Joan Fontaine

            On Monday morning I searched for the chords for “Les Araignées” (The Arachnids) by Boris Vian but no one has posted them. I worked them out for the intro and half of the first verse. So far it seems to be all just picking around B flat minor and B flat. 

            I finished memorizing “Flashback” by Serge Gainsbourg. I looked for the chords but of course nobody has put them up. I worked out the first two of the intro. 

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice for the last of two sessions. For the first two thirds of the rehearsal the B string went out of tune constantly but then started to even out and it wasn’t so bad. Tomorrow I’ll begin a two session stretch of playing my Martin acoustic. 

            I weighed 88.15 kilos before breakfast. 

            I uploaded my Batgirl 22 video, edited from season 3, episode 22 of Batman, featuring only the scenes with Batgirl. This one wasn’t blocked because of copyright greed. There are four more in my series. 

            I weighed 88.7 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the early afternoon since June 8. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. At Bay and Bloor there was an anti-fur protest in front of a store. Someone was continuously blowing a whistle. 

            I weighed 88.2 kilos at 17:50. June 8 was the last evening it was that high. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:25. 

            As far as I know I have one more studio recording of one of my songs for which to create a video and that’s “Insisting On Angels”. About six years ago I made a home recording of that song but this was before I had the audio interface and so the audio is just from the internal microphone of the Nikon Coolpix camera that Nik Cushing gave me. After I uploaded that video to YouTube I deleted it from my computer. So tonight I downloaded the YouTube video, converted it to AVI and imported it to Movie Maker. I started a new “Insisting On Angels” project and added the video to the timeline. Then I imported the studio recording. The old video of the song has no intro whereas the studio audio does. So I inserted in the beginning some of the video I shot from my bike last month of Parkdale. I began synchronizing the video of the song with the audio. So far the video is slower than the audio and so it’s just a matter of deleting bits of the video to keep them lined up. 

            I compared the song practice video of my acoustic performance of “I Love You. Neither Do I” on September 28, 2024 to that of September 4. September 4 looks better and I’m more expressive. I compared October 2 to September 4 but didn’t come to a decision and it was time for supper so I couldn’t listen to them again. 

            I grilled four chicken legs and had one with a potato and gravy while watching episode 30 of Checkmate. 

            Don has been hired by Karen Lawson to protect her from her husband who she says is trying to kill her. He accompanies her on a luxury cruise ship to Hawaii. Don gives her strict instructions to stay in her cabin and to allow no one in but him. He offers her a drink but she says she doesn’t drink. However, after Don leaves, she opens her suitcase of “valuables” and it is full of bottles of booze. At first we see her just drinking to calm her nerves but she gets drunk alone in her cabin. The next day she has to leave because of a fire drill and when she returns to her cabin there is a man hiding there. He tries to talk to her but she begins screaming and Don rushes in to punch him and demand to know who hired him to kill her. He says his name is Ernie Taggart and he’s a private detective that her husband hired to protect her from herself. He tells Don he’s being taken in by her claim about her husband trying to kill her. He says she’s using the attempted homicide claims as an excuse for a divorce so she can take Lawson for a bundle. Don now has his doubts about his client but continues with his job. He leaves her while he waits for word from the coast about Taggart’s credentials. She drinks alone again while upstairs she can hear the band playing and people are dancing. Finally she gets drunk enough to get dressed up and to head for the club. She drinks some more, dances and flirts. Then she goes with one of her dance partners to his cabin. Meanwhile Taggart is watching and sends a note to Don. They find her in the man’s cabin and Don takes her back to hers where he finds her stash of booze and realizes she’s been lying. He throws all the bottles out of the porthole into the ocean but now he no longer believes her husband is trying to kill her. He tells her that he is removing himself from her employment. The next day she goes upstairs and buys a bottle of booze from the bartender. She gets drunk again and goes back to the cabin of the man she’d seen the night before. She tells him about her husband and he says he’ll take her to the captain to tell him about it. But he takes her to a secluded part of the deck and begins to strangle her. But Taggart has followed them and stops him. The man pulls a knife and stabs Taggart but Taggart knocks him overboard. When Don finds out about it he is back on the case but won’t get any help protecting Karen because his knife wound has put Taggart out of commission. Don is sure her husband has at least one more assassin on board and he decides to let Karen go wherever she wants on the ship because it will be the only way he can draw out the killer. That night she gets drunk again and goes back to the club. She flirts with the trumpet player in the band and he takes a break. He offers to play her some records on his HiFi in his cabin and they leave together. Don tries to follow but gets held back by the crowd. The trumpet player takes her to a storage hold and starts to lock the door but Don manages to push it open. He fights with the killer, who admits Karen’s husband hired him, and then Don knocks him out. They arrive in Hawaii and Karen says she’s really giving up drinking this time. I doubt if it’s that easy but I guess the implication is that it was her fear of her husband that drov her to drink.

