Michael Greene

            On Tuesday morning I worked out the chords for the fourth verse of “Dis-lui toi que je t'aime” (That I Love You Now Tell Him) by Serge Gainsbourg. I think the rest of the verses have the same chords as the first verse so I might have it finished tomorrow. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar during song practice for the last of two sessions. Tomorrow I begin a four session stretch of playing my Martin acoustic. I audio and video recorded the session as I have since September 1 and will until October 15. I managed to get all the way through “Vomit of the Star eater” without a major mistake. When I tried it again though I fumbled a few takes before giving up. I made it through "Sixteen Tons of Dogma" twice but I always get the wrong chord in the last part. I do it better with the acoustic. 

            I weighed 87.45 kilos before breakfast. Getting back on my normal diet is already paying off. That’s the lightest I’ve been in the morning since September 12. 

            I weighed 88.55 kilos before lunch. 

            I took my bike ride an hour later than usual because I was going to Albert Moritz’s book launch at Flying Books on the way home. Before I left I started some potatoes boiling but forgot to turn them off. I rode to Yonge and Bloor, south to College and west to Flying Books at 784 College. Albert Moritz was there when I walked in and I went to the counter to buy his book, “Great Silent Ballad”, then I got Albert to sign it. He wrote, “True troubadour, poetic warrior, friend”. I found a seat and later Allen Briesmaster sat behind me. I thanked him for his advice about watching out for spelling errors when getting published by Ekstasis Editions because he was right. I had to really go over Richard Olafson’s layout with a fine toothed comb. I learned that whenever the book launch will be Allen will be part of it because Ekstasis published his book in June and there hasn’t been a launch yet. Allen took public transit all the way from Thornhill. I haven’t been on the subway for about ten years and I thought the extension to Thornhill had already been built but it hasn’t. Beatriz Hausner was the host and she got Albert to read poems based on questions she asked him about the book. I learned that this year is the hundredth anniversary of André Breton’s “Surrealist Manifesto”. 

            It was while I was sitting there that it occurred to me that I might have forgotten to turn the stove off. I was distracted by thinking about it all the time I was there. I thought it was possible that I’d turned it off but I was leaning towards that not being the case. 

            After the reading there was a long line of people waiting to buy Albert’s book. But I stepped in between signings and shook his hand before leaving. I was glad I was almost home already. I didn’t smell the smoke till I got to my hallway. There was no actual visible smoke but the odour was there. It took almost a whole box of baking soda to clean the stainless steel pot. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos at 20:24. I heated a chicken breast and some oven fries. I had the fries with the last of my gravy and the chicken breast while watching episode 16 of The Big Valley. 

