Neil Simon

            On Monday after midnight I put new carpet tape all around the edges of my futon and then put the fitted sheet on and did the same around that. I went to bed at around 1:40 and had trouble getting to sleep but didn’t feel any bedbugs on me. I got up at 5:00 and after yoga I checked for bedbugs but only saw one stuck to the tape and none wandering free. 

            I worked out some chords for all but the last line of the first verse of “Venez donc voir” (“Come Then See”) by Boris Vian. I might have the song finished tomorrow. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through singing and playing it in French. On Tuesday I’ll run through singing and playing my translation before uploading it to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare it for publication. 

            I weighed 91.75 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since September 4. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the last of two sessions and it continues to go out of tune all the time. 

            I weighed 92.75 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 92 kilos at 18:10. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:52. 

            I tried to digitize a cassette recording of a Christian and the Lions concert at The El Mocambo but there was no left track. I turned up the left gain on my audio interface to see if it could pick up a left track but I just got a hiss. So I’ll have to re-record it on Tuesday with the left gain off. I was worried that my stereo had gone back to its old tricks and lost the left channel again but other tapes have two tracks and so it seems to have just been recorded with one track. 

            I had a small potato with gravy, my last chicken leg, and some Montreal smoked meat while watching a sketch from season 4, episode 23 and all the comedy bits from season 3, episode 36 of The Garry Moore Show. 

            The season 4 sketch is a mock TV show called Supergirl starring Carol Burnett. Supergirl was already a character in DC comics but this doesn’t seem to be based on her. She’s more of a gender reversed parody of Superman. Her secret identity is Clara Kleen who works as a reporter for The Daily Tabloid. She has a crush on Scoop Scanlan, ace reporter and he knows it but she’s nothing to him. Scoop gets a tip that enemy agents are planning on kidnapping the Queen of Morovia in three minutes and blame it on the US State Department. Since Morovia is far away they can’t be stopped in time. Scoop leaves to talk to the city editor and Clara changes to Supergirl (and Carol does her Tarzan yell on TV for the first time). She jumps out the window and fifteen seconds later returns to type up a report at super speed, then changes back to Clara. Scoop comes in and reads the report that Supergirl has saved the Queen of Morovia. Then Scoop gets a call from Killer Godowsky who tells him he’s sending two of his gorillas to work him over. Scoop is frightened and hides under his desk. Clara goes to change to Supergirl then the thugs arrive. They first open the door where Clara has gone and find her half changed into Supergirl. She gives one of them a hard slap and says, “Do you mind?” then closes the door again. The crooks find Scoop but Supergirl emerges and beats them up. Scoop says he’ll do anything to repay her. So she asks him to take Clara out to dinner and smooch with her but he refuses. So she punches him through a wall, goes to the window, does her Tarzan yell and flies out over the city. 

            At the beginning of the season 3 episode, Marian Lorne comes out to show Garry her passport photo because this is the last show of the season and she’s planning on travelling to Europe. Garry observes that her passport photo is a picture of Marilyn Monroe. She says she thought it would be more fun that way. 

            Garry introduces the country’s authority on suburbia, Alan King. Alan says he read a book that reports of a small town in New Jersey that is notorious for its carryings-on, drinking and its wild parties. Alan has lived in the suburbs for 14 years and it’s the dullest place you ever saw. He wrote the author a letter to ask for the name of the town so he could move in for a couple of weeks. Alan says every doctor is a specialist now and a general practitioner is just a medical director who sends you out to all the specialists. In the future if you wanna get your nose fixed you’ll need one specialist for the right nostril and another for your left. He says his mother is the witch doctor of Odessa and her cure for everything is chicken soup even if you fall from a building. Alan says just today a guy was lying face down on the street and people gathered around to fix him, turning him this way and that. They asked him if he was better and he told them he was just there to run an electrical line. He says women want to lead two lives: theirs and their husbands’. At home he’s starring in a new series, “Father Knows Nothing”. He says his brother in law goes to look at a car and starts kicking the tires. These cars are tested by the world’s greatest automotive engineers but he’s kicking the tires. 

