April 5, 1996: I considered posing for artists to be an artform in itself

Thirty years ago today 

            On Thursday I shaped my body as usual into dynamic, creative poses for artists and art students to draw.

Robert Goulet

            On Friday morning I worked out the chords for verses five to eight and the second chorus of “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian. 

            In my “Les millionaires” Movie Maker project I finished synchronizing the images with the rhythm and the meaning of the lyrics in my photo-video of the song by Serge Gainsbourg. I changed some of the images to black and white and then published it. I watched the whole thing and it looks good. Tomorrow I’ll upload it to YouTube. 

            I weighed 87.75 kilos before breakfast. I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the last of four sessions and it went out of tune during every song. 

            Around midday I painted the second coat of “blue bliss” on the bathroom door and I think two coats are enough. On Tuesday I’ll break out the wall paint and do some touch-ups in places where the blue got away.

            I weighed 88.9 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the early afternoon since March 22. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I just wore my button shirt and no jacket as it was quite comfortable outside. 

            I weighed 88.65 kilos at 18:20. March 21 was the last evening when I was so hard on the scale. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:23. 

            I tried to record from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity the recording of the first Christian and the Lions performance at the El Mocambo but it came out distorted. I tried it with WASAPI and MME and it still sounded bad. I shut down Chrome and Bit Torrent and went back to Windows Direct Sound and it didn’t sound as horrible. I’ll try it that way tomorrow. If it doesn’t work I’ll just mic the speaker again and digitize in that manner. 

            I deleted several images from my hard drive. 

            I boiled a potato, heated my last ten oven fries and topped them with the rest of my chili. I ate while watching season 2, episode 25 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warm-up someone asks Lyle if his wife is a boy or a girl. She meant did she give birth to a boy or a girl. 

            Robert Goulet sings “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” from the 1965 musical of the same name by Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner. Then he sings “There is Always Something There to Remind Me” by Burt Bacharach and Hal David followed by “Didn’t We” by Jimmy Webb. 

            In the first skit Harvey Korman plays someone who’s just woken up with a really bad hangover. There’s a knock and he tells whoever it is to go away but they are persistent and so he opens it and in walks Carol as a parody of a Campfire Girl, called here a Fireside Girl. She’s collecting money to send Fireside Girls to camp. He lies that he has a cold and doesn’t feel well. She says that must be horrible on top of that hangover. He gives her 30 cents to get rid of her but she doesn’t go because she needs his name for the list she’ll be posting of all the tenants and how much they contributed, which she’ll be posting in the lobby. He adds a dollar. She says she saw his party from her window across the courtyard and comments that it was some masquerade party he had last night. He says it wasn’t a masquerade and she asks “Wasn’t that lady supposed to be Lady Godiva?” He puts more cash in her can and she says she promises not to show the picture she took to anyone. He pays her for the picture and then tears it up but then remembers the negative and pays her for that. Then she tells him she’ll be back in April and he starts to strangle her just as another Fireside Girl steps in with a camera and captures the moment. In the end he’s stuffing both their cans with cash. 

            In the second skit Carol is with Imogine Coca as they play two US women vacationing in Rome. Carol is socially adept and gets picked up by a count, leaving Imogine alone in the café. Everyone starts to dance while Imogine sits feeling lonely until a man asks her to dance and she does. But when the dance is over he charges her 10 lire. She sits alone and sings “If Love Were All” by Noel Coward.

            In the third skit Vicki Lawrence and Lyle Waggoner play a married couple and Lyle is a movie star (Vicki is getting more mature roles in this second season, when before she always played teenagers). She says he’s been paying less attention to her and asks if it’s because she’s becoming less beautiful. He says, “No, it’s because I’m becoming more beautiful”. Their maid played by Carol is obsessed with Lyle and can’t take her eyes off of him. Vicki threatens to fire her and finally does. The chauffeur comes in to drive Lyle to the studio. Carol knocks out the chauffeur, takes his uniform and puts on a false moustache. 

            Vicki narrates in song the fairy tale of Cinder Rumple White played by Carol. She has long long hair like Rapunzel. A witch played by Imogine tricks her into eating a poison apple. A knight played by Goulet comes to rescue her but first must defeat a two headed monster and a dragon. When he kisses her he turns into a frog. 

            Robert Goulet was born in Massachusetts to Quebecois parents but was raised in Canada. When he was thirteen his father called him to his deathbed and told him he must sing, then he died. He won a scholarship to the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and made his stage debut in Handel’s Messiah in Edmonton. He worked as a DJ in Edmonton for two years. He played Lancelot in the Broadway production of Camelot in 1960. He made his film debut in the animated feature Gay Purr-ee in 1962. He starred in Honeymoon Hotel, I Deal in Danger, and Underground. He co-starred in Naked Gun Two and a Half. His biggest pop hit was “My Love Forgive Me” in 1964, which reached #16. In 1966 he starred in the TV series Blue Light. He won a Tony for his role in Happy Time in 1968. He played Trapper Pierre on the Canadian version of Howdy Doody. He played himself on several episodes of Mr. Belvedere. He had always thought that he was a Canadian citizen but found out late in life that he wasn’t. After being inducted in Canada’s Walk of Fame he applied for Canadian citizenship and it was approved but not complete until shortly after he died.

