Thirty years ago today
On Saturday Nancy brought our daughter to me and she spent the weekend. The weather was warm and so we spent a lot of time playing outside on the back roof.
Monday, 24 August 2026
Sunday, 23 August 2026
Vivian Vance
On Friday after midnight I went over my bed several times with a lint roller until no baby bedbugs got picked up. I went to bed again with no two sided carpet tape around the futon to trap bedbugs before they could get to me because I wanted to wait until I steam the bed later today. After yoga I found several on the floor and wall at the head of my bed and a nest in a groove in the plaster. All that’s going to be blasted with steam later today.
I memorized the fourth verse of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian and almost nailed down the fifth and final verse.
I finished translating “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg and started looking for the chords. No one has posted them so tomorrow I’ll start working them out. I think this song will be fairly easy.
I weighed 91.1 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Kramer during song practice and it stayed in tune most of the time.
Around midday I steamed my mattress then moved it into the living room and steamed the west side of my bedroom where the bed sits. I steamed the baseboards, the floor, parts of the walls, as well as the back of the stand beside my bed.
I weighed 92.9 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.
I weighed 92.25 kilos at 18:05.
I was still two days behind in my journal and worked on catching up.
I made a new batch of gravy from chicken drippings and had some with a potato and a chicken leg while watching an interview with Lucille Ball and another with Lyle Waggoner on Carol Burnett.
Lucy says Carol is one of the greatest gals she’s ever met. She first went to see Carol when she starred in Once Upon a Mattress because she was interested in making her part of one of her company’s shows. But someone else had already gotten her for their show so she just became friends with Carol. She showed herself to be a true comedian on her second performance and that’s unusual. She had it, which is honesty, delivery, energy, timing, and vulnerability. Lucy loves how she gets so deep into a character. Vulnerability is very necessary for a comedian.
Carol sometimes breaks Lucy up when they work together and Lucy has to be careful because she doesn’t approve of that. She’s funny because she believes in her characters. The same thing used to happen with Vivian Vance. There isn’t anything Carol can’t do well.
Lyle says Carol’s show was very relaxed and a lot of fun. He didn’t mind the live audience. Carol was not intimidating but just one of the players. She’ll go down as one of the top comedic actors of all time. He hasn’t seen anyone that can hold a candle to her.
Steve Lawrence was a good kisser.
Tim Conway came up with ingenious ideas and he was very athletic, as was Carol.
Lyle had great admiration for Harvey Korman because he could do characters like no one else. He co-starred on The Danny Kaye Show but Lyle thinks he was better than Kaye.
When Lyle co-starred on Wonder Woman they gave him a very nice trailer. He asked where they got it and he was told that they rented it from a private owner in the Valley. So Lyle bought a motor home and they rented it from him for the three years he was on Wonder Woman. He found out that there was no one stop shopping place for motor homes and they often had to rent them from four different places. So Lyle started buying up coaches until he had a little fleet. In 1988 he started building trailers and now he has two manufacturing plants building trailers as fast as they can. He’s thought there would be a saturation point but it never came and so now his company Star Wagons has 800 trailers scattered all over the country and they’re going to send some to Vancouver. Lyle retired five years ago and his two sons run the company. The trailers all have built in generators, satellite systems, and make-up areas. He’s always been an entrepreneur and even when he was acting he considered it a business with himself as the product.
When Lyle was interviewed for the part of the announcer on Carol’s show he thought it would be funny to pretend to stutter. They looked at him in silence and thanked him for coming. He thought he blew it. But the next day they asked him to come and meet Carol. When Carol first saw him she pretended to faint. Lyle ran over to help her up. After some light conversation they thanked him again and he left. The next day he was told he had the job.
They allowed them to tweak the scripts a bit to surprise of throw the other actor off. They called them savors. (A savor is actually a pause after a line to build tension or to let a mood hover for the audience).
Everybody copied her show as the template for variety shows.
Lyle did several guest appearances on The Sonny and Cher Show. He says Cher was one of the friendliest people at CBS.
Even after The Carol Burnett Show had only been on a few weeks people were recognizing Lyle all across the country.
