Janet MacLachlan

            On Monday morning I finished working out the chords for “L'âme slave” (Slavic Soul) by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I’ll run through singing and playing it in French, then I’ll see if I need to revise my translation. 

            I searched for the chords for “La plus jolie fille du monde” (The Prettiest Girl in the World) by Serge Gainsbourg but no one had posted them. I worked them out for the intro and the first verse. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the second of two sessions and it stayed in tune for most of the time. It sounded great and was a joy to play for the first time in six months thanks to Alex Wood. 

            I called McClelland Insurance Brokers to ask about liability insurance. The person I spoke with was extremely helpful but not with a solution to my problem. She pointed out the flaw in the landlord’s offer to not renovate my place if I get liability insurance. He seemed to think that a million dollar liability policy would pay out to him, but it would pay to me. The broker told me one can’t get a liability plan by itself but it would be part of an apartment insurance package that she said I should have to protect my possessions. She didn’t understand exactly what the landlord was expecting and neither did I. She said that the landlord should submit his expectations in writing so they could be maybe interpreted if they make any sense. I thanked her and called Raja, who now says the offer is off the table and he’s going to go ahead with the renovations. He even said he would raise my rent by 20% afterwards, which I’m pretty sure isn’t legal. He continues to blame the bedbugs on me because I’m the one who complains about them. He thinks that if he renovates every apartment there will be no more bedbugs in the building. He ignores the fact that the last few times pest control was here they confirmed that I had no bedbugs whereas other units that he’d already renovated and that had fewer cracks in the walls had bedbug nests in their mattresses. 

            I filled out an appointment request form to Parkdale Community Legal Services to ask if there is a way to stop the landlord from tearing my home apart. They got back to me fairly quickly with an appointment offer for this Thursday at noon. 

            I weighed 86.6 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since June 14. 

            I weighed 87.35 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back I stopped at Home Hardware where I bought some clear silicone sealant for the base of the toilet and a box fan that was on sale for $28. When I got home I applied the sealant and then set up the fan under the mantle in the kitchen to provide extra circulation since I can’t open the deck door anymore. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos at 17:53. I haven’t been that feathery in the evening since April 13. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:11. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the Christian and the Lions studio recording of the Brian Haddon song “The Ballad of My Chest Cavity” I synchronized the video with the audio for the line, “keep on making love to you”. That kept them mostly lined up for the rest of the first chorus. But for the beginning of the second verse the video is ahead of the audio so I need to add some outside video to push it back. I looked for anthropomorphized animated human lungs but so far didn’t find what I was looking for. I’ll try again tomorrow. 

            I compared the song practice video of my Martin acoustic performance of “Laisse tomber les filles” on October 7 with that of September 5 and still find that September 5 is better. I compared October 11 to September 5 but September 5 is still on top. I compared October 13 to September 5 and the winner is September 5. If I upload an acoustic version of “Laisse tomber les filles” to You Tube it will be that one. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast beef while watching season 2, episode 8 of The Bill Cosby Show. 

            Chet has a different girlfriend in every episode that features a girlfriend. This time it’s an art teacher named Laura. Chet goes to her place of work to escort her to the beach but she’s busy with a student named Peter, who is finishing up a painting of some flowers that he will be entering in a contest, the winner of which gets a scholarship to art school. Chet impresses Laura when he mentions he’s friends with the famous artist Fletcher Rodenberry. Suddenly Peter paints a black X through his painting because he doesn’t like it. Laura asks Chet to take Peter to see Rodenberry. Chet calls him but he doesn’t remember Chet at all from the navy ship they served on, which carried 4,600 men. But Chet brings Peter to see him anyway and Rodenberry looks at his portfolio. There is a nude female model that we see from the back and Chet keeps trying to shield Peter from looking at her. Rodenberry asks Peter to draw a circle and then tells him that Leonardo Davinci said that if you can draw a circle the rest is easy (there’s no record of him saying that). But Rodenberry observes that Peter can draw a circle. He tells him to only paint what he wants and not what people tell him to paint. Peter paints a nude portrait of Laura and she is upset. She tells Chet to have a talk with him. Chet tells him there is nothing wrong with the painting but he didn’t have permission to use Laura’s likeness. Peter’s final painting is a nude portrayal of Chet as a discus thrower. Chet doesn’t see it until the day of the show and wants it removed. Laura refuses because it’s Peter’s chance at a scholarship. Then the judges give Peter first prize. Chet buys the painting from Peter for $20 because he thinks he can take it down now but Laura tells him that prize winning paintings have to go to the state capital for the state contest. If it wins there it is entered in the nationals. If it wins there it goes to Paris for the world competition. 

