August 6, 1996: A cop saw my guitar and decided I wasn't a crook

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. Afterwards we went for coffee at the Country Style donut shop across the street. At one point a cop came in and said he’d thought that I resembled somebody they were after but then he saw my guitar case and decided I couldn’t be a crook.

August 5, 1996: Brian and I rehearsed for next week's feature

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday Brian Haddon came over to my place and we rehearsed for my August 14 feature at the Artbar reading series.

Gale Gordon

            On Friday morning I went to bed after 2:30 because I had dozed off earlier as usual while trying to write my journal. With all the cleaning up I had to do after supper and the meticulous tooth and gum maintenance I do these days I had no choice but to stay up until those things were done. Even after going to bed I was awake for a while and despite the carpet tape that circled my mattress there were still a few bedbugs that got through. It was interesting that while I was lying there the ones that I killed one after the other took the same route up the right side of my stomach. There were fewer bedbugs than usual on the walls when I checked later and a few more had gotten caught on the tape. 

            After yoga I finished translating “L'enfance de bonnot” (Bonnot’s Childhood). Since no one has posted the audio there are no chords to work out. 

            I worked out the chords for the intro and half the chorus of “Shylock” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 91.15 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer during song practice for the first of two sessions and it stayed in tune pretty much the whole time. 

            Around midday I used my new vacuum cleaner for the first time to clean my futon. 

            I weighed 92.65 kilos before lunch, which is an early afternoon record high since I’ve been weighing myself. 

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

            I weighed 91.65 kilos at 18:05. 

            I was still several days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up. I had a potato with gravy and a piece of roast pork while watching a short YouTube biography of Carol Burnett on Let Me Know, a 1972 appearance of Carol on Johnny Carson and a 1976 appearance along with Lucille Ball, Valerie Harper , and Gale Gordon on The Dinah Show. 

            From Let Me Know: 

            In 1956 Carol co-starred with Buddy Hackett on the sitcom Stanley, which only lasted one season. After it was canceled she became popular on the New York cabaret circuit and in 1960 was nominated for a Tony for her performance in Once Upon a Mattress. She won her second Emmy for her Carnegie Hall special with Julie Andrews. The Carol Burnett Show picked up 23 Emmy Awards during its 11 year run. Carol performed in the play Six Rooms, She was Sesame Street’s first famous guest, and co-starred with Rock Hudson in I Do I Do. She appeared in The Four Seasons, Annie, and Noises Off. She became a regular panelist on Password Plus. In 2001 she married the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra’s principle drummer Brian Miller. After her daughter Carrie died she wrote a memoir called Carrie and Me, the recording of which won a Grammy Award. She continues to perform her one-woman Q and A show.

            Johnny Carson says he’s admired Carol Burnett ever since The Garry Moore Show. He remembers a sketch he did with her on a lifeboat when he guested on the show. Carol says it was 1961. She says they did another sketch in which she played Scarlett O’Hara and Johnny played Rhett Butler. He says, “Then you did Once Upon a Mattress.” “You mean the play?” “That might have been good for you too.” “That’s how it all started”. Carol says the great thing about Once Upon a Mattress is that it appeals to children but there is also some adult humour in it as well. She says the original play has a couple that are expecting a child out of wedlock but in the first TV adaptation they had them be secretly married. Seven years later on the second TV adaptation they brought it back to the original unmarried situation. Johnny talks about how until recently, even in motion pictures they couldn’t show a married couple in bed together. Carol says if they were in the same bed they had to have one foot on the floor whatever good that would do. 

            Johnny asks if during Carol’s questions from the audience segment if she ever gets any real zingers that throw her. Carol says they do about 12 minutes and then edit. She says one woman asked what they polish the stage floor with and Carol told her that was too personal. 

            At that point the audio for that file was gone so I moved on to the Dinah Show. Dinah Shore says they are celebrating the 25th anniversary of television with her special guest Lucille Ball. I think it jumps forward to the couch where she’s already been talking with Lucy and Valerie Harper for a while. Lucy didn’t know Dinah was bringing out her friend Carol Burnett and she is very excited when she hears her name. Carol says there aren’t too many people she’d wear high heels and socks for but she did it for Lucy. Carol first met Lucy on May 12, 1959. They opened Once Upon a Mattress off Broadway and Lucy came to see it on the second night. Carol says she was doing her makeup and when she was told Lucille Ball is in the audience she got lipstick all over her face. After the show Lucy came backstage and they talked for an hour. 

