Carol Corbett

            On Sunday morning I saw three bedbugs. For the last few months I’ve been seeing about one a week. My neighbour David told me that the landlord told him the exterminator was a coming a few weeks ago. On top of that my kitchen drain is starting to back up again. Hopefully I can clear it without getting into another war with the landlord full of blaming me because nobody else has the problem.

            I finished running through singing and playing “Be All You Can Be”, my translation of “Allons z'enfants” by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog and begin preparing it for publication. 

            I finished running through singing and playing “Delirious”, my translation of “Flagrant délire” by Serge Gainsbourg. I uploaded it to my Christian’s Translations blog and almost finished preparing it for publication. Tomorrow I’ll post it and then start on his next song. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice. Tomorrow I’ll begin a two session stretch of playing my Martin acoustic guitar. 

            I weighed 87.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I weighed 87.85 kilos before lunch. I had Swiss cheese flavoured crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of low sugar iced tea. 

             In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.

            I weighed 87.25 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:45. 

            I reviewed the videos of my song practice performances of “Vomit of the Star Eater” from October 2 to 4. On October 2 I played my Martin Road Series acoustic guitar and the take at 19:00 was one of the best. On October 3 and 4 I played it on my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar. On October 3 the take at 25:00 sounded okay but I was a little slow with the volume pedal. On October 4 the take at 30:45 wasn’t horrible. 

            I managed to put in a little over half an hour of practice of my song “Paranoiac Utopia”. Although I still can’t play the song all the way through I feel like I made some progress. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with Italian sausage pasta sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episodes 5 and 6 of The Beatles cartoon series. There’s some glitch in the videos of episodes 5 and 6, making it so although I can play the audio and video from the beginning with my VLC Media Player I can’t skim through it and still get the audio. I had to use Windows Media Player to do that. 

            In story 1 of episode 5, the Beatles are staying at the Beverly Beverly Hotel in Beverly Hills and they all sleep in the same bed side by side. Suddenly a frog jumps into their bed and Ringo immediately makes friends with it much to the discontent of the other Beatles. He names it Bartholomew and walks it on a leash. But when they enter a fine dining room and Bartholomew causes panic, the others convince Ringo to release Bartholomew into a pond. But then a movie producer says he was impressed by Bartholomew in the restaurant and wants to make it the star of his next picture. He’ll pay $100 a day and so now all the Beatles want Bartholomew back. They go looking for him while playing “I Call Your Name”, which was written mostly by John before the Beatles were formed. He gave it to Billy J. Kramer who recorded and released it in the summer of 1963, but John didn’t like Kramer’s version and recorded it with The Beatles. They find Bartholomew and take him to the producer but now he doesn’t want him. He’s going to use instead a parakeet dressed in a frog costume because the studio is going to pay him $100 a day to use his bird. 

            The first singalong is to “I Feel Fine”. The second singalong is to “Wait”, which was written by Paul, although both John and Paul sing the song. 

            In story 2 of episode 5, The Beatles are in Egypt to entertain the harem of a sheik. The three harem girls have removed their veils, which the sheik forbids. The Beatles arrive by camel and enter his tent and see the women’s faces and so the sheik condemns them to be thrown to the crocodiles. But the harem requests that they be allowed to sing one song before they die and the sheik agrees. The girls whisper to the Beatles that their father has sent a spy to help them escape and he will come forward at the mention of the password “Love”. The Beatles include the word in their song, which is “The Word”, written by both John and Paul. One girl who is not considered conventionally beautiful is chasing George while the sheik is pursuing them both with his scimitar. The song is finished but no rescue has occurred and so the Beatles are being taken to be crocodile food when Ringo says, “Goodbye love” to the camel. The camel turns out to be a French foreign legion bugler in a costume who calls for the troops and they charge in. 

            In story 1 of episode 6, The Beatles are visiting India on a good will trip and travelling by elephant. Ringo is complaining a lot and the others tell him that as a guest in India he has to be more charming. They see a sign that reads Indian Charm School and decide to sign Ringo up without reading the fine print. It’s really a school for learning to charm snakes and other creatures. Inside, the teacher has lost his students after asking them to upgrade from charming snakes to charming a tiger. When the Beatles walk in he immediately sends George and Ringo through the door into the tiger cage. He says they need to use music to charm the tiger and so they sing “All My Loving”. The tiger gets out of the cage and chases them during the song. Then the teacher charms a rope for them to climb out of the tiger’s reach. 

            The first singalong is to “I’m Looking Through You”. 

            The second singalong is to “Nowhere Man”, which was written by John and is sung in three part harmony. Paul says that John was writing about himself in the third person. 

            In story 2 of episode 6 the Beatles are just leaving a science fiction movie about aliens when a flying saucer lands in front of them. From out of the ship a big, beautiful woman emerges and says she heard some of their songs on the radio and asks for their autograph. John gives her his autograph and then she asks if they’d like to take a little trip in her fleagle. They do and she gives them four tickets for the ride. She takes them to a strange planet 37 billion km from Earth. There is at least one planet at that distance, which orbits Proxima Centauri, the nearest star. But Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf and it is unlikely that its planets would support life. She says she’s saved the universe from the Beatles and god will be so pleased, then she reveals herself to be a gloopy grobby creature with seventeen arms and long fuzzy claws, and then leaves them there. They all look at their tickets and they read “one way trip”. They play “Day Tripper” while creatures peek out at them from all around. The creatures are enjoying the music and start popping out but also keep disappearing. The Beatles are surrounded and start running even though the creatures seem friendly. Then some small, blonde, closer to human beings with a gurgling language guide the Beatles into a multi coloured crystal sphere that turns out to be a teleporter that sends them back to Earth, but for a moment they emerge looking like the furry creatures until they are themselves again. 

            Female voices for The Beatles cartoon series were done by Julie Bennett and Carol Corbett. Carol Corbett started on The Ernie Kovacs Show and the Garry Moore Show promoting Spring Cigarettes. She hosted two New York City based children’s TV shows: The Mighty Hercules / Carol Corbett Show and The Patchwork Family. She was the voice of Friday on the Cool McCool animated series. I checked for bedbugs before bed and they are definitely back but the nests I found didn’t seem to contain healthy ones. They were all black and greasy.