            Laura was played by Janet MacClachlan, who earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology in 1955. She made her professional debut in two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1965. She played Charlene Masters in the Star Trek episode The Alternative Factor. Her film debut was in Uptight in 1968. She played a supporting role in the film Sounder. She won an LA Emmy in 1981 for her performance in Voices of Our People: In Celebration of Black Poetry.

June 24, 1995: My daughter and I went to the wading pool

Thirty years ago today 

            On Saturday I would have had my daughter with me and we probably went to the wading pool at Kew Gardens.

Lynn Hamilton

            On Sunday morning I worked out the chords for the fourth and fifth verses of “L'âme slave” (Slavic Soul) by Boris Vian. There is only one verse left to do. 

            I finished memorizing “La plus jolie fille du monde” (The Prettiest Girl in the World) by Serge Gainsbourg. Tomorrow I’ll search for the chords but I doubt anyone has posted them and so I’ll start working them out. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first time since Alex Wood repaired and upgraded it. It was out of tune after each of the first two songs but then it settled in and stayed in tune for about five songs, then after tuning again it was in tune for the remainder of the session. It sounded good as well and it’s a lot quieter than the Epi. 

            I weighed 87.15 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I washed two pairs of shorts and put them out on the roof to dry in the hot sun. 

            I sanded the eastern wall in the bathroom from the underside of the upper shelf to the top of the lower shelf. I sanded the entire underside of the right upper shelf. On my next free day I’ll sand the area between the upper and lower shelf on the northern wall. 

            Normally on a hot day like this I would have opened the door to the deck to let the air circulate. But the landlord says it’s a fire door and my neighbour Benji complains if I open it, even though he used to prop it open all the time. Also since I no longer have friendly second floor neighbours it’s no longer pleasant to have my apartment door open. I’ve got to buy some more fans. 

            I weighed 86.6 kilos before lunch, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since June 13. I had saltines with five-ear-old cheddar and a glass of iced tea. 

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

            I weighed 85.95 kilos at 17:55, the same as the evening of June 12. 

            I was caught up with my journal at 18:41. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the Christian and the Lions studio recording of Brian Haddon’s song “The Ballad of My Chest Cavity” I added two clips from the 1937 animated short “Swing Monkey Swing”. At the beginning of the first chorus, while Brian is singing, “It’s all I can do, it’s all I can do…” I’m scatting “Babadabadoobap babadoobabbap”. I inserted a clip of a monkey swinging from the left towards the viewer while scatting and then swinging down to the right. Then I added another clip of the monkey swinging and scatting back up from the right and then down to the left. Altogether it really looks like the monkey is singing my part. At that point the video is behind the audio and so I worked on deleting bits of the video so it will line up with the audio for the line, “keep on making love to you”. The video was still a little behind when I stopped for supper. 

            I compared the song practice video of my Martin acoustic performance of “Laisse tomber les filles” on October 1 with that of September 5 and I still think September 5 is the best so far. There are three more to compare. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara sauce, basil pesto, Genoa salami, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episode 7 of The Bill Cosby Show. 

            Mrs. Carter has asked for Chet’s help because her son Raymond has run away from home. His father has been in the hospital for a year and a half and they don’t have much money for Raymond to have the things his friends have. Also Raymond’s hero is the character of Bronson from the TV series Then Came Bronson in which the hero travels around the country on a motorcycle. Chet drives around looking for Raymond and finds him on the side of the road with a sign that says “Frisco”. Raymond doesn’t want to get into the car but when Chet stops, five hippies climb in. Chet tells them to get out but they are oblivious. They tell him to take them as far as he’s going. He drives three meters forward, then stops and tells them, “That’s as far as I’m going.” They thank him and say “Every little bit helps”. Finally Chet offers to drive Raymond to Ventura and so he gets in. Chet tells Raymond he used to run away every Tuesday when he was a kid because his mother made brussels sprouts and okra every Tuesday. He said his parents got so used to it that they just accepted it so he got bored with running away. Chet stops in a park but then Raymond starts running. Chet catches him and asks if he could postpone running away for two weeks because he has two tickets to a Jimi Hendrix concert (This was filmed while Hendrix was still alive but aired a month after he died). Raymond asks, “Who’s Jimi Hendrix?” Chet suggests they both run away together. They are on a back road and an old man in a pickup truck gives them a lift to his place. He tells Raymond he ran away when he was 11 and it was the best thing he ever did, because now he is rich. He offers Raymond work painting his fence and Chet helps him paint while talking to him. Raymond gets paid $6 and takes Chet to lunch. Afterward Chet and Raymond say goodbye. A motorcyclist offers Raymond a ride to Oakland but he can’t get his bike started. Raymond is worried that Chet won’t be able to get a ride unless he has a kid with him, so he helps him out. Raymond thinks his mother must be worried and decides to go home. He says he wants to stop and buy her some paint for the kitchen. 