            Heath is out counting cattle when he sees some vultures circling. He investigates and finds a dead steer. He gets off his horse to inspect it and he is shot, with the bullet creasing his temple. Three men come forward and the leader is called “Daddy”. The boys want Heath’s clothes and they are about to kill him when Daddy picks up the book that Heath was writing in. He sees 500 head of cattle listed, which means that he comes from a wealthy ranch. They take him back to their camp where two women are working. Daddy explains to them that they saved him from thieves. Daddy tells Allie Kay, the youngest woman, to look after Heath. Daddy figures they’ll get a reward for “saving” Heath. They slap his horse and then follow it as it runs home. When Daddy and his gang approach, Victoria recognizes them as Rawhiders. Daddy introduces himself as John Wesley Cade but says everybody calls him Daddy. They take Heath to his room. The men are all out on roundup except for Silas the butler and Johnson with his arm in a sling. Victoria says the men will be back shortly. Victoria gives Daddy $100 as a reward but he expected $1000. He hints that they have a broken wagon wheel and so Victoria offers them the barn for the night and a spare wagon wheel. Victoria sends Audra to get the doctor. There is a telegram from Nick saying they’ll be spending a week in San Francisco to rest from the cattle drive. Allie Kay is looking after Heath when he wakes up delirious. He thinks she’s someone named Lupe and speaks to her in Spanish, asking her to lie down beside him and kiss him. He pulls her down to him and kisses her and then loses consciousness again. The doctor arrives and asks about the poultice she put on Heath. She says it’s cloverwart and mare’s tail and the doctor is impressed. Daddy comes in and steals the doctor’s watch from his bag. The doctor tells Victoria and Audra that Allie is a good nurse but to clean her up. Allie delights in her first indoor bath and Audra gives her a pretty dress to wear. While snooping around downstairs Daddy finds the telegram from Nick and realizes the house is undefended. Allie tells Audra that Daddy isn’t her father. Her real parents were killed when she was four or five and the Rawhiders raised her. Victoria discovers that the telegram from Nick is missing and now she knows Daddy knows they are alone. Pinto tells Daddy they can loot the place and get clean to Canada. Heath wakes up and meets Allie. Daddy distracts everybody upstairs while his boys take all the guns from the cabinet. Two episodes ago the cabinet was locked. Johnson the hired hand with the injured arm enters the barn and Daddy stabs him. Then he says they’ll have to kill everybody in the house that night. Allie sees the gang through the window approaching the house with guns and she rouses Heath. He asks her to find out what’s going on and she learns they plan to kill everyone. She goes to the barn to get a pistol for Heath and brings it to him. Victoria finds the Rawhiders cavorting in her living room and confronts them. Daddy asks her to marry him and she says she has to think about it. She tries to sneak upstairs but he asks where she’s going. She tells him she can’t get married in her night clothes. Heath tells Victoria, Audra, and Allie to head for the barn. Pinto sees them leave. Daddy tells Pinto he can kill Heath now but when he goes upstairs Heath kills him. Heath climbs down the balcony but when he lands Copper hears him. He goes out on the balcony to shoot Heath but Heath kills Copper. Heath enters the barn but collapses. Daddy is about to kill him when Victoria shoots and kills him. Later the doctor hires Allie Kay as a nurse. 

            Allie Kay was played by the beautiful and talented Yvonne Craig, who played Batgirl on the Batman TV series. 

            Pinto was played by Michael Greene, who was a close friend of David Carradine. He supplied all the flutes that David played on his series Kung Fu. His TV debut was in Wanted Dead or Alive. His film debut was in This Is Not a Test. He played Deputy Marshal Vance Porter on the short lived series The Dakotas. He played Nubu in the Lost in Space episode “Space Circus”.

September 25, 1994: It was raining so we played inside

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday it rained and so my daughter and I might have played inside. I assume Nancy picked her up in the evening since I would have to work the next morning.

Nicolas Surovy

            On Monday morning I worked out the chords for the third verse and half of the fourth of “Dis-lui toi que je t'aime” (That I Love You Now Tell Him) by Serge Gainsbourg. After the fourth I think the rest of the verses have the same chords as the first verse. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. I audio and video recorded the session as I have since September 1 and will continue until October 15. I made it into the third verse of “Vomit of the Star Eater” before I started making major mistakes, so I consider that progress. “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” only took a couple of takes but I think the final chord was a little off. 

            I’ve been converting the enormous MP4 files from my camera videos to H264AVI and it has always made fairly good copies in a much smaller size. This morning I saw that a 19 gig file had been converted to a 45 gig file. I tried again with Total Video Converter but saw right away that it was going to convert it to over 60 gigs. I started a few more conversions of the same file and they were predicted to be a different size each time. Finally I found one that was going to be 5 gigs and went with that. 

            I weighed 88.75 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since last Monday. 

            At 14:00 I headed downtown to the U of T Grad School of Dentistry to hopefully get my stitches out. My original appointment had been for 14:45 but they called me a few days ago and changed it to 15:00. I got there around 14:45 and Dr. Xia saw me almost right away. He removed all the stitches but one. He booked me in two weeks to get the last stitch out. Two of his professors looked at it and said it was a successful operation. He said I could wear my denture and eat a less soft diet but to still avoid crunchy food. I still can’t brush or floss that top front tooth and have to instead apply Peridex with a Q-Tip. 

