September 4, 1993: My daughter and I had a routine: back yard to school playground to park playground to burrito

Thirty years ago today 

            On Saturday I saw my daughter but I didn't write in my journal what we did. Our usual routine would have been playing in the back yard with the hose, going to the school playground, then to the Kew gardens playground, then getting a burrito at Taco Bell. I don't think that I had her overnight this time.

Geoff Edwards

            On Saturday morning I worked out the chords for the eighth and ninth verses of "Au bon vieux temps" (In the Good Old Days) by Boris Vian. There are just two left. 

            I worked out the chords for the intro and the first line and a half of "Le Couteau dans le play" (The Knife in the Play) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I audio and video recorded song practice while at first playing my Kramer electric guitar. I got through "Megaphor" after a couple of takes and then I heard that it was out of tune. I tuned it and somehow the high E string broke between the lock at the top of the neck and the machine. For that to happen I would have to have tried to tune it with the machine while it was locked but I don't recall having done that. I guess I might have done so absent mindedly but I don't know. It's not something I would normally do. Anyway I didn't have time to change the string and so I switched to the Japanese fake Gibson (I call it a Fibson) for the rest of the session. It was hard to find the chords because the neck is different. It took a long time to get through "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" and the only other song I completed before the camera timed out after that was "L'accordion". I'll have to change the string on the Kramer today because I don't like playing the Fibson as much. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I went down to No Frills where the grapes were all too soft, so I bought four expensive bags of Canadian cherries. I got a watermelon that was heavy and sounded perfect but a woman pointed out to me that it had a crack in it. That seemed at first to be true but when I looked closer I saw that it was only a shallow growth flaw and it didn't penetrate the skin. I bought some bananas, a pack of chicken drumsticks, a kilo of honey, a jug of orange juice, and two large containers of skyr. The always nice middle aged cashier Jessica remembered that I don't need bags and don't have a points card. I thanked her for noticing me. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before lunch. I had whole wheat crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride. It was raining lightly when I started out and was ready to turn around if it got heavier but it slackened off and it was actually partially sunny on the way home. 

            I weighed 85 kilos at 17:00. 

            I changed the high E string on my Kramer and hopefully won't have any problems with it for the next two weeks. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:17. 

            I reviewed this morning's song practice video. I use distortion when I play "Megaphor" and the amp is louder with the distortion turned up. It was louder than usual this morning and drowning out my voice on the camera microphone. I lowered the guitar volume earlier in the Audacity recording and so it brought my voice forward. I thought the final take of "Megaphor" was pretty good even though the guitar was out of tune. I broke the string while tuning and so everything else was played with the Fibson. "Le temps des yéyé" was okay but playing "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" was more of a struggle to get used to the other guitar. "L'accordion" wasn't too bad but the camera timed out before I was done.

            The Fibson is uncomfortable with the strap that I had custom made for the Kramer because the button near the neck is in a different position, which causes the strap to twist and so I get the edge of the strap cutting into my left nipple rather than the comfortable bottom. I think if I have to play it again I'll have a shoelace ready to tie between the strap and the top of the neck like I do with the acoustic. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for my song "Sleep in the Snow" I synchronized the final bits of the concert video with the studio audio and I think I'm pretty much done. I'm going to make two videos. The one overdubbed with me playing the drums is the one I've been working on. But the audio without the drums is the same length so I'll just make two videos, one with and one without the drums to see which works the best for me and for people viewing the video online. 

