Cass Elliot

            On Friday morning I continued to edit “Ballade de la chnoufe” by Boris Vian to prepare it for publication on my Christian’s Translations blog. 

            I worked out the chords for the first half of the chorus of “Dessous mon pull” (Under My Sweater) by Serge Gainsbourg.  

            I weighed 88.85 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio for the first of two sessions. 

            Around midday I started cleaning the blue paint from the wall tiles below the blue trim that separates the pinkish purple wall paint from the tiles. Not wanting to remove any paint from the trim I needed something to precisely take the paint from the edge and found that toilet paper, alcohol and my fingernail worked best after breaking up the paint a bit with a wooden skewer dipped in alcohol. I got three and a half tiles done and it makes the trim look a lot better. I’d been thinking that where the trim meets the wall it’s uneven but when the lower part is straightened out it makes the top look straighter. 

            I weighed 89.7 kilos before lunch.

            I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 89.4 kilos at 18:25. 

            I was still a day behind in my journal and so I worked on getting caught up. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast pork tenderloin while watching season 4, episode 8 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            In the first skit George (played by Harvey) wakes up with a hangover after the annual office party at his place of work and doesn’t remember anything that happened. He hears a woman gargling in the bathroom and then an extremely nerdy and unattractive woman played by Carol comes out of the bathroom. She says her name is Zelda and she works in accounting. She informs him to his horror that they are married now and she’s quitting her job to be a full time housewife for him in his bachelor apartment. She plans to throw out all of his furniture and decorations since she’s the one who’ll have to live with them while he’s working. He grabs the phone book to look for a lawyer but she takes it from him and rips it in half. Her mother arrives to live with them and she’s just like Zelda. He’s told he’ll be sleeping on a cot from now on. 

            Cass Elliot sings “The Good Times Are Comin” by John Barry and Hal David. 

            Next Carol and Cass play a couple of wallflowers at a dance. Harvey and Lyle approach them to ask if they are dancing the next dance. They smile and say “no”. But then the guys say, would you mind watching our coats for us? The girls then sing “Nobody’s Heart Belongs to Me by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Then Carol, Vickie and Cass sing “Tell Us Where the Good Times Are” by Bob Merrill from 1953. They follow this with “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell, with images of pollution shown on the screen. Carol had just started on an anti-pollution campaign around this time.

            In the next skit Carol plays Hester Williams, a parody of swimming movie star Esther Williams. The location is Acapulco and she comes to the hacienda of billionaire playboy Antonio (played by Ricardo Montalban). When she walks she strokes her arms as if she’s swimming. When she sits on the couch she holds her nose as if she’s diving under water. When she shakes her head you can hear water sloshing. Carol parodies Esther Williams’s limited acting abilities. He kisses her and she says she has so awakened passion in her that now all she can do is swim it off. She throws off her dress revealing a one piece bathing suit and goes to swim in his pool. This is the first Carol Burnett skit that’s been done outdoors. She starts singing “You’d Be So Easy to Love” by Cole Porter and dives into the pool. She continues the song while swimming and sometimes gurgling. She ends the song by diving out of the pool and back onto his patio. She walks back in to his home and her hair’s not wet at all. Now she wants to leave and they sing “Baby It’s Cold Outside” together. It’s by Frank Loesser and was popularized in the film Neptune’s Daughter starring Esther Williams. 

            In the final sketch Carol’s character the Charwoman is mopping up at a circus. She meets a ragged clown who gives her a dead long stemmed rose. He silently indicates that he is going to juggle three balls while balancing a feather on his nose. But he drops a ball right away and while bending forward to pick it up the feather is clearly glued to his nose. He sweeps the spotlight into a small circle then picks it up and hands it to her. She puts it in her pocket. She gives him her bucket to sit on and then sits on the floor beside him. She sings “It’s Only a Paper Moon” by Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg and Billy Rose from 1933. Then she sings “Look for the Silver Lining” by Jerome Kern and B.G. De Sylva from 1919. 

            At the end she thanks “the world’s greatest clown”, Emmett Kelly. 

