July 7, 1996: My daughter and I carried a few things to my new place

Thirty years ago today 

            On Sunday my daughter and I carried a couple of my things to the new place at 428 Queen West. Marjorie told us where the nearest playground was. It was a little further away than the one near my old place. It was in Alexandra Park off Bathurst and south of Dundas.

Madeline Kahn

            On Sunday morning I worked out the chords for half of the instrumental; intro “La complainte de Bonnot” by Boris Vian. But then I realized that I’d forgotten to do a search for the chords online and discovered that there is at least one set. So tomorrow I’ll transcribe those and see if they’re any better than what I worked out. 

            I listened to the audio of “Ça” (That), a parody of the Serge Gainsbourg song “Je t’aime. Moi non plus (I Love You. Neither Do I)” while reading the transcription and saw that Sonix hadn’t always separated the two speakers properly. I put the female voice in italics to distinguish it. The proper separation sometimes changes the meaning of the text. 

            I weighed 89.05 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since June 5. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the first of four sessions and as usual it was out of tune all the time. 

            Around midday I applied the second coat of the “crazy in love” pink hue to the inside halves of three of the four floral reliefs on my future bathroom mirror frame. Either Tuesday or Wednesday I’ll finish the pink and then later in the week I’ll touch up the rest of the frame with blue bliss. Maybe next Sunday I’ll mount the mirror. 

            I weighed 90.15 kilos before lunch. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

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

            I weighed 89.15 kilos at 17:40. That’s the easiest I’ve been on the scale in the evening since May 20. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:50. 

            I recorded side 1 of a home made recording on cassette by Tom Smarda of him singing and playing his songs. I played it through my audio interface to Audacity and then extracted it to my hard drive. Tomorrow I’ll digitize side 2. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, french fries and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching season 10, episode 4 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warmup someone asks about Carol’s garage sale. I assume they sold items from the show. She says they made $16.000 for cancer research. 

            A kid named Jackie gets Carol to sign her Nothing Book. Apparently Nothing Books were hardcover books first published in 1974 containing 160 blank pages. Carol asks her age and she has to think for a second before she answers that she’s 14. Carol says the kids have to say they are 14 otherwise they won’t be allowed in. 

            A boy who also says he’s 14 asks her from whom she inherited her gorgeous legs. She asks if he’s interested in being with an older woman. 

            A little girl who’s 3 or 4 comes up to the stage and says, “Hi Aunt Carol!” Carol doesn’t recognize her at first. But she says her name is Rosie. Carol also waves to a niece named Rachel. These can’t be Carol’s sister Chrissie’s children because Chrissie’s children are Jennifer and Max. None of Carol’s husbands’ siblings seem to have had children with those names either. Maybe it’s a situation where the children of a friend called her Aunt Carol. AI says it was the child of a crew member. 

            In the Mama’s Family sketch Eunice is rehearsing a play called Mary Queen of Scotland and the director, Mavis Danton, who’s been in the movies, is coming over to coach Eunice. Mavis arrives (played by Madeline Kahn). Ed asks her if she was really in the movies. She says after one movie in that phony Hollywood world she told herself to get out before they destroy her. Mama asks what movie she was in and Mavis says Cat Women on Mars (obviously a play on the real film Cat Women on the Moon). Mama asks if Ingrid Bergman was in it. Mama says she crossed Ingrid off her list in 1949 when she went and married that foreigner. She’s referring to Roberto Rosellini because she got pregnant by him while married to someone else. It was an enormous scandal especially because Bergman had played the holy Joan of Arc. But it’s weird that Mama would call Rosellini a foreigner when Bergman was Swedish. As they are about to rehearse, Mavis tells Eunice they are looking for numbed despair mixed with doomed frivolity. Mavis plays Mary Queen of Scots and Eunice plays her lady in waiting. Eunice is being too forceful so Mavis tells her to stop and be a butterfly. Then she tells her to stop being a butterfly and let the lightness remain. Mavis asks Mama and Ed to read some parts. Eunice doesn’t want them to but they are into it. Mama plays Queen Elizabeth I. Mavis reads, “A bastard profanes the English throne!” Mama asks, “What kind of smut is this play?” Mavis gets more and more frustrated with Eunice’s bad acting and inability to take direction. She says she never thought she would stoop so low as to cast an illiterate, no talent pea brain just because she bought 100 tickets. Mavis leaves. Ed asks how much 100 tickets cost and Eunice says, $200. Ed says that’s their life savings. Eunice says she can sell the tickets to her friends. Mama says she hasn’t got 3 friends. Ed is angry but Mama says, “Can’t you see Eunice is upset? Poor baby she’s failed again!” 

