June 6, 1996: I served as an art exam

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I likely posed for art class examinations.

Maggie Smith

            On Thursday morning I searched for the chords to “L'anguille (The Eel)” by Boris Vian and found one set on Boite a chanson (Song Box). I’ll find out tomorrow if those fit for me. Meanwhile I worked a few chords out for the intro. 

            I published “He’s a Giggle Oh My Gigolo”, my translation of “Il est Rigolo mon gigolo” by Serge Gainsbourg on my Christian’s Translations blog and posted the lyrics on Facebook. I moved on to the my next unfinished translation of a Gainsbourg song and that’s “Les anthropophages” (The Cannibals). I listened to the audio a couple of times on YouTube but I decided to not try to memorize the song until I’m sure I have the right lyrics. I already had a set but I might have just written them down as I heard them years ago and my ear for French is not that dependable. The video features Serge Gainsbourg, Dalida, and Petula Clark and it’s on the official Dalida YouTube channel. The uploader also added the lyrics and so they might be correct but I’d better do my translation before my memorization just to be sure it makes sense. 

            I weighed 89.55 kilos before breakfast. 

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

            I was behind on my journal and so I worked on getting caught up. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on the way back. I bought seven bags of grapes, two packs of raspberries, some bananas, a pack of chicken drumsticks, a large can of Full City Dark coffee, and a jar of marinara sauce. I did a price match on the grapes with the Real Canadian Superstore’s price of $4.39 a kilo. I got $3 off on the coffee with my Scene card but it took me a while to find it on my phone. The cashier was just preparing me a temporary Scene card when I found it by typing “Wallet”, which is where the Scene card is kept. Next time I’ll just make sure Wallet is on display before going there. 

            I weighed 90.25 kilos at 18:20. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 20:11. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity the first 20 minutes of side 2 of the tape I digitized last night. This was a recording session at Mike’s place of my songs “Sleep in the Snow”, “Megaphor”, “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy”, and “Seven Shades of Blues”. Mike played drums while I played my Kramer and sang. I’ll probably finish digitizing that tape tomorrow. 

            I had my last potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching season 8, episode 10 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warmup someone asks Carol who’s her favourite rock star and she answers “Rock Hudson”. 

            Carol has just noticed someone in the audience she wants everyone to applaud: “One of the finest comedians I’ve ever known: Alice Ghostly”. 

            Someone asks if her husband ever comes to see the show. Carol says, “No, he can’t stand me!” Her husband Joe Hamilton was the producer of the show. They didn’t divorce for another ten years. 

            In a parody of the movie Born Free Carol and Harvey play a couple living in Africa. Harvey is a game warden and on his way to the bush tells Carol that she has to release her pet lion Simba into the wild. He leaves and then Carol calls for Simba, who is Tim Conway in a lion costume. She says she has to talk with him and so he sits at the table and pours some tea. he looks at the paper and roars with disappointment because the Lions lost again. She tells him he must go back in the wild to live among his own kind. He feels her forehead to see if she’s sick. He wants lunch and so she gives him a raw steak, saying his going to have to get used to it. He cooks it in the microwave. She tries to lure him into the jungle by showing him a magazine centerfold of a lioness. He’s excited about her but still won’t leave. Harvey returns home and joins Carol in insisting that Simba leave. Simba slowly makes his way to pack his things, puts on his travelling clothes, his bowler hat, and then walks out the door. 

            Dame Maggie Smith comes out wearing the exact same glittering black pantsuit as Carol. At the time she was on tour with the play Private Lives by Noel Coward. Carol tells Maggie she’s so British. Maggie agrees that she’s British. Carol says she’d like to be Maggie Smith just once. They sing a duet of “You’re So London” by Mike Nichols and Ken Welch for a duet between Julie Andrews and Carol in the 1962 show Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall. 

            Harvey and Tim play two sergeants alone for three years on a remote island with the task of spotting enemy planes of which they’ve seen none. Harvey says it’s driving him mad. Then one of their own planes drops their bag of mail in which Harvey receives a notice that he’s been promoted to lieutenant. Harvey immediately starts ordering Tim around. He has to line up for inspection and then march in parade while somehow holding both ends of a banner naming the 71st Infantry Division Observation Corps. Tim discovers there is a woman named Corporal April Calloway on the island and brings her in. Harvey tells Tim to prepare the officer’s mess for two tonight. Tim says he can’t do that since as a corporal she’s only allowed to mess with enlisted men. 

