May 29, 1996: I performed at Fat Albert's

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday after work I performed on the Fat Albert’s open stage and later at the Art Bar reading series.

Joel Grey

            On Tuesday it was my birthday. 

            I listened to some Bach Cantatas during yoga.

            I made a list of Boris Vian songs from 1956. There are a lot and many of them are rock and roll songs that have “Rock” in the title. 

            I played my Martin during song practice although today was supposed to be a day to play my Gibson Les Paul Studio. Since it was my birthday I decided to avoid the hassle of dealing with electronics. I didn’t do a full set this time but only the songs that needed a lot of work. 

            I rode up to Dufferin and Dundas to Dad’s Breakfast Sandwiches because I’d passed the place a few days ago and the idea of a place specializing in breakfast sandwiches sounded appealing. I ordered the 48 Dad with egg, bacon, hash brown, cheese, and jalapenos. I took it home and ate it while watching the first episode of Dark Shadows. The sandwich was disappointing because I could make a better tasting breakfast sandwich than that. 

            I used to watch Dark Shadows after school when I was a kid and decided to revisit the show. But the so called first episode in the set that I downloaded seemed to be only a recap of the first season. Victoria Winters narrates the story of her journey to Collingwood in Collinsport, Maine in the summer of 1966. She’s been hired as a governess for nine year old David Collins and she’s hoping that this new life will help her rise above her past, as she grew up in an orphanage. But she also hopes it will shed a light on her past because she believes she has a connection to the Collins family. The matriarch of Collingwood is Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, who has not left the estate since the disappearance of her husband Paul 18 years ago. Her brother Roger, the father of David, also lives there along with Elizabeth’s 18 year old daughter Caroline. It’s dark out and after getting off the train Victoria is looking for a taxi. She sees a man named Burk Devlin standing alone on the street and asks where she can get a cab. A limo stops for him and he offers her a lift to the hotel where she can get a taxi. On the way he tries to discourage her from going to Collingwood and to return to New York as fast as she can. At a café in town she gets the same advice from the waiter Maggie Evans. Victoria moves in to Collingwood. Her charge David is a troubled boy and his father plans to send him away so David tries to kill him by sabotaging his car. Victoria learns that Collingwood’s caretaker Matthew Morgan has killed Bill Malloy, the manager of the Collins fishing fleet so he kidnaps her and holds her captive in an abandoned house on the estate. She is saved by the ghosts of Josette Collins and Bill Malloy. Roger’s wife and David’s mother Laura returns to Collingwood. Laura is an immortal phoenix who is reborn from fiery ashes every hundred years. She tries to lure David into the flames. Burk uncovers that Roger was responsible for an automobile accident that sent him to prison for five years. Elizabeth encounters Jason McGuire who is a sleezy friend of her missing husband. He blackmails her into letting him live at Collingwood because he has information that ties her to her husband’s disappearance. He knows that she killed him. Willy Loomis is a drifter friend of Jason’s who becomes an unwelcome guest at Collingwood. He learns that many of the Collins family were buried with their jewels and goes to the Collins mausoleum to rob their graves. He uses a block and tackle to try to open one of the sealed coffins but hears a strange thumping sound from inside the crypt and almost runs away. But the noise stops as he is about to leave so he regains his courage and returns to his efforts. But while he works on the coffin the door to the crypt opens and he enters. That’s the end of the summary. 

            With a hammer and chisel I finished knocking the plaster from the part of eastern wall of my living room that surrounds the passage to the kitchen and freed up the brick wall behind it. 

            After cleaning up the broken plaster and mopping the floor in that area, I had a bagel with peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar while watching the second episode of my Dark Shadows download. This was clearly not the beginning of the series. 

            This story takes place slightly before when the summary leaves off. Elizabeth wants Willy out of the Collingwood and agrees to pay him to leave. Meanwhile Willy goes to the toolshed to steal the equipment he needs to rob the Collins graves. Three quarters of the way through the episode we get to the point where the summary left off as Willy approaches the now opened door to the crypt. He finds a chained coffin and hears the thumping sound again but his greed doesn’t allow him to run away. He uses his tools to break the chains and opens the coffin. Immediately two hands reach up to grip his throat. 

