Shirley Ballard

            On Friday morning my left arm felt better than it has since I wrenched it last month. 

            I revised my translation of the second verse of “L'araignée du soir” (The Spider of the Night) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished memorizing “Paris d’papa” (Papa’s Paris) by Serge Gainsbourg. I searched for the chords but no one has posted them and so I worked out the first four of the intro.  

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it went out of tune a lot. 

            I weighed 86.85 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I took an early bike ride because I wanted to take my motorcycle jacket to Perfect Leather to get a hole patched. I stopped at Long and McQuade to pee. There’s a lot of construction on King these days so now Perfect Leather at 555 King west seems to be the shortest building and looks quite out of place. I showed them my jacket and suggested replacing the panel of the back of my left shoulder where the hole is. The elderly woman who does the leather work said she’d a new panel across the back instead, I guess because if she replaced the panel she’d also need to replace the main left pocket. It’ll cost me $150 and if I bring cash I won’t need to pay tax, but it won’t be ready for two or three weeks. 

            I weighed 86.85 kilos at 14:30. 

            I took a siesta at 15:15 and intended to get up at 16:45 but got up when I thought it was 17:45 but it was really 17:00. I often feel disoriented when I wake up from naps. 

            I weighed 87.3 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:14. 

            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. I got to about 3:12 minutes into the song and used a lot of clips from the August 22 video to replace the parts of the concert video that show Csilla and Peter on stage with me. There are less than 1.5 minutes left in the song and 3 minutes left of the August 22 video. 

            I opened my “2024-30-09 Song Practice” Movie Maker project and deleted the song that came before “Coiffure by Eliza”, which was already synchronized. I saved the project as “Coiffure by Eliza (Gibson)”, isolated the song, added a fade to black effect and published the movie. I uploaded it to YouTube. Tomorrow I’ll open my “2024-10-10 Song Practice” Movie Maker project to isolate my Kramer electric version of “Coiffure by Eliza”. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg while watching episode 13 of Checkmate.

            Checkmate’s cleaning lady Mrs. Horvath calls Jed to tell him that her client that she calls “the princess in the tower” is in danger. But before she can explain she screams and is cut off. By the time Jed can reach her she has fallen five stories to her death. Jed is searching Horvath’s apartment for clues when the phone rings and someone named Claudia Warren calls to say she’s returning Horvath’s urgent call. When Jed tells her Horvath is dead she hangs up. Horvath only used nicknames that she’d made up when she talked about her clients. Jed needs to figure out the identity of the princess and he’s thinking it might be Claudia Warren. He tracks down her number and address in a very upscale neighbourhood. Claudia’s maid tells him he can find her at the Fisherman’s Hall at Warren’s Landing. Claudia is with her boyfriend Alex who wants to marry her but she is wary of a second marriage after having been bitten by her first. Claudia is a wealthy heir but her Uncle Frank controls her money. She wants to renovate Warren’s Landing but it will cost $80,000 ($873,000 today). Frank is reluctant. Everyone leaves but Claudia who stays behind to work on renovations. Jed comes to talk with her and tells her that she’s in danger. He goes to drive her home but the brakes on his car have been cut and they end up in the bay. They go to Don’s place to recover. Jed learns that if she were to die all of her fortune would go to her uncle. Horvath came to work for Claudia on Dorothy Carr’s recommendation. Dorothy is Frank’s girlfriend. Later someone tries to run Jed over. Jed goes to the laundry room in the basement of Claudia’s building to see if any of her clients has decided to do their own laundry in Horvath’s absence. He meets a man in white face named Jocko who turns out to be the client Horvath called The Professor. Jed goes back to Claudia’s place but her maid Ellen answers the door and says she’s gone to Warren’s Landing and wants him to meet her there. But after he is gone we see that Carr is holding Ellen, Claudia, and Frank at gunpoint. At Warren’s Landing, Alex tries to shoot Jed and they have a gunfight. Jed knocks Alex into the water and captures him. He returns to Claudia’s place and when Carr opens the door Jed pushes Alex in and then disarms Carr. The plan was for Alex to marry Claudia and then become her heir, then kill her off and marry Dorothy. 

            Dorothy Carr was played by Shirley Ballard, who was Miss California of 1944. Her film debut was in Easter parade in 1948. She made her TV debut on Studio One in 1951. She co-starred in Cop Hater. She worked as a script supervisor for Mad Max.