Polly Bergen

            On Thursday morning for the first time this year it was warm and muggy enough for me to wear shorts and go barefoot during song practice, to open the my apartment door and the back door of the building and to turn my fan on. My guitar seemed to love it since it hardly went out of tune at all until two-thirds of the way through when the temperature dropped and it started to rain.

            My Serge Gainsbourg fan page on Facebook has been unpublished for almost two weeks while I wait for a response to my appeal. I’m reluctant to post anything on the other pages that I run since I don’t do anything different on them than I do on the Gainsbourg and I think, "What's the point of doing all that work if they might get taken down for the same reasons?”

            I worked on the section of my poem “The Street Sucks the Sandman’s Bag” that Albrt Moritz had suggested I expand. I went through each of the ideas I’d thrown down the time before and altered them to fit into he rhythm and rhyme scheme. I’ll decide later which parts I’m going to keep.

            I went online to try to apply for my OAS pension but discovered that it can’t be done online. Since I didn’t receive a letter telling me that I’ve been automatically applied for OAS I have to apply for it manually. I would like to know what distinguishes people that are automatically applied and those that have to fill out the forms. It makes me feel not special. I started filling out the form that I’d been sent a few weeks ago. There are seven pages to the application but I couldn’t find page 2 and wondered if I’d lost it. Finally I found out that the application pages hadn’t been collated properly and page 2 is on the back of page 5 and page 4 is on the other side of page 7. Since so much time had been taken up I only filled out page 1. I’m not supposed to apply any earlier than eleven months before my 65^th birthday and so I’ve got six days before I can apply anyway, but then by the time it’s mailed it will probably be on the money.

            I had cheese whiz and celery sticks for lunch.

            I brushed my teeth and the corner of my lip hurt. I thought something had gone wrong with my toothbrush but I found a little something on the corner of my lower lip. I popped it and it was white inside. I don't recall ever having anything poppable on my lip.

            In the late afternoon I did some exercises before taking a bike ride. I wanted to go to Freshco but instead riding directly there along Queen I went up to Dundas, across to Gladstone and then down to the supermarket.

            As I was locking my bike a father was just walking to the store with his child of about six who was crying slightly about something she wanted.

            Cherries were on sale and so I got two bags and four of the grapes. I grabbed some strawberries and since the spoon size shredded wheat was on sale I took two boxes.

            One of the regular cashiers and one of the cashier managers were training a new cashier who looked like my ex-girlfriend Brenda.

            As I was unlocking my bike the father and the child walked by again. She was holding her treat and singing over and over again, “The world is beautiful …”

            My bike ride was maybe slightly longer than the one I’d been taking every day in the other direction but with a couple of hills.

            When I was unpacking my groceries I was trying to make room for the cereal I’d bought high above the sink but the box of muesli that was up there fell down and spilled intomy shopping bag. I dumped it into the toilet and ended up also dumping a clean pair of socks left over from my laundry. I fished them out and put them in the laundry basket.

            Earlier in the day I started defrosting one of the two pepper sirloin steaks I’d bought a few weeks ago at Freshco. That evening I grilled it in the oven. I boiled two small potatoes and had them with the rest of my gravy while watching the only episode of Richard Diamond, Private Detective that I’ve been able to download so far. The steak was delicious.

This was the second story in the series and it begins with a woman named Phoebe coming home stepping out to the drug store and finding her young niece missing from her bedroom. There is a note from her father Arnie saying he took her. Marjorie’s mother Jean is in the hospital in traction recovering from a severe automobile accident and she had left Marjorie in her sister’s care until she gets better. Jean calls Richard Diamond to ask him to find a way to get Marjorie back. The father has the right to custody but Jean does not consider Arnie a responsible parent. Diamond says the only way she can get her back is if he can find incriminating evidence against Arnie. He checks out Arnie’s importing business and his competitor across the hall says that Arnie always has money but barely ever makes a sale. Diamond gets hold of Arnie’s fingerprints but the check comes up clean. Arnie takes a lot of trips to Europe and Marjorie is cared for my a cold governess named Kay who is also Arnie’s lover. Kay always takes Marjorie to the airport to meet her father when he returns and she always runs to give him a hug when he’s going through customs. He always brings Marjorie a new doll with each trip and Diamond suspects that something is being smuggled in the dolls. Diamond approaches Marjorie in front of a toy stand at the airport and starts talking with her, which would not be considered appropriate nowadays. Diamond gets his friend Lieutenant McGough to authorize the opening up of one of the dolls there is nothing inside. Diamond figures out that it’s in the moment that Marjorie comes to hug him that he transfers the contraband into her coat pocket. He’s right and he finds that Arnie has been smuggling diamonds.

Marjorie was played by Cheryl Callaway, who was eleven at the time. She had already been in a Ma and Pa Kettle movie when she was ten and when she was twenty she appeared on Mission Impossible.

Phoebe was played by Gail Kobe who from 1982 to 1987 was executive producer of the soap opera, “The Guiding Light”.

Kay was played by Eve Miller, who worked a a welder during World War II. She became a showgirl for a while and then went into films. She started getting lead roles in movies in the early 1950s. In 1955, two years before appearing on this show she attempted suicide by stabbing herself in the abdomen but recovered after four hours of surgery. She killed herself just after turning fifty in the early 1970s.  

I had yogourt with honey and blueberries for dessert and watched perhaps the premiere game or one of the first of To Tell the Truth from 1956.

The format of the show is that three people sit before four celebrity panellists and claim to be a certain person with a particular profession. The panellists ask them questions for a limited amount of time and then finally have to guess which of them is really who they say they are. For every panellist that is wrong all of the contestants split $250.

The first part has three men all claiming to be songwriter Mitchell Parish, who wrote “Stardust” and “Deep Purple” among many other hits. All three were fairly knowledgeable about music and all three made up lyrics on the spot. I guessed wrong and only the two female panellists got it right.

The second part had three women claiming to be a barber for men. Part of the person’s background was that she had also played college basketball. At first I thought that the tallest woman was the real barber but when she didn’t know how many players are on a men’s basketball team I changed to number three. Everyone but Dick Van Dyke guessed number three while he guessed the tall one. It turned out that it was the tall one and that she didn’t know how many players are on a men’s basketball team because she played women's basketball.

The first panellist was Polly Bergen, who had a very long and prolific career as both an actor and singer. She had recurring roles on Desperate Housewives and The Sopranos.

The second panellist was award winning newscaster and journalist, Mike Wallace, who was the only one to guess wrong twice in this show.

The third panellist was actor and screenwriter Hildy Parks.

The fourth panellist was Dick Van Dyke. This was four years before the Dick Van Dyke Show but he’d already been a radio personality, a nightclub comedian and a television comedian and emcee before this show aired.