Gene Perret

            On Thursday morning I worked on memorizing the eighth verse of L'anguille (The Eel) by Boris Vian. 

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before breakfast, which would be the lightest I’ve been in the morning since September 6 if the scale was correct but I think it’s registering about 2 kilos less than the truth. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the last of four sessions and it went out of tune on every song. 

            I was still behind on my journal and worked on getting caught up. 

            I weighed 90.5 kilos before lunch. I think that’s more accurate than my weight at breakfast time. That’s the furthest up I’ve pushed the scale in the early afternoon since May 1.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on the way back. I bought one bag of cherries, four bags of grapes, two packs of blueberries, some bananas, a pack of Swiss rolls, a strip loin steak, a bag of frozen fries, a pack of Full City Dark coffee, a bag of frozen samosas, a pack of frozen mini-quiches, a jar of salsa, and a tub of vanilla bean Hagen Dazs. 

            I weighed 89.5 kilos at 19:05. On the evening of May 11 I was heavier. 

            I worked on getting caught up in my journal but was still behind at suppertime. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a reheated T-bone steak while watching season 7, episode 10 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            Carol plays Denice and Tim Conway plays Harold. He arrives at her place late and explains that his dog got sick and he took him to the vet where a chimpanzee bit him, then the doctor gave him a shot. Harold and Denice plan to get married and he’s there to meet her father for the first time. But Harold has a reaction to the injection he received causing him to behave like a chimp. Her father arrives and at first thinks Harold is joking around with his apelike behaviour. The father asks Harold what he does for a living and he says he’s a CPA. The father is pleased and says, “Oh, that’s a certified public accountant!” Harold corrects him that he’s a car parking attendant. Harold removes the father’s toupee and puts it on his own head. He tries to get it back but Harold climbs to the top of a high bookshelf. The father thinks Harold is insane and calls the police while Harold throws fruit at him. The father starts making chimp sounds and it calms Harold down so he keeps doing it. But when the police arrive they take the father away, as the drug Harold received has worn off. 

            Steve Lawrence sings “Maybe This Time” by John Kander and Fred Ebb, first recorded in 1964 by Liza Minelli. 

            Harvey plays Milt Lekki as he hosts the event of famed acting coach Stella Toddler (Carol’s parody of Stella Adler) having her footprints immortalized in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Carol plays Adler as being old and confused and she is also the victim of Lekki’s clumsiness as his sweeping gestures often knock her down. She ends up falling into the cement when he’s posing for the camera and disappears beneath the surface. 

            Carol plays a plain looking woman named Sally in glasses who is in love with Buddy, a plain looking guy who sees her as beautiful. She sings “In Buddy’s Eyes” by Stephen Sondheim from the 1971 musical Follies. When Buddy arrives we see her through his eyes and now she looks glamourous with no glasses. He sings a song I can’t identify but a couple of the lines are, “Slip into something more comfortable like my arms” and “My nine to five o’clock tales sound better after cocktails”. She sings “Just in Time” by Jule Styne, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green from the 1956 musical Bells Are Ringing. 

            There’s a skit performed by Harvey, Tim and Steve that presents business relationships as being similar to romantic relationships. Tim plays a successful business owner and Harvey plays an advertising executive. He used to hold Tim’s account but Tim left it for Steve’s firm. Harvey and Tim meet over dinner in a restaurant and Harvey wants Tim back. The comedy is in how much it appears like a romance with a jilted lover wanting the loved on back. Then Steve arrives and says he knows what’s going on. He says he knows Tim has been flirting with other firms too. Tim says it’s not how it looks but Steve pulls a gun and kills Harvey. Tim is impressed with how Steve took control and stays with his firm. 

            The cast and the guests protest to Carol that all she cares about on her show are laughs. They remind her that they are also actors and they each want her to let them perform their favourite dramatic death scene. Vicki wants to perform the scene from The Red Shoes in which the heroine dances herself to death. Tim wants to die in an airplane. Carol agrees and they all perform a song about death scenes that I think was written just for the skit. “Pow pow bang bang bang… I love you!” Steve Lawrence begins with an imitation of James Cagney getting shot by the cops. Lyle plays a cowboy who dies in a quickdraw showdown. Harvey imitates a dying Peter Lorre. The dancers do a dance in which they all shoot each other. Carol dies coughing in Harvey’s arms. She says she wants to hear her concerto one last time. She hears the music, says “That wasn’t it” and then dies. Tim mimes flying in a plane and adds the sound effects with his voice. The engine goes out and he walks out onto the wing to jump but forgets his parachute so he walks back to the cockpit to put it on. But then the engine comes back on and settles back in to fly the plane but it hits a mountain. Before and in between each of these death scenes Vicki can be seen dancing by and saying she’s not ready. Now she collapses while the shoes keep moving and dies. 

            One of the writers for The Carol Burnett Show was Gene Perret, who co-wrote 120 episodes and co-won 3 Emmy Awards. He wrote five episodes of Welcome Back Kotter. He worked for Bob Hope for 28 years, writing his television specials and his USO Christmas tours.