Arnold Ziffel

            On Tuesday morning I memorized the third verse of “L'amour de moi” (The Whole of My Love) by Serge Gainsbourg. There’s just one verse left and I doubt if I’ll have any problem nailing down the whole song tomorrow. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first day of two. I weighed 85.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I researched the books of poetry published by Guernica Editions to get a handle on what to write in a cover letter if my manuscript isn’t accepted by Ekstasis. The only two books that I think my book Paranoiac Utopia would compliment are Downtown Flirt by Peter Jickling and Songs and Ballads by Frederico Garcia Lorca. Downtown Flirt is very urban and somewhat streetwise like my poetry and Lorca’s works echo mine in that they were meant to be sung or at least spoken. About Ekstasis, I had asked Albert Moritz if I should move on to the next publisher since they haven’t responded to me since I sent my manuscript to them more than four months ago. He had said that would probably be a good idea but that he’d email the publisher first. He found out that the publisher has been sick and fell behind by a year. He told Albert he would look for my manuscript. I think Guernica’s window for submissions is the month of February so I have some time to wait anyway.

            I thought about going to the hardware store to buy some molding for the space between the Masonite that I glued sown and the bottom of the kitchen counter cabinets. Then I realized that I already have some molding that I bought about twenty years ago. I measured the length that I need and cut it. I’ll need to buy a small tube of construction glue to secure the molding in place. Then I have to think about painting. 

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I spent about twenty minutes chiseling black quartz from a piece of the rock that I found six years ago. I finished that piece and started another one that still has some amethyst on it as well.

            I weighed 84.7 kilos at 17:30, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening in twenty eight days.

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:30. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my August 11 song practice I managed to synchronize the video and the audio. Then I saved it as a new project called “Le temps des yé-yé (acoustic)”. I deleted everything but that song. I set it so it has only the audio from my Audacity recording because the camera microphone picked up too much traffic noise. Tomorrow I’ll look into adding a fade to black effect at the end and maybe another effect. I might also have time to upload it to YouTube. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song Megaphor I eliminated just the right amount of the concert video of the instrumental so it ends with me beginning the last verse and it’s synchronized for my line, “Behind the tango between Venus and the planet Mars…”. But it goes out of synch for the next, “…twists a Ziegfield folly of a zillion stars”. At this point I want to replace the concert video with a clip from the Ziegfield follies, preferably with the dancers descending a stairway. I did a bit of a search and found a couple of Ziegfield Follies clips but not exactly what I’m looking for. I’ll try again tomorrow. If I don’t show a clip very few people will get the reference. 

            I cut a chicken into legs, breasts, wings and the spine and roasted it. I poured the drippings into the gravy that I made too thick yesterday. I had some with a leg and a potato while watching season 2, episodes 6 and 7 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Oliver gets a letter telling him he owes $12.03 for the State Farm Unattached Duty Tax. Nobody knows what the tax is for but they pay it anyway. Oliver however wants to know why his money is being taken so he calls up the state capital. He asks for the State Farm Unattached Duty Tax Bureau and is told they closed at noon and will be back in a year. They just run the names through the computer once a year to mail out the taxes. He wants to talk with his community’s assemblyman but nobody knows who he is. He learns that the last person to run for Assemblyman was Sam Drucker in 1922. Election day is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in September but the word got around that it was the first Monday after the first Tuesday and so everybody showed up to vote too late and no assemblyman was elected. Oliver says that since they don’t have an assemblyman they shouldn’t be paying taxes because taxation without representation is tyranny. Oliver and Lisa go to the state capital so he can talk to the governor but he can’t get an appointment for months. Lisa finds Oliver dictating to a stenographer a letter to the governor but she tells her to leave. Lisa calls the White House and talks to Lady Bird Johnson, then seconds later the phone rings and it’s the governor telling him he’ll see him right away. Oliver suggests to the governor that everybody in the Hooterville Valley should get a tax refund for all the money they’ve paid since 1922. They all get cheques and shout hooray for Oliver. But then the governor sends everybody in the valley a bill for all the work the state has done there for infrastructure such as bridges and roads. The bill amounts to more than half a million dollars per citizen so now they want to tar and feather Oliver. 

