April 6, 1996: I picked up and cashed my pay cheques

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday it was payday and so I went downtown to pick up and cash my Ontario College of Art and Toronto Board of Education cheques. After that I probably stayed downtown to perform on the Spit Fridays open stage in the back room of the Cameron.

Holly Hunter

            On Saturday morning I worked out the chords for all but the last three lines of “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian. I’ll finish it tomorrow and then start revising my translation. 

            I uploaded my photo-video of “Les millionaires” to YouTube. Then I uploaded the lyrics to my Christian’s Translations blog and started preparing it for publication. 

            I weighed 88.6 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since March 8. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it stayed in tune about half the time. 

            When I went out to lock my bike before bringing my trailer down I noticed that downstairs the Pope yes restaurant has been closed. There is an article in Toronto Life that says my landlord has locked them out because they owe him $14,000. Raja would lock them out if they owed him 36 cents. 

My name is Raja I’m just a poor poor poor millionaire 

My name is Raja I’m just a poor poor poor millionaire 

I’m gonna sue ya if ya don’t pay me all your subway fare 

My name is Raja I’m just a poor wealthy slum lord 

My name is Raja I’m just a poor wealthy slum lord 

My rent will gouge ya while my bedbugs get free room and board 

            At around midday I went over to Vina Pharmacy and picked up my Betaderm prescription. 

            I rode to No Frills were I bought five bags of mostly green grapes, two packs of raspberries, a pack of strawberries, two packs of five-year-old cheddar, three bags of skim milk, pickling vinegar, olive oil, two containers of skyr, and a bag of wedge fries. Winta the cashier, who I think is from Africa, asked me what the 0% on the skim milk means. I explained that the fat has been removed. 

            I weighed 88.75 kilos at 14:45. I had a slice of toasted seven grain bread with peanut butter and a glass of iced tea. 

            I took a siesta from 15:30 to about 17:15. 

            I weighed 89.05 kilos at 17:35. March 14 was the last evening when I tortured the scale that far.

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:59. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity the recording of the first Christian and the Lions performance at the El Mocambo in 1994. Our line-up at the time was me on vocals, Tom Smarda on Stratocaster, Steve Lowe on acoustic guitar, Mike Martin on drums, and Beverly Ross on bass. I think that was the only time Beverly played with us. I don’t know what happened to her. She played with a band called The Jazz Bitches but they don’t seem to exist anymore. She studied music at Humber College. We played “Megaphor”, “Hungry Hippunk Goes to Work”, “Calendar Girl”, “Me and Gravity”, “Tropic of Ulcer”, and “Angeline”. yesterday when I tried to digitize this tape it came out distorted but this time I shut down Chrome and Bit Torrent first so they wouldn’t tax the memory and it worked. 

            I created more folders for photos in my SSD and deleted several images from my hard drive. 

            I made oven fries and had them with a slice of seven grain bread with hummus and a glass of Creemore while watching the first episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. 

            Anisha Mir is a single mother with a 6 year old son named Caleb. They fell in with a pirate named Braka and Anisha joined him in a mission to steal food. But a Federation officer was killed during the mission and so after she is captured Anisha is sentenced to 15 years in a rehabilitation facility separate from Caleb who is made a ward of the Federation. But Caleb escapes by stealing a com badge to try to find his mother. 

            Captain Nahla Ake resigns from Starfleet over having been forced to separate a child from his mother. Fifteen years later she is approached by Admiral Vance who tells her that Starfleet Academy will be starting up again after 100 years and he wants her to be chancellor. She refuses but then he tells her they’ve found Caleb who has been captured and placed in a high security prison. Anisha escaped from confinement a year ago. That seems stupid since she only had a year left in her sentence. 

            Nahla tells Caleb she can get him released and will help him find his mother if he agrees to join Star Fleet Academy. The actual Academy is in San Francisco on Earth but the classroom is the USS Athena of which Nahla is captain. 

            The first officer and the cadet master is a half Klingon named Thok. Caleb refuses to wear a uniform and Thok immediately orders him to do 200 push-ups. It’s not likely that just because she barks the order so forcefully that he would do it but he does. Ironically Thok doesn’t look like she could do one push up. Thok appears as if she is just wearing a cheap Klingon mask over the front of her face.

            Caleb steps through a regulation Appearance Arch and automatically has his long hair gone and he’s wearing a uniform. That’s fucked up given that a male Klingon cadet named Kraag gets to keep his long hair as do the long haired female cadets. On top of that the captain has a pretty messy looking head of hair for a Starfleet officer. 

