Tom Tryon

            On Sunday morning I memorized the eleventh verse of “Allons z'enfants” (Join the Ranks Kids) by Boris Vian. There are three verses left to learn. 

            I worked out the chords for most of the verses and the instrumental of “L'amour en soi” (Love in Essence) by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have it done on Monday. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice. I audio and video recorded the session as I have for the last 36 days and as I will continue to do for another nine. It was a pretty good session and I got through both “Vomit of the Star Eater” and “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” in one take each. I didn’t finish much ahead of the usual because I ended up doing two or three takes of a lot of the other songs. 

            I weighed 87.55 kilos before breakfast. 

            I weighed 89 kilos before lunch. I had a bowl of cheese sticks and a glass of low sugar iced tea.

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

            I weighed 88.05 kilos at 18:12. 

            I was caught up on my journal just before dinner at 20:30. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce, five-year-old cheddar and an egg. I had it with a beer while watching episode 28 of The Big Valley. 

            Audra goes to the swimming hole without her bathing habit because she thinks she’ll be alone. She doesn’t notice that there is already a man in the water. She has stripped down to her very modest 19th Century undergarments but before she can go further he speaks up to praise the view. She runs behind the bushes and calls for him to leave. He says he needs his clothes. She tells him to get them and then as he starts to wade to shore she realizes that she will see him naked when he emerges and so she tells him to stop. Then her brothers and some local ranchers ride up and both Audra and the man stay concealed. The men discuss the approaching drought. It has caused a panic and the bank has closed so none of the ranchers can get their money. When Audra comes home the man she saw in the water is there as a guest and introduced to her as Scott Breckenridge. It turns out he is a wealthy financier and Jarrod will be giving him a tour tomorrow. Victoria tells Audra they call Scott “The Midas Man” because he can make success out of any situation. The next day three neighbour ranchers come to the Barkleys to ask for a loan. Nick says they’ve been hit by the bank failure as well and need the money for payroll and expenses. Breckenridge arrives and offers to loan them the money for ninety days against their land at 12% interest, which is twice what the bank would charge. The next day Audra puts on a very alluring and fashionable dress and goes to town to meet Scott although she pretends to him that she has an appointment with her dressmaker. They end up spending the day together. As the drought kicks in the other ranchers begin to resent the Barkley family’s access to private water while still wanting to use the common watering hole. The ranchers try to make rain with dynamite but it causes the watering hole to become sulphurated. In Scott’s deal with the ranchers he wins either way but he would have no qualms about taking their land if they fail to pay. Scott gives Audra a very expensive pearl necklace and she is sure it means he is going to propose. The next day the two have a picnic and he says he wants her to go away with him. She misconstrues it as a proposal but he clarifies that it isn’t. He wants her to be his mistress and she is insulted and disappointed. She says she never wants to see him again. The drought has become devastating for the ranchers. They beg Scott for an extension but he refuses. When Audra sees how desperate the situation is for the ranchers she goes to Scott and offers herself in exchange for an extension on their loans. He says he’ll think about it and she says he’s despicable. The ranchers see Audra leaving the hotel and think that the Barkleys are in on Scott’s deal. They go to the Barkley home to confront the family. Scott walks in and tells them the Barkleys have nothing to do with it. He tells them he’s extending their loans because he’s accepting Audra’s offer. She goes to pack her things. Then Scott tells Victoria he has no intention of letting Audra keep her promise. He’s rewarding Audra for her courage by extending the loans. Then he says goodbye. Shortly after that the drought ends. Audra is spoken of as having made a brave sacrifice but it’s really not a sacrifice the way it would be if someone were to risk their life. It’s not really a sacrifice if part of you really wants to do what you are offering. 