            I scanned a few more of the loose single black and white negatives that I gathered from the bottom of a file folder in my photo drawer. They range from the mid-1980s to 1991. There were a couple more shots of me nude and aroused in an attempt to look sexy, some street shots, and a shot of my newborn daughter. There are three more singles, and three strips of two left. All of those are time consuming because I have to remove the easel from the scanner and place each frame by hand. When I get to strips of three or more I can just run the strips through the scanner and things will go more quickly. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar while watching season 5, episodes 18 and 19 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story Bobbie Joe is excited because she and a graduate student she likes named Jeff Powers have been given an assignment together by their journalism professor. If they can find a newspaper publisher who will allow it they can take over the paper for a week. Sam Drucker agrees to let them take over the Hooterville World Guardian for a week. Jeff is majoring in journalism and wants to be a hard hitting objective journalist. Bobbie Joe is serving as the field reporter. Jeff's first headline exposes the fact that two years ago County Supervisor Cooper promised in his election campaign that he'd build an irrigation dam in the Hooterville area, but it hasn't been built. Sam is doubtful about the headline because he doesn't want to ruffle any feathers but Kate thinks it's okay, so he goes along with it. Next Bobbie tells Jeff that Newt Kylie's barn burned down and the volunteer fire department didn't show up. Jeff wants Bobbie to find out why. Uncle Joe is the fire chief and she asks him. Joe didn't even know about the fire and said that their lookout Len Stacey was supposed to sound the alarm. Len says he did. It turns out that the Volunteer Fire department band was practicing in Sam's store at the time of the fire and didn't hear the alarm. Jeff's next headline is on the fire and the failure of the fire department. But when Jeff names Joe and the other members Bobbie gets upset. Then the members come to protest but Kate is on Jeff's side. While they are all shouting Kate points out that the alarm is ringing again. While the fire department is looking for the fire around town they miss the fact that it is across the tracks from Sam's store. Grandpa Miller puts out the fire before they get there. Sam gets a call from the county supervisor telling him that the Hooterville irrigation dam is going to be built now because of Jeff's headline. 

            Jeff was played by Geoff Edwards, who started as a radio news reporter in the 1960s. He was sent to Dallas when news of the Kennedy assassination broke and he became a witness to Jack Ruby's killing of Lee Harvey Oswald. He became the host of both the Canadian and US versions of The New Treasure Hunt game show from 1973 to 1977. In 1983 he became the host of the video arcade game show Starcade. He hosted The Big Spin from 1985 to 1995. He hosted a total of ten game shows throughout his career. He hosted a travel website and wrote the book Going All the Way: the Good Bad and the Weird of a World Cruise. He was a regular on The Bobby Darin Show. 

            In the second story, wealthy landowner J.P. Marshal comes to stay at the Shady Rest. He owns most of the farmland in the valley and he's there to find someone to dust his crops. Joe tells him that Steve is a crop duster and for the next few days Marshal will consider whether to make up a contract with Steve and Joe's business. Meanwhile Marshal's breathtakingly voluptuous daughter Millicent comes to stay at the hotel as well. As soon as she sees Steve she latches onto him and always wants him to fly her someplace. Steve goes along so as not to lose the contract but Betty Joe is jealous and finally decides to leave little reminders of their marriage all over his plan. He gets the message and tells Marshal it's off. Marshal says it isn't off because as Steve has proved that he's not an apple polisher he is just the crop duster he needs. This was the first episode of the show in which Bea Benaderet did not appear. She was being treated for lung cancer.

September 3, 1993: I was pissed off when halfway through the poetry reading I realized I wasn't part of the show

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday night I went to what I thought was Darleen's open stage. Before the readings started I was sitting and writing near the stage area because the light was brighter there, but she shooed me away. I didn't realize until halfway through that I wasn't part of the show and that the readers were features. I was pissed off because when Darleen told me about the event I thought she was inviting me to perform.

Guy Scarpitta

            On Friday morning I worked out the chords for the sixth and seventh verses of "Au bon vieux temps" (In the Good Old Days) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished memorizing "Le Couteau dans le play" (The Knife in the Play) by Serge Gainsbourg and looked for the chords, but no one has posted them. On Saturday I'll start working them out. 

            I audio and video recorded song practice while playing my Martin acoustic guitar. I think I've been singing with the gain too high on the audio interface. There's too much clipping. I finished my last take of "Dance and Sing to Baby Pop" just before the camera timed out. There are two weeks left in this year's rebooted recording session. On Saturday I'll begin the first of four sessions with the Kramer electric guitar, then two with the Martin, two with the Kramer, four with the Martin and for the final two days I'll play the Kramer. Then I'll spend the fall reviewing all the videos to see and hear which songs are good enough so I can upload them and move on to new songs. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I changed the A string on my Kramer electric guitar, in hopes that it will solve the problem of the rattling sound when I bar the B flat chord on the sixth fret. I'll find out during song practice on Saturday morning. 

            I completed my Canadian Common CV which seems to be one of the requirements for applying for any Masters Degree program. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I chiseled some more amethyst and black quartz from pieces of the rock that I found six years ago. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos at 17:30, which is the lightest I've been in the evening in ten days.

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:56. 

