August 13, 1996: At my open stage I promoted my Art Bar reading series feature

Thirty years ago today 

            On Tuesday night as always I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of the Gladstone Hotel. I promoted my Wednesday night feature at the Art Bar reading series in the Csarda Hungarian restaurant on Elm Street. I also announced that I would be doing a feature at my open stage next week.

Stephen Colbert

            On Sunday morning before getting up I felt and smelled some bedbugs. When I checked, some babies were stuck on the tape and a few more than yesterday were on the old exit door at the head of my bed. Some of them had my blood inside and some didn’t. I’ll put some more tape down today and some more diatomaceous earth under the baseboards. There are certainly fewer bedbugs now than there were a couple of weeks ago so maybe I can diminish them further.

            I uploaded “L’epoque légendaire” (The Legendary Era) by Boris Vian to my Christian’s Translations blog and since there are no chords to place, it will be published tomorrow. 

            I published “Shylock” by Serge Gainsbourg and my translation “Pirate” on my Christian’s Translations blog, then I posted my translation on Facebook. I searched in my 1974 Gainsbourg document for the next song that I didn’t translate before because I didn’t have the audio. The first two songs are “Lili t’a pas d’sosie” and “Y’a Bon” as sung by Lisette Malidor but there is no audio. Next after those is “Docteur Faust” and there is audio for that and I did a few years ago try to transcribe the lyrics but probably got it wrong. I found another transcript and copied it, so tomorrow I’ll start learning “Docteur Faust”. 

            I weighed 91.3 kilos before breakfast. I played my Martin during song practice for the last of four sessions and as usual it didn’t want to stay in tune. 

            Around midday I put some more two-sided carpet tape in places along the edge of my bed and sprayed some more diatomaceous earth under the baseboards. 

            I weighed 93.15 kilos before lunch, which is a record high in the early afternoon of any time since I’ve been weighing myself. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            I got up from my siesta too late to ride my bike downtown but not too late to take a ride to Ossington and Bloor. 

            I weighed 92.25 kilos at 17:50.

            I was still four days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up. 

            I made pizza on Ethiopian bread with marinara, tomato pesto, oven wedge fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching four short interviews of Carol Burnett. 

            The first was in 2017 by Stephen Colbert.

            It’s the 50th anniversary of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            Her first job in New York was as a hat check girl in a women’s tea room. Women don’t check their hats but there was an oyster bar downstairs that men went to and she would grab them and check their coats. She would then cut the tag off the collar and resew it. Then when they came for their coats she would tell them they’d repaired their coats and they’d usually give her a bigger tip. She says she was a con artist. 

            Stephen Colbert’s show was shot in the Ed Sullivan Theatre, which before it was given that name was also where Carol performed as a Garry Moore Show castmember from 1959 to 1961. 

            Stephen asks Carol if there was anything the CBS Standards and Practices censors told her she couldn’t do. She says there was the sketch in which she was a nudist being interviewed by Harvey Korman at the fence that surrounded a nudist colony. The fence concealed her below the shoulders and above the thighs. She told Harvey they had dances on Fridays and he asks how nudists dance, She said, “Very carefully”. The censors thought that line was risqué. So Carol changed the answer to “Cheek to cheek” and that was fine. 

            There was a special coming up to celebrate the anniversary and Stephen says he’ll be in it and that he’ll be singing. Carol says he has a great voice. 

            The second interview is from 2018 by Paolo Presto on an internet show called A Spoonful of Paolo. 

            He says that he started his show seven years ago and he had a vision of having Carol Burnett as a guest. 

            He asks Carol if she can take being called a living legend. She says what it means is “you’re old because if you live long enough and you’re still working you get that label.” 

