June 7, 1996: I performed at Spit Fridays in the Cameron

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday evening after work I performed on the Spit Fridays open stage in the back room of the Cameron, hosted by the Leslie Spit Treeo.

Jenna McMahon

            On Friday morning I worked out the chords for the intro and the first line of “L'anguille (The Eel)” by Boris Vian. The only chord that seems to fit for the end of the line is strumming the guitar with the strings open. I was trying to figure out what to name it and did a web search. I found that it’s technically E minor 11 but it depends on what chord it follows. In this case it comes after F7 but I’ll just call it Em11 anyway. 

            I compared the set of lyrics I already had for “Les anthropophages” (The Cannibals) by Serge Gainsbourg with the lyrics provided on the Dalida YouTube channel. I went through the first two verses and the chorus and it looks like the Dalida text makes more sense so far. I’ll finish that tomorrow and then start memorizing the song. 

            I weighed 89 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since May 23.

            I played my Martin during song practice for the third of four sessions and it went out of tune for every song.

            Around midday I finished applying the first coat of “blue bliss” to my future bathroom mirror frame. On Sunday I’ll start the second and hopefully final coat of blue. 

            I weighed 90.45 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 89.75 kilos at 17:55. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:32. 

            I finished digitizing side 2 of the cassette tape that I started yesterday of a recording session at Mike’s place. There was an additional take of “Megaphor” but the only different song was my “Next State of Grace”. 

            In Movie Maker I imported season 7, episode 9 of The Carol Burnett Show. I isolated and published the song “Born to Hand Jive” written by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey for the 1971 musical Grease, and performed on The Carol Burnett Show by Vicki Lawrence and Carlton Johnson. This was long before the film version and Vicki and Carlton actually did it better. I’m going to try to upload the video to YouTube and hopefully there won’t be any copyright problems. 

            I heated some oven fries, and had them with gravy along with two chicken drumsticks while watching season 8, episode 12 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warmup someone asks if Carol Burnett is her real name. She says it’s really Ben Gazarra. 

            Someone asks Carol what’s her favourite perfume. She says she wears a cologne named Rive Gauche by Yves St Laurent and she combines it with Raid. 

            A girl asks if she had a crush on Jerry Hall at UCLA and Carol says they used to go steady at Hollywood High School. The girl says she’s Jerry’s daughter. Carol says, “You could have been mine!” and then she goes into the audience to give her a hug and a kiss. 

            Ken Berry does a song and dance with the Ernie Flatt Dancers in turn of the 20th century costume. He’s telling the losers in the barber shop how to win a woman and sings “Razzle Dazzle” by Fred Ebb and John Kander from the 1975 musical Chicago. 

            There’s a parody of the disaster movie Airport 1975. Carol plays a flight attendant named Nancy. The passengers include two singing nuns known as the Smothers Sisters (played by Bonnie Evans and Vicki Lawrence) and silent screen star Nora Desmond who remembers being a star but can barely remember her own name (Carol’s parody of Gloria Swanson). A small plane crashes into the cockpit and the pilot and co-pilot are sucked out of the plane. Harvey says he’s going to blow up the plane and says he knows bombs because he used to run Friday Night on ABC. Nancy tells him he’s in the wrong movie so he apologizes and sits down. Nancy’s boyfriend Murdoch (Carl Reiner) calls her and is more concerned with their recent fight than the disaster. Murdoch reaches the plane by trampoline and successfully lands it. 

            Vicki sings “I Gotta Be Me” (by Walter Marks from the 1968 musical Golden Rainbow) while removing her eyelashes, nails, wig, false breasts, and teeth. 

            Harvey and Carol play poor expectant parents with Carol looking very pregnant and Harvey singing a parody of Paul Anka’s “You’re Having My Baby” until Carol punches him in the face and sends him through the wall. 

            Harvey and Carol play a married couple having a passive aggressive argument. She gives him the cold shoulder and when he asks what’s wrong she keeps saying “Nothing!” Then after a while he does the same to her. They finally come together and think they’ve worked out their problem but what the problem was is never mentioned. When he asks what they were fighting about she returns to “Nothing!” 

            There’s a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet with Ken as Hamlet, Carl Reiner as the ghost of Hamlet’s father. The palace guard are all scantily clad females and they sing “Something stinks in the state of Denmark, Something’s rotten to the core, Something stinks to the heavens, It may be Maurice Evans” (a reference to his famous turn as Hamlet). The ghost of Hamlet’s father comes out and all the girls gather round him, sitting on his lap and he sings about how happy he is to be dead because he never had it so good. Harvey plays King Claudius and Vicki plays Queen Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. She finds Hamlet brooding and sings, “Don’t you love your mama anymore?” He sings how of course he still loves her, and they dance. He sits and plays the harpsichord. Ophelia approaches him (played by Carol). She wants romance but he wants revenge. She sings a torch song about the situation. She falls into the harpsichord and he says, “Get thee to a nunnery” and rolls the harpsichord away. Hamlet talks to his father but the ghost is busy chasing the palace guards around. Claudius tells him to take his father’s advice and give Ophelia a tumble in the hey nonny nonny. Hamlet confesses he doesn’t know how. Claudius is shocked and sings, “There’s No One Who Can Do It Like a Dane” in a kind of Noel Coward type song. Hamlet is convinced and calls for Ophelia. He sings he’s ready for her and she sings “I Never Had it So Good”. Everybody sings “All is well in the state of Denmark. Nothing is rotten anymore”. 

