October 29, 1993: I wrote a song called "Insisting on Angels" on my way to Marie's place

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday Yehudah didn’t show up to rehearse for my November 1 show at Crickets but Tom Smarda did. Later I went to Tom’s place where we practiced some more. I called Marie after 23:00 and she said to come over. On my way there I wrote a song called “Insisting on Angels”. We didn’t make love that night but talked and embraced. I sang her my song and she gave me an angel.

Elroy Schwartz

            On Friday morning I worked out the chords for the first verse of “L'amour de moi” (The Love of My Life) by Serge Gainsbourg. I’m not sure if the second verse has the same chords. I know it doesn’t start with the same one. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the second day of two. Tomorrow I’ll start a four session stretch of playing my Martin acoustic. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning in nine days. 

            Around midday I used No More Nails to glue the molding where the bottom of the kitchen counter meets the Masonite that I glued to the floor. I also glued the molding that I’d removed from the back of the stove so I could place the Masonite under it. Next I’m going to sand the veneer of the cabinets below the kitchen counter to get them ready for painting. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before lunch. I haven’t been that light at midday in ten days. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. It was a lot cooler in my apartment than it was outside so I overdressed and found I hadn’t needed to wear my motorcycle jacket at all. 

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

            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:10. 

            I uploaded to YouTube the video of my August 11, acoustic performance of “Le temps des yoyos” and posted the links on Facebook and Twitter. I started a new Movie Maker project for my August 19 song practice from which I’ll make a video of my electric performance of the same song. I imported the two videos and the audio recording of that session. Tomorrow I’ll start synchronizing them. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song Megaphor I worked at the end of the timeline on editing the clip of Ziegfeld Girl that I’d downloaded. The curtain closes on the dancers in the clip but I cut small sections of the end off and placed each one in reverse order, causing the curtain to open instead. The opening of the curtain becomes slightly jerky in my altered version but I think that works for my video. 

            I cleaned, scanned and cut two sets of colour negatives. The first surprised me because it had shots of my ex-girlfriends Heidi and Victoria. I had no memory of ever having taken their pictures. This would have been early in 1990 just before my place was burglarized and my Nikon was stolen. I wouldn’t put it past Victoria to have been involved but I suspect it was my ex-girlfriend Whitefeather’s sons that did it. The other set of negatives are all street and people shots, I assume from the late 80s but I don’t know exactly when. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching season 2, episodes 12 and 13 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story one of Oliver and Lisa’s chickens is laying cubical eggs, but they don’t know which one. Also their toaster only goes down to start toasting when someone says out loud the number “five”. Then it comes back up again when that number is repeated. Oliver goes to Sam’s store where Fred and Newt are discussing that another farmer has a talking turkey. Oliver asks for a new toaster but learns that toasters that work when certain numbers are called are normal. Oliver wants to find out which hen is laying the cubical eggs and so he and Eb put them under surveillance in cages but nothing happens. Hank Kimbel puts him in touch with a Mr. Moody who has been trying to develop cube laying hens for years. Moody offers Oliver $1000 for all his chickens and he accepts. Lisa is very upset because she considered them her friends. Moody brings them back because none of them laid cubical eggs. The next morning Oliver gets up and tries to make toast by calling out “five” to the toaster but Lisa wants to know why he’s doing that. He goes to get eggs but none of them are cubes. He realizes he dreamed the whole story. 

            This story was co-written by Elroy Schwartz, who co-created with his brother Sherwood the short-lived sitcom Dusty’s Trail. He co-wrote the original pilot episode of Gilligan’s Island, which was lost and so that pilot never aired until it was rediscovered in 1992. He was one of the head writers for the series. He wrote for Groucho Marx, Bob Hope and Lucille Ball. He wrote episodes of The $64,000 Question, The Six Million Dollar Man, and It Takes a Thief. He was also a licensed hypnotherapist with an office in Palm Springs, California. He did past life regressions, and wrote several fiction and non-fiction books. He was also a painter. 

