Jenna Ortega

            On Monday morning I memorized the eighth verse of L'anguille (The Eel) by Boris Vian. There are two verses left to nail down and each of them have lines from previous verses so it should be easier.

            I weighed 89.85 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since March 4.

            I played my Martin acoustic for the last of two sessions and for the first time in a long time it stayed in tune through one song. Tomorrow I begin a four session stretch of playing my electric guitars.

            I weighed 90.9 kilos before lunch. 

            At 13:00 I watched the first episode of Wednesday with my daughter Astrid on Discord. This is a spin-off of The Addams Family but more from the film adaptations than the silly but more charming TV series. 

            Wednesday Addams goes to a normal school with her brother Pugsley. But when some bullies tie Pugsley up and stuff him in a locker she takes revenge. She finds the bullies in a swimming pool and drops two bags filled with piranhas into the water. One of the boys loses a testicle (there is no mention of the fact that by dropping the piranhas in a chlorinated pool she killed them and while dying they probably wouldn’t have been in the mood to feed on the boys). 

            Wednesday is expelled and her parents Gomez and Morticia send her to Nevermore Academy where they met and fell for each other. Nevermore is obviously named for the Edgar Allen Poe poem The Raven. It is a school for the outcasts from the outcasts of society. There are vampires, werewolves, sirens, gorgons, etcetera. Wednesday is an outsider even among the outsiders and considers the school a prison, which she attempts to escape. Her parents have sent the disembodied hand known as Thing to spy on her but she forces him to serve her. 

            She plays a beautiful piece of music on the cello (Jenna Ortega learned to play cello specifically for this role). I didn’t even recognize that she was playing "Paint it Black" by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. 

            In the nearby town of Jericho, Vermont, Wednesday makes the acquaintance of a barista and fixes his broken espresso machine. She can fix it because she reads Italian as it is the language of Machiavelli. The locals have a lot of fear and prejudice against the students of Nevermore. Four bullies try to pick on her and she goes all Jackie Chan on them. The sheriff arrives, who is the barista’s father. He tells Wednesday that her father Gomez should be in prison for murder. The barista obtains the file on Gomez and gives it to Wednesday. 

            Someone is trying to kill Wednesday. She meets him in the woods and he renders her helpless with his telekinetic powers. He shows her a drawing of her that is older than she is and says his mother told him she needs to die. But before he can kill her a monster rips him to shreds, then leaves. 

            Because of the violence and the intrigue, Wednesday decides she likes Nevermore after all and no longer wants to escape. 

            Wednesday is played by Jenna Ortega, who began acting at the age of 9. At first she could only obtain roles in commercials. She made her acting debut in the sitcom Rob in 2012. She made her film debut in Iron Man 3 in 2013. She co-starred in After Words, The Babysitter: Killer Queen, Yes Day, Scream, Scream VI, Studio 666, American Carnage, Finestkind, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Death of a Unicorn, Hurry Up Tomorrow, and The Gallerist. She starred in The Fallout, X, Miller’s Girl, and Winter Spring Summer or Fall. She starred in the series Stuck in the Middle. She co-starred in the series Richie Rich, and You. She published It’s All Love in 2021. She’s an ambassador for UNAIDS because her grandfather died of the disease. 

            The casting of Ortega as Wednesday was very good but I don’t think the actors who play her parents are a good fit. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown. I stopped at Midoco in the Annex to buy two Pilot pens. 

            On the way home I stopped at the No Frills at John and Richmond to buy five-year-old cheddar but they didn’t have it. They have a much narrower selection of a lot of things compared to the Parkdale No Frills. 

            I stopped at Bagels On Fire to buy a dozen sesame seed bagels but they only had 11 so I got one all-dressed. 

            I went to Metro where they didn’t have five-year-old cheddar either so I settled for four-year-old cheddar. Then I walked over to Freshco to buy a pack of toilet paper. 

            After I got home I went to the new Popeyes downstairs to buy six biscuits. 

            I weighed 89.85 kilos at 17:55. 

            I worked on getting caught up in my journal. 