            There’s a skit done by Carol and Durward that they repeated on her show a few years later when Durward and Garry guest starred. Durward heads the Safety Committee office and Carol is his secretary. He dictates a letter to Carol on his plan to eliminate accidents and proceeds to injure every part of Carol’s body with absent minded movements such as putting out his cigarette on one of her hands, hanging up the phone on her other hand, stepping on her foot, and so on. Eventually he accidentally knocks her out the window. Garry congratulates them on a brilliant performance and Durward says the most praise should go to Carol and as he sweeps his hand out he hits her in the face.

            In another sketch Durward is an executive talking with three attractive women about them modelling his new line of nighties and pajamas. He has them sit down and then Carol comes in looking very nerdy in glasses to answer an ad for a bookkeeper. Durward tells her to sit down until he finishes with the other girls. Then each girl takes turns taking off their coats and modelling negligees. Of course Carol is shocked because she thinks these girls are also there for the bookkeeping job. When Carol is finally alone with him she just wants to get away because she thinks he wants her to take her clothes off. He closes the door and tells her she would need to work a lot of overtime at night. She asks if she can call her mother and when he shows her the phone she calls the police. 

            Garry says this has been his most fun year in show business so instead of just letting the credits roll he goes through all of the names personally. Executive producer Bob Banner; Producer Joe Hamilton; Director Dave Geisel (in his first year); head writer Vincent Bogert; Arnie Rosen, Coleman Jacoby, Norman Barasch, Carroll Moore, Sidney Reznick, and Doc (Neil) Simon; musical numbers staged by Ernie Flatt; Musical Director Irwin Kostal; Associate Producer Robert Wright; Settings designer Charles (Nutsy) Lisanby (who runs them over budget every week); Special Musical material by Ken Welch; Choral Director George Becker; That Wonderful Year was created by Arnold Peyser; Associate Director Mack Bing; Technical Director Carl Schutzman; Lighting Director Hal Anderson; Costumes by Robert Mackintosh; Set Direction Bill Harp; Graphic Artist Elinor Bunin; Hairstylist Ernie Adler. 

            Neil Simon used to get thrown out of cinemas for laughing too loud. He spent three days a week at the library reading homourists such as Mark Twain, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, and S. J. Perelman. He started writing professionally as a sports editor in the mid 1940s while still in the Army Air Force Reserve. He was making $50 a week when he started writing for radio and television. His first radio job was for The Robert Q. Lewis Show. This led to Your Show of Shows on television. When he wrote for The Garry Moore Show, Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, Caesar’s Hour, The Phil Silvers Show, Red Buttons, and Jackie Gleason he was making $1,600 a week. He says Your Show of Shows had the most talented group of writers that at the time had ever been assembled together. He said it was the most enjoyable time he’d ever had writing with other people. He wrote about it in Laughter on the 23rd Floor. He made his Broadway debut as a writer with Catch a Star in 1956 and his first hit was Come Blow Your Horn in 1961. This was followed by Barefoot in the Park, which later became a hit movie. In 1966 he had four shows on Broadway at the same time: Barefoot in the Park, Sweet Charity, The Odd Couple (for which he won a Tony), and Star Spangled Girl. He wrote more than thirty plays and almost all of them were made into films, including The Odd Couple, Sweet Charity, The Sunshine Boys, I Ought to Be in Pictures, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Jake’s Women, The Goodbye Girl, California Suite, The Out of Towners, Plaza Suite, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, The Heartbreak Kid, The Prisoner of Second Avenue, The Cheap Detective, Seems Like Old Times, Only When I Laugh, Max Dugan Returns, The Slugger’s Wife, The Marrying Man, The Odd Couple II, and Murder By Death. He also wrote a gender reversed version of The Odd Couple. He wrote the film Chapter Two in 1979. He won a Tony Award for Biloxi Blues in 1985 and for Lost in Yonkers in 1991 (which also won a Pulitzer Prize). He’s been nominated for more Tony Awards and Oscars than any other writer. He became so successful that he could afford to produce his own plays. He was the most financially successful Broadway writer of all rime. In 1983 he became the first living playwright to have a Broadway theatre named after him. He says Herbert Ross has been the best director for his films, The others don’t understand his material as well. He said, “When it’s 38 in New York it’s 22 in Los Angeles; when it’s minus 5 in New York it’s 22 in Los Angeles, but there are 6 million interesting people in New York and 22 in Los Angeles.” He said playwriting is the perfect occupation. To sit in a room for ten hours a day with characters you created is heaven. When writing he thinks of sad situations and tries to write about them in a funny way. His style has been called “painful comedy”.

