Joel Grey

            On Tuesday it was my birthday. 

            I listened to some Bach Cantatas during yoga.

            I made a list of Boris Vian songs from 1956. There are a lot and many of them are rock and roll songs that have “Rock” in the title. 

            I played my Martin during song practice although today was supposed to be a day to play my Gibson Les Paul Studio. Since it was my birthday I decided to avoid the hassle of dealing with electronics. I didn’t do a full set this time but only the songs that needed a lot of work. 

            I rode up to Dufferin and Dundas to Dad’s Breakfast Sandwiches because I’d passed the place a few days ago and the idea of a place specializing in breakfast sandwiches sounded appealing. I ordered the 48 Dad with egg, bacon, hash brown, cheese, and jalapenos. I took it home and ate it while watching the first episode of Dark Shadows. The sandwich was disappointing because I could make a better tasting breakfast sandwich than that. 

            I used to watch Dark Shadows after school when I was a kid and decided to revisit the show. But the so called first episode in the set that I downloaded seemed to be only a recap of the first season. Victoria Winters narrates the story of her journey to Collingwood in Collinsport, Maine in the summer of 1966. She’s been hired as a governess for nine year old David Collins and she’s hoping that this new life will help her rise above her past, as she grew up in an orphanage. But she also hopes it will shed a light on her past because she believes she has a connection to the Collins family. The matriarch of Collingwood is Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, who has not left the estate since the disappearance of her husband Paul 18 years ago. Her brother Roger, the father of David, also lives there along with Elizabeth’s 18 year old daughter Caroline. It’s dark out and after getting off the train Victoria is looking for a taxi. She sees a man named Burk Devlin standing alone on the street and asks where she can get a cab. A limo stops for him and he offers her a lift to the hotel where she can get a taxi. On the way he tries to discourage her from going to Collingwood and to return to New York as fast as she can. At a café in town she gets the same advice from the waiter Maggie Evans. Victoria moves in to Collingwood. Her charge David is a troubled boy and his father plans to send him away so David tries to kill him by sabotaging his car. Victoria learns that Collingwood’s caretaker Matthew Morgan has killed Bill Malloy, the manager of the Collins fishing fleet so he kidnaps her and holds her captive in an abandoned house on the estate. She is saved by the ghosts of Josette Collins and Bill Malloy. Roger’s wife and David’s mother Laura returns to Collingwood. Laura is an immortal phoenix who is reborn from fiery ashes every hundred years. She tries to lure David into the flames. Burk uncovers that Roger was responsible for an automobile accident that sent him to prison for five years. Elizabeth encounters Jason McGuire who is a sleezy friend of her missing husband. He blackmails her into letting him live at Collingwood because he has information that ties her to her husband’s disappearance. He knows that she killed him. Willy Loomis is a drifter friend of Jason’s who becomes an unwelcome guest at Collingwood. He learns that many of the Collins family were buried with their jewels and goes to the Collins mausoleum to rob their graves. He uses a block and tackle to try to open one of the sealed coffins but hears a strange thumping sound from inside the crypt and almost runs away. But the noise stops as he is about to leave so he regains his courage and returns to his efforts. But while he works on the coffin the door to the crypt opens and he enters. That’s the end of the summary. 

            With a hammer and chisel I finished knocking the plaster from the part of eastern wall of my living room that surrounds the passage to the kitchen and freed up the brick wall behind it. 

            After cleaning up the broken plaster and mopping the floor in that area, I had a bagel with peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar while watching the second episode of my Dark Shadows download. This was clearly not the beginning of the series. 

            This story takes place slightly before when the summary leaves off. Elizabeth wants Willy out of the Collingwood and agrees to pay him to leave. Meanwhile Willy goes to the toolshed to steal the equipment he needs to rob the Collins graves. Three quarters of the way through the episode we get to the point where the summary left off as Willy approaches the now opened door to the crypt. He finds a chained coffin and hears the thumping sound again but his greed doesn’t allow him to run away. He uses his tools to break the chains and opens the coffin. Immediately two hands reach up to grip his throat. 

            I searched for a torrent containing the real beginning of the series and found a file called Dark Shadows Beginnings, containing episodes 1 to 209. I started downloading it although I wasn’t sure if this was a prequel that was written after the original series. 

            I took a siesta and got up at around 16:15. 

            I headed up to the Dufferin Mall to search for cotton shammy cloths for cleaning my guitar or polishing a car or leather or whatever. I was surprised that they didn’t have anything like that at Walmart. I bought a pack of flour sack cloths, although I wasn’t sure if they were what I need. 

