David P. Harmon

            On Friday morning my left arm was a little worse again after having improved considerably two days before. 

            I memorized the first verses of “L'araignée du soir” (The Spider of Night) by Boris Vian and “Une Fille à la mer” (A Girl Out to Sea) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the last of two sessions. Tomorrow I’ll begin a two session stretch of playing my Kramer. 

            I weighed 87.15 kilos before breakfast. 

            I started my weekly filling up of the kitchen sinks and while the water was running I wanted to start preparing to apply the second coat of primer in the bathroom. First though I wanted to take some photos of how the bathroom looks with one coat. After I snapped the photos I was changing into my painting clothes when I realized I’d forgotten about the water and the sink was overflowing again. I rushed to unstop the sink and sop up the water. It had just started overflowing and there was a stream heading west to the hallway. I used a lot of sponge towels and got everything dry. I was worried that I’d caused another leak or flood down at Popeyes but when I went downstairs there was no evidence of any falling water problem. It looks like I caught my absent mindedness in time this time. Maybe the $1400 I paid in damages last time went towards a more secure ceiling. I may have to stop trying to multitask when water is filling up a sink. By the time I’d cleaned up my mess it was too late to work on any painting today and so I’ll aim for Sunday. I’ll keep the shower curtain off so I can start sooner. I weighed 87.25 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I noticed when I came back that there was a little stream of water that seems to have run from the southeast corner of the restaurant. I guess it took my sink overflow a couple of hours to work its way down through Popeye’s ceiling. It didn’t look that serious and didn’t disrupt business. Later I looked and the stream was gone. The next day though I was about to head to the supermarket and it looked like the same stream was there again. But then I realized that it was not a stream of water but a reflection in the door’s glass of a long strip tar that had been used to patch the sidewalk. So it looks like there had never been a stream of water on Popeye’s floor and so maybe my overflow didn’t leak downstairs at all. 

            I weighed 86.1 kilos at 17:50, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since August 11. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:15. 

            I put my camera on the tripod and stuck the legs firmly into the laptop compartment of my backpack with some shirts stuffed in around it. I tilted the camera down about twenty degrees, started recording, donned my backpack and then took my bike out to ride around Parkdale. I headed west and when I looked at my reflection in a store window it looked to me like the camera wasn’t tilted enough so I stopped to angle it down a little more. I rode on the street to Sorauren and then east to Dufferin, then back to O’Hara. Then I rode west again but slowly on the sidewalk to Sorauren and then on the south side I rode back along the sidewalk to Dufferin. Then I took the sidewalk back to O’Hara. I crossed the street and this time rode west on the south side to Sorauren, then east on the north side to Dufferin; then I crossed and went back to my place through the graffiti gallery that is the Milky Way and went home. I watched the video on my camera and I think the best part is from rolling through the Milky Way. I’ll upload the video tomorrow and see what I can piece together from it for my “Paranoiac Utopia” Movie Maker project. 

            I made a new batch of gravy out of the drippings from the pork ribs I grilled yesterday. I had some with the good parts of some rotten potatoes (I never saw such poor quality potatoes go to market when I was growing up on a potato farm) and three pork ribs while watching episode 17 of The Brady Bunch. 

            Carol sees Greg uncharacteristically just lying on his bed. His brothers have gone to the movies but he doesn’t feel like it. Carol takes his temperature but there’s nothing physically wrong with him. Mike discovers that Greg has failed his latest Math test even though he’s usually an A student in Math. Then Greg goes to the girls’ bedroom to ask Marcia what girls look for in boys. She says they should be rugged like Steve McQueen; dress groovy like Gene Barry; be romantic like Paul Newman; be innocent like Dustin Hoffman; be a man of the world like Dean Martin; but most importantly what is really in these days is a mustache. Greg tries but fails to grow a mustache. Alice finds a love letter that Greg wrote to someone named Linda lifting phrases from Shakespeare and Robert Burns. Carol and Mike realize that Greg is in love with someone named Linda and that’s why he’s so distracted. Carol checks the school yearbook and finds there’s not one Linda there. Then we see Greg being kept after school by his Math teacher so she can give him some personal attention and now it’s obvious that his Math teacher is Linda and he’s deliberately failing so he can be close to her. Marcia comes home with a new friend named Linda and Carol thinks that’s the one. But then Greg comes home and obviously doesn’t know her. Then Mike gets a letter from Linda O’Hara, Greg’s Math teacher, asking for a meeting and he and Carol realize the identity of Greg’s love interest. Mike meets with her and learns that her boyfriend is parked outside waiting for him. Mike recognizes him as star baseball player Wes Parker. He goes to bring him in and then Greg meets and recognizes him as well. Suddenly Greg is just as star struck as he was love struck and forgets about Linda. Wes tells him he’ll give him two tickets to a game if he gets an A in Math. The problem is solved but later we find Greg on his bed this time mooning over his substitute Biology teacher. 