            Lucy gave Carol a baby shower when she was pregnant with her second daughter and the husbands came. Carol says she’d been pregnant for two years and Lucy said, “Maybe it’ll happen if I give you a baby shower”. Lucy’s husband Gary Morton opened all the baby gifts and hilariously insulted each one. Carol went into labour the next day. Dinah says Lucy’s house is the cleanest she’s ever seen. 

            They show a few clips from The Lucy Show of Gale Gordon getting wet in various episodes. Lucy says they became superstitious about it and decided that a show couldn’t be a success unless Gale got wet. Dinah surprises Lucy again by bringing Gale Gordon out. He and Lucy embrace. He says it was always Lucy’s idea for him to get wet but it was worth it to see the look on her face. Lucy says on one show he was in the Colorado River and it was so cold he couldn’t say his lines. Lucy’s nickname for Gale was “Old Soggy Crotch”. He says he’s probably the only person who can’t enjoy a swim now unless he puts on wet bathing trunks first. 

            Gale first worked with Lucy on her radio show My Favourite Husband. When it got reshaped into the TV show I Love Lucy she wanted Gale to play Fred Mertz but while she was pregnant with Lucy, Gale was cast on the show Our Miss Brooks. Dinah says that George Burns said that he could do physical comedy with Lucy that he could never do with Gracie Allen. Carol says you’re not a performer until you’ve had at least one pie in the face. Dinah says she’s never had a pie in the face. 

            Dinah asks Lucy what's the most physical thing she ever did in a performance. She says she went down a real fireman’s pole fast and her heels went right up through her head. Dinah says she did that too and it hurts. Lucy says the most wear and tear she ever suffered was when she was in the water with the porpoises for 45 minutes at Marineland. She says after forty minutes the porpoises were complaining to their trainer about the skit. She says they don’t bite but they poke you with their long, hard snouts and she got it right across the kidneys. 

            Dinah asks Gale if he’s ever wanted to get even with Lucy. He says, “Funny your should ask” and then reaches behind the couch for a spritzer bottle. Lucy shouts, “Oh no!” then stands up an backs away. She sits on Carol and Valerie’s laps but he just says, “All right, all three!” But then he fires and sprays himself. It was obviously staged that way ahead of time. 

            Gale Gordon studied acting under Richard Bennet and began his professional career at the age of 17. He started as a radio actor and met his future wife Virginia when they were both performing on Death Valley Days. They married in 1937 and were together for 58 years until she died. He was the first actor to play Flash Gordon, on the radio series The Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon. He played Mayor LaTrivia on the radio sitcom Fibber McGee and Molly. He played Rumson Bullard on the spin-off The Great Gildersleeve. He played The Octopus on Speed Gibson. He starred in The Casebook of Gregory Hood. In 1950 he starred in Granby’s Green Acres, which was the basis for the later TV series Green Acres. He co-starred on The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show. On television he starred in the sitcom The Box Brothers. He co-starred in Sally, Our Miss Brooks, The Lucy Show, Here’s Lucy, Life With Lucy, and Dennis the Menace, He played the landlord on The Danny Thomas Show. He co-starred in Here Come the Nelsons, Don’t Give Up the Ship, The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock, Sergeant Deadhead, and The Burbs. Even in his senior years he could do cartwheels. He wrote Nursery Rhymes for Hollywood Babies and Leaves from the Story Tree. He bought 150 acres in Borrego Springs, California where he built much of his house and his art studio. He built and restored his own furniture. He became one of the only commercial carob farmers in the US.

August 4, 1996: My daughter shot her action figures with her toy gun

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday my daughter and I played on the back roof of my place. We used her toy gun to shoot her action figures.