            Cass Elliot performed in a summer stock production of The Boyfriend during her senior year in high school and made her decide to pursue show business over college. She competed with Barbara Streisand for the role of Miss Marmelstein in “I Can Get it for You Wholesale”. In 1963 she formed folk trio called The Triumvirate with Tim Rose and John Brown. They changed their name to The Big 3 when John Brown was replaced by James Hendricks. They performed on The Tonight Show, Hootenanny, and The Danny Kaye Show. Rose left they were joined by Canadians Denny Doherty and Zal Yanovsky. They changed their name to the Mugwumps. Her vocal range improved by three notes after she was hit in the head by some copper tubing while walking through a construction site. Doherty joined John Phillips and Michele Phillips as The New Journeymen. When Cass joined them they became The Mamas and the Papas. From 1965 to 1968 the Mamas and Papas was a supergroup with a string of hits. Cass went solo in 1968 with Dream a Little Dream of Me. She appeared on the Tonight Show 13 times and guest hosted once. She featured on the first episode of Midnight Special. She released five solo albums. She recorded an album with Dave Mason. In the early 70s she made appearances on all the popular TV variety shows. She co-starred in the movie Pufnstuf. She was so upset when the IRS told her she owed them $10,000 she paid it all in pennies. But it cost her an extra $3000 to deliver the coins and then they threatened her with contempt and she had to pay to have the pennies removed. In 1974 after several sellout shows at the London Palladium she went to a string of parties and luncheons to celebrate but in the end died of a heart attack at the age of 33. She was not a big fan of rock music and preferred classical, jazz, and showtunes. She said her biggest let down was being in a pop group that turned out to be like everything it was supposed to be against. A movie about Cass Elliot starring Jessica Gunning is in production.

April 25, 1996: I either posed for the art college or a high school

Thirty years ago today 

            On Thursday I probably either posed for the art college or for a high school with an art program.

Jim Bailey

            On Thursday morning I finished running through singing and playing “Ballad of a Dealer”, my translation of “Ballade de la chnoufe” by Boris Vian. I uploaded the song to my Christian’s Translations blog and began preparing it for publication. 

            I worked out the chords for the first verse of “Dessous mon pull” (Under My Sweater) by Serge Gainsbourg. All the other verses should have the same chords so tomorrow I’ll work them out for the chorus.

            I weighed 89.8 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since March 4. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the last of two sessions and it went out of tune most of the time. 

            I was a day behind in my journal again and worked on getting caught up. 

            I weighed 90.45 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back stopped at Freshco where I bought six bags of grapes but spent a lot of time picking through all of the grapes, removing the soft ones and putting the firmest ones from some bags into others. I also got a pack of raspberries, some bananas, a pack of pork souvlaki, a pack of honey garlic sausages, a big tin of Full City Dark coffee (I usually buy the smaller packs of the same brand because they seem to be fresher but the tin was $3 off with a Scene card so I thought I’d try it), shaving gel, Sensodyne toothpaste, and two-in-one shampoo-conditioner. I did a price match on the grapes with the real Canadian Superstore price of $3.95 a kilo but it took some time because my cashier Isabella got confused. They’re only supposed to price match on a limit of four items and I’d always thought it was just a count but it turns out that the computer does the counting of how many of the price match are weighed. So technically they can just pile up all the bags of grapes on the scale and the computer would read it as one item. She had to ask her supervisor if it was okay and she said it was fine to do that. Isabella said she’s scared of the people in charge. She weighed three bags and then another three. 

            I weighed 90.05 kilos at 18:50. March 7 was the last evening I pushed the scale that far. 

            In the morning I got a notice from YouTube that a video I’d uploaded on September 25, 2010 had been removed because it was hate speech. This was an audio of a poem by and recited by the late William Baker called “Requiem for a Queer” that was recorded during my first 20,000 Poets Under the League poetry slam in July of 1996. They said that I could appeal and I did but there was no comment window for me to explain why it wasn’t hate speech. When I got home there was an email telling me that the review confirmed that it was hate speech. It’s bizarre that a poem by a gay man that sheds a light on violent hatred towards queers would be considered hate speech. Here is the poem: 

Requiem for a Queer 

It’s a saxophone blues night 

The skies relieve themselves

into the steambath of the day 

Grimy streetlights encourage shadows 

and down the block Stiletto Heels 

click signature on the nightsweat of the streets 

There are no neighbours in this neighbourhood 

Just ethnic rivalries that stretch

across the alleyways like Monday clotheslines

Squalid stairwells filled with smells of drying piss

lead up into the emptiness of overcrowded rooms

Stiletto Hells now stops to pose and light a cigarette 

Windows gape encrusted with despair 

and radios ricochet invasively 

The alley walls serve well the spraypaint generation 

“Suck” this

“Fuck” that 

“Mary gives great head” 