            The second story is a Christmas episode. Oliver has always dreamed of having an old fashioned Christmas with a real tree. This is his first Christmas since he moved to the farm and that’s what he plans to do. But he discovers that everybody in the Hooterville valley uses artificial trees. Mr. Haney tells him that there is a conservation law in that state that prohibits the cutting of trees. He has to get a permit from Hank Kimbel. Doris thinks that Oliver is right about real Christmas trees and she bugs Fred about it. The night that Oliver and Lisa decorate and light their tree the Ziffels, Hank Kimbel and Sam Drucker all come to see it. They only leave quickly when Lisa brings out the fruitcake that she made out of hotcake batter and with whole, unpeeled fruit in it like a whole pineapple and whole oranges. We don’t know where Hooterville is but it is too warm at Christmas for there to be snow.

October 28, 1993: I was a smash at the Live Poets Society reading

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I practiced with Tom Smarda for my November 1 show at Crickets. I worked in the evening at the Ontario College of Art and went from there to Mudds Cabaret. It was dead there and so Mary Milne drove me to the Live Poets Society open stage at the Café May on Roncesvalles. The core group consisted of expatriate Irish poets who had some interesting work. I read some of my poems and I was a smash!

Elon Packard

            On Thursday morning I worked out the chords for the intro and the first line and a half of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Street) by Boris Vian. 

            I continued to search for the chords for “L'amour de moi” (The Love of My Life) by Serge Gainsbourg and for the 15th Century song “L’amour de moy” from which he lifted the melody. But the only chords posted were the ones I found yesterday for “L’amour de moy” as sung by Nana Mouskouri. I started working them out and I hear entirely different chords than those posted. I finished the first line.

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the first day of two.

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            At 13:00 I met Brian Haddon in front of my place and we walked over to Mezzrows for lunch. But when we got there we learned that their kitchen doesn’t open until 15:00. So we walked west and when we got to Roncesvalles we decided to walk north. We walked almost to Howard Park before we found something interesting. We went into an Argentinian-Venezuelan restaurant called Bacan. Brian had the cachapa con queso (a folded corn pancake with cheese) and I had a steak with a fried egg on top and yuca fries. I wouldn’t have been able to tell that the yuca fries weren’t french fries if they hadn’t told me. We shared a pitcher of Great Lakes Lager because their Creemore tap wasn’t set up. Our waiter looked about sixteen but that may have been just appearance. I picked up the bill, which was almost $100. We were there for a couple of hours and might get together again at the end of November in his neighbourhood when I go up there to get a haircut. But he says there’s nothing good at Yonge and St. Clair anymore. I walked Brian to the Dundas West subway station and then walked home. 

            It was almost 17:00 when I got home and I still needed to go to the supermarket and so I rode to Freshco. The grapes were too soft again and so I got two bags of oranges. I also bought a pack of strawberries, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, three bags of milk, a box of spoon size shredded wheat, a jug of limeade, Full City Dark coffee, and some deodorant. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 18:00. 

            I had planned on just skipping my daily siesta because it was so late but I was exhausted and so I took a nap from 18:10 to 19:40. That meant I didn’t get to work on any projects today but if I had I would have been useless anyway. I’ll get back into the grind tomorrow. 

