Bill Cosby

            On Wednesday morning I worked out the chords for the second verse of “A tous les enfants” (To All the Children) by Boris Vian. 

            I worked out the chords for the intro and the first three lines of “Au risque de te déplaire” (At the Risk You’ll Have the Blues) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice and it was in tune from the start. Tomorrow I begin a two session stretch of playing my Martin acoustic guitar and so I’ll be out of tune again. I’m hoping to hear from Alex Wood about fixing it soon. 

            I weighed 86.55 kilos before breakfast. 

            At noon I headed downtown to my appointment for a deep cleaning at the U of T Graduate School of Dentistry. While waiting for my cleaning I read a bit of Marshal McLuhan’s The Gutenberg Galaxy about how specialization entered our culture with the invention of the printing press, changing our perception from being sound based to the visual. Villy, my usual hygienist was not there but Julia did the job. It hurt a bit when she poked around my upper left tooth that is ready to come out. 

            I’d booked an appointment with my dentist for an extraction last week but they canceled at the last minute because the dentist was sick. They rescheduled for today and reminded me about a hundred times, warning me each time that they would charge me $50 if I didn’t come. I texted them that I would pay them $50 to stop reminding me. I had time to lie down for an hour before my 16:30 appointment at Dentistry on Queen West. When I booked the appointment the receptionist warned me that they might not be able to do the extraction if it looked like it was going to possibly break. Then when I was in the chair Dr. Singer the dentist (who looks sixteen) informed me that they never do extractions at that clinic. They would have to x-ray my tooth and refer me to a specialist. In all my life, of all the dentists I’ve seen over the years I have never come across a dentist that didn’t do extractions. It’s like a bike shop not fixing tires, like a guitar luthier not adjusting a neck, like a cobbler who doesn’t repair leather shoes. Shades of the Gutenberg Galaxy, specialization has deepened into dentistry. Anyway, Dr. Singer fixed my front filling without charging me and hopefully will refer me to an extraction specialist soon. I talked with the receptionist about how I was given the wrong impression when they told me they “might” not be able to pull my tooth when the truth was they never extract teeth. Frankly she seemed like she was high on cannabis. 

            I weighed 86.05 kilos at 17:40. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:45. 

            I made pizza on multigrain sandwich bread with marinara sauce, Genoa salami and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching the first episode of the 1969 sitcom The Bill Cosby Show followed by an interview with the elderly Cosby about the show. 

            The first episode was almost Seinfeldian in how it took an ordinary situation and made it increasingly more complicated. High school gym teacher Chet Kincaid is out for a jog. He has an amusing conversation with his feet. He stops to play football with some children for a few minutes and then continues on. As he is passing an empty phone booth the telephone rings. He muses that it could be a beautiful captured spy who has reached a phone to call for help. On the other end is the wife of someone named Calvin who says he works at the garage across the street and so Chet goes to see if he can get Calvin to come to the phone. He talks to Max who is underneath a car and says Calvin is not there but he’s at Birdie’s down the street. He goes back to tell Calvin’s wife and she asks that he go to Birdie’s to tell him to call her. He finds Cavin playing pool and delivers the message. Calvin is very upset that Chet told his wife that he was at Birdie’s because he promised he wouldn’t go there anymore. He wants to Chet to call his wife and lie to her that he wasn’t at Birdie’s after all. Chet doesn’t want to get involved in a domestic dispute and continues his jog. Some cops stop him because he looks like someone who robbed a clothing store. They say he just needs one witness to prove he wasn’t far away at that location and so Chet calls Calvin but Calvin is mad at Chet for not helping him and so he doesn’t offer himself as a witness. Chet is arrested and interviewed at the station. Then Calvin shows up and offers himself as a witness after all but the cops decide Calvin is an accomplice and they are about to put them both in a line-up when the real thief is caught and he looks exactly like Chet. 

            Bill Cosby was an athlete in public and high school but he failed the tenth grade like I did. He completed his education up to a Doctor of Education after he became a TV star. He started his stand-up career in 1961. In 1963 he appeared on the Tonight Show, which led to his recording career. His album To Russell My Brother Whom I Slept With was declared a masterpiece by Spin Magazine. Unlike a lot of black comedians who were exploring controversial material, most of Cosby’s material consisted of childhood reminiscences that appealed to people of all races. In 1965 he was cast to co-star with Robert Culp in the TV series I Spy and he became the first black TV star in a drama series. He won three Emmy Awards for that role. In the early 70s he recorded several educational segments for the Electric Company. His Saturday morning cartoon series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids was a big hit. He co-starred in the films Uptown Saturday Night, Let’s Do It Again, A Piece of the Action, California Suite, Ghost Dad, Jack, and Meteor Man. He starred in Mother, Jugs and Speed. He hosted the educational show The Picture Pages on PBS for six years. In 1983 he released a live concert comedy film that was considered the best stand-up comedy concert film of all time. His biggest success was the five year run of the Cosby Show and its spin off A Different World. He wrote and produced the film Leonard Part 6 but then told everyone not to watch it. His shows Cosby and Kids Say the Darndest Things ran four seasons. The educational series Little Bill based on the books he co-wrote ran for two seasons. He made more money from commercials than he did from his hit TV series. Over 60 women have accused Cosby of various types of sexual offences including rape and drugging. He spent three years in prison but his conviction was overturned and he was released. He’s been married to Camille Hanks since 1964. Accusations continue and they have prevented him from relaunching his career.