Florence Henderson

            On Wednesday morning my arm was about as sore as it had been at first yesterday before I wrenched it while reaching up for my raised foot while on my back. This time though I was more careful and stretched very slowly and so it wasn’t as bad. 

            I worked out the chords for half of the first verse of “L'année à lenvers” (The Year in Reverse) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished my alternative translation of “Notre Derniere Chance” (Our Final Chance) by Serge Gainsbourg using the more familiar names of mostly English language newspapers. Tomorrow I’ll run through singing and playing both versions. Then I plan to make a photo montage video of the song in Movie Maker to upload to YouTube so I’ll have a video to post when I publish it on my Christian’s Translations blog. Right now there is only a poorly done photo montage on Daily Motion and even if I used that I wouldn’t be able to post more than a link on Blogger. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the last of two sessions and it went out of tune quite a bit. Tomorrow I’ll begin a two session stretch of playing my Kramer electric. 

            I weighed 86.85 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I did my laundry. On my way to put my stuff in the dryer I stopped at Vina Pharmacy to get some Chapstick. While my things were drying I picked up my Surly after the free six-month partial tune-up. Gordon adjusted by gears and washed my bike. He says he didn’t fix the squeak in the brakes because that’s normal for disk brakes. He says could upgrade to quieter brakes. It seems fucked up that after paying $1300 for a new bike it turns out to be just a frame with shitty parts attached that one has to spend more to upgrade from. 

            I weighed 87.2 kilos at 15:10. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of iced tea.

            I took a siesta from 15:43 to 17:21. 

            I weighed 87.35 kilos at 17:39. 

            I was caught up with my journal at 18:47. 

            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 second chorus I managed to synchronize the concert video with the studio audio for “Each greeting is a curse and kind words are an even greater evil. Queen” and “Street”. 

            In my “2024-10-09 Song Practice” Movie Maker project I deleted everything leading up to my final electric take of “Comment te dire adieu”. Then I started a new “Comment te dire adieu (electric) project. I isolated the song, added fade to black, edge detection, cycling the colour spectrum, posterize and sharpen effects. I published the video and tomorrow I’ll probably upload it to YouTube. 

            I grilled two pork souvlaki then I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara sauce, tomato pesto, the cut up souvlaki and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the series premiere of The Brady Bunch. 

            It’s Mike Brady’s wedding day and we meet his three sons Greg, Peter and Bobby, as well as their maid Alice. He’s marrying Carol Martin and we meet her three daughters Marcia, Jan and Cindy. Carol and Mike are getting married in the back yard of Carol’s parents’ house. The boys want to bring their big sheep dog Tiger to the wedding but Mike says no. However, for some reason the dog gets to come. The wedding itself goes smoothly but seconds later chaos ensues when Tiger rolls down the window of the car, jumps out, and begins chasing the Martin family cat Fluffy. Mike yells at his boys and Carol yells at her girls. It looks like a disaster until the entire wedding cake falls on Mike’s face and suddenly it’s all very funny to Carol, Mike and their guests. Carol and Mike go on their honeymoon to a nice hotel but they feel guilty about how they treated their kids. Meanwhile the boys are bitter because they think they’re going to get the short end of the stick and the girls will be favoured in this new family. The girls feel the same way about the boys. Carol and Mike decide to share their honeymoon with their children then go home to get them and bring them back to the hotel. Alice has anticipated this and packed all the kids’ clothes. Alice also follows the family uninvited but welcome, with Tiger. They all somehow stay together in the honeymoon suite. Mike must be loaded. So far I don’t think I’ll be watching more than the first season. I already feel like it’s giving me tooth decay. I’d always thought that The Brady Bunch was based on the much better movie Yours Mine and Ours but apparently the premise of the Brady Bunch was conceived in 1966, before Your Mine and Ours. However the success of Yours Mine and Ours did encourage the producers of The Brady Bunch to go ahead with the TV series. 

            Carol Martin Brady was played by Florence Henderson, who could sing fifty songs by heart at the age of two. By 12 she was singing at local grocery stores. Her singing talent earned her a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Her stage debut was in Carousel in 1949. Her Broadway debut was in Wish You Were Here in 1952. Her first starring role was when she originated the title character in the 1954 Broadway production of “Fanny”, which ran for 888 performances. She appeared in Oldsmobile commercials from 1958 to 1961. She was a Today girl from 1959 to 1960. She was the first woman to guest host the Tonight Show after Jack Paar left and before Johnny Carson took over. The Brady Bunch was shot in LA but she flew back to New York every weekend to be with her own family. She asked the producers of The Brady Bunch to let her yell at the kids and use corporal punishment sometimes like she did with her own children but they said no. She was a frequent panelist on Hollywood Squares and also appeared on several other game shows. She was the spokesperson for Wesson cooking oil from 1974 to 1996. She co-hosted the daily talk show Living Live from 2007 to 2009. She became a licenced hypnotherapist.