            Scott was played by Tom Tryon, who was a radio specialist in the US Navy during WWII. After the war he joined the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts as a set designer and stage manager. This eventually led to acting. He graduated from Yale with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He made his Broadway debut in 1952 in Wish You Were Here. He worked as a production assistant for television. He made his film debut with a co-starring role in The Scarlet Hour. In 1958 he starred in the series TV Texas John Slaughter. He was in Marilyn Monroe’s final (unfinished) film, Somethings Got to Give. He starred in Screaming eagles, I Married a Monster from Outer Space, The Cardinal (for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe), Moon Pilot, Colour Me Dead, and The Glory Guys. He co-starred in In Harm’s Way, Three Violent People, The Unholy Wife, and The Story of Ruth. He was executive producer of Johnny Got His Gun. He wrote the horror novel The Other, which became a best seller and then a successful movie, which he produced. He gave up acting to become a very successful author. His books Dark Secret and Harvest Home were both made into movies. His last novel was Night Magic.

October 7, 1994: Adina and I drank wine and fell asleep in each other's arms

Thirty years ago today 

            On Friday I posed from 9:00 to 16:00 at the Ontario College of Art and got my first paycheque of the season. I bought a bottle of wine and Adina came over. After drinking it we fell asleep on the couch in each other’s arms.

Katherine Justice

            On Saturday morning I worked out the chords for the second, third and fourth verses of “L'amour en soi” (Love in Essence) by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice. Now that I know the hum is unavoidable as long as my neck pickup is single coil I was able to just go ahead and play through it. I audio and video recorded the session for the thirty fifth day and will continue for ten more. There are only four more sessions of the project in which I’ll be playing the electric and so it’s too late to order a humbucker. But now that I know I need one I’ll order it ahead of next year’s recording project. I dealt with the hum on the Kramer instead of playing the Gibson because I wanted to do some recording while playing the tremolo bar. I had to do several takes of “Vomit of the Star Eater” to get a tolerable one. It just took a couple for “Sixteen Tons of Dogma”. 

            I weighed 87.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            At around midday I headed down to No Frills. The grapes were on sale for $2.18 a kilo but only one bag had firm ones. If I run out I can do a price match with the No Frills price at Price Chopper before Thursday. I also bought two packs of raspberries, a bag of two artisan naan, dental floss, Basilica sauce, Triscuits, a jug of orange juice, a jug of low sugar iced tea, and a container of skyr. 

            I weighed 87.9 kilos before lunch at 14:39. I had Triscuits with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of low sugar iced tea. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride but on Saturdays during the recording project I get to the supermarket later, have lunch later, and take my siesta a later and so it was too late to go all the way downtown. I rode to Bloor and Dovercourt and headed home. That’s a half an hour. 

            I weighed 87.85 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:09. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Me and Gravity” I finished editing the old concert video of the second instrumental. The concert video of the instrumental was about half a minute longer than in the studio. I cut out the extra parts and then lined it up with the audio for the beginning of the last verse when I sing, “But some days my feet hit the ground…” But the rest of the line, “with my fate turned the right way around” jumps ahead of the video. So now I need to find some outside video, preferably from silent films, to insert into the timeline and push the concert video back. Maybe the scene from Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times in which Chaplin gets sucked into the mechanism of the factory machine. 

            I uploaded today’s song practice video. I reviewed another ten minutes of the September 12 video. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce, a fence in the middle made of cheese sticks and five your old cheddar, then I dropped an egg inside the fence. I had it with a beer while watching episode 27 of The Big Valley. 

