I met Nancy and her sister Susan downtown near Eaton’s Centre on Saturday to pick up my daughter. I took the baby with me to have some photocopies done, we hung around the street as she explored for a few minutes and then we caught the streetcar home. She fell asleep on the way and after she woke up, we explored the sidewalk, walked around the Beaches, and looked at some apartments. We visited the variety store lady around the corner from my place. Around 21:30 I took her to meet her mother at Warden Station. She climbed the stairs by herself and when she saw her mother, she practically ran to her. Nancy said she would be going rock climbing on Sunday so I could see my daughter again.
I missed the deadline for buying a lottery ticket for that night’s draw, but I called the line and found out my numbers didn’t win anyway.
On Saturday morning I finished working out the chords to “Toi mourir” (Then You Die) by Serge Gainsbourg. Tomorrow I’ll probably upload it to Christian’s Translations.
I video-recorded most of my song practice and audio-recorded the whole session. It went fairly well for the first time in a long time. I got through both my songs “Megaphor” and “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” on the first try without any major mistakes. I lost a bit of time replaying “The Accordion” a few times because I’ve been singing, “tune in and turn on” too fast, so trying to be conscious of that caused me to fumble. I eventually got through it.
I weighed 84.9 kilos before breakfast.
Around midday I went down to No Frills where I bought five bags of grapes, a bunch of bananas, kettle chips, baking soda, and hot salsa.
When I got home I washed the bottom part of my blender and put it back on the top shelf that I’d cleaned yesterday.
I weighed 85 kilos before lunch. I had five-year-old cheddar on spelt bread with a glass of lemon iced tea.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. It was a very warm day but there was a nice breeze to take the edge off the heat.
I weighed 84.3 kilos at 17:00.
I searched for videos that might fit with my line, “Keep in mind that every patient has a different convulsive threshold” from my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy”. I decided I would use an animation of neurons firing but there are quite a few different ones. I settled on one called “Neuron Forest.” I downloaded it with 4K Downloader but it took quite a while and it seemed to stall. I quit and restarted 4K and then it picked up where it left off and finished the download.
I made pizza on a roti with ricotta sauce, French fries, and extra-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episodes eleven and twelve of The Archie Show.
In the first story of episode eleven, Veronica’s father donates an old house for the gang to use as their clubhouse. The old Smythe place needs a lot of fixing up but Reggie doesn’t want to do any of the work. Since the house has a reputation for being haunted, Reggie uses that to his advantage. He wants to scare the others away so they’ll forget about the clubhouse project. He uses the secret passages to sneak around while he makes the eyes of a painting move and makes it talk, he attacks in a suit of armour, then he makes a sheet look like a ghost with puppet strings. Archie stumbles into a secret passage and catches Reggie in the act. Then Archie puts on a sheet and makes Reggie think he’s seeing a ghost. He scares Reggie into doing all the renovation work on the house.
The Dance of the Week is The Weatherby: Get your middle out in front, point your toes to the side, and be careful not to smile as you glide and slide.
The song of the week is “I’m In Love” by Jeff Barry.
In story two the gang is dancing at Pop’s when Reggie trips over Hotdog. Reggie calls Hotdog a clumsy dog and Jughead’s pet slinks away. Jughead says Hotdog’s feelings were hurt from being called a dog since he thinks he’s human. Hotdog digs up all his bones and runs away. The gang goes looking for him and follows a trail of bones to the local army base. Hotdog has enlisted and his sergeant thinks he’s a person named “Woof Woof.” The Riverdale base is engaged in war games with Fort Rocks and Hotdog wins the war by singlehanded burying all the blue army’s tanks. They find out he’s a dog but give him an honourable discharge after making him private first class.
In the first story of episode twelve, the gang goes to the beach and the guys enter the surf competition. Archie hangs ten by gripping the board with all ten of his toes. Reggie says, “Not bad for a Hodad!” One definition says a Hodad was a surf poser, who would come to the beach with a surfboard but not use it. But the one I always heard was that Hodads were not posers and had no interest in surfing. They were greasers who hung out at the beach and often clashed with the surfers.
