Susan Cummings

            On Saturday morning I worked out the chords for the fourth verse and half of the final verse of “Les Araignées” (The Arachnids) by Boris Vian. I should have it done tomorrow. 

            I worked out the chords for over half the fourth verse of “Flashback” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice and the B string went out of tune on almost every song. 

            I weighed 87.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            The landlord knocked on my door and gave me a noise complaint warning. I told him to give my number to whoever is complaining so I can turn whatever I’m listening to down when they are hearing it. Otherwise I don’t know what volume I’m supposed to reduce. 

            Around midday I headed out to shop at No Frills. My upstairs neighbour David was hanging around outside our building. I told him about the noise warning and he said all the tenants got one. He doesn’t think the guy above me would complain since he plays his music very loud. 

            At No Frills I got seven bags of red grapes, three packs of Canadian raspberries, some bananas, a box of spoon sized shredded wheat, some tomato pesto, three bags of skim milk, a jug of iced tea, a jug of orange juice, a container of 4% skyr, a container of berry skyr, and two bags of Miss Vickie’s chips. 

            I weighed 88.2 kilos at 14:30, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since last Saturday but heavier than then. 

            I took a siesta from 15:15 to 16:45. It was too late to take a bike ride downtown but I did ride to Ossington and Bloor. 

            I weighed 88.3 kilos at 17:50. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:13. 

            I worked on the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Insisting On Angels”. The old video I’m synching with the audio was behind all the way through the last chorus, until the finale that begins with “and if you’ve kissed an angel once”. Just before that the old video is ahead of the studio audio. I inserted a couple of clips of the trapeze artist wearing angel wings in the movie Wings of Desire to bring them back in sync. But I’ll need to add more next time. 

            I compared the song practice video of my October 5, 2024 performance of “Je t’aime. Moi non plus” to that of September 13. Although the Kramer on October 5 has a cleaner sound, September 13 looks better and I play a little better. I compared October 9 to September 13 and October 9 looks almost as good and sounds a lot better. So I’ll make a movie of October 9 but maybe not for YouTube, because I think I can do it better, but at least to archive. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara sauce, tomato pesto, the rest of the ham, cubed, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the penultimate episode of Checkmate. 

            Someone has taken a shot at the wealthy upstart Big Bill Venable and so he hires Checkmate. A case designed to carry a highly venomous snake is tossed over the wall into Bill’s estate and now it is loose and probably has found a way into the house. Bill wants to leave until they catch the snake but Jed and Hyatt advise him that he’ll be safer at home. They meet Bill’s companion the seductive Countess Johanna de Salamite. Because of his working class background Bill is shunned by his upper class neighbours. So when his neighbour Edgar Drummond comes to collect for a charity Bill welcomes him with open arms. He donates $10,000 and is told about the charity ball that will be held on Saturday. Bill wants to go and Jed and Hyatt advise against it but he insists on going. Mr. Mitchie of the zoo comes with a special box to try to retrieve Sally the snake. Jed goes to the countess’s apartment to question her but she tries to seduce him. He shocks her out of that mood with a realistic looking rubber snake. All the countess knows is that Bill received a phone call from a woman in New York and after that he put in his high tech burglar alarms. When questioned, Bill refuses to say anything about that woman. Hyatt gets Bill drunk and he lets slip a New York phone number. Hyatt learns that it belonged to a woman who committed suicide. Jed questions Bill’s butler Milroy who admits he finds Bill detestable and hates him. Don finds out the dead woman’s name is Michelle Vanessi and she was an unsuccessful actress. She took it hard when Bill dumped her and moved to San Francisco. Bill, the countess, Jed and Hyatt go to the ball. Bill is not having a good time but the countess is. Bill goes to the bar and has a drink. He sees the countess spending all her time with Drummond and wants to punch him. But before he can he collapses. At first it looks like he was poisoned but later they learn that the countess had the bartender put knockout drops in his drink to save him from being fully ostracized by doing violence to one of his neighbours in a community he wants to accept him. Bill fires Checkmate and they leave. Hyatt analyzes the box that was thrown over Bill’s estate wall and discovers that the snake had never been in it. They remember that Mitchie was still in Bill’s house when they left and he was still holding the box. They realize the snake has been in his box all along. Meanwhile Mitchie confronts Bill and reveals that the late Michelle Vinessi was his sister and he blames Bill for his death. He pulls a gun and forces him into the shower. He releases Sally in the shower with him and closes the door while Hyatt and Jed rush back to the house. They catch Mitchie just as he’s leaving. Bill jumps over Sally and smashes through the glass shower door, then faints. Mitchie goes to an asylum while Hyatt takes care of Sally. 

            The Countess was played by Susan Cummings, who was born in Bavaria and came to the US at the age of 7. In her early teens she was a regular on the variety series At Home. At around the same time she made her Broadway debut in Carousel. She co-starred in the classic Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man” and shouted out her discovery about the alien text “To Serve Man” that “It’s a cookbook!” She co-starred in Security Risk, Secret of Treasure Mountain, Utah Blaine, and Verboten. She co-starred in the TV series Union Pacific.