            Karen was played by Joan Fontaine, who was born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland. She was the sister of actor Olivia de Havilland. She took up acting after Olivia was already making a name for herself in the theatre. Joan made her stage debut in Call It A Day and her film debut at 18 in No More Ladies. Her first starring role was in The Man Who Found Himself. She co-starred in A Million To One, Music for Madame, A Damsel in Distress, Sky Giant, The Duke of West Point, Man of Conquest, You Can’t Beat Love, The Constant Nymph, The Emperor Waltz, Born to Be Bad, Gunga Din, Ivanhoe, Casanova’s Big Night, Serenade, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Island in the Sun, Until They Sail, A Certain Smile, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, She starred in Rebecca for which she was nominated for an Oscar. The next year she won the Academy Award for her performance in Suspicion and became the only actor to win an Oscar for a Hitchcock movie. She starred in Maid’s Night Out, Blonde Cheat, This Above All (for which she earned another Oscar nomination), Frenchman’s Creek, The Affairs of Susan, From This Day Forward, Ivy, Kiss the Blood off My Hands, September Affair, Darling How Could You, Letter from an Unknown Woman, You Gotta Stay Happy, Jane Eyre, Something to Live For, Flight to Tangier, The Bigamist, and The Witches. She worked as a nurse’s aid during WWII. She was married to William Dozier who created the Batman TV series. With him she formed Rampart Production which produced Letter From an Unknown Woman. In the 70s she toured with a poetry reading. She was nominated for an Emmy for her guest appearance on Ryan’s Hope. She hosted an interview show on cable TV. Her autobiography was called No Bed of Roses. Dozier said it should be called “No Shred of Truth”. She was a champion balloonist, a fisher, a pilot, an accomplished interior decorator, a chef, and an expert golfer. She said if she dies before Olivia she’ll be mad that she beat her to that as well. She married Ida Lupino’s ex-husband Collie and inherited her pet collie. She said she got two collies from Ida and both of them were dogs. She avoided playing mothers.

September 30, 1995: I enjoyed the nice weather with my daughter

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday I enjoyed another day with my daughter. The weather was still fairly nice and so we played outside.

Cyd Charisse

            On Sunday morning I finished memorizing “Les Araignées” (The Arachnids) by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I’ll look for the chords. 

            I memorized the fifth verse of “Flashback” by Serge Gainsbourg and finished translating verse four. I should have the whole song nailed down tomorrow. 

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice for the first of two sessions and the B string went out of tune a lot. I think some of its frets need to be changed just like with the Gibson.

            My scale said I weighed 88.15 kilos before breakfast and then the batteries were low so I don’t know. But that weight is not out of the ordinary for a Sunday and so it may be accurate. If it’s true it’s the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since June 6. 

            Around midday I applied a third coat of primer to my round mirror frame. I think that might be enough. I also applied the first coat of primer to the bottom of the lazy Susan that goes on the top bathroom shelf. I’d already done the top on Friday but ended up getting some of the Masonite that I’d used as a drop sheet stuck to the edge of the top. So I had to sand those parts. Next time I’ll put something in between it and the Masonite. 

            I couldn’t weigh myself before lunch because the scale batteries were still recharging. 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 87.9 kilos at 18:11. June 8 was the last evening it was that high. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:26. 

