Peter Palmer

            On Saturday after midnight I added fresh carpet tape to the edges of my mattress where it had gotten less sticky. I lint rolled the curtain between the bedroom and the living room and picked up a few bedbugs. I lint-rolled the top of my bed and found a couple. There were none on the pillow. I shook out my sheet and my comforter on the deck. I went to bed at 1:42 and woke up at 4:41 to pee. I went back to sleep for 15 more minutes. 

            I revised a little over half my translation of “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted a Little Money) by Boris Vian. I should have that done on Sunday and then I’ll start working out the chords. 

            I memorized the first verse of “L’île enchanteresses” (The Enchanted Isle) by Serge Gainsbourg. It has a nice melody by Jacques Dutronc. 

            I weighed 91.15 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            Around midday I rode to Freedom Mobile where I paid for my October phone plan. Then I rode to No Frills where only one bag of grapes was not too soft. I bought two bags of oranges, two packs of raspberries, a large pack of blueberries, a sack of red potatoes, lemon dish detergent, a jar of tomato pesto, a jug of lemonade, a jug of orange juice, ketchup, 3 containers of 4% skyr, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips. 

            I weighed 91.6 kilos at 15:05, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon in a week. 

            I took a siesta and woke up too late for a bike ride. 

            I weighed 91.45 kilos at 17:55. I haven’t been that easy on the scale in the evening since last Saturday.

            I was two days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I made pizza on a slice of 7 grain bread with marinara, tomato pesto, a chopped slice of ham, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching episode 4 of the TV series Custer. 

            Custer and his 7th Cavalry raid the camp of the Cheyenne leader yellow Hawk and capture him. General Terry is surprised when Custer brings Yellow Hawk in since his company was assigned to foraging detail. Terry says Yellow Hawk will be taken to Fort Riley for trial. Custer comes to see him in his cell and tells him the sun is setting on his people. He tells him he has to keep the treaty. Yellow Hawk argues that the white man does not keep the treaties any better. Custer says sometimes treaties are carried out by fools but we must try and make them work. 

            A little girl named Irene Maloney is wearing a small cavalry uniform and salutes Custer. She’s at the fort with her father to get supplies. They have a farm a few kilometers away. 

            Yellow Hawk is placed in a cage wagon to be transported to Fort Riley accompanied by a company of the 5th Cavalry. On the way they are ambushed and Yellow Hawk is freed. 

            California Joe tells Custer he doesn’t think the frontier will ever be tamed. Custer says it will, despite “savages” like Yellow Hawk and fools like President Grant’s brother (Custer testified against Orvil Grant accusing him of the illegal selling of trading rights at frontier military posts). 

            General Terry is sending the 5th Cavalry after Yellow Hawk and keeping Custer and his 7th Cavalry on patrol. 

            That night when camping, Sergeant Bustard sees California Joe grooming his mule and wonders why he takes care of it better than he does his horse. Joe says his mule is a better saddle animal than Bustard’s horse. He says mules are smarter than horses because they don’t get spooked as easily. Apparently mules are smarter than horses.

            Custer is chatting with Joe when an arrow hits the tree he’s standing near. Custer is pretty sure it was a deliberate miss. Joe tells Custer it’s a Cheyenne death arrow and a message from a Cheyenne chief to someone that they are marked for death. If the marked person doesn’t meet the challenge then the chief will start killing off those who are close to him. 

            A mail wagon is ambushed and Yellow Hawk gives the cavalry soldier Sergeant Tuvey a chance to fight him, but he loses and dies. Later on patrol, Custer’s company see Tuvey’s mail wagon with Tuvey in it approaching them but Tuvey is dead and merely propped up in the driver’s seat. In his glove is another death arrow as a signal for Custer. 

            They continue the patrol and then Yellow Hawk appears on a hill firing a rifle at Custer. Custer doesn’t take the bait and continues the patrol. 

            Later they see smoke and follow it to the now burned down farm of the Maloney family. Custer finds little Irene’s cavalry cap. They also find the body of a dead Sioux carrying a skin with Sioux writing on it (the Sioux did have pictograph writing). Joe says it’s an invitation from the Cheyenne to the Sioux to join forces in a big fight at War Bonnet Gorge. Custer’s company goes there and observes a camp of maybe 3000 Cheyenne. If they ride through the gorge tomorrow to join the Sioux the 5th Cavalry won’t have a chance. Custer’s company of 16 men try to stop the Cheyenne from getting through. 

            Yellow Hawk rides forward and Custer rides to meet him, challenging him to a one on one fight. They charge at each other and are knocked from their horses to fight in the water. Yellow Hawk loses and drowns. 

            The Cheyenne attack and Custer’s company tries to fight them off until General Terry and the 5th Cavalry arrive. There’s a lot of close combat until the cavalry drives the Cheyenne to retreat.

            Sergeant Bustard was played by Peter Palmer, who while serving in the US Army entered and won the All Army Entertainment Contest and got to sing on The Ed Sullivan Show. The producers of the Broadway musical Li’l Abner heard him and immediately cast him as the star. He later also starred in the film adaptation. This got him typecast as a hillbilly and he worked hard to beat that by performing in operettas and in night clubs. He co-starred in the short-lived sitcom The Kallikaks. His main focus was stage acting. He was married to Aniko Farrell who was a former Miss Canada and a Broadway actor.

October 6, 1996: My daughter and I played video games and real games

                                       

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday my daughter and I played games on my new computer and we also played out on the back roof of my place. Her mother picked her up in the evening.

Wayne Maunder

            On Friday after midnight I added fresh carpet tape to the edges of my mattress. I lint rolled the curtains between the bedroom and caught a few bedbugs. I lint rolled my bed and pillow and found none. I couldn’t shake out the sheet and comforter on the deck because it was raining. I went to bed around 1:40. It felt like it took an hour to go to sleep. I woke up at 4:00 to pee and then went back to sleep until 5:00. I got up without grabbing my phone as I would normally do. After washing up, before yoga I started yoga later because I went to get my phone. After starting yoga I was lying on the floor and realized I’d forgotten to turn on Radio Canada so I got up to do that. I fell behind a couple of minutes because of those slips of memory. 

            I finished memorizing “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted A Little Money) by Boris Vian. On Saturday I’ll start revising my translation based on understanding the rhythm and the meaning better after memorizing it. 

            I published “The Lucky Tap Dance”, my translation of “La fille aux claquettes” by Serge Gainsbourg on my Christian’s Translations blog and posted the lyrics on Facebook. The next untranslated song on my Gainsbourg list is “L’île enchanteresses” (The Enchanted Isle). I listened to it once and tomorrow I’ll start learning it. 

            I weighed 91.25 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the first of two sessions and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            I cleared some more stuff out of the storage area in the bedroom. I threw out some items but most of it is now crowding the kitchen. 

            I weighed 91.85 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 91.6 kilos at 18:10. 

            I was still three days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I baked a salmon fillet and had half of it with wedge oven fries and gravy while watching episode 3 of the TV series Custer. 