September 15, 1996: My daughter's grandparents dropped her off on their way to church

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday my daughter’s grandparents dropped her off at my place on their way to German church. We spent the day playing on the roof before Nancy picked her up in the evening.

Frank Fontaine

            On Sunday after midnight I lint rolled the top of my bed and a couple of bedbugs turned up. I was out of carpet tape and so I couldn’t put any down on the edge of my mattress. I went to bed at around 1:30 and slept fitfully as I could feel bedbugs on me all night. After yoga I killed quite a few on the wall and the floor at the head of my bed.

            I worked out some chords for more than half of the first verse of “Venez donc voir” (“Come Then See”) by Boris Vian. The song is not sung but I hear notes in the tonality of the speaker. 

            I worked out the chords for the instrumental part of “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) by Serge Gainsbourg. There are just one and a half verses left and I already know the chords so I’ll be done tomorrow. 

            I weighed 91.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the first of two sessions and it went out of tune all the time as usual. 

            Around midday I walked over to Home Hardware to buy two rolls of carpet tape. The really nice cashier who I hardly ever see there anymore and who looks like Liv Ullman greeted me brightly. I removed all the old carpet tape from my mattress and it took several minutes. I only had time before lunch to put some fresh tape on the southwest corner. 

            I weighed 92.95 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the early afternoon in a week. I had Black Forest ham slices on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I didn’t have a lot of energy today and rode slowly. But maybe it just felt that way since I didn’t get home any later than usual. 

            I weighed 92.05 at 17:50. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:08. 

            I digitized a cassette recording of a Christian and the Lions concert at Lee’s Palace on October 6, 1995. It surprises me that a venue like Lee’s Palace couldn’t record it in stereo while a little open stage like Fat Albert’s could. The band consisted of Tom Smarda on Stratocaster, Steve Lowe on acoustic guitar, Arjan on bass, and Barzin Husseini on drums. We did “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy” for which I fumbled some of my own words, Megaphor”, “Hungry Hippunk Goes to Work”, “Me and Gravity”, “The Next State of Grace”, “Tropic of Ulcer”, “Thin Red Line” and “Angeline”. On “The Next State of Grace” I tried to do a low harmonization with Tom’s voice but it didn’t work out very well. 

            I made pizza on a slice of seven grain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, wedge fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching season 4, episode 3 of The Garry Moore Show. This show was chopped in half, only keeping the comedy bits. 

            Garry opens the show in top hat, tuxedo and tails and explains that he’s been studying sex appeal from Tony Martin and tonight is his final exam. He apparently does a lip synch routine of Tony Martin’s voice but that’s not on the video I have. 

            Garry says when he first came to New York he had a little trouble understanding the natives. He says there’s a small volume called Almanac for New Yorkers, which is sort of a dictionary of New Yorkese. For instance, when inquiring whether someone has had their dinner a New Yorker says, “Jeet?” And if you urge a New Yorker to complain to the government about their high taxes they will say, “Wahgoozidoo?” At the Empire State building the elevator operator will say, “Oppkargoynop” or “”Donkargoyndon” and when you enter the elevator they will say, “Ollowayback-Fayzagate”. You might overhear a man saying goodnight to his date and asking for a kiss, so this is what you’ll hear: “Sowaddyasaybabe?” If she slams the door in his face he’ll say, “Assawayigoze”. And on your way in here tonight you would have heard the usher say, “Doneblokadoorplennyaseatsnabalkny”. And when asked what you watch on Tuesday nights you will say, “Degarrmooshow”. 

