Barbara Rhoades

            On Wednesday morning I ran through singing and playing “D’où reviens-tu Billy Boy?” by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I’ll run through my translation. 

            I memorized the second chorus of “Amours des feintes” (Feinting Romance) by Serge Gainsbourg. There are two verses and one chorus left to learn.

            During song practice I played my Martin acoustic guitar for the second of two sessions. 

            I weighed 86.7 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since August 9. 

            I called the Faculty of Dentistry at U of T and booked September 9, at 13:20 for my surgery. I’ll have to pay $430 up front but it may be over $1000 if Dr. Xia decides to do a bone graft. 

            Around midday I sanded the edges and the underside of the lower shelf in the bathroom and finished sanding the eastern wall. Tomorrow I’ll tackle the part of the northern wall that’s below the shelves. 

            I weighed 87.2 kilos before lunch. I had Triscuits with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of raspberry iced tea. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 86.85 kilos at 17:45. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:45.

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “The Next State of Grace” I made a clip of me singing “I can’t drive a girl home with wheels that don’t turn”. I used the third take of the song from the video I shot of myself on the street a month or two ago. I inserted it into the main video and synchronized it with the studio audio. Then I synchronized the old concert video with the studio audio for my line, “I’m buried with pride when I try to save face”. After that the video is out of synch again for the line “Guess I’ll sit here and wait for the next state of grace”. Tomorrow I’ll decide if I can synchronize the concert video for that line or if I’ll use the street video. 

            I digitized the cassette recording of part one of my Slamnation poetry slam from 2000. This recording came out clean with no static. 

            I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 7, episodes 17 and 18 of Bewitched. 

            In the first story Endora and Serena are observing Samantha and Darrin. Endora is disgusted by the mortal life she thinks her daughter is being forced to lead. She decides that the solution is to turn Darrin into a warlock. Serena says that’s impossible but Endora takes them to the Man on the Mountain at the top of the Himalayas. Endora and Serena have to climb part of the way because the air is too thin to fly. Considering that we’ve seen Endora instantaneously transport herself to the Moon there’s contradiction here in what witches can or can’t do. The Old Man is the oldest living warlock and Endora asks him how to turn a mortal into a warlock. His first piece of wisdom is that it doesn’t pay to interfere with your in-laws. Endora insists and so he gives her a potion that must be taken 500 years in the past to 14th Century Ireland and administered to Darrin’s ancestor Darrin the Bold. Endora tasks Serena with making the trip and completing the spell. She has to add three hairs from his beard to the potion, heat it and have him inhale the vapours. That will cause a change in his cosmic chromosomes and in the present Darrin will inherit the powers of a warlock. Serena shows up at Darrin the Bold’s castle claiming that her carriage broke down and she needs lodging until it is repaired. As soon as Darrin sees how attractive she is he agrees. Later he visits her room and comes on to her. She asks him to start a fire so she can heat her medicine. She then kisses him and pulls a hair from his beard and puts it into the potion. She explains that in her culture it’s a courting custom and the more hairs she plucks the more attracted she is to him. She kisses him and takes another, then a third. She mixes them all in the potion and then waves the vial under his nose. He becomes a warlock and then instantaneously so does Darrin in the present. Anything he wishes for materializes but he doesn’t like it. When Samantha asks Endora about it she offers the explanation that Darrin has been absorbing witchcraft by osmosis for so long that he’s turned into a warlock. When Samantha talks with Serena she lets it slip that she’s been seeing an ancestor of Darrin. Samantha gets the whole story from Serena and then goes back to the past to reverse the spell after being chased around by Darrin the Bold for a while. She puts a potion in his ale and dumps it over his head. Meanwhile in the present Darrin is about to get beaten up by his neighbour whose bush Darrin wished away. Darrin’s powers are now gone but Samantha returns and saves him just in time. 

            In the second story Arthur shows up with more practical jokes at Darrin’s expense. But then Arthur tells Samantha that those were his final pranks because he’s giving them up. He’s fallen in love with a witch named Aretha who hates practical jokes. He summons her and she is a statuesque beauty. He says they will be marrying soon. Aretha is kind of snooty and when Samantha reaches out her hand she doesn’t take it. Arthur suddenly says he needs to talk with Samantha in the kitchen and when she gets there he gives her a bouquet that squirts in her face. He's having a hard time kicking the practical joke habit. Aretha wants to discuss with Arthur where they’ll go on their honeymoon. Samantha says she knows a place Aretha can go. Arthur loses control again and turns Aretha into a clown. Aretha ends their engagement. Arthur is broken hearted and decides to cast a spell to remove his practical joking urges from his body and lodge them into the walls of Samantha’s house. Then Arthur disappears and the house itself becomes the practical joker. Samantha finds a dancing skeleton in the broom closet. Meanwhile Darrin and Larry meet their potential client Mr. Rockfield of Rockfield Furnishings. Darrin pitches a couple of ideas that Rockfield hates but Rockfield and his wife will be coming over to Darrin’s for dinner that night and Larry promises him Darrin will reveal his main campaign. Darrin arrives home and a bucket appears over his head to drench him with water. The Rockfields and Larry arrive and a gust of wind blows Mrs. Rockfield’s dress up like Marilyn Monroe’s. Darrin serves them all drinks but now they can’t lift them off the coffee table. Darrin’s shoes are stuck to the carpet. A scissor arm pops up near Larry with a boxing glove at the end and knocks him out. Then a barrel of monkeys appears and the little apes raid the room. Arthur returns with Aretha but when she sees how funny he thinks the scene is she realizes he’s not her type and leaves him forever. Arthur realizes Aretha is a phony and reabsorbs his joking urge. Then Darrin and Samantha offer Rockfield an explanation for the display. He says it was all part of his ad pitch for Rockfield furnishings. The TV ad will show a Coney Island funhouse juxtaposed with a house furnished by Rockfield and the slogan will be that Rockfield furniture is more fun. Rockfield likes the idea. Later Arthur appears again and Darrin threatens to box his ears but Arthur puts Darrin’s ears in boxes instead. 

            Aretha was played by Barbara Rhoades, whose acting debut was in “The Man Who Believed” episode of Ironside in 1967. She co-starred in The Shakiest Gun in the West. She played Maggie Chandler on the sitcom Soap, Melody Feebeck on Busting Loose, Jessica Gardner on the soap opera Generations and Irene Manning on One Life to Live. She was a frequent panelist on Match Game. She was in There Was a Crooked Man with Kirk Douglas and Henry Fonda and said that Douglas would not do any scenes with her because she was taller than him. She said there was a striking contrast between Douglas and Fonda. Douglas had a trailer with a fence around it where he stayed when they weren’t shooting while Fonda hung out with the crew, eating lunch with them and playing games with them.