May 27, 1996: I rehearsed with Brian Haddon

Thirty years ago today 

            On Monday Brian Haddon and I rehearsed at my place.

Jenna Ortega

            On Monday morning I memorized the eighth verse of L'anguille (The Eel) by Boris Vian. There are two verses left to nail down and each of them have lines from previous verses so it should be easier.

            I weighed 89.85 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since March 4.

            I played my Martin acoustic for the last of two sessions and for the first time in a long time it stayed in tune through one song. Tomorrow I begin a four session stretch of playing my electric guitars.

            I weighed 90.9 kilos before lunch. 

            At 13:00 I watched the first episode of Wednesday with my daughter Astrid on Discord. This is a spin-off of The Addams Family but more from the film adaptations than the silly but more charming TV series. 

            Wednesday Addams goes to a normal school with her brother Pugsley. But when some bullies tie Pugsley up and stuff him in a locker she takes revenge. She finds the bullies in a swimming pool and drops two bags filled with piranhas into the water. One of the boys loses a testicle (there is no mention of the fact that by dropping the piranhas in a chlorinated pool she killed them and while dying they probably wouldn’t have been in the mood to feed on the boys). 

            Wednesday is expelled and her parents Gomez and Morticia send her to Nevermore Academy where they met and fell for each other. Nevermore is obviously named for the Edgar Allen Poe poem The Raven. It is a school for the outcasts from the outcasts of society. There are vampires, werewolves, sirens, gorgons, etcetera. Wednesday is an outsider even among the outsiders and considers the school a prison, which she attempts to escape. Her parents have sent the disembodied hand known as Thing to spy on her but she forces him to serve her. 

            She plays a beautiful piece of music on the cello (Jenna Ortega learned to play cello specifically for this role). I didn’t even recognize that she was playing "Paint it Black" by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. 

            In the nearby town of Jericho, Vermont, Wednesday makes the acquaintance of a barista and fixes his broken espresso machine. She can fix it because she reads Italian as it is the language of Machiavelli. The locals have a lot of fear and prejudice against the students of Nevermore. Four bullies try to pick on her and she goes all Jackie Chan on them. The sheriff arrives, who is the barista’s father. He tells Wednesday that her father Gomez should be in prison for murder. The barista obtains the file on Gomez and gives it to Wednesday. 

            Someone is trying to kill Wednesday. She meets him in the woods and he renders her helpless with his telekinetic powers. He shows her a drawing of her that is older than she is and says his mother told him she needs to die. But before he can kill her a monster rips him to shreds, then leaves. 

            Because of the violence and the intrigue, Wednesday decides she likes Nevermore after all and no longer wants to escape. 

            Wednesday is played by Jenna Ortega, who began acting at the age of 9. At first she could only obtain roles in commercials. She made her acting debut in the sitcom Rob in 2012. She made her film debut in Iron Man 3 in 2013. She co-starred in After Words, The Babysitter: Killer Queen, Yes Day, Scream, Scream VI, Studio 666, American Carnage, Finestkind, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Death of a Unicorn, Hurry Up Tomorrow, and The Gallerist. She starred in The Fallout, X, Miller’s Girl, and Winter Spring Summer or Fall. She starred in the series Stuck in the Middle. She co-starred in the series Richie Rich, and You. She published It’s All Love in 2021. She’s an ambassador for UNAIDS because her grandfather died of the disease. 

            The casting of Ortega as Wednesday was very good but I don’t think the actors who play her parents are a good fit. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown. I stopped at Midoco in the Annex to buy two Pilot pens. 

            On the way home I stopped at the No Frills at John and Richmond to buy five-year-old cheddar but they didn’t have it. They have a much narrower selection of a lot of things compared to the Parkdale No Frills. 

            I stopped at Bagels On Fire to buy a dozen sesame seed bagels but they only had 11 so I got one all-dressed. 

            I went to Metro where they didn’t have five-year-old cheddar either so I settled for four-year-old cheddar. Then I walked over to Freshco to buy a pack of toilet paper. 

            After I got home I went to the new Popeyes downstairs to buy six biscuits. 

            I weighed 89.85 kilos at 17:55. 

            I worked on getting caught up in my journal. 

