Amy Poehler

            On Thursday after midnight I lint rolled the top of my bed and no bedbugs got picked up. I laid down more carpet tape along the edges of my mattress. I went to bed at around 1:30 and don’t remember lying awake for very long but when I got up at 5:00 it felt like I hadn’t gotten enough sleep. I was groggy through yoga. When I checked for bedbugs there were quite a few stuck to the tape and only a couple wandering free. 

            I searched for the next Boris Vian song on my list for which I could find audio or even just text. The next on the list was “Une quarante chevaux De Dion-Bouton” (A 40 Horsepower De Dion-Bouton). De Dion-Bouton was the first automobile manufacturer to mass produce a successful V-8 engine in 1910. The song is another one from the musical that Vian wrote about Jules Bonnot the Anarchist Robin Hood. A De Dion-Bouton is one of the cars he stole and used for his criminal operations. But unfortunately there is no text or audio of this song available online. 

            The next song is “Venez donc voir” (Literally “Come Then See” but more like an equivalent to the English phrase, “Step Right Up”. There is audio and text for this song though the lyrics are shouted and not sung while music plays in the background. I think the song could be sung to the music though and so that’s how I’ll learn it.

            I worked out the chords for the instrumental intro and half of the first line of “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 91.55 kilos before breakfast. 

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

            I weighed 92.8 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on the way back where I bought five bags of green grapes, some bananas, a pack of Full City Dark coffee, and some shaving gel. I did a price match on the grapes with the Food Basics price of $3.26 a kilo. 

            I weighed 91.5 kilos at 18:35, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening in a week. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg while watching a video tribute to Harvey Korman and a short video of zany outtakes from The Carol Burnett Show. 

            Amy Poehler says what she loved most about The Carol Burnett Show was the ensemble. Carol let everybody be just as funny as she was. 

            Bernadette Peters says comedy has to be open, trusting, giving, and encouraging, and that’s how Carol wanted her show to be. 

            Lyle Waggoner says Carol was there for the good of the show and not for Carol Burnett. 

            Betty White says Harvey had intelligence on top of talent. 

            I say Tim Conway was really master of the comedic pause. 

            Lyle says that Harvey was always dissatisfied so Lyle and Vickie started writing him anonymous fan letters to tell him how great he was and he enjoyed them. Carol says Harvey was very moody. One time when Petula Clark and Tim were guests on the show Harvey was rude to them both. Carol didn’t mind him being nasty with the regulars because they were used to it but she drew the line at making the guests uncomfortable. She asked him to stay after the show. He was great on that show while Carol was a nervous wreck. Carol confronted him in her Joan Crawford boss lady persona and gave him an ultimatum. He argued that he had a contract but Carol said she would find a way to break the contract if he didn’t shape up. She told him that whenever she saw him in the hall she wanted to hear him whistling happily. The next Monday she saw him come out of the elevator whistling and skipping down the hall.

            Vicki says Harvey taught her most everything she came to know about comedy. Once she developed her high voiced bimbo character she asked him why when she does it she becomes stupid for the whole week. He told her that any character she does well will become a part of her. She says Harvey was so good in drag. 

            Harvey was a wreck the day Laurence Olivier came to the taping. 

            Carl Reiner says he heard Harvey played Hamlet once and was brilliant and he’s sure he was.

            Jane Lynch says when Harvey died Carol was destroyed. 

            The zany outtakes video was just some slightly funny mistakes and recoveries from mistakes.

