Brad Weston

            On Friday morning I memorized the twelfth verse of “Allons z'enfants” (Join the Ranks Kids) by Boris Vian. There are two verses left to nail down in my head. 

            I published on my Christian’s Translations blog and posted on Facebook “Love in Essence”, my translation of “L'amour en soi” by Serge Gainsbourg. There are eleven songs left in my project to translate his entire works. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of four sessions. I audio and video recorded the session for the 41st day of 45. The battery charge waned during “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” but I didn’t notice until the end of “Laisse tomber les filles”. I took the nine volt battery from the FS-6 foot switch and put it in the guitar. I redid the last song I’d done but since I had no idea how many songs were lost I didn’t redo everything. I bumped the guitar against the microphone stand during “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” so it wouldn’t have been a useable take anyway.

            I weighed 87.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            I weighed 88.8 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 87.9 kilos at 18:00. 

            I spent a lot of time researching the career of Burt Reynolds for my blog and so I didn’t get around to finishing my “Me and Gravity” Movie Maker project. I’ll probably have it finished and uploaded to YouTube tomorrow. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg while watching season 1, episodes 3 and 4 of Branded. 

            In the first story a band of Comanche warriors have been drinking and when Jason McCord rides past they attack. In trying to get away he comes across a man driving a wagon and tosses him a rifle so he can help him fight. They take shelter behind the wagon and McCord begins firing but the other man can’t bring himself to fire. The warriors retreat but McCord is angry at the other man for not fighting until he sees that he’s a priest. Father Jason Durant takes McCord to his mission where he teaches school to Comanche children. This is the first time we see the knife that McCord has made from his cavalry sword that was broken when he was drummed out of the service. Some Comanche warriors come to summon Durant to their camp to explain to Chief Looking Glass how three of his warriors were killed. Durant insists on going and learns that the warrior Wild Horse claims that Durant and McCord ambushed he and his men. Durant tells the real story and that the warriors had been drinking but Wild Horse denies it. Durant has to spend the night and the next day he is told he has to fight Wild Horse but he refuses. They don’t understand and think he’s a coward but McCord arrives and explains that he has the courage to be peaceful. McCord asks to fight for him and proves Durant won’t fight by hitting him a few times until the chief agrees to let McCord fight Wild Horse. Their fight is similar to a Medieval joust and McCord eventually wins but refuses to kill Wild Horse. Looking Glass says Wild Horse has dishonoured his people and should die but Durant asks he be spared. Durant is allowed to continue teaching the Comanche children. 

            In the second story McCord rides into McKinley where a woman named Elsie Baron runs a dress shop. At the same time a gunfighter named Charlie Vance who used to be involved with Elsie also arrives. He comes to see her but she says it’s over between them. He is angry about her running off on him months ago and begins to destroy her merchandize. The sheriff Joe Pollard confronts him and a crowd gathers as Vance tells them all that Elsie used to be a saloon girl. The people are scandalized and Vance tells her she has to go away with him now because her reputation is ruined in this town. McCord comes to see Elsie and tells her he owes her for saving his life after she found him pinned under a wagon. A little later Vance is shooting up the hotel and the sheriff is called but Elsie doesn’t have faith in him. She asks McCord to get Vance out of town without her. Vance challenges Pollard to arrest him but the sheriff is not a fighter and walks away. The sheriff was a farmer and he was elected sheriff when no one else wanted the job. Pollard gets McCord to agree to be deputized and summons the mayor but when the mayor hears he is Jason McCord he refuses. Then Vance kills someone so the sheriff and McCord go after him. They split up as Vance is trying to escape. It’s nighttime and from the shadows a gun is seen firing and Vance is shot in the back. The mayor accuses McCord of again being the coward he was charged as at Bitter Creek and demands that the sheriff arrest him. He does so and puts him in a cell. Then Vance’s brothers arrive to start shooting up the town and they want to hang McCord. The mayor wants to give McCord to the brothers to save the town. McCord tells the sheriff he knows it was him that shot Vance in the back. The sheriff goes out to tell the brothers that he killed Charlie. Then McCord confronts them and quickly disarms them both with light bullet wounds. He gets them to admit that he is faster than Charlie was and so he wouldn’t have needed to shoot him in the back. They agree. The mayor apologizes to him. McCord tells the citizens to beg Elsie to give them another chance.

            Charlie Vance was played by Brad Weston, who went to art school before he began acting. His film debut was in Savage Sam in 1963. He starred in the critically maligned martial arts movie Kill the Golden Goose. He played Ed Appel in the Star Trek episode Devil in the Dark. He was first considered as a permanent crewmember for Star Trek but the role of the teenage heartthrob character went to Walter Koenig. Weston committed suicide in 1999.