July 4, 1993: My daughter screamed and didn't want to be with me until she saw she could play with the hose

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday I got up at around 10:00 I had breakfast and got some cleaning done before Nancy's mother knocked on my door to give me my daughter. She screamed, held onto her grandmother and didn't want to be with me until I took her outside and she saw the hose. We went to the front of the playground and then to the back while I kept an eye out for my lost glasses. We went down the slide several times with her climbing the ladder and then getting on my lap to slide down with me. Then she played in the sand for quite a while. We went down to Queen Street to call her mother but she said to call back later. She went to sleep at 14:40 and at 17:30 I carried her while she was still sleeping to meet her mother downtown and she woke up at Spadina. After giving her back to her mother I went to visit Dianna, Jodie, and Ray for a couple of hours. Then I went to Mudds cabaret to see if they'd found my glasses but also to look for Yehuda.

Ernest Truex

            On Sunday morning I blog published "Bamboo Kiss", my translation of "Shanghai" by Serge Gainsbourg and listened once to his song "Charlotte Forever", which is another duet with his daughter, Charlotte.

            I did my third song practice in a row playing the Kramer electric guitar and video and audio recorded the session. I got through Megaphor on the first try but it didn't feel exactly right and so I did it again and it felt worse. I got through Sixteen Tons of Dogma in a couple of takes. I breezed through several songs and had not problem pronouncing the line "Il passe un nuit tranquille" that I had such difficulty with two days ago. It looked like I was going to break this year's record for the number of songs that would make it onto the memory card, but then when I sang "La jambe de bois" my mouth fumbled several times in a row on the line, "passe du coté des Cossacks". It's so weird because I've done it right hundreds of times and gotten it correct many times in recording, but this time I couldn't get past it, except for once but then fumbled another line. In the end the battery timed out before I could get through the song. I'll probably do it correctly with no problem next time and many times after. Anyway I'm pretty sure I've already got good takes of this song even if I don't get another before July 15. 

            I weighed 84.8 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I went out and paid for my July phone service. There were three people ahead of me and of course the person in front was buying a phone, which takes a long time. There seems to be a ritual of the customer opening the box before taking it home. It's supposed to be an exciting experience.

            From there I went to No Frills where I bought five bags of grapes, a pack of raspberries, a watermelon, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a strawberry-rhubarb pie, cinnamon-raisin bread, a bag of naan, two large containers of skyr, and a bag of kettle chips. 

            For lunch I had Triscuits with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. It was raining a bit when I got up from my siesta but not hard enough to get wet on a short bike ride, so I rode as far as Bloor and Dovercourt and back. 

            I weighed 84.8 kilos at 16:30. 

            I chiseled some more of my amethyst rock and broke it into two pieces each about the size of a tennis ball. I'll keep knocking them down until they arrive at satisfying shapes, though I don't know what those will be. One of the chunks I broke off of the big rock I started with looks like a piece of cake with purple crystal frosting. I chiseled my second finger once. The skin didn't break but it's a bit red just down from my guitar callous and it smarts a bit sort of like a mild burn.

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:49. 

            I reviewed the video of my song practice this morning. Both takes of Megaphor sounded okay and so did Sixteen Tons of Dogma and the other songs in part A. But I spent the whole of part B fumbling the words to "La jambe de bois". 

            In Movie Maker I published my performance of "Laisse tomber les filles" and uploaded it to YouTube. Tomorrow I'll upload my translation, "Leave the Naïve Alone". 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar but while it was in the oven I realized that I'd forgotten to buy beer. I would have bought it on Saturday but I was thrown off by Canada Day. I had intended to go and get some after the supermarket today but it totally slipped my mind. I owe myself a beer on Monday. Instead I had the pizza with limeade and a splash of rum while watching season 2, episodes 16 and 17 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story Billie Joe wins a competition at business school to get a job working as a secretary for romance author Oliver Fenton. He is renting a house in Hooterville to research his next novel. But Selma Plout has gotten his books banned from the Hooterville Library because it's racy. Selma lends her copy to Kate. The novel has people being taken into arms and kissed ardently. Because of the handsome picture of Fenton and because he wants Billie to work privately out of his home, Kate doesn't want to let her go. Finally she gives in and Billie finds out that Fenton is an elderly man with a hair piece. Billie gives highly exaggerated and romanticized reports of what goes on while she's working for Fenton. For instance, he asks her to work late and have dinner at his place and says that he always serves his women caviar and champagne. But he means the women in his novels. He also says he wishes he could take her to Paris but he means because she's such a good typist. When Kate hears about Paris, caviar and champagne she goes to Fenton's home to confront him. She realizes she overreacted and Fenton shares the ham sandwich with Kate that he was going to share with Billie. He learns about Kate's life and then writes a romance novel about a woman who runs a rural hotel. Kate throws it in the stove. 