            Garry says the hallmark of a true clown is that they don’t just say funny things but have an intrinsically funny quality of their own and that describes his next guest, Frank Fontaine. I remember seeing him on Ed Sullivan and other shows when I was a kid and his humour is certainly child accessible. 

            Frank tells the story of two guys on a motorcycle and one of them is cold from the onrushing wind and so the other guy tells him to put his coat on backwards. Everything is fine then but they have an accident. When the ambulance arrives a bystander says one guy’s all right but we had a problem when we tried to turn the other guy’s head the right way around. 

            Columbus Day is approaching and so Frank has his goofy voiced and faced character John L. C. Sivony tell the story of Christopher Columbus. “Once upon a time there was a country shaped like a boot (goofy giggling). One afternoon this guy was just hangin around the house doin nothin cause he didn’t feel like doin nothin. His mother said “Christopher Columbus! What are you doin?” “Nothin” (goofy giggling). And he wasn’t. His mother said, “Why don’t ya go out and get yourself a job?” He said, “I think I’ll discover America” cause he’d heard about a buildin boom in Philadelphia (goofy giggles). He was up every night thinkin that he needed to discover America and that’s how they got The Nights of Columbus (goofy giggles). He’d heard about Queen Isabella who was kind and fat (she wasn’t obese). When Columbus knocked on the palace gate he was told Isabella was busy. Who do ya think was with her? Winston Churchill. She gave Columbus three ships and after 19 months (It only took 2 months and 9 days) they spotted land and Indians hoppin all over the place. Columbus stuck a flag in the ground and said, “I name this land America. It’ll be the greatest country in the world! (That’s fucked up, since Columbus never landed on the continental United States on any of his voyages but on his second voyage he did land on what became the US territory of Puerto Rico).” 

            They do a sketch that got repeated years later on The Carol Burnett Show when Garry Moore and Durward Kirby guest starred. Garry plays a TV producer recording tributes to a certain internationally renowned person. Carol plays the Princess of Morovia and she’s been asked to be recorded drinking a toast to that person. But in the first shot her glass is in front of her face. The next toast goes fine but she hiccups. After that she keeps doing retakes and gets increasingly more drunk so that more things go wrong to require more retakes until she finally collapses backwards with her feet up in the air, to Garry’s apparently real surprise. 

            Garry does a salute to 1921. It was the year that Einstein came up with E = MC2 . Garry interviews a scientist further developing Einstein’s theory of relativity. Dr. Cornhouse is played by Marion Lorne. He tells her that the atom has been split and she thinks that’s too bad. He asks her to explain the theory of Relativity. She says everything is relative. If I’m tall it’s because you’re short and if I’m short it’s because you’re tall. But it doesn’t matter unless you’re dancing. 

            The cast and guests sing Garry’s goodbye song. 

            Frank Fontaine’s grandfather and his mother were circus performers. His grandfather was a strongman and his mother was a trapeze artist. His mother was also a dancer who performed on vaudeville with his father who was a French Canadian singer popular in Canada. Frank quit school and married his high school sweetheart two days before his 17th birthday and immediately started performing as a singer, dancer and comedian in Boston supper clubs. He made his film debut in Nancy Goes to Rio in 1950. He co-starred in Hit Parade of 1951. He became a frequent guest on Jack Benny’s radio show starting in 1950 and The Bob Hope Show. He made his TV debut on the first three episodes of Ed Sullivan’s Toast of the Town in 1948. He had his own radio show in 1952, which featured four other members of his family. Starting in 1962 he became a regular on The Jackie Gleason Show and after a comedy routine he would often sing. He released an album called Songs I Sing on The Jackie Gleason Show that made it to #1 in 1962. In addition to Frank Fontaine’s character of John L. C. Sivony, he had another named Crazy Guggenheim who was the inspiration for The Simpsons’ character of Barney Gumble. Between 1939 and 1959 Frank had 11 children. Tom Lehrer joked that Jerry Lewis and Frank Fontaine are in charge of National Make Fun of the Handicapped Week. He changed the name of his character Crazy Guggenheim to Happy Guggenheim after he started performing in children’s hospitals because children were uncomfortable with addressing him as “Crazy”.