            He asks Carol about her new show A Little Help with Carol Burnett. She says she has a manager she met through Julie Andrews and he asked her if she’d like to do a show that’s something like Art Linkletter’s Kids Say the Darndest Things. She loves to work with kids so she was all for it. The age range is between 5 and 9 because at that age they don’t censor themselves. They say what they are thinking. Each episode has a panel of five kids and a grownup guest who has a dilemma they want the kids to help them solve. They show a clip of Carol asking, “Why should people get married” and one kid answers, “So the human population doesn’t go to zero”. 

            Carol says the humour of her old show still holds up better than a lot of current shows because it wasn’t topical or edgy. Edgy comedy is too easy. 

            About all the opportunities that suddenly opened up for her, Carol thinks that if you put out energy you get it back. 

            He asks Carol what was her biggest dream moment of her career. She says the 11 years of her show. There was also when she got the lead in Once Upon a Mattress and when she joined The Garry Moore Show. She says the award that means the most to her was the Most Promising Newcomer Award that she got back at UCLA because it was her first award. Paolo gives her a Most Promising Legend Award in the form of a glass prism and it has a quote by her late daughter Carrie: “More than anything wee are remembered for our smiles. The ones we share with our closest and dearest. And the one we bestow on a stranger who needs it.” Carol says it’s one of the nicest things she’s ever received. 

            The third interview is from a few weeks later on The Today Show by Al Roker. The interview takes place at the Ed Sullivan Theatre. Carol says she used to change costumes in the elevator. 

            The fourth interview is from about three weeks later on The Daily Blast by Tory Shulman. 

            Tory asks if she felt responsibility as a woman when she got her show. She says she didn’t. 

            The junior writer on The Garry Moore Show was Neil Simon who they called “Doc Simon”.

            Referring to Carol’s landmark lawsuit against The National Enquirer, Tory asks Carol if it’s easier to fight for the truth now. Carol says it’s harder because there are so many lies that get repeated so much people believe them. 

            Tory starts crying as she thanks Carol for answering her calling. 

            Stephen Colbert is the youngest of 11 children. He was an altar boy for 11 years. He studied acting, voice and ballet at Northwestern and performed with the No Fun Mud Piranhas improv group. He became a member of Second City in Chicago. He made his TV debut in 1993 in Missing Persons. In 1995 he co-created and co-starred in the sketch comedy show Exit 57, which ran for two seasons. He spent six months as a writer and castmember of The Dana Carvey Show. He was half of Robert Smigel’s Ambiguously Gay Duo on Saturday Night Live. He co-created and co-starred in Strangers With Candy. He made his film debut in the short film Shock Asylum. From 1997 to 2005 he was a correspondent on The Daily Show. He then became the host of The Colbert Report. He coined the word “Truthiness”. He co-starred in Bewitched and Company. In 2006 he hosted the White House Correspondents dinner in which he criticized President Bush and the press. In 2007 he ran for President. In 2009 he co-starred in Monsters Versus Aliens. In 2014 he replaced David Letterman as the host of The Late Show. He co-created and co-wrote Our Cartoon President. He was the voice of the Dean of Students on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. He co-produced Fairview, Tooning Out the News, Tha God’s Honest Truth, and After Midnight. He co-authored America: The Book, which was #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list for 15 weeks. He co-authored I Am America and So Can You, which was also #1. He co-authored the novel Wigfield: the Can Do Town That May Not. He teaches Sunday school every week. He is an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church Monastery. He’s deaf in his right ear. He’s an 8th or 9th cousin of David Letterman. Ben and Jerry’s has an ice cream flavour called Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream.

Ken Howard

            On Saturday I went to bed a little after 2:00 and didn’t notice any bedbugs on me during the times I was awake. After yoga I checked and saw a few babies crawling on the old exit door and most of those were dark inside with no fresh blood. A couple did have blood and so I assume that they’d made it across the sticky carpet tape to feed on me while I was sleeping. I noticed one baby actually moving on the tape while some had gotten stuck. 

            I finished translating “L’epoque légendaire” (The Legendary Era) by Boris Vian so tomorrow I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog. 