Jughead and Hotdog go looking for a big wave but below them they accidentally destroy the house that a sawfish is building. The sawfish attacks and starts sawing Jughead’s board, then he saws Reggie’s board in half and he’s in trouble but Archie saves him by surfing under Reggie’s legs and putting him on his shoulders. Jughead and Hotdog win first prize but Jughead admits they couldn’t have done it without the sawfish, and the sawfish agrees. It saws a hole in the pier under the trophy and takes it.
The Dance of the Week is “The Surfer”: Put one foot in front of the other, put your arms straight out to the side, move your hips and shake your shoulders like you’re going for a surfboard ride.
The song of the week is “Love Light” by Jeff Barry.
In a short segment, Mr. Weatherby sees Jughead on his hands and knees on the roof and asks him what he is doing. Jughead says he lost a quarter in the basement. Weatherby asks why he’s looking for it on the roof. Jughead says, “There’s more light up here.”
In the second story the gang learns that Dilton has invented a computer named Clyde out of his mother’s washing machine. One can ask it questions or put written questions inside. Jughead asks it what year the war of 1812 was fought. Jughead sneaks into Dilton’s lab to feed his homework to Clyde and it does it all for him. Dilton brings the computer to school to demonstrate and Jughead wants to ask it how Reggie got all his homework done. Dilton turns Clyde on but forgets to anchor it and so it goes rolling through the school. Reggie goes after it to stop it from ratting him out. He confesses to Miss Grundy about cheating and she gives him a lot of homework as punishment. He tries to use Clyde again but it’s been converted back to a washing machine and his homework gets soaked.
Betty and Veronica’s singing parts in the Archies were done by Toni Wine, who was best known as a songwriter. Her first success was “My Boyfriend’s Coming Home For Christmas”, then she co-wrote “Tonight You’re Gonna Fall In Love With Me” for the Shirelles. She co-wrote “A Groovy Kind of Love” with Carole Bayer Sager. She co-wrote “Candida” and “Knock Three Times” for Tony Orlando. She is currently playing keyboard and singing backup on Tony Orlando’s 2022 tour.
For the third night in a row, I searched for bedbugs without finding any.
On Friday I made it to Sheridan College in Oakville at the same time as the day before. For the animation drawing class, I did sequential walking poses. There was no one to drive me back to Toronto so I had to take the train. When I got downtown, I went and paid $40 on my phone bill. When I got home, I called Mike Copping and we arranged to meet at Sheppard and Yonge at 18:30. We were both on time and then we went to a video store where we rented “Barton Fink” and “Black Bimbos in Heat.” I bought a six-pack of Sicilian beer and then we went to the Flame Pit. Mike was taking care of his sister’s place while she and her husband were backpacking in Italy, and we watched the videos there. “Black Bimbos” was okay, but it had no continuity. Barton Fink was exaggeratedly suspenseful to subdued comic effect.
On Friday morning I worked out the chords to the intro and part of the chorus of “Toi mourir” (Then You Die) by Serge Gainsbourg.
I video-recorded less than half my song practice and audio-recorded the whole session. I re-played “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” several times and made mistakes every time. The thing is that on the first run through it felt really good and I had a sense that I was in the groove before it fell apart and then I couldn’t get it back. I also screwed up on other songs that I usually play better. I think I got through some songs without error but it was a generally fumbly day.
I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast.
Around midday I removed all the stuff from the two shelves on the northern wall to the right of the kitchen cabinets. I took down the shelves and then washed the wall from top to bottom. I cleaned the shelves and put them back in place, but I need to wash all the items that go on the shelves before putting them back. I’ll start and hopefully finish doing that on Sunday. Then I have to tackle the western wall to the left of the fridge, and risk my life cleaning the outside of the window.
I weighed 84.7 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.
I weighed 84.7 kilos at 17:15.
I uploaded the videos that I shot of this morning’s song practice. I managed to get through my song “Megaphor” without too many mistakes and some of the French songs might have come out okay, but this was generally a pretty flawed session.
I looked for videos that might fit with the line, “Keep in mind that every patient has a different convulsive threshold” from my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy.” So far the only thing considerable is an animation of neurons firing.
I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching episodes nine and ten of The Archie Show.
