Robert Goulet

            On Friday morning I worked out the chords for verses five to eight and the second chorus of “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian. 

            In my “Les millionaires” Movie Maker project I finished synchronizing the images with the rhythm and the meaning of the lyrics in my photo-video of the song by Serge Gainsbourg. I changed some of the images to black and white and then published it. I watched the whole thing and it looks good. Tomorrow I’ll upload it to YouTube. 

            I weighed 87.75 kilos before breakfast. I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the last of four sessions and it went out of tune during every song. 

            Around midday I painted the second coat of “blue bliss” on the bathroom door and I think two coats are enough. On Tuesday I’ll break out the wall paint and do some touch-ups in places where the blue got away.

            I weighed 88.9 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the early afternoon since March 22. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I just wore my button shirt and no jacket as it was quite comfortable outside. 

            I weighed 88.65 kilos at 18:20. March 21 was the last evening when I was so hard on the scale. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:23. 

            I tried to record from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity the recording of the first Christian and the Lions performance at the El Mocambo but it came out distorted. I tried it with WASAPI and MME and it still sounded bad. I shut down Chrome and Bit Torrent and went back to Windows Direct Sound and it didn’t sound as horrible. I’ll try it that way tomorrow. If it doesn’t work I’ll just mic the speaker again and digitize in that manner. 

            I deleted several images from my hard drive. 

            I boiled a potato, heated my last ten oven fries and topped them with the rest of my chili. I ate while watching season 2, episode 25 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warm-up someone asks Lyle if his wife is a boy or a girl. She meant did she give birth to a boy or a girl. 

            Robert Goulet sings “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” from the 1965 musical of the same name by Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner. Then he sings “There is Always Something There to Remind Me” by Burt Bacharach and Hal David followed by “Didn’t We” by Jimmy Webb. 

            In the first skit Harvey Korman plays someone who’s just woken up with a really bad hangover. There’s a knock and he tells whoever it is to go away but they are persistent and so he opens it and in walks Carol as a parody of a Campfire Girl, called here a Fireside Girl. She’s collecting money to send Fireside Girls to camp. He lies that he has a cold and doesn’t feel well. She says that must be horrible on top of that hangover. He gives her 30 cents to get rid of her but she doesn’t go because she needs his name for the list she’ll be posting of all the tenants and how much they contributed, which she’ll be posting in the lobby. He adds a dollar. She says she saw his party from her window across the courtyard and comments that it was some masquerade party he had last night. He says it wasn’t a masquerade and she asks “Wasn’t that lady supposed to be Lady Godiva?” He puts more cash in her can and she says she promises not to show the picture she took to anyone. He pays her for the picture and then tears it up but then remembers the negative and pays her for that. Then she tells him she’ll be back in April and he starts to strangle her just as another Fireside Girl steps in with a camera and captures the moment. In the end he’s stuffing both their cans with cash. 

            In the second skit Carol is with Imogine Coca as they play two US women vacationing in Rome. Carol is socially adept and gets picked up by a count, leaving Imogine alone in the café. Everyone starts to dance while Imogine sits feeling lonely until a man asks her to dance and she does. But when the dance is over he charges her 10 lire. She sits alone and sings “If Love Were All” by Noel Coward.

            In the third skit Vicki Lawrence and Lyle Waggoner play a married couple and Lyle is a movie star (Vicki is getting more mature roles in this second season, when before she always played teenagers). She says he’s been paying less attention to her and asks if it’s because she’s becoming less beautiful. He says, “No, it’s because I’m becoming more beautiful”. Their maid played by Carol is obsessed with Lyle and can’t take her eyes off of him. Vicki threatens to fire her and finally does. The chauffeur comes in to drive Lyle to the studio. Carol knocks out the chauffeur, takes his uniform and puts on a false moustache. 

            Vicki narrates in song the fairy tale of Cinder Rumple White played by Carol. She has long long hair like Rapunzel. A witch played by Imogine tricks her into eating a poison apple. A knight played by Goulet comes to rescue her but first must defeat a two headed monster and a dragon. When he kisses her he turns into a frog. 

            Robert Goulet was born in Massachusetts to Quebecois parents but was raised in Canada. When he was thirteen his father called him to his deathbed and told him he must sing, then he died. He won a scholarship to the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and made his stage debut in Handel’s Messiah in Edmonton. He worked as a DJ in Edmonton for two years. He played Lancelot in the Broadway production of Camelot in 1960. He made his film debut in the animated feature Gay Purr-ee in 1962. He starred in Honeymoon Hotel, I Deal in Danger, and Underground. He co-starred in Naked Gun Two and a Half. His biggest pop hit was “My Love Forgive Me” in 1964, which reached #16. In 1966 he starred in the TV series Blue Light. He won a Tony for his role in Happy Time in 1968. He played Trapper Pierre on the Canadian version of Howdy Doody. He played himself on several episodes of Mr. Belvedere. He had always thought that he was a Canadian citizen but found out late in life that he wasn’t. After being inducted in Canada’s Walk of Fame he applied for Canadian citizenship and it was approved but not complete until shortly after he died.