            I continued editing “Shylock” by Serge Gainsbourg on my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare it for publication. I should have it posted tomorrow. 

            I weighed 91.25 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the third of four sessions and as usual it was chronically out of tune. 

            Around midday I rode to No Frills where I bought five bags of Canadian cherries, a basket of Canadian peaches, two packs of Mexican raspberries, some bananas, a sack of Canadian potatoes. a salmon fillet from Chile, cinnamon-raisin bread, mouthwash, a jar of tomato pesto, a jug of lemonade, a jug of orange juice, two containers of skyr, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips. 

            I weighed 92.5 kilos at 14:25. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            I took a siesta and for the first time in several Saturdays woke up in time to take a bike ride downtown. On the way back, since I’d forgotten to buy five-year-old cheddar at No Frills I thought I’d stop at Loblaws at Portland and Queen because since it’s the No Frills parent company I figured they’d have the same things. I hadn’t been in that store since the early days of Covid. They have a Starbucks in the store now. I looked for cheese and found they have cheese in five different sections. They have the processed cheese in one part, the shredded cheese in another and then three cheese locations in the deli section. It would be so much more convenient if they put all the cheese in once place. I finally found five-year-old cheddar in a fancy wooden fridge cabinet with sliding doors. They didn’t have the kind that No Frills sells but rather Agropur so I got two packs. It’s not as good as Balderson's five-year-old cheddar but it’ll do. 

            I weighed 91.95 kilos at 18:25. 

            I was still four days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up. 

            I had pizza on a slice of Rudolph’s sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, potato wedges, and five-year-old cheddar with a glass of Creemore lager while watching an interview with Carol Burnett by Screen Actor’s Guild and American Federation of Radio and Television Artists President Ken Howard. 

            He says Carol is their 52nd Life Achievement Honoree. 

            He says he knows where the bodies are buried and wants Carol to talk about Tamiment. She says it was a resort area in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. They hired actors and writers to come for the whole summer. Each performer would get room and board plus $1000 for the whole season. They would write and perform an original musical comedy every week. People would come in on buses and spend a week there. They were usually single people looking to hook up. The shows were free and so they had to be good to capture the attentions of these guests who were really there to pick someone up and take a ride in a canoe. When Carol was there in 1957 Artie Johnson was there and so were the creators of Once Upon a Mattress. They had to learn things and put them together very quickly and it was a great training ground. Once Upon a Mattress was created at Tamiment in 1958. They kind of wrote it for the brilliant Nancy Walker and she said she’d love to do it. But then they got George Abbott to direct it and he said he’d like to have a brand new face star in the show. 

            When she was a small child she saw Jimmy Stewart on the screen and declared that he was her friend. Sure enough years later they became friends. When Carol was in her 20s she was a guest on a Dinah Shore summer replacement show and Mervin LeRoy the director called and invited her to lunch at the studio. She wore her only pair of high heels and took a bus to the studio. He was shooting The FBI Story and invited her to watch a scene before lunch. She was surprised to see James Stewart in the scene they were shooting. Mervin asked her if she wanted to meet him. When he spoke to her she couldn’t hear it because her heart was beating so loud. All she could think of to say was, “I guess we’d better put on the old feedbag” then she turned around to step off he stage but stepped directly into a bucket of whitewash with her right high heel. She was too embarrassed to let on that it was a mistake so she pretended that she’d done it on purpose and walked off the set dragging the bucket with her foot. Years later she went for dinner with George Kennedy and his wife and he’d also invited James Stewart and his wife so that’s how they became friends. Carol invited James and his wife Gloria to a party once and Gloria apologized in advance because they would be leaving early so they could get to bed. Among the guests were Jo Stafford, Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gormé, and Mel Tormé. After dinner they all got around the piano to sing. James loved to sing and so he didn’t leave until 1:00. 

