Brian Haddon and I rehearsed for our upcoming gigs at Fat Albert’s and the Art Bar reading series. That night we went to Fat Albert’s and performed on the open stage.
Saturday, 21 March 2026
Friday, 20 March 2026
Lesley Ann Warren
I weighed 87.9 kilos before breakfast.
During song practice I played my Kramer electric and it only went out of tune slightly once in the middle of the session.
I was behind on my journal and before lunch I worked on getting caught up, but didn’t make it.
I took a siesta and slept almost half an hour longer than usual so by the time I got ready for my bike ride it was too late to go downtown. I rode instead to Ossington and Bloor and on the way home stopped at Freshco where I bought five bags of green grapes, a bunch of bananas, several avocadoes, some vine tomatoes, two packs of grape tomatoes, a pack of lettuce from Quebec, a pack of mushrooms, a bottle of Garden Cocktail, and a jug of orange juice. I did a price match on the grapes with the Walmart price of $6.55 and without my asking the cashier Reema gave me a lower price match on the avocadoes.
I weighed 88.1 kilos at 18:55.
I worked on getting caught up on my journal and it was half an hour after my normal supper time before I was.
I had a tomato, cucumber, and not quite ripe avocado salad with lime juice while watching season 1, episode 11 of The Carol Burnett Show.
During the audience warmup an audience member asks Carol who designs her clothes. She says Bob Mackie. She shows it off and then asks if they want to see the rest of her. Her cameraman Pat says, “No thanks I just had dinner”. She brings out her guest Don Adams. He says he used to be so self conscious that when he went to a football game and the players went in a huddle he thought they were talking about him. He talks about how glad he is that his catchphrase “Would you believe?” became part of the culture. He relates his experience playing golf in the Bob Hope Classic and actually playing against Arnold Palmer one day and Jack Nicklaus another. He was very nervous competing with the famous pros.
In the first skit a woman is obsessed with watching science fiction movies on TV. Her husband doesn’t like them and goes to bed. In a minute a man in a shiny green suit with antennae steps in from her balcony. He says he’s Zorel from Venus and needs to rest before he repairs his spaceship. Her husband shouts from the bedroom. Zorel asks, “Is that another Earthling?” Carol says, “No that’s a ding-a-ling”. Her husband asks, “Are you talkin to someone?” Carol tells Zorel he’d better hide but Zorel says that Venusians are invisible to male humans. Harvey comes out but only acknowledges Carol then goes back to bed. He tells her that men worship women on Venus but they aren’t as beautiful as she is. He would like her to come to Venus with him and she wants to. He gives her a levitation pill so she can fly with him to his spaceship. She steps off the railing and falls to her death. Her husband comes out and says to Zorel “I don’t know how you did it Charlie but I still think $50 is a little too high”, as he pays him.
The second guest Lesie Ann Warren does a song and dance number with a performance of “The Best Is Yet to Come” by Cy Coleman and Caroline Leigh. She’s a very good dancer.
The next skit shows what happens when the technical staff of a TV talk show goes on strike and the studio executives try to fill their jobs. The show is the Donny Bishop Show featuring Don Adams as a parody of Johnny Carson and Regis McMann played by Harvey Korman as a parody of Ed McMann. Regis laughs hysterically for too long at everything Donny says and Donny is clearly annoyed. Donny is sitting behind the desk in his underwear because the wardrobe department is also on strike. His guest is Sandy Saint Sweet (played by Carol) who keeps getting hit and knocked down by the boom mic.
Next, two fathers (Harvey and Don) are sitting on a bench waiting to pick up their kids from school. Harvey says his solution to not be annoyed with his kids is to have activities for them to go to out of the house. On Sundays they’re in church from 9:00 to 17:00. Don asks, “Isn’t that unusual?” Harvey says, “No kidding, since we’re Jewish.” Don talks about the difficulties he has with his wife and he’s a marriage counselor.