            This story was written by David P. Harmon, whose first film credit was co-writing Johnny Concho in 1956. He wrote the movie Rock All Night in 1957. He wrote The Big Beat, Last of the Fast Guns, and Call to Danger. He co-wrote the movie L’intrigo. He wrote three episodes of Mannix, 12 Episodes of The Man Behind the Badge, 10 episodes of The Jane Wyman Show, 7 episodes of Studio 57, 34 episodes of Gilligan’s Island, 6 episodes of The Brady Bunch, and 6 episodes of Harper Valley PTA. He wrote the Star Trek episodes "Eye of the Beholder" and "A Piece of the Action". "A Piece of the Action" is the story of the Enterprise discovering a planet where the inhabitants have a society based on Chicago gangster culture of Earth’s 1920s.

August 23, 1995: I performed on the Art Bar reading series open stage

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday evening I performed on the open stage of the Art Bar reading series at the Csarda Hungarian restaurant on Elm Street.

David Alexander

            On Thursday morning my left arm was back to aching more after the improvement the day before. 

            I posted “The Year in Reverse”, my translation of “L'année à lenvers” by Boris Vian on my Boris Vian and my personal Facebook pages. I searched for the next Vian song on my list: “Apprenez-moi la chance”, but it’s one of the many Vian songs that never got recorded. The next song however, “L'araignée du soir” (The Spider of Night) is one I already had text for but the text didn’t seem accurate. I had previously copied the lyrics from a site but they weren’t fully correct. For instance in the YouTube audio by Magali Noel when she sings “New York”, what I have is “Nouillorque”. One can get the transcript of a YouTube file sometimes and I copied the one for this song. It got “New York” right but these transcripts are not always true either. I’ll sing along with the YouTube transcript tomorrow to hear if it fits. 

            I looked for the next Gainsbourg song on my list that didn’t get translated and in the 1971 file I found “Bathing Beauty and Sympathy” and “Une fille à la mer”. Both songs were sung only on television, the first by Jane Birkin and the second by Petula Clark. There is no recording or text for “Bathing Beauty and Sympathy” but there is a video for “Une Fille à la mer” (A Girl Out to Sea). I checked out the YouTube transcript but it didn’t look right. I tried transcribing the YouTube audio with Vizard but it arrived fragmented. I have 30 free minutes with Sonix, which seems to transcribe better but those only apply to files uploaded from one’s computer while for YouTube links one has to do an upgrade. So I used Clip Grab to download the YouTube audio and then uploaded it to Sonix. The result seems pretty accurate. I’ll start memorizing the song tomorrow. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the first of two sessions and the B string went out of tune quite a few times. I’m thinking the guitar might need some fret work done. 

            I weighed 86.95 kilos before breakfast. 

            At 12:05 I left for Top Cuts at Yonge and St Clair. It took me 40 minutes to get there, which is pretty good. When I walked in Amy told me that she’d be ready for me in 25 minutes but two minutes later said she could take me. When she blew the cut hair off me I opened up the back of my shirt and asked her to blow there too because I always end up with hair down my back after a haircut. 

            I rode down to Yonge and Isabella to meet my friend Brian Haddon for lunch, on me this time. We shared a pitcher of Creemore, he had the steak and mushroom pie and I had the tuna melt with fries. When we got together in the middle of July he was about to go in for a colonoscopy. It turns out they found a mass. He’s meeting with the surgeon to plan a treatment next week. He feels pretty confident everything’s going to be fine. He says he had an aunt with the same thing and she went on to live into her mid 90s. I hope everything’s fine. We might not get together in September if he has to start treatment. 

