Madlyn Rhue

           On Saturday morning my left arm was feeling a lot better again. It’s weird how it seems to bounce back and forth from day to day. 

            I memorized the second verse of “Paris d’papa” (Papa’s Paris) by Serge Gainsbourg and translated lines one to four of the first verse. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the first of two sessions and it went out of tune a lot. 

            I weighed 86.05 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since August 27. 

            Around midday I went to No Frills where they still had Canadian cherries but I had to find five bags with the fewest soft ones. While I was doing that the cashier Winta was returning some shopping baskets to the entrance. She gave me a big smile and asked if I was going to get some grapes. I told her that I wouldn’t because I try to avoid products from the United States and she was surprised. I tested the Canadian watermelons but they didn’t sound good. I bought two packs of raspberries, a basket of nectarines, a pack of Canadian cheddar, mouthwash, some kitchen bags, a container of sea salt, three bags of 1% milk (because they had a later expiry date than the 0%), two containers of plain skyr, one container of berry skyr, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips. I did a price match on the raspberries because they are a dollar cheaper at Freshco. My groceries cost $123.35. 

            I weighed 87.05 kilos at 14:19. I had whole wheat saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of iced tea. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. Traffic was crazy with cars suddenly turning every which way. On Richmond I was trying to pass a guy on a rental bike. I was right up beside him but he wasn’t giving me enough room to get by although I called out “Passing!” several times. Finally he moved over. 

            I weighed 86.5 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:13. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Paranoiac Utopia” I edited a little more of the video I shot on August 22. Now it’s down to 7 minutes from 63. I then went to the concert video and partitioned all of the parts that have other people in them. Tomorrow I’ll start cutting the August 22 video into segments that match the length of the partitioned parts and I’ll paste them into the concert video to replace those I marked off. 

            I grilled five cheddar sausages, then I made pizza on multigrain sandwich bread with marinara sauce, tomato pesto, two sliced sausages, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode 7 of Checkmate. 

            An oil tycoon named Whitney Thorne is about to make an expansion that will ruin the business of smaller oilman and former partner, Edward Scott, by cutting off his supply of crude. Shortly after that a station wagon almost runs Thorne over. Thorne’s daughter Irene hires Checkmate to prevent her father from being murdered. Thorne is certain that Scott is behind the attempted murder. The Checkmate team learn that Thorne also owns a station wagon. Thorne’s alcoholic son David says there can’t be more than 5,000 people that would want to kill his father. He adds, “Too bad he wasn’t a better driver”. Within minutes someone starts shooting at Thorne from outside his office. A car is heard speeding away and Jed finds a high powered rifle that was tossed away (Why would a failed assassin just throw evidence like that for people to find?). Hyatt finds paint on the Thorne station wagon matches scrapings from the bridge where the attempted hit took place. Don learns that Scott was on a plane when the attempt happened. Don goes to see Scott who is glad to hear of the murder attempt. He says if an attack is successful and the killer is caught, he’ll get them the best lawyer he can find. After Don leaves we see that Thorne’s chauffeur Perkins is in Scott’s office and that they are both involved in the plot to kill Thorne. Scott says Thorne has to die before the market opens on Monday or he’s through. Irene tells Jed she couldn’t kill her father because she doesn’t hate him and one can’t hate someone one feels sorry for. Jed finds someone just planted a bomb in Thorne’s office that is set to go off at 9:30 the next day. Hyatt analyzes it and discovers it’s fake. Thorne decides to challenge Scott to a one on one fight to the finish. He decides to do it in the boardroom at Thorne Tower and asks Perkins to get the word out. Before they leave, Perkins knocks out Jed and ties him up in a closet. Don later hears him banging and frees him. Jed remembers hearing about a planned showdown with Scott at the tower. Don figures that both Scott and Perkins are working together to kill Thorne. Perkins worked for both Thorne and Scott in the old days. Scott may have been on a plane during the car attack but drove back to fire the rifle. Thorne is at the tower but Scott is with a rifle on a nearby roof. He fires and misses. Don gets there and struggles with him but Scott falls to his death. Perkins pulls a gun on Thorne. He says he’s been investing in Scott Oil all these years and he’s not going to lose everything. Perkins is about to fire when Jed arrives. He is startled and only hits Thorne’s arm. Jed takes him out. Shortly and unrealistically after that David gives up drinking and Thorne is taking over Scott Oil to give to David. 