            I uploaded my video of “Divorce the Weather” to YouTube. 

            I compared the song practice video of my September 22, 2024 performance of “I Love You. Neither Do I” to that of September 4. September 4 looks better and is more expressive. I compared September 26 to September 4 and September 4 still stands out for look and expression.

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara sauce, tomato pesto, a slice of Black Forest ham cubed, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode 29 of Checkmate. 

            A ballet dancer named Janine is being followed and threatened by a well connected Mexican man named Arturo Calderone so she calls Checkmate. She receives roses with a card saying they are for her farewell performance. She needs protection but Don and Hyatt can’t help her tonight because they are under subpoena to be in Seattle to testify in a court case. They get retired cop Mike Lambeth to watch her tonight. But when leaving for the airport they find Mike’s dead body in the elevator. Janine is missing but turns up at Don’s door that night. She says she introduced Mike to Arturo so he would know she had protection. But then she left and went looking for Don. She kisses him. He takes her to the police so she can tell them what happened. Don thinks she’s holding something back and she admits it. A man named Prince Stanley Zobienski comes to see Don and offers him $5000 for the Sugarplum. Don has no idea what he’s talking about but plays along and says he can’t help him. Stan pulls a gun, which Don takes away from him. He gives it back to him without the bullets. Arturo is found dead. Janine is abducted. They learn that Mike was killed with his own gun. The dresser at Janine’s dance company falls out of a car in front of Checkmate and she has a package containing the Sugarplum. It’s the Sugarplum Fairy costume from the Nutcracker ballet. It is sequined with a million dollars worth of emeralds. Janine calls Don and tells him to bring the package to the theatre. Don takes the dress to the cleaners and sends the ticket to Dr. Hyatt, then he goes to the theatre. He finds Janine tied to a chair. Stan says Janine has been working with him but she denies it and says she was threatened with crippling. Don calls Hyatt and asks him to have a delivery service bring the package. Jed poses as a delivery man and brings it. Stan and his henchman leave with the dress but they are caught by Jed and the police. Don exposes Janine and says she killed Mike with his gun. She tells Don she really loves him, then he walks away. 

            Janine was played by Cyd Charisse, who started taking ballet lessons as therapy to build up strength after having polio, but continued studying dance throughout her childhood. She joined the Ballet Russe at the age of 13. Her film debut was in Something to Shout About in 1943 (but it may have been in the short film Escort Girl in 1941). She danced with Fred Astaire in the Ziegfeld Follies movie in 1945. Her first speaking part was in The Harvey Girls in 1946. It was her dancing in Singin in the Rain that made her famous. She co-starred in The Band Wagon, Brigadoon, Something’s Got to Give, Mark of the Renegade, It’s Always Fair Weather, Silk Stockings, The Unfinished Dance, On An Island With You, The Kissing Bandit, Tension, The Wild North, Meet Me In Las Vegas, Party Girl, Twilight For the Gods, Five Golden Hours, Two Weeks in Another Town, and Maroc 7. She said when she danced with Gene Kelly she’d be covered with bruises but Fred Astaire was smooth and agile. Kelly was more creative and stronger but Astaire was the better dancer. Her second husband Tony Martin became her dance partner in cabaret shows and on TV. Her legs were insured for $5 million. She made her Broadway debut at the age of 70 in Grand Hotel but it was a disaster because she couldn’t sing.

September 29, 1995: I played my guitar at Spit Fridays

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday I worked on preparing the second issue of Orgasmagazine. Then in the evening I took my guitar to the Spit Fridays open stage in the back room of the Cameron.

Julie London

            On Saturday morning I worked on memorizing the fifth verses of “Les Araignées” (The Arachnids) by Boris Vian and “Flashback” by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have them both in my head on Sunday. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the last of two sessions and the B string went constantly out of tune. Tomorrow I’ll begin a two session stretch of playing my Kramer electric and it will probably stay in tune. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I rode down to No Frills where I bought five bags of green grapes, a pack of raspberries, some bananas, a strawberry-rhubarb pie, cinnamon-raisin bread, two containers of 4% skyr, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips. A kid who’d just gotten some Marvel stamps from the cashier wanted more. She told him to wait and she would give him mine, but he left. 