            The Mama’s Family sketch was written by Dick Clare and Jenna McMann. They were writing about their own dysfunctional families back in Chicago. At the reading Carol decided to do Eunice with a southwestern US accent and so Harvey and Vicki did the same. Dick and Jenna were horrified. They said you can’t do it that way because you’ll alienate the entire south. They tried it once without the accents and got no laughs but then when they brought back the accents the same sketch was funny.

            When her show went into syndication they did half hour shows with the musical numbers cut out. Steve Lawrence was a frequent guest and in addition to being a singer he was a brilliant sketch comic. He told the story of being approached by teenagers at an airport who only knew him as a comedian and had no idea he was a singer. 

            Carol has just finished writing her fourth book. This one is called In Such Good Company.

            One week on The Garry Moore Show the guest was Ed Wynn. He told them the difference between a comic and a comedic actor. A comic like Bob Hope says funny things while a comedic actor like Jack Benny says things funny. 

            Ken Howard studied at the Yale School of Drama and made his Broadway debut in 1968 in Promises Promises. He made his TV debut in 1969 on NYPD. He originated the role of Thomas Jefferson in the musical 1776. He won a Tony for his performance in Child’s Play. He made his film debut in Tell Me That You Love Me Junie Moon in 1970. In films he co-starred in 1776, A Numbers Game, Such Good Friends, The Strange Vengeance of Rosalie, Second Thoughts, and Better Living Through Chemistry. He co-created and starred in the TV series The White Shadow (based on his own experience as a basketball star in school). He starred in the series Adam’s Rib and The Manhunter. His first Emmy was for Facts For Boys. He won an Emmy Award for his performance in Grey Gardens in 2009. He taught master classes at the American Repertory Theatre Institute and Harvard University. He wrote Act Natural in 2003. His second wife was the daughter of Ann Landers. August 9 – On Sunday morning before getting up I felt and smelled some bedbugs. When I checked, some babies were stuck on the tape and a few more than yesterday were on the old exit door at the head of my bed. Some of them had my blood inside and some didn’t. I’ll put some more tape down today and some more diatomaceous earth under the baseboards. There are certainly fewer bedbugs now than there were a couple of weeks ago so maybe I can diminish them further. I uploaded “L’epoque légendaire” (The Legendary Era) by Boris to my Christian’s Translations blog and since there are no chords to place, it will be published tomorrow. I published “Shylock” by Serge Gainsbourg and my translation “Pirate” on my Christian’s Translations blog, then I posted my translation on Facebook. I searched in my 1974 Gainsbourg document for the next song that I didn’t translate before because I didn’t have the audio. The first two songs are “Lili t’a pas d’sosie” and “Y’a Bon” as sung by Lisette Malidor but there is no audio. Next after those is “Docteur Faust” and there is audio for that and I did a few years ago try to transcribe the lyrics but probably got it wrong. I found another transcript and copied it, so tomorrow I’ll start learning “Docteur Faust”. I weighed 91.3 kilos before breakfast. I weighed 93.15 kilos before lunch, which is a record high in the early afternoon of any time since I’ve been weighing myself. I weighed 92.25 kilos at 17:50.

August 12, 1996: Brian and I rehearsed for our Wednesday show

Thirty years ago today 

            On Monday I rehearsed with Brian for our gig in two days at the Art Bar reading series.

George Stroumboulopoulos

            On Friday morning there were more bedbugs caught on the carpet tape around my mattress than there were on the walls. 

            I translated the fifth verse of “L’epoque légendaire” (The Legendary Era) by Boris Vian. 

            I ran through singing and playing “Pirate”, my translation of “Shylock” by Serge Gainsbourg. I uploaded it to my Christian’s Translations blog and started preparing it for publication. I’ll probably have it posted tomorrow. 

            I weighed 91.3 kilos before breakfast. 

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

            I put some more two sided carpet tape in certain places around the edge of my futon. I sprayed some more diatomaceous earth on the bottom of my baseboards near the bed. I vacuumed one side of my couch futon and flipped it. 

