Around midday I walked over to the hardware store to buy some P120 sandpaper. On the way I saw Leslie the dramatic panhandler who always acts as if it’s a matter of life and death that she get some change. On a few occasions I’ve heard her threaten to commit suicide. She asked me to help her find her keys. I was surprised that she’s not homeless because how can one have a place to live and still smell like three day old pee? I’ve seen her on the street for years with her partner Paul, who she told me now that he’s been her husband for 25 years. Paul was across the street and she told me he has his key to their place, so I told her to get his key and I would pay to make a copy at the hardware store. She was amazed and very grateful that I would do that. She’s very cautious about crossing the street and so I told her to meet me in a few minutes at the Home Hardware. I bought five sheets of sandpaper and paid for a key to be copied, but when Leslie came in she had three keys and so I said that I would pay to copy the other two as well. Just as the counter person started to grind the key Leslie reached in her pocket and discovered that she had her keys all along. She asked if I could get a refund and so I put my card back in and got it. She was still there when I left as the clerk was telling her to have a nice day as a hint for her to go.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. When I got home I went back out to buy a six-pack of Creemore.
I weighed 86.65 kilos at 17:40.
I was caught up with my journal at 18:37.
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. In the third verse I managed to synchronize the concert video with the studio audio for “bad ship donut shop”, “so”, “it can ferry”, “me”, and “across”.
I compared the song practice videos of my acoustic performances of “How to Say Goodbye to You” on September 16 and 22. I probably play it better on September 22 but I favour the look of September 16. I compared September 26 to September 16 and prefer the look and feel of September 26. I compared September 28 to September 26 and the former is definitely better. I compared October 2 to September 26 and I still prefer September 26. I compared October 8 to September 26 and September 26 is still the best looking video. I compared October 13 to September 26 and October 13 was the day someone was water blasting the building on the southwest corner. So September 26 is the take of “How to Say Goodbye to You” that I’ll upload to YouTube.
I compared the videos of my electric performances of “Comment te dire adieu” on September 19 to that of September 23. There was too much traffic noise on September 23. I compared September 29 to September 19 and find that September 19 looks a bit better. I compared October 3 to September 19 and I prefer the look and feel of October 3. There are two left to compare.
It was too hot to use the stove but I had to because I’d already thawed out a rack of ribs. So I grilled the ribs and had three with potato chips, skyr, dill and a beer while watching the antepenultimate episode of the first season of The Bold Ones: The Doctors (I bit my tongue while eating and it hurt. I noticed later it was one of the worst tongue bite wounds I’ve ever had).
Dr. Stuart is working past midnight and goes into the staff kitchen where he finds an elderly patient named Emma Fields who has snuck in past the nurses to have a cup of tea. She tells him she has cancer and he becomes involved with her case. She doesn’t really know that she has cancer but Stuart does some tests and finds she has a malignant melanoma. She might die but it’s not considered terminal, however she has resigned herself to dying. Stuart thinks it’s a mistake to put someone like Emma in a ward with the terminal patients because it encourages resignation towards death. He moves her into a room with two other patients: business person Dolly Martin and folk singer G.G. Gilman. They all become friends. Dolly is always on the phone running her business and G.G. is always playing guitar. Emma wakes to hear Dolly crying in the night and comforts her. G.G. has nerve damage in her fingers and vocal chords and may not be able to play and sing in the future. Emma decides she doesn’t want any more tests and prefers to die with dignity. Stuart tries to convince her that she has a chance to live but fails. She learns that Dolly has terminal cancer but doesn’t let it bring her down. Emma finally comes around and decides to go ahead with the procedure.
Dolly was played by Hazel Scott who was a child prodigy and started playing piano at the age of 3. When she was 4 her family moved to New York from Trinidad. At 8 she received a scholarship to study classical music at Juilliard. She was a club and radio star by the late 1930s both as a musician and singer. She played twice at Carnegie Hall. She was able to switch seamlessly from classical, to jazz, to blues. Her biggest hit was “Tico Tico”. By 1945 she was earning $75,000 a year, which today would be more than a million dollars. She helped to change how black women were portrayed in Hollywood films by refusing to play maids. She co-starred in “I Dood It” and “Rhapsody in Blue”. She successfully sued a Spokane, Washington restaurant for refusing to serve her because she was black. She refused to perform in segregated theatres. In 1950 she became the first black person to host her own television show but it was canceled after she testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee. She left the US and lived in Paris from 1957 to 1967. She then returned to the states where she made guest appearances on several TV series.
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