            I searched for a torrent containing the real beginning of the series and found a file called Dark Shadows Beginnings, containing episodes 1 to 209. I started downloading it although I wasn’t sure if this was a prequel that was written after the original series. 

            I took a siesta and got up at around 16:15. 

            I headed up to the Dufferin Mall to search for cotton shammy cloths for cleaning my guitar or polishing a car or leather or whatever. I was surprised that they didn’t have anything like that at Walmart. I bought a pack of flour sack cloths, although I wasn’t sure if they were what I need. 

            I rode to Long and McQuade where I bought a microfiber cloth specifically for cleaning guitars.

            I rode downtown and stopped at Alforat the Iraqi street food restaurant at Yonge and Dundas. There’s a video above the door that shows them making something that looks delicious, so I asked the woman taking the orders what that is and she said chicken shawarma. She pronounced “shawarma” almost as “shaarma” with just a slight kiss of the “w”. She was obviously Middle Eastern and I assume Iraqi but she wore a cross. I had to wait about ten minutes for my shawarma and it was fairly large. I didn’t eat it right away when I got home because it was still an hour or so until suppertime. 

            I weighed 89.25 kilos at 19:00. 

            I heated some oven fries for half an hour and put in the shawarma for the last fifteen minutes. I had them with a beer while watching season 7, episode 19 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            In the Carol and Sis skit, Chrissie has a date. Gary is an extremely outgoing, confident and hip little guy with a moustache. He wears a jean jacket and genes with rhinestones. He sits on the couch close to Carol with his arm behind her and tells her she has outtasight teeth. He flirts with Carol and then is all over Chrissie, then the phone rings and it’s Gary’s mommy asking for him. He comes to the phone and says “Hi Mommy”. Then Gary says he has to brush his teeth because his mommy says, “Brush your teeth whenever you can, it helps fight off the cavity man”. Gary goes to the bathroom but comes back to call his mommy and tell her they use a toothpaste without Florestan. Mommy says he can skip it tonight. Mommy calls again and says she wants to talk to Roger. Roger says “Hello” and Mommy hangs up. Gary says she just wanted to hear his voice. Carol asks Gary if his mother always calls him like this. He says she used to call his father like that all the time until about five years ago when they lost him. Carols says, “I’m sorry!” Gary says, “He’s not. He ran off with the Avon lady.” Gary gets another call and from his reaction it looks like something horrible has happened. He tells Mommy not to panic and he’ll be right there. He tells Chrissie he’ll have to take a rain check on their date. His mommy was baking a cake and she ran out of eggs. He has to bring her some right away. He takes off his fake moustache and sideburns and hands them to Roger, saying, “My Mommy would kill me”. He’s on his way out the door when Chrissie stops him and tells him they can pick up some eggs for her before their date. He asks, “You still want to go out with me?” She says, “You’re kind of cute under all that fuzz”. After they leave, the phone rings again. Roger tells Gary’s mother that he hasn’t left yet but he can’t come to the phone because he’s standing in the middle of the living room naked and burning his toothbrush. 

            Harvey plays a legendary German director who has come out of retirement to make a movie starring Carol’s parody of Shirley Temple: Rhoda Dimple. She is in a scene with Lyle playing her grandpa and he is dying. She begs him not to go because they’ll put her in an orphanage. He dies and she cries, then the scene is over and she asks for a cigarette. She pushes Lyle’s wheelchair out of the way. Max declares that the movie is finished but Dimple says it’s not because she hasn’t had her close-up. He refuses, she kicks, punches, bites, and screams but Max says no. Finally she threatens to tell the papers about how he walks around in lady’s underwear. He says he’ll give her the close-up. Her mother comes and fixes her hair while Dimple verbally abuses her. Max decides not to giver her a closeup after all and so she grabs a sword and cuts his belt so his pants fall down revealing lady’s pink underwear with lacy trim. He says she can have her close-up but the camera keeps coming closer and closer until she is pushed through a wall. 

