Benny Rubin

            On Tuesday morning I translated the eighth verse of "J'ai pas d'regret" (I've No Regrets) by Boris Vian. There's just one more verse to do. 

            I finished memorizing "Hain pour aime" ("Hate for Mate") by Serge Gainsbourg. Tomorrow I'll look for the chords. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I worked on organizing my notes on Chiac for my final English in the World essay. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I've been at that time in a week. 

            Today was the first snowfall of the season and we got quite a bit of it. It had stopped by the time I took my bike ride but there was still brown slush on the street. I rode as far as Bloor and Dovercourt and then went south. Slush is easy to cut through with bike wheels but the problem was that identical to the soft slush were frozen strips of the stuff that I almost wiped out on a few times. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos at 16:45. 

            At 18:00 I logged on to Zoom for the Medieval Literature lecture. 

            For the first half of the class she gave us pointers on essay writing. 

            Conclusions and evidence. The undergrad journal Idiom has introductions. We looked at an essay from Idiom on Thomas Wharton's Ice Fields called "A Tidy Wilderness" by Alexander Lynch. He read the book in Introduction to Canadian Literature, which I took two years ago. He uses a bracketed word to give it a double meaning: "(E)co existence". Theoretical essays. He uses a Heideggerian reference.

            Looking at two sides of an issue. 

            A thesis should be interpretive rather than descriptive. "Reveals" shows how the author is interpreting. The thesis needs to be falsifiable with the making of the opposite case. What's the difference between evidence and example? An example is not necessarily proof. 

            Descriptive thesis: there are three kinds of monsters in Beowulf and then listing them.

            Interpretive thesis: through the conclusion of three kinds of monsters the poet demonstrates the moral … 

            "The Ancrene Wisse shows every day life" is not an interpretation because it can't be disputed.

            Interpretive: "By presenting a detailed image of the ordinary world and life of an anchoress the Ancrene Wisse opens up this same world and life to critique." 

            We want a charismatic generalization to be true. 

            Tolstoy intro: "All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." 

            Marie de France's lays had Arthurian elements. 

            Comparing Julian of Norwich and Margerie Kemp.

            I typed in the chat "Bugs bunny as trickster" She liked that and said one could expand on that by researching the history of trickster figures. I typed, "Warner Brothers played trickster against Disney with its Bugs Bunny stories" and "Bugs Bunny deteriorated from trickster to hero over the decades."

            The professor says she repeats "however" a lot in her essays. She thinks repetition can be helpful. 

            I talked about my essay writing process and how difficult it is to be academic and an artist at the same time. Writing academic essays is like dancing in a very tight suit. I said I always start my essay with stream of consciousness and struggled to bring life and maintain life in the essay as I go along. It's easier to bring life back in the conclusion. It also helps to read one's essay out loud to make sure it flows well. 

            The IIDC model has 4 steps: infer, identify (who what etc), detail (evidence) and connect. 

            Don't cite whole sentences, just a word. 

            The York Christi plays. 

            We were put into breakout groups to look at various plays. I was in a group with Paco, who I remembered from the US Lit course. We looked at the opening verse of the last play that was called Doomsday or The Last Judgement but also The Mercers Play. It begins with a speech by god: 

When I first all this world had wrought - 

Wood and wind, and waters wan - 

Each kind of thing that now is aught, 

It seemed full well what I did then. 

When they were made, "It's good," I thought; 

Then in my likeness I made man, - 

And man to grieve me tarried not; 

Therefore I rue that I the world began. 

            I observed that the speech is very self centred on god's part and full of lots of "I"s and "me"s. He seems to be saying "I didn't get back what I invested in mankind by creating it". 

            Observation and evidence. 

            I observed that as the Bible begins with "In the beginning was the word and the word was god" and since "word" begins with "W", this verse also is full of alliteration of words beginning in "w" and most of them are list of his creations: Wood and wind, and waters wan as well as world later on. 

            I say the plays seem to be about product placement. I gave the example of the Crucifixion play in which four bumbling Roman soldiers are having a hard time nailing Christ to the cross that would rival The Three Stooges and would fit right into Monty Python's The Life of Brian. I said I could imagine Christ taking the hammer and nails from the soldiers and saying, "Here, I'll do it myself!" If it was in these soldiers' job description to put criminals on crosses they would have been more experienced and better at it. But the message seems to be like a TV ad, "Don't hire these fools to do a job like this. Hire the men from the Pinners Guild. 