            I had a small potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching season 7, episode 18 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            Carol does another skit in which the characters from TV commercials invade her home every time she uses a product. There are people in her medicine cabinet; she flushes the Tidy Bowl man; the loaf of bread tells her not to squeeze it so she strangles it; she’s about to make a peanut butter sandwich and Peter Pan flies in to tell her to use his brand; Naturalist Euell Gibbons comes in (played by Tim Conway) with a piece of a pine branch in his hand. He did commercials for Grape Nuts cereal, asking people if they’ve ever eaten a pine tree. He says “Many parts of a pine tree are edible” as he munches on the branch. He then takes a bite out of her chair and leaves, saying he’s now going to eat her garage; she chews some gum and a bunch of dancers burst into the room to sing the jingle for that brand. Carol grabs a broom and chases them out; a guy comes in with a gigantic pack of Wrigley’s gum and sings about big flavour until she punches him in the face and forces him back out; she begins waxing the floor until a voice says “You can see your reflection” and she looks down and screams because she can see up her housecoat; she starts washing the walls with a spray cleaner when Lyle in a blonde wig tears through the wall and says he’s Big Wally and he’s going to foam the dirt off her wall. She punches him in the gut and sends him back through the hole; her boyfriend played by Steve Lawrence arrives and tells her he made a killing in the stock market through his stock broker E.F. Sutton. Then a voice says “When E.F. Sutton talks people listen” and a bunch of guys are listening with their hands cupping their ears; Steve says he’s got tickets to Acapulco for just the two of them but then Vicki skips up to them as a flight attendant and sings “Come on and fly me” and Steve says he’s going to Acapulco with her instead. 

            Steve Lawrence sings the 1971 song “Rainy Days and Mondays” by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols. Then he sings the 1953 song “Here’s That Rainy Day” by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke. 

            Harvey plays a theatre actor about to go on in five minutes but has to awaken his elderly dresser played by Tim. Tim works extremely slowly and gets caught in various positions as he hangs from the overhead wardrobe track. Finally Harvey gets his coat on when he’s on and heads for the stage without realizing Tim is caught in the coat and being dragged behind him. In this skit Harvey laughs a lot more than usual. 

            Carol talks about how they like to have Tim and Steve in skits because they don’t crack up. Harvey on the other hand often loses control. They then show an outtake from the skit that Harvey, Tim, and Steve did in which businessmen behave as if they are lovers. In this one it is Tim and Steve that can’t stop laughing. I think they had Harvey deliberately laugh through the previous skit just to set up this one. 

            Steve plays Chuck Moran and he’s getting married tomorrow to Sally Caruthers. He’s in a bar where his bachelor party has just finished. His friends say goodbye and surprise him when they talk about not seeing him anymore. Lyle stays behind and tells him it’s true that this is his last night out with the guys. Chuck points out that Lyle is married and he goes out when he wants but Lyle says he stuffs his side of the bed with pillows and sneaks out. Chuck wonders why she wouldn’t notice and Lyle says there’s one place a wife doesn’t want to get close to her husband after a few years of marriage and that’s in bed. Chuck says he won’t have that problem because he was always better with the girls than him. Lyle says he’s observed Chuck was never smooth with the ladies. Chuck says it’s a good thing there are no girls in here right now or I’d prove you wrong. Then Carol comes in and Lyle bets he can’t pick her up. Chuck takes the bet and asks Carol where she’s been all his life, which causes her to laugh hysterically. H immediately asks if he can take her home and asks where she lives. She says she lives in Kansas and she’s in town for a wedding. Her baby sister Sally is getting married. Now Chuck stops smiling and cautiously asks Sally’s last name. It’s Caruthers. Chuck blows out the candle so his face is less visible. She says if she has too much to drink she forgets everything and so he orders drinks. She starts to get drunk and seems to be losing her memory but when Lyle calls him Chuck Moran she remembers that’s who’s going to marry her sister. No he’s really worried but then she tells him that when they’re at the wedding, if he mentions one word of this to her husband she’ll kill him. 

            There is a mostly silent skit featuring Carol and Tim as a wife and husband who work opposite shifts. She’s getting ready for work while he’s getting ready for bed. 

            Carol says fifty years ago an unknown composer’s first show opened on Broadway. he went on to write hit after hit for the next fifteen years and tonight they salute the music of George Gershwin. His most popular songs are sung and danced to in period costumes, beginning and ending with “Summertime”. Carol sings “Someone to Watch Over Me”. Steve sings “Somebody Loves Me”. Carol and Steve sing “’S Wonderful” and “Who Could Ask For Anything More”.

May 26, 1996: It was my birthday so I went to a strip club

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday Nancy picked our daughter up and then I went to the House of Lancaster for a beer. After that I bought some porn magazines.

