Ilze Taurins

            On Sunday morning I didn’t hear my alarm go off and so I woke up 25 minutes late. I got caught up by spending half an hour less on my Serge Gainsbourg project. 

            My left knee was slightly more flexible during yoga, less painful in general but just as tender under pressure. 

            I memorized the fifth verse of “Les frères” by Boris Vian. There are ten verses to go. 

            I ran through singing and playing “Dreams in X-Ray”, my translation of “Amour puissance six” (Love to the Power of Six) by Serge Gainsbourg and had time to upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog. I’ll start preparing it for publication tomorrow. 

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

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before breakfast. 

            I read chapter 6 of Bored of the Rings. Frito is not in this chapter and the other Boggies who are travelling with Arrowroot think he’s dead. They are attacked by Narcs but rescued by the sheep riders. Their leader is a tough woman who Arrowroot falls for but she won’t give him the time of day. 

            I read half of chapter 7 of The Hobbit. Gandalf takes Bilbo and the dwarves to a honey farmer named Beorn who can turn into a bear. He doesn’t like people but he finds their story entertaining enough to repay them with food and shelter. His servants are all animals and the dogs walk on their hind legs and can carry trays with their front paws. 

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been at midday in ten days. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back I stopped at Freshco to buy spoon size shredded wheat and Full City Dark coffee. The ride didn’t seem to bother my recently injured knee. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 17:30.

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:30. 

            I finished chapter 7 of The Hobbit. Beorn lends them ponies to take them as far as the dark forest. At that point Gandalf has to leave them but warns them that if they stray from the path they could be lost forever. In chapter 8 they are in the middle of the forest and are out of food. They see lights and hear laughter off the path and so they go looking for food but whenever they approach the light it goes out. 

            I read chapter 7 of Bored of the Rings. The leader of the sheep riders learns that Arrowroot is the king and changes her attitude towards him. With the help of Birdseye the laughing green giant and his army of vegetables they storm the castle of the evil wizard. 

            I had the rest of my lentils and mushrooms with ginger, garlic and onions while watching episode 5 of Amos Burke: Secret Agent. 

            This story begins in the middle. Burke is behind the Iron Curtain and captured while trying to help bomb scientist Alexis Crystal escape. But Burke’s capture is a ruse and Crystal detonates a small explosion that distracts the guards long enough for Burke to overpower them. A helicopter comes for Crystal and his assistant Paula begs to come too. The helicopter takes them while Burke blows up the facility. The helicopter has to land in rural Austria. They approach a house but knockout gas rises from the lawn and they are rendered unconscious. Two men in gas masks take Crystal away. 

            Burke is driving and picks up a hitchhiker named Maggie who it turns out is his informant. She tells him about the kidnapping of Crystal. 

            Paula and Tony the pilot are picked up by state security and taken to the office of Otto Kraus in Vienna. Burke goes there and Kraus lets them go. Paula gets a call from Conrad Jaeger who says he has information about Crystal. They go to see Jaeger and he gives them an address. It is there that they find an unconscious Crystal with electrodes taped to his heart. A man on the TV screen warns Burke not to wake Crystal. The wires from the electrodes are connected to a box on the table containing Crystal’s bomb. Removing the wires will explode the bomb. Otherwise the bomb will explode tomorrow at noon and destroy Vienna unless he receives $2 million in uncut diamonds. There is a needle on a turning cylinder and when the needle reaches the other end the bomb will explode. Burke arranges for the ransom from his organization. 

            Burke confronts Tony over how he happened to land his helicopter at random near a house holding agents who had prepared a trap for them. He says Tony is the only one who could have set it up. They fight and Burke wins. Tony says he’s sorry. Tony says he’ll take him to where he received his instructions but he is shot before he can do so. 

            Evacuation of Vienna has begun. 

            They find from where the radio signal has been transmitted. There is a computer there and an expert is brought in but he says it would take fifteen years for the computer to run through all the possible codes that would stop the bomb. 

            The diamonds arrive. Wexler calls and tells them to go to a certain discotheque. There Burke receives instructions to take the 11:00 train for Lintz and watch for a flare from the right side window. When he sees it he must toss the briefcase off the train. Later Wexler calls and claims the diamonds were fake so he won’t give the code. Kraus arrests Burke but he escapes. Burke put a transmitter in the briefcase of diamonds and he and Paula are now following the signal. They get out of the car when the signal is strongest and Wexler fires at them from a mine. There is a cave in and Wexler is killed but Burke says Wexler was not in charge. Kraus arrives to take the diamonds. Burke chases and captures Kraus but he refuses to give the code. With minutes left they have no choice but to risk using a stimulant on Crystal to wake him. He gives most of the code but can’t remember the rest in the state he is in. Finally Kraus gives the last three numbers. 

            Paula was played by Ilze Taurins, who was born in Latvia. She was dating one of the co-founders of the Playboy Clubs, Victor Lownes III. During a meeting between Hefner and Lownes to discuss future clubs, Taurins suggested dressing the waitresses in a costume based on the Playboy logo , a rabbit in a tuxedo. Ilse got her mother to make the first prototype and she wore it at a meeting between Hefner, Lownes, Arnold Morton and the magazine illustrator LeRoy Neiman. It resembled a full-body bathing suit with added tails and ears. Hefner saw potential in it and suggested cutting it higher on the hips to expose more of the legs. Later the cuffs, collar and bow tie were added.