Lucy mentioned that Carol reminded her of her comedy partner Vivian Vance.
Vivian Vance first acted professionally at The Little Theatre in Albuquerque, New Mexico and made enough to go to New York so she could study with Eva La Gallienne. The Little Theatre later was renamed The Vivian Vance Playhouse. After some struggle she finally got work performing in Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s Music in the Air. The show lasted for two years. She next understudied Ethel Merman in the original production of Anything Goes. Her first starring role was in Hooray For What. She made her silent film debut in 1925 in The Patent Leather Pug. She made her sound film debut in Take a Chance in 1933. Her most successful stage role was in Let’s Face It in 1941. She co-starred in The Secret Fury, The Blue Veil, and The Great Race. Desi Arnaz saw her in Voice of the Turtle and decided she would be perfect for the part of Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy (His first choice was apparently Bea Benadaret). She won an Emmy in 1953 for playing Ethel (It was the first Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in the history of the awards). She was offered an Ethel and Fred spin-off but turned it down. After Lucy and Desi divorced, Desi would sometimes visit Lucy on the set of The Lucy Show and they would act like they were still married. In the late 60s she and her husband moved to New Mexico where they owned and operated a travel agency. For three years in the 1970s she played Maxine in Maxwell House commercials. She was the godmother of John Sebastian.
Kristin Chenoweth
I translated the third verse of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg.
I weighed 92.15 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since February 17.
I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it stayed in tune about half the time.
I weighed 93.2 kilos before lunch. That’s a record high for the early afternoon since I’ve been recording my weight.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back stopped at Freshco where I bought five bags of Canadian cherries, a pint of Canadian blueberries, bananas, a pack of Canadian ground beef, a large tin of Full City Dark coffee, and a loaf of multigrain sandwich bread. I did a price match on the cherries with the No Frills price of $8.80 a kilo.
I weighed 92.4 kilos at 18:35.
I was two days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up.
I grilled four chicken legs and had one with a potato and margarine while watching an interview of Kristen Chenoweth and another of Lesley Ann Warren on the topic of Carol Burnett.
Kristen says Carol is her main influence. Her earliest memory of Carol Burnett is watching her dad laughing at the show. She wanted to be able to make her father laugh that hard.
Lesley was 19 and had already done Cinderella on TV, two Broadway musicals, and The Happiest Millionaire before she met Carol when Carol invited her to be a guest on her show.
Lesley grew up in Manhattan and used to sneak into Broadway shows, which is where she saw Carol in Once Upon a Mattress. Later she was a big fan of The Carol Burnett Show.
Lesley started studying ballet when she was 6. At 13 she auditioned for George Ballancine’s School of ballet and was accepted. At 14 she started taking jazz dance classes, singing lessons, and acting lessons because she had gotten the musical theatre bug. She began auditioning for musicals without telling her parents. She won a role in Bye Bye Birdie but her parents wanted her to finish high school and wouldn’t let her do the show. She finished high school at Professional Children’s School while still studying dance, acting and singing. She skipped Grade 8. She auditioned for the Broadway show Hundred and Ten in the Shade and got in. She graduated at 16 and at 17 was rehearsing for the show.
When she auditioned for Richard Rogers’ Cinderella, she was terrible and he said she wasn’t ready. But the director had seen her on Broadway and asked him to give her another chance. She had a private audition in his apartment and she sat at the piano with him while he taught her exactly how he wanted her to sing “My Funny Valentine”. She learned it and got the part.
Carol had so many colours to the palate of her talent.
Bob Mackie was a genius at construction of costumes. The jump suit that Lesley did her number and danced in on The Carol Burnett Show kept her boobs from moving.
Dancing helped her train for physical comedy. A lot of actors only perform from the neck up.
The broadest comedy she’s done is Life Stinks by Mel Brooks.
Lee Strasberg was her acting teacher for ten years. One of his exercises was that the student has to go to the zoo, pick an animal, then study its characteristics and imbue them in a character.
One can see Carol’s influence by watching the female cast members of Saturday Night Live.
A lot of Victor Victoria was improvising except for Julie Andrews’ part because she doesn’t like to improvise.
