Agnes Nixon

            On Thursday after midnight I went over my mattress with a lint roller and a few bedbugs got stuck or crushed. I also checked the curtains between the bedroom and the living room and the one on the bedroom side close to my bed had a few bedbugs on it. My steaming them didn’t seem to do much good but that’s perhaps because I used the pointed stream attachment that shoots out a narrow stream and not the wider one that I use to steam the mattress. I’ll try that on Friday. I went to bed at 1:30 and didn’t notice any bedbugs probably because I slept well. I got up at 5:00 as usual and after yoga found some bedbugs stuck to the carpet tape and some crawling on the walls. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian and ran through singing and playing it in French. Tomorrow I’ll start revising my translation. 

            I finished comparing the Turboscribe transcription with the transcription I made a few years ago of Jacques Dutronc singing “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) by Serge Gainsbourg. The Turboscribe transcription makes more sense. I sang along with the audio once and tomorrow I’ll start memorizing the song. 

            I weighed 90.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            I had a date to meet my friend Brian Haddon at Christie and Bloor but while I was getting ready to go I checked my backpack and found a couple of bedbug nests. I used hot water and an old toothbrush to try to destroy them. I saw a bedbug sink and disappear into the foam padding at the back. I had to leave without checking thoroughly, so when I met Brian I told him I couldn’t hug him. 

            We went to Pour Boys on Manning where they didn’t have Creemore on tap even though their website said they did. We shared a pitcher of some kind of natural lager that was okay. He had pad Thai and I had a chicken bacon wrap with fries. I think they probably know how to make pad Thai better than wraps.

            Brian announced that he’d finally retired from modelling at The Ontario College of Art and Design University but he’ll continue posing for some private groups. 

            We’ve made a date to meet on September 22 at The Crown and Dragon before my dental implant surgery on September 25. 

            I’m going to call the city tomorrow and get them to force the landlord to treat the building for bedbugs. 

            I took a siesta at 17:15 and got up at 18:45. 

            I weighed 91.15 kilos at 19:15. 

            I had a potato with gravy and my last two chicken drumsticks while watching a video compilation of the question and answer session on The Carol Burnett Show. 

            A redhead sitting with another in the audience says they’ve come to the conclusion that redheads make better lovers. “We were wondering what’s your opinion?” Carol leans forward to show her dark roots and says, “I have no idea”. 

            Someone asks Carol if she plays bridge. She says she doesn’t and right now she’s only mastering checkers, but it’s coming. 

            A woman points to another woman across the aisle and asks, “Is that lady Maude?” Carol gets the other woman to stand up and she really does look a lot like Bea Arthur, who starred in Maude and later in The Golden Girls. She says, “I’m beginning to believe it myself! They mobbed me at the studio for autographs and I was kissed by the most darling little man! I could sing a song for the little lady from New York!” Carol says, “You wanna sing? Okay, c’mon up!” She comes up and Carol asks her name. She says “Terry McCann”. “What do you want to sing?” The woman did not seem like an amateur at all and was totally comfortable on stage when she said, “’You Made Me Love You’ in the key of G!” She is a very good singer and even dances a bit. Carol dances up to her and Terry puts her arm around her as they sing together. They sound great together until the end when Carol knew a different ending and they didn’t mesh. Terry says, “You screwed it up!” 

            A guy says he represents a small faction of students from the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic and they feel that Carol has one of the greatest looking spines they’ve ever seen. Carol says, “Oh, you like my back? Well that’s half of it!” 

            A 14 year old asks for a kiss and when Carol gives him one he says, “I’m gonna faint!” 

            Someone asks for Carol’s Tarzan yell and Carol says she doesn’t know if she can do it because she just shaved her chest. Of course she does it. 

            Carol introduces someone she says is nicer than he is talented and he’s the most talented actor in the world. She points out Laurence Olivier, who gets the first standing ovation anyone has ever gotten on the show. 

            A man with a pompadour asks Carol if she’ll give him a big hug and a kiss for $1000 in cash. She beckons him up with her index finger. She hugs and kisses him and he gives her an oversized fake $1000 bill.

            A teenager asks for Carol’s autograph and Carol invites her up but Beth has a whole stack of autograph books belonging to herself and her friends. Carol signs “Beth” in Craig’s book and adds a note apologizing. 

