Howard Culver

            On Thursday morning my left arm was not as sore as the day before. 

            I ran through singing and playing “L'année à lenvers” (The Year in Reverse) by Boris Vian. I revised my translation of the first four verses. 

            I continued collecting images to use in a photo montage video for “Notre Derniere Chance” (Our Final Chance) by Serge Gainsbourg but only from the covers of Ici Paris magazine, and stopped when I had a total of 100 images. I converted to AVI the shitty “Notre Derniere Chance” photo montage video that I’d downloaded from Daily Motion. I started a “Notre Derniere Chance” Movie Maker project and imported the converted video, then I placed it only in the audio timeline. I started adding to the video timeline the images in the order that I collected them. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the second of four sessions and it pretty much stayed in tune. 

            I weighed 87.9 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since August 4. 

            At noon I left for the U of T Graduate School of Dentistry to get another deep cleaning. Even though I've ridden there many times I lost my bearings and thought that I'd already passed Elm Street so I rode along College to University, then back up to Wellesley, across to Yonge and back down. But then I realized that Elm Street is actually south of Gerrard and that I hadn't overshot it in the first place.    

           Three months ago my regular hygienist Villy was on holiday and so I had a substitute. I told Villy that she had recommended a fluoride rinse and Villy said fluoride rinses are very controversial now. She said fluoride is for preventing cavities and if I’m not at risk for cavities fluoride rinses may be too much. There is a connection between hypothyroidism and fluoride. The cleaning hurt more than the last few times. I had to pay $209. Next time it’ll probably be covered by the federal plan but they didn’t give me an appointment because I have to see Dr. Xia first and they won’t have his schedule until September. He may decide that I don’t need any more deep cleanings and then I can get my cleanings at my dentist’s clinic. 

            On the way home I stopped at Freshco where the grapes were all too soft and the cherries were all from the US. I bought a basket of Canadian nectarines, two packs of Canadian raspberries, some bananas, three bags of skim milk, a kilo of honey, a tub of It’s Not Butter, two boxes of spoon sized shredded wheat, one pack of Full City Dark coffee, and a pack of toilet paper. 

            I weighed 86.9 kilos at 14:52. July 30 was the last time I was that light in the early afternoon. 

            I took a siesta from 15:30 to 17:12. 

            I weighed 87.55 kilos at 17:30. That’s the most I’ve tipped the scales in the evening since June 30. 

            I was caught up with my journal at 18:41. 

            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 sixth verse I managed to synchronize the concert video with the studio audio for “shooting briefly”, “muffle”, “its”, “spastic song of” and “fear”. In the final chorus I lined up the video with the audio for “Wo oh whoever”. I’ll probably have the whole song in sync before the weekend is over. Then I plan to ride around Parkdale on my bike with my camera shooting video backwards from my backpack. I’m hoping to get some good video of Parkdale to replace the parts of the concert video that have Peter Fruchter on recorder and Csilla on bongos. They’re not in the studio recording and so it would be silly to have them in the video. 

            I reviewed my song practice performances of “Eliza” and “Coiffure by Eliza” from September 30 to October 8. On September 30 and October 4 I played “Coiffure by Eliza” on my Gibson Les Paul Studio. On September 30 the final take didn’t sound bad. On October 4 the last take was okay. On October 6 I played it on my Kramer and the last take was okay. On October 2 and 8 I played it on my Martin acoustic and both times the final takes were not bad and looked good. On October 1 and 7 I played “Eliza” on my Martin. On October 1 the final take was okay. On October 7 the last take was good. On October 3 I played it on the Gibson but the battery charge ran out just before the end. On October 5 I played it on my Kramer and the final take didn’t sound too bad. 

            I grilled four chicken legs and had one with a potato and gravy while watching episode 9 of The Brady Bunch. 

            With three adults and six kids in the house the phone is constantly in use and Mike needs it for business. So Mike gets a second phone but the problem seems to get worse and on top of that the phone bill skyrockets because of toll calls. Alice gets the idea that Mike could solve the problem by getting rid of the second regular phone and installing a payphone in the house. Everyone is given two dimes a day and any additional calls come out of their allowance. It creates a culture of scrambling for dimes, borrowing and so on. The regular phone is now just for Mike and Carol. Carol spends a lot of time talking to Martha for whom she is making a dress. But Martha gets upset at something Carol says and walks away from the phone without hanging up (In those days a connection was not cut unless both parties hung up). Mike needs to make a business call about a million dollar contract with Mr. Crawford but he can’t because Martha has not disconnected the call at her end. Mike decides to use the payphone and reaches Crawford but before they can agree to a lunch meeting the operator kicks in to asks for ten more cents. Crawford thinks less of Mike that he is calling him from a payphone but Mike explains that he's installed the phone in his home. Crawford is impressed because he has two teenagers of his own and decides to get a payphone as well. The Crawford deal goes through and Mike removes the payphone. 

            Crawford was played by Howard Culver, who started acting on the radio when he was still in high school. He starred as the Nʉmʉnʉʉ (Comanche) adventure hero Straight Arrow and his alter ego Steve Adams on the children’s show Straight Arrow, which was broadcast twice a week from 1948 through 1951. He also made public appearances dressed as Straight Arrow. In 2019 the rights to Straight Arrow were transferred to the Canada based First Nations organization Education is Our Buffalo. He co-starred in the legal drama Defense Attorney. He starred in The Adventures of Ellery Queen in 1948. His film debut was in Time Table in 1956. On television he played the hotel clerk Howie Uzzell on Gunsmoke for the entire 20 years of the series.