April 30, 1990: She Was Scared I Might Be Ugly But Then Told Me To Come Over With Some Ice Cream

Thirty years ago today

We started the lawn mowing season and Devon and I were slow at learning the

new work. On top of that the machinery kept breaking down and so we fell behind schedule.

After work I went home and waited for Heidi to call. The phone rang at around 18:00 and she told me she didn't want to meet at Toby's. She confessed that she was uneasy about meeting me at all. She said that she'd never done anything like this before and that she was scared and worried that I might be ugly.

I suggested that we meet in a place where she felt safe and comfortable.

After about an hour of humming and hawing over the phone she finally asked me to come to her place and to bring some ice cream.

Snidely Whiplash

           

            On Wednesday morning when I got up I removed the last piece of gauze from the hole where my tooth had been. It was a just a little pink from the blood from the wound so I saw no reason to stick any more cloth into my mouth. My mouth tasted of blood because I’d followed the hygienist’s instructions and hadn’t brushed, rinsed or spit

the night before.

            I found two sets of chords for “L'homme à la tête de chou" (The Man with the Head of Cabbage) by Serge Gainsbourg. One is in F and the other F sharp. I wrote them down but I would do a little more searching before trying them to hear if they work.

            I wrote in my journal.

            I cleaned another area on the upper shelf in my bedroom and washed the outside of two of the storage bins that I keep there. I’ve got a lot of shelves in the bedroom and so it’s going to take a while to clean them all. After that I might do some painting before I focus entirely on the kitchen floor.

            I had toast with peanut butter for lunch.

            I took a siesta in the early afternoon and slept for almost an hour longer than usual. Maybe its because of the naproxen that I’ve been taking, although it doesn’t make me groggy.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. This story begins as many do with an argument between Kingfish and Sapphire. He tells her that he should have married Florence Baxter. She says he’s always bringing up Florence Baxter although she’s never been mentioned before in any argument on all the years of the show. Suddenly Kingfish receives a telegram from Florence saying she’s coming for a visit to New York from Georgia because an aunt she’d never heard of sent her the money. Kingfish fantasizes about how heavenly life would have been if he’d married Florence. But he is also worried that he will be tempted away from Sapphire and he does not want to leave her. Florence arrives but she is no longer the sweet girl that Kingfish remembers. She is loud, aggressive and obnoxious. The next day Kingfish fully appreciates everything about Sapphire that he’d previously complained about. Sapphire tells him that she knew that once Kingfish saw Florence he would stop dreaming about her. She confesses that she was the “aunt” that sent Florence the money to come and visit.

            I thought about taking a bike ride but it started raining, and besides I had writing to catch up on.

            For dinner I had a fried egg with naan and a beer while watching two more episodes of the 1959 game show Take a Good Look, starring Ernie Kovacs.

            The first one was from November 26, 1959 and the panellists were Cesar Romero, Anne Jeffreys and Hans Conried.

            The opening segment shows Peggy Connelly staring a hand mirror and appreciating her own beauty. Ernie comes to her, pushes the mirror aside and kisses her. He stops to look at the camera, says, “This has nothing to do with the show” and then returns to kissing her. Ernie’s wife was in Chicago at the time and he says he hopes she didn’t see the opening. When next she is on the show, two weeks later, she complains about the kiss.

            The first guest is Mrs Carole Ziegler, the first official female referee in basketball.

            The first clue shows Ernie as a nearsighted professional baseball player doing a shaving commercial while not being able to read the cue cards very well. He says he believes in clean living but the door of the locker accidentally opens showing a locker full of booze. In the second locker is Peggy Connelly wearing tight, shiny clothes and holding a champagne glass.

            Anne guesses that the event took place in the last couple of weeks.

            In the second clue a man with a judge’s wig and robe rides a bicycle pushing a courtroom bench. He stops in front of the panel and declares that the plaintiff acted in a manner becoming a lady. He hammers the block and rules her not guilty.

            The third clue has Peggy Connelly come out in a slinky evening gown with long gloves, carrying under each arm two bushel baskets.

            The panel can’t guess and so Carole wins $300.

            Cesar and Hans argue about how the clues were no help. Ernie explains that the first established that it was about sports, the second about judging and the third about basketball.

            The second guest comes out.

            The first clue shows Ernie as a French officer speaking a comical made up French language. He pins a medal on a soldier and gives him the two traditional cheek kisses. The next soldier is Peggy Connelly. He pins the medal, gives the two cheek kisses but then they mouth kiss. Then he pins another medal on her and they kiss again. Then she pins a medal on him and they kiss. Then he pours all of the medals he’s carrying into her pocket and they finish with a super kiss.

            Hans guesses that the event occurred in the last year. Ernie cuts in and gives Hans that it was last week.

            Cesar guesses that it happened in the east in New Jersey and that the guest is Mr Gudmondson who stopped a runaway train with his own locomotive.

            Ernie insists that the panel sees the second clue anyway. It shows Peggy as a bride walking to the wedding march when the train of her dress detaches and runs away.

            Gudmondson was pulling another train and was told to detach his engine from it and to get in front of the other train so as to go just fast enough to catch it behind him without it crashing and to gradually slow it down to a stop.

            The third guest is Joseph Meany Jr. who served as the cabin boy on the second Mayflower.

            The first clue shows Ernie dressed as a Pilgrim and smoking a cigar underwater. There is a wooden sign with two arrows with the message “This away” for one arrow and “That away” for the other. On a blanket on a rock is Peggy Connelly dressed to look like an Indigenous woman with a headband and a feather and braids. She gives him a vase and he gives her money which she puts down her top as his hat floats away.

            Cesar guesses that water has something to do with the event.

            Anne asks if the guest won something under water. Ernie gives a victorious yell, jumps up and runs over smiling to kiss Anne on the forehead and then applauds. Then he goes back to his desk and says, “You’re completely wrong.”