            Irene was played by Madlyn Rhue, who at 17 was a dancer at the Copacabana in New York. She studied drama at Los Angeles City College. Her film debut was in The Kiss in 1958. Her TV debut was on Cheyenne. She played Marjorie Grant on Bracken’s World. She co-starred in Kenner. She played Marla, the love interest of Khan in the Star Trek episode Space Seed. In 1977 she was diagnosed with MS but continued to work. She had regular roles on Days of Our Lives, Houston Knights, Trial by Jury, and Murder She Wrote.

September 7, 1995: I started working on the second issue of Orgasmagazine

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I cleaned up. I worked on my writing and started putting together the second issue of Orgasmagazine.

Anna Maria Alberghetti

            On Friday morning my left arm was worse than the day before. It seems to be improved one day, then be sore for a couple of days, then improve again and then be sore again, and on and on. 

            I worked out the chords for the third verse of “L'araignée du soir” (The Spider of Night) by Boris Vian. There are two verses left. 

            I played my Martin acoustic for the last of two sessions and it went out of tune quite a bit. I think I need get it set up again. Tomorrow I’ll begin a four session stretch of playing my electric guitars.

            I weighed 86.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I finished applying the third and final coat of primer to all of the parts of the walls that require a chair to reach. Then I removed the temporary mirror and applied the final coat to the section to the right of the shelves. The only thing in that area that needs more primer is the metal light fixture, but I can do that without having to remove the mirror again. I painted the space between the underside of the upper shelves and the top of the lower shelf. My tray ran out of paint before I could finish. The shelf brackets definitely need more than three coats of primer and so when I return to painting on Sunday I’ll do them again. I think I might have the bathroom fully primed on Sunday. 

            I weighed 86.9 kilos before lunch at 14:00. 

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

            I weighed 86.55 kilos at 17:45. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:45. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Paranoiac Utopia” I finished the second run-through of editing the video I shot on August 22. What had been a 63 minute video is now 7.5 minutes. I probably only need 2 minutes so tomorrow I’ll cut a little more. 

            In my “Élisa (Gibson electric)” Movie Maker project I found that the first take was the final take. I saved the project as “2024-09-29 Song Practice” just in case I need any of the other songs from that day to be synchronized. Then I went back to “Élisa (Gibson electric)” and isolated the song. I adjusted the audio balance to include a little more from the camera microphone. I added several effects: posterize, old film, span colour spectrum, dim, and sharpen. I published the movie and then made some screen shots. Tomorrow I’ll upload it to YouTube. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg with skyr and dill while watching episode 6 of Checkmate. 

