Milton Berle

            On Thursday morning I memorized the first verse of “Le petit Lauriston”. It’s one of those expanding list songs like “The Twelve days of Christmas” and so the first verse is the shortest. Each subsequent verse adds two more nasty gifts for the French Gestapo to those repeated from the previous verses. 

            I memorized the sixth verse of “La main du masseur” (The Hand of the Masseur) by Serge Gainsbourg. There are two verses left to learn. 

            I weighed 87.2 kilos before breakfast.

            Last night I fell asleep at the computer again and so I fell behind on my journal. Today around midday I worked on getting caught up. 

            I weighed 87.05 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I rode my bike up O’Hara and absent mindedly went east on Maple Grove, which is now a one-way going west. I had to move my bike to the sidewalk twice when cars came. It was clear enough to ride on Maple Grove and Brock but it was slippery and so I headed east on Dundas to Gladstone and went down to Freshco. I bought eight bags of green grapes, two packs of strawberries, bananas, two packs of Full City Dark coffee, and a big pack of Sponge Towels. I did a price match on the grapes with the No Frills price of $4.14 a kilo. 

            I weighed 87.4 kilos at 18:11, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening since November 27.

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:33. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Seven Shades of Blues” I finished editing the BBC documentary “When Hippies Ruled the World”. There are almost enough clips to finish my video. I’ll begin organizing the clips tomorrow. 

            I reviewed the song practice videos of my performances of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” from September 11 to 13. On September 11 I played my Martin acoustic guitar and the take at 29:15 was not bad until a few of chords were off at the end. The September 12 file is corrupted. On September 13 I played it on my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar but I didn’t finish reviewing it because it was time for supper. I left off 36 minutes into the video. 

            I had a potato with gravy and three pork ribs while watching season 3, episode 7 of Batman.

            There is supposed to be a Flower-In in Gotham Park but Louis the Lilac has cornered the flower market in Gotham. He plans on using his special mind control lilacs to manipulate the Flower Children who are the future leaders. The leader of the Flower Children is Princess Primrose. Barbara Gordon happens to be walking through the park when Primrose recognizes her from college where Barbara knew her as Thelma Jones. Primrose says they’ll call Barbara Hyacinth. Barbara thinks she’s flipped a petal. Louis arrives in his Flowermobile and starts distributing lilacs. He approaches Primrose, manipulates the lilac in his lapel and suddenly she is in a trance because of its stupefying aromatic spray. He takes her back to his greenhouse. Primrose’s friend points out that the lilacs Louis gave them are plastic. Barbara goes to her father Police Commissioner Gordon to tell him that Princess Primrose has been kidnapped. Gordon and Chief O’Hara don’t take her seriously. They say they are late for a city council meeting and tell her to relax. After they leave her alone in the office she picks up the red phone to call Batman. Batman tells her that he and Robin will be guests of honour at the Flower-In. Meanwhile in Lilac’s greenhouse the dose he gave to Primrose is wearing off. She mentions Barbara and so Louis has one of his men follow her. He doses Primrose again and puts her in his hot house. Batman and Robin arrive in Gordon’s office. Gordon is mad that Barbara used the Bat Phone. The Flower Children arrive at police headquarters to protest Louis the Lilac. Batman and Robin leave through the window so they won’t be mobbed because the Flower Children think they are cool. Batman tells Gordon to be gentle with the Flower Children because they are doing what they can to help the world. Batman and Robin go to the Batmobile where Louis has left a card advertizing Lila’s Lilac Shop at eleven Lavender Lane. Batman suspects it’s a plant. Louis calls Lila and tells her to have some alba Bulgaria poison lilacs ready for the dynamic duo. Batman and Robin arrive at Lila’s shop. Lila offers to show them some rare lilacs. She pretends to accidentally drop them and Robin goes to pick them up before Batman can stop him. Robin is now unconscious and as Batman stoops over him Louis hits him with a vase of flowers. Meanwhile Barbara finds one of Louis’ thugs on her balcony but when she goes to call the police he rips out the line. She locks herself in her bedroom. In the greenhouse Batman and Robin are being held and may soon be eaten by Louis’ man eating lilacs. Meanwhile in the Batcave Alfred answers the Batphone to learn that Batman and Robin are missing after planning to consult the Bat Computer about Louis the Lilac. Alfred consults the Bat Computer himself and gets Lila’s address. At the Greenhouse the lilacs have already eaten Batman’s utility belt. Barbara has changed to Batgirl, gone out her bedroom window and along the ledge to her balcony from which she confronts Louis’ thug. He leaves and Batgirl changes back to Barbara when her father and the police arrive. After they leave, Alfred comes to see Barbara because he is the only one who knows she is Batgirl. He tells her that Batman and Robin are missing and were last seen at Lila’s. At the Flower-In, Primrose’s trance wears off and she tells the Flower Children what Louis did to Batman and Robin. Louis escapes but the Flower Children follow. In the greenhouse Batman has freed his foot and manages to kick a flower pot through a window and the cool air kills the man eating Lilacs. Louis has his gangsters attack. Batgirl arrives and kicks the guy in the head who ripped out her phone. Batgirl grabs a spray can of powdery mildew and sprays Louis in the face. He begins to wilt, mold and decay but only superficially. Batgirl sneaks away. There’s an extended scene of Batgirl riding away on her Batgirl Cycle while the Batgirl theme song plays. Outside the flower shop Batman and Robin see a band of Bessarovian Cossacks ride by on horseback. Their leader is Olga, Queen of the Cossacks and following her on a donkey and whining for her to wait for him is Egghead. 

            Louis was played by Milton Berle, who first began performing on stage and in silent films at the age of 5. He made his vaudeville debut at 12 in Floradora. At 16 he was a vaudeville MC. By the 1930s he was a successful stand-up, having patterned himself after Ted Healy. He was the first television star and was nicknamed Mr. Television and Uncle Miltie. His theme song was “Near You”. One of the legends about him was that he had an enormous penis. He had a reputation for stealing jokes. He appeared on an experimental TV broadcast in 1929. He was the host of the radio show Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One. He starred on the radio in The Milton Berle Show. He starred in Always Leave Them Laughing. In 1947 he was one of the founders of the Friars Club of Beverly Hills where many famous celebrity roasts took place. He was the host of Texaco Star Theatre from 1948 to 1953 and modeled it after his old vaudeville routines. The show dominated Tuesday nights and some movie theatres and businesses shut down early so they wouldn’t miss his performances. He got resistance when he tried to bring black performers on but he said if they don’t go on I don’t go on. In 1953 it became the Buick-Berle Show but only lasted two seasons. It survived one more year as The Milton Berle Show. After his TV stardom was over he still packed Vegas showrooms. In 1949 he hosted the first telethon. He co-starred in The Oscar, and Who’s Minding the Mint. One of his old schticks was to appear in drag and so he was paired with Ru Paul as presenters at the 1993 MTV Awards, which was a disaster. He touched her inappropriately and she ended her relationship with MTV. He said, “A good wife always forgives her husband when she’s wrong”. He said he had a cross indexed file of four million jokes. He said a comic depends entirely on the joke. A comedian can get a laugh from the attitude he projects. A funny man just looks funny. He said Sammy Davis Jr. does everything good but nothing great.