Patricia Bright

            On Monday morning I continued to try to memorize the seventh verse of “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian and the first monologues in Zizi Jeanmaire’s performance of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 88.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the last if two sessions and it mostly stayed in tune. Tomorrow I begin a two session stretch of playing my Kramer electric. 

            I weighed 89.85 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. It was wet and messy but not slippery. 

            I got a call from AMI Electronics and found out that my Sony double cassette player is in very bad shape. If I want both players fixed it will cost $250 and for only one player it will be $150. I said I think I only need one for my purposes since I just plan on digitizing cassette tapes. He said he’ll check which is the best one to fix and then it will take a few days. 

            I weighed 89.15 kilos at 18:10. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:11. 

            I finished reviewing the final cassette from my first 20,000 Poets Under the League poetry slam. I forgot that it has Penny Hoar on it. I digitized the cassette. 

            I published my “Please Don’t Quit Me Now (acoustic)” Movie Maker project. 

            I opened my 2024-09-23 Song Practice” Movie Maker project and deleted everything before “Ne me quitte pas”. Then I saved the project as “Ne me quitter pas (electric), isolated the song, added a fade to black effect and then published the movie. 

            I opened my “2024-10-06 Song Practice” Movie Maker project and deleted everything before the final take of “Please Don’t Quit Me Now”. I saved it as “Please Don’t Quit Me Now (electric)” and isolated the song. Tomorrow I’ll publish it and then start reviewing all my recordings of “Le moribund” and “When They Put Me in that Hole”. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast beef while watching season 2, episode 10 of Car 54 Where Are You? 

            Captain Block has a 15 year old parrot named BeeBee that has never learned to talk. Block and his wife Claire are going to Maine for his two week vacation and Block is packing BeeBee’s toys to take him with them as always. But Claire reminds him that every year someone asks him if his parrot can talk and he tells them to mind their own business, resulting in a fight that ruins the holiday. Claire gives Block an ultimatum that if BeeBee goes, she doesn’t. He agrees to leave BeeBee behind but can’t think of with whom. Claire reads him an article that advises parrot owners to always leave their pets with very talkative people. That would mean Toody but Toody is dumb so Block asks Muldoon to watch over Toody. Toody becomes obsessed with teaching BeeBee to talk. He buys a record that repeats, “Bye bye mommy, bye bye daddy” over and over and keeps it playing when Muldoon, his cousin Violet, Leo Schnauser and his wife Sylvia come over to play bridge. But the words “bye bye, mommy and daddy” are repeated so much that they infect the language of the game until all the guests leave. In frustration, Toody says, “I hate Captain Block!” and suddenly BeeBee starts repeating it. Toody and Muldoon see this as a horrible outcome and Toody is afraid of being fired. Muldoon is worried because he was supposed to watch out for Toody doing something stupid. Muldoon remembers that when they went to the pet shop to buy bird seed there was a customer with an identical parrot that also couldn’t talk. They get his address and he is happy to exchange the mute bird for a talking one until his bird learns, “I hate Captain Block” from BeeBee. Then he wants to keep his own bird. They take BeeBee to the pet shop to see if the owner can train it to stop talking but he can’t. Then BeeBee says, “I hate Captain Block” and all the birds in the shop start repeating it. He says customers want their birds to be a blank slate but now they are all ruined. He has to practically give the birds away and one of them makes its way to Maine where Block hears it say, “I hate Captain Block”. Block cuts his vacation short and comes for BeeBee but instead of “I hate Captain Block” the bird says, “Bye bye mommy, bye bye daddy”. Instead of being thrilled Block is mad because 15 years of affection didn’t get BeeBee to talk but one week with a nitwit did. Block says, “I hate Gunther Toody” and BeeBee repeats it. On his way home Block stops at the pet shop and BeeBee ruins all of the owner’s new birds again. 

            Claire Block is played by Patricia Bright, who made her Broadway debut in the 1943 musical You’ll See Stars. She co-starred in the short-lived sitcom “It’s Always Jan”. She was a voice actor who acted as the narrator and all the voices on the Wanda the Witch and Nanny the Nanny Goat segments of Sesame Street. She appeared on To Tell the Truth imitating Bette Davis when Davis was the mystery guest. She played Pat Nixon on the album Richard Nixon Superstar. On the single Mad Magazine Presents Gall in the Family Fare she imitated Jean Stapleton and Sally Struthers. She was also well known for her impressions of Elizabeth Taylor and Katherine Hepburn. 

            Around 23:00 my upstairs neighbour Jacob (whose always complaining to the landlord about me making noise) was blasting his stereo and banging so hard on either the east wall or the floor in that area that it knocked plaster down in my place. He was also shout-singing out his window and I thought I saw him outside later on staggering in the middle of the street.