            I had a small potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching season 7, episode 18 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            Carol does another skit in which the characters from TV commercials invade her home every time she uses a product. There are people in her medicine cabinet; she flushes the Tidy Bowl man; the loaf of bread tells her not to squeeze it so she strangles it; she’s about to make a peanut butter sandwich and Peter Pan flies in to tell her to use his brand; Naturalist Euell Gibbons comes in (played by Tim Conway) with a piece of a pine branch in his hand. He did commercials for Grape Nuts cereal, asking people if they’ve ever eaten a pine tree. He says “Many parts of a pine tree are edible” as he munches on the branch. He then takes a bite out of her chair and leaves, saying he’s now going to eat her garage; she chews some gum and a bunch of dancers burst into the room to sing the jingle for that brand. Carol grabs a broom and chases them out; a guy comes in with a gigantic pack of Wrigley’s gum and sings about big flavour until she punches him in the face and forces him back out; she begins waxing the floor until a voice says “You can see your reflection” and she looks down and screams because she can see up her housecoat; she starts washing the walls with a spray cleaner when Lyle in a blonde wig tears through the wall and says he’s Big Wally and he’s going to foam the dirt off her wall. She punches him in the gut and sends him back through the hole; her boyfriend played by Steve Lawrence arrives and tells her he made a killing in the stock market through his stock broker E.F. Sutton. Then a voice says “When E.F. Sutton talks people listen” and a bunch of guys are listening with their hands cupping their ears; Steve says he’s got tickets to Acapulco for just the two of them but then Vicki skips up to them as a flight attendant and sings “Come on and fly me” and Steve says he’s going to Acapulco with her instead. 

            Steve Lawrence sings the 1971 song “Rainy Days and Mondays” by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols. Then he sings the 1953 song “Here’s That Rainy Day” by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke. 

            Harvey plays a theatre actor about to go on in five minutes but has to awaken his elderly dresser played by Tim. Tim works extremely slowly and gets caught in various positions as he hangs from the overhead wardrobe track. Finally Harvey gets his coat on when he’s on and heads for the stage without realizing Tim is caught in the coat and being dragged behind him. In this skit Harvey laughs a lot more than usual. 

            Carol talks about how they like to have Tim and Steve in skits because they don’t crack up. Harvey on the other hand often loses control. They then show an outtake from the skit that Harvey, Tim, and Steve did in which businessmen behave as if they are lovers. In this one it is Tim and Steve that can’t stop laughing. I think they had Harvey deliberately laugh through the previous skit just to set up this one. 

            Steve plays Chuck Moran and he’s getting married tomorrow to Sally Caruthers. He’s in a bar where his bachelor party has just finished. His friends say goodbye and surprise him when they talk about not seeing him anymore. Lyle stays behind and tells him it’s true that this is his last night out with the guys. Chuck points out that Lyle is married and he goes out when he wants but Lyle says he stuffs his side of the bed with pillows and sneaks out. Chuck wonders why she wouldn’t notice and Lyle says there’s one place a wife doesn’t want to get close to her husband after a few years of marriage and that’s in bed. Chuck says he won’t have that problem because he was always better with the girls than him. Lyle says he’s observed Chuck was never smooth with the ladies. Chuck says it’s a good thing there are no girls in here right now or I’d prove you wrong. Then Carol comes in and Lyle bets he can’t pick her up. Chuck takes the bet and asks Carol where she’s been all his life, which causes her to laugh hysterically. H immediately asks if he can take her home and asks where she lives. She says she lives in Kansas and she’s in town for a wedding. Her baby sister Sally is getting married. Now Chuck stops smiling and cautiously asks Sally’s last name. It’s Caruthers. Chuck blows out the candle so his face is less visible. She says if she has too much to drink she forgets everything and so he orders drinks. She starts to get drunk and seems to be losing her memory but when Lyle calls him Chuck Moran she remembers that’s who’s going to marry her sister. No he’s really worried but then she tells him that when they’re at the wedding, if he mentions one word of this to her husband she’ll kill him. 

            There is a mostly silent skit featuring Carol and Tim as a wife and husband who work opposite shifts. She’s getting ready for work while he’s getting ready for bed. 

            Carol says fifty years ago an unknown composer’s first show opened on Broadway. he went on to write hit after hit for the next fifteen years and tonight they salute the music of George Gershwin. His most popular songs are sung and danced to in period costumes, beginning and ending with “Summertime”. Carol sings “Someone to Watch Over Me”. Steve sings “Somebody Loves Me”. Carol and Steve sing “’S Wonderful” and “Who Could Ask For Anything More”.