David Alexander

            On Thursday morning my left arm was back to aching more after the improvement the day before. 

            I posted “The Year in Reverse”, my translation of “L'année à lenvers” by Boris Vian on my Boris Vian and my personal Facebook pages. I searched for the next Vian song on my list: “Apprenez-moi la chance”, but it’s one of the many Vian songs that never got recorded. The next song however, “L'araignée du soir” (The Spider of Night) is one I already had text for but the text didn’t seem accurate. I had previously copied the lyrics from a site but they weren’t fully correct. For instance in the YouTube audio by Magali Noel when she sings “New York”, what I have is “Nouillorque”. One can get the transcript of a YouTube file sometimes and I copied the one for this song. It got “New York” right but these transcripts are not always true either. I’ll sing along with the YouTube transcript tomorrow to hear if it fits. 

            I looked for the next Gainsbourg song on my list that didn’t get translated and in the 1971 file I found “Bathing Beauty and Sympathy” and “Une fille à la mer”. Both songs were sung only on television, the first by Jane Birkin and the second by Petula Clark. There is no recording or text for “Bathing Beauty and Sympathy” but there is a video for “Une Fille à la mer” (A Girl Out to Sea). I checked out the YouTube transcript but it didn’t look right. I tried transcribing the YouTube audio with Vizard but it arrived fragmented. I have 30 free minutes with Sonix, which seems to transcribe better but those only apply to files uploaded from one’s computer while for YouTube links one has to do an upgrade. So I used Clip Grab to download the YouTube audio and then uploaded it to Sonix. The result seems pretty accurate. I’ll start memorizing the song tomorrow. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the first of two sessions and the B string went out of tune quite a few times. I’m thinking the guitar might need some fret work done. 

            I weighed 86.95 kilos before breakfast. 

            At 12:05 I left for Top Cuts at Yonge and St Clair. It took me 40 minutes to get there, which is pretty good. When I walked in Amy told me that she’d be ready for me in 25 minutes but two minutes later said she could take me. When she blew the cut hair off me I opened up the back of my shirt and asked her to blow there too because I always end up with hair down my back after a haircut. 

            I rode down to Yonge and Isabella to meet my friend Brian Haddon for lunch, on me this time. We shared a pitcher of Creemore, he had the steak and mushroom pie and I had the tuna melt with fries. When we got together in the middle of July he was about to go in for a colonoscopy. It turns out they found a mass. He’s meeting with the surgeon to plan a treatment next week. He feels pretty confident everything’s going to be fine. He says he had an aunt with the same thing and she went on to live into her mid 90s. I hope everything’s fine. We might not get together in September if he has to start treatment. 

            Even though I would be heading south I walked Brian up to Yonge and Bloor. On the way a long haired guy walking with a very attractive woman called my name. I didn’t recognize him even after he started telling his wife about me being a poet and hosting the Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage. I was embarrassed but finally I asked his name. Now I was even more embarrassed because it was John Styles who was a regular at the Orgy for a long time. I’d never seen him with long hair before. He was carrying an open bag of President’s Choice Decadent Chocolate Chip cookies and handed it to me because they are decadent. I said I thought he was living in England and he says he still is but came to Toronto for a wedding. 

            At the corner of Yonge and Bloor Brian promised he’d keep me updated about his cancer treatment. It was a sad ride to Freshco where I bought three bags of green grapes because the Canadian cherries were all too soft. I also got two packs of Canadian blueberries, some bananas, a box of spoon sized shredded wheat, a lint roller, and a pack of Sponge Towels. When I got home it was well after 17:00. I weighed 86.35 kilos at 18:00. It was too late to take a siesta so I just worked on my blog while dozing off at the computer. It would have been a good evening to shoot that Parkdale video that I’ve been planning but it was dark by the time I was caught up in my journal at 20:30. 

            I grilled two racks of pork ribs and had three while watching episode 16 of The Brady Bunch.

            Carol and Mike read their horoscopes for fun and Mike’s reads “A strange woman will soon come into your life”. The next day a very eccentric woman does walk into Mike’s office. She is Beebe Gallini, a famous cosmetics tycoon who has hired Mike’s firm of architects to design her new factory. Since Mike is the best architect at the company she wants him behind the project. She says she will give him total control but it has to be pink. But then when she sees his sketches she says they don’t express her personality. She decides it should look like a powder puff and it should look fluffy. This is a very big contract for Mike’s company and so he spends a lot of time on it. He is about to take his sons fishing on a Saturday when Beebe calls and says she needs to discuss some new ideas. So Carol takes the boys fishing and gets seasick. She is starting to get jealous because of all the late nights Mike is spending with Beebe. One night Beebe comes to the Brady house unannounced and says she’s changed her mind and instead of a powder puff the factory should be a compact that opens up. Mike tries to tell her that the engineering of such a building would not work because one can’t put a hinge on a roof. Then Peter’s model plane gets away from him and hits Beebee’s head from the back, undoing her coiffeur when she is on her way to an important event. Then Bobby accidentally shoots her with a squirt gun. Beebe decides to look for another architect and Mike is relieved. 

            This episode was directed by David Alexander who directed the 1952 Broadway revival of Pal Joey, which at the time had the longest run of any revival. He directed several episodes of My Favourite Martian. He directed the Star Trek episodes The Way to Eden and Plato’s Stepchildren. Plato’s Stepchildren is the one that featured Kirk kissing Uhuru. It was the first time on US television that a black and white couple ever kissed on the lips.