            Cadet Sam is a hologram or Photonic as her people prefer to be called. She is desperate to make friends but is ignored until she meets the confident Genesis, who is an admiral’s daughter and has never set foot on a planet as they make their way to Earth. 

            Caleb hacks an instructor’s console and looks for messages from his mother in their secret code. He sends her a message on that frequency. Genesis catches him and teases him with turning him in but they make friends. 

            The Athena is attacked by 12 drones that cause programmable matter to engulf the ship and disable all weapons and transport ability. A Vanari Ral ship assembles and tethers the Athena. Thok has a large piece of shrapnel in her abdomen and the cadets take her to a bio training facility. The cadets are cut off from the bridge and are on their own. The lights fail but Sam has the ability to illuminate the bulkhead by touching it. It looks like she’s Rudolph the red nosed reindeer. Like him she's until her abilities are needed. 

            It turns out that Braka is behind the attack. He found the Athena by tracking Caleb’s message to his mother. He appears as a hologram on the bridge and tells Nahla he wants the Athena’s warp drive in exchange for their lives. 

            Caleb communicates to Nahla that he thinks he can break the frequency isolation coefficient of the programmable matter. But they need a sample from the hull and no cadets have access to space suits. However Cadette Darem is a Khionian with the ability to survive in space for 8 minutes. He goes out and gets the needed analysis but he can’t make it back. Genesis gets clearance from the holographic doctor from Voyager who is now the medical officer for the Academy. She releases Darem’s magnetic boots and then brings him into the ship with a tractor beam. 

            Braka and his men board Athena and Caleb has a fist fight with him. During the fight Caleb is able to initiate the disruption of the programmable matter and the bridge regains control of Athena. They immediately destroy Braka’s ship but he gets away in an escape pod. 

            They arrive in San Francisco to the soundtrack of “If You’re Going to San Francisco” as sung well but horribly by Rufus Wainwright. It’s a strange choice of song since not a single one of them is wearing flowers in their hair as the song instructs them to do. 

            Nahla Ake is played by Holly Hunter, who started playing piano at age 9. She earned a degree in Drama in 1980. When she moved to New York her roommate was Frances McDormand. She made her Broadway debut in Crimes of the Heart. She made her film debut in The Burning. Her first starring role was in Raising Arizona. She co-starred in Swing Shift, Always, Once Around, Broadcast News, The Firm (for which she was nominated for an Academy Award), Copycat, Crash, A Life Less Ordinary, Living Out Loud, Jesus’ Son, Woman Wanted, O Brother Where Art Thou, Moonlight Mile, Little Black Book, The Incredibles 1 and 2, Thirteen (also Oscar nominated), The Big White, She starred in Miss Firecracker, The Piano (for which she won an Oscar and really played the piano in the film), Home for the Holidays, She starred in the TV series Saving Grace for which she received an Emmy nomination. She co-starred in the sitcom Mr. Mayor. She was nominated for two Emmys for Roe vs Wade and The Absolutely True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader Murdering Mom.

April 5, 1996: I considered posing for artists to be an artform in itself

Thirty years ago today 

            On Thursday I shaped my body as usual into dynamic, creative poses for artists and art students to draw.

Robert Goulet

            On Friday morning I worked out the chords for verses five to eight and the second chorus of “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian. 

            In my “Les millionaires” Movie Maker project I finished synchronizing the images with the rhythm and the meaning of the lyrics in my photo-video of the song by Serge Gainsbourg. I changed some of the images to black and white and then published it. I watched the whole thing and it looks good. Tomorrow I’ll upload it to YouTube. 

            I weighed 87.75 kilos before breakfast. I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the last of four sessions and it went out of tune during every song. 

            Around midday I painted the second coat of “blue bliss” on the bathroom door and I think two coats are enough. On Tuesday I’ll break out the wall paint and do some touch-ups in places where the blue got away.

            I weighed 88.9 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the early afternoon since March 22. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I just wore my button shirt and no jacket as it was quite comfortable outside. 

            I weighed 88.65 kilos at 18:20. March 21 was the last evening when I was so hard on the scale. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:23. 

            I tried to record from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity the recording of the first Christian and the Lions performance at the El Mocambo but it came out distorted. I tried it with WASAPI and MME and it still sounded bad. I shut down Chrome and Bit Torrent and went back to Windows Direct Sound and it didn’t sound as horrible. I’ll try it that way tomorrow. If it doesn’t work I’ll just mic the speaker again and digitize in that manner. 

            I deleted several images from my hard drive. 

            I boiled a potato, heated my last ten oven fries and topped them with the rest of my chili. I ate while watching season 2, episode 25 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warm-up someone asks Lyle if his wife is a boy or a girl. She meant did she give birth to a boy or a girl. 

