On Friday after midnight I lint rolled the top of my bed and no bedbugs turned up. I put some more carpet tape on the edge of the foot of my mattress. I went to bed around 1:40 and slept fairly well until I got up to pee at 3:30 but I went back to sleep until 5:00. During yoga I caught a bedbug on my left arm. After yoga I found a couple stuck to the tape on the floor at the head of my bed.
I finished translating “Venez donc voir” (“Come On and See”) by Boris Vian and ran through singing and playing it in English. On Saturday I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare it for publication.
I memorized the first verse of “La fille aux claquettes” (The Tap Dancing Girl) by Serge Gainsbourg. I discovered that the lyrics I have didn’t include the chorus and so I tracked the text for that down and transcribed it.
I weighed 90.25 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since August 12.
I played my Kramer during song practice for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune pretty much the whole time.
I called the city to let them know that the bylaw officer has yet to get in touch with me even though it’s been two weeks since I made the bedbug complaint. The phone support person gave me the number and email of Jamal Logan. I emailed him but he still hasn’t made contact.
I weighed 91.6 kilos before lunch. August 22 was the last early afternoon when I was so nice to the scale.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.
I weighed 91.05 kilos at 18:10. That’s the same as the evening of July 28.
I was caught up in my journal at 20:16.
I digitized a cassette recording of a Christian and the Lions concert on Sedated Sunday at The El Mocambo. The band at this time consisted of Tom Smarda on Stratocaster, Steve Lowe on acoustic guitar, and Mike Martin on drums. My voice was pretty bad that night but it improved considerably about halfway through when I finally asked the sound person to turn up the vocal monitor. I also sounded drunk. We did “I Saw My Reflection in an Open Wound”, “The Next State of Grace” (with me trying to sing low to harmonize with Tom), “Seven Veils of Armour” (Dedicated to Anna Montedioro because it was her birthday), “Thin Red Line”, “Sixteen Tons of Dogma”, and “Seven Shades of Blues”. From the third song on, Bob Cook played harmonica.
I had a potato with the last of my gravy and three pork ribs while watching three videos containing a classic Carol Burnette Sketch each.
The first was The Brown Derby sketch guest starring Bing Crosby as himself. Carol plays a waiter at The Brown Derby. Crosby comes in with Harvey Korman and they sit down in Carol’s section. She goes gaga over him and won’t leave him alone. She says he was born in Takoma, Washington, then moved to Spokane and sang with The Rhythm Boys, then went to Hollywood. She sings, “Pennies from Heaven” and he asks her to sing the menu. She takes the ashes from his pipe for a souvenir though they are still lit. She wants his autograph and as he’s about to sign she says he must be hungry and steals a salad from another table. He says he can’t eat and sign so she feeds him. Harvey asks, “After you burp him can we order?” She wants a picture with him and gets Harvey to take it. Then Bing says, “Now can we order?” But Carol says, “Don’t bug me! Here comes the biggest star of them all!” Then Bing is totally surprised as Bob Hope walks in. Bob compliments Bing’s blazer and says, “These are coming back you know”. Then Bob shows off his own tweed jacket and says he had it made in Glendale. Bing asks where he was at the time.
