barrows is shot by the fake doctor for no apparent reason before the robbers escape. Whenever any witnesses are asked to describe the doctor they say he is average and they can’t pinpoint anything distinctive about him. Piggot, the man who fainted has had his stomach pumped and been released. Tim and Les go to see him at his art gallery. He tells them that the “doctor” came to his gallery and wanted to buy a painting. He said he had money in the bank nearby and invited Piggot to walk there with him but on the way he invited him to lunch. After tea and a sandwich Piggot was in the bank when he collapsed. The hospital confirms later that knockout drops were slipped into his tea at lunchtime. Burke gets a note from a bank employee named Elizabeth Dunwoody inviting him to a party. When he gets there she’s alone and very forward but has no information to help with the case. They learn that the ambulance was stolen by an average looking man. They find an ambulance that has been pushed off the road. It’s been mostly wiped of prints but they do find one set. There is also blood inside. The prints match a small time thug named Frank Willard who wouldn’t be smart enough to plan this kind of robbery. They go to the bar where Willard hangs out. The bartender says that Willard and his pal Doyle would do odd jobs to pay for drinks. But lately an average looking guy had been picking up their tab. Burke goes to see Duke (played by Spike Jones), a former bank robber who now works as a bookie. Burke asks him for his opinion on the bank heist. He says it was too flamboyant for pros. Burke returns to Elizabeth who admits that Barrows was her sugar daddy. She says it was platonic because he only came to her once a week. Burke concludes that the bank robbery was a cover and that Mr. Average planned all along to murder Barrows. Both Frank Willard and Doyle are found dead. Burke goes to the Barrows home and meets his son Peter and his wife Elaine. Burke goes to see Barrows’s partner Charles Cortland. He says Barrow’s philandering drove Elaine to the sanitarium more than once and if it would have helped her he would have killed him. He didn’t because he couldn’t run the company without him. Burke goes to Barrows’s office to look through his files. Cortland says Barrows’s latest girlfriend was an actor named Paulette Shane. Burke goes to see her. She liked Barrows because he was fun and she didn’t care about his other women. There is a knock on the door and it’s Peter Barrow who is very familiar with Paulette until he sees Burke. Peter hated his father but needed him alive because he didn’t have the guts to make it on his own. Burke figures that the killer had to work at the bank in order to get Barrows there that day. Burke says the most average looking person at the bank was the accountant, George Smith. They go to Smith’s home and hear a gunshot. Tim goes after the running gunman while Burke finds Smith with a mortal wound. As Smith is dying he explains his motive. He worked there for 23 years and Barrow still called him “what’s his name?” Barrow was going to retire him. Smith dies and then Tim walks in with Peter Barrows in handcuffs. He killed Smith because he was going to turn himself in.
Elaine Barrows was played by Virginia Grey, who started out acting at the age of ten in the silent film Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Her father was one of the Keystone Kops. She was a child actor for a short time but quit to finish school, then returned as an adult. She co-starred in Hullaballoo. On TV she co-starred in the 1951 sitcom The Bickersons. She was close friends with Lana Turner and appeared in six films with her. Grey never considered herself an artist but rather an acting professional.
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