            One of the writers on the Carol Burnett Show for 120 episodes was Jenna McMahon. She opened a playhouse in West Hollywood and was teaching acting when she met her writing partner Dick Clair. They formed a comedy act and performed on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Merv Griffin Show. They wrote for The Bob Newhart Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Soap (for which they were nominated for Emmy Awards). She co-created the sitcoms It’s a Living, The Facts of Life, and Mama’s Family. They co-wrote and co-produced the TV special Carol, Carl, Whoopi, and Robin. She produced the short-lived sitcom Julie, starring Julie Andrews.

June 6, 1996: I served as an art exam

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I likely posed for art class examinations.

Maggie Smith

            On Thursday morning I searched for the chords to “L'anguille (The Eel)” by Boris Vian and found one set on Boite a chanson (Song Box). I’ll find out tomorrow if those fit for me. Meanwhile I worked a few chords out for the intro. 

            I published “He’s a Giggle Oh My Gigolo”, my translation of “Il est Rigolo mon gigolo” by Serge Gainsbourg on my Christian’s Translations blog and posted the lyrics on Facebook. I moved on to the my next unfinished translation of a Gainsbourg song and that’s “Les anthropophages” (The Cannibals). I listened to the audio a couple of times on YouTube but I decided to not try to memorize the song until I’m sure I have the right lyrics. I already had a set but I might have just written them down as I heard them years ago and my ear for French is not that dependable. The video features Serge Gainsbourg, Dalida, and Petula Clark and it’s on the official Dalida YouTube channel. The uploader also added the lyrics and so they might be correct but I’d better do my translation before my memorization just to be sure it makes sense. 

            I weighed 89.55 kilos before breakfast. 

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

            I was behind on my journal and so I worked on getting caught up. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on the way back. I bought seven bags of grapes, two packs of raspberries, some bananas, a pack of chicken drumsticks, a large can of Full City Dark coffee, and a jar of marinara sauce. I did a price match on the grapes with the Real Canadian Superstore’s price of $4.39 a kilo. I got $3 off on the coffee with my Scene card but it took me a while to find it on my phone. The cashier was just preparing me a temporary Scene card when I found it by typing “Wallet”, which is where the Scene card is kept. Next time I’ll just make sure Wallet is on display before going there. 

            I weighed 90.25 kilos at 18:20. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 20:11. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity the first 20 minutes of side 2 of the tape I digitized last night. This was a recording session at Mike’s place of my songs “Sleep in the Snow”, “Megaphor”, “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy”, and “Seven Shades of Blues”. Mike played drums while I played my Kramer and sang. I’ll probably finish digitizing that tape tomorrow. 

            I had my last potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching season 8, episode 10 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warmup someone asks Carol who’s her favourite rock star and she answers “Rock Hudson”. 

            Carol has just noticed someone in the audience she wants everyone to applaud: “One of the finest comedians I’ve ever known: Alice Ghostly”. 

            Someone asks if her husband ever comes to see the show. Carol says, “No, he can’t stand me!” Her husband Joe Hamilton was the producer of the show. They didn’t divorce for another ten years. 

            In a parody of the movie Born Free Carol and Harvey play a couple living in Africa. Harvey is a game warden and on his way to the bush tells Carol that she has to release her pet lion Simba into the wild. He leaves and then Carol calls for Simba, who is Tim Conway in a lion costume. She says she has to talk with him and so he sits at the table and pours some tea. he looks at the paper and roars with disappointment because the Lions lost again. She tells him he must go back in the wild to live among his own kind. He feels her forehead to see if she’s sick. He wants lunch and so she gives him a raw steak, saying his going to have to get used to it. He cooks it in the microwave. She tries to lure him into the jungle by showing him a magazine centerfold of a lioness. He’s excited about her but still won’t leave. Harvey returns home and joins Carol in insisting that Simba leave. Simba slowly makes his way to pack his things, puts on his travelling clothes, his bowler hat, and then walks out the door. 