            I weighed 92.5 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back stopped at Freshco to buy Sponge Towels because I forgot to buy them yesterday. 

            I weighed 91.75 kilos at 18:05. 

            I was still four days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up. 

            I had oven potato wedges with a piece of roast pork while watching a 2013 George Stroumboulopoulos interview with Carol Burnett. 

            Carol has won more People’s Choice Awards than any woman in history. George says without Carol there would probably have never been a Saturday Night Live, Kids in the Hall, or In Living Colour. Carol is touring Canada with her Q and A show. Each show is just 90 minutes of audience questions and her responses. 

            George asks her what was the weirdest question she ever got. He says she can say whatever she wants because this is Canada. A woman from Texas asked, “If you could be a member of the opposite sex for 24 hours who would you be and what would you do?” Carol said, “I’d be Osama Bin Laden and I’d kill myself”.

            Carol and her grandmother used to go to Thrifty’s Drug Store in LA and when no one was looking Nana would slip spoons, forks, knives, salt and pepper shakers, and ketchup into her big bag.” Carol says, “We didn’t have any money and so that was the way to do it.” She says she doesn’t mean it was right to steal but it wasn’t a big deal. They didn’t rob any banks. 

            Her grandmother was a hypochondriacal Christian Scientist and when she thought she was going to die she would tell Carol to “know the truth” for her, which in Christian Science involved reminding her that sickness and death are an illusion. Then Nana would tell her to get her an Aspirin, which is against Christian Science. So Carol got mixed messages. 

            Her grandmother was married six times and was quite a coquette when she was younger. She seduced her much younger piano student in Arkansas and they eloped to Texas where he became her second husband. But his mother came and got him. When she died at 81 she had a 41 year old boyfriend who was a jazz musician from Redondo Beach. Carol’s grandmother warned her not to go to New York because it was cold, her blood was too thin and she’d be dead in a week. But once Carol was on the Garry Moore Show she’d call up the trade papers and complain that they hadn’t put Carol in the paper that day. The papers knew her by name and would assure her they would cover Carol. 

            After Nana had a mind heart attack she was in the hospital for a few days and she had people lined up to her room auditioning for her to see if she could get her granddaughter to put them on The Garry Moore Show. 

            Carol says she’d always had a weak chin and she felt funny in profiles. A surgeon in Honolulu said he could bring her chin up two or three millimeters so she could feel it when it rained. After she finished shooting Annie she had it done. Then she got a call that they were going to reshoot the “Easy Street” number. She had gone into a closet and they were reshooting her coming out but she reminded John Houston that she had a chin now. He just told her to come out looking determined. 

            Harvey Korman had just died before this interview. Carol says he was like a brother. She says he was a consummate actor with comedy chops. She says maybe there was someone as good but there was no one better. She says he was better than her and made her game better. 

            Carol says at one point while her show was on the air there were nine variety shows. 

            Harvey left after the tenth season to do his own show and Carol missed Harvey during her eleventh season. 

            George asks what accent was Tim Conway doing when he did Mr. Tudball. Carol doesn’t know but I always thought it was supposed to be Swedish. Apparently Tim modeled it after his mother’s Romanian accent. 

            George Stroumboulopoulos graduated from the Radio Broadcasting program at Humber College in 1993. He started at a radio station in Kelowna, British Columbia. he moved back to Toronto where he worked for the radio stations CJCL, CFNY, Fan 590 and 102.1 The Edge for four years. he started his television career in 2000 as the host and producer of The Punk Show and then The New Music for MuchMusic. He made his film debut in Going the Distance in 2004. In 2005 he moved to The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation where he hosted and co-executive produced The Hour, which became George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight from 2005 to 2014. It won eight Gemini Awards. In 2007 he started hosting The Strombo Show on CBC radio. He hosted the documentary series Love Hate and Propaganda. From 2014 to 2016 he anchored Hockey Night In Canada. In 2020 he joined Apple Music Radio as a host of a Monday to Thursday show. he also launched the book club Strombo Lit. He co-starred in The Communist’s Daughter web series for which he won a Canadian Screen Award. He was the first Canadian National Ambassador Against Hunger for the United nations World Food Program. he was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 2023. He says hosting is his life. He doesn’t even own a plant.

