September 22, 1994: I asked Mary if Adina was too young for me and she exclaimed "YES!!!"

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday morning I posed at Avondale Alternative Secondary School. 

            That night was Marjorie Robero, Nik Beat and Tim Maxwell’s Ménage à Trois poetry show at The Green Room. Adina and Matthew were there and Tim Maxwell tried to pick Adina up. Adina seemed very attracted to me and this was the first time I considered a relationship with her. When we left, Mary Milne was giving me a ride and I asked her if she’d drop Adina off at her home, but she didn’t want to. We went to Greek’s East and later I asked Mary if she thought the seventeen year old Adina was too young for me. Very quickly she exclaimed “Yes!”

Nancy Olson

            On Friday morning I searched for more chords for “Dis-lui toi que je t'aime” (That I Love You Now Tell Him) by Serge Gainsbourg and found some sheet music that had different chords than the ones I transcribed yesterday. I worked out the first three chords for the intro and they don’t fit with either of the sets that are posted online. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar during song practice for the last of four sessions. I audio and video recorded the session as I will until October 15. After several takes I made it through “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” without any major errors although there were lots of small ones. I think I might have done the best take of “Vomit of the Star Eater” so far. 

            I weighed 88.1 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning in a week. 

            I weighed 88.65 kilos before lunch. That’s the lightest I’ve been at midday since last Friday. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. On Yonge Street someone on an electric bike came the opposite way on the wrong side and almost clipped me. 

            I weighed 87.05 kilos at 17:45. September 12 was the last time it was that low. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:34. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Me and Gravity” I synchronized the old concert video with the studio audio when I sing “careening into limbo”. That brings the song to the second chorus where the video continued to fall behind the studio audio. So after “me and gravity” I had to split the timeline and cut out a little bit so the video was lined with the audio for the repetition of “me and gravity”. Basically at every pause between lines I had to cut a little bit out and managed get the video and audio synchronized for the chorus, leading up to the instrumental. The instrumental on the 1994 concert video is about ten seconds longer than in the studio so I’ll have to cut that much out next time to line things up for the beginning of the third verse. 

            I uploaded today’s song practice video. I’m still converting the camera’s MP4 videos to H264AVI and right now I’ve finished September 13. I’ll convert part A of September 14 overnight. I finished reviewing the video for September 9 and a lot of the songs didn’t sound bad, including “Sixteen Tons of Dogma”. The Martin acoustic guitar sounds better than the electric for most of the songs. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a ladleful of ground sirloin chili while watching season 12 of The Big Valley. 

            Nick and Heath are camping when Nick is attacked by a wolf. Heath shoots and kills it but an examination of the corpse shows that it had rabies. In the nearest town the doctor says at that time in 1880 there is no cure, although they are working on one in Europe. He tells Nick that rabies has a sixty day incubation period and if he lives past that he is home free. However the doctor admits that he has only read reports of survivors and has no personal experience of a patient not dying from rabies. Nick makes Heath swear that he won’t tell their family. They return home and Nick tries to continue work but his symptoms include fits of rage and after striking Heath he decides to leave. He tells Heath he may go to Willow Springs to look for a girl he met when he was 18. He tells the family that he’s going to a different town to check out the yearling sale. He makes Heath promise not to tell anyone. He goes to the house where he sat on the swing with Jenny and he sits on the swing. A young boy pokes his head out the door and tells him that’s his swing. Nick talks to the boy’s mother Julie and asks about Jennie. She doesn’t know her but suggests he try the graveyard. Seven years ago most of the town was wiped out by a typhoid epidemic. He goes there and finds her grave and that she died in 1871, nine years ago. He has an attack and has to crawl out of the cemetery. He can’t even climb onto his horse and just lets it drag him standing sideways into town. He goes into a bar and buys a bottle of whiskey. Two men at the bar notice he has a lot of money. He leaves drunk and they follow him. He goes back to the house with the swing and sits there but then he is knocked out from behind. The men are trying rob him when Julie comes out with a shotgun and fires, sending them running. She takes him inside and nurses his concussion. He is delirious for days and talks without consciousness until Julie knows his whole story. When he wakes he offers to pay her for her care but she says there is one way he can repay her. She knows he is dying and she asks him to marry her because she wants a name for her son Tommy who was born out of wedlock. He turns her down but stays. Julie works for Mr. Po at the laundry. One evening Nick goes to escort her home and meets Po, who used to be a Taoist priest in China. They leave and while walking are called from behind by the two men who tried to rob Nick a month before. The men have their guns drawn but Nick is a lightning fast draw. He turns and kills them both but one of their wild shots hits Julie. He takes her back to Po and a doctor is called but he says Julie will be dead within an hour. Nick decides to marry her so Tommy will have a name and gets Po to perform the ceremony in his capacity as a Taoist priest. A few days later Heath tracks Nick down who asks him to take Tommy to his grandparents in Massachusetts. Heath says Nick can take him since 65 days have passed and he is still alive. Nick is overjoyed. 