            I weighed 88.25 kilos at 16:00. 

            I weighed 88.95 kilos at 18:20. The same as last Monday evening. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:30. 

            I looked for some silent film clips that might fit with my line “Whenever I lay bare my heart it looks like the Grand Canyon park and women gasp at a desert hole that’s too deep to believe. They walk around they stop and stare, they leave their garbage everywhere but no one wants to stick around it’s the kind of place you leave”. The emphasis would be on the last line because that’s the line that needs to be filled right now for the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Me and Gravity”. I watched the Tom Mix film “Sky High”, which takes place in the Grand Canyon and I think I might be able to use something from that film. I’ll download it tomorrow.

            I cut up a whole chicken and roasted it. I had a leg with a potato and gravy while watching episode 15 of The Big Valley. 

            It’s Christmas and Jarrad had been assigned as the attorney for Maybelle Williams. She’s the girlfriend of Billy Joe Gaines who is a wanted criminal. She is in jail for having been found in the possession of $5000 and a bag of gold dust that were stolen by Billy and she is accused of having been his accomplice. The judge refuses to let her out on bail and so Jarrad asks him to release her in his custody. The judge reluctantly agrees but bets Jarrad he’ll regret it. They bet a box of fine cigars. On the way to the Barkley ranch Maybelle tries to escape. He catches her and takes her home. They know who Maybelle is but Jarrad didn’t warn them that he was bringing her there. Nick especially resents her presence because her boyfriend murdered a friend of his. But Jarrad explains that he just didn’t want to leave her in the cold cell at Christmas time and the family gives in. Meanwhile Billy Joe and his gang are about 120 km away and heading for Stockton to find Maybelle. That night Maybelle tries to sneak out but Jarrad happens to be downstairs reading. She tells him she was looking for a midnight snack and so he takes her to the kitchen. Later he sees her boots are on and that she was planning on escaping. She tells him she won’t try it again but the next morning she’s packed if he wants to take her back to jail. He says she can stay. She goes riding with Audra and they go to a corral where Heath is breaking a wild horse. Maybelle disagrees with his slow method of taming horses and after he leaves she mounts it. It throws her, Audra comes to help her, Maybelle runs for the fence but Audra stumbles, gets trampled and knocked out. Maybelle drags her free and at first rides away but then comes back to help her. Audra is okay but just needs a little recovery time. Maybelle is blamed for her injury and she won’t admit that she helped Audra and so Jarrad decides to take her back to jail. But then he confronts her before they leave. She remains defiant and so he dunks her in the horse trough. Then he says he can’t take her to jail in wet clothes. He tells her to get ready for dinner. The next day Maybelle helps to trim the tree and that night she joins them for caroling. On Christmas morning while everyone is exchanging gifts, Jarrad gives Maybelle the most beautiful dress she’s ever seen. Later, wearing the dress she goes out in the wagon with Victoria and Audra to call on the ladies of the valley for Christmas, leaving Jarrad home alone with the butler Silas. Meanwhile Billy Joe has found out where Maybelle is and heads for the Barkley ranch, leaving his gang on the edge of the property. Billy holds Jarrad at gunpoint while waiting for Maybelle to return. Then the gang intercepts Victoria’s carriage, get Maybelle out and send Victoria home. One of Billy’s men tells him they’ve got Maybelle and he leaves. Jarrad gets his gun and goes after them. He holds his gun on them but Maybelle rides in front of Billy and says she’s going with him. The next day Jarrad brings a box of cigars to the judge and admits he was wrong. But when he leaves he sees Maybelle and learns that she waited for Billy to go to sleep and rode away. Jarrad takes Maybelle to the judge to show him how wrong he was about her.

            Maybelle was played by Lynn Loring, who went on to become president of MGM/Universal Artists television productions. 

