Audrey Meadows

            On Tuesday September 24 I went to bed at about 1:30 but hardly slept at all. Although I’ve been finding bedbugs on my wall, this was the first night in a couple of years that I’ve actually felt at least one on my body in bed. It’s so hard to get the landlord to listen to me. A young woman named Alexa has been living above me for a couple of months. I’ve been hoping she’ll make use of the power of her newness to compel the landlord to do something. But I’ve heard she’s moving out because she’s being attacked by ghosts. Maybe that’s what she thinks the bedbugs are. 

            I memorized the third verse of “Les Araignées” (The Arachnids) by Boris Vian. There are two verses left to nail down. 

            I memorized and translated the second verse of “Flashback” by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice and it stayed in tune until the end when I sat down in front of the computer with it and then it went out badly. It seems standing in one end of the room there’s an entirely different atmosphere than sitting at the other end. 

            I weighed 87.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I packed up my Epi acoustic, strapped my Gibson Les Paul Studio to my trailer, and rode up to Wood Instruments near Roncesvalles and Queen. I brought my Epi to get refurbished and my Gibson to have the action raised. Alex said the action on the Gibson is standard but agreed that some of the frets need to be redone. He raised the action slightly and I’ll probably bring it back later to get it fixed. The Epi’s upgrade will cost about $370. 

            Alex showed me his new toy. He bought a 3D printer online for $250. The first thing he made was a headset for his girlfriend’s headphones. he says he tried to sit and watch it work the first time but it takes two hours to make the smallest item. It does however have a camera that records a photo timeline of the process for each construction. 

            I weighed 87.25 kilos at 14:15, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since last Tuesday. 

            I took a siesta from 14:45 to 16:45. It was probably not too late to take some kind of bike ride but not all the way downtown and since I’d already been out I decided to stay home this time. 

            I weighed 87.3 kilos at 17:00. 

            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 up until the chorus by sometimes cutting bits of the video because it was slightly behind the audio. But in the chorus the video jumps ahead of the audio and so I need to do something to push the video back. Normally I would add clips of outside videos to do that but in this case I’m going to try isolating a section of the video when I’m not moving my mouth and adding the “Slow Down by Half” effect to see if that works. Also, normally I would use only the studio audio for a project like this and cut out the scenes with Peter Fruchter on recorder and Csilla on bongos. But in this case I find that the recorder and bongos of the concert audio don’t sound so bad in the far background with the clearer and louder studio recording of my voice dominating the video. 

            I reviewed the video of my song practice performances of “Je t’aime. Moi non plus” and “I Love You. Neither Do I” from October 3 to 12. On October 3 the French song didn’t get recorded because the battery charge ran out during the previous song. On October 4 my translation didn’t get recorded because the camera shut off before I could complete a good take. On October 5 and 9 I played “Je t’aime. Moi non plus” on my Kramer electric. On October 5 the final take wasn’t bad and on October 9 the last take sounded okay. On October 7 and 11 I played it on my Martin acoustic. On October 7 the final take was not bad. On October 11 the video for this song is corrupted. On October 6, 10, and 12 I played “I Love You. Neither Do I” on my Kramer. On October 6 the final take was okay. On October 10 the last take didn’t sound bad. On October 12 the video for that song is corrupted. On October 8 I played it on my Martin and the final take wasn’t bad and looked good. 

            I had a potato with gravy and some lamb slices with skyr while watching episode 24 of Checkmate. 

            Novelist Althea Todd is widely hated in her home town of Jericho because she wrote a book about it and many of the townspeople recognized themselves in the characters. She is now writing a sequel about the only murder ever committed in Jericho and in the final chapter she plans to reveal the identity of the killer. She hires Checkmate to protect her and Don Corey comes to meet her on the street at night. She points out that someone across the street has been watching her. Don confronts and threatens the man but we see it’s really his partner Jed and the confrontation is staged. She says someone is trying to stop her from finishing her second novel but it could be any one of 22,000 townsfolk. She says her dog drank some milk that was left by the milkman and it died of strychnine poisoning. She takes Don back to her house where she finds her manuscript about to be consumed by flames in the fireplace. Her typist Sarah staggers into the room and says she’s just recovered from being knocked in the head while typing chapter 14. Althea says there are other copies of the manuscript and she’ll rewrite chapter 14. She says she deposits each chapter in the bank with George Thruxton the manager. She says she doesn’t know who committed the murder as she was only 10 when it happened. The next day Don talks with Jed who tells him the murder victim was bank president Fred Lamson. He was killed with probably a tire iron. The chief suspect was Harley Russell who is now one of Althea’s only friends in town. Don goes to see police Chief Ray Terrill who advises him not to poke his nose into the Lamson murder and to stop Althea from finishing her book. Don meets Althea and George at the bank. Later Don questions Althea’s motives for writing the novel. He thinks she’s out to get someone. Althea has a confrontation with the ladies of the James Street Club as she leaves the hotel. Mrs. Cameron says she should leave by the back door. Althea says she’ll have no trouble finding it since Mr. Cameron once tried to give her directions. Althea tells Don she’s out to get the whole town for how it treated her parents. She is getting information from someone but won’t reveal her source. Don talks with Hyatt who says the person who poisoned her dog is probably not the same one who burned her manuscript. Mrs. Frederick Lamson sends for Don and asks him to stop Althea from writing the novel. She has somehow read some of the manuscript and says Althea will be destroyed by what she is stirring up. Chief Terrill tells Don Mrs. Lamson got the information from him. He says the scandal depicted in the novel about the character based on Lamson is true. The woman who had the affair with Lamson is still in town and there was also a child produced by the relationship. He gives Don 24 hours to get out of town. Don confronts Althea and she admits Harley is her source. Sarah arrives and Don accuses her of feeding Terrill the information she’s been typing. She’s the one who had the affair with Lamson and she tried to burn the manuscript. Don tells Althea she has to announce that in the next chapter she will reveal the murderer. That will set Althea up as bait to catch the killer. George comes that night to ask Althea to marry him. She says she’ll have to think about it. He leaves and later Althea finds her phone is dead. George comes back with a tire iron. He says he would have felt safe if she’d said she’d marry him but she couldn’t because she knew he was the murderer. He’s about to swing the tire iron at her when Don crashes in through the window. He’s about to swing the weapon at Don when Terrill shoots and kills him. Later Althea and Don become lovers. 

            Althea was played by the great Audrey Meadows, whose parents were missionaries in China for the first five years of her life. Although she was born in New York, Chinese was her first language. She was a mezzo-soprano and sang at Carnegie Hall. Her film debut was in The Baron of Arizona. She co-starred on The Bob and Ray Show and The Honeymooners (She was the only cast member with a contract to be paid for re-runs). She appeared in 18 episodes of Too Close for Comfort. She co-starred in the films Take Her She’s Mine, She was the live action model for Wilma Flintstone. She became the first female director of the First National Bank of Denver and held the position for 11 years. She was an advisory director of Continental Airlines.