Julie Gregg

            On Thursday morning I memorized the first verse of “On fait des rêves” (We Keep Dreaming) by Boris Vian. That verse is repeated later and so that’s about a quarter of the song. This won’t take nearly as long to learn as the last one. 

            I finished memorizing “Quoi toi moi t’aimer tu rêves” (What You Love of Me is what You Dream) by Serge Gainsbourg. I looked for the chords but of course no one has posted them. I made a few tentative stabs at working them out in patches around the middle of the song while listening to the extract on Apple Music. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the first of four sessions. My amp is still in the shop and so I’m still playing through my audio interface. I opened up Guitar Rig to try it out but there’s too much distortion and I couldn’t figure out how to get a clean sound. I turned it off and unlike Amplitube there is no residual carrying over of the effects and it returns to just the sound of the guitar through the Scarlett Interface. I like distortion and reverb in places but it’s easier to control it on my amp. 

            I weighed 87.8 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since May 6. 

            I thought about doing some more sanding of my bathroom ceiling today. But Thursday is a day I shave and shower so since I didn’t want to shower twice I would have had to sand before showering, which would have been awkward. 

            I tried to track down some photos of my daughter from around her third birthday. There was a party that Mary Milne had for her at Fat Albert’s but I only found one photo and no negatives so it probably wasn’t taken by me. I no longer have a scanner so I tried to see how well my new camera could copy it. Just hand-held it didn’t work but using the tripod I got a passable copy. 

            I weighed 87.5 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on my way home where I bought five bags of green grapes, a pack of raspberries, a pack of blueberries, bananas, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, two hot honey sausages, Grizzly Claw coffee, sea salt, and brass scouring pads. 

            I weighed 87.8 kilos at 18:00. That’s the most I’ve tipped the scales in the evening since March 1. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:55. 

            I compared the video of my September 11 song practice performance of “Kenya” with that of August 16. September 11 is better I think, plus it’s already synchronized in Movie Maker. I compared September 13 to September 11 and I think September 11 is slightly better. So the September 11 take is the acoustic version of “Kenya” that I’ll upload to YouTube. Next I have to compare the electric takes of “La bas c’est natural”. I compared August 17 and 19. August 19 is a little better, plus it’s already in Movie Maker. I compared August 29 to August 19 but couldn’t come to a decision. I’ll listen again tomorrow. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Angeline” I synchronized the concert video with the studio audio for the part where I sing, “I feel I’m falling…”. But then it goes out of synch again for “… through the soundtrack of your dream”. So I added another clip of Mickey Dolenz falling in the movie Head. Now the video is behind and so I’ll need to cut more than thirty seconds off the video to line it up with the audio when I sing, “… and since I can’t see the bottom I’ll resign myself to falling”.

            I made a new batch of gravy with last night’s chicken drippings and had some with a potato and a chicken leg while watching season 2, episodes 27 and 28 of Bewitched. 

            In the first story Darrin comes home from work to find that a leprechaun named Brian is a guest in his house. He takes Samantha aside and tells her he’s fed up with her magical relatives popping in. Samantha reveals to him that Brian is not her relative but his. Brian explains that he has come to the United States to retrieve his last pot of gold. He had hidden it behind one of the stones of a fireplace in a cottage. But a wealthy North American had bought the cottage, then disassembled the fireplace and had it shipped back to the US. Without his pot of gold Brian has no magical powers. The rich man is James Dennis Robinson and he lives near Samantha and Darrin. Darrin finds out that Robinson owns Westchester Consolidated Mills, an account that Darrin’s employer, McMann and Tate has been trying to win for years. Brian climbs through a window in Robinson’s home but is confronted by Robinson’s mastiff. Brian is arrested and uses his one phone call to telephone Samantha. Darrin gives her permission to spring him from jail but no more magic after that. Samantha frees Brian and then goes against Darrin’s wishes to help Brian retrieve his gold. They appear in the Robinson home and Samantha turns the two mastiffs into chihuahuas. Brian removes the stone but discovers that his gold has been removed. Then Robinson enters the room with a gun in one hand and the pot of gold in the other. Samantha prevents Robinson from reaching his phone so he can call the police. Brian reveals that he’s a leprechaun and Robinson believes him because he’s Irish too. Robinson gives Brian his gold but then grabs him because the rules are that if one captures a leprechaun he has to grant him one wish. His wish is to use Brian in an advertizing campaign for his company. Brian agrees but says he wants McMann and Tate to handle the account and for Darrin to be in charge of the campaign. Robinson agrees. 

            In the second story Samantha has to accompany Darrin to a cocktail party for a very important client named Kabaker. At the party Samantha meets Kabaker’s snobbish daughter who resents having to mingle outside of her class. Miss Kabaker is extremely insulting towards Samantha about her dress, her nose, and her figure. Samantha has all she can stand and so she sends a creamy pastry flying into Miss Kabaker’s face. Larry is barely able to save the Kabaker account but the next day he has some nasty things to say about Samantha to Darrin. Darrin in turn insults Larry’s wife Louise. They decide to not be friends anymore and Darrin then quits. The Ames Advertizing Agency has been courting Darrin for years and so he goes for an interview. Meanwhile Samantha and Louise discuss how stupidly their husbands are behaving and plot to make themselves a common enemy so their boys will become friends again. First of all Samantha uses witchcraft to jinx Darren’s interview. She causes him to have infantile impulses such as sucking his thumb and so he is not hired. Darrin knows Samantha is behind it and so he comes home angry. She is defiant and tells him she’s trying to stop him from making the biggest mistake of his life. She tells Darrin he should crawl to Larry and beg forgiveness because without Larry he’d be nothing. Darrin storms out and says he’ll spend the night at the club. Meanwhile Louise has a similar argument with Larry that also ends in him leaving for the club. Samantha uses magic to cause Darrin and Larry to end up in the same room but they don’t realize it until they are in bed together. They realize they have been behaving like numbskulls and make up. 

            Miss Kabaker was played by Julie Gregg, who attended university on a music scholarship. Her acting mentor was Jackie Cooper. Her first TV role was on McHale’s Navy. She played Finella in two episodes of Batman. She co-starred in the detective series Banyon. She was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance on Broadway in The Happy Time. Her first credited film role was in From Hell to Borneo. She co-starred in Mobile One. She appeared in The Godfather and co-starred in The Godfather Saga mini series. She played Antonia in Man of La Mancha and did her own singing.