            Fenton was played by Ernest Truex, who was the child of a physician and received early theatrical training from one of his father's patients in lieu of money for medical bills. He was an acting prodigy and his mother took him on tour as The Child Entertainer who recited Shakespeare. He first appeared on Broadway as a teenager in 1908. His first film was at the age of 14 in "Caprice" with Mary Pickford and then he co-starred with her again in "The Good Little Devil. He starred in "Artie the Millionaire Kid", "Come On In", "Goodbye Bill", and his last silent film, "Six Cylinder Love". In sound films he starred in "Get That Venus", "Whistling in the Dark", "Everybody Dance", "Mama Runs Wild", "Kick the Can", and in 1956 he starred in "The Benny Goodman Story". On television he was a regular on "Mister Peepers", "The Ann Sothern Show", "Jamie", and "December Bride". 

            In the second story the girls are frustrated by the fact that they are the only people in the valley without a telephone. Kate explains that it would cost them $800 to install a telephone because the main line runs along the county road which is three kilometers away. They would have to pay to have the wire run that distance from the road. So they have to depend on the Cannonball relaying messages back and forth from Sam Drucker's telephone in Hooterville. For instance when Billie Joe wants to send a message to Henry she sends a note with Charlie and Floyd and then Sam calls Henry and then writes down his response. It gets very complicated and finally Sam gives up. Joe buys a field telephone from the Army Navy Store in Pixley and plans to use it to start his own telephone company. He runs wire to the Cannonball track which connects to Ben Miller's barbed wire fence then back to the tracks, then to Fred Ziffle's barbed wire fence, then the tracks to Newt Kiley's barbed wire then back to the track to Hooterville Station. The Shady Rest, Ben, Fred, Newt and the station all have two field telephones each but calls have to be done by relay. The Shady Rest can only call Ben, Ben can only call the Shady Rest and Fred Ziffle. Fred Ziffle can only call Ben or Newt. Newt can only call Fred or Hooterville. Then receivers from each station have to be placed together for the Shady Rest to communicate directly to Hooterville. The girls are on the phone all the time and nobody in between is getting anything done. Finally the people in between rip out their lines. Kate decides to use the telegraph system that was in place when she was a girl.

July 3, 1993: I lost my glasses but when I called Nancy to see if I'd left them there she laughed

Thirty years ago today 

            On Saturday I got up at around 9:30 and after breakfast I worked on revising my second collage. I decided to have an impromptu lawn sale but only made about $3.50 up until sunset. I was about to do some darkroom work when I discovered that my glasses were gone. I couldn't focus the enlarger without my glasses and so I was pretty upset. I figured I must have lost them between Monday and Thursday. I turned my place upside down but didn't find them. I went out and searched the playground in case I'd lost them while I was there with my daughter. I called her mother to ask if they were at her place and she laughed.

Doodles Weaver

            On Saturday morning I worked out the chords to the sixth verse of "Que tu es impatiente la mort" (How Very Impatient is Death) by Boris Vian. There's only one verse left, so I might have that done tomorrow. 

            I played the Kramer electric guitar during song practice again and video and audio recorded the session. There are fourteen more sessions in this year's project as I'll do the last one on July 15. I think that over the last month I've recorded at least a few songs with the Martin acoustic that I can upload to YouTube and be satisfied with them enough to move on to new songs. I don't know if I've done anything good with the Kramer because I'm still struggling to know organically where the chords are on the different neck. Some songs like Megaphor sound potentially better on the electric but I don't know if I can sing and play them as well on the Kramer yet. We'll see. I made it through Megaphor and Sixteen Tons of Dogma in a couple of takes each. The camera battery ran out while I was attempting a second take of "Dancing to Baby Pop". 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            I would normally have gone to No Frills today but it was closed and that felt weird. 