            Someone asks about Carol’s stay at The Rehearsal Club. It was a hotel for young women in the theatre. Carol says it was great and they borrowed each other’s clothes. 

            There are twenty New Zealanders in the audience and one of them says they all love her. 

            Two cub scouts give Carol a plaque making her an honorary den mother. 

            A guy says he rented Carol’s movie Pete and Tilly and showed it in his basement for seven straight nights, but he lost $50 because nobody came. 

            Someone asks Carol if she’s as foxy as Farrah Fawcett. Carol says, How can you ask that question?” Then someone asks Carol for her Tarzan yell and she does it, then says, “Do that Farrah!”

            Carol says the creator of All My Children, Agnes Nixon is back stage but she won’t reveal any secrets. 

            Agnes Nixon went to Northwestern University with Cloris Leachman, Paul Lynde, Charlton Heston, and Charlotte Rae. She graduated in 1944. Her first job in radio was producing and writing the soap opera The Woman in White. She was a writer for As the World Turns and the head writer for Search for Tomorrow. She co-created Guiding Light in 1952. She was head writer for 1919 episodes and wrote 253. In one episode a character gets a pap test and it inspired millions of women to get pap tests. She created One Life to Live in 1968, which broke free from the conventional WASPy soap opera and dealt with more controversial themes. There was a Jewish character, the first black lead characters, and interracial romance. There was also broad comedy. She wrote 235 episodes. She created All My Children in 1970, which started with half hour episodes for the first 7 years. When the network wanted her to expand it to an hour she only agreed on the condition that they stop recording over the tapes. She wrote 574 episodes. She was executive producer of 1001 episodes. Ground breaking themes included the Vietnam war, the anti-war movement, homosexuality, and AIDS. It’s her hand that opens the photo album at the beginning of each episode. She wrote 301 episodes of Another World. She wrote the memoir: My Life to Live: How I Became the Queen of the Soaps When Men Rule the Airwaves in 2017. She co-created Loving in 1983 and The City in 1995. Her soaps featured several ground breaking storylines for daytime TV such as the first story about the Vietnam war, the first abortion, and the first lesbian kiss. She won five Emmy Awards.

September 4, 1996: I went to some high schools to get modelling work

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I went to Central Technical School and to Northern Secondary School to line up some bookings from the art teachers. That night was the first Fat Albert’s open stage after the summer break so I went there and performed.

Thandiwe Newton

            On Wednesday after midnight I put some more two-sided carpet tape around the edges of my mattress. I went to bed at 1:30. I woke up at 2:30 and killed a bedbug. I got up to pee then went back to sleep until 3:30 and killed another bedbug. I got up to pee and went back to sleep until 4:00, then went back to sleep until the 5:00 alarm. After yoga I found a few bedbugs stuck to the tape and a few babies crawling on the walls. 

            I worked out the chords for the second verse, the second chorus and most of the last verse of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian. All that’s remaining is one line repeated three times so I’ll probably have that done tomorrow. 

            I finished typing out the Turboscribe transcription I downloaded yesterday of Jacques Dutronc singing “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) by Serge Gainsbourg. I compared the transcription that I’d made of the first verse years ago to that of Turboscribe and the recent one is more correct, except that it got one word wrong. It had “loyaux” when it should have been “loyoux”. I’ll compare the transcriptions of the other verses tomorrow. 

            I weighed 90.5 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since August 12. 

            I played my Kramer for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            I put carpet tape on top of a bedbug nest on the wall near my bed and over some depressions nearby that looked like potential nests. I steamed the curtains that hang between the bedroom and the living room. 

            I weighed 92.3 kilos before lunch. I took a siesta at 14:30 as usual and thought that I woke up half an hour late. I brushed my teeth and thought that it was too late for a bike ride downtown but got ready to leave for a ride to Ossington and Bloor. Then I looked at my phone and saw that it was only 16:00 and not 17:00 as I’d thought. I had slept until 15:30 thinking it was 16:30 and so I had time to ride downtown after all. I left just after a thunder shower and the sun had come out but it clouded over again and I was feeling a few drops as I headed east on Bloor. It started very lightly raining at around Spadina but not enough to take seriously until Queens Park. I headed south and the rain kept on teasing but I was almost home and thinking I was going to dodge the storm. I was at Dufferin and Queen when the storm dropped. There was a tree that had been knocked down and blown under the railroad tracks at Dufferin. The cars were crunching over it but I couldn’t, so I got off my bike and walked over it. I got soaked in the few blocks between Dufferin and my place. 