            Amy Poehler joined the sketch comedy group My Mother’s Fleabag when she was attending Boston College. After earning her Bachelor’s degree in Media and Communications she went to Chicago where she studied at Second City and Improv Olympics. She joined the Upright Citizen’s Brigade, which later moved to New York to become a Comedy Central show for three seasons but the group stayed together and turned The Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre into a prominent sketch comedy venue. A second theatre was founded in LA and they teach 8000 students a year. She joined Saturday Night Live as a featured player in 2001 and was promoted to a full cast member that same season. The only other SNL alumnus to rise that quickly in the ranks was Eddie Murphy. When Jimmy Fallon left the show in 2004 she joined Tina Fey on Weekend Update. She co-wrote a sketch with Seth Meyers featuring Tina Fey and herself as Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton that became the biggest viral video of the year. She co-starred in Mean Girls, Blades of Glory, Mr. Woodcock, Hamlet 2, Baby Mama, Horton Hears a Who, A.C.O.D., They Came Together, The House, Hoodwinked Too, and Free Birds. She starred in Spring Breakdown, Sisters, Inside Out, and Inside Out 2. She starred in the sitcom Parks and Recreation from 2009 to 2015. She co-wrote, made her directorial debut, and co-starred in Wine Country. She directed and co-produced Moxie, and Lucy and Desi. She co-hosted and co-produced the reality competition series Making It. She co-created, co-produced and starred in Duncanville. She co-created and co-starred in The Mighty B. She co-hosted the Golden Globe Awards with Tina Fey in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2021. She co-produced Welcome to Sweden, Broad City, Difficult People, Three Busy Debras, and Russian Doll. She wrote the book Yes Please in 2014. She hosts the podcast Good Hang (which won the first Golden Globe Award for a podcast). She co-founded the girl empowerment group Smart Girls at the Party. She says, “When your children arrive your heart becomes a room with wide open windows”.

September 11, 1996: I lined up some more model bookings

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I called around for work and got some model bookings. In the evening I went to the Art Bar reading series and performed on the open stage.

Joanna Lumley

            On Wednesday after midnight I lint rolled the top of my bed but didn’t pick up any bedbugs. I went to bed at 1:35 and slept fitfully until 4:15 when I got up to pee. I could feel bedbugs whenever I was awake. I slept again until 5:00. After yoga I checked and found a few bedbugs stuck to the carpet tape but there were a lot more crawling freely on the old exit door at the head of my bed. I must have killed about 40. 

            I posted on my Boris Vian Facebook page and my personal Facebook page the lyrics for “Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anyone”, my translation of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I’ll start learning the next Vian song on my list. 

            I finished translating “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) by Serge Gainsbourg. I searched for the chords but no one has posted them so I worked out part of the intro. 

            I weighed 91.25 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 vacuumed my Targus backpack, which had been in the freezer until yesterday evening. So far I haven’t found any live bedbugs on or in it but I have found some dead ones inside the foam back-cushion. I’m not going to keep it in the living room anymore but instead in the entryway. 

            I weighed 92.9 kilos before lunch. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I headed out for a bike ride but it was raining so I just went around the block and stopped at Queen Fresh where I bought two packs of raspberries. A customer asked if I was Danish. When I left there the rain had let up and there was still time to take a bit of a bike ride. The rain picked up around Havelock and Bloor so I went south and headed home. 

            I weighed 92.45 kilos at 17:40, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening since August 26.

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:55. 

            I digitized a homemade tape recording of a rehearsal I did with Brian Haddon of my songs “Calendar Girl” and “Sleep in the Snow”. Now that I have the proper cables for recording in stereo the two tracks are visible in Audacity. There is a track for my vocals and guitar together and another track for Brian’s synthesizer. The keyboard was dominant in these sessions but now that I can see two tracks I was able to turn down the audio interface gain on Brian’s keyboard to bring up my voice. The other side of the cassette has a recording of a rehearsal of the original Christian and the Lions band in a rehearsal space we rented. I’ll digitize that on Thursday. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with cream cheese, marinara, tomato pesto, wedge fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching season 2, episode 4 of Wednesday on Discord with my daughter. 

            Marilyn Thornhill is brought to Willow Hill by Dr. Fairburn to use her bond with Tyler to help treat him. For some reason she lets her see Tyler. He becomes the Hyde monster and attacks Marilyn, throwing her against a wall but she doesn’t mind. 

            Wednesday breaks into the mausoleum where Patricia Redcar’s urn is kept. Grandmama shows up and Wednesday shows her evidence that every Outcast that died at Willow Hill is buried in this cemetery. Grandmama encourages Wednesday to sniff the urn and she discovers that the ashes are from animals and not human. The red eyed raven steals the evidence and Wednesday chases it to a cloaked figure who escapes on a motorcycle. Wednesday asks Grandmama to buy the cemetery so she can investigate who authorized the cremations. 

            Wednesday asks Uncle Fester to infiltrate Willow Hill by becoming a patient. He trashes a hotel room and after being arrested behaves like himself and so he is committed to Willow Hill. The last time he went there was to check on Morticia’s sister Ophelia but by that time she’d escaped. Ophelia has been missing for twenty years. Wednesday asks her mother why Ophelia was committed and she says it was because she pushed her psychic powers too far and it was Grandmama who had her put away. Grandmama gives Wednesday the deed to the cemetery and tells her it was Augustus Stonehurst who signed off on the cremations. Grandmama asks Morticia to give Wednesday Goody Addams’s book but she throws it in the fire. 