April 4, 1996: Brian and I busked on Bloor

Thirty years ago today 

            On Wednesday Brian Haddon and I busked on Bloor, went for lunch, busked some more and then performed on the Fat Albert’s open stage.

Inga Neilsen

            On Thursday morning I started applying Michel Fedrizzi’s melody to the full text of “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian, since Fedrizzi only used about a third of the poem. I’ve done the first four verses and the first chorus. 

            In my “Les millionaires” Movie Maker project I’ve almost finished synchronizing the images in my photo-video with the rhythm and the meaning of the lyrics. I should have it finished tomorrow. 

            I weighed 87.2 kilos before breakfast. I had to skip song practice because I had an appointment with my gastroenterologist at Mount Sinai. 

            I didn’t have to wait long before I was called by the nurse. She said that my CT scan wasn’t as clear as it should have been because of inadequate preparation on my part. I guess I should have started taking the Pico Salax in the morning instead the early afternoon. But I had an appointment to get my teeth cleaned and I didn’t want to start shitting in the hygienist’s chair. Nonetheless they saw it well enough to tell that there was no evidence of cancer. Dr. Croitoru came in and told me they found nothing to be concerned about and even the polyp they removed during my colonoscopy was only an inflammatory polyp, which means it’s not the kind that develops into cancer. They removed it for analysis but if I had never gotten the colonoscopy it wouldn’t have mattered. 

            I weighed 86.9 kilos at 13:20, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since December 16. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back stopped at Freshco where the grapes were all too soft so I didn't buy any. I got two packs of raspberries, some bananas, bacon, hot Genoa salami, half a ham, an Atlantic salmon fillet, eggs, two packs of Full City Dark coffee, a box of spoon sized shredded wheat, and a jar of salsa. 

            I weighed 88.4 kilos at 16:25, the same as last Thursday evening. 

            A few days ago I posted a poem on Facebook and my friend Nick Cushing ran it through an AI program called Suno to make it into a song. I already wrote a melody for it but it’s interesting to hear it done by a robot folksinger. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:52. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then exported to my hard drive various recordings of my band Christian and the Lions and sometimes just me performing at Fat Albert’s. We did “Angeline” a couple of times, “Megaphor” at least twice, “I Saw My Reflection in an Open Wound”, “Wives of the Prophets”, and “Spool of the Moon”. I sang a couple of Leonard Cohen covers as well. 

            I deleted several images from my hard drive. 

            I heated most of the rest of the chili I made a few days ago and had it on top of oven fries while watching season 2, episode 14 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            A woman in the audience asks if she can give Lyle Waggoner a hug. He hugs her then asks her name and she says, “Tiffany Waggoner”. He asks, “Are we related?” and she says, “I’m your sister”.

            Tim Conway’s wife, mother and mother in law were in the audience and either nervously of intentionally he referred to both older women as his mothers in law. 

            The VIP interview is with fried chicken magnate Colonel Flanders. He says he’s produced a chicken with eight legs but could never catch it. He bred another chicken that was two meters tall but it kept putting him in the bucket. 

            Tim Conway does a stand-up routine but is afraid the audience will laugh at him and so he takes the microphone into the dressing room and does it from there. Then he keeps calling Carol up mid-joke to ask her how the audience is reacting. In the end he does a performance of “Strangers in the Night” without singing. 

            The “Carol and Sis” sketch has Chrissie out on a date with an older guy who is about to leave for the Viet Nam War. It’s after 1:00 but Chrissie hasn’t gotten back yet. Carol is worried and keeps waking Roger up. Chrissie comes home and worries Carol more when she tells her they didn’t go to the movie but went to his place to listen to the stereo. She says they might get married when he gets back. Roger is not worried by any of this until Chrissie says that when they get married they’ll move in with them. 

            Vicki does a song and dance with the Ernie Flatt dancers, singing “American Boys” by Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent, which was a minor hit for Petula Clark.

            Carol and Tim play a couple about to get married who have decided to paint their apartment themselves and save $200, which would be $2000 now. But they not only make a mess but continuously injure one another in slapstick moments. Carol gets a bucket stuck on her head and so they have to go to the hospital. Carol doesn’t want to be seen that way so Tim puts her wedding veil over the bucket.

            There’s a parody of The Night They Raided Minsky’s. Tim Conway does a magic act and thinks the crowd is going wild over it but there is a burlesque dancer performing behind him. 

            Harvey is a con man and Vicki is his girl. He sells Tim Conway a magic carnation that will make Vicki kiss him. He buys it but she slaps his face. Harvey tells him he’s doing it wrong and sells the carnation to him twice more with the same result. 

            The burlesque dancers can’t do their act because the star Autumn Levy keeps fainting. Carol is told she has to fill her place, even though she’s not a dancer, especially not a burlesque dancer. Harvey and the dancers sing "Take Ten Terrific Girls (but only nine costumes)" by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams from The Night They Raided Minsky’s. Carol is wearing a nude coloured body suit so she looks somewhat naked. 