            Robert Goulet sings “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” from the 1965 musical of the same name by Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner. Then he sings “There is Always Something There to Remind Me” by Burt Bacharach and Hal David followed by “Didn’t We” by Jimmy Webb. 

            In the first skit Harvey Korman plays someone who’s just woken up with a really bad hangover. There’s a knock and he tells whoever it is to go away but they are persistent and so he opens it and in walks Carol as a parody of a Campfire Girl, called here a Fireside Girl. She’s collecting money to send Fireside Girls to camp. He lies that he has a cold and doesn’t feel well. She says that must be horrible on top of that hangover. He gives her 30 cents to get rid of her but she doesn’t go because she needs his name for the list she’ll be posting of all the tenants and how much they contributed, which she’ll be posting in the lobby. He adds a dollar. She says she saw his party from her window across the courtyard and comments that it was some masquerade party he had last night. He says it wasn’t a masquerade and she asks “Wasn’t that lady supposed to be Lady Godiva?” He puts more cash in her can and she says she promises not to show the picture she took to anyone. He pays her for the picture and then tears it up but then remembers the negative and pays her for that. Then she tells him she’ll be back in April and he starts to strangle her just as another Fireside Girl steps in with a camera and captures the moment. In the end he’s stuffing both their cans with cash. 

            In the second skit Carol is with Imogine Coca as they play two US women vacationing in Rome. Carol is socially adept and gets picked up by a count, leaving Imogine alone in the café. Everyone starts to dance while Imogine sits feeling lonely until a man asks her to dance and she does. But when the dance is over he charges her 10 lire. She sits alone and sings “If Love Were All” by Noel Coward.

            In the third skit Vicki Lawrence and Lyle Waggoner play a married couple and Lyle is a movie star (Vicki is getting more mature roles in this second season, when before she always played teenagers). She says he’s been paying less attention to her and asks if it’s because she’s becoming less beautiful. He says, “No, it’s because I’m becoming more beautiful”. Their maid played by Carol is obsessed with Lyle and can’t take her eyes off of him. Vicki threatens to fire her and finally does. The chauffeur comes in to drive Lyle to the studio. Carol knocks out the chauffeur, takes his uniform and puts on a false moustache. 

            Vicki narrates in song the fairy tale of Cinder Rumple White played by Carol. She has long long hair like Rapunzel. A witch played by Imogine tricks her into eating a poison apple. A knight played by Goulet comes to rescue her but first must defeat a two headed monster and a dragon. When he kisses her he turns into a frog. 

            Robert Goulet was born in Massachusetts to Quebecois parents but was raised in Canada. When he was thirteen his father called him to his deathbed and told him he must sing, then he died. He won a scholarship to the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and made his stage debut in Handel’s Messiah in Edmonton. He worked as a DJ in Edmonton for two years. He played Lancelot in the Broadway production of Camelot in 1960. He made his film debut in the animated feature Gay Purr-ee in 1962. He starred in Honeymoon Hotel, I Deal in Danger, and Underground. He co-starred in Naked Gun Two and a Half. His biggest pop hit was “My Love Forgive Me” in 1964, which reached #16. In 1966 he starred in the TV series Blue Light. He won a Tony for his role in Happy Time in 1968. He played Trapper Pierre on the Canadian version of Howdy Doody. He played himself on several episodes of Mr. Belvedere. He had always thought that he was a Canadian citizen but found out late in life that he wasn’t. After being inducted in Canada’s Walk of Fame he applied for Canadian citizenship and it was approved but not complete until shortly after he died.

April 4, 1996: Brian and I busked on Bloor

Thirty years ago today 

            On Wednesday Brian Haddon and I busked on Bloor, went for lunch, busked some more and then performed on the Fat Albert’s open stage.

Inga Neilsen

            On Thursday morning I started applying Michel Fedrizzi’s melody to the full text of “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian, since Fedrizzi only used about a third of the poem. I’ve done the first four verses and the first chorus. 

            In my “Les millionaires” Movie Maker project I’ve almost finished synchronizing the images in my photo-video with the rhythm and the meaning of the lyrics. I should have it finished tomorrow. 

            I weighed 87.2 kilos before breakfast. I had to skip song practice because I had an appointment with my gastroenterologist at Mount Sinai. 