Rudy de Luca

            On Sunday morning I memorized the fourth verse of “Il est Rigolo mon gigolo” (He’s a Giggle Oh My Gigolo) by Serge Gainsbourg. There are two verses left to learn. 

            I weighed 89.6 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since May 14. 

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

            Around midday I finished touching up the Blue Bliss paint on my bathroom rack. It’s ready now to mount on the wall, which I’ll probably do on Wednesday.

            I weighed 91 kilos before lunch. That’s the most I’ve pushed the scale in the early afternoon since March 2. 

            In the afternoon I rode up to The Dufferin Mall to buy socks and underwear so I don’t have to do laundry this week. I bought six ankle socks, six crew socks, and six pairs of briefs. Just riding up to the mall I saw two trees that had been torn down by the wind storm last night. 

            I weighed 90.4 kilos at 17:55. 

            I remembered to buy beer but the liquor store across the street closes early on Sundays so I had to ride down to the one at Uppity Village where I bought two six-packs of Creemore. During that ride I saw another blown down tree. 

            I weighed 90.2 kilos at 18:45. A little less than the evening of March 3. 

            I was caught up in my journal just before supper. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, black olive paste, tomato pesto, two sliced sausages and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 7, episode 17 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warmup someone asks who does the makeup for the show. She says it’s a little old guy named Al Schultz and she brings him out. He’s not old and in fact he later married Vicki Lawrence and they were together for 56 years until he died. 

            Someone asks if this is a repeat show. 

            Carl Reiner and Carol play a husband and wife who got to a restaurant to meet an insurance agent so they can be covered for accidents. Carol’s character is extremely accident prone and has only recently woken up from her second coma after their house burned down. Even just sitting there at the table she gets cut by broken glasses, burned by her husband’s cigar, gets a champagne cork shot into her mouth from across the room, has one of her real fingernails torn off, and she’s stabbed with a fork. The insurance man arrives (played by Harvey) and he gives them the papers to sign. Carl signs them but Carol still needs to sign. However, before she can, Carl accidentally steps on and breaks the fingers of her signing hand. Harvey sees she’s accident prone and cancels the deal. He closes his briefcase on her hand and starts dragging her away as he leaves. 

            Harvey plays an executive who is about to fly away to get married. Carol plays his dedicated secretary of 16 years who is staying behind to mind the office and obviously is in love with her boss. After he leaves she sings “Send in the Clowns” by Stephen Sondheim from the 1973 musical A Little Night Music. 

            Carl plays a marriage counselor who is on the phone with Bob who is thanking him for helping him patch things up with his husband. Harvey enters his office and he is the husband of a famous nightclub comedian named Totie Phyllis. He says the problem is that she will never stop joking even at home. Carl says to send her in but she refuses to enter until Harvey gives her show business intro similar to Johnny Carson’s entry. She makes a big intro and behaves as if the marriage counselor is a talk show host. She also brings her drummer wherever she goes so he can play a rim shot after every joke. Carl asks Totie if she loves her husband and she answers, “Does Raquel Welch sleep on her back?” (A reference to Raquel’s famously large breasts). Carl suggests a treatment whereby whatever joke he sets up, she doesn’t respond. He asks, “How fat is your mother in law?” Totie bites her fist to keep from responding. He asks several more questions. She screams and tries to crawl under his desk. His final question is, “What do you get when you cross a duck with Sonny Bono?” She collapses and Carl says she’s cured. Harvey picks her up and rejoices that he finally has his wife but she says, “An Italian quack is what you get when you cross a duck with Sonny Bono!” Harvey tosses Totie out the window. 

            Harvey comes to the supermarket with a hot date named Trixi. He’s bought several gourmet items because he plans to bring her back to his place and fix her a great meal before scoring. Carol plays the cashier and takes a long time to ring up all the items while Trixi is getting impatient and also is getting hit on by several men while she waits. A Boy Scout holds up three fingers in that organization’s salute but Trixi holds up five fingers to indicate his offer is short. By the time he’s finished Trixi is already leaving with someone else. 

