On Sunday morning I found about ten bedbugs on the walls and at the bottom of the baseboard near my bed but there would have been a lot more if I’d steamed the baseboards the night before. I’ve decided not to steam again until I get some diatomaceous earth to spread at the bottoms of the baseboards after steaming so as to catch and kill them when they come out.
I worked out the chords for half of the chorus of “La complainte de Bonnot” by Boris Vian. I think that most of the rest of the chorus, except for the last line is the same as the beginning.
I published “Ça” (That), the parody of the Serge Gainsbourg song “Je t’aime. Moi non plus (I Love You. Neither Do I)” on my Christian’s Translations blog and posted the text of my translation on Facebook.
I started working on the other parody of “Je t’aime. Moi non plus”. This one is “Je t’aime. Moi aussi” (I Love You. So Do I). Musically it’s the same as the original and so I won’t have to work out the chords. In this case the main speaker rather than being with the person with the orgasmic voice and holding back from his own orgasm, is not with her at all and perhaps masturbating while thinking of her.
I’ll start memorizing it tomorrow.
I weighed 89.6 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Martin during song practice for the last of two sessions and it needs a set-up because it’s always going out of tune.
I finished painting my future bathroom mirror frame. But later I removed the paper that I’d taped on the glass to keep the paint off and discovered that part of the inside of the frame is visible in the reflection. So that evening I figured out how to remove the metal wedges that were holding the mirror in and then took out the mirror. On Tuesday I’ll sand a bit of the unpainted area and then add the blue of the frame to the reflected part.
I weighed 90.95 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 90.3 kilos at 18:00, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening since June 29.
I worked on getting caught up in my journal as I was still behind.
I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with rosée tomato sauce, tomato pesto, oven fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with my last can of Creemore lager while watching season 10, episode 13 of The Carol Burnett Show.
Someone asks Carol who her favourite guest stars are. She says Dick Van Dyke, Maggie Smith, Joanne Woodward, Beverly Sills, Alan Alda, and Julie Andrews.
Williams (played by Harvey) and Mamie (played by Vicki) are brought into a room in a police station to be interrogated by Tim. As usual his character is comically clumsy. He assures them that no harm ever comes to the innocent and then gets hit in the leg and the head by sliding filing cabinet drawers. He puts Harvey and Vicki in separate rooms then starts with Harvey. He asks him where he was between 15:00 and 15:30 on Wednesday. Williams says he was with Mamie in a cinema watching The Shootist. Tim says not to tell him about it because he’s taking his wife on Saturday. Tim says he’s like his gun, small and powerful. Then he says, “You crooks are like this case of shotguns, big, powerful and a lot of you, but empty”. Then he hits the case and all the shotguns go off. Tim faints and Williams and Mamie escape.
Carol and Dick Van Dyke are wearing all white on a white set. They sing a song that was probably written just for this skit. They sing that love is a garden filled with many hues. Dick rolls out a shelf of paints and brushes. Carol sings, “Theis is the heart that thought he would always be true/ Colour it blue”. Then Dick paints a blue heart on her dress. Then she sings to colour her lips brown and he does. She sings to colour her arms empty so he writes “M” on one of her arms and “T” on the other. She sings to colour her ears green and he does. Then according to the lyrics he colours her gown red, her brow puce, her body black and blue, then dumps a whole can of white on her hair. Finally she sings “Colour him gone”, then she punches him and knocks him out.
Carol (as Bessie) and Dick (as Pete) are two wallflowers at either side of a dance floor filled with dancing couples. They clear the floor to go for refreshments and then Pete notices Bessie and she sees him noticing her. He nervously makes his way over to her and after opening his mouth a few times finally says “Hi”. He confesses to being shy, not a movie star, and boring. She doesn’t respond so he starts to walk away but she tells him to wait. She tells him the girls who rejected him might have looked at him without seeing and understanding him. She confesses that boys find her boring as well. They sit down on a bench. He starts to tell her about a daydream he keeps having but she interrupts to tell him about hers. But t0o introduce her daydream she feels the need to tell him about her life from childhood. She says a new world opened up for her when her aunt gave her a book of fairy tales. He interrupts to tell her about when he read Arabian Nights but she says, “I’m not finished” and he shuts up to let her continue. The fairy tale book influenced her daydream that she would grow up to be a princess. She says, “You’ll probably laugh” and he starts laughing, to her dismay. Then he returns to his story about being caught reading The Arabian Nights. Then she interrupts and returns to her dream of a handsome prince carrying her away. he cuts in that one shouldn’t have such high expectations. She says ordinary people are the backbone of this nation and what really counts is sincerity. He tells her how outspokenly honest he is. She says she’s the same. he tells her how he asked at a diner for over easy eggs but got sunny side up and he wasn’t afraid to speak up about it. She interrupts to say waiters don’t listen. He interrupts to say the waiter at Cecil’s listens. He starts talking about where Cecil’s is in relation to where he lives and that he likes their margarine better than Als. Then he trails off, getting as bored with himself as Bessie is. They both yawn and she says it’s getting late. She lies that it was nice talking to him as they walk away in opposite directions.