“Fags should die”

Stiletto heels moves on with flair 

and from a darkened doorway 

the orange glow from deeply sucked in heady smoke

invites Stiletto Heels to hesitate 

A shadowed arm springs out and grabs his neck 

A startled cry escapes cut short by a single bullet to the head 

Stiletto slowly slips off toppled heels 

a rag-doll folding in the gutter 

as up above a radio signing off plays 

“God Save the Queen” 

 William Baker, May, 1996 

            I was still behind on my journal at suppertime. 

            I roasted two pork tenderloins and had half of one with a potato and gravy while watching season 4, episode 5 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warmup someone asks Carol what the most embarrassing question she’s been asked. She says, “Whether or not I’ve had a sex change”. 

            A guy asked how long she’s had a driver’s license. She says it’s been about five years because she never got one until she came out to LA. She wonders why he asked and he says, “I’ve seen you drive”. 

            She introduces a couple of people in the audience: Jim Bailey, who she said she saw in Vegas and who was absolutely brilliant. She said he’ll knock everybody out when he’s a guest on her show. She doesn’t mention that he’s a female impersonator. The other person is Jackie Joseph who she says hosts a show in LA and is nuts and a hoot. I remembers her from Little Shop of Horrors. She was also the wife of Ken Berry at that time. 

            The first skit features the Old Folks Burt and Molly played by Harvey and Carol. They are on vacation in Florida. Argue at first and then sing a song together, this time, “My Best Beau” but it doesn’t sound like the one by Jerry Herman from Mame. 

            Ken Berry sings and tap dances to “Mr. Bojangles”, by Jerry Jeff Walker but he literally whitewashed the song as he plays out the lyrics as if he was the famous black dancer Bill Bojangles Robinson, right down to dancing with a child made up to look like a young Shirley Temple who he famously danced with. The version Berry does leaves out the references to meeting Bojangles in jail and him dancing across the cell. They also wrote a couple of extra verses just for this performance. I didn’t realize until looking it up that the person Jerry Jeff met in jail was not Bill Robinson but a white guy who named himself after him. 

            The second skit features Carol as hyper efficient legal secretary Miss Farnham who serves faithfully and is probably in love with the lawyer Mr. Bradley, played by Harvey. He insists that she take a two week vacation because she hasn’t had one in eleven years. She interviews some temporary replacements but they are too good looking so she tells one she’s too short and the other she’s too tall. Then a woman named Myra Blitzer with thick glasses and wearing a lot of very conservative and modest clothing comes in (played by Nanette Fabray) and since she doesn’t look like competition she hires her right away. Then Myra takes off her hat, her glasses, her coat, and her long skirt to reveal a mini skirt underneath and she turns out to be dangerously hot. But Miss Farnham doesn’t notice before Mr. Bradley does and he’s very happy with the choice. Farnham tries to push Myra out the window but misses and falls. 

            Carol shares some artwork from the students of a local Grade 1 class who were asked, “Who is Carol Burnett?” Samples are: “Carol Burnett is a teenager with harder math papers”; Carol Burnett is a dentist who brushes your teeth”; “Carol Burnett is a skinny movie star”; “Carol Burnett is a Negro who plays Julia”; “Carol Burnett is a thin, happy nurse”; “Carol Burnett is a fat nurse and mother”; and “Carol Burnett is on TV and she is young and pretty”. 

            Carol sings a song about nice people still being around. 