            Carol and Harvey play Helen and Martin who are about to receive as a guest their old college chum Karen Burns, who is now a movie star. Karen arrives played by Maggie, but Helen and Martin find it impossible to treat Karen like their old friend because they believe Hollywood changes people. They think that Karen is condescending to visit them and refuse to listen to Karen trying to express how much she’s been looking forward to it. They offer Karen a drink but she says she doesn’t drink so early in the day. They don’t believe her and urge her to stop pretending she hasn’t changed. Helen asks who she’s living with but Karen says she lives alone. Helen has read that living with someone is now the “in” thing in Hollywood. Karen insists that she lives alone with her two pets but Helen is offended that Karen won’t tell what she believes is the truth to her old friend. Helen says Karen must have felt awful when she didn’t win the Oscar. Karen says she did win the Academy Award but Helen says, “Not that year, the other year”. “But I was only nominated once”. “But didn’t you feel awful when you didn’t get a second nomination?” “No”. Helen says she felt humiliated and could hardly hold her head up around the neighbourhood. Karen tells Helen she’s sorry and she’ll try harder next time. Helen asks to see Karen’s face lift scars. Karen says she hasn’t had a face lift but Helen is sure everyone in Hollywood has had a face lift. Martin tells Karen he wanted to get her some marijuana but Helen was afraid they’d get arrested. Karen tries to tell them she doesn’t smoke but they’re too busy arguing with each other on the subject. Finally Karen says loudly, “I don’t smoke marijuana!” But Helen and Martin take that to mean she’s a pill popper. Martin says, “You can tell us! We read Valley of the Dolls!” Karen insists she doesn’t take pills and they think that means she’s hooked on the hard stuff. Finally Karen shrugs and realizes the only way out is to act like everything they believe about her is true and then adds more, such as depraved orgies and countless drug arrests. She says she’s had an affair with Paul Newman and urges them not to tell Joanne Woodward. She adds she’s also been with Robert Redford, Steve McQueen and Mickey Rooney. She begs their forgiveness and pretends to leave in tears. 

            Vicki is being interrogated by two cops about a murder. Her alibi is that she was taking a walk and found an unlocked house where there was no one home but there were three bowls of porridge on the table. She continues with the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. But the cops tell her there was no house in that area. She says she’ll tell them the truth this time, that she put on her little red riding hood and headed for her grandmother’s house. 

            Carol as The Charwoman comes to clean up on an empty theatre stage. She sings “Oh To Be a Movie Star” by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick from the 1966 musical The Apple Tree. In her fantasy the dancers sing and tap about their “Hubba Hubba Honey”, then the Charwoman as a scantily clad starlet descends a stairway and sings “Cuddle Up a Little Closer” by Karl Hoschna and Otto Harbach from the 1908 musical The Three Twins. When the fantasy is over the Charwoman finishes “Oh to Be a Movie Star”. 

            Maggie Smith started studying at The Oxford Playhouse at the age of 16 and made her stage debut there at 17 as Viola in Twelfth Night. In a 1964 production of Othello she was knocked out by Lawrence Olivier when he struck her across the face. She made her Broadway debut in New Faces of 1956. She made her film debut in Child in the House in 1956. She made her TV debut in Much Ado About Nothing in 1967. She starred in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (for which she won an Oscar), Travels With My Aunt (Oscar nominated), Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing, A Room with a View (Oscar nominated), The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Tea with Mussolini, Gosford Park (Oscar nominated), Quartet, and The Lady in the Van. She co-starred in Nowhere to Go, Othello (Oscar nominated), Go to Blazes, Young Cassidy, The Honey Pot, Hot Millions, California Suite (for which she won an Academy Award), Murder by Death, The Missionary, Clash of the Titans, Better Late Than Never, A Private Function, Lily in Love, The Secret Garden, Hook, Sister Act, Washington Square, The Last September, Curtain Call, Ladies in Lavender, Keeping Mum, From Time to Time, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, My Old Lady, and The Miracle Club. She played Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films. She played Violet Crawley on Downton Abbey (winning 3 Emmys). She’s been nominated for six Oscars. She’s won 4 BAFTA Best Actress awards, the most for any actress. She won an Emmy for My House in Umbria. She was nominated for three Tony Awards (Private Lives, Night and Day) and won one for Lettice and Lovage. She was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth in 1990.

June 5, 1996: I posed for artists and then performed as a poet

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I probably posed somewhere and then performed on the open stages of Fat Albert’s and the Art Bar reading series.

Gwendoline Christie

            On Wednesday at 1:45 before bed I was finally caught up in my journal for the first time in eight days. 

            After yoga I finished revising my translation of “L'anguille (The Eel)” by Boris Vian. On Thursday I’ll search for the chords. 

            I uploaded “Il est Rigolo mon gigolo” (He’s a Giggle Oh My Gigolo) by Serge Gainsbourg to my Christian’s Translations blog and finished preparing it for publication. Tomorrow I’ll add the YouTube file, publish the song and then post my translation on Facebook. Then I’ll move on to the my next unfinished translation of a Gainsbourg song. 