            Fester’s brain scan shows various sharp objects inside his head such as a pair of scissors, safety pins and nails. They give him electro convulsive therapy and he enjoys it. Fester’s task for Wednesday is to look for Lois. He thinks the lunch lady is Lois because of her name tag and seduces her but her name is Louise and the “U” and “I” are covered in food spills but they make out in a closet anyway.

            Agnes learns for Wednesday that Stonehurst used to be a psychiatrist at Willow Hill but became a patient. Wednesday is talking with Enid when several crows attack and Wednesday protects her friend. Fester meets Stonehurst who has a foul mouthed parrot on his shoulder. The bird repeats a four digit number. 

           Thornhill recognizes Fester and rats him out to Fairburn. He is captured and chained in a room with Pugsley’s pet zombie Slurp. Thing goes to Wednesday to tell her about Fester’s predicament. Louise helps Wednesday get inside and she frees Fester. Slurp pulls his chains from the wall and attacks some guards who are escorting Marilyn back to prison but now she escapes and heads for Tyler. 

           Fester uses the number he got from the parrot on a maintenance door keyboard. He and Wednesday get in and discover a secret door that reveals a facility called L.O.I.S. where she discovers that several Outcast patients reported dead and cremated are in fact alive and being used for experiments. 

           Wednesday discovers that the cloaked avian is in fact Fairburn’s assistant Judi, who is also Stonehurst’s daughter. Stonehurst started L.O.I.S. to extract Outcast powers and give them to Normies and that’s how Judi got her powers. Fester uses his electrical powers to cause a blackout. The Outcasts are freed and attack Judi. Thornhill frees Tyler but he turns into the Hyde and kills her. Fairburn and Stonehurst are hiding in her office but Slurp turns out to be there as well and he eats her brains. Then he speaks, calling Stonehurst “Old friend” and eats his brains as well. Wednesday fearlessly confronts the Hyde and he throws her through the window and to the ground below where her bloodied form loses consciousness. Tyler escapes. 

           Grandmama is played by Joanna Lumley who was a supermodel during the swinging 60s. Despite having had no theatrical training she transitioned seamlessly into acting from modelling. She made her film debut in Some Girls Do in 1969. She played the female lead Purdey on The New Avengers and her hairstyle “the Purdey bob” became very popular in the 1970s. Her character also became a popular pin-up model. She co-starred in the series Sapphire and Steel from 1979 to 1982. She co-starred as Patsy on Absolutely Fabulous from 1992 until 2012 and her role is considered to be one of the greatest comic performances of all time. She starred in the series Class Act from 1994 to 1995, Dr. Willoughby in 1999, The Foxbusters from 1999 to 2000, Up in Town from 2002 and Sensitive Skin from 2007 to 2009. She co-starred in Jam and Jerusalem, and Amandaland, She co-starred in The Breaking of Bumbo, Innocent Lies, The Satanic Rites of Dracula, Don’t Just Lie There Say Something, James and the Giant Peach, Prince Valiant, Parting Shots, Maybe Baby, Whispers: an Elephant’s Tale, The Cat’s Meow, The Magic Roundabout, Boogie Woogie, Late Bloomers, Absolutely Anything, and Finding Your Feet. She starred in Games That Lovers Play, Dolls, and Falling for Figaro.

         Her father was a major in the Gurkha Rifles in Nepal. Joanna has become a representative for the Gurkhas in the UK and is treated like a goddess in Nepal. She was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1995 by Queen Elizabeth and she was made a Dame by the queen in 2022 (She says she cried like a baby). She is the voice of AOL in Great Britain. Her 2005 autobiography is called No Room for Secrets. She has starred in several exotic travel documentaries. She is an activist for the indigenous rights group Survival International. She is a patron of Born Free Foundation to keep animals in the wild.

September 10, 1996: The featured poet at my reading series was Daren Swanson

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday night I hosted as always my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of The Gladstone Hotel. Our featured poet was Daren Swanson. I recall that his wonderful wife Cecile was pregnant at the time. Daren was a pretty good singer, songwriter and performer and he also had two daily journals in which he would write in one with his left hand and in the other with his right for the same amount of time every day.

