Jon Walmsley

            On Sunday morning I worked out the chords for the fifth verse of “A tous les enfants” (To All the Children) by Boris Vian. There are two verses left to figure out. 

            I worked out the chords for the intro and half the first verse of “Al Cassel’s Air” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of three sessions. On Tuesday I’ll be taking it to Alex Wood to have him do the upgrades. I could go today but I have to shave and shower and I don’t want to go on Monday because it’s my birthday and I don’t want to do any business and lug guitars around. 

            I weighed 86.35 kilos before breakfast. 

            I shaved and showered. 

           I added shades of blue to the sepia copy of frame 27 of my rainbow wave animation. There are two frames left after this. 

            I weighed 87.3 kilos before lunch. 

            I took a siesta from 14:30 to 16:00. When I got up it was raining. I headed out for a bike ride but I would have gotten wet if I’d gone too far and so I only went around the block. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos at 17:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:30. 

            I finished adding shades of blue to the sepia copy of frame 27 of my rainbow wave animation and started on the penultimate frame. I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara sauce, basil pesto, Genoa salami, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 1, episode 12 of The Bill Cosby Show. 

            Chet runs into Al, a guy he knew in high school who also happens to now be a professional football player. Al says the real money is in commercials and when he hears that Chet is a football coach he tells him that a certain ad agency is looking for a real coach to do a cereal commercial. He says one can get $10,000 ($87,000 today) if the commercial runs on TV. Chet goes to audition and the people in charge are impressed. He goes to his colleague Miss Hardy at Holmes High School and she gives him some acting lessons, which might have made him a little too self conscious during the actual shoot. He has to interact with a child star named Jeff Lord at a breakfast table and introduce him to Corn Wispies. Chet fumbles a lot and is getting sick from the cereal. He asks Jeff how he can stand it since the cereal is horrible. Jeff says, “Just drink the milk. That stuff’l kill ya!” They finally get an acceptable take, but later Chet gets a rejection letter and a cheque for only $250. 

            Jeff was played by a 13 year old Jon Walmsley, who was born in the UK and came to the US at the age of two, but in 2018 he returned to England to live. His TV debut was in Combat in 1966. He played Jason Walton on The Waltons for the entire nine year run of the series. He also created the voice of Christopher Robin for the Disney Winnie the Pooh cartoons. He was a guitarist for Richard Marx’s touring band and appeared in two of his music videos.