            The second clue has a chicken eating out of a cigar box.

            Cesar guesses that this happened on Plymouth Rock.

            Anne guesses that he was in some pageant connected with Plymouth Rock.

            The panel doesn’t guess and so Joe wins $300.

            The second game, from December 3, 1959 begins with Peggy Connelly coming out in gold lame pants and high heels. She does a headstand and goes into something like the lotus posture and then Ernie comes out to lean on her and welcome everyone.

            The panellists this time are Mervyn Le Roy, Anne Jeffreys, and Hans Conried.

            Ernie mentions that Mervyn Le Roy is directing a picture in which he is starring, called Wake Me When it’s Over. He mentions that Le Roy also directed, Little Cesar, The Wizard of Oz, No Time for Sergeants and Tugboat Annie.

            The first guest is Mrs Renae Parker, who recently spent her two week honeymoon in a sealed atom bomb shelter.

            The first clue depicts the scene from Cyrano DeBergerac in which Cyrano is coaching Christian as he recites words of love to Roxanne on her balcony. Cyrano is lamenting that he has such a grotesque nose but ten Christian turns to show that he has the same long nose.

            Anne guesses that this happened in the last week in Los Angeles.

            The second clue shows Ernie kissing Peggy. There is an explosion and then we see they are still kissing but while blackened and bandaged.

            Hans guesses that the guest was recently married and there was something unusual about the nuptials.

            The third clue has Brent Parker arrive with a bag of groceries. He kisses his wife and joins her at Ernie’s desk.

            The panel loses the game and Mrs Parker wins $300.

            We see film footage of the fallout shelter in which the couple were interned after their wedding reception. There was a phone for emergencies only. They had a very good food supply for two weeks. The door was locked from outside for two weeks. They were testing the shelter for civil defence.

            The third guest is a woman and Ernie decides not to let the audience know who she is.

            The first clue has an easel with a drawing pad. Ernie draws a refrigerator and then opens the door as real ice cubes come tumbling out.

            Anne guesses that this happened in the last week.

            Hans begins, “Riding in on this hyperborean blast …” Ernie interrupts him and says, “Hyperborean blast? You know there are kids that watch this show buddy?”

            The second clue has Ernie in a garden where there is a statue of a beautiful woman. He walks past it but she taps him on the shoulder and beckons him to her.

            Mervyn guesses that the guest was handed a painting.

            Anne guesses that this has to do with the art collection that was recently discovered in Pasadena.

            The guest is Mrs Maria Halterburger who found that the paintings in her attic were worth millions of dollars.

            Hans and Anne protest the clue withy the ice cubes. A frustrated Ernie explains that he created art that came to life.

            Some of the paintings are shown: La Maddalena by Michelangelo Caravaggio, St Cecilia by Andrea Vacarro, another by Luco Giordano, and a signed painting by Rafael worth $1.5 million.

            I can’t find any references to this find and so maybe it turned out they were not authentic masterpieces after all.

            Anne Jeffrey’s started out as a soprano for the New York Municipal Opera Company. She played Tess Trueheart in the Dick Tracy series. She starred in the sitcom Topper from 1953 to 1955. She played David Hasselhoff’s mother on Baywatch.

            Hans Conried was the voice of Snidely Whiplash in the Dudley Doright cartoons. He played Captain Hook in the 1953 film of Peter Pan and Danny Thomas’s Uncle Tonoose on Make Room for Daddy.

April 29, 1990: She Said She Wanted to Bring Her Dildos But She Was Just Fucking With Me

Thirty years ago today

I was getting ready to meet Annette for 15:00 when she called and asked to make it 16:00. During that extra hour at home I received a couple more calls. One was from an eighteen year old woman named Heidi. We talked about meeting the next evening in Toby's at Yonge and Bloor but she told me she would call earlier that day to confirm.

Twenty minutes before I was about to leave someone named Chantel called. She said she had blonde hair and blue eyes and asked if she could bring her dildos over. I think she was just fucking with me.

I met Annette and found her to be very beautiful and intelligent. She made me feel quite warm.

Dental Emergency

            On Tuesday morning I finished memorizing “L'homme à la tête de chou" (The Man with the Head of Cabbage) by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I worked on my journal.

            In the late morning I gathered together all of my insurance info from both Ontario Works and Green Shield and at 11:35 I headed for my appointment at Midtown Dental.

            On my way up Brock near the site of the old Beer Store I saw a big screen TV sitting on the sidewalk. I noticed that it had a sign taped to it and so I stopped to read it. It said, “Sound ok. Picture no". Just what I need, a big screen radio. Good name for a band: "Big Screen Radio".

            I locked my bike on Yonge Street and walked to look for 20 Bloor East. The address wasn’t marked on the outside so I went back to 2 Bloor East and down into the bottom of the Hudson's Bay Centre to walk east through the mall. It was a long walk. I'd been told that it was next to RBC and across from the post office. I stopped and asked someone along the way. I finally found the place next to the food court but the door was locked and it didn't look like there was anyone inside. I was just thinking of calling them but then I tried knocking first and while I was doing that a woman walking towards me from the direction I’d come called out that she’d open the door. This was Alexia, who had given me the appointment.

Once we were inside and she’d squirted me with hand sanitizer she told me to sit down and she would take my temperature. After a few minutes she brought a little instrument which she held about ten centimetres from my forehead. But she was having trouble getting it to work and tried several times with no success. I suggested that her thermometer might need its temperature taken. She finally got it to work and she said the reading was excellent.

I spent about half an hour filling out and signing forms. It was a good thing my wrists get lots of exercise.

Alexia was again impressed by my double name and thought it was “cool" that I work as an art model.