            I weighed 87.8 kilos at 14:12. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of iced tea. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown. On the way back I was at the light and shielding my eyes from the sun with my hand when a guy behind me on the sidewalk went into a dramatic bit saying, “Is the coast clear John? What do you see John? Please tell us John!” 

            I weighed 87.25 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:13. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Divorce the Weather” I imported the time delayed storm video and copied it to the end of the timeline. I measured two sections to replace two parts of a frozen frame of the same length and pasted them in. I deleted the frozen frames. I added an Old Film effect and a Grey Scale effect to the two storm clips. I published the movie. Tomorrow I’ll take some screen shots and then upload it to YouTube. 

            I compared the song practice video of my September 10, 2024 performance of “I Love You. Neither Do I” to that of September 4. September 10 is fine except for a glitch in which part of a word is skipped. The lyric is “I’m the naked island washed by your tide” but “island” is not fully heard; only the “d” sound. I compared September 16 to September 4 and September 16 looks good but September 4 is more expressive. There are five more to compare. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara sauce, basil pesto, a cubed slice of ham, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode 28 of Checkmate.

            Griff Nolan is an ex-con with a tendency to fly off the handle. He’s also an old friend of Don Corey. Don worries that Griff may fall back into his old ways. He has a low paying job but his wife Libby is a magazine editor and can afford an expensive car and apartment. It makes Griff feel like a failure. On top of that he knows that her boss Lewis Bates is trying to seduce her. She goes from editor, to publisher, to partner over the process of the story. Griff quits his job. Bates receives a death threat and is sure that Griff wrote it. Dr. Hyatt says it isn’t Griff’s style to give warnings because he is impulsive. The type matches Libby’s typewriter in her apartment but anyone could have used it. Griff tells Libby he’s leaving her but she promises to give up her career for him. However the next day she tells Bates she just told Griff that to make him feel better in the moment and that she doesn’t even love him. Bates has just made Libby his partner. Libby packs and leaves a note for Griff. He finds it and grabs Libby’s gun, then heads for Bates’s office. He says he’s going to kill him in ten minutes. Meanwhile Libby is waiting in the hallway for Bates to be killed, because with him out of the way she will own the magazine. Don arrives and Libby tries to seduce him. He forces Libby into the office. He tells Griff what Libby has been planning all along. Don, Griff, and Bates all leave Libby behind. 

            Libby was played by Julie London, who was still in high school when her agent changed her surname from Peck to London and she made her film debut in Nabonga. She was a pin-up girl during WWII at the age of 17. She signed with Liberty Records in 1955 and turned it into a successful label. She was married to Jack Webb from 1947 to 1954. From 1955 to 1957 she was the most popular female vocalist in the United States. She recorded 32 albums during her career. Her most popular song at number 1 for 4 months was “Cry Me a River” from her debut album “Her Name is Julie London”. 

            Years later she observed that Barbara Streisand did the song better than her.

            She co-starred in The Fat Man, Saddle the Wind, Man of the West, The Wonderful Country, The Red House, The Return of the Frontiersman, The Fighting Chance, Crime Against Joe, The Girl Can’t Help It (in which she sang three songs), and Drango. She co-starred in the TV series Emergency.

September 28, 1995: I posed all day at OCA

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I posed all day at the Ontario College of Art.

Hope Holiday

            On Friday morning I memorized the fourth verse of “Les Araignées” (The Arachnids) by Boris Vian. There is one verse left to learn. 

            I memorized the fourth verse of “Flashback” by Serge Gainsbourg and translated two lines. There are two verses left to nail down. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the first of two sessions. Alex Wood’s raising the action took the rattle away but the B string still goes out of tune constantly. I need to get it refretted. 

            I weighed 86.7 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since September 7. 

            Around midday I added a second coat of primer to my round mirror that I’ll eventually hang in the bathroom. It’s definitely going to need a third coat. I also applied the first coat of primer to the top and edges of the lazy Susan that I keep on the top bathroom shelf.