            In the second story Oliver is reading a book called “40 Years a Farmer” and tells the story to Lisa. Gus Thompson settles on land in Kansas and sends to Hungary for his childhood sweetheart Gladys. But Etta comes instead because Gladys is married in Hungary. So Gus marries Etta and they build a farm. She pulls the plough because Gus has no horse. When he almost has the money for a horse she insists on a new dress so he spends it. As the years go by they have seven kids and the farm prospers. But then they are wiped out by a flood. The children move away but Gus and Etta stay and have fifteen more kids. It ends with them old but together. Lisa says she still doesn’t want to be a farm wife. 

            Arnold Ziffel was played by several piglets over the six years of Green Acres. If they’d used the same pig it would have grown too big to be cute in a few months. Most of the time Arnold was played by a female pig. Arnold’s trainer, as for most of the animals on Green Acres, Petticoat Junction and The Beverly Hillbillies, was Frank Inn. Inn said that pigs require delicate psychology to accept training. If they are forced or reprimanded by a trainer a pig will refuse to even take food from them. Arnold received a lot of fan mail and also won an Emmy Award for best performance by an animal.

October 25, 1993: Tom Smarda and I planned to rehearse every day for the last week before my show

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday Nancy picked our daughter up from my place. I practiced with Tom Smarda for my November 1 show at Crickets. We planned on cramming in time for rehearsal all this last week leading up to our gig. I worked at Humber College in the evening and the instructor gave me a ride back to York Mills Station. I went from there to Crickets where I sang a couple of songs that I wouldn’t be doing in my show. Mary Milne drove me home.

Robert Foulk

            On Monday morning I searched for the chords for "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Street) by Boris Vian, but no one has posted them. I worked out the first chord for the intro. This song shouldn’t be hard to chord since there’s no chorus and no changes as far as I can tell from verse to verse. 

            I memorized the second verse of “L'amour de moi” (The Love of My Life) by Serge Gainsbourg. That’s half the song. I also made adjustments to my translation. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar for the final session of four. I had to tune it twice because it doesn’t seem to like the dryness now that the heat is on more often. 

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning in a week but far from as heavy as last Monday. 

            Last night I was too sleepy to finish my review of Green Acres and so I did it around midday. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on my way back. I bought four bags of black grapes. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:07. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my August 11, 2023 song practice I worked on synchronizing the video recording with the audio recording. They had been almost lined up yesterday and so I just removed small sections of the video to edge the two closer together. But then I noticed they were getting further apart and I remembered that yesterday I’d been removing the audio to synchronize them. So I returned to cutting the audio until I realized that part A of that song practice was missing from the timeline. I’d been trying to line the audio up with part B. I know they were both on the timeline yesterday but this time I somehow removed part A. So I inserted Part A of August 11 but they still weren’t lining up. Then I realized that I’d inserted Part A from August 11, 2022. So I removed that and inserted Part A of August 11, 2023. I removed all of the imported files from 2022 so I wouldn’t make that mistake again. I managed to get the two parts synchronized up to the point where they are just slightly out of synch and there’s an echo. I stopped there and I’ll decide tomorrow if I want an echo or not. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song Megaphor I continued to shorten the concert video of the instrumental because it’s longer than the one we recorded at Mike’s place. I got them almost lined up and quit for the day with the concert video only slightly behind. I’ll see if I can synchronize the concert video with the beginning of the last verse tomorrow. 

            I made a new batch of gravy from pork drippings I’d collected a few weeks ago but it turned out very thick. Tomorrow I’m roasting a whole chicken and so I’ll add some drippings from that to thin out the gravy. I had some of the thick gravy with a small potato and a chicken leg while watching season 2, episodes 4 and 5 of Green Acres.