            Even though I would be heading south I walked Brian up to Yonge and Bloor. On the way a long haired guy walking with a very attractive woman called my name. I didn’t recognize him even after he started telling his wife about me being a poet and hosting the Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage. I was embarrassed but finally I asked his name. Now I was even more embarrassed because it was John Styles who was a regular at the Orgy for a long time. I’d never seen him with long hair before. He was carrying an open bag of President’s Choice Decadent Chocolate Chip cookies and handed it to me because they are decadent. I said I thought he was living in England and he says he still is but came to Toronto for a wedding. 

            At the corner of Yonge and Bloor Brian promised he’d keep me updated about his cancer treatment. It was a sad ride to Freshco where I bought three bags of green grapes because the Canadian cherries were all too soft. I also got two packs of Canadian blueberries, some bananas, a box of spoon sized shredded wheat, a lint roller, and a pack of Sponge Towels. When I got home it was well after 17:00. I weighed 86.35 kilos at 18:00. It was too late to take a siesta so I just worked on my blog while dozing off at the computer. It would have been a good evening to shoot that Parkdale video that I’ve been planning but it was dark by the time I was caught up in my journal at 20:30. 

            I grilled two racks of pork ribs and had three while watching episode 16 of The Brady Bunch.

            Carol and Mike read their horoscopes for fun and Mike’s reads “A strange woman will soon come into your life”. The next day a very eccentric woman does walk into Mike’s office. She is Beebe Gallini, a famous cosmetics tycoon who has hired Mike’s firm of architects to design her new factory. Since Mike is the best architect at the company she wants him behind the project. She says she will give him total control but it has to be pink. But then when she sees his sketches she says they don’t express her personality. She decides it should look like a powder puff and it should look fluffy. This is a very big contract for Mike’s company and so he spends a lot of time on it. He is about to take his sons fishing on a Saturday when Beebe calls and says she needs to discuss some new ideas. So Carol takes the boys fishing and gets seasick. She is starting to get jealous because of all the late nights Mike is spending with Beebe. One night Beebe comes to the Brady house unannounced and says she’s changed her mind and instead of a powder puff the factory should be a compact that opens up. Mike tries to tell her that the engineering of such a building would not work because one can’t put a hinge on a roof. Then Peter’s model plane gets away from him and hits Beebee’s head from the back, undoing her coiffeur when she is on her way to an important event. Then Bobby accidentally shoots her with a squirt gun. Beebe decides to look for another architect and Mike is relieved. 

            This episode was directed by David Alexander who directed the 1952 Broadway revival of Pal Joey, which at the time had the longest run of any revival. He directed several episodes of My Favourite Martian. He directed the Star Trek episodes The Way to Eden and Plato’s Stepchildren. Plato’s Stepchildren is the one that featured Kirk kissing Uhuru. It was the first time on US television that a black and white couple ever kissed on the lips.

August 21, 1995: I was late to host my open stage because of work

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday I posed from 17:30 to 23:00 for Michael John Angel’s painting course at 2738 Dundas Street West. As a result I was late arriving in the Art Bar of the Gladstone Hotel to host my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage.

Burt Styler

            On Wednesday morning my left arm was feeling a lot better and I had to reach further to feel pain. 

            On my Christian’s Translations blog I published both “The Year in Reverse”, my translation of “L'année à lenvers” by Boris Vian and “Hot Off the Press” my translation of “Notre Dernière Chance” by Serge Gainsbourg. I posted the lyrics for “Hot Off the Press” on Facebook. Tomorrow I’ll post “The Year in Reverse” on my Boris Vian and my personal Facebook pages. 

            I looked for the next Gainsbourg song on my list that didn’t get translated and in the 1971 file I found “Bathing Beauty and Sympathy” and “Une fille à la mer”. Both songs were sung only on television, the first by Jane Birkin and the second by Petula Clark. So far I can’t find a recording of either of them but I’ll look again tomorrow. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune. Tomorrow I’ll begin a four session stretch of playing my electrics. 