            Custer’s 7th Cavalry comes to escort a trail drive and stops it from being raided by Sioux warriors. The trail boss, Kermit Teller says they’ve been attacked more than once since they left Texas and wonders why the escort wasn’t there sooner. Custer argues that Teller is a week ahead of schedule. He has 1200 steers and 200 horses to deliver to the US Cavalry. 

            Teller arrives with the herd at Fort Hays and says the Cavalry owes him $18 a head plus $20 for each horse. General Terry reminds him his contract states that the cattle must be delivered to Fort Wallace. Teller says he’s lost too many drovers to make that trip. Terry says Custer and his men will help with the drive and take orders from Teller. 

            Custer learns that Teller had been in the infantry in Michigan during the Civil War and has a grudge against Custer and the cavalry because they weren’t there when they needed them. 

            That night some of the cattle get spooked and stampede because the horse soldiers are wearing their swords and such which make clanking noises as they ride. Teller says that’s got to stop. 

            Custer and Teller get into a gratuitous fight. Custer beats him and then Crazy Horse’s warriors attack. Teller is wounded and so Custer takes over the role of trail boss. 

            Three Sioux not associated with Crazy Horse come begging for food, so Custer gives them a steer. When Teller complains Custer tosses him a $20 gold coin and says he owes him change. But when the Sioux men are preparing to slaughter the steer, Crazy Horse stops them and refuses to allow them to beg from the white man. 

            California Joe catches one of the drovers trying to escape the cattle drive and brings him back. Custer says the next man who tries to desert the cattle drive will be shot. 

            Custer tells Sergeant Bustard that if Teller tries to resume control of the drive, tie him to the supply wagon.

            Custer plans on taking the herd through Rocky Gorge but Joe sees 300 Kiowa and Sioux at the gorge cutting that route off. Custer says they’re going through anyway. He tells the men that when they get to the top of the gorge every man should fall back to the rear of the herd. They do so and as the Kiowa and Sioux start charging towards them, Custer has his men stampede the herd through the gorge. The warriors are overwhelmed and the herd gets through. 

            Custer returns control of the drive back to Teller the rest of the way to Fort Wallace where Custer and teller have the fight they’ve been itching to have. Custer wins and then they just continue dissing each other in a friendly way as they go for a drink. 

            Custer was played by Canadian actor Wayne Maunder, who was born in Four Falls, New Brunswick, about half an hour’s drive north of where I was raised. It’s very close to New Denmark where my father was brought up. But Maunder’s family moved to Bangor, Maine when he was 4 years old. I wonder if he was related to the Maunder family that were members of the rock band called The Common People that played at most of our high school dances. While studying Psychiatry in college in California he became interested in amateur theatre and switched to English and Drama. After college he decided to try it professionally in New York. He took lessons from Stella Adler and acted in stock theatre. He got signed to a studio in LA when a theatrical agent saw him in The Knack. He made his TV debut in a guest appearance on The Monroes in 1967. He then starred in Custer in 1968 but the show only lasted for 17 episodes. That was partly because indigenous groups protested their negative portrayal in the series, but mostly because it was defeated by being in the same time slot as both The Virginian and Lost in Space. He co-starred in the more successful western series Lancer. He co-starred in the short-lived police series The Chase. He starred in the movie The Seven Minutes. In his later career he produced independent films. In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Luke Perry played a character who was based on Maunder.

October 5, 1996: My daughter got kicked out of Montessori for kicking the teachers

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday my daughter began another weekend with me. I don’t know if I picked her up from Scarborough or if Nancy dropped her off. She’d started pre-school and was having trouble adjusting. On my suggestion Nancy had enrolled her in Montessori but she got kicked out for kicking the teachers all the time.

Michael Dante

            On Thursday after midnight I lint rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room and only one bedbug turned up. I also lint rolled the top of my bed and my pillow but there were no bedbugs. I couldn’t shake out the sheet and the comforter on the deck because it was raining. I went to bed a little after 1:30 and slept until 5:00. After yoga I found a couple of bedbugs trapped by the carpet tape on the floor. 

            I memorized the sixth verse of “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted A Little Money) by Boris Vian. There are two verses left to learn and the final verse is just two lines repeated. 

            I uploaded “La fille aux claquettes” by Serge Gainsbourg and my translation “The Lucky Tap Dance” to my Christian’s Translations blog and started to prepare them for publication. I should have it posted tomorrow. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the last of two sessions and it went out of tune all the time. 

            I weighed 92.55 kilos before lunch. In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on the way back. I bought red grapes, two packs of raspberries, bananas, a container of Yoplait skyr (I’d never seen Yoplait skyr before so I thought I’d check it out, but it was as thin as regular yogourt), two packs of Full City Dark coffee, a jar of marinara, a jar of mild salsa, a lint roller, and two packs of Irish Spring soap (They had a “deal” of one pack of six for $11 but two packs of 3 were $10).

            I weighed 91.6 kilos at 18:40. 

            I was now three days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I had wedge fries with gravy and the rest of the whole chicken, mostly the wings and spine, while watching episode 2 of the TV series Custer. 

            Custer orders Lieutenant Rudford on a scouting mission with a few men and specifically tells him not to take offensive action if he encounters hostile Sioux. But he does take offensive action, killing several warriors who were just trying to get away. One gets away though and rides back to report to Crazy Horse. Custer tells Rudford he slaughtered a Sioux hunting party but he doesn’t see the problem since it’s a war. Custer says it is not an official war and their orders are only to control and contain the Sioux with less than 1000 troops to cover 800,000 square kilometers of territory. They can’t afford to provoke more trouble than they already have. Rudford reminds Custer that four dead miners were found but Custer says those miners were killed by Cheyenne and no Sioux. Rudford thinks they are all the same and they should all be wiped out. Custer says this is not a mission of extermination. 

            They are attacked by Sioux warriors and take shelter. Custer tells Rudford to take Sergeant Mason and his detachment south by Thunder Ridge. Custer says he’s going to draw their fire by heading north through the canyon. He orders Rudford to rendezvous with him at Broken Pine Summit in three hours. He warns him to not attempt to fight under any circumstances. Custer and his men get to the Summit but Rudford has not arrived. Custer sees through his binoculars Rudford’s men dead off route from the way he ordered him to go. Custer’s patrol is attacked again and they head back to the fort. General Terry says on hearing there were casualties that any expedition into the Black Hills is a slap in the face to the Sioux. Custer says he only counted four bodies from Rudford’s unit and requests to take a patrol to look for possibly two survivors. Terry says no. He tells Custer that Rudford’s father the powerful newspaperman has been condemning him in print. Now Rudford senior is there at the fort. He came with orders from Washington releasing his son from military service. Custer tells Rudford his son is presumed dead and he immediately accuses Custer of killing him with his inept command. Rudford says Custer murdered his brother during the Civil War. Custer says his brother died in the same battle he was in the thick of. 

            Meanwhile Crazy Horse says two of the soldiers got away and one is an officer, so they will hunt them. Custer disobeys orders and takes a patrol to search for the missing men. Rudford hears of this and insists on coming along. 