            Carol introduces her very good friend Madeline Kahn. Then Carol admits that they haven’t actually had time yet to become very good friends because they really just met. Carol wrote Madeline a fan letter after seeing her in Young Frankenstein. They corresponded for a while before they met. They sing the song “Friend” by Larry Grossman and Hal Hackady from the 1975 musical Snoopy. 

            Ted plays Mr. Tudball and Harvey plays a security guard in the building where Tudball does business. As usual Ted and Harvey crack each other up just from looking at or listening to each other. Tudball always has bad luck with the coffee machine in the hallway. It gives him coffee with no cup, coffee with a bottomless cup, and coffee with an upside down cup. When he starts hitting the machine Harvey threatens him and when Tudball continues, Harvey grabs him. Tudball takes Harvey’s gun and points it at him to hold him back. Tudball says he’s going to put a hole in who’s responsible and Harvey thinks he means him but Tudball shoots the machine. Suddenly the machine drops a proper cup of coffee. Harvey takes his gun back and leaves. But before Tudball can take the coffee Mrs. Wiggins comes out and takes it. 

            Carol says fifty years ago they had That’s Entertainment. This is part 86. 

            Harvey and Tim play two elderly stars reminiscing. 

            Vickie imitates Ann Wilson and does a tap dance. 

            Harvey and Madeline do a parody of Nelson Eddy and Jeannette McDonald singing a parody of “Indian Love Call”. 

            Tim plays a tuxedoed dancer with top hat and cane but he obviously can’t dance and that’s the joke. The other dancers throw their canes and hats down in anger and walk away. 

            They then show the clip from season 4, episode 8 in which Carol did a parody of Esther Williams’s swimming musicals, sometimes singing underwater, “Blub blub”. 

            Madeline Kahn trained as an opera singer in university and also earned a degree in Speech Therapy. She studied singing with Beverly Peck Johnson. She made her stage debut as a chorus girl in a revival of Kiss Me Kate. She made her Broadway debut in Leonard Sillman’s New Faces of 1968. She made her film debut in the 1968 short De Duva. She made her feature film debut in What’s Up Doc? She co-starred in Paper Moon and Blazing Saddles and was nominated for Academy Awards for both movies. She co-starred in High Anxiety, History of the World Part 1, The Cheap Detective, Clue, Young Frankenstein, At Long Last Love, The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother, Won Ton Ton, Simon, happy Birthday Gemini, First Family, Slapstick of Another Kind, My Little Pony, An American Tail, Betsy’s Wedding, Mixed Nuts, and Judy Berlin. She was nominated for Tony Awards for her performances in Born Yesterday, In the Boom Boom Room, and in On the Twentieth Century. She won a Tony for her performance in The Sisters Rosensweig. She won an Emmy for her performance in the after school special Wanted: The Perfect Guy. She created, produced, wrote and starred in the short lived sitcom Oh Madeline. She appeared on Sesame Street 12 times. She was in 14 episodes of Mr. President, 13 episodes of New York News, and 84 episodes of Cosby.

July 6, 1996: I took my daughter to see the new place

Thirty years ago today 

            On Saturday Nancy dropped off our daughter at my place and I took her to see the new place at 428 Queen West. We discovered that out the back door was a cool rooftop where we could play. I gave Marjorie the rent money.

Nacio Herb Brown

            On Saturday morning I finished memorizing “La complainte de Bonnot” by Boris Vian. I’ll start working out the chords tomorrow. I did the first draft of a translation of most of “Ça” (That), which is a parody of the Serge Gainsbourg song “Je t’aime. Moi non plus (I Love You. Neither Do I)”. I’ll finish that tomorrow and then I’ll revise my translation while listening to the audio. Since this is a long dialogue and not a song I won’t bother memorizing it. 