            In the first story a farmer from the other side of the valley is coming to consult Oliver on a legal matter. Oliver puts on his business suit and goes to work in the field. He tells Lisa to send the farmer out to him when he arrives. But the farmer turns out to be a beautiful woman named Amy Collins. Lisa is immediately jealous and Amy doesn’t help matters when she asks her if she’s sick and tells her that her mother always wears a nightgown like hers when she’s sick. Amy finds Oliver in the field and he’s very impressed to learn that she has 1200 acres. He goes to her place to discuss her case and she gives him a tour of her impressive farm. She’s developed her own strain of corn. She cooks him dinner, pot roast, potatoes and biscuits with gravy and so Oliver comes home to Lisa quite late. She is very jealous. The next night Oliver invites Amy to their house for dinner. Lisa spends half the day learning statistics about farming from Hank Kimball and the second half learning how to make pot roast from Doris Ziffel. That night while Oliver and Amy discuss business Lisa feels more and more left out and drinks until she’s unconscious. The next day she is about to enter Sam’s store to buy aspirin when she hears Doris Ziffel inside telling someone about a man who is cheating on his wife and had the nerve to bring her home to dinner. He slipped a mickey in his wife’s drink. She hears that they have bought tickets to South America and are meeting at the bus depot to run away together. When Lisa confronts Oliver with this he doesn’t know what she is talking about. But then Doris comes to watch TV because hers is broken and she has to see her favourite show. The story she describes is exactly what Lisa heard her relate at Sam’s store. Oliver shows Lisa the show and she realizes her mistake. He reminds her that he doesn’t want anybody but her. 

            In the second story the Hooterville phone company wants to disconnect Oliver’s line because he hasn’t paid his bill in three months. He says he refuses to pay his bill as long as he has to climb a pole outside his house to make and receive calls. Meanwhile Ralph Monroe is upset because Hank Kimball keeps standing her up. She can’t work on finishing Oliver and Lisa’s bedroom because she’s crying all the time. Lisa wants to give her a makeover and it will take a few days and so Oliver has to sleep with Eb in the barn loft. It doesn’t work out well for Oliver because he injures his head on the roof and falls out of the loft and hurts his wrist. Chairman Trendall of the phone company comes to talk with Oliver and agrees to run a line into the house. Oliver asks Hank to dinner to get this problem with Ralph over with so he can sleep in his own bed again. Meanwhile Lisa tells Ralph that to catch Hank there needs to be competition. Just then Tom Blackwell arrives to put the line in for the phone but Lisa invites him to dinner. That night Tom and Hank meet a transformed Ralph with false eyelashes and makeup but one of her eyes keeps getting stuck. She does look better but they find her scary, especially when Lisa tells the men that they are in competition for marrying Ralph. Both men leave and Ralph cries but she gets over it. However, Tom runs away without connecting the phone. 

            Trendall was played by Robert Foulk, and he made a total of sixteen appearances as that character on Green Acres. He became interested in acting while studying architecture. He became a casting agent for Broadway productions and became friends with legendary producer George Abbott, who cast him in a string of Broadway hits. Bette Davis helped him get hired as a dialogue director at Warner Brothers. During the war he enlisted in the US Army and was assigned to a unit that made training films. His first Hollywood film as an actor was Road House in 1948. He appeared on three episodes of Tombstone Territory. Meanwhile he continued as an architect and designed houses in Hollywood. He played Sheriff Miller on the 1950s Lassie TV series. He was on thirteen episodes of The Loretta Young Show. He played Ed Davis on Father Knows Best.

October 24, 1993: I left a message on Spirit's machine that I could still taste her pussy on my mouth

Thirty years ago today 

            On Sunday I had my daughter all day and overnight, even though Nancy was supposed to pick her up. While she was sleeping I went out and called Spirit. She wasn’t home and so I left a message on her machine saying that I’d had the taste of her pussy on my mouth all day after the night we’d made love.