            I weighed 87.1 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 86.75 kilos at 17:55. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:37. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Divorce the Weather” I reviewed the video sections that I’d slowed down in order to let the audio catch up. The shorter sections were okay but a couple were too long and the frozen frames didn’t look good. Also the section of the concert video that was focused on Peter Fruchter playing recorder while I was still singing didn’t fit. I added a warping and an edge detection effect to make it more interesting. I decided to look for some outside video to replace the frozen frames and found a time delay video of a storm. I downloaded and converted it to AVI and tomorrow I’ll import it to Movie Maker. 

            I compared the video of my song practice performance of “Je t’aime Moi non plus” on September 25, 2024 to that of September 15. September 15 is more expressive and looks and sounds better. I compared September 27 to September 15 and found that September 15 is still the most expressive. I compared October 7 to September 15 and although September 15 is more expressive, October 7 looks a lot better, plus it’s in Movie Maker already. I compared October 13 to October 7 and October 7 looks better. If I upload this song to YouTube it will be the October 7 version.

            I compared the videos of my song practice performances of “I Love You. Neither Do I” on September 4, 2024 with that of September 6, and saw that September 4 looks better and is more expressive. 

            I had a potato with gravy and the rest of my leg of lamb, including the leg bone while watching episode 27 of Checkmate. 

            A woman is running as she is being chased at night by two men in a car. She runs into a building to escape and knocks on Don Corey’s door. He lets her in and sees she is being pursued and so he speaks loudly as if he is on the phone with the police describing three men outside his door. The men run away just as Jed Sills arrives and one of the men loses his glasses. The woman is deaf and dumb but she can read lips and writes them notes. She writes that her name is Joan Emerson and asks them to call Dr. Hyatt as they are friends. As she was being chased she recognized the building where Hyatt told her Checkmate is located, which also seems to be where Don lives. After Hyatt arrives she begins signing and he interprets as she explains that she was in a restaurant where the three men were at a nearby table. One of them noticed she was deaf and reading their lips. She didn’t catch all they said because the main message was spoken by a man sometimes holding a coffee cup to his mouth. What she got was “Sin… Antonio…have…cube…seventeenth…meat…fly”. When she left they followed her. Don decides she needs protection. She teaches at a school for the deaf and lives there as well. He poses as a journalist writing an article about the school and gets a room next to hers. On the very first day he has lunch with Joan in her room and they find a man fixing her toaster. Don asks the man to try it out himself but he hits Don and runs. Later a man comes to demonstrate visual teaching tools. He opens her window curtains and suddenly a bullet almost hits her. Don captures the guy but it seems to have been a coincidence that he opened the window before the gun was fired and he really was demonstrating a slide projector. Hyatt analyzes the angle of the bullet and figures out the precise apartment from which the bullet had to have come. Jed goes there with Hyatt and they meet the quirky woman who lives there. She is standing on her head when she tells them to come in and she constantly does some TV version of yoga, which she calls “yogi” while they talk with her. Her name is Verne and she’s a bit of a free spirit and a beatnik with a heavy Brooklyn accent. She saw this guy sitting on a trumpet case outside of her apartment and she invited him in to play, although he never did. She went out for a while, leaving him there and it was while she was out that he shot at Joan. Jed gets the police to check Verne’s number for any calls that were made between 14:00 and 16:00 while she was out. He finds there was a call to the Hercules Athletic Club. Jed goes there and questions some guys in the steam room saying he saw them at Verne’s apartment. They knock him out and leave. When he comes to he gets the address of one of the guys who is called “Ox”. He goes to his home and finds him dead. Hyatt finds that frames of the glasses one of the thugs lost were made in Cuba. Suddenly they realize that the word “cube” that Joan read may have been “Cuba”. They guess that “have” might be half of “Havana”. “Antonio” may be the exiled gangster Antonio Lucas who used to run the syndicate. Maybe the message was to meet him when he flies in from Cuba. Meanwhile two of the men follow a school bus from the deaf school and when Joan’s student Tommy is dropped off they go to his house. The director of the school receives a call from Tommy’s mother saying he is sick and needs Joan to come to interpret. We see that the gunmen have forced Tommy’s mother to make the call. Don goes there with Joan, dropped off by Jed and Hyatt, then Don and Joan are captured. Jed and Hyatt are driving away but then Hyatt thinks it’s odd that Tommy’s mother wouldn’t be able to sign and understand her own child so they double back. One of the gunmen takes Joan as a hostage but after putting her in his car he is shot by Jed. When the other gunman is distracted by the gunshot, Don fights with him and finally overwhelms him. 