September 14, 1996: I posed for Artists 25

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday I posed at Artists 25 from 10:00 to 16:00 for the first of two sessions. I think they had moved to the Tower Building at 110 Spadina by this time, so they were right around the corner from where I was living.

Jackie Mason

            On Saturday after midnight I lint rolled the top of my bed and a couple of bedbugs turned up. I added some more carpet tape to the southeast corner of my mattress. I don’t know why that part tends to get less sticky sooner. I went to bed a little after 1:30 and woke up at around 3:15 to pee. After that I felt some bedbugs but went back to sleep until 4:45 having to pee really bad but forced myself to stay in bed until 5:00. After yoga I checked and saw quite a few bedbugs stuck to the tape but a few more crawling freely on the wall. 

            I finished memorizing “Venez donc voir” (“Come Then See”) by Boris Vian and worked out the chords for the instrumental intro. The song is not sung but I started working out chords for the speech according to the tonality so it can be sung. 

            I worked out the chords for the first three verses of “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) by Serge Gainsbourg. All that’s left is the instrumental and then one and a half verses so I should have it done tomorrow. 

            I weighed 91.45 kilos before breakfast.

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

            Around midday I rode to No Frills where all the grapes were too soft. I bought two Canadian watermelons, three packs of Canadian and Peruvian blueberries, some bananas, a loaf of cinnamon-raisin bread, a loaf of seven grain sandwich bread, mouthwash, dental floss, tomato pesto, spoon sized shredded wheat, a jug of lemonade, a small container of 4% skyr, and a bag of wedge fries. 

            I weighed 92.2 kilos at 15:00, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since September 1. I had smoked turkey and maple mustard on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            I took a siesta at 15:30 and woke up at 16:55. After brushing my teeth it was too late for a bike ride. I went over to the liquor store and bought a six-pack of Creemore. 

            I weighed 92.25 kilos at 17:25. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:38. 

            I digitized a cassette recording of a Christian and the Lions rehearsal in a rented space with Tom Smarda on Stratocaster and backup vocals, Steve Lowe on acoustic guitar, me on vocals, and either Jim Bravo, Barzin, or Jeremy Finkelstein on drums. We did my songs "Megaphor", "Calendar Girl", "Hungry Hippunk Goes to Work", and "Me and Gravity". 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, potato wedge fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching season 3, episode 32 of The Garry Moore Show. But these Moore shows I’ve been watching are only 25 minutes long because the musical numbers have been edited out. 

            During the opening segment Durward Kirby comes out to tell Garry that his Aunt Mary has formed a Garry Moore Fan Club and asks if he’ll let them come out on stage to meet him. Mary comes out with three other elderly and eccentric individuals. Mary is president of the fan club and she introduces him to Vice President Patterson. Garry reaches out to shake his hand but he backs away. Mary introduces Miss Crane the secretary and Mr. Simmons the treasurer. Garry asks Mary how many members there are in the club and she says “Four”. Mr. Patterson scowls and asks Mary, “When do we go to Radio City?” Mary tells Garry that Mr. Simmons loves Garry’s singing voice but he’s nearly deaf and doesn’t know if Garry is singing right now or not. Mary tells Garry they passed a hat to get him a gift but nobody put anything in and so she thought he would at least like to have the hat. She hands him a bowler that’s too small. 