            Nick’s girlfriend Melanie Deland is visiting and being shown a new game that is currently all the rage in San Francisco on the first pool table in the Big Valley when there is a visit from Nick’s old army commander Jock McLean. He announces that they have located the lost Barkley riverboat The Monarch and he’s been put in charge of the salvaging it to recover the million dollars in government gold it was carrying. The viewer sees close up that Melanie is troubled by this news and she faints. Nick takes her home where after Nick is gone she hears that her father Cyrus Deland is having a nightmare. When she wakes him she tells him about the Monarch. He tells her to contact Peter Doolan and to tell him to call a meeting of the Circle. Cyrus used to be the head of the Barkley shipping line. Later the chest is hoisted from the boat and opened but it is full of lead bricks. Doolan arrives at Cyrus’s home and the other members of the Circle are already there. One of the members is worried about hanging as aside from the gold, twenty three men went down with that ship. Doolan says they need a scapegoat who can’t portray them and suggests the late Tom Barkley. Cyrus protests because it could result in the Barkley estate having to pay back the money but the rest of the circle agrees to Doolan’s plan. Doolan is the publisher of the Stockton Eagle newspaper and he begins his plan with the headline “Tom Barkley Implicated in River Monarch Sinking”. The result is that many old friends begin to shun the Barkleys. Melanie avoids Nick. Nick and Heath go to Doolan’s club and start a fight with him and his friends. Jock has been assigned the investigator of the affair. He examines Tom Barkley’s records and there are many deposits with no indication as to where they came from. Victoria explains that her husband had businesses in five states. Contracts were not as formal in Tom’s day and between men of honour there was no contract at all. Jock’s investigation reveals that the ship was sabotaged. Jarrod finds a newspaper clipping that references The Confederate sympathizing Knights of the Golden Circle, some of the members of which had access to the gold and a motive to steal it. Those members were living in Stockton and included Peter Doolan and Cyrus Deland. Nick confronts Melanie and she denies that her father would know anything on the subject but in her emotional state lets it slip that Doolan wouldn’t know either, when Nick didn’t ask about Doolan. The Circle meets again and Doolan wants to know where the gold is hidden but Cyrus refuses to tell. Doolan tries to have Nick killed so Melanie can’t be tempted to tell him anything. That night in Stockton Nick is shot by Doolan and he and another Circle member try to make it look like a robbery. He is about to finish Nick off when Jock sees it from his hotel window and fires to chase the assailants away. While Nick is recovering Melanie comes to see him. She tells him her father was involved. She says Cyrus offered Jock a trade of the gold for amnesty. Cyrus takes Jock to the gold but when it is uncovered Jock kills him. Then he covers the gold again. Nick arrives and Jock tells him Cyrus tried to kill him after leading him to where he claimed the gold was but there was none. Then Nick sees and smells smoke from one of Jock’s cigars coming up from below the ground. Nick tries to walk away but Jock shoots him. He's going to finish him off but can’t bring himself to do it and so he stays to help him and allows himself to be caught. 

            Melanie was played by Katherine Justice in her first TV appearance. She was Miss Ohio of 1960. She graduated from Carnegie Tech Drama School and then studied at the Hubbard Playhouse. Her film debut was in The Way West. She guest starred in the TV movie Prescription Murder, which is the first Columbo story starring Peter Falk. She played Sheila Hogan on Falcon Crest. She co-starred in the TV series Dangerous Women.

October 6, 1994: Marie and I had lunch and held hands

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday morning I posed at Avondale Alternative Secondary School (AISP). After work I went to Van Houttes on the Esplanade to meet Marie who I hadn’t seen in several months. She was about half an hour late. She bought me lunch and we were there for a couple of hours holding hands and talking. I worked that evening from 16:00 to 19:00.

Bruce Dern

            On Friday morning I worked out the chords for the first verse of “L'amour en soi” (Love in Essence) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            At the beginning of song practice I plugged in my Kramer that just came back from the shop but there was a hum coming from the amp. When I switched on the distortion it was five times worse. I switched to my Gibson and there was no hum whatsoever with or without distortion. The Gibson sounded better although it’s still going out of tune quite a bit. I had to do several takes of “Vomit of the Star Eater” to get a decent one. It took two or three takes to get a tolerable version of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma”. I managed to make better use of my volume pedal on “Leave the Naïve Alone”. Usually I start with my foot on the pedal because there’s an instrumental intro but up until today I couldn’t coordinate to step on the pedal later in the song to do the other instrumental. This time I managed by putting my foot there on the previous verse so it would be ready when the time came to do it. 

