Dick Balduzzi

            On Wednesday morning I memorized the third verse of “Hey Mister Zippo” by Serge Gainsbourg. There’s only one verse left to learn and I’ll probably have it nailed down on Thursday. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the third session of four. It took a long time to get it in tune and it’s been that way since the humidity has increased. 

            I weighed 87.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I went up the street to Freedom Mobile and paid for my May phone plan. Then I called Topcuts to find out my stylist Amy’s schedule for next week. I haven’t had a haircut for about five months. 

            I weighed 87 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of raspberry lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown but not on my usual route. This time I rode east on Queen to Bay, went south to King, east to Church and then north to Queen again. I went to Downtown Camera to enquire about upgrading from my Nikon Coolpix to a better video camera. The camera specialist gave me a lesson in sensors and lenses. Smaller sensors like that of the Coolpix are capable of more zoom. A larger sensor like on most cameras would require an enormous lens to have as much zoom. I’m more interested in video quality anyway and he said the best upgrade for me from the Coolpix in terms of video quality for $1000 would be the Sony ZV-E10. The video quality is three generations better than the Coolpix and the microphone is better as well. I could also upgrade the lens later on. I said I’d look at a couple more places before making my decision. He told me that Sony is the Apple of cameras, meaning that no matter where you go the price for any particular Sony model will be the same. I’ll check out Henry’s next and then Vistek , so I might have a new camera by the end of the week. 

            I stopped at Freshco on the way home to buy two bags of grapes. Priscilla the cashier did a price match for me so I paid a lot less than the Freshco price. 

            I weighed 86.7 kilos at 18:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:42. 

            In the Movie Maker project for “Joanna Dancing (Electric)” I worked on synchronizing the Audacity audio with the video. But progress is slow because Movie Maker has started getting tired again. When I split the audio timeline and remove an earlier part, I can’t drag the later part to the beginning. All I can do is save it then shut down Movie Maker, then return to drag the later part, then listen, split, cut, shut it down and start it up again and so on.

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 1, episodes 31 and 32 of Bewitched. 

            In the first story we learn that from time to time Samantha and Darrin meet at the President Hotel to have a romantic evening away from the normal routine. Samantha is on her way to meet Darrin at the hotel and tries changing her hair colour to brunette. After they meet in the lobby, Darrin’s friend and boss Larry Tate happens to be there and sees Darrin from a distance with a brunette who he doesn’t recognize as Samantha. Larry smiles and seems to think it’s great that Darrin is cheating on his wife and even admires him for it. That night Darrin wants to finish reading the mystery novel he’s been reading and which Samantha was supposed to have packed in their luggage. She uses magic to pop back home and get it but while she is there the doorbell rings and it’s Larry. He had talked with his wife Louise on the phone and she’d said she was going to visit Samantha. Later Larry knocks on Darrin’s hotel room door and Samantha disappears because she saw Larry at home twenty minutes ago and he wouldn’t believe she got to the hotel as fast as he did by driving like a maniac. The only thing Darrin can do is pretend to Larry that he caught him cheating on Samantha. Later at Larry and Louise’s place she is complaining about his reading a girlie magazine and says, “I’ll bet Darrin doesn’t ogle girls!” Larry tells her about Darrin meeting another woman. The next day Louise calls Darrin and tells him to meet her so she can talk some sense into him. They meet at the President and once again Larry happens to be passing through when he sees Darrin with Louise and now he thinks she’s the brunette he’s been seeing. The next day at work Larry punches Darrin and gives him a black eye. Later Louise comes to see Larry and finds him upset. Then they hear a woman giggling in Darrin’s office and go there to see Darrin kissing a brunette. Then they see it’s Samantha and Louise is thrilled to learn that her husband was so jealous that he punched Darrin. 

            In the second story Gladys and Abner Kravitz have a big fight and she throws him out of the house after thirty years of marriage. Abner shows up at Samantha and Darrin’s house and Samantha invites him to stay in the guest room. He snores very loudly, makes brussels sprouts stuffed with anchovies and has many other annoying habits. When Abner goes to get his paper Gladys is standing in the door dressed like a geisha but Abner ignores her. She tries to make him jealous by asking a salesman to kiss her but he says he’d rather she just slammed the door in his face. Samantha and Darrin are desperate to get him and Gladys back together so they can have peace. Finally Samantha causes them to each dream of the day that Abner proposed and Gladys accepted. Then she wakes them up and they go running in slow motion into one another’s arms. 

            The salesman was played by Dick Balduzzi, who was a familiar face on television from the early days of the medium. He studied at the Goodman Theatre School in Chicago and then moved to New York where he acted in off-Broadway plays. While working in a restaurant he met the casting director for The Jackie Gleason Show who hired him to perform minor characters in skits. His career consisted mainly of guest appearances on sitcoms.