October 3, 1996: I was still bewildered by web surfing

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday Andrew tried to show me how to surf the internet with my new computer but I found it boggling. I wondered if I would ever get it.

Maya Rudolph

            On Monday after midnight I lint rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room, the top of my bed and my pillow. As usual I picked up some bedbugs from the curtain but not as many as I grabbed before lunch. There were none on the bed or the pillow. I shook out my top sheet and my comforter on the deck and went to bed around 1:35. I slept until about 4:00 and didn’t get up to pee but kind of drifted in half sleep until the alarm went off at 5:00. I felt fairly well rested during yoga, after which I checked for bedbugs. There were several stuck to the tape around my mattress and some stuck to the floor tape. A few were crawling free until I popped them. 

            I memorized the third verse of “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted Change for the Toilet) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished working out the chords for the little instrumental at the end of the chorus of “La fille aux claquettes” (The Tap Dancing Girl) by Serge Gainsbourg. The chords for the second verse were almost the same as the first except it began in C. 

            I weighed 91.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it stayed in tune until after the very last song. 

            I weighed 92.3 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the early afternoon since September 14. 

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

            I weighed 91.8 kilos at 18:15. September 14 was the last evening when I was that rough on the scale. 

            I was still three days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I had wedge oven fries with gravy and a chicken breast while watching The Carol Burnett 50th Anniversary Special. 

            Stephen Colbert introduces the special. He says every Saturday night people didn’t go out. They stayed home and watched Carol. When the show ended in the late 70s they had to invent disco just to give people something to do on weekends. 

            Carol comes out in the same theatre where her show was taped. There are a lot of celebrities in the audience. She does questions and answers and Tom Selleck asks if she believes in petting on the first date. She says it depends on the age of the dog. Bob Barker stands and asks when she’s coming back. She seems to have mistaken him for Pat Sajak because she called him “Pat”. 

            Next Carol is sitting with Amy Poehler, Kaley Cuoco, Maya Rudolph, and Jane Lynch. Then she brings Vicki Lawrence out. We see a picture of Carol posing with Vicki after she won the Miss Fireball Contest. 

            Carol brings out Jay Leno, who comes with a gift. He says the item was made the same week that Carol’s show premiered. It’s a carburetor for a 1967 Buick Riviera. Bill Hader comes out with a bouquet of flowers for Carol. Jay says he wouldn’t be here today if not for Harvey Korman. He was performing at the Improv and Johnny Carson came but wasn’t impressed. Harvey encouraged Johnny to come back to see him again and he did. 

            Bill says when he did a Vincent Price impression on Saturday Night Live it was actually an impression of Harvey. He says Harvey had that slow burn. Bill’s favourite Harvey performance was when he did the Wolfman. He says the timing was impeccable. Jay says everybody copied Carol’s soap opera parody. 

            Carol brings out Jim Carrie who tells her she’s more than Carol Burnett to him. He says love is a vibration that finds its reflection and that’s what found the audience. He tells Carol she’s the space in which love happened (What a load of horse shit). Jim says when he was 10 years old he really wanted to be on the Carol Burnett Show. He did a lot of voices and wrote Carol a letter to ask if he could become a regular. Then he waited for her response like Jodie Foster in Contact for a signal from the universe. That is re-enacted with a ten year old actor receiving Carol’s rejection letter. He says, “Aww jeepers!” Jim pushes Carol’s hand away now. Jim says, “Just for the record I have never said ‘Jeepers’. It was 1972 and not 1932.” Carol says, “You’re on the show now.” Jim shouts, “Jeepers! We did it!” and his younger self runs into his arms. 

            Carol brings Martin Short out. Carol shows some clips of Tim. Martin says Tim is so physical in his comedy but so calm at the same time. 

            Carol is sitting with Bill, Amy, and Tracy Ellis Ross. Amy says her favourite character is Mrs. Wiggens because she was a study in silence and movement. 