Robert Preston

            On Tuesday after midnight I lint rolled the top of my bed but only picked up one bedbug. I put down some more carpet tape along the edges of my mattress where it had gotten less sticky. I went to bed around 1:30 and it took a while to get to sleep because it felt like there were bedbugs on me though I didn’t crush any. I woke up at four and by touch I did find one beside me. After yoga I found a couple of fat ones stuck to the tape.

            I published on my Christian’s Translations blog “Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anyone”, my translation of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” by Boris Vian. I searched for and found some more pictures of Boris Vian. 

            I finished memorizing “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) by Serge Gainsbourg. I translated the third verse. On Wednesday I’ll translate the last verse and then start working out the chords. 

            I weighed 91.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the second of four sessions and it went out of tune constantly. 

            Around midday I steamed the curtains that hang between the bedroom and the living room. I also steamed parts of the bedroom floor. I put down some more carpet tape on the floor around my bed.

            I weighed 92.85 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I took my Targus backpack out of the freezer after four days. So far I’ve only found one dead bedbug on it. 

            I weighed 92.1 kilos at 17:50. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:28. 

            I digitized a cassette of some home recordings of rehearsals with Donna Bartkiw and Brian Haddon. I had to use the noise reduction app in Audacity to get rid of a hiss. 

            I grilled four chicken legs and had one with a potato and gravy while watching three Carol Burnett related videos. 

            The first appearance of Carol’s character The Charwoman was before The Carol Burnett Show during her 1963 TV special An Evening with Carol Burnett (Also known as Carol and Company). She says her only co-star was Robert Preston. The Charwoman comes out to clean an empty stage and then an invisible orchestra starts responding to her body movements. She begins to pretend to do a striptease while stripper music is playing. 

            The second video features some of the TV commercial parodies that were done on The Carol Burnett Show. They didn’t show any that I haven’t seen and written about previously. 

            The last was a Zany Outtakes video. 

            In the first, Carol is wearing the undersuit that goes under the dress of one of her characters. It has pendulous dangling breasts and Carol begins to dance like a stripper while swinging them around. One crewmember walks by and squeezes one of the fake tits.

            In a promo for the episode featuring guest stars Betty Grable and Martha Raye, Carol says “My poison Martha Raye” when she’d meant to say “My paysan Martha Raye”. 

           In a greeting to Australian fans Carol plays Marian from As The Stomach Turns. She wishes Channel 9 a happy 15th anniversary. She sends a special greeting to the town of Bellbird, the sister city of the fictional Canoga Falls. I assume Bellbird is also fictional but Carol cracks up every time she says it. The bellbird or bell miner has a bell-like call and there is a village in Australia named after it called Bellbrook. 

            Robert Preston was a trained musician who played several instruments. He began acting in high school. He studied acting and gave his first professional performances at The Pasadena Playhouse. During one of those plays he was observed by a Paramount scout and was signed to the company. He made his Broadway debut in The Male Animal in 1952. In 1957 he won a Tony Award for his iconic performance as Harold Hill in The Music Man. When the musical was made into a movie in 1962 he reprised his role. He won another Tony for I Do I Do. He originated the role of Henry II in The Lion in Winter on Broadway. He made his film debut in King of Alcatraz in 1938. He starred in Parachute Battalion, The Night of January 6, Pacific Blackout, Night Plane from Chungking, The Sundowners, Cloudburst, and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. He co-starred in Illegal Traffic, Disbarred, Beau Geste, Union Pacific, Typhoon, Moon Over Burma, The Lady from Cheyenne, New York Town, Reap the Wild Wind, This Gun For Hire, Wings Up, All the Way Home, Junior Bonner, The Macomber Affair, Wild Harvest, Big City, Blood on the Moon, Whispering Smith, Tulsa, The Lady Gambles, When I Grow Up, Best of the Badmen, My Outlaw Brother, Face to Face, The Last Frontier, Island of Love, Victor Victoria (for which he was nominated for an Oscar), Wake Island, Mame, S.O.B., Child’s Play, Semi-Tough, and The Last Starfighter. He starred in the mini-series The Chisholms in 1979.

September 9, 1996: I moved Simon's parents

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday I met Simon Orpana at his parents’ place at 5795 Yonge Street at 9:00 to help to move them to a new place. I don’t recall there being a truck that we loaded and so maybe we just packed their things in boxes to prepare them for the actual move. Simon took me for lunch nearby either in the middle or after we were done. I don’t recall if I got paid but I might have worked for free.