            Then we see that Lieutenant Rudford and Sergeant Mason are the two survivors and they are in the middle of Sioux territory. Rudford plans to sneak up on a Sioux camp, steal some horses and get away. Mason has more experience and tells him it won’t work but Rudford insists. They attack two Sioux and kill them but the horses run away and Rudford is wounded. 

            Mason helps Rudford to a cave on the hillside. Rudford has a fever and Mason cares for him. He also reminds him that he disobeyed Custer’s orders and attacked what he thought were only three Sioux but turned out to be a 50 strong war party of Crazy Horse’s men. Mason tells Rudford he hates his guts but he’s there because his uniform is bigger than he is. 

            Custer makes camp at the foot of the hills. Rudford senior tries to bribe some of the men with $1000 each if they’ll go with him into the hills that night but there are no takers. 

            Mason tries to get Rudford out of there under the cover of night. They stop at a watering hole where Mason is killed by two Sioux. 

            The next day Custer plants dynamite on top of a hill. 

            They find Lieutenant Rudford tied up in the middle of a clearing. It’s a trap and they lose some men but manage to rescue Rudford. They ride away with the Sioux in pursuit and Custer sets off the dynamite fuse so that when it explodes an avalanche comes down between Custer and the Sioux. They make it back to the fort and father and son Rudford are reunited. 

            Rudford senior expects Lieutenant Rudford to blame Custer but he says it was his own fault. His father wants him to quit the army but he says he’s going to stay and try to live an honourable life. 

            Crazy Horse was played by Michael Dante, who out of high school began as a professional baseball player when he signed a $6000 bonus contract with the Boston Braves. During spring training he took drama classes at The University of Miami. He made his film debut in Somebody Up There Likes Me in 1956. He starred in Westbound and Winterhawk. He co-starred in The Naked Kiss, Apache Rifles, Missile X, Beyond Evil, Return From the River Kwai, Seven Thieves, Cage, The Big Score, and Arizona Raiders. He played Maab in the original Star Trek episode Friday’s Child. He hosted the Michael Dante Classic Celebrity Radio Talk Show for 12 years (later called On Deck). He wrote From Hollywood to Michael Dante Way, Winterhawk’s Land, Six Rode Home, and My Classic Radio Interviews with the Stars.

October 4, 1996: I posed at OCA and then performed at the Cameron

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday I posed from 9:00 to 16:00 in room 352 at the Ontario College of Art. In the evening I performed on the Spit Fridays open stage in the back room of the Cameron.

Owen Painter

            On Wednesday after midnight I added some more carpet tape to the edges of my mattress where it had gotten less sticky. I lint rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room and picked up a few babies. I lint rolled the top of my bed and my pillow, then I shook out my sheet and comforter on the deck. I went to bed at around 2:00 and slept fairly well. I got up at 3:00 to pee and went back to sleep until 5:00. After yoga I only found a couple of bedbugs stuck to the floor tape at the head of my bed. 

            I memorized the fifth verse of “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted A Little Money) by Boris Vian. There are three verses left to learn. 

             I ran through singing and playing “La fille aux claquettes” by Serge Gainsbourg and then my translation “The Lucky Tap Dance”. Tomorrow I’ll upload them to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare them for publication. 

            I weighed 92 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since August 20. 

            I removed some of my guitar cases and some other items from the upper storage shelf in my bedroom. I didn’t find any bedbugs nesting in those things. 

            I weighed 93.25 kilos before lunch. That’s a record high for the early afternoon since I’ve been recording my weight. I haven’t had a bowel movement for several days so maybe that’s why I’m so heavy. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. While riding, since this was the Day of Reconciliation I counted the number of orange shirts. There were about a hundred on my trip to Yonge and Bloor and 55 on the way home. On Bloor there was a stand selling them. Most of the people wearing them were school kids. The 155 I counted were just during my bike trip. I saw more all day long outside my window. 

            I weighed 91.75 kilos at 18:10. 

            I was still four days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I made pizza on a slice of 7 grain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, a chopped slice of ham and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore while watching season 2, episode 7 of Wednesday on Discord with my daughter Astrid. 

            The story opens with a flashback to 15 years ago. The current Principal Dort was then starting an organization called Morning Song for Outcasts and he recruits Outcast and actor Arnold Hunt to be the face of the organization. On the surface, Morning Song is there to give a sense of belonging to Outcasts but its real purpose is to take criminal advantage of people with special abilities. 

            In the present day Principal Dort finds Bianca hiding her mother in the tunnels under Nevermore. He reveals that he is Morning Song and forces them to work for him. Agnes continues to devotedly serve Wednesday and now she is even wearing Wednesday’s clothes and a black braided wig. She gives Wednesday the student file on the zombie genius Isaac Night. Wednesday learns that Isaac and her father were roommates at Nevermore and confronts him about it. He says he and Isaac were best friends. Wednesday informs her parents that Isaac has now teamed up with his sister Francoise and her son Tyler. 

            Wednesday reveals that her premonition has changed and that now an Addams is destined to die. She tells her mother she would like to sacrifice her brother Pugsley. 

            Professor Capri warns Enid that she has to keep herself locked up during the full moon because if she transforms into an Alpha Werewolf at that time while still young she could become trapped in that form for the rest of her life. 

            Because Isaac has yet to cure his sister, Francoise is still dying and coughing blood. She needs medicine and so Isaac, Francoise, and Tyler go to steal some from the animal hospital. 

            With the help of Eugene, Wednesday uses moths that nested in Isaac’s body to track him as they return to their host. 

            Dort has been seeking a donation from Wednesday’s Grandmama Hester. She meets with Dort in his office with the intention of crushing his hopes. But Dort has arranged for Bianca to Siren Hester and compel her to donate her entire fortune to Nevermore. 

            At the animal hospital Tyler tricks the vet into letting him come in to use his phone. Isaac feasts on the vet’s brains. Francoise starts to get worse and so Isaac gives her a transfusion of Tyler’s Hyde blood. 

            When Wednesday learns Grandmama is donating her fortune to Nevermore she is suspicious. Bianca is practicing her fencing when Wednesday challenges her to a duel. While they fight Wednesday says she knows Bianca sirened her Grandmama. Wednesday defeats Bianca who admits she was forced by Dort to manipulate Hester. But then Bianca sirens Wednesday and tells her to forget everything, then she leaves. But Wednesday anticipated this and arranged for Agnes to invisibly watch and record the encounter. Agnes tells Wednesday everything Bianca made her forget. 

            Once Hester has transferred her fortune to the Nevermore account, Dort plans on taking the money and escaping to Venezuela. 

            Enid has broken up with Bruno. Agnes has been rejected by Wednesday. Enid tells Agnes to stop imitating Wednesday and find her own psycho. Enid had been scheduled to perform a dance at the gala with Bruno. Agnes has been spying on the routine and offers to dance with Enid. Wednesday arrives and Agnes tells her she’s no longer her mindless servant. Wednesday is glad to hear it and so now they can all just work together. Wednesday details her plan. 