            I weighed 86.7 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since July 30. 

            Around midday I finished applying the first coat of primer in the bathroom. The metal brackets for the shelves don’t hold latex very well and screwhead sized spots of rust have seeped out from some of the screws. The bathroom looks a lot better than before but I think it’s going to need more than a second coat of primer and more than half the 3.7 liter can has been used up. 

            I weighed 87.2 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of iced tea. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back and wore long pants for the first time this summer. It was also the first time this season that I haven’t won sandals and the first time riding my bike with my new Blundstones.

            I weighed 87 kilos at 17:50.

            I remembered I was out of beer so I put my boots back on and went over to the liquor store for a six pack of Creemore. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:18. 

            I had hoped to start shooting my video of Parkdale from my bike this evening but it was too cloudy. So I started a Movie Maker project for the studio recording of my song “Divorce the Weather” because there is both a studio recording of the song and a concert video of me performing it. The only other studio recording I have that is yet to be made into a video is “Tropic of Ulcer’ and in the same concert video I also do that song. So I’ll create a Movie Maker project for that one when I’m finished with “Divorce the Weather”. I almost had the audio and the video synchronized when it was time to stop. 

            I started a 2024-10-07 Song Practice” Movie Maker project and almost had the audio and video lined up when it was time for supper. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, a chopped New Zealand grass-fed beef burger, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode 15 of The Brady Bunch. 

            The boys and the girls have been collecting trading stamps since they were small in what used to be their separate families. Now that they are part of one clan they begin fighting over the stamps because each gender group has different goals. The boys want a rowboat and the girls want a sewing machine. Alice donates a drawer full of hundreds of trading stamps. The boys and girls argue over custody of those until Mike suggests they simply divide them up. When they have a hard time doing so in a simple fashion Carol suggests they just put all of the stamps together and buy one thing for the entire family. They agree but the girls can’t think of anything that the boys would approve of and vice versa. Finally they decide to let Carol choose. Carol chooses from the catalogue a grandfather clock but Mike tells her the boys would not like it. He suggests a pool table but gets the same reaction from Carol. The next morning the newspaper announces that the Checkered Trading Stamp Company will be going out of business in one month and so a decision has to be made quickly because the store might run out of merchandize as people rush to use their stamps. After negotiation the boys and girls decide to return to a choice between the rowboat or the sewing machine and to make the choice the prize in a contest between the two groups. Marcia suggests swimming but Greg reminds her she’s a swimming champion and it has to be a contest of equals. They finally decide to take turns adding to a house of cards and the first group whose member knocks the house down loses. The card structure gets very large until when Greg is adding a card, Tiger the dog jumps him and he knocks the tower over. The girls win the decision and go to the Checkered company to claim their prize. They come home with a package and the boys are not thrilled until the girls reveal that they bought a colour TV for everyone. 

            The writer for this episode was Burt Styler, who after WWII wrote for the Kate Smith radio show. He co-wrote the screenplays for Call Me Mister and Boy Did I Get the Wrong Number. He wrote 24 episodes of The Carol Burnett Show. He won an Emmy award for writing the All In the Family episode “Edith’s Problem”.

August 21, 1995: I posed for Michael John Angel

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday I began a week of posing for Michael John Angel’s art classes at 2738 Dundas Street West. I worked from 7:30 to 11:00.

Lester Shorr

            On Tuesday morning I think my left arm was a little more improved. The most difficult exercise is when I loop a bicycle tire tube to each foot and then pull up with each hand while trying to straighten my arms. I was able to go a little further this morning before it hurt. 

            I finished editing “L'année à lenvers” (The Year in Reverse) by Boris Vian in my Christian’s Translations blog and only need to post a video next. 

            Also in my Christian’s Translations blog I worked on preparing “Notre Dernière Chance” (Our Final Chance) by Serge Gainsbourg for publication. I probably would have finished it if the power hadn’t gone off while I was working on “L'année à lenvers”. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the first of two sessions and it stayed in tune the whole time. 