            Julia was played by Nancy Olson, who began acting on stage while attending UCLA. She was discovered while performing and signed to paramount. He film debut was in Portrait of Jennie. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her supporting performance in Sunset Blvd. She co-starred in Union Station, Force of Arms, Submarine Command, So Big, Battle Cry, and The Boy From Oklahoma. She married renowned lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and retired from acting to raise her two daughters. After her divorce she returned to acting to co-star in The Absent Minded Professor, Son of Flubber, Snowball Express, and Dumbbells. She married record executive Alan Livingston.

September 21, 1994: It was Leonard Cohen's birthday so I performed two of his songs

Thirty years ago today 

            On Wednesday it was Leonard Cohen’s birthday. So that evening at Fat Albert’s open stage I performed his songs “The Window” and “The Tower of Song” with Steve Lowe backing me up on guitar. The open stage at Albert’s Hall was canceled and so we went up to the one at the Black Rooster, but I was too tired to perform.

Rodolfo Acosta

            On Thursday morning I finished memorizing “Dis-lui toi que je t'aime” (That I Love You Now Tell Him) by Serge Gainsbourg. I searched for the chords and found a set on La bôite a chanson (Song Box), which I transcribed. Ultimate Guitar and another site had the same chords. I’ll look some more tomorrow and then start working them out. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar during song practice for the third session of four. For the first 2/3s of the session it continued to have tuning problems but settled down for the final stretch. I audio and video recorded the session as I will every day until October 15. I almost made it through “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” on the second take and then hit a wrong chord. After a couple more fumbled takes I finally got through but fumbled a word and probably got a chord wrong. I’m almost halfway through the project and I don’t know if I’ve gotten one good take of that song.

            I weighed 88.35 kilos before breakfast. 

            I weighed 89 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown. On Yonge Street a skateboarder jumped off his board in front of me and I almost hit it but he grabbed it just in time. On the way back I stopped at Freshco where the grapes were $8.80 a kilo but I found a flyer for No Frills that shows them for $3.17 a kilo. Since I knew I could do a price match I got seven bags of green grapes. I also bought two packs of raspberries, bananas, a small whole chicken, a pack of ground sirloin, a bag of crinkle cut fries, two packs of Full City Dark coffee, and a jar of salsa. 

            I weighed 88.2 kilos at 18:00. I was caught up on my journal at 18:15. 

            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. The original Christian and the Lions band at this El Mocambo concert in 1994 played the song more slowly than Brian Haddon and I did in the studio. To line the video up with the audio throughout most of the song so far I’ve just had to cut out small sections of the video timeline. This time I started with the third line of the second verse. I made cuts before “and on and on”; “from coffeeshop”; “sometimes I think”, and “one millisecond”. That synchronized them up until “careening into limbo”, which are the last three words of the second verse and which are also behind in the video. I’ll cut out about half a second before those words tomorrow and that should line things up leading to the second chorus. 

            I uploaded today’s song practice video but didn’t have time to review the rest of September 9. I’m still converting the MP4 videos the camera makes to H264AVI format. I should have all the September 11 videos converted by the end of the day and convert part A of September 12 overnight. 

            I sautéed the ground sirloin and added a jar of salsa. I had a potato with gravy and a ladleful of the sirloin chili while watching episode 11 of The Big Valley. 