            Enid and Agnes do their dance, during which Agnes sometimes makes herself invisible. During one of those times Agnes sneaks up on Dort and removes his anti-Siren amulet from his vest. Bianca, Hester and Dort take the stage. She sirens him into confessing all of his schemes to the crowd and Hester learns that she has been manipulated. Dort grabs Bianca and threatens to burn her with his pyro powers as he tries to escape. Ajax uses his Medusa power to turn Dort to stone. The effect would have been temporary but the chandelier falls on Dort and breaks him into pieces. 

            Pugsley is alone in the graveyard feeling sorry for himself when he is confronted by Isaac. Glad to see his pet zombie he is not prepared when Isaac uses chloroform to take him captive. 

            Isaac is played by Owen Painter, who earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Screen Acting from Chapman University. He made his film debut in the short movie Soup in 2021. He co-starred in Tiny Beautiful Things.

Mary Ann Mobley

            On Tuesday after midnight I added some fresh carpet tape to the edges of my mattress where it had become less sticky. I lint rolled the curtain between the bedroom and the bathroom and picked up a couple of bedbugs. I lint rolled the top of my bed and grabbed one. I lint rolled my pillow and it was clean. I shook out my sheet and my comforter on the deck. I went to bed at around 1:35 and had a pretty good sleep until the alarm went off at 5:00. After yoga I found a few bedbugs stuck to the tape on my bed and one trying to crawl away from the tape on the floor at the head of my bed. 

            I memorized the fourth verse of “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted a Little Money) by Boris Vian. That’s half the song. 

            I finished working out the chords for “La fille aux claquettes” (The Tap Dancing Girl) by Serge Gainsbourg. The end of each line of every chorus seems to have a different instrumental bit but I didn’t bother to work those out. They’re just accompaniment for a tap dance and so it could be any combination of chords that sound good together. Tomorrow I’ll run through singing and playing the song in French and English and then upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare it for publication. 

            I weighed 91.7 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since September 14. 

            I played my Kramer during song practice and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            I removed a few more strips of wood from the north side of my bedroom storage shelf. 

            I weighed 93.05 kilos before lunch. That seems off considering how little I had for breakfast. It’s the same as the early afternoon of September 6. 

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

            I weighed 92.4 kilos at 18:30. September 11 was the last evening when I was that mean to the scale. 

            I was now four days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I had wedge oven fries with gravy and a chicken breast while watching the first episode of the 1967 TV series Custer. 

            In 1868, after the Civil War and after having been demoted from general to lieutenant colonel for one year because of dereliction of duty, George Custer arrives at Fort Hays, Kansas, for his new command. He finds the fort gate open and the guard sleeping. In the stable the men are shooting dice. Custer steps on the money and confronts the winner, Private James Bustard, who recognizes him. Bustard is a former Confederate soldier as many of the new recruits are. They fight and Custer wins, then from that time on they’re buddies. Custer immediately promotes him to sergeant. 

            In the intro to the show it says that Custer was the youngest general in the Civil War at the age of 24. He was then reduced in rank and sent west. 

            Custer’s commanding officer, General Terry is away from the fort so Custer and Bustard ride to meet him. But from a high position Custer spots some Kiowa waiting in ambush for Terry’s detail. He and Bustard charge through the Kiowa camp drawing fire and causing the Kiowa to mount up and chase them as they head for Terry. Then Terry’s men drive the Kiowa back. 

            Later a rifle salesman named Tyman arrives at the Kiowa camp and the Sioux warrior Crazy Horse is there. Tyman offers them rifles in exchange for $100 in gold for each rifle (that would be $2,359 per rifle today). That seems like a lot. 

            Back at the fort we meet the general’s daughter Ann who is rebellious. 

            Custer reports to Terry who tells him he doesn’t like him but he needs all the men he can get. Terry shows him around the fort and says some of the men are the scum of the earth. No enlisted man in uniform can be arrested or tried for any civil offense. That makes the army a hideout for thieves, renegades, murderers. immigrants, former Confederate soldiers, and mercenaries. 

            Custer starts to train the men to be cavalry soldiers. 

            The 5th Cavalry returns from patrol accompanied by the fort’s scout California Joe who knows Custer and is surprised and glad to see him. Ann is with them and she invites Custer to dinner. At dinner the officers discuss the situation. Once the news spreads back east that there is gold in the Black Hills there will be a rush of fortune hunters. After the prospectors will come the whisky traders and then the land speculators. Custer adds, “and a major attack by the tribes!” He argues that’s why the 7th Calvary needs to be trained to fight. Terry says the 7th already has its assignment: training and work details. Custer leaves in anger. Ann goes after him and asks why he likes to fight. He says Napoleon always rode to the sound of the guns. 

            Crazy Horse and his warriors attack a mining camp and steal the gold. The 7th is clearing land when they hear the gunfire. Custer orders them to arm themselves and head in that direction where they find the dead miners. Custer tells Terry they need to attack the Kiowa now. Terry reminds him that the 7th’s job is to prepare the fort for winter. 

            The Kiowa and Crazy Horse buy the rifles from Tyman. Then they ambush the 5th calvary on patrol. Terry is wounded. He orders California to find Custer and tell him to defend the fort and not to relieve the 5th until he does so. Custer only sends two men to warn Fort Hays and then takes the rest of the men to rescue the 5th. The Kiowa have shotguns and Custer has the range marked at 40 meters. Custer brings his men just up to the markers and then they wait until the Kiowa fire before he orders them to attack while they are trying to reload. The Kiowa retreat. Tyman tries to shoot Custer but he kills him by throwing a Kiowa spear. 

            Later Terry gives Custer hell for disobeying his orders. Custer says he was carrying out those orders but the general hadn’t specified the route he should take on his way back to the fort. 

            Ann was played by Mary Ann Mobley, who was Miss Mississippi in 1958 and won the Miss America pageant in 1959. This led to many guest appearances on popular TV series of that era. She made her TV debut on Be Our Guest in 1960. She made her film debut with a starring role in Get Yourself a College Girl. She co-starred in Harum Scarum (which earned her a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer), Girl Happy, For Singles Only, Young Dillinger, She was the first female guest star on Mission Impossible. She appeared 50 times as a panelist on Match Game. She co-starred in the final season of Diff’rent Strokes, guest hosted Hour Magazine 11 times, She was an active participant in The March of Dimes for 25 years.

October 3, 1996: I was still bewildered by web surfing

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday Andrew tried to show me how to surf the internet with my new computer but I found it boggling. I wondered if I would ever get it.

Maya Rudolph

            On Monday after midnight I lint rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room, the top of my bed and my pillow. As usual I picked up some bedbugs from the curtain but not as many as I grabbed before lunch. There were none on the bed or the pillow. I shook out my top sheet and my comforter on the deck and went to bed around 1:35. I slept until about 4:00 and didn’t get up to pee but kind of drifted in half sleep until the alarm went off at 5:00. I felt fairly well rested during yoga, after which I checked for bedbugs. There were several stuck to the tape around my mattress and some stuck to the floor tape. A few were crawling free until I popped them. 