            I weighed 89.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin during song practice and it went out of tune for every song. 

            Around midday I painted the first coat of “blue bliss” on the area directly around the second of four floral reliefs on the frame of my future bathroom mirror and half of the other two. On Friday I might have the first coat of blue finished. 

            I weighed 89.9 kilos before lunch. I had a toasted Montreal style bagel with peanut butter and four-year-old cheddar, plus a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back stopped at Freshco to buy grapes. Since this was the last day they were on sale there weren’t many good ones left but I got five bags. They were heavily covered with insecticide so I’m going to have to give them a good washing.

            I weighed 89.4 kilos at 18:00, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since May 26. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:47. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and extracted to my hard drive a recording session at Mike’s place of my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy”, “Me and Gravity”, “The Princess and the Pea Happy Song” and “Paranoiac Utopia”. This side of the tape has just me on vocals and guitar and Mike on drums and bass. The bass is only on “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy”. I’ll digitize side 2 tomorrow. It has Brian Haddon accompanying me on synthesizer.

            I made pizza on two halves of a Montreal style bagel with olive paste, half a burger on each bagel, and each topped with marinara, tomato pesto, and four-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager after meeting my daughter to watch episode 3 of Wednesday on Discord. 

            While exploring the basement headquarters of the Nightshade Society at Nevermore Academy, Wednesday is captured by that group and tied to a chair. They are all masked but Wednesday recognizes Bianca and Xavier’s voices. Xavier suggests they let her join but she declines. Bianca says to untie her but she reveals that she already untied herself five minutes ago. As she leaves she tells them they are amateurs who give kidnapping a bad name. A community outreach festival is held in Jericho to ease the tensions between the Normie community and the students of Nevermore. Everybody will be dressed in 17th Century period costumes to honour the Pilgrim founding father of the town of Jericho, Jericho Crackstone. It turns out that Jericho’s biggest source of income is the Nevermore Academy. Wednesday learns that the Pilgrim Meeting House in town is not the original one. She finds out the location in the woods of the ruin of the original and goes there with Thing. When she touches the door she has a vision of the witch trial of her ancestor Goody Addams (also played by Jenna Ortega). Goody is thrown into the meeting house where the other victims are imprisoned. Jericho sets fire to the building but Goody can’t save the others because they have been chained to the floor. They tell her she has to escape as she is the only hope for the future. Wednesday goes back to the fair and has Thing sabotage the unveiling of the statue of Jericho Crackstone. It is engulfed in flames and melts where it stands. The principal knows Wednesday is behind it but has no proof. Wednesday confronts her because she admits she knows what Crackstone did. She says she wants to heal the old wounds. Enid arranges a date with Ajax and thinks she’s been stood up but what happened is Ajax was temporarily turned to stone by a Gorgon. 

            Principal Larissa Weems is played by Gwendoline Christie, who worked as a fashion model before graduating from Drama Centre London in 2005. She appeared in a series of mostly nude photos called Bunny between 2002 and 2008. She made her film debut in the short film The Time Surgeon in 2007. She made her feature film debut in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus in 2009. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance as Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones. She won an Emmy for her guest appearance on Severance. She played Lucifer in The Sandman series. She co-starred in the second season of Top of the Lake. She co-starred in Wizards versus Aliens, The Darkest Minds, Welcome to Marwen, Robin and the Hoods, and After His Death. She starred in Flux Gourmet, In Fabric, She played Captain Phsma the first female villain in the Star Wars franchise in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. 

June 4, 1996: I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy open stage at the Gladstone

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, at 1214 Queen Street West.

Helen Reddy

            On Tuesday morning I revised my translation of the sixth and seventh verses of “L'anguille (The Eel)” by Boris Vian. There’s a chance I’ll have the song finished on Wednesday. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Il est Rigolo mon gigolo” (He’s a Giggle Oh My Gigolo) by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through singing and playing it in French and English. Tomorrow I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog to begin preparing it for publication. 

            I weighed 89.95 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer during song practice and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            Around midday I packed up my laundry and took it to the Speedy Queen. I was bringing my stuff home just after all the teenagers were getting out of Parkdale Collegiate. 

            I weighed 89.75 kilos at 15:40, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since May 20.

            I took a siesta from 16:08 to 17:38. It was too late for a bike ride. 

            I weighed 90.5 kilos at 17:55. 

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

            I grilled eight chicken drumsticks and had one with a small potato and gravy while watching season 8, episode 9 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warmup Carol introduces someone who won a scholarship that she sponsored back east for the most outstanding senior in theatre arts. She brings out Kenny Solms, who was actually a writer for Carol Burnett for several years and so this was a bit. He says he blew his scholarship money on a first class plane ticket to get to LA from New York. The bit is that he’s just somebody she invited to the stage but he thinks he came out to be a castmember on her show. He says he’s going to change his name to Lyle because Kenny is too cute. He says he can’t find his dressing room so he doesn’t know where to put his stuff. She says they’ll have to talk about it and he says they can go out for dinner wherever she wants to take him. 