The website for this place shows that several dentists work there but that day there was only Dr Ramlaggan, Alexia and one hygienist assisting him. Dr Ramlaggan says “cool" a lot too.

After the x-rays the dentist told me I had two options. I could add another five to ten years to the life of my tooth withy a root canal or I could have it removed. He said that I could discuss it with Alexia, who is the financial coordinator. She made it fairly clear that I only had one option, since neither Ontario Works nor Green Shield would cover a root canal and the procedure costs $1200. She told me that Green Shield would cover an extraction but that there would be a balance. She said however that she would help me out, which seemed to mean that I would not be charged the balance.

Alexia said that if I signed the consent form I could get the procedure done that day and so I did. I sat alone in the operating room for a long time and almost fell asleep.

I found Dr Ramlaggan to have an exceptionally good manner with patients. He let me know everything he was about to do and warned me in a very friendly tone of what I might feel or hear.

Both the doctor and the hygienist were well armoured with full length plastic shields over their faces.

The first thing he did was to put some freezing gel on my gums and then to wait about ten minutes for it to kick in. This served to somewhat numb the sting of the freezing needle. I’d never had a dentist do that before. I could feel the gel numbing certain parts of my mouth and throat but I still felt the prick of the needle just as much as any other time. It was only the third needle that I didn’t feel. The only pain I felt was at one point when it felt like he was digging into my lip while trying to pry the tooth out.

The dentist prescribed seven days of naproxen.

The hygienist gave me extra gauze to absorb the blood coming from the hole where my tooth had been. She told me that if I run out and still need something to put there I could use a black tea bag, but never a green tea bag. I asked why and she informed me that black tea suppresses bleeding while green tea induces bleeding. That was a “Hmmm!" moment because I'd never heard that before. When I looked this up later I also saw that green tea can cause iron deficiency.

She told me I shouldn’t spit, rinse or brush until the next day. She said I should eat but only soft food until Wednesday.

When I got back to Parkdale I went straight to the drug store to fill my prescription.

When I got home I saw that my appointment must have lasted two and a half hours. I took out the bloodstained gauze and had a late lunch of a hard boiled egg and some yogourt. It was weird eating with my mouth still frozen. It was funny when I felt an itch on my face but couldn’t feel myself scratch it. I took the first of the naproxen pills with lunch. I put new gauze in but had to throw it away because I’d forgotten that I was supposed to wet it first. I put another in and then took a siesta, sleeping well for a first time in a few days.

When I woke up the freezing was gone.

I worked on writing my journal.

For dinner I avoided meat and just had two carrots and two potatoes with gravy while watching two episodes of the game show, Take A Good Look, starring Ernie Kovacs.

The first game, from November 5, 1959 had Cesar Romero, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Jim Backus as panellists. Because this was before Backus was a star of Gilligan’s Island he was famous as the voice the cartoon character Mr Magoo. It was because of this it seems that Zsa Zsa had brought in her little Pekingese dog, which she had named Mr Magoo.

The first guest, an attractive young woman, was not identified to the audience.

The first clue featured a woman in a slinky gown come out with a tray containing a bowl of three eggs and a spread out deck of cards.

Cesar Romero guesses that the guest is a beauty queen and that she is from Mississippi. He then says he knows who she is and so he’ll pass.

The second clue shows two boards with tennis shoes on the end walking back and forth behind a curtain.

Jim Backus guesses that she won the Miss America contest in 1958.

Zsa Zsa is confused by the shoes in the boards. Ernie explains that they were boards walking representing the Boardwalk in Atlantic City where the Miss America pageant took place. The guest is Mary Ann Mobley. She says she is now studying in New York with Lee Strasbourg and she hopes to one day perform on Broadway.

Mary Ann Mobley never did appear on Broadway but she did have a career in television and film. She was friends with Elvis, who considered her a true southern lady, and co-starred with him in “Girl Happy" and "Harum Scarum".

The second guests were a man and woman.

The first clue shows a man and a woman playing chess and the woman checkmates him.

“Zsa Zsa says, “She beat him in chest!” Zsa Zsa tends to speak out of turn and can’t hold back from saying what is on her mind whenever it pops up. Since Zsa Zsa has already spoken up Ernie allows the questions to start with her. She asks, “What you two do do you do together?” The guest responds with an accent as thick as Zsa Zsa’s and says, "You will have to speak slowly because you have an accent.”

Jim Backus establishes that the couple is married and that she is European while he is from the United States.

Cesar Romero guesses that they are both athletes.

The second clue has a man covered in red tape spinning past the panel’s desk while Zsa Zsa's dog barks angrily at him.

Cesar guesses that they were wound up in red tape. He basically guesses that she is from behind the iron curtain and they got married in Australia but that was only almost right. Ernie explains the first clue being a checkmate as in she is the man’s Czech mate. The guests won $100 but they could not accept it because it would ruin their amateur standing. The money would go to the Olympic Fund. Olga Fikotová was a discus thrower from Czechoslovakia and won the gold medal at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. There she met Harold Connolly from the United States, who won the gold for the hammer throw. They decided to marry. But there was a lot of red tape before that could be accomplished. They got married in Prague and 25,000 showed up for the wedding. She moved to the States and wanted to continue to compete for Czechoslovakia but her country’s government rejected her and so she competed for the United States. She and Connolly divorced in 1975 and she is now a fitness coach in Las Vegas at the age of 88.

It was revealed beforehand that the third guest was Lathrup Whittington Junior, the college student that started the fad of goldfish swallowing in 1939.

The first clue shows Ernie as a parade baton twirler with a mechanical wrist that keeps going around and around.

The second clue shows a screen with the video of a cat with its feet in a fish bowl. Zsa Zsa’s dog goes to the end of the desk beside Cesar to get a closer look.

