John Marley

            On Thursday morning I worked out the chords for the first verse of “L'amour en cage” (Love in a Cage) by Boris Vian. I’m pretty sure the second, fourth, and fifth verses all have the same chords. 

            I finished working out the chords for “La Robe de Papier” (The Paper Dress) by Serge Gainsbourg. Tomorrow I’ll run through singing and playing it in French and English and then I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar during song practice and it went out of tune at least five times during the 90 minute session. 

            I weighed 87.35 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I worked a bit on my Batgirl 17 video, made from season 3, episode 17 of Batman but with only the scenes that feature Batgirl. 

            I weighed 87.4 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back I stopped at Freshco. I bought five bags of grapes, a basket of Ontario strawberries, some bananas, two packs of Nabob Sumatra coffee (They had big cans of my usual Full City Dark coffee but I find the big cans don’t have the same quality of coffee as the smaller packs), a pack of toilet paper and a large pack of Sponge Towels. I did a price match on the grapes with the Food Basics price of $8.77 a kilo. 

            I weighed 85.75 kilos at 18:23, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since June 24.

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

            I downloaded the video of the giant clams and converted it to AVI. I imported it to Movie Maker and copied it to the end of the timeline of my “Ballad of My Chest Cavity” Movie Maker project. I edited it down to just close-ups of three giant clams exhaling through their siphons and then copied and pasted those into the main timeline for the line “as happy as a clam off a Grand Bank isle”. The third clam’s exhalation is extended and fits with my backup vocal when I sing “Ahhhhhhhhh”. That last part hadn’t even been planned but it worked out in a very satisfying way. Next I need to synchronize the concert video with the studio audio for Brian Haddon’s line, “But never a grain of that beautiful sand does he bring back to me”. 

            In my “2024-10-09 Song Practice” Movie Maker project I deleted all the songs that came before the final take of “Laisse tomber les filles”. Then I started a “Laisse tomber les filles (Kramer electric)” Movie Maker project and deleted everything after the end of the song. I was going to add some effects but I think the video looks pretty good as it is. Tomorrow I’ll publish it and maybe upload it to YouTube. 

            I cut a chicken into legs, breasts, wings, and spine. I grilled the parts and had a leg with a potato and gravy while watching the penultimate episode of The Bill Cosby Show. 

            In a makeshift basketball court in front of a loading dock across from a community centre, Chet is coaching some boys. Mrs. Dixon runs the community centre and is trying to raise the funds so the boys can have proper equipment. She points out to Chet a grey haired moustached man in a suit who often stands and watches Chet coach the boys. She tells Chet he’s been asking questions about him. Later a man comes to Chet’s place and asks him to drive with him to meet with Mr. Sloan. They go to a huge mansion on a palatial estate. Mr. Sloan gives Chet a cheque for $2000 for the community centre, which would be $16,000 now. But there is a catch. He wants the boys to come to his property every weekend to play but he has preferences in the physical features that he wants the boys to have. Chet says it’s not central casting and if you help one kid you help them all, so he turns Sloan down. Sloan takes Chet out the back door of his mansion where he has recreated in minute detail the actual street where he grew up in New York. He wants Chet’s kids to come and play stickball, johnny on the pony, and mumbly peg with him. Chet turns him down but later as more equipment breaks he decides to take the kids to Sloan’s place. Sloan is disappointed that Chet didn’t bring the types of kids he asked for but then he accepts them. They are going to play Johnny on the Pony and Sloan cheats right away. He also gives the boys nicknames they don’t like such as “Shorty” and “Glasses”. After Sloan cheats at several games the boys want to leave and so Chet takes them. Later Tony tells Chet he left his baseball cap at Sloan’s and so Chet goes to get it. Sloan is there on that sad and lonely street and Chet tells him he can’t buy back his childhood. Sloan asks Chet to tell the kids he’s sorry and to tell Mrs. Dixon he’s sending her a cheque for $5000. After they get their new equipment Sloan returns to watch them play.

            Sloan was played by John Marley, who dropped out of college and narrowly avoided joining a Harlem gang when he was picked out of the audience to play a sheriff in the play “Ice Bound” and his career as an actor began. He was half of the radio comedy team of Lawrence and Marley. He made his film debut in “Native Land” in 1942. He made his Broadway debut in “Stop Press” in 1948. He starred in Faces (for which he won the Venice Film Festival Best Actor award), He co-starred in “Love Story” (for which he was nominated for an Oscar), The Car, The Greatest, and The Amateur (for which he won a Genie Award). He made his TV debut on Sea Hunt in 1961. In The Godfather he played Jack Woltz, who woke up to find the head of his prize racehorse in bed with him. He played David Banner’s father in The Incredible Hulk TV series.