I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar during song practice for the last of two sessions. Tomorrow I’ll begin a two session stretch of playing my Kramer electric.
I weighed 87.2 kilos before breakfast.
Around midday I sanded a little more of the inside of the bathroom side of the bathroom door. I got the top half done and I’m hoping to finish it tomorrow so I can focus more on rehearsing for my book launch in a little over a week.
I weighed 87 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride and stopped at Freshco on my way back. I bought five bags of red grapes, three packs of raspberries, bananas, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, three bags of skim milk, a tin of Full City Dark coffee, a jar of salsa, and a pack of Sponge Towels. They had packs of two on sale but I did the math and a pack of six that’s not on sale is still cheaper.
I weighed 87.2 kilos at 18:45.
I was caught up on my journal at 19:30.
I reviewed the song practice video of my performance of “Vomit of the Star Eater” on October 15 playing my Kramer electric guitar and the take at 34:30 wasn’t bad.
I compared my acoustic performance of “Vomit of the Star Eater” on September 6 with that of September 9 and found that September 6 has more presence and energy even though it has a few more mistakes so September 6 wins this round. There are fifteen more acoustic takes to compare.
I had time for about fifteen minutes of practice of my song “Paranoiac Utopia”. I don’t know if I made progress but at least I kept the song warm in my brain until I can rehearse it hopefully tomorrow.
I had a small potato with gravy and a slice of roast beef while watching the last episode of The Beatles cartoon series and half of episode 25 of The Bill Dana Show.
In story 1 of The Beatles finale, in the kingdom of Kropotkin a young prince is bored and wants to lead a rock band. His instrument is a comb and tissue paper but he is a horrible musician. The evil prime minister hates the prince and wants to take over. Princess Amalia of Calca Malia loves the prince but hates his music. The prime minister loves the princess, which is another reason why he wants to get rid of the prince. He convinces the prince that he is a great musician and should go out into the world to find a band to lead. Amalia is forced to be promised in marriage to the prime minister who now rules the kingdom. She is trapped in the tower and puts a note in a bottle which she throws down the mountain. Meanwhile the Beatles are in a car winding their way up the mountain when the bottle hits Ringo in the head. The note is addressed to the Beatles asking them to find the prince. Then the prince lands in front of them to ask if they need a leader for their group and then plays his comb. They tell him it’s terrible and now he knows. They take him back to the castle to save the princess while the song “Wait” is playing. They crash through the castle gate in their car. But the prime minister pulls a cord and the car with our heroes in it falls through a trap door and he grabs the princess to carry her away. The car is back in pursuit and is closing in when the prime minister brings down a gate to stop them from following. But John hooks a rope onto the gate and the car is put in reverse, causing it to spin its tires on the carpet which in turn pulls the carpet towards them that the prime minister is running away on, pulling the prime minister back to the gate. The prince confronts the prime minister for lying that he blew great comb and tissue paper. The prime minister denies he was lying and so the prince challenges him to say that under the Kropotkin Bell of Truth. He does and the big bell falls on him.
The first singalong is to “Penny Lane”. The second singalong is to “Eleonor Rigby”.
The final Beatles story for this series begins with John reading a King Arthur story to some children. John falls asleep and dreams he is in the book where Merlin takes him to see Arthur. Arthur has just learned of a fire breathing dragon menacing the land and so he takes Merlin and John the troubadour with him to fight the dragon. Arthur is having a tough time with the dragon and so Merlin tells John he’ll have to put the monster to sleep by singing. John says he can’t sing alone because he’s part of a group and so Merlin transports the rest of the Beatles there and they don’t seem a bit surprised. They play “I’m Only Sleeping”, which was written mostly by John. George’s lead guitar is played backwards and that’s the first time that was ever done in a recording. The song is about how much John enjoyed sleeping. The song puts the dragon to sleep. Then it wakes up and puts the Beatles in its mouth but they keep playing and it falls asleep again. John wakes up in the real world with the Beatles there. It was a dream but they all remember having been in it.
In The Bill Dana Show, Dana plays his most famous character Jose Jiminez who works as a bell hop in a hotel. Also working there is another bellhop named Eddie, Byron Glick the hotel detective, and the hotel manager Mr. Phillips.
The scene opens in Phillips’s office where Glick has his gun drawn as he supervises Mr. Brown who is changing the combination of the safe. Glick is played by Don Adams and he is identical to Adams’s later character of Maxwell Smart, right down to the “Would you believe” gag he often did. Glick receives the new combination, commits it to memory and then locks the combination in the safe. Glick tells Jose the numbers are embedded in his brain. Jose says, “They are in bed with your brain”. Glick says his father had one of the great memory acts in vaudeville but then Glick can’t remember his father’s name. Phillips arrives and Jose shows him a list of the seating arrangement for today’s banquet. While they are going over it a lot of numbers are spoken and Glick realizes that he has lost the combination. Later a sheik approaches Jose and asks if he knows who he is. Jose responds, “You don’t know who you are?” He says he is the caliph of Ranjapoor. Jose says he’s the bellhop of very poor. It turns out the caliph is Glick. Then a sophisticated British guest named Bardley is at the desk and Jose thinks it’s also Glick and so he pulls his beard, which makes Bardley demand to see the manager. Phillips comes and invites him for tea in his office. Then Bardley pulls a gun and demands that Phillips open the safe. Phillips says he can’t but Bardley doesn’t believe him. At that point the video freezes because only 59% downloaded in a year. There’s no version on You Tube or any other online player and no synopsis on IMD. I assume that either Jose or Glick or both save the day.
Bill Dana’s career as an entertainer began in the comedy team of Dana and Wood. He worked as a writer for Steve Allen. The Bill Dana Show was a spin-off of The Danny Thomas Show as was The Andy Griffith Show. I remember the Bolivian character of Jose Jiminez appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show many times. Jose would always be interviewed by Sullivan about some exotic job he had, like the time he was an astronaut. Dana also made recordings of comedy songs he wrote. Since Dana was not Hispanic the character of Jose Jiminez would be considered extremely politically incorrect in the modern world. He created the character of Jose for the “Man in the street” segments of The Steve Allen Show. He also had a management company that handled Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Don Adams’s “Would you believe” routines were written by Dana. He wrote and produced The Spike Jones Show. He co-wrote the Get Smart movie The Nude Bomb. He wrote one of the most famous episodes of All In the Family, in which Sammy Davis Jr. appears. He co-starred in the movie I Wonder Who’s Killing Her Now. He co-starred in the TV series Zorro and Son.
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