            I rode to Long and McQuade where I bought a microfiber cloth specifically for cleaning guitars.

            I rode downtown and stopped at Alforat the Iraqi street food restaurant at Yonge and Dundas. There’s a video above the door that shows them making something that looks delicious, so I asked the woman taking the orders what that is and she said chicken shawarma. She pronounced “shawarma” almost as “shaarma” with just a slight kiss of the “w”. She was obviously Middle Eastern and I assume Iraqi but she wore a cross. I had to wait about ten minutes for my shawarma and it was fairly large. I didn’t eat it right away when I got home because it was still an hour or so until suppertime. 

            I weighed 89.25 kilos at 19:00. 

            I heated some oven fries for half an hour and put in the shawarma for the last fifteen minutes. I had them with a beer while watching season 7, episode 19 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            In the Carol and Sis skit, Chrissie has a date. Gary is an extremely outgoing, confident and hip little guy with a moustache. He wears a jean jacket and genes with rhinestones. He sits on the couch close to Carol with his arm behind her and tells her she has outtasight teeth. He flirts with Carol and then is all over Chrissie, then the phone rings and it’s Gary’s mommy asking for him. He comes to the phone and says “Hi Mommy”. Then Gary says he has to brush his teeth because his mommy says, “Brush your teeth whenever you can, it helps fight off the cavity man”. Gary goes to the bathroom but comes back to call his mommy and tell her they use a toothpaste without Florestan. Mommy says he can skip it tonight. Mommy calls again and says she wants to talk to Roger. Roger says “Hello” and Mommy hangs up. Gary says she just wanted to hear his voice. Carol asks Gary if his mother always calls him like this. He says she used to call his father like that all the time until about five years ago when they lost him. Carols says, “I’m sorry!” Gary says, “He’s not. He ran off with the Avon lady.” Gary gets another call and from his reaction it looks like something horrible has happened. He tells Mommy not to panic and he’ll be right there. He tells Chrissie he’ll have to take a rain check on their date. His mommy was baking a cake and she ran out of eggs. He has to bring her some right away. He takes off his fake moustache and sideburns and hands them to Roger, saying, “My Mommy would kill me”. He’s on his way out the door when Chrissie stops him and tells him they can pick up some eggs for her before their date. He asks, “You still want to go out with me?” She says, “You’re kind of cute under all that fuzz”. After they leave, the phone rings again. Roger tells Gary’s mother that he hasn’t left yet but he can’t come to the phone because he’s standing in the middle of the living room naked and burning his toothbrush. 

            Harvey plays a legendary German director who has come out of retirement to make a movie starring Carol’s parody of Shirley Temple: Rhoda Dimple. She is in a scene with Lyle playing her grandpa and he is dying. She begs him not to go because they’ll put her in an orphanage. He dies and she cries, then the scene is over and she asks for a cigarette. She pushes Lyle’s wheelchair out of the way. Max declares that the movie is finished but Dimple says it’s not because she hasn’t had her close-up. He refuses, she kicks, punches, bites, and screams but Max says no. Finally she threatens to tell the papers about how he walks around in lady’s underwear. He says he’ll give her the close-up. Her mother comes and fixes her hair while Dimple verbally abuses her. Max decides not to giver her a closeup after all and so she grabs a sword and cuts his belt so his pants fall down revealing lady’s pink underwear with lacy trim. He says she can have her close-up but the camera keeps coming closer and closer until she is pushed through a wall. 

            Vincent Price does a tribute to the humourous side of Abraham Lincoln in celebration of his 165th birthday. He tells the story of Lincoln attending the theatre and placing his stove pipe hat upside down on the seat next to him. A big woman comes and sits on it and Lincoln responds that he could have told her it wouldn’t fit before she tried it on. 

            Carol plays a hotel phone operator listening in on the calls she relays. Vincent plays George who’s in town for the sump pump convention. He calls Linda (played by Vickie) who’s in the bathtub. He wants her to go to dinner but after what happened last time she turns him down. George calls Ted who is also in town for the convention and he agrees to gort for dinner at the Hungarian restaurant called Tokyo Ben’s. Linda calls George back and says she will join him after all so George tries to think of how to get out of dinner with Ted. Then Jack (played by Lyle) calls Linda and asks her out to dinner at Wolfgang’s Cacciatori Gardens. She agrees to go with Jack. George calls Ted and says he’s got a headache and can’t go to dinner. George calls Linda to tell her he’s now free for dinner. She agrees to go with him. Ted asks Jack to dinner but he says he’s made other arrangements. Linda calls Jack and lies that she has a headache. Ted calls Linda and asks her to dinner. She tells him she’s going with George. He says George told him he’s having dinner in his room. Linda doesn’t want to have dinner in George’s room so she agrees to go with Ted. Jack calls Ted but he tells him he called somebody else. Linda calls George to say she doesn’t want to have dinner in his room. He says they’ll go to Tokyo Ben’s. She says she’s made other arrangements but he reminds her that they had a date so she says she’ll try to get out of it. Linda calls Ted and he knows she’s cancelling. Jack and Ted call each other and Linda and George call each other. Jack and Ted are going to dinner and Linda and Jack are going but they don’t want to go to Tokyo Ben’s because they might run into the people they ditched and so they all agree on Madame Ing’s. Carol makes reservations for Madame Ing’s as well so she can watch it all unfold. 