August 11, 1996: My daughter and I played on the old structures on the back roof

Thirty years ago today 

            On Sunday my daughter and I enjoyed playing on the back roof of my place. There was more than one level and old brick structures to climb on.

Barbara Walters

            On Thursday before bed I finished circling my mattress with two sided carpet tape. 

            I went to bed at 1:30 and I think I pretty much went to sleep right away until the alarm went off at 5:00. It had to drill deeper than usual for it to wake me up. I think I fell asleep during yoga.

            I found a few bedbugs caught on the tape and only one running free on the wall. The tape had come loose in a small section at the foot of my bed. 

            I translated the fourth verse of “L’epoque légendaire” (The Legendary Time) by Boris Vian. 

            I worked out the chords for the last line of “Shylock” by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through singing and playing it in French. I translated the final line and tomorrow I’ll run through singing and playing my full English version of the song before uploading it to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare it for publication. 

            I weighed 90.5 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since last Thursday. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the first of four sessions and as usual it was constantly out of tune. 

            I had a lunch date with my upstairs neighbour David and it was his turn to pay so I had a potato roti and a ginger beer at Ali’s roti. He has bedbugs too and I think they are coming from his third floor neighbour Jacob’s place. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back stopped at Freshco where I bought five bags of Canadian cherries, a rack of Canadian pork ribs, an Atlantic salmon fillet from Chile, and a pack of Full City Dark coffee. I did a price match on the cherries with No Frills price of $8.80 a kilos. The cashier was brand new and mine was her first price match. The store policy is to only do the same price match on four items and so she wanted to charge me the regular price for one bag of cherries. I told her that everybody else just doubles up the bags on the scale. She asked her supervisor and she said that was okay. I gave her $90 but she only gave me change for $80. I pointed that out to her and she saw her mistake but didn’t know how to fix it so she had to call Isabella to guide her through it. It’s okay. All the cashiers fumble at first. I’m sure she’ll be efficient in no time. 

            I weighed 91.4 kilos at 18:35. That’s the easiest I’ve been on the scale in the evening since July 29. 

            I was four days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up. 

            I had wedge fries with a piece of roast pork while watching the rest of the Barbara Walters interview and a Marlo Thomas interview with Carol Burnett. 

            Barbara asks Carol if she blamed herself for her daughter Carrie’s drug addiction. She says she did because she wondered if there had been signs that she missed. Carol thinks that maybe she tried too hard to be like the screen mothers she admired who never got angry and never showed her children when she was down. After Carrie kicked her addiction she and Carol went public about it, partly to spread awareness but also to beat the tabloids to the story. While working on the play Hollywood Arms, Carol rented and renovated the apartment in which she was raised. Barbara points out that Carol was going to be a journalist but became an actor while Barbara was going to be an actor but became a journalist. Carol’s daughters came to every dress rehearsal and practically grew up on the set. Jodie became a producer and co-produced one of Carol’s specials. Carol married a much younger man and so did her grandmother. Barbara asks why the marriage is good for her. Carol says it gives a sense of security, a sense of being cared for, and feeling like she’s number 1. When Carrie was on her deathbed she assisted in the casting for Hollywood Arms. Carrie named her tumour Yucky Chuckie so she could talk to it. She had a picture of it and would visualize it getting smaller. She suffered a lot and Carol was hoping for her to die. Carrie apologized for smoking. Beverly Sills says Carol has no choice but to get over Carrie’s death. 

            The Marlo Thomas interview takes place in a restaurant and Marlo is reading off her laptop questions from fans for Carol. 