            Around midday I finished scrubbing the residual glue off the area that was exposed when I ripped up the first tile next to the kitchen counter. I finally got it all off using a steel brush. Then I tackled the space that came out from under the next tile over. It will take at least another session to get the patches of glue that are remaining. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I didn't notice as much smoke in the air.

            I spent about half an hour chiseling what remains of my amethyst rock. What's left is about the size of a cereal bowl. 

            I weighed 84.2 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:51. 

            I reviewed the video of song practice that was recorded this morning. Everything I did felt like it was almost okay but a little off.

            I copied the Movie Maker project of my June 19, 2022 song practice and saved it as "Laisse tomber les filles". I shaved a bit of the echo off. I removed all the songs ahead of it and two false starts but there's still at least one dud before I get to the good take. I'll probably have it finished and maybe even have it uploaded to YouTube tomorrow. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episodes 14 and 15 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story it's a stormy night and Joe comments to their guest Mr. Richardson that it's real Chester Farnsworth weather. He proceeds to tell the story of a former hotel guest and travelling salesman named Chester Farnsworth who collected towels from every hotel he stayed at. But after stealing a towel from the Shady Rest he disappeared. His ghost was seen at a YMCA in a nearby town trying to return a towel that he stole from his old room. His curse is that he has to return all of the towels he stole before his spirit can rest. The next day Mr. Richardson is checking out but feels an uncontrollable urge to steal a Shady Rest towel. The dog catches him. That night Kate hears gargling in the bathroom at midnight but when she knocks on the door the light goes off inside. She opens the door but there is no one in the room. Kate asks the advice of Doctor Stuart in Hooterville and he contacts a psychiatrist named Melman who has an interest in the supernatural. Melman advises Kate to remove the towel from room four so Farnsworth can replace it. The next morning there is a fifty year old towel on the rack. But Melman had a camera set up in the room and the picture shows Kate replacing the towel. She says she can't afford for the hotel to have a reputation of being haunted. She gives the towel to Melman and he leaves. But the next day another old towel is in its place. 

            Chester Farnsworth appears briefly in a flashback while Joe is telling Richardson his story. He was played by Doodles Weaver, who performed in clubs worldwide with manic routines about sports events. He narrated the Disney cartoon "Hockey Homicide". He joined Spike Jones's troupe in 1946 and developed a character called Dr, Feitlebaum. His routine involved mixing up words to songs as if he were myopic or dyslexic. He toured with Jones, appeared on his radio show, on records and on television. In his song "The William Tell Overture" his play by play horse race announcement is a famous piece with the repetition of the name "Beetlebaum". He did many "Day with Doodles" silent film shorts for television in the 1940s. He was an early contributor to Mad magazine. He played eccentric characters in several guest spots on TV series like Batman and The Monkees. He had a listed phone number because he loved to chat with his fans. He was Sigourney Weaver's uncle. He committed suicide with a gun at the age of 71. 

          

            In the second story Joe is receiving perfumed letters. Kate tricks him in his sleep into revealing they are from Mary Alice Perkins who stood him up at the altar to marry his best man. But now that man is dead and she's gotten back in touch. They decide by mail to renew their engagement and Mary Alice arrives. She rubs Kate the wrong way because she acts like she knows better about everything. A wedding is planned and the day before that her lawyer Boo Boo arrives to give her away. But she stands Joe up again and runs off with Boo Boo. Joe decides to enjoy the reception anyway.

July 2, 1993: My dehumidifier didn't do much good even though its tray filled every day with the water it sucked from the air

Thirty years ago today 

            On Friday I got up after 11:00, had some breakfast, did some stuff and then headed downtown to pick up my Board of Education cheque. I went to the Ontario College of Art to check if Connie had any work for me. I cashed my cheque and deposited it into my chequing account. I walked along Queen Street almost to Parliament before the streetcar came. Once I had taken I seat I realized that I'd forgotten my pen on top of the bank machine and so I had nothing to write with on the way home. My place was really cold and almost unbearably damp. The dehumidifier didn't do much good at all even though its tray filled up every day with the water it sucked from the air.

Parley Baer

            On Friday morning I worked out the chords for the fifth verse of "Que tu es impatiente la mort" (How Very Impatient is Death) by Boris Vian. There are two verses left. 