            Garry says his next guest reminds him of the social director for The Twilight Zone. Jackie Mason comes out to do his stand-up routine. Jackie says this is his third time on the show. He tells us there’s one thing in life more important than money, and that’s love. “I’m very fortunate because I love money. There’s only one thing you can get without money and that’s sick. My grandfather told me to never guard my money but guard his health. “So one day I was guarding my health and someone stole my money and it was my grandfather. He was a genius at the stock market. He bought 7-Up when it was only 6 and a Quarter. He told me to invest in copper and I lost. He told me to invest in zinc and I lost. But when he said “steal” I made a fortune. I read a book by a Columbia professor who said that one out of every three women is suffering from a lack of love. Now whenever I see three girls together I wonder which one it is. A psychiatrist told me I need to find the real me to be happy. But what if I look for the real me and find he’s even worse than me? Ten years ago if you told me to look for the real me I would have been happy to look because I couldn’t make a living. But now I’m doing good so let him look for me. The psychiatrist charged me $25 but if this isn’t the real me why should I pay him? Let him look for the real me to get the $25. For all I know the real me might be going to a different psychiatrist or maybe he’s a psychiatrist himself. Wouldn’t it be funny if my psychiatrist was the real me and he owes me $25? I told him I’ll charge him $10 and we’ll call it even. But I kept on studying and I found out that I’m Carol Burnett.” He tells the audience, “If I didn’t make you happy tonight it’s none of my business because it’s not me. Let Carol worry about it. Remember that money is not important because you can’t take it with you. Friends are more important and so that’s why when I go I’m taking my friends.” 

            Mel Tormé introduces a skit that is almost exactly the same as one that was later done on The Carol Burnett Show I assume it was written by the same writers. The main difference is that in this one Carol’s husband is played by Durward Kirby while in the later one he is played by Harvey Korman. The sketch involves an upper class couple on 5th Avenue who are about to have their apartment photographed for Home Beautiful Magazine. They say their home is exquisite because their tastes blend harmoniously but then Durward says the only thing disharmonious is the ashtray that Carol bought in Copenhagen and so he throws it out the window. What follows is them smashing each other’s things until the home is a wreck. Garry later says he doesn’t want to know about this week’s budget because they had to replace everything they smashed during rehearsal just so they could smash it all again for the show. 

            Garry says 1938’s biggest picture was Algiers. It told the story of Pepe La Mocco, a notorious jewel thief and his ill-fated love affair. It all took place in the Casbah, a walled city of mystery and intrigue. The movie introduced one of the most beautiful women in movie history, Hedy Lamarr. Carol plays Hedy playing Gaby the most beautiful woman in Europe. Someone tells her it’s not safe for her to be alone in the Casbah. She says she won’t leave until she meets Pepsi La Cola. Jackie Mason plays Pepsi and approaches her from behind. She turns, sees him, says, “Yeeuck!” and walks away. 

            Garry assembles the cast and the guests to sing the goodbye song while holding hands. Carol Haney was on this show but not in the video that I have. She must have done a dance routine.

            Jackie Mason came from a long line of rabbis. He earned a BA at City College in New York with a double major in English and Sociology. He was a cantor until the age of 25 when he was ordained as a rabbi like his three brothers. His sermons were so funny that gentiles used to come to hear them. He left after three years because somebody in the family had to make a living. He worked as a busboy in the Catskills until he broke all the dishes. They made him a lifeguard even though he couldn’t swim. They told him not to tell the guests. He made his national TV debut on The Steve Allen Show in 1962. The same year he released his first record, I’m the Greatest Comedian in the World Only Nobody Knows It Yet, which was a best seller. When he appeared on Ed Sullivan in 1964, Ed thought Jackie gave him the finger. He says he was gesturing with his index finger but he was banned from the Sullivan Show because of the misunderstanding. He sued Sullivan and later did appear on his show a few times but Mason gained a bad reputation and lost a lot of TV work. He made his Broadway debut in A Teaspoon Every Four Hours in 1969. He won a Tony, an Emmy, and Grammy for his first one man show, The World According to Me, which ran for two years. He became the first guest on The Simpsons to win an Emmy for his performance playing the father of Krusty the Clown, which he would return to do several times. He starred in The Stoolie, Caddyshack II, and One Angry Man. He performed for Queen Elizabeth in 1991. He endorsed Donald Trump in the 2016 election. He doesn’t think Israel should be required to follow the world’s understanding of democracy. One of his jokes about aging is, “It’s no longer a question of staying healthy but of finding a sickness you like.”

