Tuesday 24 September 2024

Nicolas Surovy


            On Monday morning I worked out the chords for the third verse and half of the fourth of “Dis-lui toi que je t'aime” (That I Love You Now Tell Him) by Serge Gainsbourg. After the fourth I think the rest of the verses have the same chords as the first verse. 
            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. I audio and video recorded the session as I have since September 1 and will continue until October 15. I made it into the third verse of “Vomit of the Star Eater” before I started making major mistakes, so I consider that progress. “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” only took a couple of takes but I think the final chord was a little off. 
            I’ve been converting the enormous MP4 files from my camera videos to H264AVI and it has always made fairly good copies in a much smaller size. This morning I saw that a 19 gig file had been converted to a 45 gig file. I tried again with Total Video Converter but saw right away that it was going to convert it to over 60 gigs. I started a few more conversions of the same file and they were predicted to be a different size each time. Finally I found one that was going to be 5 gigs and went with that. 
            I weighed 88.75 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since last Monday. 
            At 14:00 I headed downtown to the U of T Grad School of Dentistry to hopefully get my stitches out. My original appointment had been for 14:45 but they called me a few days ago and changed it to 15:00. I got there around 14:45 and Dr. Xia saw me almost right away. He removed all the stitches but one. He booked me in two weeks to get the last stitch out. Two of his professors looked at it and said it was a successful operation. He said I could wear my denture and eat a less soft diet but to still avoid crunchy food. I still can’t brush or floss that top front tooth and have to instead apply Peridex with a Q-Tip. 
            I weighed 88.25 kilos at 16:00. 
            I weighed 88.95 kilos at 18:20. The same as last Monday evening. 
            I was caught up on my journal at 19:30. 
            I looked for some silent film clips that might fit with my line “Whenever I lay bare my heart it looks like the Grand Canyon park and women gasp at a desert hole that’s too deep to believe. They walk around they stop and stare, they leave their garbage everywhere but no one wants to stick around it’s the kind of place you leave”. The emphasis would be on the last line because that’s the line that needs to be filled right now for the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Me and Gravity”. I watched the Tom Mix film “Sky High”, which takes place in the Grand Canyon and I think I might be able to use something from that film. I’ll download it tomorrow.
            I cut up a whole chicken and roasted it. I had a leg with a potato and gravy while watching episode 15 of The Big Valley
            It’s Christmas and Jarrad had been assigned as the attorney for Maybelle Williams. She’s the girlfriend of Billy Joe Gaines who is a wanted criminal. She is in jail for having been found in the possession of $5000 and a bag of gold dust that were stolen by Billy and she is accused of having been his accomplice. The judge refuses to let her out on bail and so Jarrad asks him to release her in his custody. The judge reluctantly agrees but bets Jarrad he’ll regret it. They bet a box of fine cigars. On the way to the Barkley ranch Maybelle tries to escape. He catches her and takes her home. They know who Maybelle is but Jarrad didn’t warn them that he was bringing her there. Nick especially resents her presence because her boyfriend murdered a friend of his. But Jarrad explains that he just didn’t want to leave her in the cold cell at Christmas time and the family gives in. Meanwhile Billy Joe and his gang are about 120 km away and heading for Stockton to find Maybelle. That night Maybelle tries to sneak out but Jarrad happens to be downstairs reading. She tells him she was looking for a midnight snack and so he takes her to the kitchen. Later he sees her boots are on and that she was planning on escaping. She tells him she won’t try it again but the next morning she’s packed if he wants to take her back to jail. He says she can stay. She goes riding with Audra and they go to a corral where Heath is breaking a wild horse. Maybelle disagrees with his slow method of taming horses and after he leaves she mounts it. It throws her, Audra comes to help her, Maybelle runs for the fence but Audra stumbles, gets trampled and knocked out. Maybelle drags her free and at first rides away but then comes back to help her. Audra is okay but just needs a little recovery time. Maybelle is blamed for her injury and she won’t admit that she helped Audra and so Jarrad decides to take her back to jail. But then he confronts her before they leave. She remains defiant and so he dunks her in the horse trough. Then he says he can’t take her to jail in wet clothes. He tells her to get ready for dinner. The next day Maybelle helps to trim the tree and that night she joins them for caroling. On Christmas morning while everyone is exchanging gifts, Jarrad gives Maybelle the most beautiful dress she’s ever seen. Later, wearing the dress she goes out in the wagon with Victoria and Audra to call on the ladies of the valley for Christmas, leaving Jarrad home alone with the butler Silas. Meanwhile Billy Joe has found out where Maybelle is and heads for the Barkley ranch, leaving his gang on the edge of the property. Billy holds Jarrad at gunpoint while waiting for Maybelle to return. Then the gang intercepts Victoria’s carriage, get Maybelle out and send Victoria home. One of Billy’s men tells him they’ve got Maybelle and he leaves. Jarrad gets his gun and goes after them. He holds his gun on them but Maybelle rides in front of Billy and says she’s going with him. The next day Jarrad brings a box of cigars to the judge and admits he was wrong. But when he leaves he sees Maybelle and learns that she waited for Billy to go to sleep and rode away. Jarrad takes Maybelle to the judge to show him how wrong he was about her.
            Maybelle was played by Lynn Loring, who went on to become president of MGM/Universal Artists television productions. 
            Billy Joe was played by Nicolas Surovy, who is the son of renowned opera singer Risë Stevens. He attended Juilliard on the G.I. Bill after a term in Vietnam. His film debut was in For Pete’s Sake. He played Mike Roy on All My Children. He played Pe’Nar Makull on the Star Trek Voyager episode Time and Again.





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