I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice. It was pretty much in tune from the start. Tomorrow I’ll begin a two session stretch of playing my Epi acoustic guitar and it won’t be in tune very often.
I weighed 86.95 kilos before breakfast.
Around midday I rode to Christie and Bloor to an imaging lab to get my bone density scan done. My doctor said that now that I’m 70 I have to do that every couple of years. It’s a weird, noisy Star Trek looking thing that moves over the body. I thought it was going to teleport me someplace or do a 3-D print of my body. My stomach felt weird but maybe that was just from the noise and the proximity of the machine. The technician said it shouldn’t affect my stomach.
I learned that there is a lab next door in the basement that could do my blood work and so I went there. I thought I would have to fast for 12 hours but they said it was okay and I got it done. One of the tests was not covered by OHIP and so I had to pay $41. I’d thought I’d have to get these two tests done on separate days but now they are both out of the way.
I continued riding to Yonge and Bloor, south to Richmond, west to Peter, north to Queen and west to Parkdale.
My front brakes were sounding weird and so I stopped at Metro Cycle. Gordon said the metal was coming through on one of my brake pads. I don’t know why they didn’t find that during my tune-up. Anyway I bought new pads for $40.
Gordon said this is his slowest year since he opened in 2019. He said the economy has shied people away from buying new bikes.
I weighed 85.6 kilos at 15:30, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since May 15.
I weighed 86.55 kilos at 18:20.
I was caught up on my journal at 19:41.
In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Seven Shades of Blues” I worked on shortening the duration of the frames of the animated rainbow wave at the end of the video. I need to shorten them a bit more and then maybe mix some of them up with the images of Brunhilde’s castle from Fritz Lang’s Sigfried.
I had a potato with gravy and three pork ribs while watching season 1, episode 16 of The Bill Cosby Show.
After the end of the school day Chet gets on the elevator in the basement just as Mr. Richards is getting off. But Richards didn’t want the basement and gets back on. Chet explains how the elevator works. Richards pressed the button on the third floor to call the elevator there, but in between then and the time the elevator arrived on floor 3, Chet had pushed the button to call the elevator to the basement. The elevator goes to wherever it is called first. The door opens and they are at the third floor when Richards wanted the ground floor. Chet explains that is because Richards impatiently pushed the button again on the third floor after Chet called the elevator to the basement and so the lift then returned to the third floor where it had been called after. He says now it will go to the ground floor because Richards pushed that button after he got in. But it doesn’t go to the ground floor but to the fourth floor because the cleaning lady Mrs. Wochuk called it there before Richards pushed for the ground floor. Wochuck does not speak English other than “How you do” when she gets in. But on the way down the elevator gets stuck between the third and second floors. The three of them are forced to spend the night together. Chet instigates a game of twenty questions and several other games to pass the time with Richards until they start arguing. Then Wochuk opens her thermos and there seems to be booze inside because she starts dancing some kind of Slavic or Yiddish dance and everybody else joins in. Then Chet starts asking Richards about his life and they learn that they are both “undecided” voters. Chet says his family have been undecided voters for generations. Richards says that polls show that undecideds outnumber Republicans and Democrats put together. He speculates that if they formed an Undecided party they could take over the US. “Fellow undecided voters, don’t just do something, stand there!” Richards gets serious and says he has been undecided about his own life for the thirty years he’s been a teacher. He decides he’s going to quit and go and breathe fresh air, then he and everybody else starts dancing. They are freed in the morning and later Chet invites Richards and Wochuk to his place for dinner and Richards suggests they make it an annual event. Richards announces that he finally knows he wants to be a school teacher.
Mrs. Wochuk was played by Elsa Lanchester who played one of the most iconic characters in the history of cinema in the title role in The Bride of Frankenstein.
Joshua Richards was played by Henry Fonda, who at the age of 14 witnessed the lynching of Will Brown during the Omaha race riots and it enraged him against racism for the rest of his life. In 1923 he enrolled in the University of Minnesota as a Journalism major but after two years decided Journalism was not for him. He worked at various jobs but after playing the lead role in a one-week play called Merton of the Movies, he was hooked on acting. He joined the University Players where he met and became lifelong friends with James Stewart. He studied acting with Marlon Brando’s mother Dorothy. In 1934 he did a comedy sketch with Imogene Coca in the Broadway review New Faces. He hired Leyland Howard as his agent and manager and it is he that persuaded Ford to enter film acting. His film debut in 1935 was a co-starring role in The Farmer Takes a Wife. He co-starred in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, You Only Live Once, The Moon’s Our Home, Jezebel, Jesse James, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Mad Miss Manton, The Lady Eve, Daisy Kenyon, Battle of Midway, Let Us Live, War and Peace, The Deputy, Fort Apache, Fire Creek, The Cheyenne Social Club, There Was a Crooked Man, My Name is Nobody, Tentacles, Roller Coaster, City on Fire, Yours Mine and Ours (Jane says her father was in love with Lucille Ball), On Golden Pond (for which he won an Oscar). He starred in I Dream Too Much, Young Mr. Lincoln, The Grapes of Wrath (for which he was nominated for an Oscar), My Darling Clementine, The Ox Bow Incident, 12 Angry Men (which he also produced), Rings On Her Fingers, The Wrong Man, The Return of Frank James, Big Deal at Dodge City, The Tin Star, Once Upon a Time in the West, Mister Roberts (He won a Tony for the Broadway version), Battle of the Bulge, Gideon’s Trumpet, Fail Safe, Stage Struck, The Male Animal, Spencer’s Mountain (which inspired The Waltons). He starred in the short-lived sitcom The Smith Family. During the time of the House of Un-American Activities investigations into Communist activity in Hollywood he was one of the actors who protested the witch hunt. He was so offended by the political climate in Hollywood that he moved to New York until 1955. He approved of his daughter Jane’s anti-Vietnam War activism. He was a big fan of All in the Family and hosted a TV special about the show. He became a skilled painter. Quote: “I’ve been close to Bette Davis for 38 years and I have the cigarette burns to prove it”. The character Major Major Major Major in Catch-22 is based on Henry Fonda.
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