Zsa Zsa guesses during Jim’s turn that the guest ate a gold fish and Jim guesses that it was at Harvard.

Ernie wants to show the third clue because it was so much trouble to get the pet borough there. A guy dressed as a prospector panning for gold comes out with a young borough. Zsa Zsa's dog is barking frantically. Ernie then picks up the borough and carries it off stage.

Before Lathrup leaves Ernie gives him a bowl with a goldfish in it and a loaf of rye bread and some mustard on the side.

In the next show from November 12, 1959, Zsa Zsa was replaced by Ernie's wife Edie Adams. Ernie introduces her as "the good looking broad in the middle, who should be at home doing dishes.” Edie says, “I never saw you before in my life."

In the first clue a woman goes to a butcher shop and instead of the usual hot dogs takes a ham with cherries and places it in front of the first guest.

Cesar guesses the guest is an athlete in baseball, that he plays for the Dodgers and that he is their star pitcher Don Drysdale. But Ernie reminds the panel that they need to reveal more than the guest’s identity. Cesar says that Don is now working as an actor on television on a western called The Lawman and that is the answer.

Even though the mystery has been revealed after the first clue, Ernie wants to show the second clue. There are three plates hanging from a curtain. Ernie fires a gun and the first plate breaks, he fires again and the second plate breaks, he fires several times at the last plate and it does not break and so the guy with the hammer from behind the curtain comes out and hits it from the front.

During the banter between guests Ernie says he’d forgotten the middle panellist wasn’t Zsa Zsa. Edie immediately goes into a Hungarian accent to imitate Zsa Zsa.

The second guest, a middle aged, blonde woman is brought out.

The first clue shows Ernie in drag, but still with his moustache and a cigar, miming for help from the upper window of a burning building. Two firemen with a round life net are below. Ernie jumps and breaks through it.

Edie guesses that this was a recent occurrence in the last month.

Jim guesses that it was in the field of politics.

Cesar guesses that she is from Livonia, Michigan. Ernie says, “I could punch him right in the mouth!” Cesar continues that she has been appointed the head of the police and the fire department in Livonia.

Ernie passes Edie a note to read. It says the host is going to do a commercial and it ends with, “What are you doing after the show baby?” The commercial shows Ernie standing before a firing squad as his last cigar is lit for him. The men are about to fire but the aroma from Ernie’s cigar causes them to come around him to savour it.

On his way back to his desk Ernie stops to kiss Edie and declares, “A little sex on the air never hurt!”

The third guest is Martin Cassandorf who in April, 1959, with sixteen other UCLA students set a world phone booth stuffing record.

The first clue shows Ernie as Alexander Graham Bell having just invented the telephone. He calls Watson to come in but the operator tells him the number he has reached is not a working number.

Cesar guesses the guest is a student.

Edie asks if this was in the world of sports and the guest says yes but Ernie intervenes and says no.

The second clue shows footage of two men wrestling in an arena.

Cesar guesses that he took part in a crazy thing like the guy that swallowed the gold fish and that he was the champion telephone climber inner.

Ernie tells Edie not to be so smart around the house and he might slip her the answers. She mentions that she hasn’t been allowed in his study lately and Ernie confirms that. It was because he was in there discussing clues with the staff from the show.

At the end of the show Martin Cassandorf reenacts the phone booth stunt with sixteen of his fellow students.

April 28, 1990: She'd Been Walking All Morning With Nothing On Under Her Jacket

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Spanky and Our Gang

            On Monday morning I woke up at 2:00 to the arrival of the toothache I’d been expecting. I just hadn’t expected it to hurt so much. I couldn’t sleep with the pain going on and so at 2:20 I got up and went to the washroom to grab little tube of  extra strength Tylenol that I’d bought years ago and out of which I’d only taken one. I took one this time and waited for it to kick in as the pain got worse and expanded to include an earache. I walked aimlessly around the apartment, naked with my hands on my head or flailing and clawing the air. Sometime I would stop to lean forward on something with my head down, seeking some magical position that would alleviate the pain. Finally I sat down at the computer, went on line and looked at Japanese porn, which distracted me for a few minutes until I had to get up to do my aimless pain dance again. Tylenol is supposed to take about 45 minutes for its effects to be felt. In this case it took almost an hour and even then at first it didn’t fully take away the pain but rather filed a bit off the tip of its fangs. I sat down and looked at some more Japanese porn and saved some pictures. It was 4:00 by the time I felt like I might be able to sleep. I went to bed and though I didn’t really sleep I at least got an hour's rest without pain.

            I got up at 5:00 as usual. The pain wasn’t totally gone but it was manageable with the help of the Tylenol. I took one tablet every four hours throughout the day.

            That morning I memorized all but the last five lines of “L'homme à la tête de chou" (The Man with the Head of Cabbage) by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I worked on writing in my journal.

            At 9:30 I called Smile City to make an appointment. Someone answered but she told me they were closed because of Ontario Government orders. I was surprised that Doug Ford considered dental clinics to be non-essential services. She agreed with me that they should be allowed to open. She gave me the phone number for the emergency dental clinic and also told me that there is a dental clinic at Mount Sinai Hospital. She said that they are hoping that in a couple of weeks the government might ease the restrictions and allow them to open.

            I called the emergency number but received an annoyingly perky message from Freedom Mobile that “This person is not taking calls right now. Try a text!”

            I called Mount Sinai and found out that there are no appointments for their dental clinic. It must be accessed through the hospitals general emergency centre. Although I've always had pretty good treatment any time I've had appointments at Mount Sinai I imagined that I would have to wait Hours to get dental treatment through their emergency section. It seemed to me that there must be more than two dental clinics open in a city the size of Toronto and so I did a search. I found the website of the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario and it had a page with a list of every dental practice in Ontario that meet the proper safety requirements and have the personal protective equipment needed to offer emergency services during the pandemic. On the list I found the Midtown Dental Centre at Yonge and Bloor and called them. The woman who answered the phone liked my double name and gave me an appointment for 12:15 the next day.