In story one of episode nine, it’s “Kids’ Day” in Riverdale and so students from Riverdale High are given the jobs of city officials for one day. Archie is the mayor, Betty is his secretary, Veronica is the treasurer, Jughead is chief of police, Hotdog is the dog catcher and Reggie is his assistant.
Veronica puts pretty lampshades on all the streetlights, has the fire hydrants painted with stripes, the mailboxes with polka-dots, and the lines on the streets painted pink.
Jughead tickets firetrucks for parking too close to fire hydrants.
Hotdog rounds up all the stray dogs by running with a chain of sausages in his mouth. But he gets mistaken for a stray dog and arrested by a cop. But then Hotdog finds homes for all the stray dogs by getting cops to adopt them.
The Dance of the Week is “The Drag”: Take a step forward, a step back, a step forward and drag. Step to the right, to the left, to the right and drag.
The song of the week is “Hide and Seek” by Mark Barkan and Ritchie Adams. It has an acid rock feel to it. It was distributed as a cardboard Sugar Crisp cereal box record that actually played.
In the second story, Reggie has been picking on Jughead because he’s not very athletic. Archie decides to give Jughead some physical training to help build up his confidence. After a few sessions Jughead gets a little too confident and challenges the athletic Reggie to a strength competition. But then when Jughead visits science student Dilton in the school lab, he gets thirsty and drinks one of Dilton’s experiments. The result is that he gains super strength. He makes Reggie look like a weakling but then decides to set his sights higher. He challenges the state heavyweight wrestling champion to a bout. The gang is watching the fight on TV but Dilton tells them that the formula Jughead drank is only temporary. Jughead at first easily throws the gigantic wrestler but then his strength wears off and he is beaten.
In story one of episode ten, Jughead builds a rocket and the gang goes to see it. Jughead says it’s going to fly to the Moon and invites everyone inside. Meanwhile a real rocket crash-lands in Riverdale and the military go looking for it. When they see Jughead’s rocket in his back yard they mistake it for theirs and hook a crane to it. Inside the ship, Jughead trips and hits some levers and suddenly his ship begins to move. Reggie looks out the window and sees the Earth receding but he doesn’t look long enough to see that it’s a picture of the Earth on a billboard as the military truck drives away from it. They take Jughead’s rocket to their base and put it on the artificial Moonscape they’ve built for astronaut training.
When Jughead and his friends look out the window they think they are on the Moon. They go outside and think they are experiencing lower gravity but the surface is made of sponge rubber to make one bounce as one walks. Everyone but Reggie falls down a crater and when Archie sees the artificial structures that support the simulation, he realizes they are not on the Moon. But alone on the surface, Reggie still thinks they are. NASA has placed animated puppets made to look like space monsters in craters to pop up every now and then and so Reggie is scared out of his wits and faints. The gang meets the military and explains the situation. They take Jughead’s rocket back to his back yard. When Reggie wakes up he thinks Jughead has gotten him safely home from the Moon and he promises him a million hamburgers.
The Dance of the Week is the Angel: One has to keep one’s hands in prayer position while moving one’s feet very quickly.
The song of the week is “You Little Angel You” by Jeff Barry.
In the second story the boys are hired as caddies at Veronica’s father’s gold club. Mr. Lodge decides to play a few holes and picks Archie to be his caddy. But Reggie figures if he becomes Lodge’s caddy he’ll get to spend more time with Veronica. He tries to get Archie in trouble by substituting all of Lodge’s clubs and balls for trick versions. One club shrinks just before Lodge swings it, another club turns into an umbrella, then a ball in flight ejects a parachute and lands back on the tee, and another ball flies out of the hole and explodes. Mr. Lodge is angry at Archie until he learns that he got a score of 200 when he usually shoots a 250. Suddenly he loves Archie.
Archie first appeared in Pep Comics #22 in December, 1941.
The character was inspired by the popular Andy Hardy movies starring Mickey Rooney.
The characters in the first comic were Archibald (Chick) Andrews, his new neighbour Betty Cooper, and his unintelligent friend Jughead Jones. Their look was conceived by the artist Bob Montana. It was so successful that the publisher MLJ Magazines changed its name to Archie Comics five years later.
For the second night in a row I didn’t find any bedbugs when I looked. So far so good.