            I weighed 87 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I brought the stepladder in and worked on finishing painting the first coat of primer on the ceiling and upper walls in my bathroom. I got 3 / 4 done and then put more paint in the tray. By the time I was done with the areas that I needed the stepladder to reach it was cleanup time but I still had lots of paint in the tray and so I kept on painting. I did most of the rest of the bathroom but didn’t remove the mirror or the stuff from my lower shelf so I left that for later. I painted the tops of the upper shelves and most of the undersides. I painted the door and some of the frame before the paint in the tray ran out. I had lunch an hour later than I planned. I think tomorrow I’ll finish the areas that I left unpainted today before I take a shower. I won’t need the roller or the tray to finish the shelves and the door frame. 

            While painting I was listening to Blur and my neighbour Benji was banging on his wall. I turned it down a bit but if he would communicate like a human being we could establish the exact volume that’s comfortable for him. 

            I weighed 86.7 kilos at 14:30. 

            I took a siesta at 15:30 and got up at 16:45 when it was too late to take a bike ride. 

            I weighed 87 kilos at 17:15. 

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

            I worked on the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Paranoiac Utopia”. I established where on the audio timeline the first of the “doo”s in the finale is sung and then worked out how much later it appears on the video timeline. I calculated the difference and deleted that much from the video timeline when I’m not in view. But the finale runs a bit longer in the concert video and so I established when the final “doo” is in the audio timeline and the video timeline, worked out the difference and cut that much out as well. I got the whole song synchronized and then saved the project as Christian Solo. Then I went back to edit the Paranoiac Utopia project but found I’d somehow deleted an important part of the video. That part however was still there in “Christian Solo” and so I resaved it as Paranoiac Utopia and it was fine. I deleted the other songs that come after Paranoiac Utopia in that project. Now I’m ready to go out tomorrow evening and shoot some video of Parkdale to add to the Paranoiac Utopia project. 

            I compared the song practice video of my September 14 performance of “Coiffure by Eliza” to that of September 2. Even though September 2 is a lower quality video it does look and feel better. I compared September 18 to September 2 and on September 18 I have a very visible strand of hair on my shirt, plus September 2 looks better anyway. I compared September 20 to September 2 and although September 2 looks better I do play the song better on September 20. I compared September 24 to September 20 and I think September 20 looks better. I compared September 30 to September 20 and though September 20 looks better I think I have more presence and play a bit better on September 30. I compared October 4 to September 30 and I think I look better on September 30 and usually when I look good I sound good. I compared October 6 to September 30. I think I’m going to upload September 30 because it’s the best one with the Gibson but I’ll see if October 6 is the best with the Kramer. I compared October 10 to October 6 and I think October 10 is a bit better. So I’ll upload both September 30 and October 10. 

            I had a potato with the last of my gravy and a chicken leg while watching episode 14 of The Brady Bunch. 

            Mike delays an important meeting to help Marcia understand her Math homework. After he leaves she sees in the paper there is an essay contest to nominate the Father of the Year. She decides to write an essay about Mike. She gets up in the middle of the night and in looking for a quiet and private place to write she goes into Mike’s study, which is off limits. When he comes home and catches her there she tells him it’s a secret what she was writing. He lets her off easy and only gives her an extra day of chores. The next day she focuses on writing the essay and puts off her chores. When he asks for an explanation she says she can’t explain and so he grounds her for one week. After he leaves she crumbles up her essay in anger but gets up in the middle of the night and continues writing it. She finishes it but then realizes that the next day is the deadline for entries. So she sneaks out to mail the letter. When Mike and Carol check on the kids later they see Marcia coming in through the window. Once again she refuses to explain and so Mike tells her that the family is going skiing on the weekend, all except for her, and she loves skiing more than anyone else. She is very upset and cries. In a few days a TV crew comes to the house and the director tells Carol that Mike has won an award but they want it to be a surprise. They set up in the home and Mike is surprised when he arrives to find he is Father of the Year and that was Marcia’s big secret for which he’d punished her. 

            The cinematographer for this episode was Lester Shorr, who won an Emmy for his work on the Medic TV series. He was also the cinematographer for the sitcom When Things Were Rotten. He was the director of photography for Take the Money and Run. He was president of the American Society of Cinematographers from 1975 to 1976.