            Mariano, a childhood friend of Nick is the son of a woman who cleaned the Barkley house. When they grew up Nick gave him a calf. Mariano moved back to Mexico and became a rancher. Now he has returned to Stockton, having crossed the border with 93 head of cattle to take them to market. Nick inspects his herd and says they need to be fattened. Mariano has a week before the market opens and so Nick offers to rent him the north pasture at a penny an acre. After moving his cattle there one of them dies. His main hand Rico says it’s anthrax but Mariano refuses to accept that. He says it’s Trail Fever and tells them to bury the animal and keep quiet about it. The next morning Eugene Barkley tells Nick and Heath that one of their hands counted Mariano’s cattle this morning although not on the family’s orders, perhaps expecting to find more than 93 because of theft. But what he found was that when he counted there were 91. When Mariano sees the second cow dead Rico again declares that it’s anthrax. He believes there is a miasma in the pasture that is causing it and wants to move the herd out before more are killed. Mariano insists to all his men that it’s not anthrax but rather trail fever. Nick and Heath go out to Mariano’s camp to investigate. They see a dead cow and agree that it’s anthrax. Nick says not to move a single cow out of that pasture. Nick and Heath gather their hands and make sure they all have rifles and send them out to surround the pasture where Mariano’s herd is grazing. Mariano tries to move his herd out but they stop him. Nick tells him that anthrax spreads like a brushfire and could kill 3000 head in less than a week. Nick walks through the herd and sees another one drop. He says the herd has to stay behind the fence but Heath says they have to be shot. Mariano again tries to move them out but Nick says they will kill every one that leaves. Mariano thinks it’s the pasture that is causing the deaths. Nick says no one knows how anthrax starts and sometimes it suddenly stops. That evening at the Barkley residence the butler Silas says everything is going to be fine and that he has seen anthrax suddenly disappear. Heath confronts Nick and insists that Mariano’s entire herd has to be shot. Nick says that when he and Mariano were ten years old Mariano used to come with his mother when she scrubbed the floors. If he played with Nick his mother made him call him “Senor Nick”. That night at dinner, Eugene brings up the idea of vaccination but nobody else in the family has heard of it. He says they are experimenting with it at his university. It’s a new technique developed by a scientist named Louis Pasteur. Eugene says he’s seen it work. Hawthorn, one of Eugene’s professors has been injecting anthrax germs into healthy cattle. The others don’t know what germs are. Eugene explains they are so tiny they can only be seen under a microscope but they cause anthrax and other diseases. Heath makes fun and suggests the germs are something like faeries. Eugene leaves for Berkely. The next day there is a standoff. The Barkleys and their men won’t let Mariano’s cattle out and Mariano won’t let anyone in. Eugene returns home with Professor Hawthorn and the vaccine. Victoria takes them out to Mariano’s herd and gets Mariano to lower his rifle to talk with her. The idea that anthrax spreads from cow to cow is new to Mariano because people at that time believed that it came from the ground. Mariano says there is only one way he will believe the vaccine is safe. If the Barkleys inject it into their $10,000 prize bull (It would be worth more than a quarter of a million today). They bring the bull but Mariano insists further that the vaccine could be water and so they need to bring the bull in to mix with his herd to prove the vaccine can work. They bring it in and as soon as the bull collapses the professor injects it with the vaccine. Shortly after that however the bull dies. Mariano is about to begin shooting his own cattle when suddenly the bull comes back to life and stands again. Mariano’s herd is saved and everybody is friends again. This was the most interesting episode so far. 

            Rico was played by Rodolfo Acosta, who was born in Chamizal, Chihuahua, which at the time was considered US territory but is now part of Mexico. He studied drama at UCLA. He won a scholarship to the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico. He was married to Jeannine Cohen but she divorced him in the 50s when she found out he was secretly sharing an apartment in Mexico City with Ann Sheridan. His film debut was in Soy un Profugo. He appeared in several Emilio Fernandez films. This led to work in Hollywood. He starred in The Tijuana Story. He was typecast as mostly villains. He played Vaquero the ranch hand on the first two seasons of The High Chaparral but was fired because of drinking.

September 20, 1994: Ejawsay took my picture

Thirty years ago today 

            On Tuesday I posed for an afternoon class at Central Technical School. There I ran into Ejawsay and she took my picture. In the evening I worked at the Ontario College of Art until 22:00 and so I was late for my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of the Gladstone Hotel. My co-host Mary Milne had gotten the event started and I missed Matthew’s first time reading his poetry. Adina was there when I arrived.

Richard Long

            On Wednesday morning I memorized the sixth and seventh verses of “Dis-lui toi que je t'aime” (That I Love You Now Tell Him) by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have the whole song in my head tomorrow. 

            I weighed 88.15 kilos before breakfast. 

            I weighed 89.15 kilos before lunch. I had a slice of multigrain bread with margarine and five-year-old cheddar. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. In Koreatown a guy came running across the street between two parked cars and almost collided with me. He stopped himself just in time. A few years ago someone didn’t stop himself and I slammed right into him, damaging my bike. 

            I weighed 88.2 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:21. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Me and Gravity” I synchronized the old concert video with the studio audio for the first chorus. I had to cut some of the video to line them up. I also synchronized video and audio for the first two lines of the second verse: “Well I walked along the street today, same route that I took yesterday”. After that the video falls slightly behind again. I’ll deal with that tomorrow. 

            I uploaded today’s song practice video. The video for September 8 finished being converted to H264AVI. The 29 gig file got boiled down to 8 gigs. It’s weird how the first time I converted a 25 gig file to that format it ended up at 1 gig. It’s still the best option I’ve found though. I finished reviewing the September 8 video. I think there’s something wrong with the Gibson electric guitar. It goes out of tune way too often. I think the only song that sounded okay was “Leave the Naïve Alone”. Also the light was a bit harsh for the video. I reviewed the first ten minutes of the September 9 video and it was a cloudy day so the light was less harsh. On top of that I was playing the Martin acoustic and it sounded much better as well. 