            Raymond’s mother was played by Lynn Hamilton, who started in Chicago community theatre. She made her film debut in Shadows in 1958. She made her Broadway debut in Only in America in 1959. She spent three years with the New York Shakespeare Festival. She played Donna Harris, Fred’s girlfriend on 22 episodes of Sanford and Son. She co-starred in the TV series Dangerous Women. She played Verdie Foster on The Waltons.

June 23, 1995: I spent the day writing

Thirty years ago today 

            On Friday there was no work so I probably spent the day writing.

Rupert Crosse

            On Saturday morning I worked out the chords for the third verse of “L'âme slave” (Slavic Soul) by Boris Vian. 

            I could have memorized the third verse of “La plus jolie fille du monde” (The Prettiest Girl in the World) by Serge Gainsbourg but I made a push to try to nail down the entire song and didn’t quite get it. I should have it all in my head tomorrow. 

            I weighed 87.05 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since last Saturday. 

            Around midday I rode to No Frills where I bought three bags of green grapes, two bags of red grapes, two packs of organic raspberries (that were the same price as and in better condition than the non-organic raspberries), a watermelon, some bananas, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a pack of cheddar sausages, kitchen garbage bags, spoon sized shredded wheat, a container of skyr, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips.

            I weighed 87.1 kilos at 14:00. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of lemon iced tea. 

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

            I weighed 86.8 kilos at 17:30. 

            At around 18:30 the landlord came by with a contractor and walked him through my place telling him to rip out all my beautiful antique walls and put drywall everywhere. He even wants to cover my wood floors with vinyl. He also said he’d remove the big mirror in the kitchen that adds so much light and a sense of space to my home. Those changes would break my heart. He told me if I were to get liability insurance for $1 million he wouldn’t do anything. At first I said that was absurd but when I looked into it I saw that it might not be that expensive: between $450 and $2000 a year. If I can get that and he agrees to keep his grubby hands off my place it would be worth it. It would still be less than paying rent on a place this size somewhere else. I’ll look into it on Monday. 

            Later I called Raja and told him I was going to try to get the liability insurance. He said he was okay with it but he’s going to try to prove I’m a liability and if the insurance company is still okay with it he doesn’t mind not spending the money on the renovations. Anyway I figured I’d call him so he doesn’t go ahead with the contract. He said he’d give me five days. If it doesn’t work out at least I tried.

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

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the Christian and the Lions studio recording of Brian Haddon’s song “The Ballad of My Chest Cavity” I started editing the video montage of musical Tom and Jerry cartoons. I had almost half of it done when Movie Maker crashed but only for that section. I decided to copy all of the Tom and Jerry bits and to paste them into another Movie Maker project. I’ll publish that Tom and Jerry project, then import it back into “Ballad of My Chest Cavity”. I’m pretty sure that’ll work. 

            But it didn’t work. It froze in the exact same places. I tried rendering the whole converted WMV file into a video in Movie Maker but that froze in the same place as well. Finally I used Winx to convert the original downloaded MP4 file to AVI and that worked. I finished editing all of the clips I wanted. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara sauce, pesto, Genoa salami and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episode 6 of The Bill Cosby Show. 

            Chet, his mother, his brother, his Aunt Bertha and several others attend the reading of the will of Chet’s Great Aunt Harriet. The others each receive an item of value but Chet inherits all the rest of her possessions including a prized Abraham Lincoln letter that was handed down to her from her mother. The letter’s value is estimated to be $15,000 and that was in 1970, which would be $124,000 now. Harriet’s lawyer who read the will is Felix E. LeBlanc and he immediately injects himself into Chet’s life with investment plans for the money for the sale of the letter. Chet however just wants to spend the money on a high end car. Felix says that’s sudden death and that putting the money in the bank is like striking a match to it. He suggests buying a Mexican racehorse, investing in raw alcohol which increases in value ten times after seven years, or a pistachio nut farm. Meanwhile the letter is somewhere in one of several crates and boxes that are delivered to Chet’s place. They go through them over a few days until finally in a Bible they find a letter. But the letter is actually addressed to Lincoln and not from him and it is worthless. They accept that it was a wild goose chase but then they read the letter and it refers to having received a letter from Lincoln and so the show ends as they start looking for the letter again. 

            Felix was played by Rupert Crosse, who studied acting under John Cassavetes. He made his film debut in Shadows in 1958. His TV debut was on Johnny Staccato. For his performance in The Reivers in 1969 he was the first black actor to be nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. He co-starred with Don Adams in the short lived sitcom The Partners. He was one of the actors to whom Jack Nicholson dedicated his As Good As It Gets Academy Award. He was a lifetime member of The Actors Studio. He married the daughter of Cab Calloway.