There’s a parody of a TV commercial for Fresha (mocking Fresca). A husband and wife are sitting and when Carol drinks the ice cold drink, a large dump of snow suddenly falls on them.
Carol sings “Enter Laughing” from the Carl Reiner movie of the same name. The song is written by Quincey Jones and Mack David.
In the next sketch Don the husband had asked Carol the wife to stop at the bank and pick up some papers from their safety deposit box. But while Carol was out she lost her purse. When Don comes home he explains that the papers are his finance records from last year that will help him avoid paying $2000 in taxes. After some comical evasion of the issue Carol finally admits she lost her purse and the papers. Obviously Don is not happy and derides Carol for quite a while for being so stupid as to lose her purse, until a grocery boy shows up with Carol’s purse. Don goes to give a generous tip to the grocery boy but discovers he’s lost his wallet.
The closing number is a song and dance bit with Carol Burnett and Lesley Ann Warren singing the jazz standard “All God’s Children Got Rhythm” by Walter Jurmann, Gus Kahn, and Bronislaw Kaper. The dancers are also beating out rhythms on the floor and various objects. Carol has cymbals on the inner sides of her knees.
Lesley Ann Warren began training in ballet at 6. She studied at the High School of Music and Art and won a scholarship to the School of American Ballet at 14. At 17 she became the youngest student to ever be accepted at the Actors Studio and studied under Lee Strasberg. Her film debut was in The Chapman Report in 1962. The same year she made her TV debut on The Doctors. She made her Broadway debut in 110 in the Shade in 1963 and won Broadway’s Most Promising Newcomer Award. She co-starred in The One and Only Original Family Band, Pickup On 101, Harry and Walter Go to New York, Choose Me (for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe), Songwriter (for which she won a People’s Choice Award), A Night in Heaven, The Shore, The Sphere and the Labyrinth, Victor/Victoria (for which she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar), Cop, Race for the Yankee Zephyr, Worth Winning, Life Stinks, Love Kills, Richie Rich’s Christmas Wish, Pure Country, The Limey, Peep World, 3 Days with Dad, Between Us, and It Snows All the Time. She replaced Barbara Bain on Mission Impossible for one season and was nominated for a Golden Globe. She won a Golden Globe for her performance in the TV movie 79 Park Avenue. She starred in When Do We Eat?, On TV she Bonda Jo Weaver on Dr. Kildare, played Jinx Shannon on In Plain Sight, and Millicent Prescott on Panhandle
March 20, 1996: The turnout was dropping at my open stage
On Tuesday night as usual I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of the Gladstone Hotel. The turn-out was starting to drop.
Thursday, 19 March 2026
Cher
On Wednesday morning I continued gathering images for my photo-video of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. I have 219 so far. I probably won’t need more than 250.
I weighed 87.45 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since December 24.
I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it stayed in tune the whole time. Tomorrow I’ll play my Kramer.
Around midday, with a small brush, I finished painting with “blue bliss” the edges of the casing of the bathroom door frame.
I weighed 88.8 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back and had to stop to pee at the College and Yonge McDonald’s. My hands were warm in my winter gloves until after I took them off in the cold to lock and unlock my bike. If I put cold hands inside the gloves they tend to stay somewhat cold.
I weighed 87.95 kilos at 18:35.
I was caught up in my journal at 20:12.
I tried again to digitize the cassette tape that has come through distorted for the last two weeks I’ve tried. Unclicking “Allow other applications to take control of this device” didn’t help and this time the Audacity timeline was moving incredibly slow. I restarted the computer and shut down Bit Torrent just in case it was using up too much memory. I restarted my Scarlett 2i2 audio interface and started getting a waveform in Audacity. The timeline started moving at normal speed but the result was still mostly noise. The left track of the tape plays a faint other recording perhaps from the other side or underneath the track I’m trying to record. In the Audacity recording that’s the only part that comes through. In Audio Setup for “Host” I switched from MME to Windows Direct Sound. I’ll see if that works tomorrow. If it doesn’t I’ll try Windows WASAPI.
