Joey Forman

            On Friday morning I worked out the chords for the third and fourth verses of “On fait des rêves” (We Keep Dreaming) by Boris Vian. All that’s left are multiple repetitions of parts of certain lines. 

            I continued to work out the chords for “Aberdeen et Kowloon” by Serge Gainsbourg while listening to the extract on Apple Music. I’m still waiting for my ear to settle on a pattern because for some lines I hear different chords each time I listen. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the second of two sessions. It’s still going out of tune quite a bit. Maybe it’s a combination of the weather and the new strings. Tomorrow I’ll begin a four session stretch of playing my Kramer electric guitar. 

            I weighed 88.2 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since May 20. 

            Around midday I took an early bike ride and stopped at Steve’s Music on the way back to check out their electric guitars. I tried an Ibanez but it turned out to be a six stringed bass. I tried a guitar and thought the amp was misbehaving. The sales person pointed out that I didn’t have the jack all the way in and added that it’s usually the customer who is misbehaving. What a smartass. The best guitar I tried was a Schechter with a wood body for $1200 and change. I think I’m going to go back to the Mother of All Guitar Shops to see if he still has the wooden Gibson electric. If he does I might buy it. If not I might wait a year and look around again. I probably won’t have time to go tomorrow and he’s not open after that until Tuesday. 

            I stopped at Freshco where I bought three bags of grapes, a pack of strawberries, bananas, a pack of raspberries, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a pack of chicken drumsticks, a jug of orange juice, a box of spoon size shredded wheat, two packs of Full City Dark coffee, a jar of salsa, and a pack of garbage bags. 

            I weighed 86.6 kilos at 15:12. 

            I took a late siesta. 

            I weighed 88.1 kilos at 17:45. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:15. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my electric performance of “Kenya” I synchronized the audio with the video. I isolated the song, added a fade to black at the end, added the effects of film grain and rendered it brighter. I published it and tomorrow I’ll upload it to YouTube. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Angeline” I continued to edit the copy of the silent Greta Garbo film Wild Orchids. I isolated what are probably all of the clips that could fit with my line “restless days of hopeless sleep”, then I just continued to watch the movie in case there is something more I need. Here is the story so far: 

            Wealthy businessman John Sterling and his wife Lillie are on a luxury boat to Java because John wants to invest in tea plantations. In the corridor Lillie sees a man named Prince de Gace severely beating his servant and she is appalled. When he sees her he is smitten. The prince strikes up a friendship with John so he can get to Lillie. Out on the deck the prince tries to kiss Lillie and she slaps him. Later Lillie and John are in their separate twin beds. This is the scene that I edited and kept. Lillie tries to tell John of her encounter with de Gace and confesses that he kissed her. But John has already fallen asleep. Lillie has a nightmare of de Gace beating her with his whip and she wakes John, who comforts her. The prince has invited the Sterlings to stay at his plantation while John does his business. When they get to Java they take a luxury train to the prince’s estate. Lillie is upset because she doesn’t want to go there. That and the heat causes her to faint. The prince comes to revive her with a cool drink made by his servants. They arrive at the prince’s estate and are greeted by hundreds of kneeling servants. At dinner the Sterlings experience eating with their hands for the first time but John doesn’t like it. They are shown to their opulent room and Lillie is given four subservient maids. There’s about an hour left in the film. 

            I roasted four chicken legs and had one with a potato and gravy while watching season 3, episodes 17 and 18 of Bewitched. 

            In the first story Darrin is very interested in NASA’s project to put a man on the moon. He is watching the results of the probe that was sent there and the closest images that anyone had seen up to that point. Darrin wants Samantha to watch it with him but she says she is busy with housework and besides, she’s seen the moon. Darrin doesn’t know what to make of that because he thinks she might really mean that she has been to the Moon. Then he starts thinking that if she has been to the Moon and if she has a means of getting there then it might be of national interest for him to notify NASA. At work he asks Larry what he thinks and Larry says it’s a waste of his tax payments to send people to the moon. Meanwhile Samantha’s mother Endora comes to visit and asks her to lunch. They go to Tokyo where they drop in on a Japanese warlock who is an old friend of Endora’s. He gives them a package of his special warlock tea. When Samantha gets home she returns to cleaning the attic. When Darrin gets home he is so suspiciously inquisitive about what Samantha did that day that she finally tells him that she was on the moon. Darrin believes her and he later collects some dust from her clothing and the package of tea, then takes them to his local pharmacist to ask him to analyze the samples. When Darrin comes home he falls asleep on the couch and dreams that NASA is interrogating him about the contents of the packages. Then Samantha is taken into custody and he wakes up in a panic. Samantha is there and he asks why she had to go to the moon. She explains she went to Japan but he doesn’t believe her. She says, “You believe I went to the moon but you don’t believe I went to Japan?” Finally he believes her and he laughs about having taken ordinary Japanese tea to be analyzed. But Samantha says it isn’t ordinary but rather warlock tea. Then Mr. Grand the druggist calls and says he analyzed the tea and his brother in law Harry Kahn from NASA is very interested in it. Grand and his brother in law come over. The man from NASA is holding the envelope and Samantha causes a wind to blow the contents away. She says that was the only sample and he’ll just have to explain that to the space agency. Harry says he’s not from a space agency but owns a chain of drug stores in Nassau County, Long Island. Later Darrin asks Samantha if she has ever really been to the moon. Samantha says there are some things a wife should not tell her husband.

            In the second story Samantha is on her way to take Tabatha to be in the studio audience of her favourite TV show, “Hoho the Clown”. Samantha was given tickets by Darrin, whose company handles the advertizing for the show’s sponsor, Solow Toys. Endora drops by to see her granddaughter and decides to come along, although she is contemptuous of popular human entertainment and would prefer that Tabatha attend the ballet. At the show there is a draw for a chest full of Solow toys and any of the children in the audience who are wearing special badges are automatically entered. Endora wonders why Tabatha doesn’t have a badge and Samantha explains that because Tabatha’s father works for a firm that handles the toymaker’s advertizing for Tabatha to win the toys would be a conflict of interest. Endora doesn’t understand and conjures a badge for Tabatha. She also causes Hoho to call out Tabatha’s number. Samantha has the chest of toys given to charity. But the next day Darrin and Samantha learn that Hoho refuses to do the show unless Tabatha is there. Samantha brings her and when the show begins Hoho goes directly to Tabatha and does the show only for her, who he calls his “little doll’. He also tells her that he will arrange for her to win all the prizes. Samantha is desperately trying to find Endora so she can reverse the spell but she can’t locate her. It is obvious that Endora did something to Hoho’s mind to make him so obsessed with Tabatha. Endora finally returns from Mexico to reverse the spell. Hoho doesn’t know what he’s doing there and doesn’t care about Tabatha. Then Larry Tate arrives with Mr. Solow, who fires Hoho and cancels his contract with McMann and Tate. Larry in turn fires Darrin. Samantha suspends everyone but Darrin so she can figure out how to save the day. Samantha then conjures a doll that looks like Tabatha and unfreezes everybody. She tells Solow that this was all a publicity stunt to advertize a new doll and that Hoho was in on it. She shows him the doll and he likes it. He hires back Hoho and makes Larry hire back Darrin. 

            Hoho was played by Joey Forman, who started out performing on the radio. He became a stand-up comedian and was one of the winners on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts. He formed a comedy duo with Mickey Rooney and they performed in Las Vegas. This led to him co-starring on the TV sitcom The Mickey Rooney Show. In 1968 he created the guru parody character Mashuganishi Yogi and released an album featuring the character with Bill Dana playing the sitar in the character of Harvey Shankar.