John Harmon

            On Sunday morning I went to bed at 2:05 and didn’t get much sleep. 

            I published “War Monument”, my translation of “A tous les enfants” by Boris Vian on my Christian’s Translations blog. 

            I uploaded to Christian’s Translations “Carol Lynn and Love Sue Dawn”, my translation of “Johnsyne et Kossigone” by Serge Gainsbourg. I prepared it for publication and published it. Tomorrow I’ll post it on Facebook and then move on to learning “Je suis capable de n’importe quoi” (I Am Capable of Anything) by Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar during song practice. It’s no fun not playing loud. 

            I weighed 88.55 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since September 23. 

            Around midday I started filling the kitchen sink with hot tap water to do my weekly pipe flushing. I then stood on the bathroom sink and finished sanding the drywall compound on the upper part of the southern wall of the bathroom and also the area just above the light fixture on the eastern wall. The phone rang several times and I wondered if it was my landlord responding to a complaint from my neighbour Benji about my sanding. Then I heard the water running and realized I’d forgotten to turn it off. I grabbed a bunch of dirty laundry and wiped it all up from the floor but apparently a lot of water leaked downstairs. I talked with the landlord and he says he’s going to evict me. I said I’m willing to pay for the damage this time since it was clearly my fault. He claims there is a pattern of floods on my part but the last time it was my fault was over ten years ago and the recent times it was always because of faulty plumbing causing pipes to leak. He even blamed me once for a leak that didn’t even come from my place. I don’t think he can successfully evict me if I’m willing to pay the damage. 

            I weighed 88.9 kilos before lunch. It’s been several months since it was that high in the early afternoon. 

            In the late afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 88.3 kilos at 17:45. That’s the most it’s been in the evening since November 10. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:45. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the Christian and the Lions studio recording of Brian Haddon’s song “The Ballad of My Chest Cavity” I got the concert video synchronized with the studio audio for the descending interval leading to Brian’s vocal and almost got them lined up for the beginning of his vocal. 

            I grilled two burgers in the oven and was getting ready for supper when the landlord and his wife knocked on my door. I shouldn’t have let them in but I did. First it was about the damage downstairs. I said I would pay for the physical damage. She claimed that Popeye’s lost $20,000 from customers not coming in because of the water and is threatening to move. But I think she is talking about all the other times she thinks I flooded the restaurant when it was really caused by the landlord’s shitty plumbing. I told her that I hired a plumber last fall and he found that the kitchen stack is rusted and that’s why the drain gets clogged. She said I don’t have the right to call a plumber without their permission. The last time the drains were plugged the landlord made me wait a month and constantly blamed me for the clogging. They also brought up noise and say the people in the building next door are still complaining about my singing and playing because they work nights. She started taking pictures of my place and said there are bedbugs because of the dust. I tried to explain that bedbugs don’t come because of dust but because of blood. Other units in the building that are cleaner than mine have more bedbugs. Besides I reminded my landlord that he was standing right there more than once when the Orkin technician said that there were no bedbug nests in my place but that they visited from other units. Then his wife looked at what I’ve been doing in the bathroom and told me I can’t renovate without the landlord’s permission. I looked it up and found I can paint without his permission, and filling and sanding always have to be done before painting. She started taking pictures of my place and I told her she didn’t have permission. She said it was to show the structural damage and she has a right to do that because Raja needs to fix it. I prefer to renovate myself because Raja would do a shitty job. She says he has the right because he’s the owner. Raja offered to pay me six months rent to move out but I refused.

            They finally left when my supper was almost cold. I had my burger on my last Montreal style bagel with chili sauce, Dijon, pickles, horseradish and hot sauce. I had it with a beer while watching season 1, episode 19 of The Bill Cosby Show. 

            Chet is carrying a bag of groceries when he stops at a store to use the phone. He calls his girlfriend to tell her he’s got the ingredients for the dinner she is preparing and he will be there soon. He leaves the store and outside sees a boy struggling with the gumball machine because it didn’t give him a gumball. He starts shaking it and ends up accidentally knocking it over and breaking it. The boy runs then Chet puts his groceries down and runs after him and convinces him to come back and explain that it was an accident. But he runs again and Chet gives up, then goes back to get his groceries. The store owner Mr. Gustaitis thinks Chet broke his machine and demands $20 to pay for the damage. Chet refuses and so Gustaitis calls a cop. The cop says this is a misdemeanor and so he can’t arrest him but tells Mr. Gustaitis that he can make a citizen’s arrest with a cop present so he does. Chet is processed and put in jail in a cell with a guy named Cookie Maharg who is always getting drunk and in fights with people who call him “little”. Chet tells Cookie he’s going to defend himself and quote Oliver Wendell Holmes. They both appear in night court a couple of hours later but Cookie goes up first and tries to quote Holmes. He quotes him badly but the judge is so impressed with the fact that he even knows who Holmes is, he lets him off. Chet is next but he can’t use the Holmes quote now without looking like he’s copying Cookie. He pleads not guilty but his conversation with the judge isn’t going well until Gustaitis steps forward and admits he never really saw Chet break his gumball machine and he thinks he’s innocent so he’s dropping the charges. 

            Gustaitis was played by John Harmon, who had more than 300 film and television roles over six decades. His film debut was in The Missing Guest in 1938. He co-starred in The Monster of Piedras Blancas. He appeared in two Star Trek episodes: The City on the Edge of Forever and A Piece of the Action. He became a used book seller and collected first editions of Mark Twain’s works.