            I weighed 92.85 kilos at 15:55 before I took the bike ride. 

            I weighed 92.25 at 17:10. 

            I got caught up in my journal for pretty much the first time this summer. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, potato wedge fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching season 2, episode 3 of Wednesday with my daughter Astrid on Discord. 

            Wednesday burgles the cottage where her parents are staying in order to steal back Goody Addams’ book because she thinks it holds the key to her getting her psychic powers back. But her mother Morticia’s powers are fully functional and she catches her. She tells Wednesday the book only provides shortcuts and so she can’t have it back. 

            Pugsley’s pet zombie Slurp is starting to regenerate a brain and can almost speak. Pugsley and Eugene think it’s because they’ve been feeding him but it’s really because of the meal of fresh brains he had at the end of episode 2 when he killed the driving instructor in the woods. 

            Wednesday’s devoted fan Agnes uses her invisibility powers to get the late sheriff Galpin’s phone for her. Wednesday learns from the phone that Galpin had a cabin near Camp Jericho. The Nevermore Students happen to be going for a camping trip to Camp Jericho and of course she didn’t plan on joining them until now. 

            Wednesday catches Pugsley dragging a coffin and he lies that it contains fireworks for the camping trip but he’s really bringing Slurp along. 

            Gomez and Morticia come along as chaperones and their tent looks like a smaller version of their gothic house. 

            A youth cadet group led by the cadet master Ron Kruger arrives and it seems the Nevermore group and the cadets were double booked for the camp that weekend. Wednesday suggests they engage in a competition for use of the camp with the losers going home. Each team has to capture a zephyr and place it at the top of a tower at the end of the course. Kruger seems well schooled in the powers of the Nevermore students. He has the cadets wear headphones so they can’t be manipulated by Bianca or the other Sirens. One of the cadets uses an arrow to shoot off Ajax’s hat to reveal his Gorgon snake hair and cause him to turn one of his own teammates to stone. The cadets use teargas to hold back the werewolves Enid and Bruno. Eugene overwhelms the cadets with a bee attack and Wednesday walks unharmed through both the bees and the tear gas to capture the zephyr. But a cadet has already captured their zephyr and he’s way ahead of Wednesday and already climbing the tower. Wednesday shoots a crossbow bolt carrying a line at the tower from a hill and rides the line as a zip line to the tower, kicks the cadet as she’s swinging in and plants the zephyr to win the competition for the Outcasts. 

            But Kruger is a sore loser and plots to capture the camp anyway that night. 

            The campers and Morticia sing “Bad Moon Rising” around the campfire. The music for this show is very retro. 

            Wednesday and Thing go to Galpin’s cabin. She finds evidence that someone or something named L.O.I.S. is targeting outcasts. 

            Wednesday needs Goody’s book to help her get her powers back and so she goes back to her mother and challenges her to a blindfolded duel in the woods. Wednesday wears a silver heart and Morticia a red one. The first to break the other’s hear wins. If Wednesday wins she gets the book but if Morticia wins she burns it. 

            Kruger leads his cadets into the sleeping camp but Kruger trips Pugsley’s fireworks alarm and stumbles into Pugsley's and Eugene’s tent where his brains are eaten by Slurp. Slurp grabs an axe and tries to kill Gomez in the shower but Pugsley stops him. Morticia wins the duel just as Slurp is about to attack her but Wednesday throws her sword and impales Slurp to a tree. 

            The authorities arrive and take custody of Slurp while Wednesday sees the red eyed raven land on the shoulder of a cloaked figure in the woods. 

            A new patient/prisoner arrives at Willow Hill. It’s Marilyn Thornhill who seems happy about it.

