David Hartman

            On Tuesday morning I memorized the first verse of “L'année à lenvers” (The Year in Reverse) by Boris Vian. 

            I posted on my Facebook page the lyrics for “Silly Kelly Kills with Her Grill”, my translation of “Turlututu Capot Pointu” by Serge Gainsbourg. I searched for the next Gainsbourg song that never got translated in my Gainsbourg project because the French text was not available. Still in the 1969 file I found “Notre Derniere Chance” (Our Final Chance) for which I had a set of lyrics. There is a video for the song on Daily Motion and I tried to sing along with my text but it seemed incomplete. I tried to copy the Daily Motion link into Vizard’s transcription app but it said it was an invalid link. So I used ClipGrab to download the Daily Motion video and then uploaded it from my computer to Vizard. It gave me a transcript of which I took a screen shot and made a jpg. I could see then that I must have tried to transcribe the lyrics a few years ago from the Daily Motion video and of course got them wrong. Tomorrow I’ll transcribe the proper lyrics from the jpg. and then start learning the proper song. Now that I’ve downloaded the video I might as well upload it to YouTube so I’ll have a YouTube video to post when I publish my translation. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions and it needed tuning at first but stayed there through the session. 

            I weighed 86.8 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I mopped half of the bedroom floor, all of the living room, the kitchen area and the bathroom. But the water was pretty dirty by the time I started doing the kitchen and so after I was finished I walked over to the hardware store to buy some more Murphy’s wood soap. I also looked for organic insecticides to kill bedbugs. I specifically wanted something that contained beauveria bassiana, the bug killing fungus but they didn’t have it. It looks like I’ll need to buy it online. I settled on a spray can of a diatomaceous earth product specifically made to kill bedbugs. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 86.2 kilos at 17:45. 

            I was caught up with my journal at 18:30. 

            I worked on the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Paranoiac Utopia”. The concert video continues to drag behind the studio audio and so every few words I have to delete some of it to bring it forward. I managed to synchronize “I’m”, “riddled”, “with accusations”, “as the writhing”, “blinded”, and “beast”. I’ll probably have the concert video and the studio audio for all of the second verse lined up tomorrow. 

            I reviewed the videos of my song practice performances of “How to Say Goodbye to You” and “Comment te dire adieu” from September 14 to 21. I played “How to Say Goodbye to You” on my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric on September 14, 18, and 20. On September 14 the take at 59:30 was rattly and the Gibson was out of tune at the end. On September 18 and September 20 the final takes were okay. On September 16 I played it on my Martin Road Series acoustic guitar and the take at 39:15 was okay. I played “Comment te dire adieu” with my Martin on September 15 and 21. On September 15 the take at 33:15 was good. On September 21 the take at 50:00 was not bad. On September 17 and 19 I played it on my Gibson. On September 17 I fumbled the take at 0:45 in part C and I just played till the end without a retake. On September 19 the take at 3:30 in part B didn’t sound horrible. 

            I grilled three chicken legs and had one with a potato and gravy while watching episode 2 of The Bold Ones: The New Doctors. 

            Casey Woods collapses at work and is rushed to the hospital. Meanwhile Chief of Medicine Dr. Paul Hunter announces that he and Dr. Ralph Simpson want to build a tactile vision substitution system. The next day Hunter meets Casey and hears that yesterday she had some vision impairment but none today. After observing that she is thirsty all the time he keeps her in for further tests. Hunter and Simpson present their theory to the hospital head Dr. Craig. Hunter says that Benjamin Franklin came up with the basic idea, although I can’t find any reference to that. The idea is that a camera is used to replace the blind eye. The camera is hooked up to a sensory area in contact with the brain and transmits impulses to it. They plan to convert the visual images in the camera to electrical impulses that will cause duplicates of the images to be lightly pressed onto the skin of the subject’s back and if the brain recognizes the images then the subject will have pseudo vision. Eventually it could be miniaturized so the blind can see. Craig has no money to fund the project but gives them a room in the basement. Hunter checks on Casey again and he notices she is having slight vision problems. He has Dr. Stuart take some pictures of her brain. Hunter and Simpson acquire a barber’s chair which will serve as the retina of their mechanical eye. Stuart finds a growth in Casey’s brain and so they need to operate. The growth is putting pressure on her pituitary gland, which is why she’s been so thirsty. But it’s also putting pressure on the junction of her eye nerves. They are able to save her life by removing the tumour but the result is that she is now blind. Hunter and Simpson acquire a TV camera and now they can experiment with their mechanical eye. Hunter puts on a blindfold and is able to discern simple shapes from the images being projected on his back. Ralph’s son is blind and they now try it on him but it doesn’t work because he’s been blind from birth and doesn’t have the same kind of spatial awareness as someone who is born sighted. They try it on Casey and it works. This system was new when they wrote it into the show. I remember seeing a similar story on TV when I was a kid. I don’t remember this particular series but the idea of projecting images on a blind person’s back was a major part of the story. 

            Hunter was played by David Hartman, who was a musician and a high school baseball star who turned down an athletic scholarship to study Economics. But in college he started working in radio and television. He worked in summer stock theatre. His screen debut was in Coronet Blue. He appeared in 27 episodes of The Virginian. He co-starred in The New Doctors, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe. He starred in The Island at the Top of the World. He starred in the TV series Lucas Tanner. In 1975 he was hired as the male anchor of Good Morning America. He stayed on for 11 years, giving over 12,000 interviews. He hosted documentaries for Discovery and starred in the doc series Walking Tour for which he won several Emmys.