Paul Carr

            On Thursday morning I worked out the chords for the first verse of “À poil ou à plumes” (Naked or in Feathers) by Serge Gainsbourg. I think all the verses might have the same chords, in which case I only have to work them out for the chorus. 

            I weighed 87 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since October 11. 

            Around midday I put away most of my laundry that’d been sitting on the couch since Monday.

            I weighed 88.7 kilos before lunch. 

            I took a siesta and slept 45 minutes longer than planned. It was too late to take a bike ride downtown and so I just rode to do my grocery shopping at Freshco. I bought six bags of red grapes, a pack of raspberries, some bananas, a pack of chicken drumsticks, a pack of ground pork, two boxes of spoon sized shredded wheat, and a pack of Full City Dark coffee. 

            I weighed 88.3 kilos at 18:10.

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:53. 

            I reviewed the cassette recording of the Howl radio show interview that preceded my first 20.000 Poets Under the League poetry slam at the Rivoli. Raven, Denise Naples, and I were the guests. I played and sang my poem “Sugar” and my daughter Astrid was also there. I digitized the tape recording. 

            In my “2024-10-09 Song Practice” Movie Maker project I worked on synchronizing the interface audio with the video and when I quit for supper it was just a little behind. 

            I had a potato with the rest of my gravy and a slice of roast beef while watching episode 8 of Cain’s Hundred. 

            Eddie Novak is being groomed to become the middle weight boxing champion by Tom Larch, the front man for the mob in their control of professional boxing. Novak doesn’t like the Organization having control over his career but Larch warns him that if he fights for himself he’ll be shadow boxing. Nicholas Cain wants the boxers to testify against Larch but the trainer Willie Carter says they won’t. Ten years ago Carter fought for the world championship against Al Heldon and lost. Heldon retired immediately after and so Carter didn’t get a chance for a rematch. Cain has dinner at Heldon’s successful restaurant and tries to get Heldon to testify. One of Larch’s men warns him not to talk. Novak finds out that Larch just bought him from his manager. Larch hands Novak an advance of $1000, which would be about $11,000 today, to keep quiet. That night one of Larch’s men knocks on the door of Novak and his wife just to tell him he knows where he lives. The next night Novak loses the fight he should have won. He didn’t throw the fight but he feels guilty anyway and the next day at the gym he tries to give the money Larch gave him to all the people that bet on him, but they don’t want it. Then Novak’s wife arrives and confesses that she put barbiturates into his vitamin capsules because she wanted him to lose so he would get out of this dirty business. Suddenly everyone at the gym, including Carter is willing to testify. Novak thinks he’s through but Cain tells him he thinks his wife would support him as a fighter if he were competing in an honest sport. Larch comes to see Carter and tells him that ten years ago when he lost the crown to Heldon he was drugged. Cain brings Heldon to the gym and Carter challenges him to a fair fight. They step into the ring and Heldon beats him but confesses that he did know that he was doped ten years ago but didn’t learn it until after the fight was over. Then he was too ashamed to speak of it. Heldon says he’ll testify now. 

            Novak was played by Paul Carr, who studied acting at the American Theatre Wing in New York. He appeared in nearly 100 Broadway productions. He made his film debut in 1955 in The Wrong Man. He co-starred in Jamboree and The Severed Arm. He starred in The Dirt Gang. He played Bill Horton in the first season of Days of Our Lives. He played Casey Clark on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He played Lieutenant Lee Kelso in the second Star Trek pilot “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. He played Lieutenant Devlin on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. He directed a program in honour of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. He was head of the play committee of the LA Repertory Company. He wrote and produced plays for a group called Video Playwrights.