            Dr. Fairburn, the head psychiatrist at Willow Hill is played by Thandiwe Newton. She is half Zimbabwean and half English. She was born in London but lived in Zambia as a child until political unrest forced her family back to the UK when she was 3. She studied dance at London’s Art Education School until a back injury ended that dream. She made her film debut in Flirting in 1991. She made her TV debut in Pirate Prince in 1991. She enrolled at Cambridge University and earned a degree in Anthropology. Her Hollywood film debut was in Interview with the Vampire. She co-starred in Jefferson in Paris, Gridlockd, The Journey of the August King, Crash, Mission Impossible II, Beloved, Norbit, Run Fatboy Run, Good Deeds, RocknRolla, W, 2012, For Coloured Girls, Reminiscence, , She starred in Loaded, Besieged, It Was an Accident, The Chronicles of Riddick, The Truth About Charlie, Shade, Vanishing on Seventh Street, Retreat, Good Deeds, Gringo, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, All the Old Knives, God’s Country, . She co-starred in the series Rogue, Westworld (for which she won an Emmy), Line of Duty, The Slap. She made her West End debut in Death and the Maiden in 2012. She was appointed as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth in 2019.

September 3, 1996: Denise Naples was our featured poet

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday I hosted as always my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of The Gladstone Hotel and our featured poet was Denise Naples.

Lainie Kazan

            On Tuesday after midnight I put down some more two-sided carpet tape along the edges of my mattress where the previous tape had gotten less sticky. I went to bed at 1:30 and slept until 3:30 when I got up to pee. It’s around that time that the bedbugs normally start sucking on my body and I felt some had gotten across the tape but not as many as the night before. I was able to get back to sleep until 5:00 when the alarm went off. After yoga all the bedbugs I found were trapped on the tape. 

            I worked out the chords for the chorus of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian. I think the second verse and second chorus should have the same chords, and so on. 

            I downloaded the YouTube video of Jacques Dutronc singing “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) by Serge Gainsbourg. I then uploaded the MP4 file to Turboscribe and got a transcript. I copied that into my 1974 Gainsbourg document but had to copy it out manually because the transcript was pasted in boxes. Sometimes one can copy text out of the boxes and paste it as normal text but not this time. I copied about half the song and I’ll finish it tomorrow. Then I’ll find out if it’s accurate. 

            I weighed 90.6 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since August 12. 

            I played my Kramer during song practice for the first of two sessions and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            Around midday went over to Home Hardware and bought two more rolls of two-sided carpet tape. I put some more along one edge of my mattress. 

            I weighed 92.05 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back stopped at Freshco where I bought five bags of green grapes and a basket of Canadian nectarines. I did a price match on the grapes for $4.37 a kilo and Priscilla gave me a price match of $4.98 a basket on the nectarines. The Freshco price was $6.99 a basket. 

            I weighed 91.1 kilos at 18:20. That’s the kindest I’ve been to the scale in the evening since July 28.

            I was one day behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I had a potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching two videos about the Question and Answer segment of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            Someone gave Carol a souvenir from the Queen Mary and she didn’t realize he was talking about the cruise ship while she thought it was a place where they have female impersonators. 

            Lainie Kazan says Carol was born to improvise. She was like a jazz singer. 

            One time two young men in the audience turned out to be the sons of Carol’s childhood best friend Ila May Sills, with whom she used to go to movies and re-enact them afterward. 

            Jane Lynch says Carol made her audience feel like they were her best friends. 

            Lainie Kazan went to high school in Brooklyn with Barbara Streisand. She studied drama at HB Studio in Greenwich Village. Her acting teacher Ann Italiano became Ann Bancroft. She studied at Hofstra University and acted in school musicals written and directed by classmate Francis Ford Coppola. 

            Lainie made her Broadway debut in The Happiest Girl in the World in 1961. 

            She made her TV debut on Car 54 Where Are You? in 1962. 

            She made her film debut in Dayton’s Devils in 1969. 

            She co-starred in Lady in Cement, One From the Heart, Lust in the Dust, The Journey of Natty Gann, The Delta Force, Harry and the Hendersons, Beaches, 29th Street, The Associate, The Big Hit, What’s Cooking?, A Good Night to Die, Gigli, Bratz, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, Expecting Mary, Pearly Gates, Tango Shalom, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 1, 2, and 3.

            She starred in Red Riding Hood and Oy Vey My Son is Gay. 

            She guest starred on The Dean Martin Show 26 times, The Bobby Vinton Show 19 times, and The Paper Chase 15 times. 

