Rebecca Welles

            On Sunday morning I finished revising my translation of “L'araignée du soir” (The Spider of the Night) by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I’ll run through singing and playing it and then I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare it for publication. 

            I worked out the chords for about half the first verse of “Paris d’papa” (Papa’s Paris) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions and it went out of tune a few times but not to an annoying degree. 

            I weighed 87.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I rode down to Canadian Tire at Joe Shuster Way and King. I wanted to buy two filters for my cool mist humidifier in hopes they will last through the furnace-on season but there was only one on the shelf. I asked about it at customer service and the clerk had someone find and bring me a second one. I also looked at their stepladders. The best looking one was a black three-step one that says its reach is 2.7 meters. My ceilings are 3 meters. The ladder’s top step is a meter high. My chair with my cement block on it is about three fifths of a meter and I can almost reach the ceiling, so when they talk about “reach” they must be thinking of a shorter person than I. So the three-step ladder might be fine for my purposes. It’s on sale for $75 right now. I’ll check what Home Hardware has later and compare. 

            I weighed 88.15 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the early afternoon since June 8. 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 87.3 kilos at 17:50. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:02. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Paranoiac Utopia” I started editing the ending in order to include better clips of the Milky Way graffiti alley from the video I shot on August 22. I deleted some of what I added yesterday and replaced them with other clips of the exact same duration. I’ll do some more of that tomorrow. I trimmed down the leftover video to about 30 seconds. I think it might be fine to have a few seconds run silently after the song is over but 30 seconds is too much. 

            I uploaded my “Coiffure by Eliza (Kramer guitar)” video to YouTube. So now I’m done rehearsing “Élisa” and “Coiffure by Eliza” and I’ll begin singing and playing “Le complainte du progress” and my translation “The Warranty of Love” on alternating days. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara sauce, basil pesto, oven fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode 15 of Checkmate. 

            Master criminal Alonzo Graham has just been released from prison and has woven an elaborate plan of revenge against criminologist Dr. Carl Hyatt who put him there. Hyatt knows Alonzo is plotting against him and yet he comes to dinner in his home anyway. There is a mutual respect and a love of the game, even though if Hyatt loses he will probably die. Alonzo has hired a doppelganger of Hyatt and is training him to imitate his speech and mannerisms. Hyatt has a love interest for the first time in the series in Helena. She is married but is trying to free herself of her cruel husband so she and Carl can be together. Hyatt has never been to Helena’s apartment because he does not think it appropriate while she is still married. But Helena is also secretly working for Alonzo, and her neighbour Fay Razon sees Bruno’s fake Hyatt comes to see her often and hears them engaging in violent arguments. Don and Jed want to help their friend and so Jed poses as an electrician and bugs Alonzo’s home. But Alonso knows there is electronic eavesdropping going on and plays prepared tapes for the listening detectives to hear. Helena goes missing and evidence points to her having been drowned in the ocean. Fay recounts the arguments between Hyatt and Helena to the police. They can’t question Alonzo because no one has seen him with Helena. Eight witnesses have seen the fake Hyatt with Helena, causing loud scenes wherever they went. They find Helena’s car with blood stains on the upholstery. It was parked on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Jed has been captured and is tied to a bed while Bruno watches over him with Helena. Hyatt goes to talk with Alonzo who tells him that Don will be there soon pursuing Bruno and will kill Hyatt. Carl runs halfway up the stairs as Don bursts through the door. Carl fires and so does Don. Hyatt is hit and tumbles down the stairs. Alonzo thinks he’s won but Hyatt gets up unscathed because the bullets were blanks. Helena and Bruno arrive in the custody of Jed, who Helena had untied. Alonzo takes his defeat very calmly. He was played by the great Peter Lorre. 

            Fay was played by Rebecca Welles who at first I got confused with the daughter of Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles because that’s who turns up mostly in a search for the name. Rebecca Welles the actor made her TV debut in an episode of Studio One in 1951. Her film debut was in Good Morning Miss Dove in 1955. She co-starred in Juvenile Jungle.