            Dame Maggie Smith comes out wearing the exact same glittering black pantsuit as Carol. At the time she was on tour with the play Private Lives by Noel Coward. Carol tells Maggie she’s so British. Maggie agrees that she’s British. Carol says she’d like to be Maggie Smith just once. They sing a duet of “You’re So London” by Mike Nichols and Ken Welch for a duet between Julie Andrews and Carol in the 1962 show Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall. 

            Harvey and Tim play two sergeants alone for three years on a remote island with the task of spotting enemy planes of which they’ve seen none. Harvey says it’s driving him mad. Then one of their own planes drops their bag of mail in which Harvey receives a notice that he’s been promoted to lieutenant. Harvey immediately starts ordering Tim around. He has to line up for inspection and then march in parade while somehow holding both ends of a banner naming the 71st Infantry Division Observation Corps. Tim discovers there is a woman named Corporal April Calloway on the island and brings her in. Harvey tells Tim to prepare the officer’s mess for two tonight. Tim says he can’t do that since as a corporal she’s only allowed to mess with enlisted men. 

            Carol and Harvey play Helen and Martin who are about to receive as a guest their old college chum Karen Burns, who is now a movie star. Karen arrives played by Maggie, but Helen and Martin find it impossible to treat Karen like their old friend because they believe Hollywood changes people. They think that Karen is condescending to visit them and refuse to listen to Karen trying to express how much she’s been looking forward to it. They offer Karen a drink but she says she doesn’t drink so early in the day. They don’t believe her and urge her to stop pretending she hasn’t changed. Helen asks who she’s living with but Karen says she lives alone. Helen has read that living with someone is now the “in” thing in Hollywood. Karen insists that she lives alone with her two pets but Helen is offended that Karen won’t tell what she believes is the truth to her old friend. Helen says Karen must have felt awful when she didn’t win the Oscar. Karen says she did win the Academy Award but Helen says, “Not that year, the other year”. “But I was only nominated once”. “But didn’t you feel awful when you didn’t get a second nomination?” “No”. Helen says she felt humiliated and could hardly hold her head up around the neighbourhood. Karen tells Helen she’s sorry and she’ll try harder next time. Helen asks to see Karen’s face lift scars. Karen says she hasn’t had a face lift but Helen is sure everyone in Hollywood has had a face lift. Martin tells Karen he wanted to get her some marijuana but Helen was afraid they’d get arrested. Karen tries to tell them she doesn’t smoke but they’re too busy arguing with each other on the subject. Finally Karen says loudly, “I don’t smoke marijuana!” But Helen and Martin take that to mean she’s a pill popper. Martin says, “You can tell us! We read Valley of the Dolls!” Karen insists she doesn’t take pills and they think that means she’s hooked on the hard stuff. Finally Karen shrugs and realizes the only way out is to act like everything they believe about her is true and then adds more, such as depraved orgies and countless drug arrests. She says she’s had an affair with Paul Newman and urges them not to tell Joanne Woodward. She adds she’s also been with Robert Redford, Steve McQueen and Mickey Rooney. She begs their forgiveness and pretends to leave in tears. 

            Vicki is being interrogated by two cops about a murder. Her alibi is that she was taking a walk and found an unlocked house where there was no one home but there were three bowls of porridge on the table. She continues with the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. But the cops tell her there was no house in that area. She says she’ll tell them the truth this time, that she put on her little red riding hood and headed for her grandmother’s house. 

            Carol as The Charwoman comes to clean up on an empty theatre stage. She sings “Oh To Be a Movie Star” by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick from the 1966 musical The Apple Tree. In her fantasy the dancers sing and tap about their “Hubba Hubba Honey”, then the Charwoman as a scantily clad starlet descends a stairway and sings “Cuddle Up a Little Closer” by Karl Hoschna and Otto Harbach from the 1908 musical The Three Twins. When the fantasy is over the Charwoman finishes “Oh to Be a Movie Star”. 

            Maggie Smith started studying at The Oxford Playhouse at the age of 16 and made her stage debut there at 17 as Viola in Twelfth Night. In a 1964 production of Othello she was knocked out by Lawrence Olivier when he struck her across the face. She made her Broadway debut in New Faces of 1956. She made her film debut in Child in the House in 1956. She made her TV debut in Much Ado About Nothing in 1967. She starred in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (for which she won an Oscar), Travels With My Aunt (Oscar nominated), Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing, A Room with a View (Oscar nominated), The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Tea with Mussolini, Gosford Park (Oscar nominated), Quartet, and The Lady in the Van. She co-starred in Nowhere to Go, Othello (Oscar nominated), Go to Blazes, Young Cassidy, The Honey Pot, Hot Millions, California Suite (for which she won an Academy Award), Murder by Death, The Missionary, Clash of the Titans, Better Late Than Never, A Private Function, Lily in Love, The Secret Garden, Hook, Sister Act, Washington Square, The Last September, Curtain Call, Ladies in Lavender, Keeping Mum, From Time to Time, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, My Old Lady, and The Miracle Club. She played Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films. She played Violet Crawley on Downton Abbey (winning 3 Emmys). She’s been nominated for six Oscars. She’s won 4 BAFTA Best Actress awards, the most for any actress. She won an Emmy for My House in Umbria. She was nominated for three Tony Awards (Private Lives, Night and Day) and won one for Lettice and Lovage. She was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth in 1990.

