Kiss me!

            On Thursday morning I started working out the chords for "S.S. in Uruguay" by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I worked on updating my journal.

            Around noon I went to Freshco where I bought eight bags of grapes, an English cucumber, sixteen small avocadoes and eleven vine tomatoes.

            Thirty years ago today I weighed 83 kilos. Today I weigh 90.1 kilos. I’m just below the border of being officially overweight although from my perspective I weigh too much.

            I read most of The Federal Indian Day Schools of the Maritimes and made notes. There were a lot of Indigenous schoolteachers working Down East in that era. Also the Department of Indian Affairs wanted to avoid bands showing up in Ottawa with petitions.

            I watched the first half hour of the only Wayne and Shuster special that I could find. It’s based on Mother Goose and it’s called “Once Upon a Giant”. It was done in 1988 and it’s way past the golden age of the Wayne and Shuster team’s comedy. Wayne was 70 at the time and Shuster was 72 but they did a pretty spry soft-shoe routine nonetheless. For the most part it's pretty bad with a lot of lame jokes, lines and pop references. The story takes place in a previously happy kingdom that for years has been plagued by a giant that now consumes most of all the kingdom produces. Johnny Wayne plays the jester and Frank Shuster is the physician. The king’s daughter Marigold wants to marry Daryl, who is the poorest prince around and who used to be a frog.

            It just occurred to me that for a frog to become a prince he would also have to magically have an entire lineage. His parents would have to be also royal or other wise the princess would have to just kiss the amphibian up to a king. He would also need to be a prince of something more than a pond. It would work if the prince had been cursed in the first place and turned into a frog with the kiss breaking the spell. There’s apparently a risk of contracting salmonella from kissing frogs.

            So the princess wants to marry the poor prince. The only musical number that stands out is the one sung by the prince and princess. It’s poignant because it parallels the situation that currently plagues Prince Harry and Princess Meghan. “Bugles blowing everywhere we go / Giggling gossips carrying your train / and there is only one thing that I know / Being royal is a royal pain // Why can’t we be like ordinary people / like ordinary people in love? / Why can't we simply be alone whenever we're dating / instead of being hounded and surrounded by lords and ladies in waiting? / And why can’t we stroll like ordinary people / like ordinary people in love? / Why can’t we do without the protocol, the entourage / the trumpet call, the flags and those banners waving up above?”

The king wants his daughter to marry the evil but rich prince Malokeo and he decrees on her eighteenth birthday that she will. She refuses but she is escorted to her chambers and the wedding will take place the next day. The jester and the doctor plot to help the prince and princess stay together. They decide to help the couple elope. When the king asks the jester what props he will need for the wedding entertainment he asks for a ladder, a lantern and a salami.