On Thursday I got up around 6:17 and prepared to leave as soon as possible. I caught the streetcar to Yonge and the subway to Union Station. I had time to get a coffee, a juice, and the paper before boarding the 7:23 train to Oakville. I got to Sheridan College at 8:20 but the class didn’t start on time. The instructor, Susana Wald looked the same, except for a few grey hairs and she seemed to have grown spiritually. I put on a great show, and she used me for all she could to lift weights so the students could draw my muscles. She gave me and two others a ride back to Toronto and dropped me off just south of Bloor. I went to the subway where I saw Ezra playing violin and he asked if I wanted to go for a beer. We went to Futures and talked over a couple of pints. He asked me to finish his second draft and so I felt a bit inebriated when we left.
On Thursday morning I finished memorizing “Toi mourir” (Then You Die) by Serge Gainsbourg. I looked for the chords but no one had posted them, so tomorrow I’ll start working them out.
I did a shortened song practice until about 7:45 then I started getting my place prepared for pest control.
I weighed 86 kilos before breakfast, but I only took the time to eat a few grapes and sip some coffee.
I had everything ready before 9:00, but I also lint rolled my futons and was sweeping the floor when Matt came at around 9:30. He would be spraying the spores again this time and so I only had to leave for a couple of hours rather than four like I would if he’d sprayed poison. I still had to change into my shorts and brush my teeth. Steve usually gets started while I’m still here but Matt stood and waited, looking a little impatient.
I took a bike ride downtown. I had to pee while I was there for the first time in months. Perhaps it was because of the hour since I tend to ride six hours later. I drink three glasses of water during song practice and then I pee several times afterward, so it makes sense that if I ride in the morning I’m going to need to urinate. I first stopped to pee at A&W and while I was locking my bike a young woman was walking by with a little terrier. It put its paws up on the other side of my bike while I was bent over so I patted it and said hello back. Maybe it was just interested in smelling my keys. The woman smiled at me.
I stopped at Freshco on the way back where I bought five bags of grapes, a pint of Ontario strawberries, a half-pint of raspberries, a loaf of sliced Bavarian sandwich bread, a whole chicken, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a bag of kettle chips, three bags of skim milk, a container of skyr, a jug of orange juice, a pack of cheap extra old cheddar for cooking, tomato sauce with ricotta cheese, and a box of saltines.
I got home at around 11:00. The floor in the bedroom was still wet from the spores. Hopefully, this would be the end of the bedbugs.
I weighed 85.4 kilos before lunch.
I weighed 85.5 kilos at 16:20.
I was caught up on my journal at 17:15.
I uploaded the videos that I'd shot of my song practice on Wednesday. I did a pretty good version of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma.” I’d been worried that singing the last word before playing the chord would sound odd, but it sounds fine.
I skimmed through all the audio recordings I’d made of my song practices in June, and found that I wasn’t getting a clean and audible sound until June 8. I recorded with Audacity until June 19 and then with Ableton from June 20 on. Some of the early Ableton recordings came out crackly, maybe because I had the gain too high on the Scarlett interface, and so I can’t use those. My plan is to have thirty recordings to pick through to find songs that are ready for YouTube, so that means that I’ll continue to record until at least the middle of July.
In the Movie Maker project of creating a video for my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy” I inserted the clip I made of the Allan Memorial Institute just after I sing, “… raise the church …” until just before I sing, “… of shock therapy.” The clip shows the aerial approach to the notorious Montreal mental hospital where the CIA did their draconian mind control experiments on psychiatric patients, combining doses of LSD with electroshock. It continues with a horizontal approach to the old building known as “Ravenscrag” and ends with the ornate doorway. The clip was too long and so I cut out the aerial view and most of the approach to the building. My final clip just shows the building and then the doorway. I then cut out a few seconds of the concert footage so that it lines up with the studio audio when I sing, “… of shock therapy.” Next there’s instrumental space but it's longer in the concert. I have to figure out whether I need to just clip the concert video some more, or insert another outside video before I sing, “Keep in mind that every patient has a different convulsive threshold.”
I sorted through some of the papers in a big folder in my four-drawer filing cabinet. This one has mostly the writing of poets who submitted copies of their work for my poetry slams. But some of the poems are doubled and so I pulled the extras out for scrap paper. A few of the papers are just hard copies of my journal that are already digitized and so I put those in the garbage. I’ve gone through about half the folder.