They do a parody of a Shirley Temple movie that begins in an orphanage. Carol plays Shirley playing Honey Bunny. She leads them before bedtime in a production number with taps on her pajama feet. She sings a song about chasing the grumpies away. Honey tap dances on the bed. At the end of her song Honey’s old and scowling Uncle Meanie (played by Harvey) walks in and says he’s going to adopt her. But seconds later her happy go lucky Uncle Miney (played by Dick) taps his way in the room to say he wants to adopt her. Honey can’t decide until Meanie points out that he’s a millionaire while Miney is penniless, so she goes with Meanie. Her friends say goodbye and she sings about how sad she is that she deserves adoption more than they do. Honey leaves and her friends are crying but Uncle Miney consoles them with a song about noy crying like a little kid until he begins to sob uncontrollably. Three months later Miney is with his girlfriend Trixie (played by Vicki) and he says he’s still upset but she suggests they rehearse their number for the show. He plays piano while she sings, “One look at you and what do I do? I tap dance” and then she taps. Then he joins in and it’s a song about only being able to speak about love by tapping because one’s tongue is in one’s toes. Suddenly Honey knocks on their door saying Meaney wasn’t nice and asks if she can live with her Uncle Miney and her Aunt Trixie. Trixie points out that they aren’t married and Honey calls her naughty. Miney tells Honey it’s time for bed so she says her prayers. She says, “God bless Uncle Miney and Aunt Trixie his very special friend if you know what I mean”. Then she asks god to have Uncle Meaney get hit by a truck. Miney tells Trixie that he thinks they could finish their show by doing “Swanee River” as a rumba. Honey says she’s worked out a number they can do. Honey sings “Yum yum tummy tum tum peppermint sticks and bubble gum Yum yum tummy tum tum you’re my lollipop and my lollimom... I’d gobble you up you know what I’d do? I’d throw up all over you”. A Broadway producer suddenly knocks on their door and says he’s been watching through the window and they’re sensational si he’s going to back their show. But then Meaney arrives with a cop and takes her away. There follows a custody battle and Honey shows up in court to handle her own case. She sits on Meanie’s lap and sings him the song she opened with, then blows a raspberry in his face. She presents Miney and Trixie as evidence. They come in dressed for a show and do their tap dance song. Then Honey stops them and says tapping is passé. She says to give them jazz and swing and sings about “Truckin down old Broadway”. Then Miney sings about her being Little Miss Showbiz and suddenly the courtroom becomes a stage and all the jury are dancers and the judge is dancing too. Suddenly Meaney arrives and says he’s no longer a grouchie wowchie and gives them a cheque of half a million dollars to put on their show. Honey says she wants her own dressing room and pointing to Trixie says, “Get rid of her”.
Dick Van Dyke worked as a DJ at the age of 16. He was rejected three times by the army air corps during WWII because he was underweight. When he was finally accepted he served as a radio announcer without leaving the States. He married his first wife Margie in 1948 on the radio show Bride and Groom, which paid for the ring, the wedding, the appliances, and the honeymoon. But after the wedding they had to live in their car for a while. His comedy hero was Stan Laurel who he looked up in the phone book and called as a fan. Stan invited him to his home and they were good friends from then on. He didn’t start dancing until he was 34 and he was self taught. He has always considered himself to be a song and dance man rather than an actor. He had a lip syncing nightclub act from the late 1940s to 1954 with Phil Erickson called The Merry Mutes. He made bhis TV debut on Chance of a Lifetime in 1954. He made his Broadway debut in the 1959 show The Girls Against the Boys. He became a star after his Tony winning performance in the 1960 musical Bye Bye Birdie and the 1963 film adaptation. He co-starred in Mary Poppins (the soundtrack for which he won a Grammy Award), What a Way to Go, He starred in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Comic, Lt. Robin Crusoe, Fitzwilly, The Art of Love, Some Kind of a Nut, Never a Dull Moment, Divorce American Style, Cold Turkey, Night At the Museum, Mary Poppins Returns, On TV he starred on The Dick Van Dyke Show from 1961 to 1966, The New Dick Van Dyke Show from 1971 to 1974 (based on the British sitcom Head of the Family, and for which he won 3 Emmy Awards), and Diagnosis Murder from 1993 to 2001. He won an Emmy at the age of 98 for his performance on Days of Our Lives. His album Songs I Like in 1963 was in the top 40 for several weeks. He formed an acapella quartet called Dick Van Dyke and the Vantastix in 2000. He wrote Faith Hope and Hilarity and Those Funny Kids. He earned his high school diploma at the age of 78.