When Lesley didn't win the Oscar she was at first devastated but then she looked around and saw that Dustin Hoffman had also lost, so it was easier to handle.
She was nominated for a Golden Globe for 79 Park Avenue and did not expect to win.
The Muppets was also like a variety show. It required ten days of rehearsal. Lesley had seen Lili starring Leslie Caron about seven times as a girl. She falls in love with a puppet. It had such a strong imprint that when she went to work with the Muppets she felt like Lili.
When Lesley did Carol’s show she had been singing and dancing for years. Her mother had been a torch singer at the Copa and sang all the time at home. So when Lesley did her sultry and sexy number she was impacted by her mother.
Kristin Chenoweth studied Musical Theatre at Oklahoma State University and earned a Masters Degree in Opera Performance. She turned down a scholarship to The Academy of Vocal Arts in 1993 to make her New York debut in Animal Crackers. She made her Broadway debut in Steel Pier in 1997. In 1999 she won a Tony for her performance as Sally in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown. She also won for On The Twentieth Century. She made her film debut in Topa Topa Bluffs in 2002. She originated the role of Glinda in the 2003 musical Wicked and the part was written with her in mind. She co-starred in Pushing Daisies for which she won an Emmy Award. She also co-starred on The West Wing, Sit Down Shut Up, and Schmigadoon. She starred in the short-lived sitcom Kristin and on GCB. She starred in 12 Men of Christmas and Family Weekend. She co-starred in Into Temptation, Bewitched, RV, Deck the Halls, Space Chimps, Tinker Bell, Four Christmases, You Again, Hit and Run, The Opposite Sex, The Boy Next Door, Strange Magic, Hard Sell, Class Rank, My Little Pony, The Star, The Witches, and Holidate. Her first album in 2001 was Let Yourself Go. Her 2009 memoir was called A Little Bit Wicked. She is a coloratura soprano.
During supper I got a chicken bone stuck in my throat. It was sharp and wedged sideways and when I tried to swallow it just dug in. I went to the bathroom and made long, slow, hard coughs to try to jar it free. This had never happened to me before and so I was frightened. I was thinking I might have to head for emergency at St. Joseph’s. I pushed harder and finally coughed it free. It was almost the length and shape of a thin toothpick.
August 23, 1996: Brian and I busked then went to Burgundy
On Friday Brian Haddon and I probably busked on Bloor Street. We made enough to go for lunch and beer at Burgundy on Yonge Street and then busked some more before going to perform on the Spit Fridays open stage in the back room of the Cameron.
Saturday, 22 August 2026
Evie Templeton
I finished memorizing “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg and translated the second verse.
I weighed 91.4 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Martin during song practice and it went out of tune all the time.
Around midday did my laundry two weeks after the last time so yesterday’s vacuuming wouldn’t be a waste of time in fighting the bedbugs.
I weighed 91.85 kilos at 15:30, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since August 4, which was the last time I did my laundry.
I took a siesta and woke up too late to take a bike ride.
I weighed 92.45 kilos at 19:15.
I was still three days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up.
I made pizza on my last slice of Rudolph’s sandwich bread with marinara, skyr, tomato pesto, a sliced hot Italian sausage, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching season 2, episode 2 of Wednesday on Discord with my daughter Astrid. My daughter has the flu and only had it before a few months ago in December. She had influenza twice last year. I advised her to get the flu shot before flu season starts since she’s so prone to getting the virus. As far as I remember I’ve only had the flu a couple of times in my life.
This was a particularly good episode of Wednesday.
Wednesday wakes up at home after having collapsed in convulsions after the last episode. goes to see former Sherriff Galpin in his home and finds dead and horribly dried out. Suddenly a murder of crows come flying out of his mouth and escape the cabin by smashing through the windows. Wednesday touches him to access her psychic powers but they don’t work as she's lost her ability.
It’s prank day at Nevermore and everybody but Wednesday is using their powers to prank other students.
Wednesday finds one of Galpin’s eyes in the room she shares with Enid.