            Vincent Price does a tribute to the humourous side of Abraham Lincoln in celebration of his 165th birthday. He tells the story of Lincoln attending the theatre and placing his stove pipe hat upside down on the seat next to him. A big woman comes and sits on it and Lincoln responds that he could have told her it wouldn’t fit before she tried it on. 

            Carol plays a hotel phone operator listening in on the calls she relays. Vincent plays George who’s in town for the sump pump convention. He calls Linda (played by Vickie) who’s in the bathtub. He wants her to go to dinner but after what happened last time she turns him down. George calls Ted who is also in town for the convention and he agrees to gort for dinner at the Hungarian restaurant called Tokyo Ben’s. Linda calls George back and says she will join him after all so George tries to think of how to get out of dinner with Ted. Then Jack (played by Lyle) calls Linda and asks her out to dinner at Wolfgang’s Cacciatori Gardens. She agrees to go with Jack. George calls Ted and says he’s got a headache and can’t go to dinner. George calls Linda to tell her he’s now free for dinner. She agrees to go with him. Ted asks Jack to dinner but he says he’s made other arrangements. Linda calls Jack and lies that she has a headache. Ted calls Linda and asks her to dinner. She tells him she’s going with George. He says George told him he’s having dinner in his room. Linda doesn’t want to have dinner in George’s room so she agrees to go with Ted. Jack calls Ted but he tells him he called somebody else. Linda calls George to say she doesn’t want to have dinner in his room. He says they’ll go to Tokyo Ben’s. She says she’s made other arrangements but he reminds her that they had a date so she says she’ll try to get out of it. Linda calls Ted and he knows she’s cancelling. Jack and Ted call each other and Linda and George call each other. Jack and Ted are going to dinner and Linda and Jack are going but they don’t want to go to Tokyo Ben’s because they might run into the people they ditched and so they all agree on Madame Ing’s. Carol makes reservations for Madame Ing’s as well so she can watch it all unfold. 

            Vincent Price and Harvey doing his Peter Lorre impression are two spies who meet on a dark street. They exchange passwords and Harvey asks for the state secrets. Vincent asks for the money. Harvey gives him $749,980. Vincent says he’s $20 short. Harvey gives him his last $8 but Vincent tells him he still owes him $12. Harvey sells him his trenchcoat for $10 but still owes $2. Harvey sells Vincent his suit jacket and pants and argues that it’s imported from London. Vincent says they are in London and so it’s a domestic suit so he only pays him $1.70. Vincent says he’ll give 30 cents for his tie, one shoe and one sock. He gets the state secret but now he needs busfare so he sells Vincent his shirt for ten cents. At the bus stop there are several other spies in their underwear and wearing only one shoe.

            Vincent plays a street puppeteer and sings “Comedy Tonight” by Stephen Sondheim from the 1962 musical A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum. He opens the curtains on his little puppet theatre and there are Joel Grey as Punch and Carol as Judy. They sing about how they’ve learned the trick to a successful marriage and if you want love to bloom start a fight. If something’s missing in your life beat your wife. If he is making you his slave break his toes. If something’s missing in your man kick his can. They sing while they hit each other. The street audience all jump up to dance and the men and women hit each other with paddles and brooms. 

            Joel Grey knew at the age of 9 that he wanted to be an actor. His father was Mickey Katz who had a hit record with a Yiddish song and put together a variety show. Joel sang the Yiddish song “Romania Romania”. He made his acting debut at the age of 10 in Curtain Puller’s Children’s Theatre at the Cleveland Playhouse. Eddie Cantor saw Joel perform and put him on his Colgate Comedy Hour as a regular performer from 1951 to 1954. He began performing in nightclubs across the US. He made his film debut in About Face in 1952. He was the first guest on the 1968 version of What’s My Line. He won a Tony award for his performance in Cabaret on Broadway and an Oscar for the film adaptation. He co-starred in Man on a Swing, Remo Williams (for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe), Kafka, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, The Music of Chance, Dancer in the Dark, . He starred in The Fantasticks, He was the guest star in the first episode of The Muppet Show in 1976. He was nominated for an Emmy for his guest performance on Brooklyn Bridge. He guest starred in the 28th episode of Star Trek: Voyageur: “Resistance”. He played the demon Doc on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He was nominated for Tony Awards for his performances in the original Broadway productions of George M, Goodtime Charley, and The Grand Tour. He created the role of The Wizard in the original Broadway production of Wicked. He was nominated for a Best Director Tony for The Normal Heart. He is also a photographer who has published four books of his work. He’s the father of Jennifer Grey who co-starred in Dirty Dancing. He came out as gay in 2015 after 24 years of marriage to Jo Wilder with whom he had two children. I wonder if anyone was surprised. His 2016 memoir was entitled Master of Ceremonies. 