            Verne was played by Hope Holiday, whose father was a burlesque comedian who pushed her and her sister into show business. She studied ballet, tap, and modern dance and made her debut as a child singer in a kiddie show on a local New York station. She dropped out of high school to sing at the Copacabana. She sang with some big bands but got fired because she couldn’t sing. She made her Broadway debut as a teenager in the chorus of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She danced in the film L’il Abner. She started to become known to the public after playing a scene stealing role in The Apartment. She played the flamboyant sex worker Lolita in Irma La Douce. She had a contract to appear in Jerry Lewis films but lost it when she slapped him too hard in The Ladies Man. She said she did it because he masturbated in front of her in his office. In the 80s she produced several low budget films such as Texas Lightning, Raw Force, Kill Point, Low Blow, Code Name Vengeance, Space Mutiny and Rage to Kill.

September 27, 1995: I played my new guitar at the Art Bar

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I posed for a Design class at the Ontario College of Art from 13:00 to 16:00. That evening I took my new guitar to the Art Bar reading series at the Csarda Hungarian restaurant on Elm Street and performed on the open stage.

Patricia Donahue

            On Thursday morning I worked on trying to memorize the fourth verses of “Les Araignées” (The Arachnids) by Boris Vian and “Flashback” by Serge Gainsbourg. I think I’ll have them both nailed down tomorrow. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the last of two sessions and it went out of tune a few times but not enough to make me cry. Tomorrow I’ll begin a four session stretch of playing my electric guitars. 

            I weighed 86.8 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since September 7. 

            Around midday I sanded a section where the paint had globbed on the edge of the round mirror that I started priming last Sunday. I’ll apply the second coat tomorrow and might also prime my lazy Susan that I keep on the top bathroom shelf. 

            I used the rest of my drywall compound to fill cracks in the bedroom where bedbugs might go but there wasn’t much left. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos before lunch. That’s the lowest since September 16. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown. I was passing some teenagers hanging out at Bathurst and Bloor when one of the little pricks lunged at me just for fun. On the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought five bags of green grapes, a pack of raspberries, a bag of Argentinian shrimp, a Black Forest ham, two packs of Full City Dark coffee, and a pack of Sponge Towels. I did a price match on the grapes with the No Frills price of $5.38 a kilo. 

            I weighed 86.95 kilos at 18:30. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:03. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Divorce the Weather” I synchronized the concert video with the studio audio by sometimes applying the Slow Down by Half effect at least three times to small sections of the video because it was slightly ahead of the audio. That worked for the most part. The app will only allow about five slow-downs and then at five one is freezing it. I also did the ending differently in the concert video and didn’t repeat the chorus an extra time but only the final phrase. That meant I had to use several slow-downs on the video so the audio could catch up. The slow-downs appear as a few seconds of freeze frames. One of those just shows Peter Fruchter frozen with his recorder while I’m singing until the video and audio are in sync again. I finished the song but I’ll have to either make the freeze frames look better or replace them with some outside video. 

            I compared the video of my song practice performance of “Je t’aime. Moi non plus” on September 15, 2024 with that of September 9 and found that September 15 is more expressive and played better. I compared September 21 to September 15 and it’s clear that September 15 is more expressive and looks better. 

            I had a potato with gravy and some parts of the leg of lamb while watching episode 26 of Checkmate. 