            I washed the inside of the frame of my apartment door. Next I’ll wash the frame of the big mirror in my kitchen and then clean the mirror itself.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. This 1951 episode was very similar to a story from 1950 in which Kingfish thinks that Andy has accidentally taken the picture of  a jewellery store robber for whom there is a $1000 reward. The only difference is the trick that Kingfish uses to try to get the film roll away from Andy. In this story there is large piece of plaster ready to fall from the ceiling at the lodge hall and so under the pretence of playing a game of canasta Kingfish positions Andy under it and keeps finding excuses to slam the door in order to loosen the plaster so it will knock Andy out. But after several tries Kingfish ends up knocking himself out. As in the other story, in the end when the film is turned in to the police and they are told that the thief is in the last frame, it turns out that only Kingfish is in the picture after all, which results in him being arrested.

            For dinner I had a potato and some pork ribs with gravy while watching two episodes of the 1950s game show Take a Good Look hosted by Ernie Kovacs from October of 1959.

            In the first one the panellists were Cesar Romero, Janet Leigh and Hans Conried.

            The first guest is Chuck Essegian of the LA Dodgers, who was the first pinch hitter to hit two home runs in a world series baseball game.

            The first clue is a 16^th Century painting of Adam in the Garden of Eden.

            Janet Leigh guesses that the guest was the first to do something and then asks if he was naked like Adam while he did it.

            Hans Conried guesses that the achievement was athletic and professionally so. He also guesses that the game was baseball.

            In the second clue the guest is handed three violins. He stands up, throws two of them away and then swings the third like a bat.

            Janet Leigh guesses that the achievement occurred in the last two weeks during the World Series, that he hit two home runs and that he is Chuck Egressian. She is very excited about getting it right.

            The guests arrive from the back by way of a rotating stage from which there is one step to get down. For the second guest Ernie gets up and takes her hand, explaining that this woman is near sighted like his wife Edie Adams, who he also helps down steps.

            The first clue shows a scene in which Peggy Connelly dances out to 1920s music.

            Hans Conried guesses that the clue indicates the period of the guest’s accomplishment and that she was an entertainer.

            In the second clue Ernie goes to an easel with a drawing pad that already has a sketch of an eye. Below it he draws a door, writes “DB" and then rips the door open so that several bone shaped dog treats come falling out.

            As the guest is not very old, Cesar Romero guesses that her achievement must have occurred when she was very young and that she had been a child star in motion pictures and that she had made a movie with a dog.

            The third clue shows someone drawing a heart with an arrow going through it and inside the names Johnnie and Jean.

            Janet guesses that the guest’s name is Jean.

            Hans guesses that her name is Jean Darling but he can’t remember the movie she was in and so Jean wins the $300.

            She is Jean Darling from the Our Gang series of films. A clip is shown of a scene in which a cop is unsuccessfully chasing the children while the token black child with the comically wild hair is chasing a runaway watermelon. Ernie then introduces several of the members of the Our Gang cast.

            JR Smith who played Freckles is now the owner of a paint store.

            Jackie Davis is now a physician.

            Sherwood Bailey who played Spud is now a project engineer for a construction company.

            Johnnie Downs is now the host of a children’s television program at a local station.

            Alan Hoskins who played Little Farina now works for the state of California.

            Ernie has them all pose together and then brings out a bull terrier with a black patch on its eye much like the dog that appeared in the Our Gang series.

            For the third guest there is no time for three clues and three rounds of questions. We are shown a rose, a fishbowl and a suspended beatnik beret with sunglasses. They can only guess that it happened in Los Angeles. Ernie reveals that the guest is Scott Crossfield, who flew the X-15 rocket plane at twice the speed of sound to the edge of space, burning nine tons of fuel in three minutes before landing the plane.

            In the second show I watched the panel consisted of Cesar Romero, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Hans Conried.

            When Ernie introduces Zsa Zsa he says that she’s stolen more towels from the Hilton than anyone. She says, “I didn't have to steal them!" This is a reference to the fact that Zsa Zsa was married to Conrad Hilton.

The first guest is Karol Fageros who was banned from playing tennis at Wimbledon because she wore gold panties.

The first clue shows three clocks, each showing time in a different city. The cities are London, Bombay and New York.

Hand Conried guesses that the guest travelled to the three cities mentioned and that she is from the southern United States.

The second clue shows two people in multiple exposures to make them look like an audience and they are moving their heads back and forth as if watching a tennis match.

Zsa Zsa guesses that the guest is a tennis athlete and that she wears golden panties.

Karol says she will be turning professional and going on a world tennis tour.

The accomplishment of the second guest is not revealed beforehand.

The first clue is the caduceus, which is the winged staff entwined with two serpents that is the emblem of the medical profession.

Hans guesses that the guest is a doctor and that he has made a recent discovery.

Cesar guesses that the guest achieved an award.

The second clue shows Santa Clause receiving a speeding ticket for travelling at 1017 km per hour.

Hans guesses that it has something to do with speed.

The third clue is just the audio of tires screeching.

Cesar guesses that the guest broke a speed record.

Ernie reveals that the guest is Colonel Paul Stapp, the fastest man on Earth, who broke a speed record in a rocket sled. His weight increased to 3057 kilos during the forward motion.

The third guest is Fred Demara, the great impostor, who has successfully passed himself off as a naval surgeon, a Latin teacher, a college dean, a science teacher a prison warden and a trapist monk.

The first clue shows Ernie playing piano as his ridiculous hats keep changing.

Cesar guesses that the guest’s accomplishment involves a change of hats. The guest says no but Ernie says there is a yes in there.