            I didn’t have to wait long before I was called by the nurse. She said that my CT scan wasn’t as clear as it should have been because of inadequate preparation on my part. I guess I should have started taking the Pico Salax in the morning instead the early afternoon. But I had an appointment to get my teeth cleaned and I didn’t want to start shitting in the hygienist’s chair. Nonetheless they saw it well enough to tell that there was no evidence of cancer. Dr. Croitoru came in and told me they found nothing to be concerned about and even the polyp they removed during my colonoscopy was only an inflammatory polyp, which means it’s not the kind that develops into cancer. They removed it for analysis but if I had never gotten the colonoscopy it wouldn’t have mattered. 

            I weighed 86.9 kilos at 13:20, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since December 16. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back stopped at Freshco where the grapes were all too soft so I didn't buy any. I got two packs of raspberries, some bananas, bacon, hot Genoa salami, half a ham, an Atlantic salmon fillet, eggs, two packs of Full City Dark coffee, a box of spoon sized shredded wheat, and a jar of salsa. 

            I weighed 88.4 kilos at 16:25, the same as last Thursday evening. 

            A few days ago I posted a poem on Facebook and my friend Nick Cushing ran it through an AI program called Suno to make it into a song. I already wrote a melody for it but it’s interesting to hear it done by a robot folksinger. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:52. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then exported to my hard drive various recordings of my band Christian and the Lions and sometimes just me performing at Fat Albert’s. We did “Angeline” a couple of times, “Megaphor” at least twice, “I Saw My Reflection in an Open Wound”, “Wives of the Prophets”, and “Spool of the Moon”. I sang a couple of Leonard Cohen covers as well. 

            I deleted several images from my hard drive. 

            I heated most of the rest of the chili I made a few days ago and had it on top of oven fries while watching season 2, episode 14 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            A woman in the audience asks if she can give Lyle Waggoner a hug. He hugs her then asks her name and she says, “Tiffany Waggoner”. He asks, “Are we related?” and she says, “I’m your sister”.

            Tim Conway’s wife, mother and mother in law were in the audience and either nervously of intentionally he referred to both older women as his mothers in law. 

            The VIP interview is with fried chicken magnate Colonel Flanders. He says he’s produced a chicken with eight legs but could never catch it. He bred another chicken that was two meters tall but it kept putting him in the bucket. 

            Tim Conway does a stand-up routine but is afraid the audience will laugh at him and so he takes the microphone into the dressing room and does it from there. Then he keeps calling Carol up mid-joke to ask her how the audience is reacting. In the end he does a performance of “Strangers in the Night” without singing. 

            The “Carol and Sis” sketch has Chrissie out on a date with an older guy who is about to leave for the Viet Nam War. It’s after 1:00 but Chrissie hasn’t gotten back yet. Carol is worried and keeps waking Roger up. Chrissie comes home and worries Carol more when she tells her they didn’t go to the movie but went to his place to listen to the stereo. She says they might get married when he gets back. Roger is not worried by any of this until Chrissie says that when they get married they’ll move in with them. 

            Vicki does a song and dance with the Ernie Flatt dancers, singing “American Boys” by Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent, which was a minor hit for Petula Clark.

            Carol and Tim play a couple about to get married who have decided to paint their apartment themselves and save $200, which would be $2000 now. But they not only make a mess but continuously injure one another in slapstick moments. Carol gets a bucket stuck on her head and so they have to go to the hospital. Carol doesn’t want to be seen that way so Tim puts her wedding veil over the bucket.

            There’s a parody of The Night They Raided Minsky’s. Tim Conway does a magic act and thinks the crowd is going wild over it but there is a burlesque dancer performing behind him. 

            Harvey is a con man and Vicki is his girl. He sells Tim Conway a magic carnation that will make Vicki kiss him. He buys it but she slaps his face. Harvey tells him he’s doing it wrong and sells the carnation to him twice more with the same result. 

            The burlesque dancers can’t do their act because the star Autumn Levy keeps fainting. Carol is told she has to fill her place, even though she’s not a dancer, especially not a burlesque dancer. Harvey and the dancers sing "Take Ten Terrific Girls (but only nine costumes)" by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams from The Night They Raided Minsky’s. Carol is wearing a nude coloured body suit so she looks somewhat naked. 

            Autumn Levy was played by Inga Neilsen, who was tall and awkward as a child and so she began taking ballet lessons at the American School of Dance to learn poise. She showed a natural talent for dance and earned a scholarship. She made her film debut in Scaramouche at the age of 12. She became a showgirl in Vegas and was named Showgirl of the Year four times. She was often cast in movies and TV shows for much shorter comedians to ogle. She played Gymnasia in A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum. She appeared many times on The Carol Burnett Show from 1969 to 1973 to serve as a comical contrast to the plainness that was part of Carol’s schtick.

April 3, 1996: I hosted my open stage as always at the Gladstone Hotel

Thirty years ago today

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