Musical Comedy

            On Monday after midnight I lint rolled the top of my bed but only caught one bedbug probably because I vacuumed on Sunday. I added some more carpet tape to the edge of the head of my bed. I went to bed at around 1:30 and slept fairly well until the alarm went off at 5:00. After yoga I killed a few bedbugs that were stuck to the carpet tape on my bed and on the floor. I killed one that was wandering free on the floor at the foot of my bed. 

            I uploaded “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anyone) by Boris Vian to my Christian’s Translations blog and began preparing it for publication. 

            I almost memorized the last verse of “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have it nailed down on Tuesday. 

            I weighed 91.05 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the first of four sessions and it went out of tune all the time. It’s usually just the high E, the B, and sometimes the G string that are slightly off. It doesn’t take long to get them back in tune but it’s annoying because if the guitar is properly set up it’ll stay in tune for almost the whole session. 

            I weighed 92.7 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I saw a plain clothes cop giving somebody a ticket. He was wearing a backwards baseball cap but also a vest on top of his civilian clothes saying “Police”. 

            I weighed 91.65 kilos at 17:50. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:32. 

            I digitized an interview with me on CIUT radio about the launch of my first chapbook, Vomit of the Star Eater. I performed the title poem, then “The Princess and the Pea Happy Song” and “Sleep in the Snow”. Tomorrow I’ll digitize the other side, which has home recordings of rehearsals with Brian Haddon and Donna Bartkiw.

            I worked on digitally enhancing one of my old photos. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a heated up T-bone steak while watching two more videos about The Carol Burnett Show. One was a tribute to the writers and the other was about the mini musicals.

            Ken Solms and Gail Parent were signed as the first writers on the show fresh out of college. Tim Conway says nobody is funnier than Kenny Solms and Tim doesn’t know why he doesn’t perform.

            There were usually around 9 writers at a time. 

            Carl Reiner says when there’s a flame like Carol Burnett the moths gather. The same thing happened with Sid Caesar. Every good writer wanted to work on the Sid Caesar show and it was the same with Carol Burnett. 

            Carol says sometimes Laugh-In writers would get tired of quick jokes and wanted to write longer ones so they came to her show while some of her writers would go to Laugh-In. 

            Ken Solms says they got away with murder on The Carol Burnett Show because The Smothers Brothers down the hall were distracting the censors. 

            Carol says every Wednesday the writers would get together for lunch and they would show old kinescopes of variety shows like Jackie Gleason. Carol would usually come in at that time to talk to the head writer Arnie Rosen about script changes. One week she came in and they were watching a porno film. They’d set her up, knowing she’d be dropping by. Carol had never seen porn before and exclaimed, “That’s awful!” Arnie told her, “He’s doing the best he can.” 

            Ken and Mitzi Welch invented the mini musical. 

            Carol says Harvey had a good voice and Vicki adds, “Once he got the note”. 

            Kyra Thompson says they did what Broadway couldn’t do. They put together a Broadway musical comedy review in five days when on Broadway you’d rehearse that for six weeks. 

            Bob Mackie says a lot of Carol’s writers were Broadway calibre but they wanted to live in LA and have a weekly paycheque, and a nice home. 

            Ken Berry says Carol could fill a house with that voice. “It just sails!” 

            Musical Comedy can be traced back to ancient Greece as is evidenced by 6th Century pottery that depicts actors dressed as horses, satyrs, and dancers in exaggerated costumes. 

            In the 16th Century there were parody masses such as by Josquin des Prez and Palestrina, which were banned by the church. Comic opera developed in 17th Century Italy. 

           It spread to France where it became opera comique, then in the 19th Century French operetta, the master of which was Jacques Offenbach. 

           Victorian Burlesque came out of English Pantomime, which came out of Commedia dell’arte which has its roots in Greek Theatre. 

            Pantomime was musical theatre that depicted fairy and folk tales with cross dressing actors. Victorian Burlesque would turn popular operas into broad comic plays. The first was Olympic Revels by J.R. Planché in 1831. Music Halls started in England in the 18th Century. Again, these spread to France in the 19th Century and developed into the Folies Bergere and then The Moulin Rouge. 

            In North America the English Music Hall became the Concert Saloon. A North American form of Burlesque developed into Vaudeville.