            In the next skit Carol plays a flight attendant, Lyle Waggoner plays the hot pilot, Ken Berry plays a priest, Nanette Fabray plays a painted lady, Harvey Korman plays a brilliant brain surgeon turned drunk, and Vickie Lawrence and Don Crichton as the constantly necking honeymooners. Madame Nanette was a successful businesswoman at the age of 12. The priest is reading the Good Book, which is a biography of Danny Thomas. The plane is flying backwards and sometimes upside down in a storm. The flight attendant tells the captain to avoid turbulence because she’s pregnant. The pilot, the co-pilot, and the navigator all say, “Oh no!” at once. Nanette asks Carol that if anything happens to her look up the kid she sent though military school who’s now a general at the Pentagon. He never knew she was his mother. She gives Carol an envelope to give him containing $640,000 (which would be like more than $5 million now). Tell him she was a checkout girl at a supermarket. The co-pilot points out to the captain that #2 engine is on fire. He says, “Good. Maybe it’ll melt the ice on the wing”. They’re flying at sea level but the captain is able to get them up to 5 centimeters. Carol tells the priest she’s pregnant and he marries her to the flight crew. Suddenly all the engines are working and the doctor’s hands have stopped shaking. Carol asks the honeymooners if they are happy. Vickie stops kissing to say, “I certainly am! Aren’t you George?” He says, “George? My name is Stanley!” She suddenly exclaims, “I’m on the wrong plane!” and leaves. 

            In the final song and dance skit it’s the end of the US Civil War. Carol and Nanette are two southern belle sisters arguing over which of them the Colonel is coming home to. The Colonel asks Carol to marry him. Nanette is very upset but Carol says Nanette's been teched in the head ever since Grant took Richmond instead of her. They dance and have a tug of war with the Colonel. He decides he’s not going to marry either of them because he’s a coward. 

            Jim Bailey started performing as a young teen on The Children’s Hour. He studied opera at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music. His Broadway debut was in Fly Blackbird in 1962. In 1964 he started mimicking famous female celebrities both visually and with his voice. Judy Garland and Phyllis Diller loved his impersonations of them and became friends and mentors. After his performance on the Ed Sullivan Show he became internationally famous. He brought female impersonation into the mainstream. He performed for the queen in 1973 and for the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1992. He appeared six times on The Tonight Show. He appeared at Carnegie Hall 9 times and the London Palladium 17 times. One of his Carnegie performances was recorded and became a hit record. Performing as Judy Garland he and Liza Minelli recreated in Las Vegas the famous Judy and Liza concert.

April 24, 1996: Brian Haddon and I rehearsed

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I rehearsed with Brian Haddon for our upcoming gigs at Fat Albert’s and the Art Bar reading series.

Gail Parent

            On Wednesday morning my left ear was extremely plugged. 

            I ran through singing and playing verses 12 to 18 of “Ballad of a Dealer”, my translation of “Ballade de la chnoufe” by Boris Vian. There are only two more verses to run through and I’ll have that done tomorrow. I’ll also probably have time to upload the song to my Christian’s Translations blog to begin preparing it for publication. 

            I searched for the chords for “Dessous mon pull” (Under My Sweater) by Serge Gainsbourg but no one has posted them. I worked them out for the intro and the first two and a half lines. I tried again to flush out my left ear and dislodged a little bit of wax. It felt a touch clearer afterwards. I weighed 89.15 kilos before breakfast. I played my Martin acoustic for the first of two sessions and it went out of tune for all but a couple of songs.  

            Around the time when I do song practice every day there’s a large man in an electric wheelchair who rides up Dunn Avenue not on the sidewalk but on the road as if his chair was a car. He is totally unconcerned about the cars he is holding up behind him. Dunn is a one way street going north and this morning the man in the wheelchair had gone up to Queen to get his coffee and then he went south, driving towards the oncoming cars and toasting them with his takeout coffee cup. He played chicken with a car and just sat there until the vehicle finally swerved around him. 

            I spent several minutes trying to flush out my left ear with my rubber syringe but it didn’t feel like anything was coming out or that the water was going in very far. 

            Around midday I opened up the “Blue Bliss” paint and did some touch-ups. Everything is pretty much fixed now except a small area between the blue doorframe and pinkish purple wall where I curved the line a bit. It’s barely noticeable and so I won’t try to correct it with the wall paint unless I break it out to do anything major later on. So now technically the bathroom is painted but I still have to clean up where paint got onto the wall tiles, the floor tiles, the sink, and the bathtub. I also have to paint the bathroom wire rack blue and mount it on the wall; paint the lazy Susan pink; and paint the bathroom mirror frame blue and pink before mounting it. 

            I weighed 90.75 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the early afternoon since March. 

            I took a siesta at 14:30 and planned to get up at 16:00 but I slept an extra 15 minutes. I had an appointment with my dentist for 17:00 and rushed to get ready. I got there with twenty minutes to spare but they were ready for me right away so I guess someone before me canceled. Dr. Singh fixed the corner of my front filling and said if it comes off again he’ll remove the entire filling and start fresh. I brought my denture with me to see if he could adjust it so it fits because since I got the bone graft the gap is smaller. He tried to shave it down but it was still cutting into my gum so they gave me an appointment with the denturist for next week. 