June 22, 1995: I posed for the Ontario College of Art

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday night I posed from 18:30 to 22:00 in room 214 at the Ontario College of Art.

Darlene Conley

            On Friday morning I worked out the chords for the second verse of “L'âme slave” (Slavic Soul) by Boris Vian. The third and fourth verses might have the same chords as the first and second. 

            I memorized the second verse of “La plus jolie fille du monde” (The Prettiest Girl in the World) by Serge Gainsbourg. The third verse is almost the same as the first except for two lines and the fourth verse is almost the same as the second except for two lines, so I might have the song nailed down on Saturday. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. I had to unlock the Floyd Rose system and tune four of the strings then after that it stayed in tune. 

            I weighed 87.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I sanded the drywall compound I’d used in the area under the top shelf in the bathroom that’s still to the right of the bottom shelf, including the underside of the shelf and the sides of the brackets. On Sunday I’ll try to do the rest of the area under the top shelves that meet at the northeast corner including the top of the bottom shelf. Maybe by the end of next week I’ll be finished with the sanding until I add a second coat of compound in a few places. 

            I weighed 87.15 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on the way back. The grapes were all too squishy and the cherries are from the USA and so I didn’t get any of either. The BC cherries should be in season soon. I bought three bags of Egyptian oranges, a pack of raspberries, some bananas, a bag of wedge oven fries, two packs of Full City Dark coffee, a tub of olive oil margarine, a jar of salsa, three bags of skim milk, and a lint roller. 

            I weighed 87.05 kilos at 18:21. 

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

            In Movie Maker I edited the cartoons “One Froggy Evening” and “Swing Monkey Swing”. Parts of the latter might be perfect for the scat part of the chorus of “The Ballad of My Chest Cavity”. Other parts where the monkeys are wearing clothing and singing jazz might be racist because the implication seems to be that they are portraying black people. But the segments in which the monkeys are naked might be okay.

            I compared the song practice video of my Martin acoustic performance of “Laisse tomber les filles” on September 21 with that of September fifth and so far September 5 is still the best. I compared September 25 to September 5 and September 5 is still on top. I compared September 27 to September 5 and September 5 is still ahead. 

            I made a fresh batch of gravy with drippings from the Australian eye of round roast. I had some with a small potato and a slice of roast beef while watching season 2, episode 5 of The Bill Cosby Show.

            Chet rushes to get ready for a date but finds he is out of shaving cream. His date says she is going to call in ten minutes and he runs to the local market to get the shaving cream. But an old man butts in front of him at the cashier. He hurries home where the phone is ringing but by the time he reaches it his date has hung up. Then the old man Mr. Kane walks in to tell Chet he got his shaving cream mixed up with his whipped cream. Kane knows where Chet lives because they are across the street neighbours. He comes in and sits down uninvited in Chet’s living room. He invites Chet to come over to his place for dinner. Kane’s wife died 23 years ago and he lives in a room with no kitchen but plugs a hot plate into the light socket. After dinner Chet wants to leave but Kane gets him to play a game of chess. The next day Kane catches Chet about to leave the market in his car and Kane says he can give him a ride. But Ken hears something wrong in Chet’s engine and opens the hood. When Chet says he neither has a wrench or a screwdriver Kane asks for a key. Chet hands him his ignition key which Kane fumbles and loses inside. Then Kane walks home. Kane visits him again that night. Chet tries to make it clear he doesn’t want company but Kane says he can entertain himself and sits down to watch TV. Chet lies that he wants to go to bed but Kane just says he’ll keep the volume down. Kane keeps coming over every night. Chet tries to hook Kane up with his landlady but they just argue. The next night Chet has a dinner date at his place but Kane comes over again and thinks the dinner is for him. Chet finally tells him he doesn’t want him there and he leaves, but Chet feels bad and later comes over to tell Kane he’s boring but only because he sees him every night. He says once a week would not be boring and they arrange to meet and play chess every Wednesday night. Kane is happy with that. 

            The market cashier was played by Darlene Conley, who made her stage debut at 15 in a touring production of The Heiress. Her film debut was in The Birds. Her TV debut was on Ironside. She played Rose DeVille on The Young and the Restless, Warden Edith Hopkins on Days of Our Lives and Trixie the mature sex worker on General Hospital. She started playing Sally Spectra on The Bold and the Beautiful in 1989 and continued with the role until she died in 2007. She was nominated for two daytime Emmy’s for her performances. She is the only soap opera star to be honoured with a wax figure at Madame Tussaud’s.