            Billy Joe was played by Nicolas Surovy, who is the son of renowned opera singer Risë Stevens. He attended Juilliard on the G.I. Bill after a term in Vietnam. His film debut was in For Pete’s Sake. He played Mike Roy on All My Children. He played Pe’Nar Makull on the Star Trek Voyager episode Time and Again.

September 24, 1994: My daughter and I went to the playground

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday I probably had my daughter for the weekend. The weather was nice so we would have gone to the playground.

Noreen Corcoran

            On Sunday morning I worked out the chords for the first two verses of “Dis-lui toi que je t'aime” (That I Love You Now Tell Him) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

           I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the second of two sessions. I audio and video recorded the session as I have since September 1 and will continue to do until October 15. I spent several takes on “Vomit of the Star Eater” until I got through to the second chorus without a major mistake, then I let it go and allowed myself to fumble the final verse. I made it almost all the way to the end of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” on the first take but fumbled a chord on the last verse. A couple of takes later I got all the way through. 

            I weighed 88.65 kilos before breakfast. 

            I weighed 89.35 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the early afternoon since last Sunday. 

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

            I weighed 88.5 kilos at 17:40. 

            Last night I was too tired to finish updating my journal before bed and so this evening I had to spend a couple of hours on it. I only finished when it was time for dinner. 

           I heated the rest of the soup I made last night with the ground sirloin chili and the hot garlic ramen. Tonight I added two eggs and had it with a slice of multigrain bread and a beer while watching episode 14 of The Big Valley. 

            Audra is out riding when she sees a train of covered wagons going across her family’s land. Then she sees them tear down a fence and move the wagons in. The leader puts up a sign that reads Kilkenny Farms on one of the fence posts. Audra rides in angry and tells him to get off Barkley land. He says they have paperwork to prove it’s their land. She knocks the sign down and when he tries to put it back up she starts whipping him. He pulls her off her horse, spanks her several times, puts her back on her horse backwards and slaps the horse to send it running while everyone is laughing. Audra storms home and asks Nick for the keys to the gun cabinet. He gives them to her but he and Heath decide to accompany her to see who she plans on shooting. The man who spanked Audra introduces himself as John James Callaghan and tells them they bought the land. Nick calls him a hooligan and Callaghan challenges him to a fight, which Nick gladly accepts. But Callaghan’s mother comes between them and persuades Nick to look at the papers. Victoria Barkley is in San Francisco with her oldest son Jarrad and Heath wonders if maybe they sold some of the land while they are there. Nick goes to check the paperwork in the office at home. Heath stays behind to rebuild the fence. Callaghan protests but Heath tells them if their cattle get through to the swamp they’re going to have to charge them for each cow. He builds the fence and goes home. He tells Nick he doesn’t think they’re squatters but rather honest people who made a mistake. He suggests they send a telegram to Jarrod in San Francisco to clear things up. They go to Stockton and see Callaghan turned down for credit. Heath gets them supplies on the Barkley account but Callaghan’s niece Sharon refuses to accept them. Victoria and Jarrod receive the telegram and send one back denying they sold the land. They decide to go home. Heath goes back to the Irish settlers and picks them some lambs quarters by the fence, which he says they can cook like spinach. Callaghan invites him to stay for dinner. Nick comes with the telegram confirming that they don’t own the land. Callaghan challenges Nick to a fight and it’s a pretty fake one which ends in both of them pretty much getting knocked out. Later Nick gets men with guns together to drive the settlers off. Heath rides out to warn them and reasons with Callaghan, who agrees they’ll go. Later Nick tells Silas to load up a couple of sides of beef and some flour and take it to them. The settlers are packed and about to move out but suddenly Callaghan says they’re not leaving. He grabs a shotgun and goes to confront Nick. He meets Victoria who greets him in a very calm manner despite the fact he has a gun. She explains that the agent who sold them the land is a known criminal who swindled them. He says he came to shoot Nick but she says he’ll want a drop before the serious work. She serves him whiskey and forces Nick to sit down. She tells Callaghan that he needs to find the swindler and get his money back and until they do they can stay. Under Nick’s protest she says he’s going to San Francisco with Callaghan. On the way they become friends. At the hotel where they stayed in Frisco Callaghan confronts the hotel clerk who introduced them to the swindler. Some men try to stop them from going upstairs and so Nick and Callaghan fight with them. Then we see Nick and Callaghan in jail. Jarrad arrives to bail them out and tells them the con man has been caught but has no money. Later the settlers are about to leave when Nick comes to offer them a different piece of land. He says it needs to be irrigated but if they work they could make something out of it. Callaghan is reluctant but Sharon accepts on behalf of everybody. Heath escorts them to their new home. 