Ray Teal

            On Sunday morning I finished memorizing "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Street) by Boris Vian. It took me by surprise that I was able to nail down the final verse so easily. Tomorrow I’ll search for the chords. 

            I memorized the first verse of “L'amour de moi” (The Whole of My Love) by Serge Gainsbourg. It has a baroque melody so I was guessing Gainsbourg lifted it from Bach. But after writing this I looked it up and found that the melody is based on an old French folk song from the 15th Century called “L’amour de moy”:

L’amour de moy s’y est enclose 

Dedans un joli jardinet 

Où croît la rose et le muguet 

Et aussi fait la passerose 

Ce jardin est bel et plaisant 

Il est garni de toutes flours 

On y prend son ébattement 

Autant la nuit comme le jour 

Hélas ! Il n’est si douce chose 

Que de ce doux rossignolet 

Qui chante au soir, au matinet 

Quand il est las, il se repose 

Je la vis l’autre jour, cueillir 

La violette en un vert pré

La plus belle qu’oncques je vis 

Et la plus plaisante à mon gré 

Je la regardai une pose 

Elle était blanche comme lait 

Et douce comme un agnelet 

Et vermeillette comme rose 

            Gainsbourg’s first verse is pretty much the same as the original but then he takes it to a darker place about the love interest being a murdered sex worker. The original was found among one hundred and two other songs in the Bayeux Manuscript in the 16th Century. Apparently Gainsbourg wrote his version sometime between 1950 and 1952. I guess I’ll write an English version of this as well. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the third session of four. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before breakfast.

            I returned the two unused tubes of construction glue to the hardware store and got $21 and change back. But it hadn’t occurred to me that I wouldn’t be getting cash back and so I had to go home and get my debit card to complete the transaction. I should have realized that since I’d paid by debit I would get my refund that way as well.

            I started looking into Guernica editions to get an angle on what kind of cover letter I should write when I send them my manuscript. Albert Moritz said he went to their recent launch and a couple of works made him think that mine might be a good fit. I’ll have to ask him which ones. Their window for submissions seems to only be the month of February. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before lunch. I had Cheez-it crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I had to stop to pee at McDonalds at Yonge and College. 

            I spent about ten minutes chiseling black quartz from the rock that I found six years ago.

            I weighed 85.6 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:45. 

            I opened a Movie Maker project for the video and audio recordings of my August 11 song practice. I managed to almost synchronize the video and the audio. I should have that done tomorrow and then I’ll create a separate project for that date’s take of “Le temps des yé-yé”. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song Megaphor I removed the images of flying gods that I’d inserted and then just reinserted three of them: Anteros, Helios, and Mercury; this time more carefully fitting the beat of the line, “spirals endlessly inward to …” Then I synchronized the concert video with the studio audio for when I shout, “god in my head”. What follows is the instrumental, which is longer in the concert video, so after the camera pans from me to Brian on the keyboard, while it’s panning back to me I need to cut some of the video. I removed some of it but I need to take out more before I start singing the last verse. I might have that done tomorrow.

            I cut the strip of colour negatives that I scanned yesterday into strips of five, put them in an envelope, then labeled and filed them. I’m going to need some new envelopes soon. I pulled out another uncut strip but didn’t have time to clean it before dinner. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episodes 2 and 3 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Haney’s well is dry and he hires Willy the Witcher to find another one. He does locate one but the minute the water goes on at Haney’s place the water goes off at Oliver’s farm. Oliver hires Willy and digs another well but that causes the well to go dry at the Ziffel place. When Oliver loses his water again he calls a meeting and proposes they build a reservoir. Hank Kimball conducts a survey and finds that the best location for a reservoir in the valley is on Oliver’s farm. Obviously Oliver doesn’t want to sacrifice his farm for a reservoir so he comes up with an alternative. A pipeline is built from the reservoir in the nearby town of Pixley and a pump is set up to send the water through. But the day that the pump is switched on it blows out the power throughout the valley and so Hooterville returns to the old system of using Willy to find wells that compete with one another. 