            I reviewed this morning's song practice video. I was weak on a couple of chords of "Megaphor". "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" was okay but the ending has been better. Some of my translations weren't bad. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for my song "Sleep in the Snow" I synchronized the concert video with the studio audio for my line at the beginning of the final chorus, "Don't it make you wanna go to sleep in the snow" by adding a short clip from the 1922 film Nanook of the North of Nanook sleeping. But then the next line "Don't it make you wanna turn away and go" was ahead again in the video and so I added a short clip of Dorothy sleeping in the snow scene from The Wizard of Oz. I hadn't quite shaved off enough of the clip for the line to be synchronized. I'll do that next time.

            I scanned four more single negatives, one of a fancy lamppost at night, one of my newborn daughter from 1991, one of my ex-girlfriend Brenda, and a self portrait with the top of my head cut off.

            I roasted a pork loin and had a slice with a potato and gravy while watching season 5, episodes 16 and 17 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story Joe's latest money making scheme is to take up bee keeping. But he mistakes hornets for bees and ends up causing the hotel to be infested. Kate has to send her guests to the Pixley Hotel while the place is being fumigated and then the whole family has to go and stay in Betty Joe and Steve's little cottage. 

            This episode was directed by Guy Scarpitta, who directed 28 other episodes of the show, eight episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies, and 19 episodes of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. As a film editor he was nominated for an Emmy in 1956 for his work on The Bob Cummings Show. He was the Associate Producer of Green Acres for the entire run of the show. 

            In the second story Betty Joe is spending money faster than Steve can put it in the bank. She agrees to stop spending from that minute on but doesn't mention that before that minute she bought a very long sofa for $100. At first she keeps the sofa in the baggage car of the Cannonball until she can find a right moment to break it to Steve. The moment doesn't come and so she decides to just put the sofa in the house before he comes home from work. But the sofa is too long for the house. She talks her mother into negotiating the return of the sofa to a store that has a no returns policy. The manager Mr. Agnew finally agrees to take the sofa back when she says she'll settle for the return of only $90. Then Steve decides to surprise Betty with a new piano but after measuring he concludes the house is not big enough and so he tears out a wall and extends the house. When Betty finds that out she now realizes the sofa will fit and so she asks her mother to buy the sofa back. But Agnew still wants $100 and so Kate pays it. Then Betty finds out about the piano and gets her mother to return the sofa. Again she has to settle for $90. Then Joe lets it slip to Steve about the sofa and he asks Kate to get it back. Now both the sofa and the piano are on the Cannonball but Betty can't choose. They have a singalong with the piano on the train while it's moving and finally Betty and Steve decide to keep both the piano and the couch.

September 2, 1993: I told the audience to fake an orgasm

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday night at Mudds Cabaret Elizabeth the co-proprietor picked out three of my collages: "Prana", "Miss Clairol", and "Boddhi's Hat" to put up on the walls. The place was pretty dead. Martin was getting tired of hosting the readings and so I started the open stage. I announced my upcoming concert at Crickets on November 1 and I told the audience to fake an orgasm. I ran into Marjorie Robero and asked her why she'd stood me up a few weeks before. She apologized and gave some excuse. We talked for quite a while outside of Mudds and I showed her my artwork. She fixed her hair while we were talking and I thought it was a good sign she was attracted to me.

Ralph Manza

            On Thursday morning I worked out the chords for the fourth and fifth verses of "Au bon vieux temps" (In the Good Old Days) by Boris Vian. They were easy because they have the same chords as the second and first verse. I'm pretty sure the sixth verse has the same chords as the third verse and so on. 

            I wasn't quite able to memorize the sixth and final verse of "Le Couteau dans le play" (The Knife in the Play) by Serge Gainsbourg. There's a good chance I'll have it nailed down on Friday. 

            I audio and video recorded song practice while playing my Martin acoustic guitar. I hit a lot of wrong chords on a few songs. I finished "Megaphor" in about three takes but took several for "Sixteen Tons of Dogma". It's amazing to me that I have played that song every day for maybe about five years and I still screw it up. In some ways it's clear that I play it better now than before but the mistakes are independent of any improvement. I also redid "L'accordion" a few times. The camera timed out while I was on the third take or so of "La jambe de bois". 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            I finished filling out my profile on the Research Portal. Then I read that I needed to fill out something called a Common CV. That seems to be on another government site. I registered but I only started filling out all the information for the CV before lunch. This is such a complicated process. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. On my way out I saw my second floor neighbour Shankar sitting on the bench and stopped to chat briefly. He told me he was moving out today. He said he heard from the landlord that at first two Indian students would be moving in but now it's a Chinese tenant. I mentioned that Raja has never rented to a white tenant in twenty five years. I gave Shankar my email, shook his hand and wished him luck. 

