I memorized the first half of the chorus of “La main du masseur” (The Hand of the Masseur) by Serge Gainsbourg and worked on revising my translation.
I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice. Tomorrow I begin a four session stretch of playing my Martin acoustic guitar.
I weighed 87.25 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since November 28.
In Movie Maker I edited the Batgirl video of clips from her second appearance in Batman.
I weighed 87.6 kilos before lunch. That’s the most I’ve pressed the scale in the early afternoon since November 28.
In the afternoon I rode my bike to Freshco, although the streets are still too snowy for that sort of thing. I feel my knees lock up if I don’t at least ride a little bit. But when I got to Freshco it was closed and I realized that I’d forgotten about our deeply rooted tradition of Family Day. I rode home and then walked back down the street to Queen Fresh market where I bought three bags of red grapes.
I weighed 87 kilos at 17:30.
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 “Seven Shades of Blues” I imported the clip of the girl with the rainbow umbrella from the end of the Woodstock documentary and inserted it onto the video timeline just after the clip of the rainbow umbrella from the Rainbow Family Gathering documentary. For the first clip I edited out the umbrella carrier and the surrounding people and just showed the umbrella against the sky. Followed by the entire clip of the girl with the umbrella it looks good as a transition from the rainbow wave animations of the intro to when I start singing “Freedom loving children…”
I downloaded the BBC documentary “When Hippies Ruled the World” then converted it to WMV. Tomorrow I’ll import it to Movie Maker and start harvesting clips for my “Seven Shades of Blues” video.
I reviewed the song practice videos of my performances of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” from September 4 to 7. From September 4 to 6 I played it on my Martin acoustic guitar. September 4 was great until I hit a wrong chord at the end. On September 5 I fumbled near the end but caught myself. On September 6 the take at 19:15 was the best one so far but there was traffic noise. On September 7 I played it on my Gibson Les Paul Studio but I only reviewed up to 31:30 because it was time for dinner.
I cut up two racks of pork ribs and grilled one while I cooked the other in water under the grill. I had three ribs with a potato and gravy while watching season 3, episode 4 of Batman.
The story begins at the Gotham Park racetrack the day before the Bruce Wayne Foundation Memorial Handicap. Lola Lasagna with her parasol and her horse named Parasol are being photographed by the press. One reporter recalls that she has a famous collection of parasols. Suddenly Penguin sneaks up and steals Lola’s parasol. We know from the end of the last episode that Lola and Penguin are old acquaintances. Later at the Gotham Public Library (They goofed and showed the sign outside that reads New York Public Library) we see Barbara Gordon at her desk when Penguin walks in and she watches as he approaches a glass case containing a book called Umbrellas and Parasols. He uses the tip of his umbrella to cut the glass and take the book. He is about to leave with it when she confronts him and says, “You can’t just walk off with a priceless folio of famous parasols!” He asks, “Why not? I’m a tax paying citizen and this is a public library!” She calls her father, police Commissioner Gordon. Penguin starts to leave and she tells him she’s placing him under citizen’s arrest. He places his umbrella in an umbrella stand, presses a button on the handle and it begins to tick, then he leaves. Batman and Robin just happen to be in Gordon’s office when she calls and they rush over there. Batman places the bomb under the Bat Bomb machine where it safely explodes. Then Batman and Robin head for the Bat Computer to help figure out Penguin’s motives. Meanwhile Penguin’s headquarters is in Penguin’s Bookshop where he does more bookmaking for horse races than he does book selling. Lola Lasagna arrives looking for her priceless parasol. Penguin tells her the parasol is as fake as she is and he calls her Lulu Schultz and reminds her that he knew her when she’d steal the braces from other kids’ teeth. She says Penguin stole their teeth. She says her horse Parasol is all she has to show for her three weeks of marriage to Luigi Lasagna. She says he’s 80 years old but instead of dying as any wife might reasonably expect, he divorced her. All she got was the horse and she had to sell her parasols to eat. Meanwhile the Bat Computer leads Batman and Robin from parasols, to Parasol the horse, to Lola Lasagne, to Lulu Schultz, to Glu Gluten’s Glue Factory. They head for the factory and after they leave, Alfred calls Barbara Gordon who only he knows to be Batgirl and tells her about the factory. As she changes to Batgirl the narrator refers to her as “that dominoed daredoll”. Meanwhile Penguin plots with Lola about the race. Her horse Parasol is the favourite but that won’t pay much. He has the idea to make another horse look like Parasol and make Parasol look like another horse, then bet against the fake Parasol to cash in on the odds. Penguin and Lola go to Glu Gluten where he keeps a horse just in case he needs it for the glue even though glue isn’t made out of horse’s hooves anymore. Penguin wants to buy the horse on an installment plan. Batman and Robin arrive and try to bust Penguin for the umbrella bomb. Batman refers to Lola as Penguin’s charming conspiratress and she likes it. Penguin has his finks attack while Lola walks off with the horse. Penguin is about to escape when Batgirl lassos him with her Bat Rope. She leaves him tied while she unravels a giant roll of adhesive tape and wraps up Penguin’s henchmen. But while she’s doing that Penguin cuts himself free with his umbrella, then escapes with some glue that he uses to sabotage the Batmobile, gluing the seats and the wheels. Batman asks Batgirl how she knew about the glue factory and she lies and says it was through woman’s intuition. Batgirl disappears again, then when Batman and Robin get in the Batmobile they are stuck. Meanwhile Lola has disguised the two horses, but she and Penguin need money to bet and so Penguin goes back to the library to steal the priceless parasol book so he can sell it on the black market. But while doing so he sets off the library prowler alarm that flashes and chimes in Barbara’s bedroom. The story is continued next episode.
Lola is played by the great Ethel Merman, who was born Ethel Zimmerman. She started singing in Manhattan nightclubs. She got a gig opening for Jimmy Durante. Somehow a tonsillectomy made her voice even more powerful. George and Ira Gershwin cast her in their musical Girl Crazy. She co-starred in Anything Goes, Something For the Boys, She starred in Call Me Madam (for which she won a Tony), There’s No Business Like Show Business, We’re Not Dressing, Strike Me Pink, Anything Goes, Happy Landing, Alexander’s Ragtime Band, Straight Place and Show, She starred in Annie Get Your Gun on Broadway for three years. Hello Dolly was written for her but she turned down the role at first. She originated the role of Mama Rose in the Broadway show Gypsy (for which she was Tony nominated). She was the first singer of many Broadway standards such as, “I Got Rhythm, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”, “It’s De-Lovely”, “I Get a Kick Out of You”, “You’re the Top”, “Anything Goes”, and “There’s No Business Like Show Business” (which became her signature song). She was commissioned by the US Postal Service to sing a song promoting the new ZIP code system. In 1979 she recorded The Ethel Merman Disco Album in which she sang Broadway hits to a Disco beat. She was such a fan of Christmas that she kept her tree up all year round. The power of her voice had a lot to do with the fact that when she started out there were no microphones. Her last marriage was very briefly to Ernest Borgnine. Legend has it that when Borgnine asked Merman how an audition had gone, she replied: "Well, they were mad about my 35-year-old body, my 35-year-old voice, and my 35-year-old face." He asked "What did they think of your 65-year-old cunt?" Without missing a beat, Merman retorted: "You weren’t mentioned once." In her autobiography one of the chapters was ritled “My Marriage to Ernest Borgnine” but it was a blank page. When she appeared on the Loretta Young Show she said the word “Hell” during rehearsal. Young held out a swear can and asked for twenty five cents. Merman asked, “How much will it cost me to tell you to go fuck yourself?”
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