            Helen Reddy sings her 1974 hit “Angie Baby” by Alan O’Day. Two of the dancers act out the lyrics. 

            There’s a Mama’s Family sketch in which Mama is visiting at Eunice and Ed’s place. They’ve finished dinner and Mama has just put her two grandchildren to bed. She says they asked her for a story but she said, “You think you deserve a story when your room is such a mess” They said their mother lets them keep it that way but Mama said, “Your mother might like to live in a garbage can but I don’t!” Eunice has set up the board game Sorry on the dining room table and wants Mama and Ed to play it so they can all have some fun together. Mama complains about the trashy movie magazines Eunice keeps in the house. Eunice argues that some of those articles have been authenticicated. Mama says, “I suppose they’ll keep printing them as long as there are people brainless enough to read them!” Eunice nags them until they agree to play. It starts to go sour almost immediately when Ed wins the dice roll and therefore gets his choice of men. He picks the yellow ones even though Eunice already said those were the ones she wanted. The game inspires arguments about their lives. Eunice complains she doesn’t have anything nice. Ed points out the salad bowl but she says it’s imitation wood and the Wishbone dressing just eats through it. Eunice complains that’s all he ever gets her is household appliances cause that’s all she ever does is housework. Mama says, “You’d never know it”. Eunice says, “I practically have to get down on my knees to get you to play a game with me so I can have some fun with this impossible old woman!” Eunice explodes in anger and tears open a feather pillow on the couch. Mama tells her, “You’re really nuts! I think somebody blew out your pilot light!” This is clearly an ad lib on Vicki’s part because Carol starts to laugh. Then Mama says, “You got splinters in the windmills of yer mind!” and Carol cracks up. Mama adds, “Yer playin hockey with a warped puck!” Eunice is shouting when they tell her it’s her turn. She continues shouting when she rolls but when they tell her she just rolled double six her mood suddenly changes and she sits down to happily play the game again. 

            John Byner does a stand-up routine on the topic of nostalgia. He says when he was a kid he idolized Elvis and does an Elvis impression. He says everybody had motorbikes but he couldn’t afford one so he used to pretend. He imitates a motorcycle. He says 50s television screwed him up because the families on the shows were too perfect and nothing like his own. Ozzie and Harriet was on for 14 years. He says nobody has ever met anyone named “Ozzie”. Ozzie never left the house. He speculates what Ozzie and Harriet would be like if it was still on and competing with shows like All in the Family and Maude that deal with real problems. Ricky’s girlfriend is pregnant but Ozzie’s solution is to have cookies in the kitchen. 

            Harvey and John are at a singles bar looking to score and Carol and Helen come in. Harvey and John have been coming there for a month and haven’t even talked to a woman. It’s Carol and Helen’s first time and they are also shy. They notice Harvey and John and think they’re cute. Harvey and John walk over to them but as soon as they turn around they run away back to their end of the bar. By the time they approach them again it’s closing time. Carol decides to drop her handkerchief on the way out. Harvey picks it up to hand to her but the girls scream and run out of the bar. 

            Helen Reddy began performing at the age of 4 at the Tivoli Theatre in Perth, Australia while touring with her show business parents. She left boarding school at the age of 15 to become a professional singer and actor. She got her own radio show on ABC called Helen Reddy Sings and it aired twice a week. She made her TV debut in In Melbourne Tonight in 1962. In 1966 she won a trip to New York in an Australian Bandstand contest. There she met and later married Jeff Wald and converted to Judaism. Her first single was “One Way Ticket” in 1967. She appeared on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show 15 times. She had her first hit in Canada in 1972 with a cover of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him”. She co-wrote “I Am Woman” with Ray Burton in 1971 and it was a #1 hit in 1972, becoming the first Australian performer to win a Grammy. In her acceptance speech she famously thanked a female god “because she makes everything possible”. “Delta Dawn” in 1973 hit #1 and “Angie Baby” did the same in 1974. She hosted 19 episodes of The Midnight Special. She co-starred in Airport 1975 and Pete’s Dragon, . She made her Broadway debut in Blood Brothers. She starred four times in the one woman show Shirley Valentine. She was the Commissioner of Parks and Recreation for the state of California for three years. In 2002 she returned to Australia to study in university and after earning her degree, worked as a practicing hypnotherapist. She moved back to California about ten years later when she started suffering from dementia. She sang “I Am Woman” at the 2017 Women’s March after Trump became president of the US.

June 3, 1996: I posed for final projects at OCA

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday I probably posed for final assignments at the Ontario College of Art so there was very little instruction and classes often ended early.