Wanda Hendrix

            On Friday morning I dreamed I was kissing Imane Khelif. I think the dream was symbolic of something rather than sexual. 

            My cold was still there but more diminished than yesterday. 

            I searched for the audio for songs on my Boris Vian list so I could find the next of his songs to learn. I couldn’t find lyrics or music for “Ces suprenant”, “Cueillir le jour”, “Il y a plein de neige dans la rue”, or “Vamp”. I’ve got the lyrics for “Pour bercer ma peine” but there’s no audio posted. The next song with lyrics and audio is “Allons z'enfants” (Join the Ranks Kids), a comical song about being in the army when one is not army material. Tomorrow I’ll start memorizing it. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Amours des feintes” (Feinting Romance) by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through singing it in French and English. Tomorrow I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. 

            I weighed 86.85 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I sanded the right casing of the frame of my bathroom door. I had expected to get more of the frame sanded but there was one nail that was sticking out that I couldn’t hammer in. I spent several minutes prying it with a screwdriver, trying to pull it out with pliers and trying to claw it out with a hammer. Finally I pried it out enough to catch it with the hammer claw. The rest of the frame should be easier. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 86.8 kilos at 17:30, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since last Friday. 

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

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “The Next State of Grace” I had last inserted a recent clip of me singing, “While I line up and wait for the next state of grace”. I lined it up with the studio audio. Then I synchronized the old concert video of me singing, “I’m biding my time here as god’s welfare case”. Then it was out of synch for my repetition of “while I line up and wait for the next state of grace”. I once again harvested a clip from my street video and inserted it, but that take was a little fast. So I took a clip from another take and synchronized that. Now it’s time to introduce the clips of people lip syncing “line up and wait for the next state of grace”. I converted the video of Minh into AVI WMV. Tomorrow I’ll import it into Movie Maker. 

            I roasted four chicken legs in the oven and put some of the drippings into the gravy I made yesterday to thin it out. I had one of the legs with a potato and gravy while watching season 8, episodes 7 and 8 of Bewitched. 

            In the first story Samantha, Darrin, Larry and Louise go to stay in the Duke of Winsett’s haunted castle. That night the ghost of Harry the eighth duke of Winsett is making so much noise howling and rattling his chains that Samantha gets up from bed and goes to confront him. Harry finds Samantha attractive and so he takes over Darrin’s body to pursue her. But she knows almost right away that he’s not Darrin and avoids him. Meanwhile Louise thinks there’s something wrong with Samantha’s marriage. Then Harry as Darrin makes a pass at Louise too. Samantha decides to conjure a female ghost for Harry to play with from a portrait of the Duchess of Windermere. Samantha figured they had been lovers since it was her husband who made a ghost out of Harry. They are very happy to see each other again and now they haunt the castle together in a much less mournful manner. 

            In the second story Tabitha and Adam are watching a children’s TV show that is sponsored by one of Darrin’s clients, Lester Silverton. One of the features is a Punch and Judy puppet show. Punch and Judy was the very first show I saw when our TV was hooked up when I was four. Punch is always hitting Judy with a big stick and it inspires Adam to hit Tabitha. Tabitha doesn’t like Punch hitting Judy all the time and so she transports herself onto the set to stop him. The puppeteers improvise and interact with Tabitha through their puppets. She makes Punch’s stick disappear but Judy gives him another one and he hits her with that too. Darrin is watching from work and angrily calls Samantha who confronts Tabitha through the TV and tells her to come home. It turns out though that Tabitha was a hit with Silverton and with the public and they want to make her part of the show. Helen Silverton, the wife of Lester thinks he should put his daughter Robin in the show because she is a talented actor but he doesn’t want to use relatives. Samantha manipulates Helen to bring Robin to the studio. Tabitha doesn’t like all the work she has to do on the show and so Samantha tells her she doesn’t have to. She advises her to forget some of her lines. Then Samantha makes Silverton suggest to Robin that she play Tabitha’s part. After that Samantha takes Tabitha to have fun at the zoo. 

            Helen Silverton was played by Wanda Hendrix, who was discovered in her hometown theatre in Jacksonville Florida. Her family moved to California and she began to get featured roles in films at the age of 17. Her debut was in Confidential Agent. She did Ride a Pink Horse when she was 19. She co-starred in Miss Tatlock’s Millions, My Own True Love, Captain Carey USA, The Highwayman, Highway Dragnet, My Outlaw Brother, and Prince of Foxes. She married Audie Murphy at 21 but the marriage only lasted seven months because he was violent and perhaps psychotic. She retired in 1954 to marry millionaire James Stack, who was actor Robert Stack’s brother. They divorced in 1958 and she returned to acting. She starred in One Minute Before Death.