            She posed nude for the October, 1970 issue of Playboy. Those photos inspired the look of Jack Kirby’s DC Comics character Big Barda. She formed a business partnership of the jazz venues Lainie’s Room East and Lainie’s Room West with Hugh Hefner. 

            She taught theatre at Hofstra University and UCLA. 

            She was arrested for shoplifting at a supermarket in 2017. 

            She says Jerry Lewis sexually harassed her.

Charlene Beatty

            On Monday I went to bed a little before 1:30 and slept fairly well until 3:00. I started feeling bedbugs on me after a couple of days of peace since I destroyed the nests above the bedroom door curtains. I got up and lint rolled my bed then got a little more sleep but not much. After yoga there were a few caught on the carpet tape around my bed but more crawling freely on the wall at the head of my bed. The tape tends to get less sticky after a few days. 

            I worked out the chords for most of the chorus of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian. I might have gotten more or all of it done but the guitar strap for my Martin broke at the button end and so I had to widen the next hole so it would fit the button and then untie the leather cord I use to attach the strap to the neck so I could extend it to compensate for the new shortness at the other end. 

            I published on my Christian’s Translations blog “The Seduction of Doctor Faust”, my translation of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg then posted the text on Facebook. I looked for the next Gainsbourg song on my list to work on and that’s “Soixante Treize” but that was just a one-off piece Gainsbourg wrote for Jane Birkin to sing on a TV show and there is no recording. The next song after that is “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) for which there is a video by Jacques Dutronc. I have a set of lyrics for it but I think I transcribed them years ago from listening and I don’t think they’re accurate. So tomorrow I’ll download the video and try uploading the audio to another free transcription app. I might have to try more than one because sometimes they’re not very accurate. 

            I weighed 91.05 kilos before breakfast.

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune about half the time. 

            I weighed 92.35 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 91.8 kilos at 17:55. 

            I was still two days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I had a potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching a couple of videos about The Carol Burnett Show. One was about the Tudball and Whiggins sketches and the other was about breaking out laughing during sketches. 

            Tim says the appeal of Tudball and Whiggins is the familiarity of the situations. He says Mrs. Whiggins was inspired by Charlene Beatty who is now his wife. Carol loved the character and she made sure that she never laughed because she had to be too dumb to see the humour. Amy Pohler says she loves Mrs. Whiggins is because she was so slow and it dragged out the comedy. Tim says he got Tudball’s accent from his mother’s Romanian relatives. Vicki says it sounded a little like Lawrence Welk. 

            The second video opens up with Harvey cracking up while dressed as a German officer while Carl Reiner tells him to be a good Nazi and stop laughing. 

            Carol says Harvey would get mad at himself for laughing. Vicki says they used to have a betting pool in the green room. How many seconds into a sketch with Tim before Harvey loses it? 

            Ken Solms says in the dentist sketch, Tim didn’t accidentally put novocaine in his leg during the dress rehearsal. That was entirely improvised. Tim says his object in life was fulfilled when Harvey wet his pants during that sketch. Ken Berry says Tim was the only one they let get away with such wild deviations from the script. 

            Steve Lawrence says that in the sketch where he and Harvey are ad men competing for the account of Tim the client, it was Steve’s idea to play it as if they were competing for Tim’s love. This was the one sketch in which Tim cracked up more than anyone else. Tim says he thinks he wrote the original sketch. 

            In the Born Free parody sketch when Carol and Harvey are making Tim as the lion return to the wild, it was Tim’s improvization to have the sound of a toilet flushing while he was packing to leave in the other room. 

            Tim says his Old Man character came about because he’s always thought elderly people were funny. 

            Charlene Beatty was a production assistant for 160 episodes of The Carol Burnett Show; for Sills and Burnett at the Met; and for the TV movie The Tenth Month. She was the original inspiration for the character Mrs. Whiggins on The Carol Burnett Show because of her inability to use an intercom. Tim thought it was funny and so that was the premise of the first sketch. Tim married Charlene in 1984. He said she fed him so much fiber he was passing wicker furniture. They were together for 35 years until Tim died.

September 2, 1996: I did some writing

Thirty years ago today

             On Monday it was Labour Day. I probably tidied up after my weekend with my daughter and worked on my writing.