            The final skit is a Mexican version of Little Red Riding Hood called La Caperucita Roja. Little Red Riding Hood is played by Carol in the character at that time very well known, voluptuous and highly sexualized Spanish actor, singer, and guitarist Charo. When she jerks her hips to the right or left it causes men to fall over as if they’ve been struck. Vicki in a Mexican accent plays the interpreter. Harvey plays the grandmother. Instead of a wolf there is a bull played by Carl Reiner. In La Caperucita’s basket she carries for her grandmother her special tortitas (which they say are little cookies but looking it up I see they are pancakes). They say that La Caperucita has the sweetest tortitas in town. The bull wants her tortitas and so he goes to grandma’s house to replace her. Grandma (played by a variation of Harvey’s big buxom woman character) has the hots for the bull. La Caperucita arrives but sees the bull’s horns and escapes. The matador (played by Lyle) replaces the woodcutter in the traditional story but when he sees the bull he runs away. La Caperucita defeats the bull with her cape and everyone wants her to kill him but her grandmother says to let him live with her. Then Carol and Vicki toss tortitas to the audience. Carol sings her usual closing song but in Spanish. 

            One of the writers for The Carol Burnett Show was Rudy de Luca, who cofounded The Comedy Store with Sammy Shore in Hollywood. He also wrote for The Tim Conway Show, He co-wrote Silent Movie, High Anxiety, Caveman (starring Ringo Starr), Million Dollar Mystery, Life Stinks, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, The Good Bad Guy, Screw Loose, and Box Office 3-D. He wrote the screenplay for Transylvania 6-5000. He co-starred in The Return of Count Yorga, and The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine.

May 25, 1996: It was a cool Saturday

Thirty years ago today 

            On Saturday I picked up my five year old daughter and she spent the weekend at my place. It was a cool day but we probably went to the playground anyway. 

            After she went to sleep I stayed up watching TV. I was looking forward to my birthday the next day when I'd probably go to a strip club. 

Richard Crenna

            On Saturday morning I memorized the third verse of “Il est Rigolo mon gigolo” (He’s a Giggle Oh My Gigolo) by Serge Gainsbourg. That’s half the song. 

            I weighed 88.6 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since May 14. 

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

            Around midday I headed down to No Frills where I bought six bags of cherries, two packs of blueberries, some bananas, two packs of New Zealand lean ground beef, a pack of two gourmet naan, a Basque chocolate cheesecake, dental floss, a can of light whipped cream, a jug of lemonade, a jug of orange juice, two containers of skyr, a bag of Miss Vickie’s apple wood smoked chips and another of sweet chili chips. 

            I met my upstairs neighbour David at 14:00 because we had a lunch date. I insisted on paying because yesterday was his 61st birthday and also because it was my turn. He gave in and we went to the place of his choice. It was raining hard so we didn’t want to walk far. We went to Little Tibet and the door was open but they were closed so we settled on Ali’s Roti. He had rice with ox tail and I had a potato roti and a ginger beer. 

            I took a siesta at 15:35 and planned to get up at 17:05 but woke up at 17:50. 

            I weighed 89.95 kilos at 18:10. That’s the same as the evening of May 11. 

            I got caught up in my journal. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread, with marinara, olive paste, tomato pesto, two sliced sausages, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching season 7, episode 13 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            In the first skit officers Dawson and Dawson, played by Richard Crenna and Carol have an armed robber cornered in a warehouse. Suddenly Carol asks for a divorce and they begin arguing about their marriage. She complains he’s not affectionate and he argues he can’t be that way with another cop. While they’re arguing the crook gets away. Then they hear on the radio a call for them to intervene in a domestic dispute at a certain address but they realize they are at that address and the call is about them.

            In the workshop of a toymaker there are only life sized dolls and one of them is Ruth Buzzi. The toymaker winds her up and sings the poem “There Was a Little Girl” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. She sings the 1941 song “Squeeze Me Please Don’t Tease Me” by Duke Ellington and Lee Gaines. The old man goes to bed and all the dolls come to life to sing the 1911 Ragtime song “Oh You Beautiful Doll” by A. Seymour Brown and Nat D. Ayer. Ruth ends up knocking out all the other dolls then the toymaker spanks her. 

            Lyle plays Tom Hotchkiss the host of a game show called Celebrities and Peasants in which famous people match wits with nobodies. Ruth plays the movie star Helene LaFlange. Carol plays Anita Sims but Tom calls her Annette. She is a librarian and looks like the stereotype of a librarian with glasses and frumpy clothes. She says this is her favourite show and she always guesses all the answers. She spent everything she had to travel out to LA to be on the show. For the last month she had to sleep in the park. Helene asks, “Didn’t the squirrels bother you?” Anita says, “No, they were delicious”. Anita has to give Helene three one-word clues and have her guess the answer, which is “George Washington”. Anita’s first clue is “President” but Helene names President Sadat of Egypt. Anita says “American” and Helene says “Herbert Hoover”. Anita says “First” and Helene says “George Hoover”. Helene’s answer is “The Vatican” and her first clue is “spaghetti”. Anita guesses “a restaurant”. Helene says “Old” but Anita can’t even guess before time’s up. Helene’s final clue is “God” but Anita doesn’t get the connection. Tom says Anita is their only loser in six months. Anita shouts that she hocked her underwear to get there and dealt with being molested in the park just to play with the worst celebrity in the world. Helene says, “Play with? I thought I was supposed to play against you!” Anita begins attacking Helene, strangling her and dragging her down behind the desk to beat her. 