The second sketch is a Carol and Sis episode guest starring Don Rickles as a painter named Snider who is doing Carol’s living room. She’s complaining about how long it’s taking. When he walks in Carol says, “It’s about time!” “Just leave me alone lady!” “Could I have a word with you?” “I thought you were gonna take some sleeping pills!” “I changed my mind!” “You didn’t take the sleeping pills?” “No!” “Can I take them?” “I’m saving them for later!” “You don’t have to swallow them! Just hold them in your mouth till your tongue gets drowsy!” “These happen to be my walls and you’re gonna paint them the colour I want them!” “How bout I suck your neck!” “The forest green is just a shade off.” “You want a light green or a dark green?” “I want canary yellow.” Snider throws his brush, shouts “That’s it” and climbs down from the ladder. He goes to the phone and Carol goes to the kitchen to tell her sister Chrissie she’s learned how to handle Snider and now he’s ordering the paints. But on the phone Snider says, “Hello doctor? It’s Snider! I think I’m getting another attack! The pills? Yeah, I have them. Three? But you don’t understand. She went from forest green to canary yellow. Six pills?” Meanwhile Chrissie asks Carol if she’s sure about canary yellow. “Absolutely!” “Do you think it might be too bright for the room?” “You’re right!” Carol goes to Snider and says, “The canary yellow is too bright and the forest green is too dark. Let’s settle on a medium brown.” He runs into the kitchen and starts banging his head on the cutting board. “This broad’s makin it an eye test! I can’t take it anymore! I wanna go away and watch a duck die!” He regains his composure and returns to the living room. “Ladies, you’re absolutely right. Medium brown is fine. I’ll just mix the paint.” Carol says, “But it’ll clash with the new draperies. Maybe we’d better go back to forest green.” He tells his hands not to go for her, then climbs down from the ladder and says he’s going in the alley for a minute. One can hear him yelling out there as he bangs his head on the side of the building. He comes back in and says, “Did you know that Adolph Hitler, before he was a house painter, was a pussycat? And it must’ve been a nutty, flippy broad like you that was in Munich and started World War II!” Carol shouts, “How dare you!” as her husband Roger (played by Harvey) walks in. “What’s going on?” “There’s something wrong with Mr. Snider!” Snider says, “There’s nothing wrong with Mr. Snider! Mr. Snider is quitting!” Roger says, “You can’t leave a job half finished!” “Who says?” “I do!” Who are you?” “Her husband!” Snider pauses and says, “Right!” and both Carol and Harvey start laughing. Snider says, “Pull yourself together you moron! You’re married to this ding-a-ling? You don’t need these walls painted! They should be padded and she should be in a hot tub with a duck!” Carol appears to be upset and leaves the room but I think she is just going off-camera to laugh. Roger says, “She’s my wife and whatever she says is alright with me cause she has great taste!” “She picked you for a husband so she’s got bad taste! She’s got a big mouth and a small brain and it’s broads like her that make painters like me wanna cut off their ears!” Roger brings his face close to Snider’s and says, “You were hired to paint! So paint big mouth!” Snider says, “You know somethin?” “What?” “You got a stye!” Harvey cracks up again. Snider picks up a brush full of canary yellow and paints Roger’s tie. Then he paints under his arm and says, “Into the valley where the seagulls die!” Roger shouts, “Get out!” Snider says, “Pinocchio is alive!” and paints Roger’s nose. Roger paints Snider’s face too. Snider shouts, “Oh yeah?” as Harvey cracks up again. Snider goes to the kitchen to get water for a tranquilizer when Carol swings open the door and knocks him out.
The last sketch is a parody of the hit 60s movie Love Story. Carol plays Jinnie, a student who works part time in the college library. Harvey plays Oliver Harvard IV, who is rich and the star of the college hockey team. He sees Jinnie for the first time and says he loves her. He says he can give her anything. She says she’s happy at the library so he says he’s buying it for her. Jinnie says, “Stop it preppie and just get out of my life!” “No! I know you love me!” “I never said anything about loving you!” “But don’t you understand? Love means never having to say I love you!” (That’s a parody of the most famous line from Love Story: ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry’) “You mean if I say I don’t love you I do?” “Of course! Because not loving means having to say ‘I love you’, which you didn’t say because you did!” “I’ve never thought of it that way! I guess I don’t love you, which means I do!” Music plays and they embrace. They dance around the library hand in hand while making it look like slow motion. He proposes and they embrace and kiss while four guys surround them with violins and play something like the theme from Love Story. Carol says, “Promise me it’ll always be this romantic!” “I can’t promise that!” Why not?” “Two of the violinists graduate next week!” He takes her to meet his father. “My father and I have never been very close. I grew up in Connecticut and he lived in Massachusetts.” “My, this is a big house!” His father walks in and asks, “Which one of you is Oliver?” He forbids the marriage and warns Oliver if he marries Jinnie he’ll cut him off.
Jinnie and Oliver now have a small apartment. Oliver walks in and she runs to his arms. “I missed you so much!” “I missed you too! Next time we’ll both take out the garbage!” They stay ridiculously physical connected in everything they do. A telegram arrives saying Oliver has just been made junior partner in a big law firm for $20,000 a year (which is like $200,000 today). Then he gets a phone call telling him he’s now senior partner at $50,000 a year”. Then another telegram announces that he’s just been made chief justice of The Supreme Court. He says, “From now on our future is going to be unlimited joy and happiness!” But then she coughs. He puts her in bed and she says she’s cold. “I’ll get you the finest doctor that money can buy!” Suddenly Lyle Wagonner walks in. “Who are you?” “I’m the finest doctor money can buy!” “How did you know she was sick?” “I heard the music!” He lays out several sharp instruments on the bed and tells her to stick out her tongue. She does and he says, “Uh oh!” He tells Oliver that Jinny only has five minutes to live. She dies then Oliver learns it’s contagious and he dies too while Lyle plays the violin.