Zsa Zsa guesses that he travels to many foreign countries.

Hans Conried disqualifies himself because he knows who the guest is.

The second clue shows the guest dressed as Santa and arguing with the same cop about the speeding ticket.

Cesar guesses that the guest is the great impostor.  We learn that while he was posing as a naval surgeon he performed a number of successful operations, including the removal of a lung.

At the end it shows Demara taking the place of Ernie Kovacs as he says goodnight.

I took two Tylenol before bed because one did not fully dull the pain and I wanted to be able to sleep.

April 27, 1990: Escape from the Underground Railroad

Thirty years ago today

Lorne let me off at 14:30.

I puttered around at home until 17:00 and then rushed to get ready for my date with Michelle, whose real name was Melanie.

I made it to the Squeeze Club exactly on time. Melanie was big boned as she said she was but she was also quite beautiful. The only problem was that neither of us were very talkative.

We went for dinner at the Underground railroad but after we ate she felt tired. She gave me her number and since she already had mine I would call her or she could call me.

When I got home at around 21:30 I went straight to sleep but was later woken by a call from Christine, the woman from Jamaica who had phoned me the night before. We talked for quite a while.

Bundu Secret Society

            On Sunday morning I memorized lines 13 to 20 of “L'homme à la tête de chou" (The Man with the Head of Cabbage) by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I worked on writing about Saturday's Food Bank Adventure.

            A little after noon I pulled down all of the wood from the left corner of the upper storage area in my bedroom. I cleaned the shelf in that area and also cleaned some of the wood, which still had hair on it from when I still had cats, and then I put everything back in better order than before.

            I had a piece of toast with peanut butter and cheese for lunch.

            I didn’t do my exercises in the afternoon because I wanted to finish my Food Bank Adventure and get caught up on my journal.

            I had a fried egg and warmed naan for dinner with a beer while watching the last half of David Attenborough’s “Zoo Quest to West Africa". Since no one in the first village they stayed at recognized the photo of the white-necked picathartes. David, Jack and the rest of the expedition decided to move on into the interior. There are very few large animals in the West African forest and the only one they observed as they travelled was the rare black and white colobus monkey. Its diet is far too specialized for it to survive in a zoo and so they did not try to capture one. They had to cross a hammock bridge to get to the village. They were told while halfway across that these types of bridges only last a year and that this one could go at any moment. The chief of the next village gave them a full ceremonial reception and they were entertained by the dancing of girls who had just been initiated into the rites of the Bundu Secret Society. The Bundu Society is for females only and it doesn’t mention here that one of the initiation rituals involves female circumcision. Some of the drums were those used in ceremonies of the Mjai Society, which they were told they were not allowed to see. The high priestess of the Mjai society, an old woman smeared with clay, also came out to dance along with the masked Mjai Devil. David asked if he could examine the mask but she told him that would only be possible if he went through the initiation and became a member of the society. It also doesn’t mention that it was probably that priestess who performed the surgery on the young women.

David recorded the ceremony and played the music back for the singers. They were delighted because they’d never heard themselves on tape. Jack kept showing the picture of the white-necked picathartes to the villagers and finally a man who was living there as an agricultural instructor recognized it. He had seen them in the bush in the hills behind the village. But it would be hard to helpers to carry their equipment up there because they believe the birds are the servants of a one-legged, one-eyed devil, bigger than a man, that lives inside the rock on which they build their nests. But he said that if they offered enough money they could get people to take the risk. They arrived at the location and found a nest containing two warm eggs. What they wanted was to capture a young bird that would adjust better to being tamed and so they decided to come back in four days. Meanwhile they went looking for the mudskipper fish that the London Zoo wanted from the mangrove swamps on the coast. They also captured a small crocodile, a small python, a mongoose, several baby birds and a baby spotted squirrel that David carried in his shirt pocket to keep it warm. The expedition’s pet chimpanzee Jane wanted to play with every animal they caught. They went back to the picathartes nests and built a screen of foliage so they could observe the birds from behind them for several days as they took care of their young. Finally they caught a fledgling but at first it would not feed and got weaker and weaker until Jack offered it a small frog. It devoured it and wanted more. It required at least sixty frogs a day for the next week until they were able to wean it onto an easier to obtain mixture of chopped meat and mealworms. It became the first picathartes to be brought to Europe alive and it thrived at the London zoo.

            I think that this episode of Zoo Quest took place before the other ones I watched because. Jack Lester was supposed to have been the host of the show until he took sick.

            I had a piece of apple pie with strawberry yogourt for dessert with coffee while an episode of The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Richard Greene. Although the torrent file for this series was supposed to have fully downloaded the video for some of these shows is glitchy as if they were incomplete. The audio is fine but the video freezes sometimes, especially in the beginning. Also, even though this is supposed to be the first season and the show I watched should have been the second episode, it had Patricia Driscoll as Marion, which means it was a fourth season episode.