            I had a small potato with gravy and a chicken leg while watching season 2, episodes 10 and 11 of Green Acres. In the first story Oliver is invited to join the Hooterville Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Haney tries to sell him a Hooterville Chamber of Commerce belt buckle, tie clip and the Chamber nail file. Oliver refuses but it turns out that he’s not even allowed to speak or vote at the meetings without those items. The chamber votes to bring in money by having a Hollywood movie come to town. Oliver tells them it’s absurd but his comment doesn’t count. Later Oliver is complaining to Lisa about how nothing grows on his farm even though he has followed all of the directions on the pamphlets from the Department of Agriculture. He decides to write another angry letter to Washington. Then a Mr. Gibson of the department brings the letter to James Stewart of the same department. Stewart for a long time has been thinking of making a documentary about the hazards faced by city people who take up farming and fail due to inexperience. He thinks Oliver Douglas would be a good subject. But when James Stewart calls up Sam’s store talking about making a movie, Sam, Fred and Doris Ziffel, and Newt Kylie all think it’s the film star Jimmie Stewart coming to make a Hollywood movie. They are very disappointed when Stewart arrives. Stewart points out to Oliver a lot of his farming mistakes, such as that he shouldn’t have planted corn if corn had been planted there the year before. Also that he shouldn’t have planted his soybeans until six weeks after liming the soil. Back in Washington the movie taken of Oliver’s farm is so ridiculous that Stewart burns it. 

            In the second story Oliver is so frustrated with Ralph and Alf having worked on his bedroom for nine months without getting anything done that he fires them. Then he hires an architect from Pixley to design a new home for him. Contract workers are hired but they refuse to cross Ralph and Alf’s picket line. Finally Oliver agrees to rehire Ralph and Alf and give them raises. But then the workers refuse again because Mr. Haney has an injunction to stop renovations. He says that the old house is a historical landmark built by the founder of that great (unnamed) state, who is also Haney’s ancestor. So now they can’t fix up the place at all. Also during this episode Lisa demonstrates that she can get Eleonor the cow to milk herself. She just puts a cup under her udder and asks for a cup. She turns it on like a tap at will. She also asks for butter but we don’t find out if Eleonor can actually make that as well. This episode was co-written by Elon Packard, who also co-wrote the George Burns One Man Show, 33 episodes of Wendy and Me, and the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show. He wrote one episode of Good Times, one of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, one of The Red Skelton Show, four of The Phyllis Diller Show, one of The Wild Wild West, one of My Three Sons, two of The Joey Bishop Show, two of The Real McCoys, one of Leave it to Beaver, and seven of The George Gobel Show.

October 27, 1993: I worked nine hours at the Ontario College of Art

Thirty years ago today 

            On Wednesday I worked from 13:00 to 22:00 at the Ontario College of Art.

Moldings Were Made for the Masking of Mistakes

            On Wednesday morning I finished memorizing “L'amour de moi” (The Love of My Life) by Serge Gainsbourg. I searched for the chords but the title accompanied by the English word “chords” turned up nothing. They might turn up when I look for “accords” and I’ll do that but I thought I’d see if they are posted for “L'amour de moy” the 15th Century song on which Gainsbourg’s song is based. From that search Ultimate Guitar had a set of chords from Nana Mouskouri’s version. Hers only has three verses and an outro and it turns out that the second and third verses of “L'amour de moy” are structured differently from Gainsbourg’s song and have different chords. It appears that Gainsbourg only borrowed the melody of the first and third verses and applied it to all of his verses. I assume others besides Mouskouri have done the original song and so there might be more chords for that online. I’ll look for them tomorrow. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the second day of two. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before breakfast. 

            I cleared away some of the excess, dried construction glue that squeezed out from under the Masonite that I glued down a few days ago. I went to the hardware store to but a small tube of more construction glue to glue the molding down to cover the gap between the Masonite and the bottom of the kitchen counter. I noticed that No More Nails was on sale at almost half the price of the same size tube of construction glue. I asked one of the floor staff if No More Nails is just as good for just putting on a molding and she didn’t have a clear answer, so I asked someone else. He said that it should be fine, plus it doesn’t need more than a couple of hours of being held in place. I asked as well about floor paint and found that the colours are limited. I could get white but not black. If I put another black paint down with the white floor paint for a checkerboard pattern it wouldn’t have a matching shine. I think maybe I won’t use floor paint then. He suggested I should shellac after painting but I think that might discolour the white part of the checkerboard effect. I’ll ask when I buy the paint. Anyway here's a before and after of the space without and with the molding.