            I watched one more episode of my first download of Dark Shadows while Dark Shadows Beginnings was still downloading. Willie Loomis is missing and has not come for the money that he was to collect as a motivation to leave Collingwood. Elizabeth wants him found so they can be sure of his final departure and she has tasked Jason with the responsibility of finding him. Mrs. Johnson the housekeeper says she saw Willie prowling around the tool shed last night. She tells him that Willie found out from her that some of the Collins family were buried with their jewellery and he found that very interesting. Jason goes to the mausoleum where he meets the caretaker who says he saw Willie earlier and let him in because he claimed he was a Collins and wanted to pay his respects. He says he thought he left but later he saw the lock had been broken on the door. Jason goes inside and the only evidence he finds is a cigarette butt that Willie left behind. Back at Collingwood Mrs. Johnson answers the door and a man who says he’s Elizabeth’s cousin from England asks to see her. Johnson invites him in. He says he is Barnabus Collins, who is supposed to be dead.

May 28, 1996: I hosted my writers open stage

Thirty years ago today 

            On Tuesday as always I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of the Gladstone Hotel.

May 27, 1996: I rehearsed with Brian Haddon

Thirty years ago today 

            On Monday Brian Haddon and I rehearsed at my place.

Jenna Ortega

            On Monday morning I memorized the eighth verse of L'anguille (The Eel) by Boris Vian. There are two verses left to nail down and each of them have lines from previous verses so it should be easier.

            I weighed 89.85 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since March 4.

            I played my Martin acoustic for the last of two sessions and for the first time in a long time it stayed in tune through one song. Tomorrow I begin a four session stretch of playing my electric guitars.

            I weighed 90.9 kilos before lunch. 

            At 13:00 I watched the first episode of Wednesday with my daughter Astrid on Discord. This is a spin-off of The Addams Family but more from the film adaptations than the silly but more charming TV series. 

            Wednesday Addams goes to a normal school with her brother Pugsley. But when some bullies tie Pugsley up and stuff him in a locker she takes revenge. She finds the bullies in a swimming pool and drops two bags filled with piranhas into the water. One of the boys loses a testicle (there is no mention of the fact that by dropping the piranhas in a chlorinated pool she killed them and while dying they probably wouldn’t have been in the mood to feed on the boys). 

            Wednesday is expelled and her parents Gomez and Morticia send her to Nevermore Academy where they met and fell for each other. Nevermore is obviously named for the Edgar Allen Poe poem The Raven. It is a school for the outcasts from the outcasts of society. There are vampires, werewolves, sirens, gorgons, etcetera. Wednesday is an outsider even among the outsiders and considers the school a prison, which she attempts to escape. Her parents have sent the disembodied hand known as Thing to spy on her but she forces him to serve her. 

            She plays a beautiful piece of music on the cello (Jenna Ortega learned to play cello specifically for this role). I didn’t even recognize that she was playing "Paint it Black" by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. 

            In the nearby town of Jericho, Vermont, Wednesday makes the acquaintance of a barista and fixes his broken espresso machine. She can fix it because she reads Italian as it is the language of Machiavelli. The locals have a lot of fear and prejudice against the students of Nevermore. Four bullies try to pick on her and she goes all Jackie Chan on them. The sheriff arrives, who is the barista’s father. He tells Wednesday that her father Gomez should be in prison for murder. The barista obtains the file on Gomez and gives it to Wednesday. 