            I weighed 89.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer during song practice and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            Since the back of my toilet is leaking I keep the water turned off unless I have to flush it. Then after I fill up the tank I flush it before turning the water off again. I had to do that three times during song practice. 

            Around midday I rode down to No Frills where the cherries were very cheap at $4.34 a kilo. I bought seven bags of cherries, a pack of Canadian strawberries, some bananas, a boneless pork sirloin half, a loaf of cinnamon-raisin bread, medium freezer bags, plastic wrap, a new brand of pasta sauce called Stefano, a box of saltines, three bags of microfiltered skim milk, three small containers of PC skyr because they didn’t have the big ones, and two bags of Miss Vickie’s chips. 

            When I got home I realized that I’d forgotten to buy bleach so I walked over to the hardware store. I inquired about steamers for fighting bedbugs. The guy said they’ll be getting the Dirt Devil steamer in on Monday. He didn’t know anything about it killing bedbugs but it says so in the product profile online. 

            I weighed 89.5 kilos at 14:40, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since May 20. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with some homemade iced tea mixed with lemonade. 

            I took a siesta and got up too late to take a bike ride. 

            I weighed 89.55 kilos at 17:20. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:17. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity, then extracted to my hard drive side 1 of another tape of recordings of my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy” at Mike’s Place with Mike on drums. We were getting a little more polished on this song at this point. There is nothing recorded on side 2. The next tape I’ll digitize is one of my friend Tom Smarda playing his songs. 

            I worked on digitally enhancing one of my old photos. 

            The rain today broke the heat so I was able to cook for the first time in a few days. I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, french fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching the tenth season premier of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            There is a parody of the sitcom Mary Hartman Mary Hartman but set in the world of nursery rhymes and starring Carol as Mary Mary Quite Contrary. The phone rings and Mary crawls out from the cupboard under the kitchen sink to answer with “Good morning” but then confesses that she doesn’t really know if it’s a good morning so she goes to check and comes back to say “Fair morning”. It’s the police telling her that her grandfather Wee Willy (Winkie) has been arrested for peekabooing. Mary says she’ll be right over but then her neighbour Loretta (played by Vicki) comes over to relate a tail of being terrorized by a spider like Little Miss Muffett. On the way over she saw Wee Willy Winkie in his nighty heading towards the old woman who lives in a shoe. Loretta’s horny husband Charlie Haggers (played by Jim Nabors) comes over and wants Loretta back home so they can have sex but suddenly she is paralyzed from the waist down. He says he heard the old woman in the shoe has never been married. Mary asks how she got all those children. Wee Willy (played by Tim) arrives. The police have the place surrounded and threaten to blow the house down. Mary crawls back under the sink. 

            Jim Nabors sings “Let Me Be There” by John Rostill that was a hit for Olivia Newton John in 1973. 

            Tim plays a businessman who’s been driving for two days and stops to sleep at a motel. But the walls are thin and he can hear the couple arguing in the room next door. One of them throws a lamp right through the wall. Then he hears a fly buzzing. He gets the fly to follow him out the door but then he locks himself out and has to climb in through the window above the door. Then he hears a little knock and opens the door and it’s the fly. He catches the fly but it pulls him by his fist forces him out the window. 

            In the Mama’s Family sketch, Eunice, Ed, and Mama are playing Monopoly. Eunice lands on Boardwalk and is ecstatic because she already has Park Place and all her life she has wanted to have both at the same time. She thinks it’s an omen that her whole life is about to change. She believes with the houses and hotels she will buy for those locations it will render her invincible. Mama is interested in a sale at the mall and Ed is interested in a western on TV. Eunice thinks they want to quit because she’s on the verge of the greatest triumph of her life. They return to the game. Mama finds all this talk of mortgaging property in Monopoly depressing since she spends all week trying to make ends meet. Ed has to pay Eunice most of his money in the game and he’s upset. Mama tells him he should be used to going broke by now. Eunice gets a call from her brother Philip who is in Rome writing a movie. Mama talks to him and hears he’s engaged to an Italian movie star. She wants to know if she speaks English because if she doesn’t he won’t be able to understand what his kids are saying. Eunice spends all her money on houses and hotels. But then she lands on St. Charles Place and owes Mama $750. She has to mortgage some of her property to pay. On her next move Eunice owes Ed $1050. She doesn’t like Ed’s attitude but Mama tells her to let him enjoy making a little money since he never had that pleasure in real life. Eunice is bankrupt and very upset. She goes out in the rain to shout about her bad luck and comes back in soaking wet. She sits and sulks while Mama and Ed enjoy the game. 