I had a tomato, cucumber and avocado salad while watching season 1, episode 8 of The Carol Burnett Show.
During the audience warm-up, guest Nanette Fabray comes out and says the outfit Cher is wearing tonight makes her look like an old frump by comparison. An audience member asks Carol to do her Tarzan yell and she does. Someone asks Carol how she likes being a sex symbol and it makes her feel good.
In the first skit a TV announcer interviews Carol as a member of a nudists camp. She says she has nothing to hide.
The second skit is an office scene with Carol as the secretary who is given all the work and Nanette is the flirty one who the boss keeps around though she barely knows how to sharpen a pencil. The boss has Nanette bring her pad into his office where Carol knows she is doing more than taking dictation. The boss’s wife comes in and Carol happily lets her into the boss’s office. The result is Nanette being led out by her ear and the boss being beaten up. He calls Carol into his office so she puts on her lipstick and takes off her glasses but without them she can’t see so on her way she falls out the window.
In the next skit Carol and Nanette are wearing the same clothes and are out of work, sitting on a park bench. They had shown so much animosity towards each other before but now they agree to try to be buddies. They sing “Bosom Buddies” by Jerry Herman from the musical Mame.
The next skit is very short. Carol is a housewife serving her husband Harvey Korman coffee but he says it’s dishwater and smashes the cup. The next night she tries again and this time he dies because she poisons the coffee.
The next guest is Cher, looking incredibly gorgeous and dressed all in red, singing her hit song “You Better Sit Down Kids” by Sonny Bono. Then Sonny comes out and they sing together his song “Living For You”.
Then Carol comes out to ask them if they’ll record a song she and Harvey wrote and they do a deliberately bad impression of Sonny and Cher who walk away.
The next skit is a parody of several foreign airlines, starting with France. Nanette plays a sexy French flight attendant who gets everybody making love while she sings the English version of “La vie en rose” with melody by Louisguy and lyrics by Mack David.
Next is a Japanese airline with Nanette and Carol as geisha flight attendants but doing what would be considered a racist version of the Japanese accent with the switching of all the “L”s for “”R”s. The pilot is an experienced kamikaze pilot.
Then they do a Slavic airline with Carol as a slob flight attendant with unkempt and dirty clothing and hair. Everything she touches breaks. The pilot is in a T-shirt and torn pants. He says it will take them a week to get to Warsaw but who wants to go to Poland anyway.
Finally there is an old style song and dance number featuring Carol, Nanette, Sonny, Cher, Harvey, and Lyle. I assume it’s a song that appeared in a musical but no searches turn it up. It starts with “Whatever happened to that old time rhythm? Where did it go?”
Cher took acting lessons as a child. She had difficulties in school because of dyslexia so she quit at 16. She took acting lessons and supported herself by dancing in clubs on the Sunset Strip. She had a brief love affair with Warren Beatty at that time.
Then still 16 she met the 27 year old Sonny Bono who gave her a job as his housekeeper. He was working for Phil Spector and talked him into hiring Cher as a session singer. She sang backup on “You’ve Lost That Lovin Feeling” and “Be My Baby”.
She married Sonny when she was 18. At first he wrote songs for her to sing solo but they didn’t chart. Her first record was “Ringo I Love You”. Sonny had the idea that they would become a duo and after the release of their first album Look at Us, they became stars. Unlike most male-female duos Sonny sang the high harmony while Cher sang low.
In 1965 The Rolling Stones advised them to go to England because North Americans didn’t get them. The advice was right because literally overnight London went crazy over the Sonny and Cher’s style of dress. When England was nuts about Sonny and Cher so became the US and the rest of the world.
They made their film debut together in Wild on the Beach. Women began imitating Cher, straightening their hair and dying it black.
