Paul Lynde

            On Friday morning I worked out the chords for the first and second verses of "Hmm hmm hmm" by Serge Gainsbourg. There's just one left and so I should have the song uploaded to my Christian's Translations blog on Saturday. 

            I weighed 83.8 kilos before breakfast. 

            I worked on my essay, mostly tweaking the paragraph that I'd built up yesterday. This is the only totally new thing I added: 

            Along with the eyes and the "straight black lips", another source of repulsion for Victor's sensibilities is his creation's yellow skin, which "scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath". The creature then is almost an x-ray image of himself, and given Victor's obsession with stopping at externals when he looks at others, it points to his fear of really seeing beneath the surface.

            I weighed 83.7 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst. I weighed 84 kilos at 17:00. I was caught up with my journal at 18:21. I spent over an hour on my essay but didn't get much writing done. I mostly researched all the names that Victor Frankenstein uses to refer to the creature from the time of his creation until their last close encounter:

            The surface of the monster appears as the inside of a human. "I beheld the wretch - the miserable monster whom I had created... the demoniacal corpse... filthy daemon... His countenance expressed the utmost extent of malice and treachery". 

            I had the usual boring avocadoes and tomatoes with lemon juice and Garden Cocktail for dinner at the end of this eighth day of my fast. Six more days to go. The tomatoes are getting tedious so I might pick up some cucumber and scallions tomorrow. I ate while watching the sixth season premier of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Without fail, the longer a sitcom exists the more ridiculous the scenarios become. Jed has somehow inherited a castle in England. Jethro hears about it first and in anticipation of them moving to England he has researched it at the library. He's learns that Elizabeth is the queen of England but he gets the wrong Elizabeth and reads about Elizabeth I. He comes home dressed in Elizabethan clothes, with a suitcase of other raiment of the period for the rest of the family. He addresses Jed as Earl Clampett. Jethro believes he is a knight now and thinks he needs an oaf to accompany him, so he makes Granny his oaf. 

            Drysdale is all for the Clampetts going to England and he plans to come as well because he thinks there will be money to be made and prestige to be won. He also wants to humour Jethro's fantasies about England and so when Granny rejects the oaf costume he makes Jane wear it. I don't know where Jethro got this idea of an oaf being an attendant to a knight. Jane points out to Jethro that there are no female oafs and so Drysdale has to wear the outfit. 

            The Clampetts go to the passport office and the clerk first tries to help Jethro with his application. "Your name?" "Jethro" Your surname?" "Sir Jethro". When Jethro starts telling the clerk that the hillbillies he sees in the office are royal and are going to live in a castle in England, he first thinks they're crazy. As Jethro's answers become more and more ridiculous and the clerk hears that Jethro was torn between being a brain surgeon and a fry cook, he starts thinking he's on Candid Camera and begins talking to ordinary items in the office like thermostats and air vents as if they contain hidden cameras. The Clampetts think the clerk needs a rest and say they'll come back later. I guess they get their passports because we see them headed for the airport with the truck decked out in the crosses of the union jack and with a big throne at the back. 

            The passport clerk was played by Paul Lynde, who wanted to become an actor ever since he saw a re-run of the silent film "Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ". After university he went to New York and lived in a building for struggling actors that had a shared kitchen. Marlon Brando said Lynde used to steal his food from the fridge. Lynde became a stand-up comedian in New York night clubs, leading to an appearance in the Broadway show "New Faces of 1952", which became a movie in 1954. He became a regular on Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall for two years. His first big hit film was "Bye Bye Birdie" in which he played Ann-Margret's character's father. He performed a drag scene in the movie "The Glass Bottom Boat". He was a featured performer on Donny and Marie. He played Uncle Arthur on "Bewitched". He was on Hollywood Squares for 14 years. He had his own The Paul Lynde Show for one season and also played a doctor on "Temperature Rising". When he won the 1976 AGVA Award for funniest man of the year he immediately gave it to Jackie Gleason saying he was the funniest man ever. Roger the Alien on American Dad was modeled after the kind of characters Lynde played and his voice.

            

            For the fourteenth night in a row I found no bedbugs.