Ilka Windish

            On Tuesday morning I worked out the chords for the third line of the fourth verse of “L'araignée du soir” (The Spider of Night) by Boris Vian. There’s one more verse. 

            I memorized the fourth verse of “Paris d’papa” (Papa’s Paris) by Serge Gainsbourg. There is one more verse to nail down. 

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice for the last of two sessions and it went out of tune quite a bit. 

            I weighed 87.05 kilos before breakfast. 

            At 13:00 I went to Family Dentistry to have my two front fillings fixed. The right tooth seems shorter than the other one now. Dr. Singh says it would be too fragile if he made the filling longer. 

            I weighed 87.4 kilos at 14:25.

            I took a siesta at 15:00 and woke up at 16:45. By the time I was ready to go it was too late for a bike ride downtown and so I just rode to Freshco where I bought five bags of Canadian cherries, two packs of raspberries, a jug of iced tea, a pack of Sponge Towels, and a pack of toilet paper. 

            I weighed 87.45 kilos at 18:05, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening since September 1.

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

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Paranoiac Utopia” I continued replacing the partitioned sections of the concert video with parts of the exact same duration from my August 22 video. The balance between the concert video and the street video works well but after 45 minutes I was only 13 seconds further into the song than yesterday. There are 5 minutes left of the August 22 video. 

            In my “2024-10-05 Song Practice” Movie Maker project I got the external microphones’ audio synchronized with the video. Tomorrow I’ll delete everything on the timeline before “Élisa”. 

            I grilled a boneless rib steak from New Zealand and had it with a potato and gravy while watching episode 10 of Checkmate. 

            Don and Jed are vacationing in Tijuana and in a cantina they witness the arrival of the revered matador Manuel Alvarez with his beautiful sister Rita. Rita flirts with Jed from across the room and Manuel does not approve. Later we see that Rita and Jed know each other as she calls him at his hotel and they arrange to meet that night. But Jed finds her by the beach near death as she has been stabbed. He removes the knife and is immediately arrested. Later Rita dies in the hospital before she can reveal the identity of her attacker. As Rita was the sister of the town hero and as Jed is a gringo he is already assumed guilty by the public and the police. The police chief Lieutenant Diaz tells Jed that Don has gotten him a lawyer. The lawyer tells Jed his case is hopeless unless he can pay someone to say they saw someone else stab Rita. Jed knows this is a trick and refuses to take the bait. Diaz admits it was a trick. Don arranges for Jed to be released but he is not allowed to leave town. Manuel comes to see Jed and tells him if he doesn’t confess in 24 hours he will kill him. Jed and Don go back to the cantina and there is a guitarist playing. Jed remembers hearing him in the background when Rita called him. He questions him and he confesses that he saw Rita that night with Juan Rohas in the parking lot. They were lovers just as the guitarist had once been with her. Don goes to see Rohas who says he was with Teresa Garcia when Rita was attacked. Don goes to question Teresa and she is with Manuel. Don asks her if she was with Rohas the night of Rita’s stabbing and she surprises Manuel by admitting that she was. Manuel smashes a picture of himself and Teresa. Later Teresa calls Jed and arranges to meet him in the cantina. She urges him to leave town or Manuel will kill him and she will lose Manuel if he goes to prison. Dr. Hyatt arrives in town and talks with Diaz. He points out that Jed did not leave the scene of the crime and it’s odd that he was not scratched in the struggle if he was Rita’s killer. He also points out Jed’s history. Diaz reads Hyatt a quote from a criminology book, “Previous behaviour should be discounted”. Hyatt says he’s learned a lot more since he wrote that book. Hyatt finds Jed at the scene of the crime. He’s discovered some seashells that look like they were part of a necklace that could have been torn off by Rita in her struggle with her assailant. Jed goes back to his hotel where he is grabbed by Manuel’s men. He is bound and driven to Manuel’s ranch. Don goes back to Teresa and sees she wears a bracelet of the same seashells and that in a photograph she is shown wearing a matching necklace. She finally admits to stabbing Rita who drew a knife in a struggle during an argument about Rita ruining Manuel’s reputation with all of her lovers. Manuel takes Jed to ring where he tests the bulls he breeds savagery. He puts Jed in the ring and prepares to release his most vicious bull. Don and Teresa arrive and Teresa confesses just as the bull is released. Manuel steps into the ring and is gored to death.

            Teresa was played by Ilka Windish, who was studying to be an actor in Austria when Hitler sent her to the Russian front to entertain his troops. She starred in 8 Austrian films until 1943 when the film studio in Vienna was converted to a factory for the war. When the Russians invaded she had to perform for the new government and was paid in lard and flour. In 1946 she married a US journalist and moved to the United States. She returned to Vienna to make more films. She worked as a model and a television actor, making her debut on Studio One.