Meanwhile Pugsley is hiding the zombie he brought to life in Eugene’s bee shack. It’s hungry and they try to feed it honey but it spits it out all over them. Pugsley names it Slurp.
Wednesday wants to go see Tyler at the psychiatric hospital to find out if he is connected to his father’s murder but needs a ride and so she poses as Enid when her nerdy driving instructor arrives. She terrorizes him by commandeering the car and driving like a maniac. We see her experience explained in a flashback to when she used to drive the getaway car for her Uncle Fester’s robberies when she was 8. Wednesday meets Tyler’s psychiatrist who approves of her visiting Tyler because he’s been unresponsive and thinks her presence might give him a needed jolt. Tyler is chained to a wall with an electric shock collar which a guard triggers a few times when he lunges at Wednesday. He doesn’t seem to know anything about his father’s death.
Back at Eugene’s bee shack Pugsley is about to enjoy a brain sandwich and offers some to Slurp who greedily eats the whole thing.
When Wednesday returns to Nevermore she discovers that Enid and her boyfriend Bruno have been kidnapped by Wednesday’s mysterious stalker. Wednesday is particularly worried because the last time she had a vision was of standing before Enid’s grave. Wednesday with the help of Thing follows her stalker’s clues to the tower where Enid and Bruno are chained but making out under several blades that are lowering to kill them. Wednesday solves the final clue, the answer to which is The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells and the blades stop falling just millimeters above Enid and Bruno. Wednesday’s stalker reveals herself to be Agnes DeMille, who has invisibility powers. She is an admiring fan so obsessed with Wednesday that she wears her red hair in the same style as her.
Slurp escapes from the bee shack and attacks Wednesday’s driving instructor. He’s eating his brains at the end of the episode.
Agnes is played by Evie Templeton, who was born in Barbados but moved to London when she was 7. She attended the Tring Park School of the Performing Arts. She made her TV debut in Life After Life in 2022 and her film debut the same year in Pinocchio. She co-starred in Lord of Misrule.
August 22, 1996: I started getting modelling bookings for the fall
On Thursday I might have gotten a call from the model coordinator at The Ontario College of Art offering me some September bookings. Then maybe I went downtown and busked.
Friday, 21 August 2026
Billy Barnes
I worked on memorizing the fourth verse of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian and the last verse of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have at least the latter nailed down on Wednesday.
I weighed 91.6 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since August 10.
I played my Martin during song practice and it went out of tune all the time.
Around midday I pulled out the dressers from the east side of my bedroom and steamed the baseboards and the floor.
I weighed 92.15 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.
I weighed 92 kilos at 18:35.
I was still three days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up.
I had a potato with margarine and my last piece of roast pork while watching an interview with Ken Berry about Carol Burnett.
He once had a summer replacement comedy variety show in 1972 called Wow. He found out that he couldn’t carry a show. He already had the utmost respect for Carol but when he discovered how difficult it is to star in a variety show that admiration soared even higher.
When he starred in F-Troop he improvised with prat falls and things like that and it was written into the script that he would do so. Buster Keaton was a friend of Ken’s who he met through his ex-wife Jackie. Buster was not one to offer compliments but one time after watching F-Troop he called Ken up and told him, “That was a good gag last night.” There was no reason for F-Troop to be canceled.
Ken and his wife became good friends with Carol and her husband. She handled her fame gracefully and never was a diva. She was kind to all of her guests and it was hard to be mean to her. She was the star but couldn’t wait to see somebody else get a laugh.
They hired Harvey Korman to direct Mama’s Family because the show had a sketch type feel and Harvey understood sketch comedy.
Lucille Ball had been a beautiful starlet at MGM but when she became a comedian on TV she blew the roof off the business. But Carol took it a step beyond. She was also a great theatrical singer who could fill a theatre with her voice sans microphone. Nobody was more versatile than Carol.