Erin Hamilton

            On Thursday morning a few more bedbugs had past the two-sided tape that I’d put around my mattress and a few had gotten trapped on it. I think on Friday I’ll try out the new vacuum cleaner in the bedroom. 

            I started translating “L’enfance de Bonnot” by Boris Vian. I don’t think I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog but then again I might. 

            I finished translating “Shylock” by Serge Gainsbourg and out of habit looked for the chords even though I was not surprised that no one had posted them. I worked them out for about half of the intro. 

            I weighed 90.35 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            I weighed 92.1 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the early afternoon since July 20. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back stopped at Freshco where I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Canadian cherries are finally in season. I bought five bags of cherries, two pints of blueberries, some bananas, a pack of pork souvlaki, a pack of Full City Dark coffee, and a lint roller. 

            I weighed 91.55 kilos at 18:25. 

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

            I made a pork roast and had a slice with a potato and gravy while watching the Lifetime Intimate Portrait documentary on Carol Burnett. 

            From the beginning Carol has brought a rare optimism, compassion and strength of spirit to every performance which not only entertains but inspires. 

            Carol was named after her mother’s favourite actor Carol Lombard. Her parents realized they weren’t cut out for parenthood and left Carol with her maternal grandmother. Carol became her whole life but she was also a hypochondriac who thought every day that she was about to die. That was scary for Carol when she was under her Nana’s care. 

            They were very poor but Carol didn’t know it because her whole neighbourhood was poor and many had alcoholic parents. Carol was never hungry and she got to watch eight movies a week. In third grade Carol loved the Hans Christian Andersen story The Princess and the Pea. 

            When Carol was 10 her sister Chrissie was born. 

            At 18 Carol graduated from Hollywood High School. She wanted to go to UCLA and she had the grades but not the $42 a semester tuition and her grandmother couldn’t afford it. One day someone put a letter in their mailbox without mailing it and inside was a $50 bill. To this day she doesn’t know who gave her the money. Nobody she knew had the money to give. 

           Carol wanted to study Journalism but UCLA had no such course and so her second choice was Theatre Arts. Chrissie says their mother was rarely functional. In 1953 Carol spent the summer in San Francisco with the UCLA Players and fell for her fellow actor Don Saroyan. They both dreamed of performing on Broadway. 

           When the anonymous benefactor gave Carol the $1000 her grandmother was immediately worried about where it came from. She also thought that Carol’s dream of being an actor was a pipe dream. 

            In 1955 Carol and Don got married. When she was 23 she was experiencing success but began worrying about her now 12 year old sister back in LA who was getting out of control. Chrissie admits that she had more freedom back then than maybe she should have. She was getting a little wild and growing up too fast. Carol lied to Chrissie that she was just coming to New York for Christmas. After the holidays Chrissie started talking about getting back to school in LA, Carol told her she wasn’t going back and it hit Chrissie hard. 

            When she met Robert Goulet on The Garry Moore Show she talked about seeing him as a knight in shining armour in Camelot and wished she’d had a can opener. 

            After Carol auditioned for but didn’t get the part in Babes in Arms she almost immediately was offered a chance to audition for Once Upon a Mattress and she got the part. It was only supposed to run for three weeks off-Broadway but it was a hit and played for two months of sold out shows. It moved from off-Broadway to Broadway. Every day she did the Garry Moore Show and every night she starred in the play. One time after climbing onto the mattresses she actually fell asleep. The stage manager had to yell to wake her up.

            One night Julie Andrews came backstage to meet Carol. They went for Chinese food and became lifelong friends. They did several two women shows together. 

            When Carol won her first Emmy she thanked “The greatest man in the world, Garry Moore”. 

            In 1963 when The Garry Moore Show ended, Carol was back on Broadway in Fade Out Fade In. At the same time she was in the cast of the TV show The Entertainers which was produced by her second husband Joe Hamilton. One day while rushing to the TV studio her taxi smashed into another car and Carol suffered severe injuries that took three months to recover from. Then she was pregnant and overwhelmed by her workload. She had to quit the play, angering the theatrical community. She didn’t get work on Broadway again for thirty years. 

           Carol was pregnant with her second daughter Jody when they moved back to LA. 