            It was too late for a bike ride downtown but not for a ride to Ossington and Bloor so I went there and stopped at Freshco on the way home where I bought five bags of grapes and price matched them to the Food Basics price of $6.59 a kilo. 

            I weighed 90 kilos at 18:25. March 7 was the last evening when I was that hard on the scale. I was about a day behind on my journal and so I worked on getting caught up. 

            I made pizza on a slice of seven grain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, the last of my ham chopped, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore while watching season 3, episode 27 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warmup Carol demonstrates her exercise routine and has a middle aged man from the audience come up to do sit-ups with her. 

            In the first skit Carol and Harvey play their very poor characters Stella and Harry with their fifteen years old juvenile delinquent biker son Brewster played by Lyle and their 11 year old slutty daughter Dulcie played by Vickie. Harry always comes home from not looking for a job with a six pack. Stella says, “Mother warned me you were a good for nothing bum”. He says, “You and your mother!”. “She says, “Not my mother, you’re mother”. They have to fill out their tax return. He starts reading the form and concludes that if he was smart enough to understand it he’d have an income. He puts his occupation down as a freelance executive. Their income was 52 welfare cheques, unemployment insurance, and food stamps. Harry asks Brewster if he had any income last years and he says he stole some hubcaps, swiped a motorsickle, looted a couple of TV sets, and picked some pockets. Brewster says he’s going to his sex education class. Stella says for him to pay attention but he says he’s the teacher. Dulcie says she earned $2000 babysitting. Stella asked who she babysat for and she lists, “Tony, Rocko, Joey, Max, Eddy…” Stella interrupts and says “They don’t have any babies”. Dulcie says it’s easier that way. Dulcie’s leaving and Stella asks what time she’s coming home. She says, “9:00 in the morning”. Stella says, “Good, You know I don’t like you out when it’s dark”. With the kids gone they decide to delay doing their income tax, go up to the roof and make another tax deduction. 

            This is the season finale and so there are no special guests. 

            A dance number features Tony Rizzi on guitar and the Earnie Flatt Dancers. They are kind of dressed for flamenco dancing but what they do is pretty modern with some Spanish dance stylizations.

            In the second skit Fillmore and Pamela Cartwright are going to be featured in the magazine Home Beautiful. Lee Henderson the photographer arrives and comments that he has never seen a more immaculate interior design. The Cartwrights have contributed equally and Fillmore explains that their tastes blend so perfectly that there is not a jarring note in the entire room. Lee goes to get his equipment and then Fillmore thinks that maybe one item is out of place. It’s the ashtray that Pamela bought in Copenhagen. He puts it in a drawer out of sight but Pamela takes it back out. They begin to argue gently as they go back and forth until finally Fillmore simply tosses the ashtray out the window. She responds by throwing out his Thai vase. He smashes her Venetian stemware and she says that was dreadfully middle class of him. He tears down her drapes, then she takes a knife to his imported silk sofa. He smashed her coffee table, she breaks his Grecian urn, he destroys her jade figurines, she totals his Stradivarius violin, and this continues back and forth until the apartment is a disaster area. Then Lee returns and Fillmore and Pamela are ready to happily toast each other for the camera. 

            There is a skit in which there is a similar dance routine to ones of the great 1930s musicals, with the couple in a elegant crowded restaurant who begin dancing dramatically and no one thinks it’s odd as they leap over the furniture. Lyle and Vickie perform such a scene together. Then the same scene is done with an ordinary nerdy couple, Myrna and Walter played by Carol and Harvey. Then to Myrna’s embarrassment and everyone else’s annoyance Walter starts singing “Cheek to Cheek” by Irving Berlin. Then he grabs her and starts spinning her around to her horror, causing chaos in the restaurant until a cop arrives and arrests them. 