            Someone is trying to kill Wednesday. She meets him in the woods and he renders her helpless with his telekinetic powers. He shows her a drawing of her that is older than she is and says his mother told him she needs to die. But before he can kill her a monster rips him to shreds, then leaves. 

            Because of the violence and the intrigue, Wednesday decides she likes Nevermore after all and no longer wants to escape. 

            Wednesday is played by Jenna Ortega, who began acting at the age of 9. At first she could only obtain roles in commercials. She made her acting debut in the sitcom Rob in 2012. She made her film debut in Iron Man 3 in 2013. She co-starred in After Words, The Babysitter: Killer Queen, Yes Day, Scream, Scream VI, Studio 666, American Carnage, Finestkind, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Death of a Unicorn, Hurry Up Tomorrow, and The Gallerist. She starred in The Fallout, X, Miller’s Girl, and Winter Spring Summer or Fall. She starred in the series Stuck in the Middle. She co-starred in the series Richie Rich, and You. She published It’s All Love in 2021. She’s an ambassador for UNAIDS because her grandfather died of the disease. 

            The casting of Ortega as Wednesday was very good but I don’t think the actors who play her parents are a good fit. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown. I stopped at Midoco in the Annex to buy two Pilot pens. 

            On the way home I stopped at the No Frills at John and Richmond to buy five-year-old cheddar but they didn’t have it. They have a much narrower selection of a lot of things compared to the Parkdale No Frills. 

            I stopped at Bagels On Fire to buy a dozen sesame seed bagels but they only had 11 so I got one all-dressed. 

            I went to Metro where they didn’t have five-year-old cheddar either so I settled for four-year-old cheddar. Then I walked over to Freshco to buy a pack of toilet paper. 

            After I got home I went to the new Popeyes downstairs to buy six biscuits. 

            I weighed 89.85 kilos at 17:55. 

            I worked on getting caught up in my journal. 

            I had a small potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching season 7, episode 18 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            Carol does another skit in which the characters from TV commercials invade her home every time she uses a product. There are people in her medicine cabinet; she flushes the Tidy Bowl man; the loaf of bread tells her not to squeeze it so she strangles it; she’s about to make a peanut butter sandwich and Peter Pan flies in to tell her to use his brand; Naturalist Euell Gibbons comes in (played by Tim Conway) with a piece of a pine branch in his hand. He did commercials for Grape Nuts cereal, asking people if they’ve ever eaten a pine tree. He says “Many parts of a pine tree are edible” as he munches on the branch. He then takes a bite out of her chair and leaves, saying he’s now going to eat her garage; she chews some gum and a bunch of dancers burst into the room to sing the jingle for that brand. Carol grabs a broom and chases them out; a guy comes in with a gigantic pack of Wrigley’s gum and sings about big flavour until she punches him in the face and forces him back out; she begins waxing the floor until a voice says “You can see your reflection” and she looks down and screams because she can see up her housecoat; she starts washing the walls with a spray cleaner when Lyle in a blonde wig tears through the wall and says he’s Big Wally and he’s going to foam the dirt off her wall. She punches him in the gut and sends him back through the hole; her boyfriend played by Steve Lawrence arrives and tells her he made a killing in the stock market through his stock broker E.F. Sutton. Then a voice says “When E.F. Sutton talks people listen” and a bunch of guys are listening with their hands cupping their ears; Steve says he’s got tickets to Acapulco for just the two of them but then Vicki skips up to them as a flight attendant and sings “Come on and fly me” and Steve says he’s going to Acapulco with her instead. 

            Steve Lawrence sings the 1971 song “Rainy Days and Mondays” by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols. Then he sings the 1953 song “Here’s That Rainy Day” by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke. 

            Harvey plays a theatre actor about to go on in five minutes but has to awaken his elderly dresser played by Tim. Tim works extremely slowly and gets caught in various positions as he hangs from the overhead wardrobe track. Finally Harvey gets his coat on when he’s on and heads for the stage without realizing Tim is caught in the coat and being dragged behind him. In this skit Harvey laughs a lot more than usual. 