           Thirty minutes into the video I have for this documentary the video froze but I still had the audio.

           In the summer of 1968 Carol gave birth to her third daughter Erin. Carol and Joe made sure they were home by 19:00 so they could have dinner with their family and tuck their kids in bed. Carrie used to watch musicals on TV with her mother. The family played a lot of Scrabble and tons of board games like Password. Carrie says her mother is terrific at Scrabble but she can beat her. 

            After 11 years CBS wasn’t ready to quit the Carol Burnett Show but Carol was. Tim Conway says Carol and Joe took the cast to dinner one night. Carol announced that she’d done 1300 sketches and didn’t know if she could do any more. She went to the ladies room to cry and Tim said to Joe, “We’ll put her in a mental institution and we’ll go on with the show.” 

           The National Enquirer posted a story that Carol had been drunk and raucous in a restaurant, forcing strangers to eat her desert, and had a fist fight with Henry Kissinger. Carol sued because her daughters were young and in school and exposed to ridicule because of the rumours. She said she will fight anyone that would dare to try to hurt her kids. In 1981 after four years of struggle Carol won the case and was awarded $1.6 million. She donated it all to various college funds.

           For the first time in her life Carol took on a non-comedic role in the made for TV film Friendly Fire and she was nominated for an Emmy. 

           In 1984 Carol and Joe divorced. Carol didn’t consider their 20 year marriage a failure. They were just different people now. 

           In 1995 Carol returned to Broadway for the first time in 30 years in Moon Over Buffalo. 

           Carol played Jamie’s mother on the sitcom Mad About You. 

           She said she wouldn’t mind getting married again to have someone to travel with. The ideal would be if he lived next door so they each had their own space. 

           What Carol was happiest about was that her daughters were all close. They called each other and supported each other. Carol can now ask them for advise and get very good advice from all of them.

           In January of 1997 Carol became a grandmother with the birth of Erin’s son Zacharie. 

           Carol’s daughter Erin Hamilton is a dance and electronic music singer. Before that she sang for blues and jazz bands like As Is, and Komba Kalla. Her first solo single was a 1998 cover of Gary Wright’s 1975 hit “Dream Weaver”. Her debut album was One World in 1999. She opened for Bette Midler and Witney Houston. In 2008 her cover of the Cheap Trick hit “The Flame” by Bob Mitchell and Nick Graham reached #1 on the dance charts. She had a second son Dylan but lost custody of him because of her problems with addiction. In 2020 Carol and her third husband Brian Miller gained temporary custody of Erin’s son Dylan when Erin was institutionalized because of suicidal behaviour. Carol tried to take full custody but the court decided on a third party. When Dylan turned 18 there were no longer any restrictions of access to Erin’s son. Even though Erin has been clean and sober for a few years Carol remains estranged from her because she’s had her heart broken by her too many times. Carol has a close relationship with Dylan who is now in college.

Percy Hynes White

            This is the beginning of the 14th year of my journal. 

            On Wednesday morning the two-sided carpet tape that I’d put around the edge of my futon apparently did some good. It caught a few bedbugs but mostly seems to have deterred a lot of them from climbing up to me because I didn’t feel any on me and slept a little better for the first night in a while. 

            I searched for the next Boris Vian song to learn and found the lyrics for his “L'epoque légendaire” but no audio. It’s from the musical he wrote called La bande à Bonnot for which I could buy the audio but I’m not going to do that. I assume down the road someone who has the audio will upload it. The lyrics are posted online and I’ve got those, so I’ll translate those while I’m waiting for the audio. The next Vian song on my list is “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody), which is from the same musical and the audio for that is posted online. 

            I finished memorizing “Shylock” by Serge Gainsbourg. Tomorrow I’ll finish translating it and start working out the chords. 

            I weighed 89.95 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the first of two sessions and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            Around midday I went to the Dynacare Labs at Christie and Bloor to get my blood tests done. I’d gotten the requisition from my doctor back in early May but never got around to going until today because I’d been focusing on painting my bathroom. They took two samples of my blood and I barely felt the needle. I also filled a urine sample container and then they surprised me by giving me a heart test. I didn’t even know that was on the requisition. I’d never had a heart test before and had expected to be on a treadmill with electrodes on my chest. I had the electrodes but while lying down. She also put electrodes on my legs and arms. 