            Clive Kensington played by Harvey is a famous actor performing in a hit play that’s been running for two years. A man played by Lyle comes to Clive’s dressing room and says it’s an honour because “This is the first time in two years you’ve spoken to me”. Clive says “You can’t expect me to have the time to speak to all the little people. What do you do?” “I’m the director”. The director informs Clive that his leading lady is ill and being replaced by a “friend” of the producer. Sabrina Hackmeister (played by Carol with blonde hair, large fake breasts and a ditzy manner) come in to greet Clive. On stage they play lovers Franklin and Sylvia. Sylvia is wearing a very tight gold gown and when she walks she bumps and grinds across the floor like a stripper. She has trouble sitting down in the dress. Franklin confesses he owes money to the mob and they’re going to kill him. The hitman arrives and shoots him so he can have his dramatic death scene. He’s trying to impress a movie producer who’s in the audience. She’s holding him and accidentally pulls his toupee off. 

            The Charwoman skit is slightly different than usual. She is cleaning up on the Carol Burnett stage with several familiar sets, such as the “Carol and Sis” set, “The Old Folks” set, and the “As the Stomach Turns” set. She remembers the announcer saying that Marian received an obscene phone call and was so upset that she hung up within ten minutes. She goes through the autograph book that Carol’s guests sign at the end. She sings her theme song, “I’m so glad we had this time together” by Carol’s husband Joe Hamilton but there are extra verses. The end does not have the gathered cast waving goodbye and swaying together but just Carol singing the song and then leaving the empty theatre. 

            One of the writers for The Carol Burnett Show was Gail Parent who worked on 133 episodes. She started as part of a writing team with Kenny Solms. Carol Burnett was her big break. In 1972 her novel Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York became a best seller. It was made into a movie starring Jeannie Berlin in 1975 for which she and Solms wrote the screenplay. She and Solms wrote the Broadway musical Lorelei. She co-created The Tim Conway Show and Mary Hartman Mary Hartman. She wrote the screenplay for The Main Event and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. She was also a writer for The Smothers Brothers, Rhoda, and Tracey Takes On. She wrote 12 episodes of The Golden Girls. As a writer she was nominated for 14 Emmys and won two.

April 23, 1996: I hosted my writers open stage as always

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.

Barbara Feldon

            On Tuesday morning I ran through singing and playing verses 9 to 11 of “Ballad of a Dealer”, my translation of “Ballade de la chnoufe” by Boris Vian. 

            I finished memorizing “Dessous mon pull” (Under My Sweater) by Serge Gainsbourg. Tomorrow I’ll start working out the chords. 

            I weighed 88.85 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice and it stayed in tune about a third of the time. 

            I had to quit song practice two songs early because I needed to get ready to ride to get together with Brian Haddon at the Scotland Yard pub in the Esplanade. We were scheduled to meet at 13:00 and I was pretty much on time with Brian already there when I arrived. For some odd reason I got the idea that I was half an hour early and wondered why Brian was there. We shared a pitcher of Creemore. I had the cheeseburger with fries and he had the fish and chips. The food was excellent but there were big screens on either side of us blasting a football game. We’ll probably get together again at the end of May perhaps at The Artful Dodger. 

            I stopped at No Frills at John and Richmond where I bought three bags of grapes and a box of Earl Grey tea. 

            I took a siesta from 17:00 until about 18:45. 

            I weighed 88.9 kilos at 19:45. 

            I worked on getting caught up in my journal but was still behind at suppertime. 

            I had a potato with gravy and the five left over little thin-sliced eye of round steaks while watching season 3, episode 17 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            The first sketch was with The Old Folks Mollie and Burt played by Carol and Harvey. After tease-insulting each other for a while they start singing, “Cuddle Up a Little Closer” by Karl Hoschna and Otto Harbach from 1908. 

            Barbara Feldon does a song and dance with “If You’ve Got the Money I’ve Got the Time” by Lefty Frizell and Jim Beck from 1950. They do it with kind of a ragtime flavour rather than the original country and western style. But the instrumental break with all the dancing was to the tune of “Yakety Sax” by Spider Rich and Boots Randolph from 1963 (best recognized as Benny Hill’s theme music).