            Vincent Price and Harvey doing his Peter Lorre impression are two spies who meet on a dark street. They exchange passwords and Harvey asks for the state secrets. Vincent asks for the money. Harvey gives him $749,980. Vincent says he’s $20 short. Harvey gives him his last $8 but Vincent tells him he still owes him $12. Harvey sells him his trenchcoat for $10 but still owes $2. Harvey sells Vincent his suit jacket and pants and argues that it’s imported from London. Vincent says they are in London and so it’s a domestic suit so he only pays him $1.70. Vincent says he’ll give 30 cents for his tie, one shoe and one sock. He gets the state secret but now he needs busfare so he sells Vincent his shirt for ten cents. At the bus stop there are several other spies in their underwear and wearing only one shoe.

            Vincent plays a street puppeteer and sings “Comedy Tonight” by Stephen Sondheim from the 1962 musical A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum. He opens the curtains on his little puppet theatre and there are Joel Grey as Punch and Carol as Judy. They sing about how they’ve learned the trick to a successful marriage and if you want love to bloom start a fight. If something’s missing in your life beat your wife. If he is making you his slave break his toes. If something’s missing in your man kick his can. They sing while they hit each other. The street audience all jump up to dance and the men and women hit each other with paddles and brooms. 

            Joel Grey knew at the age of 9 that he wanted to be an actor. His father was Mickey Katz who had a hit record with a Yiddish song and put together a variety show. Joel sang the Yiddish song “Romania Romania”. He made his acting debut at the age of 10 in Curtain Puller’s Children’s Theatre at the Cleveland Playhouse. Eddie Cantor saw Joel perform and put him on his Colgate Comedy Hour as a regular performer from 1951 to 1954. He began performing in nightclubs across the US. He made his film debut in About Face in 1952. He was the first guest on the 1968 version of What’s My Line. He won a Tony award for his performance in Cabaret on Broadway and an Oscar for the film adaptation. He co-starred in Man on a Swing, Remo Williams (for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe), Kafka, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, The Music of Chance, Dancer in the Dark, . He starred in The Fantasticks, He was the guest star in the first episode of The Muppet Show in 1976. He was nominated for an Emmy for his guest performance on Brooklyn Bridge. He guest starred in the 28th episode of Star Trek: Voyageur: “Resistance”. He played the demon Doc on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He was nominated for Tony Awards for his performances in the original Broadway productions of George M, Goodtime Charley, and The Grand Tour. He created the role of The Wizard in the original Broadway production of Wicked. He was nominated for a Best Director Tony for The Normal Heart. He is also a photographer who has published four books of his work. He’s the father of Jennifer Grey who co-starred in Dirty Dancing. He came out as gay in 2015 after 24 years of marriage to Jo Wilder with whom he had two children. I wonder if anyone was surprised. His 2016 memoir was entitled Master of Ceremonies. 

            I watched one more episode of my first download of Dark Shadows while Dark Shadows Beginnings was still downloading. Willie Loomis is missing and has not come for the money that he was to collect as a motivation to leave Collingwood. Elizabeth wants him found so they can be sure of his final departure and she has tasked Jason with the responsibility of finding him. Mrs. Johnson the housekeeper says she saw Willie prowling around the tool shed last night. She tells him that Willie found out from her that some of the Collins family were buried with their jewellery and he found that very interesting. Jason goes to the mausoleum where he meets the caretaker who says he saw Willie earlier and let him in because he claimed he was a Collins and wanted to pay his respects. He says he thought he left but later he saw the lock had been broken on the door. Jason goes inside and the only evidence he finds is a cigarette butt that Willie left behind. Back at Collingwood Mrs. Johnson answers the door and a man who says he’s Elizabeth’s cousin from England asks to see her. Johnson invites him in. He says he is Barnabus Collins, who is supposed to be dead.