            There's a verse that would even work as a jingle: 

 " Why chatter so? Let's get him tied, 

And stretch him; we'll not work in vain. 

3 SOLDIER: You boss us like an overlord; 

Come help to haul, you son of Cain. 1

SOLDIER: Indeed, that shall I do 

(As quickly as a snail). 

3 SOLDIER: And I'll attach him to, 

With skill and with a nail. 

            The commercial world of plays. Every pageant or play was on a wagon. They began at daybreak and ended at sundown. There was festive drinking all the time. It ends with the last judgement. 

            The Tanners tell of the Fall of the Angels and tanning is a stinky profession to reflect the stench of hell. 

            The Plasterers did the Creation and designed the firmament ceiling. 

            The Parchment makers did the story of Abraham and Isaac. Parchment was made of lambskin so maybe the slaughter of lambs was supposed to reflect the sacrifice of Isaac. 

            The York plays were special because there is more detail than literature of that time. 

            The York Mercer's indenture props list included a hell mouth, pageant wagon, models of angels flying around. The Mercers were silk merchants. 

            I read god's part of Doomsday. Bad soul from gospels of Matthew. Division between lack of compassion and compassion. The crowd are extras as souls are risen.

            The city of York vs cities in other texts. 

            If you are in this audience this is what you know of history. 

            Jesus is shown to be the beginning of history but reclaims the history before. 

            History is not a straight line in these plays. The start of the day as the beginning of the world. Creating parallels. The Medieval sense of time has different scales but it's similar to now. List a descent from heaven. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast pork while watching season 2, episode 10 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Thanksgiving is approaching and Mr. Drysdale has gifted the Clampetts with a live turkey. But Elly May has bonded with the turkey and named it Herman. By the time Granny tells Jed it's time to slaughter the turkey, Elly has taught Herman how to shake hands Jed can't bring himself to kill it. He's shot plenty of wild turkeys that had a sporting chance but this one is too tame to kill. 

            Jethro is setting the table in what they call the fancy eating room. He says that a school chum told him that the room is called a billiard room and the table is called a billiard table. Above the mantle is the head of a rhinoceros but Jed and Jethro assume that it's the head of a "Billiard". They figure people must hunt them in Beverly Hills because Jethro says his friend says his father shoots billiards a couple nights a week. Jed says even Elly wouldn't make a pet of something that looks like that. 

            Since Jed won't kill the turkey Granny tells Jethro to clean and dress it, but he ends up putting clothes on it. 

            Mrs. Drysdale has arranged for herself and Mr. Drysdale to pose as the Puritan Governor and Mrs. Bradford for a recreation of the first US Thanksgiving. Jane is going to take the picture. There are two men at the Drysdale's residence dressed as First Nations men waiting to pose for the picture. Mrs. Drysdale asks what nation they are from and one of them answers "Central Casting." She asks if she can get them refreshments. One says he'll have a beer and the other a dry martini. Mrs. Drysdale is surprised and asks, "You want firewater?" He says, "Very dry. Ten firewater to one vermouth." 

            Mildred dresses Milburn in pilgrim attire and he feels ridiculous and tries to get away. The actors grab him and say, "You no pose, we no get paid!" But Elly is looking through the bushes and runs to tell Granny that the Indians have captured Drysdale. They prepare a defense. 

            Meanwhile at the Drysdales one photo is taken but they need to also pose with the turkey. It turns out that the turkey that Drysdale gave the Clampetts was for the photo. The actors say they will go get the turkey but when they walk onto the Clampetts' property Granny and Elly ambush them and tie them up. Jed comes home and unties them. Then the Drysdale's come and everybody's arguing until Jed reminds them it's Thanksgiving. 

            Next we see them having a meal of gefilte fish prepared by the mother of one of the actors. Granny says, "You Indians sure know how to cook!" 

            One of the actors posing as a chief was Benny Rubin, who wrote an autobiography about his work in Vaudeville and his over 200 radio, film and television appearances in 70 years in show business called "Come Backstage with Me". He was a master of dialects and demonstrated them on the radio show Stop Me If You've Heard This One. He was the voice of Joe Jitsu on The Dick Tracy Show cartoon series. He played Professor Kropotkin on My Friend Irma. He was a regular on The Bickersons and frequently appeared on the Jack Benny Program. He appeared in six Three Stooges movies.

             I searched for bedbugs and found one on the edge of the frame of the old exit door at the head of my bed, at the same level as the lower hinge.