            In the second story the Ziffels decide to take a second honeymoon and the Douglases agree to take care of Arnold the pig while they are gone. They bring his crib, his TV, and a list of dietary instructions but as soon as they leave Oliver throws all that out the window and tries to treat Arnold like a regular pig. He makes him sleep in the barn and Arnold cries very loudly. In the middle of the night there is a knock on the door. Oliver answers it and Arnold comes running in to sleep in his crib. The next day Arnold receives a letter from the draft board telling him to report for service. Oliver ignores the letter since Arnold is a pig but Mr. Grimes and Mr. Collins of the Selective Services Board don’t know that. They think they’ve finally gotten their first draft dodger and try to track Arnold down. They talk to Lisa and she says Arnold is a pig but they say they don’t care about his table manners and he still has to report. Oliver is amused and decides to take Arnold to the draft board to show them what a dumb mistake they made. But the desk sergeant thinks Oliver’s claim that Arnold is pig is an elaborate cover up for the real Arnold Ziffel. The FBI comes to investigate and warn Oliver that if he tells them one more time that the pig is Arnold Ziffel they’ll put him in jail. He does and they do. The Ziffels are called in Niagara Falls and although they just got there they head back to Hooterville. That problem is cleared up but then Ralph Monroe gets a draft notice too. Oliver takes Ralph to the draft board and the sergeant thinks she’s just a guy in a dress. He tells her to take off her clothes and she starts to do so but Oliver stops her. Ralph asks if she can be in the same outfit with her cousin. The sergeant asks, “What’s his name?” and she says, “Louise”. The sergeant thinks he’s going crazy. 

            Mr. Grimes was played by Ray Teal, who worked his way through college playing saxophone in local bands. He had his own band for ten years. He played Little John in a 1946 Robin Hood picture. He had a recurring role as a cop on the sitcom Where’s Raymond? He played Sheriff Roy Coffee on Bonanza.

October 23, 1993: My daughter had chicken pox

Thirty years ago today 

            On Saturday morning Spirit and I talked in bed. I was scheduled for a photo shoot and I’d planned on bringing my daughter but when I called her mother I found out she had chicken pox. Nancy said that she was going to bring her down later by car. Spirit drove me home after picking up Jake and said she might come by my place later. Nancy brought my daughter in the early afternoon. Later I found out that when we were both sleeping Jake knocked on my door while Spirit waited in her van to see if I was home, but we didn’t hear.

Oscar Beregi Jr.

            On Saturday morning I memorized the tenth verse of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Street) by Boris Vian. There is one verse left to learn. 

            I uploaded “Le moi et le je” by Serge Gainsbourg and my translation, “The I and the My” to Christian’s Translations, edited it and published it on the blog. Tomorrow I’ll start learning his song “L'amour de moi” (The Whole of My Love), which is the final song in the 1986 Gainsbourg file. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the second session of four. 

            I weighed 85.9 kilos before breakfast. I removed all the weights from the Masonite that I’d glued to the kitchen floor the day before. There’s some construction glue that squeezed out around the edges so I’ll have to clean that up. There’s a bit of space between the bottom of the kitchen cabinets below the counter and the Masonite. I can cover that by gluing down some molding. I plan to paint the Masonite in a black and white checkerboard pattern but I might as well paint the kitchen cabinets below the counter first to cover up that ugly fake wood veneer. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos before lunch. I had Cheez-it crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

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

            I spent about twenty minutes chiseling black quartz from a piece of the rock that I found six years ago. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:25. 

            I compared the September 3 song practice video of my electric performance of “Time of the Yo-Yo” with the one from August 14. September 3 looks just as good, plus there is very little traffic noise by comparison. So September 3 has nudged out yesterday’s winner. It’s too bad because I already have the August 14 song practice synchronized in Movie Maker. I compared September 5 to September 3 and September 5 has more traffic noise and doesn’t look and sound quite as good. I compared September 9 to September 3 and September 9 has really bad light, plus there’s a motorcycle idling at the end. So September 3 will be the electric version of my translation that I will upload to YouTube. 