June 5, 1996: I posed for artists and then performed as a poet

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I probably posed somewhere and then performed on the open stages of Fat Albert’s and the Art Bar reading series.

Gwendoline Christie

            On Wednesday at 1:45 before bed I was finally caught up in my journal for the first time in eight days. 

            After yoga I finished revising my translation of “L'anguille (The Eel)” by Boris Vian. On Thursday I’ll search for the chords. 

            I uploaded “Il est Rigolo mon gigolo” (He’s a Giggle Oh My Gigolo) by Serge Gainsbourg to my Christian’s Translations blog and finished preparing it for publication. Tomorrow I’ll add the YouTube file, publish the song and then post my translation on Facebook. Then I’ll move on to the my next unfinished translation of a Gainsbourg song. 

            I weighed 89.3 kilos before breakfast. 

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

            Around midday I painted the first coat of “blue bliss” on the area directly around the second of four floral reliefs on the frame of my future bathroom mirror and half of the other two. On Friday I might have the first coat of blue finished. 

            I weighed 89.9 kilos before lunch. I had a toasted Montreal style bagel with peanut butter and four-year-old cheddar, plus a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back stopped at Freshco to buy grapes. Since this was the last day they were on sale there weren’t many good ones left but I got five bags. They were heavily covered with insecticide so I’m going to have to give them a good washing.

            I weighed 89.4 kilos at 18:00, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since May 26. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:47. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and extracted to my hard drive a recording session at Mike’s place of my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy”, “Me and Gravity”, “The Princess and the Pea Happy Song” and “Paranoiac Utopia”. This side of the tape has just me on vocals and guitar and Mike on drums and bass. The bass is only on “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy”. I’ll digitize side 2 tomorrow. It has Brian Haddon accompanying me on synthesizer.

            I made pizza on two halves of a Montreal style bagel with olive paste, half a burger on each bagel, and each topped with marinara, tomato pesto, and four-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager after meeting my daughter to watch episode 3 of Wednesday on Discord. 

            While exploring the basement headquarters of the Nightshade Society at Nevermore Academy, Wednesday is captured by that group and tied to a chair. They are all masked but Wednesday recognizes Bianca and Xavier’s voices. Xavier suggests they let her join but she declines. Bianca says to untie her but she reveals that she already untied herself five minutes ago. As she leaves she tells them they are amateurs who give kidnapping a bad name. A community outreach festival is held in Jericho to ease the tensions between the Normie community and the students of Nevermore. Everybody will be dressed in 17th Century period costumes to honour the Pilgrim founding father of the town of Jericho, Jericho Crackstone. It turns out that Jericho’s biggest source of income is the Nevermore Academy. Wednesday learns that the Pilgrim Meeting House in town is not the original one. She finds out the location in the woods of the ruin of the original and goes there with Thing. When she touches the door she has a vision of the witch trial of her ancestor Goody Addams (also played by Jenna Ortega). Goody is thrown into the meeting house where the other victims are imprisoned. Jericho sets fire to the building but Goody can’t save the others because they have been chained to the floor. They tell her she has to escape as she is the only hope for the future. Wednesday goes back to the fair and has Thing sabotage the unveiling of the statue of Jericho Crackstone. It is engulfed in flames and melts where it stands. The principal knows Wednesday is behind it but has no proof. Wednesday confronts her because she admits she knows what Crackstone did. She says she wants to heal the old wounds. Enid arranges a date with Ajax and thinks she’s been stood up but what happened is Ajax was temporarily turned to stone by a Gorgon. 

            Principal Larissa Weems is played by Gwendoline Christie, who worked as a fashion model before graduating from Drama Centre London in 2005. She appeared in a series of mostly nude photos called Bunny between 2002 and 2008. She made her film debut in the short film The Time Surgeon in 2007. She made her feature film debut in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus in 2009. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance as Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones. She won an Emmy for her guest appearance on Severance. She played Lucifer in The Sandman series. She co-starred in the second season of Top of the Lake. She co-starred in Wizards versus Aliens, The Darkest Minds, Welcome to Marwen, Robin and the Hoods, and After His Death. She starred in Flux Gourmet, In Fabric, She played Captain Phsma the first female villain in the Star Wars franchise in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. 

June 4, 1996: I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy open stage at the Gladstone

Thirty years ago today 

            On Tuesday night as always I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of the Gladstone Hotel, at 1214 Queen Street West.