           

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before lunch. I had Cheezit 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 half an hour chiseling quartz from a piece of the rock that I found six years ago. I knocked off the last of the amethyst and now there’s just the black quartz left. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:24. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my August 11 acoustic performance of the song “Le temps des yé-yé” I added a fade to black effect and tried a few other effects but for each try I had to close and restart Movie Maker. I tried various effects of making the video look like old film but that didn’t look good. I settled on turning to grey scale and that looked surprisingly good with the light that was coming in that day. I published it and then I selected a couple of images from the original video to later turn to grey scale as well and to use as thumbnails for the You Tube video. I’ll probably upload it to YouTube tomorrow. Then I’ll work on synchronizing the audio and video for the electric version I selected. 

            I downloaded a clip from Ziegfeld Girl starring Lana Turner that features women in elaborate costumes, including headdresses of stars, descending a spiral stairway in a Ziegfeld Follies style grand entrance. I converted it to WMV and imported it into the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song Megaphor. I edited out everything but the women. I’m going to try to reverse some of it as it ends with the camera moving back to show all of the women on the stairway and the curtain closing. I want the curtain to open and show all of the women and then pan in to show them closer. I only need about four seconds though so I have to cut a lot more out. 

            I cleaned and scanned another uncut set of colour negatives. There are shots of my daughter’s mother Nancy so I assume they are from early 1990. One reason is that I think my camera was stolen in early 1990. Another reason is that Nancy looks quite beautiful in the photos and so it must have been after I took her virginity because she got really quite attractive once she was getting fucked regularly. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episodes 8 and 9 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Eb falls for Betty Joe Bradley. Oliver asks why they never dated since they grew up together. Eb says she never asked him out. We never learn anything about Eb’s background. He acts as if Oliver and Lisa are his adopted parents. Eb wants Oliver to tell him about the birds and the bees. He tells Eb about first meeting Lisa and asking her out. But a few episodes ago we heard that they met during WWII when Oliver’s plane engine conked and he had to parachute into German occupied Hungary. In this story however they meet on a ship owned by her father that is crossing the Atlantic. He asks her for a date and they go to an expensive place where they get a horrible table near the kitchen and the waiter keeps thinking Oliver is ordering more champagne. He has to buy a candle for their table from the cigarette girl. Eb asks Betty out and she says yes. Oliver tells Eb not to let the girl decide where to go. Betty suggests a movie followed by a burger. When Eb says he’s not going to let her take advantage of him she calls it off. Oliver has to talk to Betty and smooth things over. The night of the date Oliver gives Eb some roses to give to Betty. But Eb comes home saying that the date was canceled because Betty had an allergic reaction to the roses. 

            In the second story Oliver has a different business suit for every farm chore. But Fred Ziffel, Newt Kylie and Mr. Haney discuss among themselves that it’s bad for Hooterville’s image for a farmer to dress that way. They say he needs to be made to conform. They decide to show him how ridiculous he looks by doing their farm chores in suits. Finally Oliver gives in and gets some overalls but then the farmers say he has to start wearing suits again because when their wives saw how good they looked in suits, they burned their overalls. Of course they’ll all be back in overalls next episode and this story will have been forgotten by the writers.

October 26, 1993: Spirit gave me shit for the erotic message I'd left on her machine

October 26, 1993

            On Tuesday afternoon I worked for sculpture at Central Technical School. Then from 19:00 to 22:00 I worked in room 352 at the Ontario College of Art for Chinkok Tan. I called Spirit and she gave me shit for the erotic message that I’d left on her answering machine. She said, “Don’t you ever leave a message like that on my answering machine again!” I think she was mainly upset because when she played the message on speaker there were other people in the room. Her reaction was hilarious but also unattractively prudish and it turned me off, so I never wanted to make love to her again.