            I compared my electric performances of “Le temps des yé-yé” on August 17 and August 19. On August 19 the guitar sounds better and there is less traffic noise. So August 19 will be the French version that I’ll upload to You Tube. So now I’ve selected the acoustic and electric performances of both the French and English versions of this song. I’ll start a project in Movie Maker on Sunday for my acoustic performance of “Le temps des yé-yé”. 

            I collected some images of flying gods and inserted them into the main video of my Megaphor Movie Maker project. I cut them according to the wave form but I think I need to remove them and cut them again so they fit the beat better. 

            I cut the negatives of Parkdale that I scanned on Friday into strips of five, put them in an envelope, then labeled and filed it. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce, a cut up beef burger, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the first season finale and the second season premiere of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Oliver’s nephew Charles is coming to visit. Oliver hasn’t seen him since he was a little boy but he arrives as a young man on a motorcycle and Oliver is appalled that he is a long haired Beatnik. He bunks with Eb in the barn, which is the first time we’ve seen where Eb sleeps. He has turned the hayloft into a pretty nice bedroom. Oliver expects Chuck to help out on the farm but he is a very bad influence on Eb and teaches him the fine art of goofing off. It turns out however that Chuck is useful for something as when he finds Oliver struggling with fixing his ancient tractor he not only fixes it but supes it up. When Oliver tries to drive the tractor it takes off like a shot and before he can stop it he is arrested for speeding. Later Mr. Haney’s truck breaks down in front of Oliver’s house and Chuck fixes it but in doing so he removes the engine from Oliver’s car. Oliver hops on Chuck’s motorcycle to get his engine back but the bike takes off and Oliver is arrested for speeding again. Chuck decides to leave and Oliver is glad to see him go but then he sees that Eb is wearing a wig like Chuck’s. 

            In the second story Eb discovers that Oliver’s corn crop is being devoured by bugs. Meanwhile Sam, Fred, and Newt elect Oliver to be the Grand Marshall in the Veterans Day parade. Lisa tells the story of how they met. In the flashback, he is flying his plane over Nazi occupied Hungary when his engine conks out and he radios to the base that he has to jump. The radio operator tells him that if he gets captured to ask to be taken to Stalag 13 and to look for a chap named Hogan. So it turns out that Green Acres is in the same universe as Hogan’s Heroes. His parachute gets caught in a tree and he is hanging helpless when he is found by Lisa and Janos, who are fighters in the Hungarian resistance. Lisa is a sergeant and the one in charge. At first she wants to shoot Oliver because he might be German but when he starts talking fresh she knows he’s from the US. Then they see a German tank and Lisa takes off her coat to reveal a sexy gown. The Germans poke their heads out of their tank and while they are doing so Janos lobs a grenade. Lisa says that was the sixth tank they’d blown up that day. The day before they got twelve because she was wearing a bikini. Anyway they fall for each other. In the present Hank Kimball informs them that the pest eating the crops is the bing bug. He says they could be saved by crop dusting if they had a pilot. Everybody elects Oliver but the only plane is a WWI plane owned by Haney. The plane loses control and Oliver has to jump, catching his parachute once again in the trees. But the crashing plane saves the valley because it lands in Oliver’s corn field and burns his whole crop, which was where the bing bug is contained at this stage. 

            Janos was played by Hungarian actor Oscar Beregi Jr., whose father was a famous Hungarian actor. They left Hungary together but the son couldn’t get into the States. He ran a restaurant in Chile for several years before he was able to get a Visa to enter the US. He worked as a salesman for a few years while he learned English and then finally was able to enter his father’s profession at the age of forty. He played mob boss Joe Kulak in The Untouchables. He starred in three episodes of The Twilight Zone. He was a successful breeder of white Komondor sheepdogs.