            Bill asks Carol to do her Tarzan yell. She says she’ll do it but everybody else has to try it first. Bill and Maya almost get it. Tracy gives it a try. Amy’s Tarzan yell is, “Hey! Tarzan!” Steve Carell sends a video of him just yelling. 

            Carol and Vicki discuss the Family. They show a clip in which Eunice learns her daddy died in the bathroom. 

            In 11 years Bob Mackie designed around 17,000 costumes for The Carol Burnett Show. Carol introduces Bob Mackie. For Mrs. Wiggens Bob suggested that she be like those temp girls who work at CBS and sit at their desks doing their nails and watching the clock. 

            Carol is with Stephen Colbert in the Ed Sullivan Theatre where he shot the Late Show and where she was a regular of The Garry Moore Show. To reminisce about the songs that were sung on the show Carol brings out Kristen Chenowith and Bernadette Peters. Stephen has Jon Batiste play piano. Bernadette sings “All That Jazz”, which she sand on her first guest spot on Carol’s show. Carol pays tribute to her late friend Jim Nabors. Kristen sings “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” then segues into “Born Free”, and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. Stephen says his favourite male singer on Carol’s show was Steve Lawrence. They show a clip of him doing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” then Stephen continues the song but then Steve Lawrence comes out and sings it with him. They all sing a song about the Carol Burnett Show called “Saturdays at 10:00”. 

            There’s a clip of Julia Louise Dreyfuss saying that Carol’s connection with the audience made her want to get into show business. 

            Carol is sitting with Leno, Short, Amy, Lyle, Kaley, and Beth Behrs. Martin says his favourite sketch is The Dentist. Carol shows a clip in which she got back at Tim for the elephant story when she was playing an old homeless lady on a bench with Tim as an elderly man. She tells him a story about having once had two Siamese elephants joined at the trunk until one of them caught a cold, sneezed and blew both their brains out. 

            There’s a clip of Jimmy Kimmel saying when he was growing up The Carol Burnett Show was as important to his family as spaghetti, and spaghetti was very important. 

            Carol is sitting with Steve Martin in a movie theatre. 

            There’s a clip of Ellen DeGeneres wearing a parody of the curtain gown from Carol’s Gone With the Wind spoof: Went With the Wind. 

            Carol brings out Harry Connick Jr. He says the day The Carol Burnett Show premiered, September 11, 1967 was the day he was born. They sing Carol’s theme song together. Carol starts crying for some reason. Then all the other guests come out and join in. 

            Maya Rudolph is the daughter of Minnie Riperton in whose hit song “Loving You” she sings the name Maya several times at the end. Minnie died when Maya was 7 years old. Maya was friends with Gwynneth Paltrow while growing up. Maya majored in Photography at the University of California and formed the band Supersauce. After graduation she joined the band The Rentals as keyboardist and backup singer After they broke up she joined the improv troupe The Groundlings. In 2000 she joined the cast of Saturday Night Live and continued for 7 seasons. Later when guesting on the show she played Kamala Harris, for which she won an Emmy. She co-starred in the sitcom Up All Night. She starred in The Maya Rudolph Show TV special. She co-starred in Idiocracy, Grown-ups 1 and 2, Bridesmaids, Inherent Vice, Sisters, Life of the Party, Disenchanted, Away We Go, The Way Way Back, The Nut Job, McGruber, Friends with Kids, Maggie’s Plan, A Very Murray Christmas, Mr. Pig, My Entire High School Sinking, We Don’t Belong Here, The Happytime Murders, Wine Country, The Willoughbys, Big Hero 6, The Angry Birds Movie, The Emoji Movie, Luca, The Lego Movie 2, and The Mitchells vs The Machines, She co-starred with Martin Short in the variety show Maya and Marty. She starred in the sitcom Loot. She co-starred in the sitcom Big Mouth for which she won 4 Emmy Awards. She co-starred in City of Angels, Forever, and Human Resources. She made her Broadway debut in 2026 in Oh Mary!. She is in a Prince cover band called Princess.

October 2, 1996: I posed for David Campbell's class at OCA

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday night I posed for David Campbell’s drawing class at the Ontario College of Art. Since I didn’t have to work the next day I went after work to perform on the Art Bar reading series open stage.

Paul Newman

            On Sunday after midnight I added fresh carpet tape to parts of the edge of my mattress where it had gotten less sticky. I lint rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room and picked up some bedbugs but fewer than usual. I lint rolled the top of my bed and there were a couple of babies, then the pillow. I shook out my top sheet and my comforter on the deck. I went to bed around 1:40 and woke up to pee at 3:03. I felt and killed some bedbugs then slept a little more until the 5:00 alarm. After yoga I found a few bedbugs stuck to the carpet tape at the head of my mattress. 

            I consolidated my memorization of the first two verses of “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted Change for the Toilet) by Boris Vian. 

            I worked out all the chords for the chorus of “La fille aux claquettes” (The Tap Dancing Girl) by Serge Gainsbourg except for the little instrumental bit after the final line. I’ll have that done on Monday and then the pattern of the song should be established. 

            I weighed 90.85 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the last of four sessions and it went out of tune all the time. 

            I lint rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room and picked up a cluster of bedbugs attempting to form a nest. 

            I removed the boards from the upper storage shelf in my bedroom. I put the ones with collages on them and the ones that are part of furniture in the kitchen and threw out a few that I hadn’t been keeping for any good reason. 

            I weighed 91.85 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 91.5 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was still three days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I made pizza on a slice of 7 grain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, a chopped slice of ham, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching This Time Together a cast reunion of The Carol Burnett Show from 2012. 

            Carol once gave the cast a lecture before the family sketch telling them she wanted some discipline and for people to stop cracking up. That was just before the time in the Family sketch when Tim was playing Mickey Hart and telling the story of the Siamese elephants joined at the trunks. Carol was the first one to crack up. 

             Lyle thinks Tim’s future wife Charlene had a lot to do with him getting hired because he heard that Joe the producer asked her what she thought. 

            Vicki says when the writers of the Family sketch heard Carol, Vicki, and Harvey doing the characters in a southern US accent they walked out of the room because they were so upset. They eventually liked the accents. Carol started asking them for more Family sketches and one could hear them both typing like crazy from their office and yelling at each other. Vicki says the echo in the women’s washroom was great for rehearsing character voices. 

            The time that Joanne Woodward was a guest on the show her husband Paul Newman was in the booth. Later they went for Chinese food and Paul taught Carol how to use chopsticks. 

            Carol says Desi Arnaz invented the three camera thing for sitcoms. 

            Tim says he didn’t really want to be in the business but The Carol Burnett Show was so comfortable that he changed his mind.

            Lyle says he was getting gas one time when he noticed another guy looking at him. The guy came over and asked if he was an actor and Lyle confirmed he was. He asked for his autograph and Lyle gave it to him but when he read, “Lyle Waggoner?” he said, “Never heard of you!” then he handed it back and drove away. 

            Carol says a guy walking with his wife in New York stopped her once and asked, “Aren’t you that girl on The Garry Moore Show?” Carol told him she was and he said to his wife, “Hey May, she ain’t such a dog!” 

            Vicki says once when she and Carol were in Hawaii they went to the washroom and somebody passed their autograph book to Carol under the stall to ask for her autograph. 

            Vicki says when they flew to shoot the show in Australia and the plane landed, Tim was rolling down the aisle, bumping into seats and going, “Ow! Yipes! Whoa!” until he bumped against the pilot’s door at the front. Then he stood up and he was wearing his sleep mask like a bra. Then he said, “Wow! Rough landing!” and walked back to his seat. 

            Carol says when they were in Australia she and her husband Joe were going to take Tim to dinner. When they knocked on his room to pick him up he shouted, “It’s open! C’mon in!” They found him in bed with a life sized toy sheep while smoking a cigarette. 

            One time in Hawaii they were dining in their hotel restaurant that had a palm tree that went up through the ceiling. Tim said he was going to his room, then just climbed the palm tree and disappeared.

            Paul Newman came from a well off family in Shaker Heights, Ohio. He acted in plays in grade school and high school. He got kicked out of Ohio University for denting the college president’s car with a beer keg. He later attended the Yale University School of Drama, paying his tuition by selling encyclopaedias, which he was a very good at. He made his TV debut in 1952 in Tales of Tomorrow. He made his Broadway debut in 1953 when he was an understudy for the lead in the play Picnic. His future wife Joanne Woodward was also an understudy in the same play. He was accepted without auditioning into The Actors Studio. He starred in Somebody Up There Likes Me, The Left Handed Gun, The Rack, The Long Hot Summer (for which he won Best Actor at Cannes), Harper, Hombre, The Secret War of Harry Frigg, Sweet Bird of Youth, Rally Round the Flag Boys, From the Terrace, Paris Blues, A New Kind of Love, Winning, WUSA, The Drowning Pool, Harry and Son (which he also directed), Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, The Hustler, Hud, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Towering Inferno, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, Slap Shot (his favourite), Sometimes a Great Notion (which he also directed), The Verdict, The Colour of Money (for which he finally won an Oscar), Absence of Malice, Nobody’s Fool, When Time Ran Out, Twilight, Blaze, Pocket Money, Exodus, The Young Philadelphians, Torn Curtain, and Fort Apache the Bronx. He co-starred in Until They Sail, The Helen Morgan Story, Cat On a Hot Tim Roof (for which he was Oscar nominated), The Hudsucker Proxy, and Cars. He made his directorial debut with Rachel Rachel in 1968. He directed The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man In The Moon Marigolds and The Glass Menagerie. He was a civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, gun control, and anti war activist. He was a passionate race car driver. His Newman’s Own salad dressing business raised $600 million for charity. He founded the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for children with serious illnesses. He was a skilled blues and jazz piano player. He was on Richard Nixon’s Enemies list. He trained to be a pilot in the US Navy but was rejected because he was colour blind. He was the model for the silver age superhero Green Lantern in 1959. He said he signed over 500 autographs as Marlon Brando. He was nominated for ten Academy Awards. He was the principle shareholder of the periodical The Nation and sometimes wrote for it.

October 1, 1996: Our featured writer was Barry Carleton

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday I worked from 9:30 to 12:30 but I have no record where it was. Since I didn’t write down the name of the place in my appointment calendar it must have been familiar to me so I’m guessing I posed at a high school like Central Tech. That night as always I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of the Gladstone Hotel and our featured writer that night was Barry Carleton.

September 30, 1996: I was on the internet now but had no I idea how to do anything there

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday Andrew helped me find an internet service provider so I could go online with my new computer. I got a dial up account with Global Serve (which later changed its name to Primus). My first email address was christia@globalserve.net. Andrew also helped me find a second hand printer for my computer but when we connected it the thing refused to work with Windows. Andrew had to split my computer into two operating systems as he installed OS2, so whenever I needed to use the printer I had to sign in to OS2. It was really fucked up.

George Schlatter

            On Saturday after midnight I added some fresh carpet tape to parts of the edge of my bed that had gotten less sticky. I lint rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room and caught a few bedbugs, then lint rolled the top of my bed and my pillow and found a couple more. I shook out my top sheet and my comforter on the deck. I went to bed around 1:35 and slept until just before 4:00 when I had to pee and noticed bedbugs all over me. After peeing I lint rolled my bed again and must have picked up about 30 bedbugs. I went back to bed but couldn’t sleep. After yoga I noticed quite a few bedbugs stuck to the tape and a couple crawling free. When they get stuck it’s usually on the edge of the tape and it’s often the ones that have already fed on my blood and get caught leaving the restaurant without paying. 

            I memorized the first two verses of “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted Change for the Toilet) by Boris Vian. 

            I worked out the chords for a little more than half of the chorus of “La fille aux claquettes” (The Tap Dancing Girl) by Serge Gainsbourg. There are little instrumental bits after each line so it takes more time. 

            I weighed 90.65 kilos before breakfast. I played my Martin during song practice for the third of four sessions and it went out of tune all the time. 

            Around midday I rode to No Frills where all the grapes were too soft. There were watermelons but they weren’t from Canada. They were from the States but the state of Michigan, which is against Trump’s tariffs so I guess it’s not so bad. I got two watermelons, a pack of blueberries, some bananas, a pack of chicken legs, a strawberry-rhubarb pie, mouthwash, some medium Ziploc bags, a jug of lemonade, a jug of orange juice, two containers of skyr, and some wedge fries. 

            I weighed 91.15 kilos at 14:40. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

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

            I weighed 91.2 kilos at 17:25. 

            I was still three days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I made pizza on a slice of 7 grain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, two chopped slices of ham, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore while watching part 1 of a 2012 cast reunion of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            When Carol first called Vicki she told her she was coming to see her compete for Miss Fireball. Carol told her she was very pregnant and didn’t want to be seen so she asked for seats in the back so she could slip in and out. The organizer didn’t believe Vicki when she told him Carol Burnett was coming. It was at the Hollywood Park Race Track. It was the Firemen’s Ball with an 1890s firehouse theme. There were 8 girls in the competition with two cancan numbers, and Vicki had her individual talent where she played the guitar with a kazoo strapped around her neck. Vicki won the contest. The organizer announced that Carol was there. That was November and two months later Carol gave birth. Vicki was on her way to a recording session with The Young Americans when she decided to stop at the hospital and bring Carol some flowers. The nurses thought Vicki was Carol’s sister Chrissie so they let her in right away. Carol told her she was going to call her when she got her tummy back. Vicki got the call at the end of her senior year in high school. By coincidence, Carol’s manager saw Vicki singing with the Young Americans on The Andy Williams Show and called Carol, saying he’d found the girl to play her sister on her new show. 

            Carol says when they did the mini-musicals Ken and Mitzi Welch would write a whole story around the works of a certain composer and or lyricist like George and Ira Gershwin. 

            Vicki could read music but Carol made up her own musical shorthand. 

            When the Jackson 5 were on the show there was an earthquake. 

            Lyle says somebody gave Harvey a gold chain with the letter H on the end and they called it “the Preparation H Award for the biggest pain in the ass”. 

            Vicki says she got to touch the golden age of television because Carol’s show was the last show of that age. 

            Carol hired the very best people and then just let them fly. 

            Tim says George Schlatter was doing a show with John Wayne and Tim as guests. Tim asked George if it would be funny if he called John “The Duck” instead of “The Duke”? George said John Wayne has a great sense of humour. When Tim tried it John broke a picture, a bottle, and a breakaway chair over his head. Carol says she never met John Wayne. 

            They all sing Carol’s theme together. 

            George Schlatter was the creator and executive producer of Laugh-In and Real People. He established The American Comedy Awards. He co-wrote and produced Sinatra: 80 Years My Way. He won 5 Emmy Awards out of 25 nominations. He produced the first five years of The Grammy Awards. He wrote the book Still Laughing: A Life in Comedy. When he wrote a script for The Jackie Gleason Show Jackie threw it up in the air and said, “This is shit!” The next day he presented Gleason with the exact same script and he said, “That’s a lot better.” He said Jackie Gleason and Red Skelton were not nice people. Red Buttons and Bob Hope were murder on writers but Jack Benny was not. He wrote Victor Borge’s 20th anniversary in 1971. He produced the first five episodes of The Judy Garland Show. He co-wrote, produced and directed the movie Norman Is That You?