            The musical tribute is to Nacio Herb Brown in a segment called Shipwreck in Tahiti. Tim plays a witch doctor who makes couples fall in love by shaking his magic gourd over them. Carol sings “Broadway Rhythm” with lyrics by Arthur Freed from the 1952 movie Singin in the Rain. Jim Nabors is washed up on the beach and Carol sings to him “Temptation” with lyrics by Freed from the 1933 film Going Hollywood. At first Jim is frightened of her but Tim makes him fall in love and then Jim sings the 1940 song “You Stepped Out of a Dream” with lyrics by Gus Kahn. Carol sings “If You Will Hold My Hand” from the 1931 film A Woman of Experience. Harvey sings “Alone” from the 1935 film A Night At the Opera. Tim makes the volcano erupt and a hurricane hit the island. Vicki, who was also shipwrecked wakes up to perform “Singing in the Rain”. Jim gets hit over the head with debris and it breaks the spell so he is back with Vicki and sings with her “You Were Meant for Me” from the 1929 film The Broadway Melody. Harvey sings to Carol “Good Morning” from Singing in the Rain. Carol sings “You Are My Lucky Star” from Broadway Melody. Vicki and Jim leave in a canoe and the rest return to singing “Broadway Rhythm” to finish. 

            Nacio Herb Brown studied at the Mnaual Arts High School in Los Angeles. He became a successful realtor but continued writing songs. His first hit was “Coral Sea” in 1920. After his first big hit “When Buddha Smiles” in 1921 he quit real estate and became a full time songwriter. He collaborated with lyricist and producer Arthur Freed on many hits, including “Singing in the Rain”, “Good Morning”, and “Broadway Melody”. He also collaborated with lyricists B. G. "Buddy" DeSylva, Gus Kahn, Leo Robin and Gordon Clifford. He came to Hollywood in 1928 under contract to MGM because now that they were making sound films they needed composers. He made his film debut in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. He co-wrote the music for the television show Hopalong Cassidy in 1949.

July 5, 1996: Keith Anderson was pretty racist

Thirty years ago today 

            On Friday I was working as a swamper for Keith Anderson Moving and Storage. We had moved somebody to around Forest Hill and we were unloading when who walks up the street but my bandmate Brian Haddon. It was a strange coincidence to run into him there. He said he was just running some errands. Keith Anderson was a bit of a racist. Whenever he moved someone who was Jewish he always left the most expensive item on the truck until after they’d paid the bill. He claimed that in his experience Jews would always argue about the bill otherwise. His practice often caused a lot of argument anyway.

Pat Proft

            On Friday morning I did the first draft of a translation of about a third of “Ça” (That), which is a parody of the Serge Gainsbourg song “Je t’aime. Moi non plus (I Love You. Neither Do I)”. 

            I weighed 89.55 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and as usual it went out of tune for the first half and then settled mostly into tune. 

            I finished adding the second and final coat of the “crazy in love” shade of pink to the outside halves of the four floral reliefs on my future bathroom mirror frame. On Sunday I’ll work on finishing the outside halves. 

            I weighed 90.25 kilos before lunch. 

            My toilet is leaking somewhere. At first I thought water was seeping from underneath and added more silicone but there’s wetness above the silicone. I tightened the bolt that secures the toilet to the floor in case it’s coming through that bolt hole. 

            I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            When I got back I realized that the water is coming from the back of the tank or the pipes back there so I turned the water off. I’d rather call a plumber myself than deal with the landlord so maybe I’ll do that on Monday. 

            I weighed 89.85 kilos at 17:55. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:53. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity, then extracted to my hard drive side 2 of the tape I started digitizing a few days go. These were all takes of my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy” as I continued to communicate to Mike what I wanted from the drums. The next tape I’ll digitize has more polished takes of the same song. 