When Ken had been in the army for a year he found out at the last minute about a talent contest on the base and the winner would get to travel to New York and be on the Arlene Francis Soldier Parade Show. He grabbed his ukulele and his tap shoes and went down to the latrine to work out a number with a trick at the end to get applause. He won the contest and went to New York. After the show he got an invitation to join the Third Army Special Services outfit in Atlanta, Georgia. The sergeant who ran the outfit was Leonard Nimoy. Then the All Army Talent Contest came around and Ken won third place and was among the winners who got to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. Leonard sent wires about the upcoming event to casting agents for the big studios. As a result Ken got contacted by both Fox and Universal. Leonard was in on the decision for Ken to go to Universal. They were looking for a replacement for Donald O’Connor in the Francis The Talking Mule series of films. But then Mickey Rooney got the part and so Ken didn’t get a Universal contract after all.
Ken was in The Billy Barnes Revue in 1958 when Lucille Ball came to ask if he’d like to be part of her talent department. At the time she was in charge of Desilu. There were about thirty performers in the stock company and one of them was Majel Barrett, the wife of Gene Rodenberry. Ken met Carol around that time as well when she came to see the show. She was already friends with Billy Barnes and some of the other performers. Carol went back to New York and suggested to her future husband Joe Hamilton that he invite Ken to be a guest on The Garry Moore Show. After that he was one of the co-stars of a TV special called Carol Burnett and Company.
Ken became good friends with his former Sergeant Leonard Nimoy. Leonard starred in the boxing film Kid Monk Baroni in 1952.
Ken guest starred on Dr. Kildare. Richard Chamberlain was a nice guy who used to skateboard around the studio. He got more fan mail than anyone in the history of MGM.
When Ken was between shows he went on the road because he couldn’t afford to stay in town. He did tours, summer stock and dinner theatre. Community theatre paid very well. Just from his guest spots on network TV shows Ken was recognized by someone everywhere he went.
Because his character Captain Parmenter was very clumsy and yet well loved by his men, Ken got a letter of appreciation from a father who told him he’d boosted the confidence of his uncoordinated son.
On the set of The Dick Van Dyke Show there was a sign that read “Nothin Beats Fun!”
Ken says Carl Reiner looked like he imagined god would look as a person. He says Carl told him a story about a guy who dies and goes to Heaven where he meets God. But God is surprised to see him and says, “I don’t remember creating you. What are you?” “I’m a man.” “Man? I don’t remember that creature. I remember the birds but not man. What is it that you do.” So the man starts singing and doing a soft shoe dance and God gets very excited. He asks, “Can you show me how to do that?” He says the moral is that you might do something inconsequential but it could mean everything to some people.
Sometimes Ken would do his own steps for his dance number on The Carol Burnett Show and Earnie Flatt would build the choreography around it. Ken says Toni Kaye from the Ernie Flatt Dancers was as good a dancer as Ann Miller. Ernie had also been the choreographer for Your Hit Parade.
The last time Ken danced professionally was in a show called From the Top that he did with Carol when he was 60.
Fred Astaire was dancing and winning Emmy Awards into his mid-60s. They only dancer who was better was the young Fred Astaire.
Ken says you can’t find a better person than Carol Burnett. She’s the closest thing to an angel anybody ever saw.
Ken played the prince in two TV productions of Once Upon a Mattress.
Ken always wanted to be in motion picture musicals but then the genre died.
The Carol Burnett Show and The Garry Moore Show were run like clockwork. By comparison The Glen Campbell Show was very sloppy.
If you were nasty to any member of Carol’s crew you wouldn’t be invited back.
Ken never worked in any of the Mama’s Family sketches when he was on the show. But he was hired to be Philip the TV movie of Eunice and then he was cast in the Mama’s Family sitcom.
Ken doesn’t like rock and roll.
Billy Barnes was known as the revue master of Hollywood. His revues included Billy Barnes People, Billy Barnes Hollywood, Billy Barnes Party, and Billy Barnes L.A. Barnes wrote the songs “Have I Stayed Too Long at the Fair?” and “Something Cool” that were introduced in the original Billy Barnes Revue. He was the music coordinator for Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. He wrote special material for Carol Burnett, Sonny and Cher, Danny Kaye, Lucille Ball, and The Academy Awards. He wrote the songs for the TV musical adaptation of Pinocchio. He guest starred on three episodes of Mad About You.
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