            A young woman is on a flight from Boston to San Francisco when she tells the white haired man in the seat next to her that she is being followed. She gets him to create a diversion so she can escape. He pretends to clumsily drop his briefcase at the exit door and then his glasses, while blocking the passage of her pursuer. She makes her way to Don Corey’s address and when he doesn’t answer the doorbell she pulls out a key ring with about fifty keys, selects one and lets herself in. Don comes home and goes straight to bed. The next day he wakes up to find a cup of coffee sitting on his nightstand. He appreciatively drinks some of it and then stops to wonder how it got there. Then the woman’s voice calls to him from the kitchen, asking him how he likes his eggs. Puzzled but intrigued, he tells her he likes them poached. Then he meets her. She apologizes for wearing his bathrobe but says she had to leave her luggage at the airport when she got away from the man who is trying to kill her. When she goes to work on breakfast he goes to the phone and calls his partner Jed, the ladies man because he thinks this is some sort of prank involving one of his girlfriends, but it isn’t. The young woman tells him she knows a lot about him because she studies detectives. She says her name is Mary Ann Milford and she’s a stenographer. She says she witnessed a murder in the Bronx and escaped to Boston but they followed her there. She’s very forward with Don in a semi-innocent sort of way and asks Don to help her. She’s too charming to refuse. Jed comes by and when Mary Ann is out of the room Don tells him he doubts her story. She wears very expensive clothes for a stenographer, there’s lots of money in her purse and a large collection of skeleton keys. Don sends Jed to pick up Mary’s luggage and the man from the plane sees him at the baggage check and follows him. When she gets her luggage back she discovers that her perfume bottle spilled in her suitcase and so she has to go and shop for more clothes. While in the dress shop she sees standing outside the man from the plane and goes out through a window in the dressing booth (I’ve never seen a window in a dressing booth for obvious reasons). Don goes to the police station where Captain Howard tells him about the runaway heiress Trudy Lombard. She has a trick of hiring private detectives and telling them the mob is after her for witnessing a murder and gets the detectives to help her run away. On top of that she’s only 17. Mary comes back to Don’s place but a man is waiting for her and knocks her out from behind. He’s the man who helped her on the plane. He is about to inject her with something when he hears Don’s car pull up. He slugs Don from behind and he is stunned but not out, then fights off his assailant, who runs away. When Mary wakes up he calls her Trudy and she confesses to having deceived him. She says she’s a prisoner of her grandmother who watches her every move. Don says he was going to take her back but now with the assault he’s not sure. Trudy goes to lie down and Dr. Hyatt arrives. He finds the hypodermic and upon analysis discovers that it contained nothing but air, which can be a deadly murder weapon because unless an autopsy is performed in two hours it’s not traceable. Augie Belner is a killer who uses such a method and they think he’s after Trudy. Meanwhile Trudy has broken a toaster, a frying pan, and a vacuum cleaner at Don’s place. Don comes home and notices a man watching his apartment from the parking lot. Don and Jed catch him and it turns out that he works for Trudy’s grandmother. He takes them to her. While she’s talking with the detectives Trudy escapes. She runs into the man who helped her on the plane and asks for him to help her again and so he gives her a ride. Don and Jed learn that Belner was seen nearby and conclude that he might have Trudy. Belner drives to the woods and they go walking to a place he says he knows where she can hide. But she figures out who he is before he has a chance to try to kill her. She knocks him out with judo she learned from a detective. Then Don arrives but she didn’t need to be rescued. She goes back to her grandmother but receives more respect and fewer restrictions from now on. Plus in three months she’ll be 18. 

            Trudy was played by Anna Maria Alberghetti, who was a singing prodigy at an early age with music professionals as parents who helped to guide her. She was singing with symphony orchestras at the age of 6 and debuted at Carnegie Hall at 14. She made her film debut at 15 in The Medium. She made her TV debut on Wagon Train. She was Red Skelton’s opening act in Las Vegas. She co-starred in The Stars Are Singing, The Last Command, 10,000 Bedrooms, She starred in Duel at Apache Wells, In the 1960s she abandoned films for Broadway. She won a Tony for Carnival. She sang 53 times on the Ed Sullivan Show. She was pictured twice on the cover of Life Magazine. In the 70s she became the face and voice of Good Seasons salad dressing. She has a popular one-person cabaret act.

September 6, 1995: I sold some copies of Orgasmagazine at the Art Bar

Thirty years ago today 

            On Wednesday evening I performed on the Art Bar reading series open stage in the Csarda Hungarian restaurant on Elm Street. I promoted the first issue of Orgasmagazine and probably sold a couple of copies.

Betty Lou Gerson

            On Thursday morning my left arm felt a lot better than it’s been feeling since I wrenched it three weeks ago. 