            I worked on digitally enhancing one of my old photos. 

            It was too hot to use the stove and so I just had potato chips with salsa and skyr and a piece of finger beef. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching the ninth season finale of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warmup someone asks Carol if her children want to get into show business. She says all three are kind of hammy and she would encourage them but she wouldn’t put them on her show. She says, “My old lady didn’t have a television show”. Her daughter Carrie Hamilton became a writer and an actor but she died at 38. Her daughter Judy Hamilton became a film and TV producer and sometimes actor. Her daughter Erin Hamilton became a singer of dance and electronic music. 

            Someone asks who does the sound effects for the show and Carol says it’s Ross Murray. 

            A 14 year old boy tells Carol his Canadian grandfather has a crush on her so he asks if he can make him jealous by kissing her. She lets him come up and she snuggles him then kisses him on the cheeks. 

            In the Mama’s Family sketch Ed is preparing to leave for a hardware convention in Chicago. Mickey Hart was going to run the store for the three days he’d be gone but he convinces Ed that it would benefit the business better if they both went. They are about to leave when Eunice comes home with Mama. Mama doesn’t know why Ed is going at all since at his age he’s not going to get any new ideas. Ed doesn’t want Eunice to know that he’s taking Mickey because he’d already told her she couldn’t go. But Mickey lets it slip that he needs to pick up his pajamas. Now Eunice is upset and finally Ed gives in and says she can go. She is happy but she also says she doesn’t think Ed will get anything from the convention because he’s so empty headed, but she’s going to have fun. Finally Ed says that he didn’t want Eunice to go because she’s no fun and so he decides to take Mickey after all and leaves. Eunice plots her revenge. 

            In the Mr. Tudball and Mrs. Wiggins sketch starring Tim and Carol, it’s Mrs. Wiggins’ birthday. He wants to give her a party but it’s almost 17:00 and she wants to leave. He gives her a gift but she says this is putting her into overtime. The gift is a coffee mug with her name on it. He presents her with a cake but she says she can’t eat cake because it makes her break out and she leaves. He ends up with the cake upside down on his lap. 

            The Ernie Flatt Dancers do a number while dressed as babies to the 1926 song “Baby Face” by Harry Akst and Benny Davis. 

            Carol and Harvey play a couple who are just coming home from a movie. She was impressed with how the couple in the film were so honest with each other. She encourages Harvey to offer a criticism of her. He’s reluctant but finally says her forehead is too high. She points out that the couple in the movie didn’t criticize physical traits but emotional ones like apathy. His criticism bothers her and so he tells her to give him a dig to make it even. She says his ears are lop sided and that his belly button is an outie. She says sexy men like Paul Newman and Robert Redford have innies. He tells her that her toes curl up and this really upsets her. They make up and say they love all those things about the other. He says he loves her turkey neck too, which he hadn’t mentioned before so they are uneven again. 

            The ending of the last show always features her Charwoman character. She gets kissed goodbye by Tim, Harvey, and Vicki then she visits the Mama’s Family set, the Tudball-Wiggins set, and the Queen Elizabeth set. Then she sings the extended version of her theme song. 

            One of the writers for The Carol Burnett Show was Pat Proft, who started out in Dudley Riggs’ Brave New Workshop in the mid 60s. In the late 60s he had his own comedy act. He performed at The Comedy Store and that led to joining Kentucky Fried Theatre. He wrote for The Smothers Brothers. He co-wrote the screenplays for Police Academy, Bachelor Party, Real Genius, The Naked Gun, Lucky Stiff, The Naked Gun 2, Hotshots, Hotshots deux, Naked Gun 3, High School High, Scary Movie 3, 4, and 5, Mr. Magoo, Mostly Ghostly, and Bachelor Party 2. He wrote the screenplay for Brain Donors. He wrote and directed Wrongfully Accused. He wrote and produced Moving Violations.

July 4, 1996: I paid my last month's rent with a post-dated cheque

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I left a post dated cheque on the kitchen counter for my last month’s rent at 111 Sheridan Avenue then I walked to get on the Lansdowne bus to ride to the subway. The bus was still sitting there when Peter got on and confronted me about the cheque. He held up the bus while I calmly told him it was the best I could do.