I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching episodes seven and eight of The Archie Show.
In the first story of episode seven the gang work together to help Archie fix up his car so it can compete in the hot rod race. In the end all there is left to do is to put in new spark plugs and tighten the wheels but everyone is exhausted. Reggie says he’s got plenty of energy and so Archie asks him to finish up. But after the gang goes to rest, Reggie can’t be bothered and just walks away. During the race, Archie’s rod is doing well until his spark plugs start to miss. They discover that Reggie didn’t put new ones in but Archie wins the race anyway because they make Reggie push.
The Dance of the Week is “The Betty”: Wiggle to the left and wiggle to the right, wiggle all around with all your might.
The Archies song of the week is “You Make Me Wanna Dance” by Jeff Barry.
In the second story, the gang gets hired by Veronica’s father to work as a rescue service at his ski lodge. But Reggie wants to get everyone but himself fired so he can have time alone with Veronica. His first dirty trick is to send a snowman-practice-ski-rescue dummy through the lodge. Mr. Lodge is angry but says he’ll give them one more chance. Next Reggie greases Jughead’s skis so he goes out of control and skis through the lodge. Archie, Jughead, and Betty all have their skis taken away as punishment. Hotdog shows Mr. Lodge the bucket of grease and then imitates Reggie to tell him who is really to blame. So Lodge and Hotdog collaborate to punish Reggie. Reggie is showing Veronica how he can jump over a mound of snow but Hotdog is inside the mound and lifts himself until Reggie goes out of control. He lands inside a large rolling snowball and winds up in a giant ice cube. Lodge holds a dance for the kids but glues Reggie to his chair.
In the first story of episode eight, Archie and Jughead have lunch at the zoo but a gorilla steals Jughead’s sandwich. Then the ape escapes and follows Jughead to school. The gorilla keeps getting Jughead in trouble so he has to find a way to get him back to the zoo. The football tryouts are that afternoon and so Jughead puts a uniform on the ape. Meanwhile, Reggie is doing very well in his tryout but we learn that he bribed a couple of players to take falls in order to make him look good. Jughead is taking the gorilla across the field when he catches the ball and shows that he can knock down the competition and score, so the gorilla makes the team.
The Dance of the Week is the Banana Split: Swing like a monkey hanging by its tail, when we say “split” change your partners. Now split.
The Archies song of the week is “Time for Love” by Mark Barkan and Ritchie Adams. It kind of feels like an imitation of the Mersey Beat style of songs.
Story two begins with Betty and Veronica having gotten a mysterious phone call to meet a secret admirer at Pop’s Choclit Shop. When Archie shows up in his hot rod they think it must be him. They all go for a drive and Reggie suggests they take Highway 102 because the desert flowers are in bloom. They see a partially covered sign that looks like it reads “Lost Mine Ahead” and so they go there to explore. The see something scary and then an empty mine car rolls up. They jump in and then their ride becomes a fantastic thrill ride through a horror show. They encounter ghosts, monsters, and unreal effects. When they get out at the other end they discover that it’s the Ghost Mine Fright Tunnel and that it is still under construction and won’t open until next week. Reggie begins to laugh because he set up the whole thing. But then a small bounding ghost comes out of the tunnel and Reggie runs away. But it’s just Hotdog covered in a sheet.
I searched for bedbugs before bed and didn’t find any but that’s probably not because of the spores being sprayed that day, since it takes a while for the fungus to infect the bugs.
On Wednesday I picked up my daughter at around 9:30. Then I had to go to the bank to take out $550 for the first deposit on the apartment at Gerrard and Greenwood. The baby fell asleep on the streetcar home. I put her to bed and took off her little shoes (because they were hurting my feet). After she woke up, I got a call about an apartment, so we went up to see it. It was a good-sized basement with a high ceiling, but it was kind of dark and had no bathtub. We walked along Gerrard and I bought us a sparkling juice. I put her behind the wheel of a video racing game, and she kept driving off the road. Then we caught the Victoria Park bus, and I took her back to Nancy but she told me to take her out again and so I went to the park and put her on the swing.