            I weighed 87.85 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around 12:30 I headed for Li’l Demon with my Kramer and saw Gian on the street a little past Lansdowne. He said he was just delivering a guitar so I went ahead to his shop. It was still open and there was a woman there eating a salad. Gian came a few minutes later from the back. I told him about the humming problem and he said it hums because I have it switched to the neck pickup, which is a single coil pick-up. He said all single coil pickups hum and he demonstrated with several guitars. It seemed strange to me because I never heard a hum before but maybe it’s because I’ve been playing my Gibson which has no humming at all. He said the Gibson doesn’t hum because it has humbucker pickups. I asked if I could replace my single coil neck pickup with a humbucker and he said absolutely. He said he doesn’t sell them but I could get one in town for about $100 and he’d install it. Looking it up I see there’s a Kramer “Eruption” neck humbucker that I can get but if I want it in black I need to buy it online.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride but it was sprinkling and got a little heavier as I headed downtown. I decided at Bloor and Brunswick to head south. I went to Harbord and then west to Ossington, south to Queen and then home. I made it before I got wet. 

            I weighed 87.5 kilos at 17:45. 

            While hanging my bike up I noticed the thermostat in the hall went dead. About a year ago I put in two rechargeable AAA batteries so I assumed they needed to be recharged. I put them in my charger and it didn’t take long at all. I put them back in the thermostat and the digits woke up. I still have the heat off but it won’t be long before it will need to be switched on sometimes. I’m going to buy a humidifier to protect my guitars before the heat comes on. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:00. 

            I changed the A string on my Gibson. The only one I had was a little bit thicker than the old one so I hope it’s all right. I need to buy more strings. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Me and Gravity” I worked on synchronizing the old concert video with the studio audio for the fourth chorus. As with most of the song the concert video during that chorus drags slightly behind the audio so I had to cut out little bits to line them up for the lines “In the end”; “It’s all between” and “and gravity”. That brought me to the last instrumental before the final verse. The final instrumental at that 1994 El Mocambo concert is almost thirty seconds longer than it was in the studio. I cut out all the parts that don’t show me, including the parts that focus on Tom Smarda, who is not in the studio audio. Most of the instrumental just shows me dancing while the band is playing and I chopped out a few seconds of that. It doesn’t really matter what I delete in that section as long as what’s left over doesn’t look choppy. When I quit for the night there were nine seconds of the instrumental left to cut from the video. I’ll finish that part tomorrow and then deal with the last verse. 

            I uploaded this morning’s song practice video but I didn’t have time to review any more of September 12. 

            I had a potato with gravy and an end of a pork tenderloin while watching episode 26 of The Big Valley. 

            Victoria and Heath head out to open up the family fishing lodge, but even as they are leaving, the camera shows the wheel on their wagon is cracked. After a few hours of travel they find that the spring thaw has left a deep, muddy trench they need to cross. The horses get stuck and so Heath gets out to push. It’s at that point that the wagon wheel breaks, tipping the wagon, weighed down with heavy supplies on top of him. He can’t pull free and Victoria is not strong enough to lift the wagon. She rides one of the horses bareback in the direction of home to get help but on the way sees a man in the bushes. She asks him for help but he refuses. Victoria rides back to Heath and we see when she leaves that the man is wearing the leg irons of someone from a chain gang. Victoria returns to the wagon to get a rifle, then she goes back to confront the man who’d refused to help. She finds him trying to break his chains with a rock. Meanwhile two bounty hunters are also tracking Harry Dixon. Victoria points her gun at him and says she’s going to make him help. He says he can’t walk with the leg irons on and so she shoots and breaks the chain. She forces him to walk ahead of her despite the fact that he is in pain from the leg irons. He keeps on trying to take a break but she pushes him on. Meanwhile Heath is slowly sinking in the mud as he lies on his back and he’s trying hard to stay awake or else he’ll die. Dixon is wanted for murder but he says it was self defence and it was the only man he ever killed. Victoria does not care right now if he is innocent. Heath has to scare a wolf away with fire from his lamp. The bounty hunters can be heard approaching and Victoria is distracted long enough for Dixon to tackle her. They roll off the trail and Dixon grabs the gun so now he is in control. He tells her about how he fairly beat some bounty hunters out of their money in a poker game. When they attacked him later to get their money back he killed one of them. He says his mother and then his father abandoned him. He ran into his mother in a bar years later trying to pass for someone much younger by wearing a lot of makeup and working as a saloon girl. She denied knowing him and even bore false witness against him when he was accused of murder. Dixon then tells Victoria she can go but as she’s leaving he decides to help her after all. But he can barely walk because his ankle iron is cutting into his leg. He risks being heard by the bounty hunters and shoots off the iron. They make it to where Heath is and Dixon is able to clear some of the heavy supplies off him. Then he lifts the wagon while she pulls Heath free. The bounty hunters approach but Dixon makes it to the bushes. Victoria tells them she hasn’t seen Dixon. She asks for their help but they say they don’t have time. They ride away and Dixon runs in the opposite direction. 