Bob Hope was born in England and his parents brought him to the US when he was 5. At the age of 12 he busked as a singer and dancer on the street for change. Also at 12 he won a prize for his imitation of Charlie Chaplin. He changed his name from Leslie to Bob because in school they called him Hopelessly”. He was briefly a pro boxer under the name Packy East with three wins and one loss. His showbusiness debut was as a dancer for a Fatty Arbuckle vaudeville revue in 1924. He formed a vaudeville act called The Dancemedians with George Byrne and the conjoined tapdancing twins The Hilton Sisters. He and Byrne sometimes performed in blackface as dancing and singing Siamese twins. He made his Broadway debut in The Sidewalks of New York in 1927. He first performed with Bing Crosby on vaudeville in 1932. His first starring role on Broadway was in Roberta in 1933. He made his radio debut on NBC in 1934. His first regular radio show was The Woodbury Soap Hour in 1937. The Pepsodent Show Starring Bob Hope began in 1938 with a ten year contract. He paid a crew of 15 writers and it became the top show in the US. He made his film debut in The Big Broadcast of 1938 singing “Thanks for the Memory” which became his theme song and won an Oscar. He starred in My Favourite Brunette, Star Spangled Revue, Let’s Face It, They Got Me Covered, Calling All Tars, Shop Talk, Double Exposure, Watch the Birdie, The Old Grey Mayor, Going Spanish, The Cat and the Canary, The Paleface (in which he introduced the Oscar winning song “Buttons and Bows”), and Cancel my Reservation. He co-starred in Road to Singapore, Road to Zanzibar, Road to Morocco, Road to Utopia, Road to Rio, Road to Bali, Road to Hong Kong, and Paree Paree, His writers had to submit 20 jokes each a day. If a writer didn’t come up with a joke Bob used over two weeks they were fired. He had a lifetime contract with NBC and held the record for the longest contract with any network. He started doing TV specials in 1950 and was one of the first performers to use cue cards. His Christmas specials were particularly popular. His 1970 Christmas special filmed live in Vietnam is still one of the highest rated TV broadcasts in history. He hosted or co-hosted the Academy Awards 18 times starting in 1940. He wrote several books, mostly dictated to ghostwriters, such as I Owe Russia $1200, Confessions of a Hooker (about golf), and Don’t Shoot It’s Only Me. During WWII and the Vietnam War he spent 57 tours entertaining the troops. He also visited wounded soldiers in hospitals and forbade his accompanying performers to cry because their job was to elevate the spirits of the soldiers. From 1950 to 1969 DC comics published The Adventures of Bob Hope, which ran for 109 issues. In 1969 he was worth $150 million (the equivalent of one and a half billion today). Although he had a reputation for being cheap he is said to have donated $1 billion to charity over his life. He bought several acres of land in Rancho Mirage, California to build a race track but decided the area needed a medical centre so he donated the land to build The Eisenhower Medical Centre, which is now one of the top 100 hospitals in the US. He retired from show business at 93. He was the entertainment coordinator for the USO from 1941 to 2001 when he retired at 98. He was the only entertainer allowed to walk onto Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show whenever he wanted. He won a record 1500 awards. He was awarded an honorary knighthood in 1998. Voters declared him the Entertainer of the 20th Century. He became a vocal supporter of gay rights after his daughter came out as a lesbian. He said, “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for Bing Crosby and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for me. That’s why we do nothing for each other.” On having six brothers. “Waiting for the bathroom is how I learned to dance”. “When vaudeville died, television was the box they put it in”. On golfing he said, “It’s wonderful how you can start out with three strangers in the morning, play 18 holes and end up with three new enemies.” Woody Allen says Bob Hope was his biggest influence and his characters in Sleeper and Love and Death were basically impersonations of Hope. He wrote Diane Keaton’s parts in those films to play the part of Bing Crosby. He first started golfing in Winnipeg in the 1930s. Marlon Brando called him a desperate applause junkie.