            I worked out the chords for the second verse of “L'araignée du soir” (The Spider of Night) by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the first verse of “Paris d’papa” by Serge Gainsbourg and changed the end words of the third and fourth lines. The Sonix transcription app had said one of the words was “d’ombre” but the rhyme scheme calls for a “doo” sound, so I changed it to “d’ou”. 

            I weighed 87.25 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since August 18. 

            Around midday, after shaving and showering, I worked on getting caught up in my journal. 

            I weighed 87 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride and on the way back stopped at Freshco where they still had Canadian cherries and so I got five bags. I also bought three packs of on sale raspberries, some bananas, a box of spoon sized shredded wheat, two packs of Full City Dark coffee, and a pack of eleven lint free microfibre washcloths. There were ten in a pack but there was only one blue pack and a loose blue one that I’d thought had come from that pack and so I stuffed it inside. 

            I weighed 86.45 kilos at 18:15. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 20:03. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Paranoiac Utopia” I continued to edit the video that I shot on August 22. I went through the footage of my trip west on the south sidewalk of Queen and then covered the trip east on the north side from Sorauren to O’Hara. When I stopped for supper there were about 13 minutes left in what was originally a 63 minute video. All that’s left is the rest of my ride east along the north side of Queen and then west through the graffiti alley called the Milky Way. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg with Skyr while watching episode 5 of Checkmate.

            Janet Evans, George Mallinson, and Peter Simpson are in an antique shop when George looks outside and sees a man looking in. He recognizes the face as Louis Roche. When Roche sees him he runs with George in pursuit, but Roche gets away in a cab. Peter says he thought Roche was dead but George says “He won’t be alive for long”, leaving his fiancé Janet in shock. After this George breaks off their engagement without an explanation. Janet goes to Checkmate to get them to stop her fiancé from killing Roche. Dr. Hyatt recognizes George’s name because Dr. Mallinson is a renowned Canadian archaeologist who works at San Francisco’s biggest museum. Don and Hyatt go with Janet to talk with George, who denies knowing a man named Roche or wanting to kill him. He explains he simply broke off his engagement with Janet because he realizes he doesn’t love her. She doesn’t believe him and knows he’s just trying to protect her. Don goes to the museum to inquire about George only to find that he recently and suddenly resigned. Don goes back to confront George but he continues to evade any admission about planning on killing Roche. Don says he believes Janet and leaves. Don gets Janet to put together Roche’s features for Hyatt to sketch and he comes up with a portrait she recognizes. Don and Jed take copies of the portrait to various parts of town where a foreigner might go such as hotels and shops. After several dead ends Don finds the proprietor of an antique shop who just sold a China cabinet to Roche but he used the name Jean Charette. She says someone else asked for his address recently as well. Peter also has Roche’s address and number but it’s that of his girlfriend Helen, who says there’s no Roche there. But when Roche hears this he runs for the car. Don arrives, sees Peter with a gun and tries to warn Roche but he drives away, knocking over Don. George learns that Charette has his own antique shop in Los Angeles and heads there with Peter. Jed follows them but they evade him. Don learns Roche’s LA store address from Helen. Jed calls Don from the airport where he figured George and Peter were going when he lost them. He learned that they were on a plane to LA half an hour ago. Don takes the next flight. George and Peter break into Roche’s shop and so does Don. They tell him that Roche was the sadistic commandant of the POW camp where George and Peter were held for years and that he is responsible for the murder of thousands. Don still argues that he must be brought to trial and not killed. Roche arrives and there is a shootout that causes a gasoline leak that eventually bursts into flames. Don is shouting for Roche to jump when the whole place explodes and Roche dies. Janet and George’s engagement is back on. 

            The antique dealer was played by Betty Lou Gerson, who moved with her family from Tennessee to Chicago in the 1930s and became a radio actor at the age of 16 on the First Nighter Program. Then she found bigger radio work in New York and starred in Arnold Grimm’s Daughter, Lonely Women, and played Charlotte Wilson on the radio version of The Guiding Light. She played Glinda in a 1950 radio adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. She was the narrator for the 1950 animated film Cinderella. She was the voice of Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmations. She co-starred in the movie The Miracle of the Hills. Her last role was providing the voice of Frances for Cats Don’t Dance in 1997.