In 1966 Cher put out a solo album and had a hit with “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down). Between 1965 and 1972 they had six top 10 songs including “Baby Don’t Go”, “I Got You Babe”, and “The Beat Goes On”. They starred in the movie Good Times in 1967. Cher wanted a heavier sound like Cream and Led Zeppelin but Sonny refused. Her album 3614 Jackson Highway explored R&B and Soul but Sonny didn’t like it.
She starred in Chastity.
By the end of the 60s their hits dried up but their live show was still popular. Their famous onstage rapport developed out of actually arguing on stage. When they saw how much audiences liked it they began insulting each other as part of the act. Sonny started maneuvering them towards getting a TV show and encouraged network executives to check out their live show. In 1971 they landed The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. The show was a hit and it revitalized Cher’s recording career. The Bob Mackie clothes she wore set 70s fashion trends. She had three #1 hits with “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves”, “Dark Lady” and “Half Breed”.
They separated in 1974 and that killed the show because people wanted to see them together. They each tried their own solo shows but they didn’t take. Cher’s show however lasted two seasons and was critically acclaimed. Sonny and Cher reunited with a new Sonny and Cher Show but it only lasted one season.
In 1976 Mego toys released a Cher doll that outsold Barbie.
From 1978 to 1980 she lived with Gene Simmons of Kiss.
In 1979 she released a disco album called Take Me Home and it was a hit.
In 1980 she formed a rock band called Black Rose and gave herself a short haired punk look. At the same time she had a residency in Las Vegas and was making $300,000 a week. In 1981 she did a successful duet with Meat Loaf called “Dead Ringer for Love”.
Cher turned to acting and made her Broadway debut in 1982 with Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean. She reprised her role in the film adaptation. She co-starred in Silkwood (for which she was nominated for an Oscar), The Witches of Eastwick, and If These Walls Could Talk (her directorial debut). She starred in Mask (for which she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress), Suspect, Moonstruck (for which she won an Academy Award), Burlesque, Mermaids, Tea With Mussolini, and Faithful.
In 1987 she released a critically acclaimed audiobook with her reading The Ugly Duckling. The same year she released the fragrance Uninhibited which made $15 million in its first year.
She also kept singing and had hits with “If I Could Turn Back Time”, “After All”, “Believe” (which featured the first use of Auto Tune), “I Found Someone”, “Love and Understanding”, “Strong Enough”, and “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me”. She won a Grammy for “Believe” and an Emmy for her televised farewell concert tour. She covered “Fernando” by Abba and Bjorn Ulvaeus of Abba declared that it’s her song now.
She released two fitness videos in the early 90s. Around that time she contracted the Epstein-Barr virus and couldn’t sing for a while. She made $10,000 doing health related infomercials.
She published a book of autobiographical essays called First Time.
In 2000 she released a controversial album of her own songs called Not Commercial that was condemned by the Catholic Church.
Cher: The Memoir was on the New York Times Bestseller list for three weeks.
After Margaret Thatcher died there was the hashtag #nowthatchersdead but many thought it meant “Now that Cher’s dead”.
She’s had several plastic surgery procedures. There are four Barbie dolls in her likeness.
She said, “Some women get all excited about nothing and then marry him”.
She is called The Goddess of Pop.
She’s the only Academy Award winning actor to also have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
March 19, 1996: On the 11th day of my 14 day fast I was bored
Thirty years ago today
On Monday it was the eleventh day of my annual fourteen day fruit fast. I no longer felt weak but only bored.
Wednesday, 18 March 2026
Gwen Verdon
I weighed 87.55 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the last of four sessions. It went out of tune during most songs but stayed in tune during more songs than the last three sessions.
Around midday I started painting the top and left edges of the bathroom door frame casing with “blue bliss”. Tomorrow I’ll start painting the front of the casing. It will all need at least a second coat.
I weighed 89.15 before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on the way back. The grapes were cheap at $3.90 a kilo but only one bag had firm grapes. I bought a bag of oranges, a pomelo from China (avoiding the ones from Israel), and a pack of toilet paper.
