Reva Rose

            On Sunday morning I memorized the chorus of “Mangos” by Serge Gainsbourg and tried to rework my translation. I need a word that rhymes with “tropical” that describes what's inside of a mango. 

            I weighed 87.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            I worked on writing ideas for my essay on cousins as they are presented in “The Ballad of the Sad Café and “What You Pawn I Will Redeem.” “Cousin” is an interesting word because more than any other familial term we tend to use it without a qualifier or quantifier. No matter what the degree of removal we more often than not simple say that someone is our “cousin.” In sibling terms one can't be less than a half brother or sister and there's no such thing as a half parent. 

            I weighed 88.2 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with five year old cheddar and a glass of fruit punch. 

            When I got up from my siesta it was starting to rain so instead of taking a bike ride I did some exercises at home while watching the first part of a production of Othello from 1981. 

            I weighed 88.1 kilos at 18:00. 

            I re-read the first half of “The Ballad of the Sad Café” by Carson McCullers and made notes toward my essay that is due in less than five days. 

            I made pizza on my last two slices of Bavarian sandwich bread after I cut out the mouldy patch on each slice. I added Florentine sauce, the cut-up second chicken burger that I made yesterday and some extra old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the penultimate episode of the final season of “Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C.” 

            In this story, Carter's other sister Muriel is coming to visit, although in the second season Babe Carter is his only sister. Muriel is not conventionally attractive and so Carter worries about her becoming an old maid. There's a dance coming up on the base and Carter tries to get Duke to escort her. At first he agrees but then he sneaks in Carter's desk and looks at a picture of her. He makes up an excuse and passes Muriel over to Gomer who is happy to take her, even after meeting her. But Carter still wants to fix Muriel up to make her attractive. He takes her to a makeover expert named Madame Claudette. Claudette puts a horrible gold wig on Muriel, gives her false eyelashes and a gaudy dress. Muriel doesn't like it but she's trying to please her brother. But when Gomer comes to pick Muriel up and sees her dressed like that he tells her it just isn't her. She changes back to her natural self and Gomer takes her to the dance. Carter is mad but Gomer convinces him he was wrong to try to change his sister. Gomer dances with Muriel and then another marine cuts in. Later Carter gets a letter from Muriel saying she's been dating. 

            Muriel was played by Reva Rose, and I was correct when I picked up a Chicago accent from her. She won two awards for her role as Lucy in the Off Broadway musical “You're A Good Man Charlie Brown” opposite the pre-M.A.S.H. Gary Burghoff as Charlie. She did the voice of Fritz's girlfriend in the animated film “The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat.” She did a lot of TV commercials in the 60s, the most memorable being an Alka Seltzer commercial in which she plays a wife who can't cook. She played Nurse Mildred MacInerney on the sitcom Temperatures Rising.