I worked out the chords for the first verse and a half of “Tandem” by Serge Gainsbourg.
I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. It stayed in tune once or twice through a whole song.
I weighed 85.55 kilos before breakfast.
Around midday I rode down to No Frills where I bought five bags of green grapes, two packs of raspberries, bananas, a pack of four-year-old cheddar because they were out of five-year-old cheddar, a rack of pork ribs, lemon dish detergent, low sugar iced tea, orange juice, two containers of skyr, a bag of Miss Vickie’s regular chips and another of the sweet chili kind.
I weighed 86.35 kilos before lunch at 14:30. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of low sugar iced tea.
Since I took a siesta half an hour later than usual I didn’t take a bike ride downtown but I decided to ride up to the Dufferin Mall to look for a balaclava, At Marks they only had the kind with a logo. The salesperson told me that all the knit balaclavas were sold out early in the season. I went to Walmart and none of the employees I asked even knew what a balaclava was. No other stores had them either. Maybe I’ll try Canadian Tire on Monday.
I lost my favourite bike gear and can’t seem to get it back. On top of that it sounds like something’s rubbing and when I’m coasting it sounds more like a whirr. The left gears don’t work at all. When I got home I took it to Metro Cycles and the guy says I need a new derailleur and so I left it there overnight. It’ll cost me $50 when I pick it up tomorrow.
I weighed 85.65 kilos at 18:15.
I was caught up on my journal at 19:09.
I continued to look for video clips of hippies that might fit with my Seven Shades of Blues video. There’s lots of material but not a lot that ties in with my vision. But then I found a BBC documentary called “When Hippies Ruled the World” and I think it might be fruitful. I’ll watch it tomorrow.
I compared the song practice video of my acoustic performance of “Les Sucettes” on September 27 to that of September 25 and I made fewer mistakes on the 25th. I compared October 1 to September 25 and I made fewer errors on September 25.
I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with Bolognese sauce, potato chips, parmesan and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episode 55 of Batman.
This story introduces the villain Black Widow. Her MO is to enter a bank under the pretense of opening an account. Then while she is in the manager’s office she turns a small device on him that takes over his brain, causing him to submissively hand her a bag containing several thousand dollars when she tells him to. Commissioner Gordon recognizes this method as that of Black Widow and calls Batman. He brings a brain wave bat analyzer to examine the bank manager Mr. Cash and determine exactly what Black Widow did to him. The device looks like a hair dryer and fits over the manager’s head. Batman says Black Widow’s device may have short circuited a portion of Cash’s brain. The analyzer says Black Widow put Cash’s cerebrum out of commission. Police Chief O’Hara says, “Me men are clever but where the human brain is concerned they’re just not equipped”. Black Widow’s headquarters is in an underground grotto called “The Web”. She robs another bank and this time the manager gives her $40,000. Gordon tells Batman that Black Widow has robbed four more banks. Batman asks the names of the banks and discovers that she is working in alphabetical order. That means that the next bank on her list will be Gotham General. Batman and Robin stake out the bank and confront her when she is about to use her device. She tries to use it on Batman and Robin but they are wearing anti short circuiting brain bat electrodes. She takes a spray can from her purse labeled “Instant Nerve Paralyzer” and sprays it at Batman rendering him motionless. She leaves, patting Robin’s cheek and saying “Bye bye baby”. Batman speaks very slowly and says it’s like a dose of spider venom. It slowly wears off but Black Widow has a head start. Batman says he has installed an odour sensitometer in the Batmobile that can follow the smell of Black Widow’s motorbike. Black Widow rides the side car of a motorbike driven by one of her henchmen to an ordinary looking house. But one of the walls drops like a drawbridge and they drive inside. The Batmobile arrives and Black Widow watches through a periscope. There is an elderly couple in rocking chairs on the porch of the adjacent house. It turns out they are automatons that say whatever Black Widow says when Batman asks them questions. But Batman automatically records their voices and analyzes them back at the Batcave to discover they are amplified. They return to the Black Widow’s house and find the secret entrance. Her henchmen attack and after the usual first fight they are beaten. Black Widow steps out and while talking with Batman and Robin steps on a floor switch that lowers a web behind them. She pulls out her can of nerve spray and they back away only to become stuck on the web. She has two large and very fake looking black widow spiders placed at Batman’s and Robin’s feet and they begin to climb up their bodies without really moving their legs. That’s the cliffhanger.
Black Widow is played by the great Tallulah Bankhead, who was 65 at this time and it was her final screen appearance. She craved attention as a child and after tantrums stopped working she turned to being entertaining. She started acting in local troupes when she was 16 and after winning a Picture Play Magazine beauty contest moved to New York from Alabama. She was offered a role in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but turned it down after John Barrymore tried to fuck her. She wasn’t successful in her efforts to appear on Broadway and so she moved to London. She became the most popular actress in the West End and that caught the attention of Paramount Pictures back in the States. Her film debut was a small part in Woman’s Law in 1927. She starred in His House in Order, Tarnished Lady, My Sin, The Cheat, Thunder Below, Faithless, and Devil and the Deep (She said she only took the part so she could fuck the divine Gary Cooper). In 1933 she nearly died from a hysterectomy brought on by gonorrhea which she said she either got from Gary Cooper of George Raft. After that she returned to theatre for 11 years. At society parties she would shock people by stripping naked and chatting. Her own wild parties would last for days. She starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, A Royal Scandal, Die Die My Darling, and the animated The Daydreamer. In 1950 she became host of The Big Show on NBC radio. It got rave reviews but couldn’t compete with Jack Benny and Edgar Bergen. She always preferred theatre because she had direct contact with the audience. Her 1952 autobiography was a best seller. She was a civil rights activist and the first white woman to appear on the cover of Ebony Magazine. Legend has it that she was the inspiration for the character of Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmations and Margo Channing in All About Eve. She smoked 120 cigarettes a day. She said she only called everyone “Dahling” because she couldn’t remember names. Tennessee Williams created Blanche DuBois for her. When filming Lifeboat the other actors complained that she didn’t wear underwear and was always flashing them. Hitchcock said he didn’t know if it was a problem for wardrobe or hairdressing. She was a member of the clique of lesbians and bisexuals called the Four Horsemen of the Algonquin, consisting of herself, Estelle Winwood, Eva La Gallienne, and Blyth Daly. She was a big fan of the New York Giants baseball team. She had a pet lion named Winston Churchill. On seeing a former lover for the first time in years she said, “I thought I told you to wait in the car”. She said, “If I had to live my life again I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner”. “Cocaine isn’t habit forming and I should know since I’ve been using it for years”. “Say anything about me as long as it isn’t boring”. “Bette Davis and I are such good friends that there is nothing I couldn’t say to both of her faces”. “Only good girls keep diaries Bad girls don’t have time”. “I’ve had men and I’ve had women. There’s got to be something better”. She preferred the term “ambisextrous” over “bisexual”.
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