September 5, 1995: I launched Orgasmagazine

Thirty years ago today 

            On Tuesday I was interviewed on the Howl radio show on CIUT about my writers open stage, the Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy that took place in the Art Bar of the Gladstone Hotel and about the launch of Orgasmagazine. That night I launched the magazine at the Orgy and there was a great reaction.

Jane Wyman

            On Wednesday morning I tried to find the lyrics for “Paris d’papa” by Serge Gainsbourg but no one has posted them. I downloaded the YouTube audio of Juliette Greco singing the song and then I uploaded the MP4 to Sonix where I still had 28 minutes of free transcription credits. The transcription seems mostly accurate but a couple of words at the end of lines don’t fit the rhyme scheme. I tried it with Vizard but it didn’t transcribe the lines in question so I may have to figure them out on my own. 

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice and it went out of tune a couple of times. Tomorrow I’ll begin a two session stretch of playing my Martin acoustic. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I finished applying the final coat of primer to the ceiling and upper walls of my bathroom while balanced on my cement block on a kitchen chair. It was a lot more secure than the milk crate on the chair but it was limited compared to a step ladder because I couldn’t reach as wide an area and had to move the chair outside the tub to finish. I then got rid of the block and just stood on the chair to do the area above the lights on the eastern wall. I moved to the left and did some of the space between the vent and the upper shelf. On Friday I might have the whole bathroom primed. 

            I weighed 87.85 kilos before lunch. I ate a whole package of herb turkey slices with no bread and a glass of iced tea.

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

            I weighed 86.7 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was behind in my journal until just before supper. I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara sauce, tomato pesto, the rest of my spicy pepperoni and five-year-old cheddar. I was about to eat when I remembered to buy beer. Luckily the liquor store was still open. I grabbed a six-pack of Creemore and had one with my meal while watching episode 4 of Checkmate.