            Sharon was played by Noreen Corcoran in her final television appearance. Her film debut was in Apache Drums. Her first TV role was in The Adventures of Kit Carson. She starred in The Girls On the Beach. She co-starred in the sitcom Bachelor Father. She retired from screen acting in 1965 to focus on theatre and dance.

September 23, 1994: I hung around Yonge Street before work

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday I posed all day at the Ontario College of Art and then I hung around on Yonge Street until it was time to head over to Parkdale where I worked for Paul and Sarah’s drawing session.

Martine Bartlett

            On Saturday morning I memorized the seventh verse of “Allons z'enfants” (Join the Ranks Kids) by Boris Vian and that’s half the song. 

            I worked out the chords for the intro and the first three lines of “Dis-lui toi que je t'aime” (That I Love You Now Tell Him) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. I audio and video recorded the session as I have since September 1 and will until October 15. I spent a long time trying to get “Vomit of the Star Eater” right. My goal right now is to make it through the second chorus without a major mistake and to worry about the third verse later. I don’t know if I’ve gotten a good take of that song anytime during this project so far. I almost made it through “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” on the first take, then redid it and made it through without any major mistakes. 

            I weighed 88.45 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I hitched my bike trailer and rode to the supermarket. A guy walking by complimented me on my trailer and told me I was smart. The grapes at No Frills were $3.17 a kilo so I got six bags. I also bought two packs of raspberries, bananas, detergent, salsa, Manchurian flavour ramen, a jug of orange juice, and two containers of skyr. After going through the checkout I remembered to buy milk, so I left my trailer there and went to get three bags of skim. 

            I weighed 88.05 before lunch. I had a slice of multigrain bread with margarine, five-year-old cheddar and a glass of low sugar iced tea. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. When I got back there were three bikes blocking the door of Popeyes. I guess people could squeeze by but it’s an odd place to park. Two nights ago the city finally replaced the bench on the corner in front of my place. 

           Several months ago one got wrecked by a truck and then it was replaced only to get ripped out by another truck. The corner is not a good place for a bench because of the big delivery trucks that back up and turn onto O’Hara to feed Popeyes.

            I weighed 88.6 kilos at 17:41. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:53. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Me and Gravity” I continued to work on synchronizing the old concert video with the studio audio. The song in that 1994 video is played more slowly than I played it later when I took up the guitar. I had to make cuts from the video after “Whenever I lay bare my heart”; “it looks like the Grand Canyon Park”; “and women gasp at a desert hole”; and “that’s too deep to believe”. Then the video and audio stay lined up for “They walk around, they stop and stare, they leave their garbage everywhere, but no one wants to stick around…” But while I’m singing “It’s the kind of place you leave” the camera has moved away from me and it’s focused on Tom Smarda. Since I’m still singing it’s not appropriate to have the camera on Tom. And within the context of this project it makes even less sense to single out Tom, since he’s not even in the studio recording. So next I need to find an outside video clip to fill up the timeline until the camera is back on me in the concert. 

            I uploaded today’s song practice video and reviewed the first 40 minutes of the September 10 video. “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” that day wasn’t too bad. 

            I added three cups of water to the ground sirloin chili that I made on Thursday. I mixed in two hot garlic flavour packs and brought it to a boil, then I added the two ramen cakes. I had two bowls with a beer while watching episode 13 of The Big Valley. 