            Joan Rivers does a stand-up routine. She says she flew Trans Jersey Airlines in a rainstorm to get from New York to LA. Everybody in tourist class got a rabbits foot and a cross but each person in first class got their own priest. Even the plane looked afraid because it had it’s wings folded over its nose. When she boarded the plane a man said, “If the lord wanted man to fly he’d have given him wings”, and that was the pilot. She says the flight attendants were beautiful but dumb. She says, “Dumb doesn’t matter when you’re beautiful, which is why I’m educated”. “I’m a Philosophy major but what good does Philosophy do me now? I can go to the butcher and prove the meat doesn’t exist?” “I studied Calculus and learned to figure out the length of a room but you don’t need Calculus when you’re housewife. It’s always seven inches longer than your vacuum cleaner cord”. “Housework is futile. You make the bed, you do the dishes but six months later you have to start all over again”. “If guests come over I just put down a drop cloth and tell them I’m painting”. “When it gets really filthy I call up my husband’s mother and ask her to show me one more time how he likes it”. “If you have kids that can crawl they can dust. You tie the diapers to their legs and throw a cookie across the room”. 

            Carol and Harvey play Stella and Harry, a poor couple in a run down apartment celebrating their 20th anniversary. He comes home from not looking for a job but forgets what day it is. She asks him to guess what happened 20 years ago and he lists the Korean war, almost getting drafted, getting double pneumonia. She says they got married and he says, “I knew it was something bad”. They decide to celebrate but have to get rid of the kids for the night. Their oldest son is a biker played by Lyle. He leaves. Now they have to get rid of the 11 year old. Dulcey is played by Vicki and looks a lot older than 11. Stella asks if there are any friends she can stay with tonight. Dulcey says, “Sure there’s Charlie, Tommy, Joey, Rocko, Mike, Al, Stanley…” Stella asks if she needs any money but Dulcey says she’s got a lot left over from her alimony cheque. 

            The next skit is the Miss Globe pageant hosted by Burt Sparks. Carol plays Miss USA, Barbara plays Miss India, Vicki plays Miss Holland, and Joan plays Miss China. The other contestants are played by members of the Ernie Flatt Dancers. Miss Holland wins Miss Warmth but gets a four month scholarship to a welding school. She reminds Burt that last night when she was a good sport he promised her a trophy. Burt has some men take her away. She tells him they’re going to take him away because she’s not 18 yet. The three finalists are Miss India, Miss China, and Miss USA. Burt asks them each a question. Miss USA is asked for the best way to aid the underdeveloped parts of the world and she answers the best way is exercise. She demonstrates a breast developing exercise. Miss India is asked what was her first impression of New York City. She says in a not bad Indian accent that New York is very similar to her own native city. Burt asks what city that is and she answers in a US accent “Chicago”. Burt asks, “Don’t you mean Calcutta?” She says, “No, you found me in the show Oh Calcutta, don’t you remember?” (Oh Calcutta was an R rated hit musical that started off Broadway in 1969. It was successful in London and New York but there were arrests in some smaller US cities). Miss China is asked where she thinks she will find the man of her dreams. She answers with a racist joke, “In yellow pages”. Then there’s the talent competition starting with Miss China demonstrating the ancient oriental art of stand-up comedy. She says, “Greetings ladies and Caucasians”. She has a gong hanging under her dress that she hits after telling a joke. She tells one joke and then says, “Last time I buy joke from Mao Tse Tung”. “Confucious say, many men smoke but Fu Manchu.” “That’s all the Chinese jokes for now but I be back in one hour when you hungry for more”. Miss India does a snake dance. She is basket on her left shoulder with a fake but realistic looking left arm and hand while her real left arm manipulates a snake puppet. Miss USA sings “Don’t Fence Me In” by Cole Porter but with extremely bad timing and out of tune. The first of the finalists to be eliminated is Miss China, who threatens to call Burt’s wife. The winner is Miss USA and Miss India begins strangling her. 

            The final bit has Carol’s character the Charwoman cleaning up at a nursery school. She sings a song that’s probably called “Where Did My Childhood Go?” but I can’t find it in a search. 

            Barbara Feldon studied acting at HB Studio in New York. In 1957 she won the grand prize in the $64,000 Question on the topic of Shakespeare. She caught the attention of TV producers after being featured seductively lounging on an animal skin type rug in a TV commercial for Top Brass hair pomade and calling the men who use it “Tigers”. She was cast as Agent 99 on Get Smart in 1965 and played the role for the show’s entire run until 1970. She received two Emmy nominations for her role. Her character’s real name was never given even after 99 married Maxwell Smart he still called her 99. She performed 5 times on The Dean Martin Show. She co-starred in Fitzwilly, and Smile. She wrote two books: Living Alone and Loving it and Getting Smarter: a Memoir.