            Joan Talmadge is walking home after dark when she witnesses a shooting. Months later her testimony leads to the guilty verdict of Edward Joslin. But as he is led away he gives her a sinister smile. She’s afraid that somehow he will find and kill her. Dr. Hyatt happens to be there as he also had been on the witness stand. He takes her to meet Don and Jed of Checkmate to further allay her fears. Don dismisses her dread as groundless. Hyatt admits that Joslin will appeal his conviction but has a one percent chance of getting off. Don offers to have Jed watch over her for a few days. But she’s also being watched by Joselin’s men. The next day she goes to work for the first time since the trial began and in her office finds a crime magazine but the picture on the cover of a man about to knife a swimsuit clad woman from behind has her face and Joselin’s pasted on, and the caption “Killer’s Revenge”. She screams and goes back to reception. The receptionist Millie (played by Mary Tyler Moore), her boss Monroe, and her colleague/boyfriend Bob comfort her. The men go to her office where they find the magazine with the murderous image but not with her and Joselin’s face. She’s sure it was changed but they think it’s just stress causing her to hallucinate. Monroe insists that she take a little more time off. She goes to Checkmate and they also dismiss what she saw as a trick of her stress. After Joan leaves, Hyatt thinks she has a long standing neurosis that has been reigned in for years but recently aggravated. Don says if Joan could be found to be mentally unbalanced, when Joselin gets a retrial it could cause his conviction to be overturned. Don says whether or not what she saw was real, someone left the real magazine on her desk. The next day Joan is being watched as she buys a novel called The Gay Life. That night after a date with Bob she sits down to unwrap her new book only to find that it’s Psychology of Suicide. One of the men watching her from a window in the next building says he switched books in the car while Joan and Bob were having dinner. Don is looking at the magazine and notices that the issue was released two weeks ago while Joan hadn’t been in the office for six weeks. That means her story may be true. Someone comes to Joan while she’s sleeping and slips a cord around her neck. Don and Hyatt go to Joan’s place but there is no answer and so Don busts open the door. They find her on the floor with the cord around her neck and she’s under sedation. The other end of the rope had been tied to a coathanger above the closet door that had collapsed. Don sees that the screws have been loosened indicating that whoever did this didn’t want to kill her. They wanted it to look like an attempted suicide. She has a bottle of sleeping pills but says she didn’t take any. She tells them that when she was graduating she had a close friend who she walked in on at the moment that he was shooting himself in the head. She thinks she’s losing her mind but Don tells her he checked the bookstore and found out that a man bought the Psychology of Suicide book shortly after she left the store. The only person who knows about her past trauma is Bob. Joselin’s men must have offered Bob money to make her think she was losing her mind. They begin to lure Bob into a trap. Jed plants a harmlessly exploding but scary bomb in Bob’s car. Later he fires some blank gunshots at his car when he is driving. The purpose is to make Bob think Joselin’s men are now after him. Jed sings a song to himself, “Please don’t point that gun at me / I never disagree / with anyone who has a gun / Don’t point that gun at me”. Bob calls Checkmate to ask for protection and Don tells him to come there. Since no one is supposed to know that Joselin’s men hired Bob, he can’t reveal that is who is after him. Don says they are busy protecting Joan but when they leave to see her they invite Bob along. But they have Jed drive Bob over so they can get there first and tell Joan that Bob was the one who manipulated her. Jed pretends they are being followed and so when they get to Joan’s place Don and Jed pretend to go after whoever it was. Hyatt is hidden in another room while Bob is alone with Joan. She pretends to Bob that she realizes now that she imagined everything but he tells her she didn’t. He confesses that all they wanted at first was for him to convince her not to testify. He said he was behind switching the magazines but not the fake suicide. He tells her about the men who’ve been watching her and now they have a confession, so Joan doesn’t need to pretend anymore. 

            Joan was played by Jane Wyman, who became a radio singer in 1935 after graduating from university. In 1936 she signed a contract with Warner Brothers. She made her film debut in The Kid from Spain in 1932. She co-starred in The Lost Weekend, The Yearling (for which she was nominated for an Academy Award), Stage Fright, Here Comes the Groom, The Story of Will Rogers, Just For You, Holiday for Lovers, You’re in the Army Now (and held the record for the longest screen kiss for the next few decades), Larceny Inc, My Love Came Back, The Spy Ring, He Couldn’t Say No, Wide Open Faces, The Kid From Kokomo, Kid Nightingale, Private Detective, Brother Rat and a Baby, An Angel from Texas, Gambling on the High Seas, The Body Disappears, My Favourite Spy, Make Your Own Bed, The Doughgirls, One More Tomorrow, Cheyenne, Magic Town, A Kiss in the Dark, The Lady Takes a Sailor, Here Comes the Groom, Let’s Do It Again, Lucy Gallant, and How to Commit Marriage. She starred in Johnny Belinda (for which she won an Oscar), The Glass Menagerie, The Blue Veil (Oscar nominated), Magnificent Obsession (Oscar nominated), So Big, Lucy Gallant, All That Heaven Allows, Miracle in the Rain, Polyanna, Torchy Blane, Crime By Night, Three Guys Named Mike, She starred in the TV series Jane Wyman Presents the Fireside theatre from 1955 to 1958. She was the star of Falcon Crest for nine seasons. She had three top 30 hits as a singer. She was married to Ronald Reagan from 1940 to 1949 and they had three children. She left him for Lew Ayers. She was the first ex-wife of a US president. She voted for Reagan three times after their divorce and attended his funeral. She became a third degree nun before she died. She said , “Women are like tea bags. You never know how strong they are until you put them in hot water”. She said if you ask Ronald Reagan the time he’ll tell you how the watch was made. 

            

           I was caught up in my journal at 22:30.