            Someone asks Carol her favourite joke. She remembers the first joke she ever heard. A little boy and a little girl were at a picnic. When the girl saw the boy take a piss on a tree she said, That’s a handy gadget to bring to a picnic.”

            Someone asks who cracked her up the most on her show. She says it was Tim Conway. They would tape two shows and after the first, Tim would ask the director if he got everything. If he had then Tim felt free to adlib during the second taping. Tim would just have to look at Harvey and tilt his head before going off script and already Harvey would lose it. 

            Someone asks Carol how she keeps up her youthful energy. She says she does crossword puzzles, Pilates and eats granola yogourt and fruit for breakfast.

            Someone asks Carol who are her favourite funny women. She says Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig, and Jane Lynch. Marlo comments that Jane looks like Carol and she considers it a compliment. 

            Marlo says her father Danny Thomas told her to not be afraid of failing at auditions because if you’re a tomato and they want a potato you’re not gonna get it. Carol adds “Don’t take it personally”.

            Someone asks Carol what current show makes her laugh. She says Modern Family but she also likes the dramas like Mad Men and Damages. “What show would you like recurring role on?” Modern Family and Mad Men. 

            Advice to those who have fear about taking a plunge. Nothing is worse than regret, so go for it.

            Advice for someone over 50 who wants to change careers. Save your money before making the change. Something might happen is not a plan. 

            Carol says she was once trying to cash a cheque in a department store but she didn’t have her identification. So the woman said she’d cash her cheque if she did the Tarzan yell. She did it and a security guard burst through a door with his gun drawn. Carol does it and everyone in the restaurant applauds. 

            Carol says she’s not religious but faith helps her through bad times. 

            Marlo says at her dad’s funeral all these comedians got up. Bob Hope stood up and said, “Danny was so religious he has stained glass windows in his car.” 

            Carol never liked doing stand-up. She wanted to make eye contact with another performer and play off them. 

            Carol says todays shows are missing out in not being filmed before a studio audience. Carol says she has nothing against edgy comedy but she prefers to be made to have a belly laugh. Marlo says Woody Allen’s play has lots of belly laughs. She’s probably referring to his play Honeymoon Motel.

            Someone asks Carol what she thinks of Occupy Wall Street and she says she thinks it’s great.

            Barbara Walters became a working journalist in 1951 after earning her BA in English from Sarah Lawrence. She started at WNBT-TV, which was NBC’s flagship station. She joined the Today Show as a writer and researcher in 1961. She became a Today Girl and did light assignments plus the weather. She published How to Talk to Practically Anyone About Practically Anything in 1970 (with help from Canadian journalist June Callwood). She was the first woman to anchor a news broadcast on a major network in 1976 on World News Tonight. She moderated a debate between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. She started her Barbara Walters Specials in 1976 with an interview of Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter. Her interview with Monica Lewinski was the highest rated news program in history. The Today Show’s first female co-host. From 1993 to 2015 she hosted the annual special Barbara Walters Ten Most Fascinating People. She created The View and produced and co-hosted it from 1997 to 2014. She was the first anchor to earn $1 million a year. She said her best interview was with Katherine Hepburn and her worst was with Warren Beatty. She’s interviewed every US president and First Lady from Richard and Pat Nixon to Barack and Michelle Obama but she did interview Donald Trump and Joe Biden before they became president. She was able to be cool around celebrities because she was surrounded by them her whole life, having been the daughter of the owner of several nightclubs. In 2007 she earned $12 million. In 2008 she was asked who she would want to spend time with if the world was ending and family and friends don’t count. She said she would interview Osama Bin Laden. She never owned a car or had a driver’s license. She was a Republican. She was named one of the best dressed stars of all time by People Magazine in 2000. She donated $1 million to Sarah Lawrence College towards a Barbara Walters gallery. She was nominated for 19 Emmys and won 3. She won a GLAAD Award in 2008 for a report on transgender children. She said it meant more to her than all of her Emmys.