            Note: The above happened on Tuesday and it was today that I went to buy the vacuum cleaner. 

            I weighed 91.1 kilos at 15:25. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

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

            I weighed 91.3 kilos at 18:10. 

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

            I made pizza on a slice of Rudolph’s sandwich bread with rosée tomato sauce, tomato pesto, wedge oven fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the first season finale of Wednesday on Discord with my daughter Astrid. 

            The story begins with Wednesday inviting Tyler to the woods and confronting him about being the Hyde monster which she found out in a vision when she kissed him. She doesn’t feel in danger being alone in the woods with him because she knows he is attracted to her. But she also didn’t come alone as Bianca and some others step out. Bianca takes control of him with her Siren powers and he wakes up chained to a chair in Xavier’s forest studio. Wednesday has uncovered that Tyler’s mother was a Hyde and that his father the sheriff has been covering it up. Wednesday wants to begin torturing Tyler for information. The others don’t want any part of that and so they leave and report to Principal Weems, who calls the sheriff. The sheriff arrives and arrests Wednesday but for some reason he lets her go. Before she leaves the police station Tyler speaks to her privately and confesses to being the Hyde and liking it. Weems expels Wednesday but she asks to be able to visit Eugene in the hospital before she leaves. They find that Eugene has awakened from his coma and when he describes the figure she saw at the monster’s cave before it attacked him as having red boots. This fits the description of Ms. Thornhill, the only Normy teaching at Nevermore. Wednesday confronts Thornhill and she denies everything until Wednesday calls in Tyler who she says told her everything. Thornhill orders Tyler to kill Wednesday but it’s really Principal Weems shape-shifting. Thornhill admits she is Laurel Gates and that she manipulated Tyler into killing her victims as body parts towards the resurrection of Joseph Crackstone so he can wipe out all the Outcasts. Thornhill grabs a knife and stabs Weems in the jugular, killing her. Wednesday is knocked out with a shovel and she wakes up in chains. Gates uses Wednesday’s blood to resurrect Crackstone in the assembled body parts. She stabs Wednesday before leaving with Crackstone and she is dying. But the ghost of Goody Addams appears and tells her she is going to heal her by passing into her body, then she will never see her again. Learning that Wednesday is in danger, Enid finally transforms into a white werewolf and fights Tyler. She almost loses but eventually wins. With Bianca’s help, Wednesday kills Crackstone. We finally learn what Eugene’s power is as he controls his bees to swarm and defeat Thornhill. Xavier is released from jail and reconciles with Wednesday. Tyler is institutionalized in a high security hospital. Nevermore closes for the rest of the semester and Wednesday finishes her novel and goes home. 

            Xavier was played by Canadian actor Percy Hynes White, who mad his acting debut at the age of 2 in short films such as Moera: Fact or Fantasy? in his hometown of St. John’s, Newfoundland. He made his feature film debut at the age of 7 in the 2008 Canadian film Down to the Dirt, which was based on his father Joel Thomas Hynes’ first novel. At age 9 he played the lead role in the short film Forty-Five and Five and then in the short films Winners and Little Man. He studied with The Performing Arts Group in St. Johns. He made his television debut in 2013 on The Slattery Street Crockers. His starring performance in Cast No Shadow earned him the Best Actor Award at the 2014 Atlantic Film Festival and the Rising Star Award at the 2014 Edmonton Film Festival. His first Hollywood film appearance was in Night At the Museum: Secret of the Tomb. His performance in I Like Movies in 1922 earned him a Best Supporting Actor award from the Vancouver Film Critics Circle. He co-starred in My Old Ass, Edge of Winter, Our House, Winter Spring Summer or Fall, and Whistle. He co-starred in the X-Men spin-off TV series The Gifted, the Canadian science fiction series Between, the Canadian police series Pretty Hard Cases, and Murdoch Mysteries.

August 3, 1996: The weather was nice so we played outside

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday my daughter began another weekend at my place. The weather was nice and we played outside.