Nathaniel Taylor

            On Tuesday morning I worked out the chords for the first line of “L'amour en cage” (Love in a Cage) by Boris Vian and most of the first verse of “La Robe de Papier” (The Paper Dress) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. It only had to be tuned twice in the 90 minute rehearsal. 

            I weighed 87.45 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I sanded the drywall compound from the bathroom side of the door frame. Tomorrow I might get all the inside parts done. 

            I weighed 87.15 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back and wore my sandals again. They’re a lot more comfortable for riding than they are for walking because during the latter the straps dig into my feet. Maybe that’s because they are too big for me and I’ve had to punch several holes in the straps to make them fit. 

            I weighed 86.75 kilos at 17:41. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:23. 

            I worked on the Movie Maker project to create a video for the Christian and the Lions studio recording of Brian Haddon’s “The Ballad of My Chest Cavity”. I shaved the video clip of waves washing onto a beach until the concert video after it was synchronized with the studio audio for the line, “Where the beach is soft as eiderdown as it feather dusts him clean…” After that the video jumps ahead again and so I needed something to push it back in line with the audio, so I looked for videos, cartoons, or old movies that feature feather dusters. There were lots of things but nothing without water marks. Finally I bookmarked a video that shows feather duster worms and I’ll download it tomorrow. 

            I uploaded to YouTube the video of my September 19 performance of “Laisse tomber les filles” on my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar. 

            I imported to Movie Maker the video of my October 9 song practice and created a project for it. I almost had the video synchronized with the audio when it was time for supper. 

            I had a potato with gravy and my last two slices of roast beef while watching season 2, episode 23 of The Bill Cosby Show. 

            An elderly woman named Patricia Wochuk walks into Chet’s unlocked apartment and into the bathroom while Chet is in the tub. She represents an organization called P.L.A.N.T (Protect Los Angeles Neighbourhood Trees) and she gets him to sign a petition against the National Construction Company which is putting up a shopping centre at a certain corner. She leaves, but a minute later knocks again to invite Chet to the rally she is holding. He goes but besides her he is the only one there. She makes Chet the vice president of P.L.A.N.T. He makes flyers to notify people of the march on the offices of National. He also comes up with the slogan, “Save One Tree, You’ll Breathe More Easily”. On the day of the protest Chet arrives at the corner with a car full of protest signs but Patricia is the only one there. It turns out there is only one young liquid amber tree that she planted herself on the property of the construction site. They won’t be building where the tree is but they will be parking their vehicles there. Patricia and Chet go to National where the president thinks they are trying to save a redwood tree from another construction site and he invites them into his office where they also meet the vice president Bob Steffen. They assure Patricia that they are going to have experts move the tree. But when she says she planted the tree herself the president starts laughing because he thinks she’s joking, as the tree he is talking about is over 350 years old. They realize it’s a different tree and the president says they can’t look out for one little tree. Chet is now mad and so he tries to get the media involved but none of the papers or networks are interested. Chet moves that they dig up and move the tree themselves but when they arrive to do so a truck has already run over it. Chet and Patricia dig up the damaged tree and take it to Chet’s place where he has a tree surgeon come and try to save it but it’s too far gone. Patricia moves to dissolve P.L.A.N.T., but Chet moves to start a new organization called N.A,T.U.R.E. that plants liquid amber trees where there are no trees. So they do. Patricia was played by the great Elsa Lanchester, who played The Bride of Frankenstein. 

            Bob Steffen was played by Nathaniel Taylor, whose acting debut was a starring role in the made for TV movie Listen to the Man. His film debut was in Trouble Man. He played Rollo Larson on Sanford and Son and on the sequel Sanford. He became an acting teacher and a director of community theatre.