Philip Bruns

            On Sunday morning I translated another couple of verses of “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the second verse of “Tout l’monde est musician” (All of Us Are Musicians) by Serge Gainsbourg. There are only three more verses to nail down. 

            I weighed 89.7 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning in well over a year.

            I had my cereal in a smaller bowl because I’m getting too heavy.

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice for the second of four sessions and it stayed in tune most of the time.

            Around midday I soaked my older warm mist humidifier in high acid vinegar and then rode over to Freedom Mobile only to find it’s closed on Sundays. I finished cleaning the humidifier and then cleaned my bathroom sink. My new wall paintjob looks so much better with a clean sink. 

            I weighed 90.2 kilos before lunch. That’s the furthest I’ve pushed it in the early afternoon in a long time. I had saltines with peanut butter, five-year-old cheddar and a glass of ice tea. I had one less slice of cheese than usual because I’ve been getting heavy. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride and stopped at Freedom Mobile at Dovercourt and Bloor to pay for my December phone plan. I rode downtown and back. 

            I weighed 89.75 kilos at 18:15. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:26. 

            I finished reviewing one side of the cassette recording of the Christian and the Lions rehearsal with Tom, Steve, and Mike. A lot of talking and playing but a lot of the playing wasn’t on my song. It’s very hard to teach musicians a melody with just one’s voice. I got a lot better results later when I was playing guitar and working with Brian. 

            I worked on my “2024-09-23 Song Practice” Movie Maker project. The audio was still slightly behind the video when I stopped for supper. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara sauce, tomato pesto, Genoa salami, and five-year-old cheddar (one fewer slice than usual). I had it with a glass of Creemore while watching season 1, episode 16 of Car 54 Where Are You? 

            Muldoon has a photographic memory for dates, forms, codes, and jurisdictions. Meanwhile Toody can’t even remember his own badge number. The captain suggests that Muldoon take the test for sergeant but he says he’s happy where he is. Toody goes home and is horrified to learn his TV is in the shop and he’ll be without one for a whole day. Lucille suggests he read a book that she just bought called “The Sacrifice”. He’s reluctant to read a book but Lucille wants to be able to tell people that her husband actually read a book once. She asks him to just try one sentence and so he does and from then on can’t put the book down until it’s done. It’s about a showbiz duo named Rex and Elmer that’s been together for nine years and Toody immediately associates them with himself and Muldoon. Rex is approached by an agent who could make him a star but Rex doesn’t want to leave Elmer. So Elmer makes a sacrifice and deliberately accuses Rex of being too frightened to succeed thus making Rex angry enough to leave the duo to be a star. Toody thinks he should do the same thing with Muldoon but it has the opposite effect. Muldoon admits he is afraid that he’s not really a good enough cop to become a sergeant. His father was a captain and his grandfather was a police commissioner and Muldoon now feels he will never be as good as them and so he should give up on being a police officer. That night Muldoon’s sister Cathy brings her Psychology professor home to dinner. Muldoon gets Professor Benedict to analyze him. When he finds out Muldoon never even had a cowboy costume to play in as a child he declares that he is only play acting as a policeman. He does a word association test and all of Muldoon’s answers are insect related and so Benedict concludes that Muldoon should be an exterminator. Muldoon submits his resignation but Captain Block is reluctant to accept it. Toody takes Block aside and explains that Muldoon is in a fragile state and needs to be built up and so they lie about a number of heroic deeds and convince Muldoon that he performed them. Later Muldoon is himself again and he starts to tell Toody he’s worthless as a cop until Toody decides to take the sergeant’s test. Then we see that Muldoon is also reading “The Sacrifice”. 

            Professor Benedict was played by Philip Bruns, who earned a Masters degree from the Yale School of Drama and then studied at the Old Vic Theatre School in London. In 1964 he won the Obie award for his off Broadway performance in Mr. Simian. He was in the cast of The Jackie Gleason Show for three seasons. He played Mary Hartman’s father on Mary Hartman Mary Hartman. He was the first actor to play Jerry Seinfeld’s father but only did so in one episode because they wanted a more irritable parent for Jerry. He co-starred in Return of the Living Dead II. He was a lifelong friend of Peter O’Toole.