September 13, 1996: Brian and I performed on the Spit Fridays open stage

            Thirty years ago today

            On Friday I rehearsed with Brian Haddon and in the evening we went to perform on the Spit Fridays open stage in the back room of the Cameron.

Eileen Farrell

            On Friday after midnight I lint rolled the top of my bed and no bedbugs turned up. I put some more carpet tape around the southeast corner of my mattress. I went to bed at around 1:40 and didn’t sleep very well although I didn’t feel any bedbugs. After yoga I checked and saw there were quite a few bedbugs caught on the tape and none wandering free. 

            I memorized the first verse of “Venez donc voir” (“Come Then See”) by Boris Vian. There’s only one more shorter verse to learn. 

            I worked out the chords for all but the final line of the first verse of “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) by Serge Gainsbourg. The last line of every verse is shorter than the others so it shouldn’t take long to work out. I think all the verses have the same chords and there’s no chorus. 

            I weighed 91.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it went out of tune most of the time. 

            I lint rolled the top of my bed and no bedbugs turned up. I put some two-sided carpet tape on the back and side of my desk. 

            I weighed 92.45 kilos before lunch, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since September 1. 

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

            I weighed 92.45 kilos at 17:50. I was caught up in my journal at 20:14. 

            I had a potato with gravy while watching season 4, episode 28 of The Garry Moore Show. 

            It begins with Garry reading next week’s newspaper. 

            Caroline Kennedy had a birthday party and her father gave her an erector set: US Steel. 

            There’s a bill before congress to simplify the 1962 income tax form. You send the government all your money and it gives you bus fare to work. 

            Elizabeth Taylor’s new movie will be Bathsheba. Her leading man has not been chosen and the studio is asking for volunteers. 

            NASA’s first female astronaut is undergoing flight tests. Scientists are not sure how she is reacting because every time they call the space capsule the line is busy. When the first Moon shot takes place Zsa Zsa Gabor will be a passenger because if there’s a man on the Moon she’ll find him. 

            Bob Williams performs with his trained dog Louie. The joke is that Louie the sad eyed spaniel does not perform but rather just sits there. I think it’s possible that he really would have to be trained to be that unresponsive. Williams does a lot of fast talking as he gives Louis his commands. He tells him to jump up onto a table and says, “He’s thinking about it!” He lifts Louie halfway onto the table and his legs are dangling with no effort to try to climb up. Bob puts him all the way on the table and says, “He loves to play!” Gary brings out his own dog Sam for Bob to train and he’s equally effective except that Garry’s dog actually wags his tail. 

            Garry plays newscaster Walter Crankcase and he takes us back to the most poignant moment in the history of romance. The year is 1657. The place, a modest cottage in one of the smaller European kingdoms. The event, the day the Prince found his Cinderella. Last night with the help of her fairy godmother, Cinderella was able to attend the Grand Ball at the palace. The prince is going to arrive soon as he is checking all the homes for the mysterious young woman he danced with at the ball. Walter interviews the stepmother and asks if she’d be happy if the Prince married one of her daughters. She says she’d be hilarious if he married both of them. 

            Cinderella arrives (played by Carol Burnett), hungover from the ball. Walter asks Cinderella if she lost a shoe last night. She says, “I wouldn’t be surprised!” He asks if she’d marry the Prince. She says, “Mister, to get out of this dump I’d marry a moose!” 