I weighed 87.9 kilos at 19:00.
I was caught up in my journal at 20:19.
I tried again to digitize the cassette tape that has given me problems for over a week but this time I couldn’t even get a waveform. I restarted and increased the recording volume but nothing helped. I followed the suggestions from AI and one of them was to unclick “Allow other applications to take control of this device”. I won’t know until tomorrow if that works.
I had a tomato, cucumber, and avocado salad with lemon juice and a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching season 1, episode 6 of The Carol Burnett Show.
During the opening questions from the audience segment Carol brings Vicki Lawrence out to meet the audience for the first time. She’s very shy and nervous and when an audience member asks how old she is she says she doesn’t know. She finally says she’s 18.
The first skit involves Carol as the wife of Dr. Jekyll. William Schallert plays Henry Jekyll, who goes against his wife’s urgings, has a drink and turns into a wolf man. Eventually Mrs. Jekyll gives in to join him, drinks the potion and turns into Phyllis Diller.
Then Carol brings out Diller to do her stand-up routine. She’s wearing a coat made of mink tails. She says her husband Fang tried to leave her but was arrested for leaving the scene of an accident.
The second guest is dancer Gwen Verdon who sings and dances to “Feelin Groovy” by Paul Simon.
The second sketch re-enacts a memory of when a foreign exchange student came to live with Carol, her husband, and her sister Chrissie. As they are preparing for their guest, Carol’s husband resents the idea of having another teenager around. But then she turns out to be a gorgeous woman and her husband couldn’t be more welcoming while Carol wants to kill her. But then she gets a call from her neighbour who tells her they got their new maid from Sweden mixed up with the exchange student. They are relieved until the student turns out to be a teenage boy.
Bobby Gentry sings her song Bugs plus an interpretation of “The Look of Love” by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.
The next skit is set in a courtroom and the murder trial of Rodney Harrison played by Lyle Waggoner. But the judge played by Phillis Diller is immediately in love with Rodney and pleads him innocent. Carol is the prosecutor who objects and says he should get the chair. The judge says he’s going to get the couch instead.
Then there is a musical performance of a medley of Beatles songs featuring Carol, Phyllis, Bobby, and Gwen dressed as Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band.
Gwen Verdon was afflicted with rickets at age 2 and had to wear leg braces and orthopedic boots. Her mother put her in dance classes when she was 3 to strengthen her legs. She made her stage debut as a tap dancer at age 6. At age 11 she performed as a ballerina in the movie The King Steps Out. She continued performing into senior high school when at 17 she eloped, got pregnant and gave up dancing for the five year marriage. At the age of 23 she became an assistant choreographer and gave dance and walk lessons to actors like Jane Russell, Betty Grable, Lana Turner and Marilyn Monroe. In 1953 she starred in Can Can for which she won a Tony Award. She made her TV debut on Goodyear Playhouse in 1954. She starred in Bob Fosse’s Damn Yankees in 1955 and won a second Tony. It ran for 1019 performances. She reprised her role in the film adaptation. She recorded an album called The Girl I Left Home For. She and Fosse collaborated on New Girl in Town and Redhead bringing her two more Tonys. Her album from Redhead won a Grammy award. She married Fosse in 1960. She took six years off to raise their daughter and then starred in Sweet Charity, which ran more than 600 performances. Shirley MacLaine starred in the film version but she was coached by Verdon. She originated the role of Roxie Hart in Chicago. She appeared in five episodes of Magnum PI, and 3 episodes of Webster. She was nominated for three Emmys for Magnum PI, Dream On, and Homicide. When she died they dimmed all the marquee lights on Broadway.
March 18, 1996: My daughter and I made mud pies
Thirty years ago today
On Sunday it was relatively warm so my daughter and I made mud pies in the back yard. My landlady Helga accused us of using her baking pan but I had the exact same kind.
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