            Carol talks about how they like to have Tim and Steve in skits because they don’t crack up. Harvey on the other hand often loses control. They then show an outtake from the skit that Harvey, Tim, and Steve did in which businessmen behave as if they are lovers. In this one it is Tim and Steve that can’t stop laughing. I think they had Harvey deliberately laugh through the previous skit just to set up this one. 

            Steve plays Chuck Moran and he’s getting married tomorrow to Sally Caruthers. He’s in a bar where his bachelor party has just finished. His friends say goodbye and surprise him when they talk about not seeing him anymore. Lyle stays behind and tells him it’s true that this is his last night out with the guys. Chuck points out that Lyle is married and he goes out when he wants but Lyle says he stuffs his side of the bed with pillows and sneaks out. Chuck wonders why she wouldn’t notice and Lyle says there’s one place a wife doesn’t want to get close to her husband after a few years of marriage and that’s in bed. Chuck says he won’t have that problem because he was always better with the girls than him. Lyle says he’s observed Chuck was never smooth with the ladies. Chuck says it’s a good thing there are no girls in here right now or I’d prove you wrong. Then Carol comes in and Lyle bets he can’t pick her up. Chuck takes the bet and asks Carol where she’s been all his life, which causes her to laugh hysterically. H immediately asks if he can take her home and asks where she lives. She says she lives in Kansas and she’s in town for a wedding. Her baby sister Sally is getting married. Now Chuck stops smiling and cautiously asks Sally’s last name. It’s Caruthers. Chuck blows out the candle so his face is less visible. She says if she has too much to drink she forgets everything and so he orders drinks. She starts to get drunk and seems to be losing her memory but when Lyle calls him Chuck Moran she remembers that’s who’s going to marry her sister. No he’s really worried but then she tells him that when they’re at the wedding, if he mentions one word of this to her husband she’ll kill him. 

            There is a mostly silent skit featuring Carol and Tim as a wife and husband who work opposite shifts. She’s getting ready for work while he’s getting ready for bed. 

            Carol says fifty years ago an unknown composer’s first show opened on Broadway. he went on to write hit after hit for the next fifteen years and tonight they salute the music of George Gershwin. His most popular songs are sung and danced to in period costumes, beginning and ending with “Summertime”. Carol sings “Someone to Watch Over Me”. Steve sings “Somebody Loves Me”. Carol and Steve sing “’S Wonderful” and “Who Could Ask For Anything More”.

May 26, 1996: It was my birthday so I went to a strip club

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday Nancy picked our daughter up and then I went to the House of Lancaster for a beer. After that I bought some porn magazines.

Rudy de Luca

            On Sunday morning I memorized the fourth verse of “Il est Rigolo mon gigolo” (He’s a Giggle Oh My Gigolo) by Serge Gainsbourg. There are two verses left to learn. 

            I weighed 89.6 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since May 14. 

            I played my Martin acoustic for song practice and it went out of tune during every song. 

            Around midday I finished touching up the Blue Bliss paint on my bathroom rack. It’s ready now to mount on the wall, which I’ll probably do on Wednesday.

            I weighed 91 kilos before lunch. That’s the most I’ve pushed the scale in the early afternoon since March 2. 

            In the afternoon I rode up to The Dufferin Mall to buy socks and underwear so I don’t have to do laundry this week. I bought six ankle socks, six crew socks, and six pairs of briefs. Just riding up to the mall I saw two trees that had been torn down by the wind storm last night. 

            I weighed 90.4 kilos at 17:55. 

            I remembered to buy beer but the liquor store across the street closes early on Sundays so I had to ride down to the one at Uppity Village where I bought two six-packs of Creemore. During that ride I saw another blown down tree. 

            I weighed 90.2 kilos at 18:45. A little less than the evening of March 3. 

            I was caught up in my journal just before supper. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, black olive paste, tomato pesto, two sliced sausages and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 7, episode 17 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warmup someone asks who does the makeup for the show. She says it’s a little old guy named Al Schultz and she brings him out. He’s not old and in fact he later married Vicki Lawrence and they were together for 56 years until he died. 

            Someone asks if this is a repeat show. 