            I memorized the third verse of “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted Change for the Toilet) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished working out the chords for the little instrumental at the end of the chorus of “La fille aux claquettes” (The Tap Dancing Girl) by Serge Gainsbourg. The chords for the second verse were almost the same as the first except it began in C. 

            I weighed 91.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it stayed in tune until after the very last song. 

            I weighed 92.3 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the early afternoon since September 14. 

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

            I weighed 91.8 kilos at 18:15. September 14 was the last evening when I was that rough on the scale. 

            I was still three days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I had wedge oven fries with gravy and a chicken breast while watching The Carol Burnett 50th Anniversary Special. 

            Stephen Colbert introduces the special. He says every Saturday night people didn’t go out. They stayed home and watched Carol. When the show ended in the late 70s they had to invent disco just to give people something to do on weekends. 

            Carol comes out in the same theatre where her show was taped. There are a lot of celebrities in the audience. She does questions and answers and Tom Selleck asks if she believes in petting on the first date. She says it depends on the age of the dog. Bob Barker stands and asks when she’s coming back. She seems to have mistaken him for Pat Sajak because she called him “Pat”. 

            Next Carol is sitting with Amy Poehler, Kaley Cuoco, Maya Rudolph, and Jane Lynch. Then she brings Vicki Lawrence out. We see a picture of Carol posing with Vicki after she won the Miss Fireball Contest. 

            Carol brings out Jay Leno, who comes with a gift. He says the item was made the same week that Carol’s show premiered. It’s a carburetor for a 1967 Buick Riviera. Bill Hader comes out with a bouquet of flowers for Carol. Jay says he wouldn’t be here today if not for Harvey Korman. He was performing at the Improv and Johnny Carson came but wasn’t impressed. Harvey encouraged Johnny to come back to see him again and he did. 

            Bill says when he did a Vincent Price impression on Saturday Night Live it was actually an impression of Harvey. He says Harvey had that slow burn. Bill’s favourite Harvey performance was when he did the Wolfman. He says the timing was impeccable. Jay says everybody copied Carol’s soap opera parody. 

            Carol brings out Jim Carrie who tells her she’s more than Carol Burnett to him. He says love is a vibration that finds its reflection and that’s what found the audience. He tells Carol she’s the space in which love happened (What a load of horse shit). Jim says when he was 10 years old he really wanted to be on the Carol Burnett Show. He did a lot of voices and wrote Carol a letter to ask if he could become a regular. Then he waited for her response like Jodie Foster in Contact for a signal from the universe. That is re-enacted with a ten year old actor receiving Carol’s rejection letter. He says, “Aww jeepers!” Jim pushes Carol’s hand away now. Jim says, “Just for the record I have never said ‘Jeepers’. It was 1972 and not 1932.” Carol says, “You’re on the show now.” Jim shouts, “Jeepers! We did it!” and his younger self runs into his arms. 

            Carol brings Martin Short out. Carol shows some clips of Tim. Martin says Tim is so physical in his comedy but so calm at the same time. 

            Carol is sitting with Bill, Amy, and Tracy Ellis Ross. Amy says her favourite character is Mrs. Wiggens because she was a study in silence and movement. 

            Bill asks Carol to do her Tarzan yell. She says she’ll do it but everybody else has to try it first. Bill and Maya almost get it. Tracy gives it a try. Amy’s Tarzan yell is, “Hey! Tarzan!” Steve Carell sends a video of him just yelling. 

            Carol and Vicki discuss the Family. They show a clip in which Eunice learns her daddy died in the bathroom. 

            In 11 years Bob Mackie designed around 17,000 costumes for The Carol Burnett Show. Carol introduces Bob Mackie. For Mrs. Wiggens Bob suggested that she be like those temp girls who work at CBS and sit at their desks doing their nails and watching the clock. 

            Carol is with Stephen Colbert in the Ed Sullivan Theatre where he shot the Late Show and where she was a regular of The Garry Moore Show. To reminisce about the songs that were sung on the show Carol brings out Kristen Chenowith and Bernadette Peters. Stephen has Jon Batiste play piano. Bernadette sings “All That Jazz”, which she sand on her first guest spot on Carol’s show. Carol pays tribute to her late friend Jim Nabors. Kristen sings “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” then segues into “Born Free”, and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. Stephen says his favourite male singer on Carol’s show was Steve Lawrence. They show a clip of him doing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” then Stephen continues the song but then Steve Lawrence comes out and sings it with him. They all sing a song about the Carol Burnett Show called “Saturdays at 10:00”. 

            There’s a clip of Julia Louise Dreyfuss saying that Carol’s connection with the audience made her want to get into show business. 

            Carol is sitting with Leno, Short, Amy, Lyle, Kaley, and Beth Behrs. Martin says his favourite sketch is The Dentist. Carol shows a clip in which she got back at Tim for the elephant story when she was playing an old homeless lady on a bench with Tim as an elderly man. She tells him a story about having once had two Siamese elephants joined at the trunk until one of them caught a cold, sneezed and blew both their brains out. 

            There’s a clip of Jimmy Kimmel saying when he was growing up The Carol Burnett Show was as important to his family as spaghetti, and spaghetti was very important. 

            Carol is sitting with Steve Martin in a movie theatre. 

            There’s a clip of Ellen DeGeneres wearing a parody of the curtain gown from Carol’s Gone With the Wind spoof: Went With the Wind. 

            Carol brings out Harry Connick Jr. He says the day The Carol Burnett Show premiered, September 11, 1967 was the day he was born. They sing Carol’s theme song together. Carol starts crying for some reason. Then all the other guests come out and join in. 

            Maya Rudolph is the daughter of Minnie Riperton in whose hit song “Loving You” she sings the name Maya several times at the end. Minnie died when Maya was 7 years old. Maya was friends with Gwynneth Paltrow while growing up. Maya majored in Photography at the University of California and formed the band Supersauce. After graduation she joined the band The Rentals as keyboardist and backup singer After they broke up she joined the improv troupe The Groundlings. In 2000 she joined the cast of Saturday Night Live and continued for 7 seasons. Later when guesting on the show she played Kamala Harris, for which she won an Emmy. She co-starred in the sitcom Up All Night. She starred in The Maya Rudolph Show TV special. She co-starred in Idiocracy, Grown-ups 1 and 2, Bridesmaids, Inherent Vice, Sisters, Life of the Party, Disenchanted, Away We Go, The Way Way Back, The Nut Job, McGruber, Friends with Kids, Maggie’s Plan, A Very Murray Christmas, Mr. Pig, My Entire High School Sinking, We Don’t Belong Here, The Happytime Murders, Wine Country, The Willoughbys, Big Hero 6, The Angry Birds Movie, The Emoji Movie, Luca, The Lego Movie 2, and The Mitchells vs The Machines, She co-starred with Martin Short in the variety show Maya and Marty. She starred in the sitcom Loot. She co-starred in the sitcom Big Mouth for which she won 4 Emmy Awards. She co-starred in City of Angels, Forever, and Human Resources. She made her Broadway debut in 2026 in Oh Mary!. She is in a Prince cover band called Princess.