            I ran through singing and playing "Bamboo Kiss", which is my translation of "Shanghai" by Serge Gainsbourg. I uploaded it to Christian's Translations and started preparing it for publication on the blog. I might have it posted on Saturday. 

            I began the first day of a four day stretch of playing the electric guitar during song practice and video and audio recorded it. I started ten minutes later than usual because I had to tune the Kramer. Before the string broke it stayed in tune for an amazing amount of time but it seems to have to settle in before getting back to that stability. I had to stop and tune the E string again halfway through. I got through Megaphor in a couple of takes. It's a lot harder to hear what I'm playing with the electric because I don't want to turn it up too loud since I would also need to turn the microphone up and I don't want to disturb anyone. I do increase the volume gradually as the session progresses. My first take of Sixteen Tons of Dogma went smoothly until the seventh verse and then several retakes were pretty horrible until I finished it at the beginning of part B of the camera battery's life. I got the chords right that I often get wrong at the end but then got some other chords wrong. I only completed three songs. I kept on fumbling a word of "L'accordion" in a way that I never have before. It's supposed to be "Il passe un nuit tranquile" but I kept saying "Il passe un nuit tratile". It's weird how that happens because I know that the next time I do it I'll get it right without even trying. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I've been in the morning in forty one days. 

            Around midday I did my laundry and I was done just in time for lunch. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 84.1 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:00. 

            I reviewed the video I recorded of song practice this morning. I don't sing as well while playing the electric guitar I guess because I don't hear it as clearly. The final take of Sixteen Tons of Dogma would have been fine if not for falling short of the D sharp minor chord. I can feel where it is on the acoustic but on the Kramer it has yet to become organic. 

            I compared the video of my June 11, 2022 performance of "Leave the Naive Alone" with the one from June 28 of the same year. I think June 28 is better but there's more traffic noise. I compared them to July 2 and it's also good but no better than the other two. I compared June 11 with June 28 in the synchronized versions in Movie Maker and decided that I prefer June 11. I saved a copy of the project as a new project called "Leave the Naive Alone" and isolated it, then I made it into a movie. On Saturday I'll do the same to my June 19, 2022 song practice recording and isolate "Laisse tomber les filles" to make into a movie. I always upload the French version to YouTube first since it's the original.

            In Movie Maker I also finished removing all of the "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" clips from my "Dancing Electrical Cords" project for making a gif. I made that into a movie but when I played it back it kept on going after the video had stopped. It took a while for me to figure out that there was a little piece of audio sticking way out on the timeline and so the video kept going to meet it. After I deleted that it closed at the end of the video timeline. But then I noticed that even though the finished movie had the file name of "Dancing Electrical Cords", the title displayed on the screen was "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy". I figured that was because the file that the dancing cords was copied from was "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" and it was still called that on the timeline. I started making supper and when I came back the power must have been off and just come back on. After I started the computer the Wi-Fi was off and I couldn't see a list of networks and so I restarted and then I was back online. In Movie Maker I deleted the video that had the title "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" on the timeline and imported the movie with the title "Dancing Electrical Cords". Then I made that into a movie but it still showed the wrong title on the screen. Finally I went into properties in VLC and changed the title. 

            I went onto my YouTube channel to see what I already have of my song "Sleep in the Snow" and found two files. There's a concert video from the Riot Gallery in 1998 and there's a file with the studio audio but no moving video. I'll check tomorrow if I have any more videos on discs of that song. I assume we must have played it in our 1998 concert at The 360. I don't think it's on the video of our Parkdale Festival performance. I used the Riot Gallery show for my "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" video mostly because that was the only concert version of the song that wasn't online. Since there's already a Riot Gallery video online I'm reluctant to draw from that same footage for a music video using the studio audio. I'll look through my files before deciding what to use. 

