Mara Lynn

            On Sunday morning I memorized the first half of the chorus of “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the opening monologue and the chorus of “Les Millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I continued to work on merging the original text that I’d copied with the transcribed text that Sonix made from the audio. 

            I weighed 87.35 kilos before breakfast. 

            During song practice I played my Kramer electric for the first of two sessions. It stayed in tune most of the time. 

            Around midday I cleaned with high acid vinegar the warm mist humidifier that’s been running over the last week. 

            I weighed 88.2 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the early afternoon since last Sunday. I had a toasted rosemary bagel with peanut butter, five-year-old cheddar and a glass of iced tea. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. At Yonge and Dundas I was stopped at the red light and carefully trying to make my way to the curb by walking my bike through the holes in the pedestrian stream that was crossing. A woman with a stroller stopped at my front wheel and told me I was kind of in her way. I could see she could easily veer around the front of my wheel and calmly asked, “I’m in your way?” When she started screaming at me I said I was just walking like everybody else. 

            I weighed 87.9 kilos at 18:10. That’s the farthest I’ve pushed the scale in the evening since last Sunday. 

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

            I reviewed side 2 of tape 1 of my third or fourth 20,000 Poets Under the League poetry slam hosted by the amazing Sahara Spracklin. I digitized the tape but I know the copy will have glitches and so I’m looking forward to getting my Sony cassette player back and repaired from AMI. 

            I reviewed the song practice videos of my performances of “Ne me quitte pas” and “Please Don’t Quit Me Now” from September 29 to October 2. I played “Ne me quitte pas” on my Gibson Les Paul Studio on September 29 but the camera battery charge ran out while I was struggling to get a good take. I played it on my Martin Road Series on October 1 but the camera shut off before this song. I played “Please Don’t Quit Me Now” on my Gibson on September 30 and my Martin on October 2 and both times the final take didn’t sound bad. 

            I made pizza on two halves of a sesame seed bagel with marinara sauce, tomato pesto, a slice of ham each and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore while watching season 2, episode 7 of Car 54 Where Are You? 

            A spiritualist con gang fronted by Madame Sonya is operating in the 53rd Precinct and trying to convince customers that dead loved ones want them to let Sonya manage their money. But nobody seems to have any money, causing Sonya to comment that the Bronx is great for pastrami but lousy for spiritualists. But then the gang leader finds a newspaper article about Count Dimitri Schnauser-Dosteyevski who has just married a woman in the Bronx. He thinks they just need to scam his new wife in order to get her to hand over the count’s money. They try to find the count’s phone number and end up with that of Officer Leo Schnauser and his wife Sylvia. Sonya calls Sylvia to tell her that her husband’s first wife Celeste is trying to contact her from the great beyond. Sylvia is very superstitious and agrees to meet Sonya in the morning. But that night Sylvia starts asking Schnauser about another wife when he was never married before and he starts to think that Sylvia is losing her mind. He says he was married to Queen Elizabeth but they split up when he told her he didn’t want his wife to work. Then when Sylvia keeps pushing he tells her he was married to Greta Garbo but when it was over she promised she’d never mention him again and the evidence is in all of her interviews. Not once has she mentioned Leo Schnauser. Schnauser tells Toody and Muldoon about it and even though Toody knows Schnauser was never married before he keeps asking what Celeste was like. The next day Sylvia goes to see Sonya and communicates with the voice of Celeste who tells her she is a countess. That night she greets Leo while wearing a tiara and calls him Count Schnauser. She says she would love to meet the Czar and Schnauser says he’ll arrange it. The next day he goes to see a psychiatrist to tell him about Sylvia’s delusions and invites him to come and meet her. Sylvia contacts Sonya and tells her about Schnauser’s reaction. Sonya tells her never to tell a third person about her contact with the spirit world because it will break the connection. She must pretend she knows nothing. And so when Schnauser brings home the psychiatrist, the doctor finds Sylvia acting normal and thinks Schnauser is the one with the delusions. Meanwhile Captain Block hears about Sonya from one of her customers and arranges for Toody and Muldoon to investigate. The grifters think that now that the count has heard about Sonya he’ll send his brother Sergei to get the goods on them. Toody comes in plain clothes as a customer and of course is immediately sucked in. At the same time they think Toody is the count’s brother and convince Toody that he was smuggled out of Russia and raised by a Romani band while his brother was raised by another. The psychiatrist calls up Block and tells him Schnauser thinks he’s a count. Then Block tells Toody and suddenly Toody thinks that he and Schnauser are brothers. Then when Toody tells Schnauser about it he flips and really believes it. The psychiatrist says that Toody and Schnauser just have to be driven around the familiar surroundings of the Bronx until they snap out of it. 

            The gang member who did the voice of Celeste was played by Mara Lynn, who studied classical dance in New York. She was a featured dancer in the 1948 musical revue Inside USA on Broadway, which ran for 339 performances. She supposedly gave acting lessons to Marilyn Monroe in preparation for Let’s Make Love. She co-starred in the movie Prehistoric Women. She was Ray Bolger’s dance partner on his last tour.