October 2, 1996: I posed for David Campbell's class at OCA

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday night I posed for David Campbell’s drawing class at the Ontario College of Art. Since I didn’t have to work the next day I went after work to perform on the Art Bar reading series open stage.

Paul Newman

            On Sunday after midnight I added fresh carpet tape to parts of the edge of my mattress where it had gotten less sticky. I lint rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room and picked up some bedbugs but fewer than usual. I lint rolled the top of my bed and there were a couple of babies, then the pillow. I shook out my top sheet and my comforter on the deck. I went to bed around 1:40 and woke up to pee at 3:03. I felt and killed some bedbugs then slept a little more until the 5:00 alarm. After yoga I found a few bedbugs stuck to the carpet tape at the head of my mattress. 

            I consolidated my memorization of the first two verses of “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted Change for the Toilet) by Boris Vian. 

            I worked out all the chords for the chorus of “La fille aux claquettes” (The Tap Dancing Girl) by Serge Gainsbourg except for the little instrumental bit after the final line. I’ll have that done on Monday and then the pattern of the song should be established. 

            I weighed 90.85 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the last of four sessions and it went out of tune all the time. 

            I lint rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room and picked up a cluster of bedbugs attempting to form a nest. 

            I removed the boards from the upper storage shelf in my bedroom. I put the ones with collages on them and the ones that are part of furniture in the kitchen and threw out a few that I hadn’t been keeping for any good reason. 

            I weighed 91.85 kilos before lunch. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

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

            I weighed 91.5 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was still three days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I made pizza on a slice of 7 grain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, a chopped slice of ham, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching This Time Together a cast reunion of The Carol Burnett Show from 2012. 

            Carol once gave the cast a lecture before the family sketch telling them she wanted some discipline and for people to stop cracking up. That was just before the time in the Family sketch when Tim was playing Mickey Hart and telling the story of the Siamese elephants joined at the trunks. Carol was the first one to crack up. 

             Lyle thinks Tim’s future wife Charlene had a lot to do with him getting hired because he heard that Joe the producer asked her what she thought. 

            Vicki says when the writers of the Family sketch heard Carol, Vicki, and Harvey doing the characters in a southern US accent they walked out of the room because they were so upset. They eventually liked the accents. Carol started asking them for more Family sketches and one could hear them both typing like crazy from their office and yelling at each other. Vicki says the echo in the women’s washroom was great for rehearsing character voices. 

            The time that Joanne Woodward was a guest on the show her husband Paul Newman was in the booth. Later they went for Chinese food and Paul taught Carol how to use chopsticks. 

            Carol says Desi Arnaz invented the three camera thing for sitcoms. 

            Tim says he didn’t really want to be in the business but The Carol Burnett Show was so comfortable that he changed his mind.

            Lyle says he was getting gas one time when he noticed another guy looking at him. The guy came over and asked if he was an actor and Lyle confirmed he was. He asked for his autograph and Lyle gave it to him but when he read, “Lyle Waggoner?” he said, “Never heard of you!” then he handed it back and drove away. 

            Carol says a guy walking with his wife in New York stopped her once and asked, “Aren’t you that girl on The Garry Moore Show?” Carol told him she was and he said to his wife, “Hey May, she ain’t such a dog!” 

            Vicki says once when she and Carol were in Hawaii they went to the washroom and somebody passed their autograph book to Carol under the stall to ask for her autograph. 

            Vicki says when they flew to shoot the show in Australia and the plane landed, Tim was rolling down the aisle, bumping into seats and going, “Ow! Yipes! Whoa!” until he bumped against the pilot’s door at the front. Then he stood up and he was wearing his sleep mask like a bra. Then he said, “Wow! Rough landing!” and walked back to his seat. 

            Carol says when they were in Australia she and her husband Joe were going to take Tim to dinner. When they knocked on his room to pick him up he shouted, “It’s open! C’mon in!” They found him in bed with a life sized toy sheep while smoking a cigarette. 

            One time in Hawaii they were dining in their hotel restaurant that had a palm tree that went up through the ceiling. Tim said he was going to his room, then just climbed the palm tree and disappeared.

            Paul Newman came from a well off family in Shaker Heights, Ohio. He acted in plays in grade school and high school. He got kicked out of Ohio University for denting the college president’s car with a beer keg. He later attended the Yale University School of Drama, paying his tuition by selling encyclopaedias, which he was a very good at. He made his TV debut in 1952 in Tales of Tomorrow. He made his Broadway debut in 1953 when he was an understudy for the lead in the play Picnic. His future wife Joanne Woodward was also an understudy in the same play. He was accepted without auditioning into The Actors Studio. He starred in Somebody Up There Likes Me, The Left Handed Gun, The Rack, The Long Hot Summer (for which he won Best Actor at Cannes), Harper, Hombre, The Secret War of Harry Frigg, Sweet Bird of Youth, Rally Round the Flag Boys, From the Terrace, Paris Blues, A New Kind of Love, Winning, WUSA, The Drowning Pool, Harry and Son (which he also directed), Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, The Hustler, Hud, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Towering Inferno, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, Slap Shot (his favourite), Sometimes a Great Notion (which he also directed), The Verdict, The Colour of Money (for which he finally won an Oscar), Absence of Malice, Nobody’s Fool, When Time Ran Out, Twilight, Blaze, Pocket Money, Exodus, The Young Philadelphians, Torn Curtain, and Fort Apache the Bronx. He co-starred in Until They Sail, The Helen Morgan Story, Cat On a Hot Tim Roof (for which he was Oscar nominated), The Hudsucker Proxy, and Cars. He made his directorial debut with Rachel Rachel in 1968. He directed The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man In The Moon Marigolds and The Glass Menagerie. He was a civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, gun control, and anti war activist. He was a passionate race car driver. His Newman’s Own salad dressing business raised $600 million for charity. He founded the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for children with serious illnesses. He was a skilled blues and jazz piano player. He was on Richard Nixon’s Enemies list. He trained to be a pilot in the US Navy but was rejected because he was colour blind. He was the model for the silver age superhero Green Lantern in 1959. He said he signed over 500 autographs as Marlon Brando. He was nominated for ten Academy Awards. He was the principle shareholder of the periodical The Nation and sometimes wrote for it.

October 1, 1996: Our featured writer was Barry Carleton

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday I worked from 9:30 to 12:30 but I have no record where it was. Since I didn’t write down the name of the place in my appointment calendar it must have been familiar to me so I’m guessing I posed at a high school like Central Tech. That night as always I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of the Gladstone Hotel and our featured writer that night was Barry Carleton.

September 30, 1996: I was on the internet now but had no I idea how to do anything there

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday Andrew helped me find an internet service provider so I could go online with my new computer. I got a dial up account with Global Serve (which later changed its name to Primus). My first email address was christia@globalserve.net. Andrew also helped me find a second hand printer for my computer but when we connected it the thing refused to work with Windows. Andrew had to split my computer into two operating systems as he installed OS2, so whenever I needed to use the printer I had to sign in to OS2. It was really fucked up.