            Lee Tabor is an old friend of Dr. Hyatt’s. He’s also wealthy, eccentric, claustrophobic, and a big game hunter. He has had his Scottish castle taken apart and reassembled in the jungle of Malaya. He tells Hyatt that someone is trying to kill him. He has a handful of suspects, including his soon to be ex wife Kay, his future wife Marylu’s father Walter Keyes, George Parker who serves as a hunting ranger. Lee invites them all to his castle so he can choose his own battleground. Hyatt and Jed come along to stop the killer. Lee ruined Walter in a corporate battle and now his fiancé’s father works for him. Lee goes hunting on track 4 even though Parker has warned him it’s too dangerous so Hyatt goes with him. Lee falls in a concealed pool of quicksand and Hyatt can’t pull him out. He gives him a reed to breathe through and goes to get help. Jed ties a rope around himself with the other end on the jeep. Jed jumps in and finds Lee below the surface, then pulls him out (This trope about quicksand sucking one down is apparently false. He could have leaned back with his arms spread to float on his back and then slowly moved his legs in circles until they were free, then simply swam to solid ground). Lee is in shock and bedridden after that. Jed thinks that since Parker warned him about track 4 he’s no longer a suspect. But Hyatt says the best way to get Lee to do something is to tell him not to do it. Lee is now frightened for the first time of dying. Marylu still refers to Lee as “Mr. Tabor” and although she is going to marry him she doesn’t show any affection. In fact she kisses Jed. She says she hates Malaya and would rather be in Switzerland. The shortwave radio is not working and there are no telephones in the jungle. They want to fly Lee to medical assistance but the pilot says the plane has been sabotaged. Adams is sent in the jeep to get replacement parts. Lee shoots at someone on the edge of the jungle from his bedroom. He says Parker is in love with Kay and if Lee dies before the divorce then Kay will be rich. Lee says Adams is wanted for gun smuggling. He tells Jed where he can get tubes for the radio. Jed contacts the government station but they can’t send help until the next day. Lee decides to go out into the jungle and expose himself to the killer. He takes several guns with him. Jed and Hyatt follow and then Kay gets a gun and follows them. In the jungle she catches up to them, points her gun at Hyatt and Jed and forces them to drop their rifles. She says Lee needs to face this by himself. They see Parker stalking Lee but she can’t bring herself to fire. Jed picks up his gun and kills Parker just before he can shoot Lee. Lee says none of this means anything to him anymore and asks Kay how she feels. She says it never meant anything to her and so they come back together. Marylu and Jed are free to pursue each other. 

            Kay was played by Patricia Donahue, who worked as a model while studying acting in New York. Her first co-starring role was in the Bowery Boys comedy In the Money in 1957. She co-starred in the Michael Shayne TV series.

September 26, 1995: I played my new guitar at my open stage

Thirty years ago today 

            On Tuesday I worked on preparing the second issue of Orgasmagazine, which I planned to present next week. That night as always I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of the Gladstone Hotel and played my new guitar there for the first time.

Dennis Patrick

            On Wednesday morning I memorized and translated the third verse of “Flashback” by Serge Gainsbourg. That’s half the song. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice. I think I was supposed to be playing the Kramer electric for the first of two sessions but I lost track of my schedule. I might as well play the Martin tomorrow and then get back on track with two sessions of the Gibson and two of the Kramer over the next for days. Anyway the Martin stayed in tune for most of the time. 

            I weighed 86.85 kilos before breakfast. 

            I took an early siesta from 12:45 to 14:15 because I had to leave at 14:45 for the U of T Graduate School of Periodontics. Dr. Xia did my bone graft a year ago and this was the final follow-up. He said he was very happy with the results and most of my periodontal pockets have gotten much more shallow over the last year as I’ve been doing such a good cleaning job. He brought up the subject of implants but I’d been told that implants are not an option for someone with periodontitis. He said there is a slight risk of implant failure. It would cost me about $4000 and so I would only be able to afford one every few years but I said I was interested in starting with the missing front tooth where I use the denture. He said that first I need to get a CT scan and so I’ll get a call from the CT people in the next couple of weeks. 

            I weighed 86.25 kilos at 17:30. 

