Sandra Gould

            On Saturday morning I worked out the chords for the first verse of “On fait des rêves” (We Keep Dreaming) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished working out the chords for “China Doll” by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through singing and playing it in French, then I adjusted my translation and sang and played it in English. I uploaded it to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare it for publication. I don’t know if I’ll post it on Sunday since it’s my birthday. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the second of four sessions.

            I weighed 87.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            I was going to take my bike trailer to No Frills but it was raining hard and if I’d taken it I would have spent twice as much time in the rain. I wore my hood but I also wore shorts because I didn’t expect it to be so cold. I had a flier from Freshco to price match the cherries but No Frills already had a lower price. I got three bags. I also bought three bags of grapes, bananas, two artisan naan, dish detergent, spreadable butter, two containers of skyr, a pack of frozen gnocchi, and two bags of Miss Vickie’s chips. 

            I weighed 88 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I‘ve been at midday since May 8. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of iced tea. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and it was just warm enough to go in shorts, but I put on my long sleeved shirt unbuttoned. On the way back I stopped at Bagels on Fire to get a dozen sesame seed bagels. I also stopped at Island Foods on Gladstone to get a spinach and potato roti to eat for lunch tomorrow because they are closed on Sunday. I asked the owner if they used to be on Bathurst because I used to go to a roti place just south of Bloor that I thought I remembered as Island Foods. He said they were at King and Dufferin before and not Bathurst. Now I think I remember that the other place was called Island Roti. 

            I weighed 86.9 kilos at 17:45. That’s the lightest I’ve been in the evening since May 14. 

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

            In the Movie Maker project for “Là-bas c'est naturel (electric)” I converted the video to sepia tone and added the effect of spanning the colour spectrum. The result was that the video eased through various shades of the grey scale. When I tried to do the same thing starting from the grey scale in another video nothing seemed to happen. I uploaded it to YouTube. All that’s left relating to that song is to make a video of the electric version of “Kenya”, my translation. I opened up Audacity and adjusted the guitar and voice levels of the song but then realized I’d opened August 19, the same version that I’d just uploaded instead of August 20, which has the “Kenya” version I want. I’ll get the right one on Monday. 

            I continued to search for a Greta Garbo clip to fit my line, “restless days of hopeless sleep” and finally found something in “Wild Orchids”, one of her last silent films. I could only find the whole movie on Facebook but not on YouTube. I found it on Pirate Bay and downloaded the torrent but it didn’t download yet. Finally I copied the URL of the Facebook movie and pasted it into 4K Downloader and it worked. I didn’t know 4K could download Facebook movies. I had only done YouTube videos so far but apparently it also works on Vimeo. I downloaded “Wild Orchids” and maybe on Monday I’ll convert it to WMV. Then I’ll import it to Movie Maker and isolate the scene of Greta in bed. 

            I gilled eight souvlaki, then I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce, two cut up souvlaki, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 3, episodes 7 and 8 of Bewitched. 

            In the first story it’s Halloween and Endora wants to throw a party for real witches and warlocks. The house that she’d previously conjured in the vacant lot across the street and which Samantha unconjured has reappeared for the occasion. Darren insists the house has got to go and so Endora transforms Samantha and Darren’s living room to have the party there. Endora doesn’t want her brother Arthur there but Samantha insists. The servants are just levitating trays. Darrin sees Willy Mays at the party and Samantha says of course he’s a warlock. How else would you explain all of his home runs? A warlock named Boris arrives with a black cat named Ava. He transforms her into a woman before they go inside. Ava as a human is extremely sensuous and sultry and she can’t keep her paws off of Darrin. She does a slow, gyrating dance for everyone, much of which is done on the floor. She is all over Darrin again just before she turns back into a cat at midnight. The nosy next door neighbour Gladys Kravitz calls her local councilman to report strange goings on in the Stevens house. Councilman Green comes over with Morgan his campaign manager. When they try to get into the Stevens house Arthur casts a spell so that the front door leads directly to the patio and they can’t reach the house in between. Endora tries to recite “The Night Before Halloween” but Arthur keeps throwing in his own comical rhymes. Finally she turns Arthur into a fountain and transports everyone to the Riviera. 

            In the second story Diaper Dan picks up diapers from Samantha and delivers new ones. He says he has made his own rattle and gives the first one to Samantha. But it turns out that the rattle is bugged and Dan is working as a spy for Kimberley, a rival advertizing firm. On the phone Samantha is telling Louise Tate, the wife of Darrin’s boss, about Darrin’s brilliant new idea for the Wright Pen company. But the next day when Darrin and Larry present the idea to Wright he says he already heard the same idea from Kimberley. Darrin comes up with a new idea and tells Samantha about it on the phone. Then Samantha tells her mother and Dan records it. The next day Kimberley tells Wright the idea before Darrin and Larry. They start to think this is more than a coincidence and that their office must be bugged. Darrin looks for bugs at home as well. He and Samantha have a fight over her talking on the phone and the result is that they aren’t speaking. Dan decides to send Samantha flowers in Darrin’s name and sends Darrin a tie in Samantha’s name. When Darrin thanks her for the tie she says she didn’t send one but maybe her mother did. When Endora denies it Samantha calls the florist and learns that Dan sent it. She smashes the rattle and finds the bug. Dan tries to get away but Samantha causes his van to break down, the door to fall off, the tires to blow, and the baby model on top of his van starts talking to him. Endora causes the diapers to shoot at him from the back. The next day Darrin has won back the Wright account and Dan announces he’s going into a rest home. 

            The new Gladys Kravitz was played by Sandra Gould, who as a teenager had roles in the musical review Thumbs Up and the comedy Having Wonderful Time. Her first film role was an uncredited part in T-Men. Her unique voice was very popular on the radio and she co-starred on several popular programs such as Jack Benny, My Friend Irma and Duffy’s Tavern. On TV she played Mildred Webster on the sitcom I Married Joan. She reprised her role of Gladys Kravitz on the sitcom Tabatha. She was the author of Sexpots and Pans and Always Say Maybe. She released a comedy record called “Hello Melvin this is Mama”, which was a response to Alan Sherman’s “Hello Muddah Hello Fadduh”.