George Schlatter

            On Saturday after midnight I added some fresh carpet tape to parts of the edge of my bed that had gotten less sticky. I lint rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room and caught a few bedbugs, then lint rolled the top of my bed and my pillow and found a couple more. I shook out my top sheet and my comforter on the deck. I went to bed around 1:35 and slept until just before 4:00 when I had to pee and noticed bedbugs all over me. After peeing I lint rolled my bed again and must have picked up about 30 bedbugs. I went back to bed but couldn’t sleep. After yoga I noticed quite a few bedbugs stuck to the tape and a couple crawling free. When they get stuck it’s usually on the edge of the tape and it’s often the ones that have already fed on my blood and get caught leaving the restaurant without paying. 

            I memorized the first two verses of “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted Change for the Toilet) by Boris Vian. 

            I worked out the chords for a little more than half of the chorus of “La fille aux claquettes” (The Tap Dancing Girl) by Serge Gainsbourg. There are little instrumental bits after each line so it takes more time. 

            I weighed 90.65 kilos before breakfast. I played my Martin during song practice for the third of four sessions and it went out of tune all the time. 

            Around midday I rode to No Frills where all the grapes were too soft. There were watermelons but they weren’t from Canada. They were from the States but the state of Michigan, which is against Trump’s tariffs so I guess it’s not so bad. I got two watermelons, a pack of blueberries, some bananas, a pack of chicken legs, a strawberry-rhubarb pie, mouthwash, some medium Ziploc bags, a jug of lemonade, a jug of orange juice, two containers of skyr, and some wedge fries. 

            I weighed 91.15 kilos at 14:40. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            I took a siesta and got up too late to take a bike ride. 

            I weighed 91.2 kilos at 17:25. 

            I was still three days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I made pizza on a slice of 7 grain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, two chopped slices of ham, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore while watching part 1 of a 2012 cast reunion of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            When Carol first called Vicki she told her she was coming to see her compete for Miss Fireball. Carol told her she was very pregnant and didn’t want to be seen so she asked for seats in the back so she could slip in and out. The organizer didn’t believe Vicki when she told him Carol Burnett was coming. It was at the Hollywood Park Race Track. It was the Firemen’s Ball with an 1890s firehouse theme. There were 8 girls in the competition with two cancan numbers, and Vicki had her individual talent where she played the guitar with a kazoo strapped around her neck. Vicki won the contest. The organizer announced that Carol was there. That was November and two months later Carol gave birth. Vicki was on her way to a recording session with The Young Americans when she decided to stop at the hospital and bring Carol some flowers. The nurses thought Vicki was Carol’s sister Chrissie so they let her in right away. Carol told her she was going to call her when she got her tummy back. Vicki got the call at the end of her senior year in high school. By coincidence, Carol’s manager saw Vicki singing with the Young Americans on The Andy Williams Show and called Carol, saying he’d found the girl to play her sister on her new show. 

            Carol says when they did the mini-musicals Ken and Mitzi Welch would write a whole story around the works of a certain composer and or lyricist like George and Ira Gershwin. 

            Vicki could read music but Carol made up her own musical shorthand. 

            When the Jackson 5 were on the show there was an earthquake. 

            Lyle says somebody gave Harvey a gold chain with the letter H on the end and they called it “the Preparation H Award for the biggest pain in the ass”. 

            Vicki says she got to touch the golden age of television because Carol’s show was the last show of that age. 

            Carol hired the very best people and then just let them fly. 

            Tim says George Schlatter was doing a show with John Wayne and Tim as guests. Tim asked George if it would be funny if he called John “The Duck” instead of “The Duke”? George said John Wayne has a great sense of humour. When Tim tried it John broke a picture, a bottle, and a breakaway chair over his head. Carol says she never met John Wayne. 

            They all sing Carol’s theme together. 

            George Schlatter was the creator and executive producer of Laugh-In and Real People. He established The American Comedy Awards. He co-wrote and produced Sinatra: 80 Years My Way. He won 5 Emmy Awards out of 25 nominations. He produced the first five years of The Grammy Awards. He wrote the book Still Laughing: A Life in Comedy. When he wrote a script for The Jackie Gleason Show Jackie threw it up in the air and said, “This is shit!” The next day he presented Gleason with the exact same script and he said, “That’s a lot better.” He said Jackie Gleason and Red Skelton were not nice people. Red Buttons and Bob Hope were murder on writers but Jack Benny was not. He wrote Victor Borge’s 20th anniversary in 1971. He produced the first five episodes of The Judy Garland Show. He co-wrote, produced and directed the movie Norman Is That You?

Dick Clark

            On Friday after midnight I added more carpet tape to the south east corner of my mattress as that part loses its stickiness sooner because my socks are always rubbing against it. I lint rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room and picked up a few bedbugs. I went to bed a little after 1:30 and slept until just before 4:00 when I got up to pee, then I slept until 5:00. After yoga I found a few bedbugs stuck to the carpet tape. 

            I uploaded “Les bienfaits de la pratique” (The Benefits of Practice) by Boris Vian to my Christian’s Translations blog and published it. I posted my translation on my Boris Vian fan page and on my personal Facebook page. The next Vian song on my list is “Elle voulait toucher du pognon” (She Wanted Change for the Toilet). There’s audio for that one so I’ll start learning it on Saturday. 

            I worked out the chords for the first verse and part of the chorus of “La fille aux claquettes” (The Tap Dancing Girl) by Serge Gainsbourg. I might have the chorus done tomorrow. 

            I had to skip breakfast because I was scheduled for my implant surgery at the U of T School of Dentistry and so I had to start getting ready at 8:30. I left my place at 9:00. The Elm Street entrance was closed for construction and so I had to go in through the Edward Street entrance and figure out how to get up to the third floor from there. I finally found the elevator and got to the Periodontics office where I had to pay $1640. I guess the big fee will probably be for the crown when that goes on, which I assume will be between $3000 and $4000. At least that will be a few months so I can get more money in the bank from my pension payments. 

            Dr. Martin Lambert froze me up pretty good. I got mildly yelled at for closing my mouth while there was a pin there but I should have been told beforehand not to close my mouth because a pin was there. The assistant Isabella called the pin the CN Tower and I saw later it was because there was a part around it that looks something like the CN Tower’s observation deck. Martin drilled down and then screwed in the implant. 

            Some of Dr. Xia’s bone graft collapsed and so Martin had to fill the space around the implant with a new bone graft and also bury it with more bone to put it to “sleep” for a few months. The original plan without glitches would have been a four month wait before the crown goes on but now it will be six to nine months. Martin’s professor suggested that I take vitamin D to strengthen the bone. Apparently most Canadians are vitamin D deficient because it’s a sunshine vitamin. But I probably get more sun in the winter than most people as I have southern exposure and big windows. Plus I eat a lot of meat which is a rich source of D3. 

            Martin stitched the gum together over the bone graft. He frequently complimented Isabella for her assisting work. He said that at U of T the dentists are spoiled because the assistants are professionals. He said that in a lot of the dental schools in the States the assistants are also students and they often don’t know how to assist.