            I had a potato with the last of the gravy and a few pork ribs while watching season 2, episodes 12 and 13 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story soldiers are playing war games in the area of The Shady Rest. Three of the members of the Blue Army come up to Billie Joe, Bobbie Joe, and Betty Joe while they are sunbathing. The soldiers are pointing their guns at them and asking for their phone numbers until Kate comes out with a shotgun. After they understand they will be following her rules she invites them in. They party with the girls until General Patterson arrives. The three soldiers Hank, Tod and Stu put on scarves and dresses but Patterson sees their army boots. He is about to reprimand them when they point their rifles at him and say he's captured since he's a Green Army general. Kate makes the general wash dishes. As more and more soldiers from both armies hear about the girls they descend on the Shady Rest and there is a big party with dancing and the best food they've ever had. It becomes ridiculous as some parachute in and then absurd when a sailor shows up even though they are probably at least a thousand kilometers from any ocean. 

            In the second story Joe, Sam, Charlie, Floyd, Ben Miller and Newt Kiley are trying to form a volunteer fire department but they have no money for equipment. So they have formed a horrible band to try to raise funds but even most of the members can't stand how they sound. Finally Kate takes it upon herself to fund raise and makes $62. She wants to ask for outside help from Henry Phillips who runs a fire equipment company in another town. Joe resents her wanting to use outside help and promises he can get all the equipment they need with the $62. He gets a tarpaulin to use for a safety net, a broken axe, a half a ladder, and several cases of fireworks to use as alarms. Kate makes Joe store the fireworks at Hooterville station and she writes to Phillips after all. He comes and tells Kate that the solution is the Cannonball to be equipped with a hose and to serve as a fire vehicle. But Joe organizes a false alarm to test the volunteers. He has newt set off a rocket but it falls over before it can blast into the sky and shoots sideways into Hooterville station to set off all the other rockets. The station burns down and the Cannonball is derailed. 

            Henry Phillips was played by Parley Baer who worked in radio from the 1930s, starting as an announcer. He was a captain in the US Army who served in the Pacific during WWII earning seven battle stars and a presidential citation. He started out as a circus ringmaster and owner and that’s where he met his wife Ernestine Clark who was a bareback rider. They were together for 54 years. Her father was the first trapeze artist to do a triple somersault. Baer was the voice of Ernie Keebler, of the Keebler cookie elves. He played Chester on the Gunsmoke radio series. He said radio was a perfect actor’s medium because if you play to five million listeners you are giving five million performances.

July 1, 1993: A woman was complaining that she got arrested for throwing a brick through the window of the leader of the Heritage Front

Thirty years ago today 

            On Thursday my daughter and I got up at around 10:00. She had a bowl of Shreddies and I made her some toast but she didn't want any cheese. We walked to the playground with her wagon and then we went to the payphone and called her mother. No, that's not what happened. On our way out with the wagon, Tom Smarda showed up. No, that didn't happen either. Anyway, Tom showed up sometime but first we went out and called Nancy and then returned home. The next door neighbour's kids were playing with radio cars and my daughter was enthralled. Then my daughter was chasing me with the hose and soaked my bag and after that Tom showed up. At one point there was a SWAT team on the street chasing somebody. Tom walked with us down to Queen Street and I called Nancy again but she still didn't know what she was doing. We went to Kew gardens and watched a country band and then Tom split. I called Nancy again and she said she'd be picking up our daughter at around 20:00. She went to sleep at 18:30 or so and I shaved, showered and repaired some pants. After Nancy came I headed downtown to Mudds cabaret for the open stage. There was a woman there complaining about how she'd been arrested for throwing a brick through the window of the home of the leader of the Heritage Front. The reading went well, especially the Alphabet Orgy: 

Isn't endless chaos a contradiction in terms 

and isn't dead dirt just a constipation of worms? 

Why do you ask me this when you know it just makes me tense? 

Because you possess endless amounts of beauty 

which shine across the horizons of heaven into the open galaxy 

When you ask "What are the qualities of life?" 

are you seeking helplessly harvesting heaven's hazards 

and ending up eating the sky's excrement? 

I pretend to slip into a drunken spin 

falling from my petty broken terrace

then I sit in my heaven looking back through needle eyes 

trying to fit the thread through the hole of a drunken ass

trying to seduce himself for torture and gratification 

to suck the monster pussy that would swallow him whole 

clothes and all in his erotic daydream 

Yagga yagga wooga go nami ne nek nek nyyeehieeeh! 

Take me home in cab on a horse or on your back 

but it's not a smile I miss my smile 

buried at birth somewhere beneath my mother's heart 

At thirty I found it again but tarnished and cautious it is 

Breath life live so 'cause there's a lot of beauty