            A logging engineer named Matt Todman and his wife Cinda come to stay with the Barkleys and to negotiate a project that he says promises to turn a five times profit after a big investment. He wants to build a flume for sliding logs into the river. Heath comes in and is brought over to meet Toddman, whose back is turned. Heath extends his hand but as Toddman turns to shake it they both recognize each other in a moment of shock, which is broken when Heath drives his fist into Toddman’s face. Jerrod and Nick have to pull him off because he wants to kill him. Heath tells them Toddman’s real name is Bentell. He was the warden of Cardison prison during the Civil War. Up until this point it’s never been mentioned that Heath had ever been in the Civil War. Heath was a prisoner of war for seven months until the war ended. He tells of food with maggots, putrid water and floggings for complaining about them. Prisoners died of exposure and others died because medical help was refused. Heath was among 740 soldiers fighting in New Mexico and half ended up in Cardison but less than 100 survived the prison. Victoria asks if he could really kill him now. Heath leaves to do some work. Bentell and Cinda are leaving but the rest of the Barkleys ask him to stay. Bentell and Cinda discuss it and apparently this has happened many times but this is the first time they’ve been asked to stay, so they do. Nick decides to send Heath with Bentell to work on the project because if someone else from Cardison tries to kill him Heath would recognize them sooner and be able to stop them. Heath refuses but Victoria tells him he has to have the guts to conquer the hatred or it will conquer him. When Heath and the Bentells arrive at the work site Matt introduces himself and tells the men who he really is so that anyone who wants to quit can do so ahead of time. Some of them do. Jarrod is hiring men for the project and gets attacked by some of the men who quit. Two other men come to his defense who happen to be brothers named Aaron and Gil Condon. Jarrod hires them. Heath helps Bentell screen the men and Heath turns down anyone he recognizes from prison. Heath also turns down the Condon brothers but Bentell says they can work in the construction camp. Later Bentell is riding between sites and someone takes a shot at him. Later still he’s at the site of the flume and below one of the large supports on the hill. Gil sneaks off to cut the rope. Heath sees it falling and jumps Bentell to push him out of the way. Heath catches up with Gil and Aaron. They remind him of the 18 prisoners shot during the prison break. Cinda goes to think Heath for saving her husband’s life but he says he’s sorry he did it and she hits him. Then she offers her husband’s side of the story. She claims he was more of a prisoner than any of the prisoners, held by huis duty. She says he couldn’t give what little food there was to the prisoners when his own men were starving. She says the prisoners fought each other like animals over food, clothing, places to sleep and even places to die. She says part of Bentell died with the men he had killed. She tells Heath to save some of his anger for the prisoner who informed Bentell of the escape plan. Then Bentell walks in and says the informer was Aaron Condon. He informed on the condition that Gil receive medical help to save his leg. He says the Condons don’t want him dead for revenge but to keep him from exposing them. Meanwhile Gil is still obsessed and now his plan is to start a forest fire. All the workers are sent to try and put it out. But it’s in several places. Heath got one section under control but another needs the help of explosives to create a fire bridge to stop its advance. Heath and Bentell get the nitro and start planting it. Heath catches Gil stealing nitro from the wagon. He tries to make him put it back but Gil sucker punches Heath and knocks him out. Bentell stops Gil from taking the notro and then goes to help Heath. But Gil goes to where the nitro is planted and tries to dig it up. Bentell drags Heath away while Aaron tries to stop Gil. Then a burning tree falls on them both and sets off an explosion that kills the brothers. Later after the flume is built Heath seems hunky dory with Bentell. 

            Cinda was played by Martine Bartlett, who earned a Masters Degree in Drama at Yale. She was active in theatre work for many years and made her Broadway debut in The Devil’s Disciple in 1950. Her television debut was on an episode of Robert Montgomery Presents in 1956. Her film debut was in Splendour in the Grass in 1961. She was nominated for an Emmy for her performance in an episode of Arrest and Trial in 1963. She co-starred in I Never Promised You A Rose Garden. She was a lifetime member of the Actors Studio.