            I stopped to get some raspberries and Queen Fresh on the way home. Last time I bought some raspberries in baskets and was told they were from Ontario but she put them in packages that said “product of USA”. This time I was told the ones in baskets were from the US. I took some in packages that said “product of Mexico” and asked if they are from Mexico. She seemed annoyed and said, “What it says on the package”. I said, “It says the package is from Mexico”. She confirmed testily that they were from Mexico so I bought them. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:54. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Divorce the Weather” I synchronized the concert video with the studio audio by sometimes applying the Slow Down by Half effect at least three times to small sections of the video because it was slightly ahead of the audio. That worked for the most part. I stopped when the song was about 3.5 minutes in. 

            I reviewed the video of my Martin acoustic song practice performance of “Je t’aime. Moi non plus” on October 13 and the take at 4:30 in part B was okay. I reviewed “I Love You Neither Do I” from October 14 and the take at 16:45 in part B wasn’t bad. 

            I compared the video of my song practice performance of “Je t’aime. Moi non plus” on September 9 with that of September 11 and saw that September 9 looks better. There are six more left to compare. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara sauce, basil pesto, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode 25 of Checkmate. 

            Comic strip artist Steve Margate writes and draws the adventures of an internationally published hero he created named “O’Hara” who seems to be based on The Shadow. He wants to kill O’Hara off but when he tries he sees O’Hara appear on the balcony in the flesh with a knife about to be thrown. Steve’s wife Edna, his attorney Jack and his assistant Andy hear him screaming and then find he’s been stabbed in his left hand with a replica of O’Hara’s knife. Jack wants Steve declared mentally incompetent but Edna is reluctant to sign the papers. Steve is an old friend of Hyatt and all three hire Checkmate for different reasons. Steve wants to be protected from O’Hara, Edna wants Steve protected from himself, and Jack wants O’Hara the strip protected from Steve. Don and Jed go to Steve’s hotel room and check out the balcony. It’s several floors up but only a couple of stories to the roof. Up there they find marks that could have been made by a grappling hook. There are theatrical flying rigs used for shows like Peter Pan and only two or three companies in the country make them. Jed checks to see how many orders they’ve had recently. An actor named Niles Parker bought a rig recently from a company in Hollywood. Jed heads there to check it out. Steve and Andy find O’Hara’s antique gun. Steve panics and while trying to remove it Andy shoots it at the mirror. Steve accuses everyone of conspiracy and starts attacking them until Jack knocks him out. Edna signs the papers to have Steve declared incompetent. Hyatt returns to San Francisco and tells Don about Steve. He was an excellent engineering draftsman and had a photographic memory. He could look at something once and precisely reproduce it on paper. Hyatt tells Steve he knows he didn’t imagine the attacks. He asks Steve to draw O’Hara as he saw him on the balcony. He realizes it wasn’t O’Hara but someone in a costume. Jed goes to see Miss Cadwallader’s model agency and she thinks he’s a model. Once he lets her know who he is he asks about Niles Parker. He’s a washed up action hero who she keeps on out of sympathy. He’s not afraid of heights and recently he's had a lot of money. He sometimes uses the name Arthur Pain. They track him down to a hotel room where they find him dead. They also find his flying rig and Don tells Jed he’s going to have to use it. He dresses in the O’Hara costume and goes on the roof. Steve is now in on the plot to trap the killer. Edna, Jack and Andy come to Steve’s suite. Hyatt opens the curtains to reveal O’Hara on the balcony. Andy is the most surprised because he’s the one who killed Parker. Steve sells the rights to O’Hara for a very large sum and never has to work again. 

            Jack was played by Dennis Patrick, who made his stage debut in a production of Harvey in Maine. He served in the navy during WWII and made training films. He made his film debut in C-Man in 1949. In an episode of Stage 13 in 1950 he was the first vampire written for television. He co-starred in Joe and Dear Dead Delilah. He played Sheriff George Patterson in the movie House of Dark Shadows but also appeared as two characters on the TV series. He co-starred in Bert Dangelo / Superstar and the soap opera Rituals. He played Jean Paul Marat on Broadway in Marat/Sade.