            Autumn Levy was played by Inga Neilsen, who was tall and awkward as a child and so she began taking ballet lessons at the American School of Dance to learn poise. She showed a natural talent for dance and earned a scholarship. She made her film debut in Scaramouche at the age of 12. She became a showgirl in Vegas and was named Showgirl of the Year four times. She was often cast in movies and TV shows for much shorter comedians to ogle. She played Gymnasia in A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum. She appeared many times on The Carol Burnett Show from 1969 to 1973 to serve as a comical contrast to the plainness that was part of Carol’s schtick.

April 3, 1996: I hosted my open stage as always at the Gladstone Hotel

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday evening as always I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of the Gladstone Hotel.

Marilyn Horne

            On Wednesday morning I finished working out the chords for Michel Fedrizzi’s adaptation of “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian. But the original text is almost three times longer and so now I want to apply that melody to the full poem. 

            In my “Les millionaires” Movie Maker project I continued synchronizing the images in my photo-video with the rhythm and the meaning of the lyrics. I’m about five-sixths of the way through the song so I might have it finished tomorrow. 

            I weighed 87.25 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the third of four sessions and it went out of tune during all but one song. 

            I finished painting the second coat of “blue bliss” on the bathroom door frame. I don’t think it will need a third coat. On Friday I’ll put the second coat on the door. 

            I weighed 88.55 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on the way back to buy seven bags of red grapes. I did a price match with No Frills at $3.90 a kilo. Priscilla the cashier tipped me that the grapes at the Real Canadian Super Store will be cheap starting tomorrow and so I can do another price match then. 

            I weighed 87.45 kilos at 18:35. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:15. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity a performance of Christian and the Lions at Fat Albert’s of my songs “Seven Veils of Armour” and “I Saw My Reflection in an Open Wound” featuring Yehudah Cullman on cello, Tom Smarda on Stratocaster and Steve Lowe on acoustic guitar. There are also two solo performances by Tom of his songs “You’re Always Yourself in Your Head” and “This is My Prayer”. This digitization came through clean, though I had to first shut down Bit Torrent so it wasn’t a memory drain on Audacity. Tomorrow I’ll record side 2. 

            I created folders for some photos in my SSD and changed the names of several images in my hard drive. 

            I heated a bag of frozen samosas and had them with sweet chili sauce and a glass of Creemore while watching season 2, episode 12 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warm-up Carol says she brushes her teeth six times a day and hasn’t had a cavity in ten years. 

            A woman asks about the two weapons on stage. Carol tells her they are shotgun mics so , “You can relax and uncross your legs”. 

            In the first sketch Harvey Korman plays the president of the US in a kind of video greeting card with his wife, two daughters, and son in law. They are trying so hard to look authentic that they come across as fake. To try to show they aren’t racist they introduce their maid Minerva. 

            Eileen Farrell sings “Kiss Him Now” by Jerry Herman from the musical Dear World. 

            In the second skit Carol plays a journalist who’s come to interview Hugh Handsome the movie star. She is cool and aloof until she meets him and then she continuously faints during the interview. He says he has the same effect on himself and swooned twice earlier while shaving. After she leaves he can get comfortable. He goes behind a screen, removes his elevator shoes, the padding, his hairpiece, and the girdle. He comes from behind the screen and he’s Bob Hope. Carol tells everyone to watch Bob’s special on Thursday night and Bob says, “And uncross your legs”. 

            Marilyn Horne sings Urbain's aria ("Non, non, non") from Giacomo Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots. 

            Carol, Eileen, and Marilyn play an operatic version of The Three Little Pigs (but not made up to look like pigs) while Harvey plays the wolf also as human and more like a silent movie villain. 

            Carol, Eileen, and Marilyn (done up to look a lot like Mae West in She Done Him Wrong) sing “Hey Big Spender” by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields from the musical Sweet Charity. Then the whole cast and the guests sing “What Child is This?” by William Chatterton Dix to the tune of “Greensleeves”; “Here We Come a Wassailing”; “Good King Wenceslas” by John Mason Neale; “God Rest ye Merry Gentlemen”; and “Angels We Have Heard On High” by James Chadwick. 

            Marilyn Horne at the age of 13 joined the Roger Wagner Chorale. In high school she was part of the St. Luke’s Episcopal Church Choir of Long Beach, which often performed in Hollywood films. In 1954 at the age of 20 she dubbed Dorothy Dandridge’s singing voice in Carmen Jones. Igor Stravinsky invited her to perform at the 1956 Venice Festival. She sang with the Gelsenkirchen Opera for three years. She debuted at the Royal Opera House in 1964 and La Scala in 1969 where she received a seven minute mid-act ovation. She debuted at The Met in 1970. She sang “Simple Gifts” at Bill Clinton’s inauguration. She teaches voice at the Music Academy of the West.

April 2, 1996: I don't remember where I worked but I know I did a good job

Thirty years ago today 

            On Monday I probably posed for drawings, paintings or both at one or more schools or art clubs. I don't remember but I know I did a good job.