            The Prince’s footmen arrive and blow their trumpets to announce the Prince’s arrival and that aggravates Cinderella’s hangover to an extreme degree as she holds her head and doubles over the table. The Prince arrives played by Derward Kirby wearing a bobbed wig and tights. From the start he is straining to keep from laughing. He announces that he thinks his tights just ripped and the stepmother, her daughters, and Cinderella are cracking up. The Prince lowers his jacket from his shoulders to hide his behind. 

            The Prince looks at the daughters’ and the mother’s feet and can tell they won’t fit the shoe. Then he turns to Cinderella who is still laughing. She sits down as he kneels and she puts her leg over his knee to reveal her foot. He asks, “What size is this dainty little foot?” She giggles and answers, “Twelve”. He struggles to put the shoe on and she struggles to get her foot in until finally it fits. He asks her to marry him and she says, “Coax me!” He asks again twice and she repeats “coax me” twice until he’s about to get up to leave and she shouts, “Yes!” They are about to leave together and she says she wants to say goodbye to her family, then she sticks out her tongue at them and blows a raspberry. 

            Next is the segment called That Wonderful Year. Garry steps out under a streetlamp and says, “That wonderful year when jazz became the national rage; Edna Ferber, Ring Lardner, Sherwood Anderson, and Sinclair Lewis were the new young writers; 16 year old violin prodigy Yasha Heifitz made his debut at Carnegie Hall; the world’s most famous vamp was Theodosia Goodman, better known as Theda Barra; women mechanics replaced the doughboys on the homefront; ostrich feathers, narrow skirts, and parasols were standard equipment for vamping; the last of the old fashioned Revivalists, Billy Sunday drew crowds from coast to coast; at the movies everyone’s favourite two-gun man of the west was William S. Hart; and for laughs there was nothing like cops and slapstick; We see film footage of a traffic cop gradually being stripped to his underwear as his uniform is snagged by passing vehicles. It was the wonderful year of 1917. 

            Garry approaches an old man (played by Derward) who is whittling a small piece of wood on a bench and addresses him as Casper Penny. Garry asks if he’s been whittling long. Casper says, “When I started, this was a piano.” Garry informs Casper that he and Garry’s father Thomas Garrison Moore went to the same school. Casper says he remembers Tom well. Casper says, “He flunked Arithmetic, spelling, geography and… You’re his son?” “That’s right!” “Tom never could do anything right.” 

            Garry announces that two weeks ago their orchestra leader Irv Kostal earned an Oscar for his scoring on West Side Story. 

            Garry brings out Eileen Farrell (who played the stepmother), Bob Williams, Carol Burnett, and Derward Kirby. They sing Garry’s goodbye song, which is lyrically similar in theme to Carol’s later theme song: “We just said hello and right away we have to say so long for a while. Before we go we’d like to say you had a little laugh or a smile. We hope to see you soon (at this point Carol pulls her ear). Thanks for comin by. But just for now we’ll say goodbye.” Garry says, “Until next week, be very kind to each other and goodbye out there!” Garry’s dog is with them and barking for a treat which Garry throws for him. 

            Eileen Farrell began her career in 1940 as a member of the CBS Chorus on CBS radio. From 1941 to 1946 she had her own program called Eileen Farrell Sings. In 1947 she launched her career as a concert soprano and in 1956 began performing in operas starting with Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. In 1952 Toscanini hired her to sing on his recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. In the movie Interrupted Melody she dubbed the singing of Eleanor Parker who was playing Marjorie Lawrence. In 1960 she released the first successful crossover album: I’ve Got a Right to Sing the Blues, which reached #15 in the charts. She starred at the Metropolitan opera from 1960 to 1966 starting with Gluck’s Alceste. In 1979 she did a duet with Frank Sinatra of the song “For the Good Times”. She was a voice professor at Indiana University School of Music. Her 1999 autobiography was called Can’t Help Singing.