Greta Chi

            On Friday morning I memorized the thirteenth verse of “Les frères” by Boris Vian. There are two verses left to nail down. 

            I finished working out the chords for “J'ai pleuré le Yang-Tsé” (My Tears Flood the Yangtze) by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through singing and playing it in French. Tomorrow I’ll run through it in English and then upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog. 

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

            I weighed 86.8 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning I threw out six pairs of holey underwear and six pairs of worn out socks. 

            At 13:00 I met my upstairs neighbour David downstairs and he took me to lunch at the Rhino. I had the fish and chips and a pint of Creemore. He ordered a chicken sandwich and a Labatt Blue. He hardly ate the sandwich because he had pizza at 11:00. Then he rushed me to finish my beer because he had an appointment. What is the point of going for lunch if one can’t relax? Next time he invites me I will make sure he has nothing else planned before I agree to meet him. It’s no fun being told to hurry up and finish my beer. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride and found some cookery on the lawn of a house on Brock between the railroad bridge and Dundas. There was a cast iron casserole by Lodge twice as big as the aluminium one I’ve been using for years; a cast iron camp oven; and a little rectangular cast iron Dutch oven by Paderno about the size of a block of butter. It’s amazing how much stuff I find while cycling and more often than not I find stuff within a few blocks of home. I took them all home and then went back out for my bike ride. 

            I stopped at The Bike Depot to ask about bike trailers but they don’t have them. I went down the street to Sweet Pete’s and they didn’t have them either but suggested I try The Urbane Cyclist, which is now on College. I’ll check it out on Saturday. 

            I weighed 86.5 kilos at 17:45, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since April 15. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:00. 

            I uploaded my September 11 song practice performance of “Joanna Dancing” to YouTube. Tomorrow I’ll start making a video of my August 29 electric performance of “Joanna”. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my song “Angeline” I made a five second clip of the dance scene from Mata Hari starring Greta Garbo and inserted it into the main video between the lines “I’d been looking hard and long” and “But my machinery felt a surge of power that night I listened to your song”. It wasn’t hard to re-synchronize the video with the audio for that last line. After that though, in the concert video I sing “Ahhhh” again while I don’t in the studio audio so I have to cut that part out and replace it with another short Garbo clip. 

            I had a potato with gravy and two porkchops while watching season 1, episodes 21 and 22 of Bewitched. 

            In the first story Samantha finds a Siamese cat in her back yard and makes friends with it. This is the same Siamese cat that Darrin brought home in episode 18 but it’s being treated like that never happened. Meanwhile Darrin is looking for an exotic girl to represent the Jewel of the East campaign but although he’s interviewed several women, none of them fit. The deadline is closing fast for them to find someone or they lose the contract. Samantha decides to help by turning the Siamese cat into a human and she is gorgeous. She shows up at the McMann and Tate office and introduces herself as Ling Ling. Darrin, Larry, and Wally the photographer know right away that Ling Ling is perfect for the campaign. Wally spends the day photographing her and she is a natural at posing because she is so patient. Darrin decides to celebrate by inviting Larry and Louise Tate and Wally and Ling Ling home for dinner. Ling Ling devours all the sardine hors d’oeuvres and laps the cream soup without a spoon. Samantha makes everyone believe that is the traditional way to eat that kind of soup. Wally is falling for Ling Ling and so Samantha has to intervene. Ling Ling tells her she doesn’t care about Wally but she loves being pampered and she doesn’t want to go back to scrounging in alleys like she did before. Samantha slips catnip into Ling Ling’s drink and she gets high. Wally tries to take her drink away and she scratches him, then leaves. Later the nosy neighbour puts out a bowl of milk for the stray cat but when she looks out the window she sees a woman on her hands and knees lapping up the milk. She calls to Abner to look but before he does Samantha turns Ling Ling back to a cat. 

            In the second story Samantha, Darrin, and Samantha’s mother Endora are in an antique shop. Endora and Samantha know the proprietor is lying about the age of some of the items because they were both around when they were new. Endora plays a trick on Darrin by moving a picture from the 17th Century of a maid of Salem who looks like Samantha into his view. It suddenly occurs to Darrin that he doesn’t know how old Samantha is. She avoids the question when he asks. Darrin begins to worry about the possibility that Samantha will still look young when he is old. He suddenly starts feeling old and weak. Endora might be causing his weakness with witchcraft. He spends a lot of the episode soul searching in bars and in the park until finally he decides the aging difference is not as important as their love. 

            In the first story Ling Ling was played by Greta Chi, who was born in Denmark and raised in Switzerland. After graduating from a Swiss college she went to Hollywood where she studied at the La Jolla Playhouse. Her acting coach was Martin Landau. Her only starring role was in the movie Fall Girl. She played Mata Hari in La Reina del Chantecler. She returned to Europe and when her parents died she inherited the ownership of the Li Tai Pe restaurant in Lucerne, Switzerland.