            In this story Lord Giles the head tax collector is in Nottingham. He enters the market to see if the peasants are paying their taxes. One merchant is offering a chicken very cheap and, not knowing he is speaking to Lord Giles, he tells him that he raises his own chickens in the forest and avoids paying taxes on them. Giles has the merchant arrested but then lets him go with a warning. Meanwhile an eccentric but kind hearted nobleman named Lord Eilmer visits the market. He is a scientist and does little experiments as he walks along but to the peasants he is a sorcerer and the merchants find him to be bad for business. Lord Giles observes this and is angry that business is not being done. He complains to the sheriff. The sheriff tells Lord Giles that Lord Eilmer is very rich and has no heirs. As Lord Giles is one of Eilmer’s peers, if he were to officially renounce Eilmer as a sorcerer his estate would automatically be forfeited to Prince John. Giles argues that Eilmer would appeal to the ecclesiastical court and if he were to be found innocent then his accuser would be put on trial. But the sheriff says that Lord Eilmer would not make it to trial because the peasants hate and fear him and they might throw him over a cliff. Marian, having overheard Giles complain about Eilmer goes to Robin. Robin says that Eilmer is one of the few lords who treats his serfs like human beings. Marian goes to Eilmer to urge him to stay in his castle for a while but while she is there soldiers come and arrest him. Marian rides to tell Robin and he and Harold go to rescue Eilmer. The sheriff’s plan is to take Eilmer to jail via the cliffside road and to have two of his soldiers, disguised as serfs abduct and then throw him from the cliff. Robin and his man rescue Eilmer from the murder but then they are surrounded by the sheriff’s men and backed up against the cliff. Eilmer makes a kite and uses it to transport a string to the other side of the canyon and then the string is used to pull a rope across which Harold, Robin and Eilmer cross, hand over hand. Eilmer then wills his estate to the church so Prince John can't touch it.

April 26, 1990: Boring Phone Conversation

Thirty years ago today

The classified ad that I'd placed in the personals of Now Magazine came out that day and not long after I got home from work the phone rang. She told me her name was Michelle and that she was from Venezuela, half black and half Indigenous, twenty eight years old, 173 cm tall and that she runs a fragrance business.

We arranged to meet for a drink and then dinner at the Underground Railroad.

We talked on the phone a long time with a few spaces of silence between questions. It was a pretty boring conversation.

Later a woman from Jamaica called and though we didn't arrange to meet she said she would call me back.

If You Don't Want to be Noticed Stop Casting a Shadow

            After the food bank on Saturday I took my groceries home to put away and then headed out to the supermarket, expecting to have to wait in another long line-up because of the new social distancing rules. Last week I had to wait half an hour and the week before that the line went around the block. I was very surprised when I got to No Frills that for the first time in a month I was able to walk right into the store. I mused morbidly that maybe most of the customers had died over the last seven days.

            I bought six bags of grapes, two double packs of pork souvlaki, and some mouthwash.

            When I left the store I noticed that there was a small line-up of about five people waiting to get in.

            For lunch I had a piece of toast with peanut butter and cheese and washed it down with the cucumber-mint-lime beverage, which basically just tasted like cold mint tea.

            I worked on my journal.

            For dinner I had a fried egg with a loaf of naan and a beer while watching one and a half episodes of David Attenborough’s Zoo Quest from the 1950s. The first part was the final instalment of “Quest to Madagascar”. Madagascar is the land of the lemurs, of which there are a large variety ranging in size from the tiny mouse lemurs to the ape-sized indris. The mouse lemurs are the smallest of all primates. The indris is a size of a young chimpanzee and it is the only tailless lemur. Many speculate that when Marco Polo reported having seen a dog headed man it was of the indris that he was speaking. The name “indris” comes from a French explorer who recorded the title after his guide pointed at it and said, “Indris." But apparently "indris" just means "Look at that" while the real name for the creature is “babakoto".

            Before David went to Madagascar the indris had never been photographed alive. David went to the only thick tropical rainforest left in Madagascar, on the east coast. While looking for the indris he found other things, such as a nest of shiny pill millipedes. When hiding they roll themselves into seamless balls. After several days of looking David still had not found an indris. He decided that since Madagascar is full of many rare birds he would at least take some equipment into the forest and record their songs. But while he was doing that there suddenly came from out of the trees and eerie howling noise that varied in pitch to an almost musical quality that could not have come from any bird. He was certain it was the call of the indris. Several more days passed and although David sometimes could hear them, he still had caught no glimpse of the indris. He decided to focus on other animals. He was interested in finding a frilled gecko, which has the ability to blend in so well with the bark of trees that it seems invisible. David searched and finally found one. They flatten themselves so much against the tree that they seem to melt into the bark. The secret to any effective camouflage is to not cast a shadow and so these geckoes have flaps of skin along the sides of their bodies. After catching the gecko David’s thoughts returned to the indris. It dawned on him that he had a recording of the call of the indris and so he brought his equipment back into the jungle to play back that call at very loud volume. After a while he began to hear from up in the trees responses to the recording. He looked for the sources of the howling and finally saw an indris. They were at least a metre tall and they had come out from hiding to get a closer look at the source of the indris calls they were hearing. David noted that they looked very much like the dog headed men that Marco Polo spoke of.

            The next day David went back to the same place at the same time, without his equipment and found them to be sitting in the same trees as before. There was a family of four. The two youngest were an affectionate pair and there was a father and mother but the mother tended to stay out of sight. It turned out that she did so because she was nursing a baby indris. They were so regular in their habits that they went to the same trees at the exact same times every day.

            The last of the Zoo Quest documentaries that I downloaded is “Quest to West Africa" but since that one is an hour long I only watched half of it this time. This was a larger expedition than the previous ones and David did not seem to be the one in charge. They went to catch a rare bird called the white-necked picathartes. The leader of this expedition was Jack Lester of the London Zoo because he had actually caught sight of the bird once. They went to Freetown on the coast of Sierra Leone and then headed into the bush to the place where Jack had seen the bird. Their first duty was to pay their respects to the chief of the village because if he gave his approval the best hunters in the district would be available to help them on their quest. The chief was a Muslim and he came to greet them with a few dozen of his over sixty wives. They showed the chief a picture of the picathartes but the chief said he hadn’t seen one. He invited them to watch a dance by one of his people who had control over snakes. The magician danced with cobras and even put the head of one in his mouth. He also allowed the venomous snake to bite him several times with no ill effect. Not far from the hut where they were staying they found and captured a gaboon viper, which is just as poisonous as a cobra.