            Dixon was played by Bruce Dern, who was trained by Elia Kazan at the Actors Studio. He made his film debut in Wild River in 1960. In The Cowboys he became the only man to kill John Wayne on screen and says he received death threats because of it. He co-starred in the original Broadway run of Sweet Bird of Youth. He starred in Smile, The Incredible Two Headed Transplant, Silent Running, Nebraska (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), and Tattoo. He co-starred in The Trip, The Great Gatsby, Coming Home (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), Black Sunday, The Driver, That Championship Season, The Burbs, Last Man Standing, Emperor, The King of Marvin Gardens, Support Your Local Sherrif, Diggstown, The Hole, and in Alfred Hitchcock’s final film Family Plot. He co-starred in the TV series Big Love. His ex-wife Diane Ladd, his daughter Laura and himself are the only family to received stars on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame in the same ceremony. His autobiography was called, Things I Probably Said But Shouldn’t Have.

October 5, 1994: Adina's mother told me I was the most sophisticated performer in the place

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I posed at Central Technical School from 12:30 to 15:00 and then at the Ontario College of Art from 16:00 to 19:00. After work I headed straight to the Bloor Street United Church for the Fat Albert’s open stage in the basement. Adina was already there when I arrived and she was smoking as much as she could before her mother got there. Her mother came just as I was about to perform. With Steve Lowe backing me up on guitar I did either “Me and Gravity” and “Angeline” or “Spider and the Fly” and “Mooning the Matriarchs/Pooning the Patriarchs”. Adina’s mother enjoyed it and said that I was the most sophisticated person in the place. After she left, Steve performed. Then Adina and I walked while she smoked to Albert’s Hall for the open stage there. I screwed up again on “Mooning the Matriarchs/Pooning the Patriarchs”. I walked Adina to the bus.

David Sheiner

            On Thursday morning I searched for more chords to “L'amour en soi” (Love in Essence) by Serge Gainsbourg. But none have been posted other than the ones I found on La bôite a chanson (Song Box) yesterday. I worked them out for the intro and the first line and I hear entirely different chords than those posted. Also while the set I found has just two chords all the way through, I’m hearing four. 

            I weighed 88.45 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since September 23. 

            Yesterday I sent an email to Gian at Li’l Demon Guitars to inquire about the progress on repairing my Kramer that I brought in on August 23. Last night there was a response that my guitar has been ready for a month. He had said he was going to email me but now wrote that he’d called me several times. I don’t turn on the ringer on my phone and so I wouldn’t have heard it. I checked all the calls I received since August 23 and none were from the phone number on his website. There were also no text messages or voice mails from him. Today at around 12:30 I went there and brought my Gibson along. Gian fixed the switch on the Kramer and reversed it so it’s down for the neck pickup. I only use the neck pickup and before when I was strumming I would accidentally hit the switch to the bridge pickup. He charged me $70. I also had him look at my Gibson to find out why it’s going out of tune so much. He discovered that my bridge is sitting 180 degrees from where it should. The big grooves were holding the small strings and the narrow grooves were holding the big strings. He turned it around and also made a few other adjustments including raising the action a bit. I paid him $80 in cash. We agreed that he should only contact me by email from now on. I would have liked to have played my Kramer sometimes during this year’s recording project, which only has twelve days left. 