            Carl Reiner and Carol play a husband and wife who got to a restaurant to meet an insurance agent so they can be covered for accidents. Carol’s character is extremely accident prone and has only recently woken up from her second coma after their house burned down. Even just sitting there at the table she gets cut by broken glasses, burned by her husband’s cigar, gets a champagne cork shot into her mouth from across the room, has one of her real fingernails torn off, and she’s stabbed with a fork. The insurance man arrives (played by Harvey) and he gives them the papers to sign. Carl signs them but Carol still needs to sign. However, before she can, Carl accidentally steps on and breaks the fingers of her signing hand. Harvey sees she’s accident prone and cancels the deal. He closes his briefcase on her hand and starts dragging her away as he leaves. 

            Harvey plays an executive who is about to fly away to get married. Carol plays his dedicated secretary of 16 years who is staying behind to mind the office and obviously is in love with her boss. After he leaves she sings “Send in the Clowns” by Stephen Sondheim from the 1973 musical A Little Night Music. 

            Carl plays a marriage counselor who is on the phone with Bob who is thanking him for helping him patch things up with his husband. Harvey enters his office and he is the husband of a famous nightclub comedian named Totie Phyllis. He says the problem is that she will never stop joking even at home. Carl says to send her in but she refuses to enter until Harvey gives her show business intro similar to Johnny Carson’s entry. She makes a big intro and behaves as if the marriage counselor is a talk show host. She also brings her drummer wherever she goes so he can play a rim shot after every joke. Carl asks Totie if she loves her husband and she answers, “Does Raquel Welch sleep on her back?” (A reference to Raquel’s famously large breasts). Carl suggests a treatment whereby whatever joke he sets up, she doesn’t respond. He asks, “How fat is your mother in law?” Totie bites her fist to keep from responding. He asks several more questions. She screams and tries to crawl under his desk. His final question is, “What do you get when you cross a duck with Sonny Bono?” She collapses and Carl says she’s cured. Harvey picks her up and rejoices that he finally has his wife but she says, “An Italian quack is what you get when you cross a duck with Sonny Bono!” Harvey tosses Totie out the window. 

            Harvey comes to the supermarket with a hot date named Trixi. He’s bought several gourmet items because he plans to bring her back to his place and fix her a great meal before scoring. Carol plays the cashier and takes a long time to ring up all the items while Trixi is getting impatient and also is getting hit on by several men while she waits. A Boy Scout holds up three fingers in that organization’s salute but Trixi holds up five fingers to indicate his offer is short. By the time he’s finished Trixi is already leaving with someone else. 

            The final skit is a Mexican version of Little Red Riding Hood called La Caperucita Roja. Little Red Riding Hood is played by Carol in the character at that time very well known, voluptuous and highly sexualized Spanish actor, singer, and guitarist Charo. When she jerks her hips to the right or left it causes men to fall over as if they’ve been struck. Vicki in a Mexican accent plays the interpreter. Harvey plays the grandmother. Instead of a wolf there is a bull played by Carl Reiner. In La Caperucita’s basket she carries for her grandmother her special tortitas (which they say are little cookies but looking it up I see they are pancakes). They say that La Caperucita has the sweetest tortitas in town. The bull wants her tortitas and so he goes to grandma’s house to replace her. Grandma (played by a variation of Harvey’s big buxom woman character) has the hots for the bull. La Caperucita arrives but sees the bull’s horns and escapes. The matador (played by Lyle) replaces the woodcutter in the traditional story but when he sees the bull he runs away. La Caperucita defeats the bull with her cape and everyone wants her to kill him but her grandmother says to let him live with her. Then Carol and Vicki toss tortitas to the audience. Carol sings her usual closing song but in Spanish. 

            One of the writers for The Carol Burnett Show was Rudy de Luca, who cofounded The Comedy Store with Sammy Shore in Hollywood. He also wrote for The Tim Conway Show, He co-wrote Silent Movie, High Anxiety, Caveman (starring Ringo Starr), Million Dollar Mystery, Life Stinks, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, The Good Bad Guy, Screw Loose, and Box Office 3-D. He wrote the screenplay for Transylvania 6-5000. He co-starred in The Return of Count Yorga, and The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine.