On Saturday after midnight I put some fresh carpet tape along some of the edges of my mattress. Then I noticed that the bedbugs have started to try to nest again in the rod pockets of the curtains between my bedroom and the living room. A lint roller is an essential tool for picking up bedbugs as they get stuck to it on contact. I spent about an hour running the roller up and down and across the curtain and must have grabbed about thirty of the little monsters. I also noticed some bedbugs in the storage area at the far end and top of my bedroom. In twenty years I’d never seen them go there but now the landlord has let this go on so long that the bedbugs are now in every part of the bedroom. So now I have to clear out the storage area, vacuum, and steam it, then get rid of all non-essential items
I didn’t get to bed until around 2:15 and even then I didn’t sleep very well with the ever expanding bedbug population on my mind. I got up at 5:00 as usual and after yoga checked for bedbugs. I found a few babies stuck to the tape on the floor at the head of my bed.
I uploaded “Venez donc voir” (“Come On and See”) by Boris Vian to my Christian’s Translations blog and began to prepare it for publication. I might have it done on Sunday.
I memorized the chorus and the second verse of “La fille aux claquettes” (The Tap Dancing Girl) by Serge Gainsbourg. I revised my translation of the first two verses and the chorus. There’s just one verse and chorus left.
I weighed 90.35 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Martin during song practice for the first of two sessions and it went out of tune all the time.
I rode to Vina pharmacy to ask them to fax my doctor to get him to renew my Betaderm prescription. The druggist told me I already have four renewals. Although my container says “0 repeats”, apparently they faxed Dr. Shechtman back and got him to grant more. I said I’d pick it up next Saturday.
I rode to No Frills where I bought seven bags of red grapes, a pack of blueberries, a pack of strawberries, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, two packs of New Zealand ground grass fed beef (I think it was ground and packed in Canada), a bottle of olive oil with the spout, three bags of 1% milk, a jug of lemonade, a container of 0% skyr, a container of 4% skyr, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips. Even though the price of the grapes was very cheap at $3.28 a kilo I matched it with the Freshco price of $3.17 a kilo. The cashier was surprised and said she’s going to do that too.
I weighed 91.1 kilos at 14:50, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since July 29. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade.
I took a siesta and woke up too late for a bike ride.
I weighed 91.25 kilos at 17:30.
I was a day behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up.
I made four burgers with the ground beef and grilled them. I made pizza on a slice of 7 grain bread with marinara, tomato pesto, one of the burgers sliced edgewise, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching three sketches from The Carol Burnett Show.
In the first, Carol plays Cynthia, a nerdy girl with a sinus condition and wealthy father (played I think by Alan Arkin but not credited). Jerry Lewis plays a nerdy boy named Dexter with a wealthy father played by Harvey Korman. The two fathers want to merge their families and so they arrange a date between the two. Dexter is 35 and his father asks him if he thinks a man of 35 should be playing with electric trains. Dexter says, “As long as he’s careful.” Dad warns him that if he botches this he won’t let him go to camp this summer. He tells him to take off his glasses until she gets to like him but he can’t see without them. He comes to Cynthia’s place and trips over her couch. They both put on their glasses and he’s frightened when he sees her. She says her father suggested plastic surgery. “When are ya gonna have it?” “I had it already.” “They did a very unusual job!” “Thank you!” They dance awkwardly and then he dances frantically with her and by himself. He says he’s in love and she tells him he has animal magnetism. He says he probably caught it at camp. They kiss weirdly by just touching lips and holding them together. They’re going to get married.
The second sketch is a parody Sunset Boulevard. Steve Lawrence plays Joey Gillis, who comes to the mansion of silent screen legend Nora Desmond who hasn’t made a movie in 30 years. He meets her butler Max (played by Harvey Korman with a German accent) who was Nora’s director in her days of stardom. Joey wants Nora to buy his screenplay. Nora stumbles down the stairs in extreme makeup with a permanent look of extreme surprise on her face. Joey asks her why she never made it in talking pictures and she answers, “I don’t know!” in a squeaky voice. After he introduces himself she keeps forgetting she saw him a few seconds ago and repeats several times, “Hello, who are you and what are you doing here?” She asks Max if she hears the phone ringing. “No”. “Good then don’t answer it!” Max says Nora is writing her own screenplay but she tells Joey, “You’ll stay here and help me!” She kisses Joey then says, “How dare you!” and knocks him across the room. She says if he helps her everything she has is his. She puts her pearls around his neck and her earrings on his ears, then says, “Give me back my jewellery you thief!” and knocks him across the room. She wants to rehearse her screenplay and Joey tries to leave but Max pulls a gun. They start a scene in which Joey is a slave and Nora holds a whip but Joey stops her and tells her she’s all washed up. She grabs Max’s gun and says she’s going to kill Joey. Max jumps in front and she shoots him in the forehead. Then she shoots Joey. Then she declares that she can do it alone but when she points at herself she fires the gun and now everybody is dead.
The third is the famous Dentist sketch featuring Tim Conway as a new dentist and Harvey Korman as his first patient. Harvey has a bad toothache but Tim tells him he only got C grades in filling and pulling. Then he confesses that he cheated on his final exam. He also was sick when the other students worked on people and so his only experience is with animals. He starts by rubbing and scratching Harvey’s tummy. Tim has to consult his textbook to remind him how to pull a tooth. Harvey says he needs something for the pain and Tim hands him the needle full of novocaine to hold while he looks up how to administer it. He reaches for the needle without looking and stabs his hand, then it goes limp. As Tim tries to function with a limp hand, that’s when Harvey starts to laugh. He tries to hold the syringe in his limp hand but his arm swings down to stab himself in the leg. Seconds later his right leg goes limp and he drops to one knee. This was not in the script. He pulls himself up and drags his leg across the room to get a chair for support. He tries to give Harvey the novocaine again but this time stabs his own forehead. Now Harvey is totally cracking up and Tim is starting to. Tim tries to adjust the light, hits Harvey in the face and knocks out his tooth. Then says, “That’ll be $20”.
Alan Arkin took acting lessons from the age of 10. In college he took drama classes and sang in a folk band. He dropped out of college to form The Tarriers, for which he was the lead singer and played guitar. He co-wrote “The Banana Boat Song”, which became a big hit for harry Belafonte in 1954. He cut a solo album called Folk Songs: Once Over Lightly. he made his film debut in 1957, singing in Calypso Heat Wave. In 1959 he became one of the original members of Second City in Chicago. He made his Broadway debut in 1961 in the musical From The Second City, for which he wrote the lyrics and sketches. In 1963 he won a Tony Award for his performance in Enter Laughing. In 1964 he starred in Luv on Broadway (I had the record and it was great). He made his directorial debut in the 1964 off-Broadway production of Eh?, which was the stage debut of Dustin Hoffman. He made his film directorial debut in 1969 with People Soup, based on a story he published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1958. In 1972 he directed the original production of The Sunshine Boys. His first Oscar nomination was for his performance in The Russians Are Coming in 1966. He co-starred in Wait Until Dark, Woman Times Seven, Argo (for which he was Oscar nominated), Hearts of the West, Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins, Joshua Then and Now (for which he won a Genie Award), Hearts of the West, Edward Scissorhands, The Rocketeer, Glengarry Glen Ross, Indian Summer, North, Mother Night, Gattaca, Slums of Beverly Hills, Grosse Pointe Blank, Jacob the Liar, America’s Sweethearts, 13 Conversations About One Thing, Rendition, The Santa Clause 3, Sunshine Cleaning, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, City Island, Django Unchained (for which he was Oscar nominated), Stand Up Guys, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, The Million Dollar Arm, Get Smart, Going in Style, Dumbo, Spenser Confidential, Little Miss Sunshine (For which he won an Academy Award), Little Murders (which he also directed), and Minions: the Rise of Gru. He starred in Deadhead Miles, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Freebie and the Bean, The Seven Percent Solution, Popi, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Four Days in September, Inspector Clouseau, Catch 22, The In-Laws, Simon, Improper Channels, Chu-Chu and the Philly Flash, The Last Unicorn, Fire Sale (which he also directed), and Love the Coopers. He won an Emmy Award for his performance in The Pentagon Papers. He and his wife Barbara Dana co-starred on the 1970 to 1971 season of Sesame Street as an arguing couple who solve their problem each episode when they learn to spell “cooperate”. He co-starred in the series . He wrote the books Tony’s Hard Work Day, The Lemming Condition, Halfway Through the Door, The Clearing, An Improvised Life, Out of My Mind, Cassie Loves Beethoven, and One Present for Flekman’s. He said David Mamet is harder to do than Shakespeare. He had a home in Cape Breton where he spent every summer. His father David Arkin co-wrote the song “Black and White”.