            Tonight’s theme is “The Bad Girl” and they begin with Mrs. Robinson from The Graduate. Mrs. Robinson checks into a hotel room with a Boy Scout played by Richard Crenna, who says all he wanted to do was help her across the street. 

            The next bad girl is Eve Harrington (played by Vicki) as she tries to destroy Margo Channing (played by Carol) in All About Eve. Carol’s impersonation of Bette Davis is over the top with each word emphasized and a pause in between. She catches Eve posing in front of the mirror with her gown, realizes she’s trying to take her place and fires her. Then Margo’s boyfriend Bill comes in. She says he’s the only one she can trust but then he poses in front of the mirror with the same gown. 

            Next is a parody of Born to Be Bad. Darlene (played by Ruth) is soon to marry the love of her life Kirk (played by Harvey), who also happens to be rich. Her cousin Christina Belle (played by Carol) comes to live with her. Christina immediately tries to drive a wedge between them and flirts with Kirk but he is unaffected. He and Darlene leave her alone in Darlene's apartment where she meets her alpha male down to Earth neighbour Buck Travis (played by Richard). Buck immediately comes on to her and she can’t resist. Christina gets a call from Kirk to come over and she thinks she’s lured him in but he only wants her to help pick out jewellery as a gift for Darleen. She selects the most expensive necklace but plants the seed in Kirk’s mind that if she accepts it she is only after him for his money. When he expresses that doubt Darline leaves him and Christina moves in. He marries Christina and they are unhappy together. They are throwing a party and Darline comes with Buck as her date. Christina and Buck begin kissing. She says she loves him but won’t tell Kirk for another year or so. He rejects her and says she only cares for herself. Kirk catches her and they are through. He gets back with Darline who has learned a lot from Christina. 

            Carol and Ruth talk about article 19 of the US Constitution, but there is no article 19. They mean the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote in 1920. They do a song in period costumes in praise of the suffragists who fought to win that right. But it’s mostly a love song to the mimeograph machine which the suffragists used to print thousands of pamphlets for their campaign. They, Vicki, and several of the women dancers sing about being “cranks”, because apparently that’s where the meaning of the word as “obsessive” comes from as they would crank the machine to print the pamphlets. 

            At the age of 11 Richard Crenna co-starred for 11 years in the radio program Boy Scout Jamboree. He also voiced Oogy Pringle on the show A Date With Judy. He majored in Theatre Arts at The University of Southern California and earned a BA. He played Bronco Thompson on the radio sitcom The Great Gildersleeve from 1949 to 1954. He co-starred as Walter Denton on the radio show Our Miss Brooks and appeared in 94 episodes of the TV adaptation. He made his film debut in Let’s Dance in 1950. He co-starred in the TV series The Real McCoys from 1957 to 1963 and eventually became one of the four directors. He directed 8 episodes of The Andy Griffith Show. He starred in the series Slattery’s People (for which he was nominated for two Emmy Awards). He co-starred in the sitcom All’s Fair. He co-starred in the series Pros and Cons. He starred in the sitcom It Takes Two. He won an Emmy for his performance in the 1985 TV movie The Rape of Richard Beck. He starred in Midas Run, Devil Dog, The Evil, Stone Cold Dead, The Man Called Noon, and Death Ship. He co-starred in Over Exposed, Made in Paris, The Sand Pebbles, Catlow, Un Flic, Body Heat, Wait Until Dark, Marooned, Doctor’s Wives, Breakheart Pass, Wild Horse Hank, The Flamingo Kid, Summer Rental, First Blood, Rambo II, Rambo III, Table For Five, Hot Shots Part Deux, Leviathan, and Jade. He appeared in 13 episodes of Judging Amy.

May 24, 1996: Since it was Bob Dylan's birthday I performed my version of "Mr. Tambourine Man"

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday evening, since it was Bob Dylan’s birthday I performed my version of his song “Mr. Tambourine Man” on the Spit Fridays open stage in the back room of The Cameron.