Robert Reed

            On Sunday morning my arm was still very sore with no improvement for a few days. I worked out the chords for verses 4 to 7 of “L'année à lenvers” (The Year in Reverse) by Boris Vian. 

            I continued collecting images to use in a photo montage video for “Notre Derniere Chance” (Our Final Chance) by Serge Gainsbourg. I think I’ve got close to half of what I need. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice and it stayed in tune the whole time. Tomorrow I’ll begin a two session stretch of playing my electrics. 

            I weighed 87.25 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I vacuumed the surplus drywall compound dust in the bathroom and finished washing the walls, the door and the frame. I cleaned the sink and did a quick scrub of the toilet. On Tuesday I’ll probably finish cleaning the bathroom. On Friday I’ll probably sweep and mop the floors of the apartment. On Sunday I might buy some primer, a drop sheet, a tray, a roller and some brushes. 

            I weighed 87.35 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of iced tea. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 86.05 kilos at 17:49, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since July 29. 

            I was caught up with my journal at 18:26. 

            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 fifth verse I managed to synchronize the concert video with the studio audio for “even the pigeons are” and “suspect as it looks under discarded burger”. 

            In my “2024-10-10 Song Practice” Movie Maker project I synchronized the audio with the video. I deleted everything that comes before “How to Say Goodbye to You” but hadn’t arrived at the final take before supper. 

            I was thinking it was going to be too hot to cook dinner but it cooled down enough so I could use the oven. I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara sauce, tomato pesto and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode 5 of The Brady Bunch. 

            Jan starts sneezing before leaving for school and so she is kept home but she stops sneezing shortly. She doesn’t have a fever and so Carol and Alice think it’s an allergy. Nothing in the house makes her sneeze but when Mike comes home and visits her she starts sneezing again. However it turns out she sneezes around their dog Tiger. Mike breaks it to his sons that Jan and Tiger can’t live in the same house. Bobby asks where Jan is going to live. Mike decides Tiger will have to live with the kids’ grandparents. The boys, the girls, Alice and Carol, and Mike all decide separately and unknown to the others that they will give Tiger a bath in hopes that will fix the problem. Tiger gets four baths in one day but on the day the dog has to leave Jan still sneezes. Mike takes Tiger to the car and Alice remembers to give Tiger the new flea powder they’ve been using. Jan says she’ll take it to Mike and as soon as she holds the container she starts sneezing. They won’t have to get rid of Tiger after all. I think if they had made the Brady Bunch over the top sweet to a deliberately ridiculous degree then it might have made the show worth watching. As it was the niceness and sweetness was only slightly less than believable and it just made it annoying like a Disney show. 

            Mike was played by Robert Reed, who started singing and acting in high school. He studied drama in university and then trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Back in the States he joined a Shakespeare company and played lead roles. In the late 50s he moved to Hollywood where he made his TV debut as a guest star on Father Knows Best. He made his film debut in Bloodlust in 1961. He co-starred in the legal drama The Defenders. He made his Broadway debut in Barefoot in the Park. In 1969 he was cast in The Brady Bunch. He was not fond of the silly scripts and often clashed with the producers and directors but got along well with the cast. He claimed if it wasn’t for his protests The Brady Bunch would have become as silly as Gilligan’s Island. He refused to appear in the series finale because he hated the script. He played Lieutenant Adam Tobias on 22 episodes of Mannix. He was nominated for an Emmy for his guest appearance as a transgender doctor on Medical Centre. He was nominated for another Emmy for his supporting role on Rich Man Poor Man. He was nominated for a third Emmy for his performance on Roots. He died of colon cancer but it was discovered after his death that he had been HIV positive.