            I steamed a bag of shrimp and mixed them with two ramen cakes and their hot garlic flavour packs. I had the soup with a beer while watching episode 10 of The Big Valley. 

            Heath has just brought a package to mail on the night train and is walking along the street when he hears and then sees a struggle in the dark. Then he hears a man in pain. He rushes over to find the dead body of respected citizen Colonel Asheby. He hears someone running down the alley and sees them climbing the wall so he goes after him. He catches Korby Kyles and they fight until Korby surrenders and says he didn’t kill him. There is an inquiry and Heath testifies. Jacob Kyles comes to ask Jarrod to defend his son because no other lawyer will touch the case because Korby refuses to plead guilty. Jarrod turns him down as well but one can see from his face that he questions that decision. The problem is that nobody likes the Kyles. They are the opposite of the Barkleys in almost every way and it’s true that they are criminals and so no one doubts that Korby committed the murder of a man who will be missed by everyone. Jarrod’s sister Audra is involved with planning the new orphanage and the widow of Colonel Asheby is financing it. Audra is worried that Jarrod is considering taking Korby’s case because Mrs. Asheby may withdraw her support. The more public opinion is convinced of Korby’s guilt the more Jarrod wonders about it. He tells Heath there is a shadow of possible but not probable doubt. Heath tells Jarrod not to turn Korby down just because he saw him do it. Jarrod goes to see Korby in jail. Korby shocks Jarrod with the accusation that Colonel Asheby was the middle man for the opium trade of all Central California. Korby worked for him to carry the stuff to the buyers. He says what was happening in the alley that night was the payoff by the leader of a Chinese gang. Korby had come to get his money and saw the Chinese man stab the colonel. Korby says he pulled the knife out and chased the Chinese man. Jarrod says the story is so wild he almost believes it. Korby says, “Thanks Jarrod” but Jarrod says, “Don’t you ever call me Jarrod!” Jarrod visits the Kyles place and it’s pathetically run down. While he’s talking to Jacob, Korby’s brothers try to steal some silver decorations from Jarrod’s saddle. Jarrod catches and stops him. Jarrod’s whole family besides Heath is against Jarrod taking Korby’s case. Victoria says it will hurt Heath’s reputation to dispute what he saw. Jarrod thinks he’s off the hook when he hears that Matt Cooper is going to take Korby’s case, but then he hears Matt say he thinks Korby is guilty because he looks guilty. Heath is forging a new branding iron late at night when Jacob and his two sons come to threaten him against testifying in Korby’s trial. He refuses and so they beat him up, saying they’ll burn the house down. After that Jarrod’s family is shocked when he says he’s going to take the case. Mrs. Asheby withdraws her support of the orphanage. The trial begins and Korby is on the stand. D.A. Greene is questioning him about the curved knife that was pulled from the colonel. Korby says he wouldn’t own such a knife. He demonstrates by throwing his own knife across the room to stick in the wall behind the audience. Jarrod calls Asa Harmon to the stand. He is a special detective employed by Senator Harrison’s investigating committee. He confirms what Korby told Jarrod about Asheby, who was for twenty years a prime mover of an opium ring dealing to the Chinese gangs from here to San Francisco. Jarrod calls Heath to the stand. Jarrod says the nearest street lamp to that alley is thirty meters away and could not have lit what Heath claims he saw. On top of that there was no moon that night. He convinces Heath that he may be mistaken about what he saw. But Greene calls train engineer Henry Bingham to the stand, who says the light from his train shone on the colonel and on Korby Kyles in the alley and he recognized both faces. Bingham points out Korby, who panics and tries to run out of the courtroom. Jarrod feels bad about defending Korby but his family forgives him. 

            Jarrod Barkley was played by Richard Long, who had no intention of becoming an actor but took a drama class for the easy credit. He went straight from high school acting to film acting. His movie debut was in Tomorrow is Forever. He played Tom Kettle, one of Ma and Pa Kettle’s sons in that series of films. He co-starred in Cult of the Cobra, Fury at Gunsight Pass, Tokyo After Dark, and House On Haunted Hill. He played Rex Randolph on both Bourbon Street Beat and 77 Sunset Strip. He co-starred in the sitcom Nanny and the Professor and did voices for two animated versions of the show. His last film was Death Cruise. He was married to Lucille Ball’s second cousin Suzan Ball in 1954 until she died 14 months later.

September 19, 1994: I posed all day at OCA

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday I posed from 9:00 to 16:00 at the Ontario College of Art.