            I weighed 85 kilos at 18:00. 

            The landlord finally came to look at my plumbing. He said that I need to buy a filter for my drain. I said it's his drain and he should have provided it. I asked who else in the building has a filter. He said I need one because I put dirt down the drain. That's his ignorant accusation to pass the buck. There are other possibilities like for instance a rat having gotten stuck in the drain or plugged it with shit or whatever. He asked me to plunge it and it started to leak. He said he knows the problem and can fix it in two weeks. I protested having to wait but he just repeated that it's my fault. I said when the bathroom sink plugs I plunge it, it clears and doesn't leak because it has metal pipes. He just said plunging is for toilets and not for sinks. He is such an asshole. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:15. 

            I reviewed this morning's song practice video. The final take of "Megaphor" sounded pretty good, as did "Le temps des yéyé". "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" was fine until the end and then it was off on a couple of chords. On "L'accordion" I might not have held the B flat chord firmly enough at least once. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for my song "Sleep in the Snow" I synchronized the concert video with the studio audio for the line, "But it takes a pretty big charge to refrigerate a bed of...". But the "of" is extended in the concert video and so I cut out some of it, although not enough yet.

            I scanned a few more of the single black and white negatives and they were all images of diverse subjects. There was a damaged one with abstract shapes, one of my ex-girlfriend Brenda, a shot of a homeless person in front of a mural of three acrobats, and another of the self portraits of me attempting to be sexy. Most of the latter look pretty gross with me aroused but in this one I kind of do look sexy. In this one I'm not nude but just standing erect with my fly down. It's going to take a while to scan all these single frame negatives. 

            I had a potato with gravy and the other T-bone steak while watching season 5, episodes 14 and 15 of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story Kate is issued a traffic ticket for jaywalking in Pixley. The town has installed one traffic light that is not supposed to be working after 14:00. The cop claims that he gave Kate the ticket at 13:55 but she says it was after 14:00 and challenges the ticket in court. Kate defends herself but has no real evidence to prove the time of her crossing. Joe and Floyd present a photograph of Joe and Floyd standing in front of the light while Floyd is displaying his watch. As Floyd is a railroad man he has a reputation for always having an accurate watch. But the judge points out that behind them is the clock tower on the town hall, which reads 13:45. Then Kate mentions that she was in the beauty parlour at 13:45 with the judge's wife when she was just starting to tell Kate about her grandchildren. The judge says that his wife would not talk for less than half an hour about their grandchildren and dismisses the case. 

            The proprietor of the beauty parlour was played by Ralph Manza, who began studying medicine before becoming an actor. He was serving as a medic during WWII when he was assigned to an acting troupe. After the war he took classes at Elizabeth Halloway's School of Acting. He was one of the original cast members of General Hospital but soon moved on to character work. He played Al Bonacorsi on the short lived TV series The D.A's Man. He played Hitler in the movie Blazing Saddles.

            In the second story Joe comes back from escorting Billie Joe to a singing gig out of town and reveals that he applied to join some kind of hotel union called the Master Plan. A very snooty guest arrives named Gaylord Martindale who complains about everything and refuses to dine with the Bradley family and the other guest Mrs. Pruit. He insists on eating alone in the dining room and so Mrs. Pruit happily joins the Bradley family at the kitchen table. Joe tries to cater to Martindale's every whim because he thinks he is a spy from the Master Plan and provides French formal service for Martindale's dinner with Bille Joe and Bobbie Joe dressed in French maid uniforms. The dinner is a disaster with the shish kebob burning out of control and Martindale getting sprayed with a fire extinguisher. Later the family and Mrs. Pruit have a singalong but when Martindale complains about that the family has had enough and Joe asks him to leave. Mrs. Pruit reveals that she's the spy for the Master Plan and she loves the hotel.

September 1, 1993: I got the nerve to talk to the woman at the train stop. I got her number before she got off

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I worked at Sheridan College in Oakville from 15:00 to 21:00. After work I was waiting for the bus when I saw a young woman on the bench across from mine. She seemed to be making eyes at me and after several minutes I finally got the nerve to talk to her. Her name was Sandra and we sat together on the train. I got her phone number before she got off at Port Credit.