            I weighed 88.6 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on my way back. Their red grapes were over $6.50 a kilo but I found a price match with No Frills where they’re only $2.18 a kilo so I bought seven bags. I also got two packs of raspberries, bananas, two backs of five-year-old cheddar, cream cheese, and a pack of Full City Dark coffee. 

            I weighed 88 kilos at 18:45. 

            I got an email from Richard Olafson telling me that my book is being printed and that he’ll be sending me my ten author’s copies soon. He said he gives authors a 40% discount for any additional copies. I told him I would definitely buy more at that rate when my copies are gone. He also said he’s having the launch on November 24. I assume that will be at The Supermarket in Kensington Market but I asked for confirmation so I can promote it properly. I also need to know how much time I’ll have on stage. 

            I was caught up on my journal just in time for dinner at 20:40. 

            I had a potato with gravy and the end of a pork tenderloin while watching episode 25 of The Big Valley. 

            A carnival style variety show has come to Stockton and the owner Mr. Mortenson has staged a street demonstration. He introduces the main attraction, a singer named Liberty Keene as being known as the songbird of Sacramento and tells them they can hear her tonight. Heath is in the audience and seems to recognize her. Another man in the audience who appears to be drunk calls out, “Let’s hear something now!” Mortenson tells him they can’t do the whole show on the street. The drunk insists on hearing a sample, then he pulls out a pistol and says, “Are you gonna start singin or do I start shootin?” He shoots the feathers that are decorating her hair four times before Heath jumps him. Then Heath is told it’s all part of the act and the shooter is introduced as The Great Ambrose the sharpshooter. Heath sends Liberty a note inviting her to dinner after the show. It turns out that Liberty and Heath were childhood friends and when she hears his story of becoming part of the Barkley family she compares it to Great Expectations. Then she reveals to Heath that she is actually married to Ambrose. Heath walks her home and at her door Ambrose steps out of the shadows, somewhat drunk and pulls his gun. He says he never kills but could place a bullet so life is not worth living. He tells Heath that his wife has a passion for young, rich men but she always comes back to him. Liberty and Ambrose go inside and shut the door. Inside Ambrose is hitting Liberty and she screams. Heath breaks down the door. Ambrose smashes the lamp and puts the room in darkness. Shots are fired. The sheriff happens to have heard the shots and enters to find Heath with his gun drawn and standing over Ambrose’s dead body. He says, “I killed him”. Liberty says to Heath, “Don’t look like that darling. It was the only thing you could do”. Heath is arrested on suspicion of murder. The next day Jarrod bails him out and plans to defend him in court. Heath goes to Liberty and insists she stay with his family until it’s all over. As the trial unfolds the papers are eating it up and the public is enjoying Barkley privilege being undermined. Then Liberty says she killed Ambrose and that in the darkness Heath didn’t see her fire the shot. District Attorney Archer challenges how she could have hit Ambrose in the dark. She says she’s a very good shot. He asks her to demonstrate her marksmanship but her hand is shaking and she misses. Later Jarrod learns from Mortenson that Liberty really is an expert shot. Jarrod gets permission from the judge to exhume Ambrose’s body to remove to bullet that killed him. They already have a bullet from Heath’s gun and the two bullets are placed on each side of a scale. If the scale balances then it means Heath’s was the only gun fired. But the killing bullet is lighter. Liberty realizes she has been exposed as the killer. She grabs a gun and shoots out the light, then runs to the street. She gets in a wagon and Heath goes to her. She can’t shoot him and lets it drop. Then she faints in his arms and it turns out that she has been mortally wounded but I don’t see how. Shots were fired after she shot out the lamp so maybe she was hit but there was no indication of that as she ran for the carriage. She gives a very poorly acted death speech. It’s a really stupid ending with the prosecutor offering to let the Barkleys beat him up but Jarrod offering to take him fishing while Heath laughs. 

            Archer was played by David Sheiner, who made his TV debut in Tom Corbett, Space Cadet in 1950. He made his Broadway debut in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter in 1958. He made his film debut the same year in The Mugger. He played Roy in the film The Odd Couple. He played Guido in The Stone Killer.