            They had put the word out that they were willing to pay for animals and so natives began coming to them in large numbers with boxes and cages holding live animals. Some they bought and some they didn’t but one they did take was a very frightened baby chimpanzee. Jack had great difficulty feeding the chimp because it fought and bit for a couple of days. After four days however it would run to Jack for milk. They named her Jane and they were able to let her loose to play in the trees nearby wherever they travelled.

            They found termites that keep mushroom farms underneath their mounds. David broke open one of the mounds to expose the large, bloated and cumbersome queen whose function is to do nothing but lay eggs. Because David had exposed her to the sunlight, hundreds of termites worked desperately to push and pull her back into the darkness while others closed up the exposed mound.

            He watched a kilometres long river of driver ants that consume everything in their path, including insects and small reptiles. They don't like the sun and so they build walls on each side of their path to provide shade. A millipede approaches and walks straight into the path of the ants and then right along it for a while before emerging unharmed. The millipede is protected by the formic acid that it discharges.

            

Homeless with Dogs

            On Saturday morning I memorized lines eight to twelve of “L'homme à la tête de chou" (The Man with the Head of Cabbage) by Serge Gainsbourg.

            At 9:45 I went to stand in line at the food bank. It was quite a bit longer than it had been the week before so I was two places past where the big hearts end and around the corner on Beaty Avenue. The middle aged blonde woman ahead of me is a food bank regular. She nodded and smiled as I took my place two metres behind her.

            A few minutes later a young woman accompanied by a black labradoodle came to stand behind me, but the woman ahead of me began to severely chastize her for spitting on the sidewalk. She told her that people put their bags and backpacks down to mark their places in line and they don’t want her saliva on their things.

            At the same time the woman with the dog was smoking and so I put my backpack down on my spot and took my book across Beaty to stand and read in the sun. But then for reasons that were a mystery to me the woman with the dog followed me to the west side of the street and stood behind me, with the wind continuing to blow her smoke towards me. I moved back to my spot and she followed me again but by this time she had finished her cigarette and so I stayed.

            My best guess to explain her strange behaviour is that she was confused about the line and simply had followed me because she’d thought she was supposed to.

            My second guess is that she thought that I’d been offended by the woman ahead of me that had criticized her and that I’d moved across the street in protest, causing her to join me in solidarity.

            I read a couple of pages from my dual language book of French stories and I was almost finished with The Death of Judas by Paul Claudel. The story is being told by Judas after he has committed suicide. Claudel adds an interesting element by having Judas hang himself from the same fig tree that Jesus had illogically cursed because it did not bear fruit out of season.

            Actually, the Bible has two conflicting stories about the death of Judas. The most popular one is the suicide as depicted in Matthew, but in Acts Judas uses the blood money that he got for turning Jesus in to buy a piece of land. It is on this property that Judas has an accidental fall resulting in his death. Some people that are desperate for the Bible to be literally true in every instance have used a clumsy creativity to combine the two stories so they will both be true.

            I looked behind me and saw that the line was now stretching for about five houses down Beaty. The woman two places behind me struck up a conversation with the woman with the dog. She learned her name is Charlotte and that she and her dog are homeless. She said she knows how hard it is to find a place when one has a dog because she was on the street with a dog at one point. She said that her dog had to be put down.

            There is nothing wrong with homeless people having dogs as long as they can take care of them and feed them properly. Homeless people are really the ideal dog caregivers because dogs are homeless by nature. Wild dogs tend to run in packs and only females giving birth and nursing will stay in a single place until their pups are ready to travel. Eighty-three percent of the dogs in the world are feral. One in four homeless people have pets.

            This was my second week going to the food bank in the age of social distancing. Before that there tended to be a ninety minute wait before we could go downstairs in groups of five and choose our items. Last week I learned that in the new system we no longer get to go downstairs but rather boxes of food are brought upstairs and distributed. When I first heard this I thought it was a rip off to take away our choices but I was so pleasantly surprised that I only had to wait half an hour for my food that I didn’t care anymore about not being able to choose. This time however the wait was as long as it had been before and so it made me feel that we should have the power of selection again.

            After a little over an hour the people in the front started getting their boxes and left. The line moved forward a bit until I was standing on one of the hearts painted two metres apart. Marlena came around with a big bag of 170 gram bags of Fresh Gourmet whole grain chips. I took the jalapeno flavoured kind and put it in my bag. Charlotte opened hers immediately and shared some with her dog. According to the Animal Rescue site it’s okay to share non spicy versions of those kinds of snacks with a dog as long as they are not salted. Dogs cannot eat salt because it causes excessive thirst, urination and can lead to sodium ion poisoning. These chips are all corn based and corn is a common allergen for dogs. They are also fried in oil., which is also bad for dogs and so for Charlotte to allow her dog this snack was not good care giving.

            After ninety minutes I finally got a box of food with a big paper bag on top. Most of the food items that I received this time were not what I would have chosen from the shelves downstairs. The paper bag contained five large potatoes, two bruised apples, a very soft grapefruit and a plastic bag of about fifteen carrots. In the box was a can of whole tomatoes, two of tomato soup, one of peas and one of cut wax beans. There was a 400 gram pack of Asian noodles, a box of four apple-strawberry pressed fruit bars, a bottle of a cucumber-lime-mint beverage, a 680 gram container of cherry tomatoes from Mexico, a bag of four crusty buns, a bag of frozen sliced peaches, a one-litre carton of lactose free 2% milk, two 100 gram containers of coconut Greek yogourt and two peeled and packaged hard boiled eggs. I was raised on a farm with chickens and I never imagined that someone would come along and sell pre-boiled and peeled eggs. It seems totally decadent to my mind. There was recently a listeria outbreak in the United States due to pre-boiled eggs but these are free range and come from Conestoga Farms in Ontario. I can’t imagine they will taste as good as freshly cooked eggs but they might be ideal for a homeless person like Charlotte and for her dog.