            He prescribed the same things Dr. Xia prescribed after my bone graft: Amoxicillin the antibiotic to be taken three times a day for a week; Ibuprofen for pain, though I still have a full container from last time because I didn’t need it; a chlorohexidine gluconate oral rinse to be taken twice a day starting a day after surgery; and he added dexamethasone to reduce swelling with one and a half tablets to be taken the next morning, one tablet the morning after that, and half a tablet on the third morning. I’m scheduled to see Martin again for a follow up in two weeks when I assume he’ll be removing the stitches. 

            Before going home I went straight to Vina pharmacy and had to wait several minutes for a newbie pharmacist to fill my prescription. At first he said they didn’t have the dexamethasone but later he discovered they had it after all. They cut one of the tablets in half and put the half tablets in a separate container as if I’m too stupid to tell the difference between a whole and a half tablet. I also bought some vitamin D3 because it was the only D vitamin they had. Apparently it’s generally the most effective form. 

            I weighed 90.25 kilos before lunch. 

            I took a long siesta.

            I weighed 90. 8 kilos at 17:25, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since July 24. 

            I was still three days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I had my last potato (a tiny one) with gravy and a chicken leg while watching Let’s Bump Up The Lights, a Carol Burnett Special from 2004. 

            Carol, Vicki, Tim, and Lyle are sitting together. Vicki tries the Tarzan yell and pretty much nails it. Both Tim and Lyle mime a silent Tarzan yell to be dubbed with Johnny Weismuller’s original Tarzan yell. Actually the Tarzan yell in his movies was engineered from recordings of Swiss yodeling, opera singing, and the cry of a camel, then some of it was played backwards. Apparently he later on learned how to do it with his own voice. Carol says she entered a Tarzan yell contest in London once and came in third. She was the only female in the contest. Lyle asks, “What show did the winner get?”

            Lyle says he and his wife took a vacation to Peru and were chopping through the Amazon jungle to visit a First Nation village when they met another tour group from the States chopping their way out. One of them recognized Lyle from The Carol Burnett Show. 

            Vicki says she and her daughter went to visit the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico. They went into one of the wood huts to buy souvenirs. There was an old Tiwa man sitting in the dark corner with his hat down. Then he looked up at Vicki and asked, “You Mama?” He came out into the light to take pictures with her. 

            Lyle says even after he was on the show for a couple of weeks he’d have people calling him by name anywhere in the country. Carol says when people view television performers from home they become more familiar than movie stars. Vicki says she noticed early on that if a guest on the show was in movies they would be “Miss Hayworth” or “Mr. Stewart.” But if it was a TV star they would call them by their first name. 

            Carol says they were one of the few shows in the world that finished in time to go have dinner.

            Vicki says of Carol she cared about the whole crew and knew if the prop man’s dog was throwing up. 

            Vicki says when they did the take-off on Showboat she couldn’t find her starting note. Hal Linden, who was stage trained, was staring at her as if to say, “You little twit!” 

            Vicki calls The Carol Burnett Show "The Emerald City" because it was unique in show business.

            Vicki says she used to go home to Lyle’s place for lunch with his wife. And Lyle taught her how to do plaster of Paris sculptures. Vicki also became friends with Bob Mackie because he was one of the youngest of the staff and came from the same part of California. 

            Lyle says that while nobody planned to break up during a sketch, players did plan to break the other player up with what they called “savers”. 

            Tim says when he tricked Harvey into being on Dick Clark’s Bleepers, Bloopers, and Blunders, the race horse they brought out to sell wasn’t even their race horse but Harvey couldn’t tell. After he got punked Harvey didn’t talk to Tim for months. 

            Lyle says he was in the Green Room with Harvey when he got the script for Blazing Saddles. He was reading it and commenting that it would never sell. 

            Vickie says Bob told her he had 45 seamstresses putting together between 60 and 80 pieces a week. 

            Vicki says she took Carol shopping once and in a boutique she went into the dressing room with about fifteen outfits and shocked the salesperson with how lightning quick she could try on and take off clothes. She developed the skill from doing live TV. 

            Carol says on the Garry Moore Show she would change in the elevator with her dresser but Garry didn’t know that and ran in to also use it to change with his dresser. They just turned their backs on each other and did it with four people in a tiny elevator. 

            Dick Clark got his first job when he was 16 in the mail room of WRUN Radio in Ithaca New York. The station was owned by his uncle and managed by his father. He worked his way up to being a weatherman and then an announcer. He graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in Business Administration. In 1952 he was working at WFIL Radio when he became a substitute host for Bob Horn’s Bandstand on the WFIL TV station. After Horn was arrested for drunk driving Clark became the permanent host. In 1957 the show got national distribution and the name was changed to American Bandstand. Clark added interviews, starting with Elvis. He introduced lip synced performances and a “rate a record” segment. The latter established the catchphrase: “It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it!” Clark mandated a dress code of skirts or dresses for the girls and coats and ties for the boys. Clark was also the first bandstand host to allow black performers on the show. The biggest names in rock and roll appeared on the show over its long run and helped to ease the TV viewing public into feeling more accepting of rock and roll. He saved the career of Connie Francis when he played her song “Who’s Sorry Now?” on his show and caused it to become a hit. In 1958 Chuck Berry made his network television debut on American Bandstand when he sang “Rock and Roll Music”. By 1959 American Bandstand was reaching an audience of 20 million. Many performers got their first national television exposure on American Bandstand, including The Supremes, The Beach Boys, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, Chubby Checker, Tina Turner, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Simon and Garfunkel, Iggy Pop, Prince, Talking Heads, and Madonna. Clark began managing artists, arranging concert tours, and hosting live sock hops. Paul Anka credited Clark with creating youth culture by showing teenagers publicly enthusing over rock and roll. In 1960 an investigation into payola found that Clark owned partial copyrights to over 150 songs, many of which were featured on his show. Nothing illegal was found on Clark’s part but he was given a choice to sell his shares or leave the show, so he sold and stayed. Clark moved the show to LA and started Dick Clark Productions. He hosted The Dick Clark Show from 1958 to 1960. He produced Where the Action Is, TV Bloopers and Practical Jokes, and So You Think You Can Dance? He hosted the game shows $10,000 Pyramid, The $100,000 Pyramid. Scattergories, The Challengers, and a male version of The View called The Other Half. He also hosted the radio shows The Dick Clark National Radio Survey, Countdown America, and Rock Roll and Remember (which was inspired by Dick’s autobiography of the same name). He owned several radio stations. He starred in Because They’re Young. He co-starred in The Young Doctors. In 1968 he co-wrote and co-starred in the movie Killers Three. He produced the film Psych-Out. In 1972 he produced In Concert. In 1972 he produced and hosted the first Dick Clark’s New Years Rockin Eve, which continued every New Year except for 1999. He created and produced The American Music Awards in 1974. He became the mentor of Ryan Seacrest, who took over New Years Rockin Eve after Clark. He’s won five Emmys and one Peabody Award. He had a chain of restaurants and was criticized in Michael Moore’s documentary Bowling for Columbine because he would hire single welfare mothers for very little pay and the son of one of his employees became a shooter at the Columbine school. Clark refused to be interviewed.