Darrell Larson

            On Sunday morning I finished memorizing “L'amour en cage” (Love in a Cage) by Boris Vian. I did a quick check for the chords and there is at least one set that’s been posted, so I’ll transcribe them tomorrow. 

            I memorized the first verse of “La Robe de Papier” (The Paper Dress) by Serge Gainsbourg. There are only six lines left and so I’m pretty sure I’ll have the whole song in my head on Monday. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. It was in tune from the start despite the humidity but it did go out after about 75 minutes. 

            I weighed 87.35 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I sanded the drywall compound that I’d applied to the reachable part of the southern wall in the bathroom above the sink. All that’s left now to sand is the door and the door frame. Then I need to clean the dust from all the areas I’ve sanded to prepare them for a little more drywall compound. 

            I weighed 87.35 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of ice tea. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. It was pretty hot but not unbearable. 

            I weighed 86.7 kilos at 17:41. 

            I was caught up with my journal at 18:35. 

            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 continued to work on synchronizing the concert video with the studio audio. I found that for the third verse line, “Where the beach is soft as eiderdown” the video was again ahead of the audio so I had to look for another outside video to push it back. At first I looked for “eider ducks on a beach” but saw that those birds don’t look all that soft when they are alive and the beaches they frequent don’t look very soft either. Instead I found a three minute video of waves coming in to a deserted beach at sunset. I downloaded it with ClipGrab and tried to convert it to AVI with WinX but the app couldn’t do this one. I was able to convert it with Cloud Convert but it took several minutes and the first attempt failed. I imported the converted file to Movie Maker and tomorrow I’ll edit it. 

            In my 2024-09-19 Song Practice Movie Maker project I deleted everything up until the final take of “Laisse tomber les filles”. Then I saved the project as “Laisse tomber les filles” and isolated the song. I added some effects like Posterize, Sharpen, and Old Film and then published the movie. I took some screenshots and composed three pictures to use as thumbnails. Tomorrow I’ll probably upload the video to YouTube. 

            I grilled five cheddar sausages. I sliced two of them and put them on a pizza made with multigrain bread, marinara sauce, pesto and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episode 21 of The Bill Cosby Show. 

            The running gag of Chet’s coaching of athletic teams at Holmes High School is that they always lose. He is trying to prepare his track and field team for an upcoming meet but his boys are not good. Suddenly a young man who’s not on the team runs up while carrying books and does a broad jump far further than the others and then he takes to the track and whizzes past the others who are running. Chet becomes obsessed with finding him and getting him onto his team. He sees him in the hall and loses him but later finds him at the lockers. He asks him to join the team but he’s not interested. He at least finds out his name is Chuck Kern when they shake hands to part. Chet notices his watch is missing and thinks he left it on the field. He goes to the school office to ask for the file on Charles Kern and inside it he finds his watch. Later Chet goes to meet his girlfriend on the university campus and runs into Chuck, who is walking with a friend who calls him Ralph. Chuck says he takes an extension class in Chinese at the university. Chet continues to try to tempt him to join the team. He says he could get a sports scholarship but Chuck says his grades will give him a scholarship. Chet says he could be king of the campus if he became a star athlete. Chuck says being a star is undesirable because he wants to be a spy and a spy must be anonymous. Chet threatens to expose his secret plans but Chuck says no one would believe him. Chet picks up his date and takes her back to his place but Chuck follows them secretly. Chet feeds Marcella dinner and a lot of bullshit lines about how he’s always chosen to be solitary until he met her. The next time Chet sees Chuck the boy gives him the slip. Chet stakes out Chuck’s locker and begins to spy on him. When Chuck walks by Chet grabs his arm but Chuck does a judo move that puts Chet against the wall with his arm twisted behind him. Chet tells him he only made two mistakes. Chuck wants to know what they are and Chet says they have to meet in the gym after class so he can show him. Later Chet is able to make Chuck fall twice and his student Alfonzo takes some pictures. Chet tells Chuck he will publish the picture with the caption that he is a cousin of Ringo Starr if he doesn’t compete in the track meet. Chuck agrees but on the day of the competition there is suddenly blasting over the loud speaker a recording of Chet’s voice saying all the bullshit lines that he’d fed Marcella the other night. Chet finds Chuck locked in the control room and has to exchange the picture for the tape. Chet tells Chuck if anybody could make it as a spy it would be him. 

            Chuck was played by Darrell Larson, who made his acting debut on Marcus Welby M.D. He made his film debut in The Student Nurses. He co-starred in Mike’s Murder. He teaches acting classes at Columbia University. He became the artistic director of a New York City performing arts group called The Culture Project. He wrote a rock opera called “Drive All Night” using the songs of Bruce Springsteen.