Helen Reddy

            On Tuesday morning I revised my translation of the sixth and seventh verses of “L'anguille (The Eel)” by Boris Vian. There’s a chance I’ll have the song finished on Wednesday. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Il est Rigolo mon gigolo” (He’s a Giggle Oh My Gigolo) by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through singing and playing it in French and English. Tomorrow I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog to begin preparing it for publication. 

            I weighed 89.95 kilos before breakfast. 

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

            Around midday I packed up my laundry and took it to the Speedy Queen. I was bringing my stuff home just after all the teenagers were getting out of Parkdale Collegiate. 

            I weighed 89.75 kilos at 15:40, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since May 20.

            I took a siesta from 16:08 to 17:38. It was too late for a bike ride. 

            I weighed 90.5 kilos at 17:55. 

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

            I grilled eight chicken drumsticks and had one with a small potato and gravy while watching season 8, episode 9 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warmup Carol introduces someone who won a scholarship that she sponsored back east for the most outstanding senior in theatre arts. She brings out Kenny Solms, who was actually a writer for Carol Burnett for several years and so this was a bit. He says he blew his scholarship money on a first class plane ticket to get to LA from New York. The bit is that he’s just somebody she invited to the stage but he thinks he came out to be a castmember on her show. He says he’s going to change his name to Lyle because Kenny is too cute. He says he can’t find his dressing room so he doesn’t know where to put his stuff. She says they’ll have to talk about it and he says they can go out for dinner wherever she wants to take him. 

            Helen Reddy sings her 1974 hit “Angie Baby” by Alan O’Day. Two of the dancers act out the lyrics. 

            There’s a Mama’s Family sketch in which Mama is visiting at Eunice and Ed’s place. They’ve finished dinner and Mama has just put her two grandchildren to bed. She says they asked her for a story but she said, “You think you deserve a story when your room is such a mess” They said their mother lets them keep it that way but Mama said, “Your mother might like to live in a garbage can but I don’t!” Eunice has set up the board game Sorry on the dining room table and wants Mama and Ed to play it so they can all have some fun together. Mama complains about the trashy movie magazines Eunice keeps in the house. Eunice argues that some of those articles have been authenticicated. Mama says, “I suppose they’ll keep printing them as long as there are people brainless enough to read them!” Eunice nags them until they agree to play. It starts to go sour almost immediately when Ed wins the dice roll and therefore gets his choice of men. He picks the yellow ones even though Eunice already said those were the ones she wanted. The game inspires arguments about their lives. Eunice complains she doesn’t have anything nice. Ed points out the salad bowl but she says it’s imitation wood and the Wishbone dressing just eats through it. Eunice complains that’s all he ever gets her is household appliances cause that’s all she ever does is housework. Mama says, “You’d never know it”. Eunice says, “I practically have to get down on my knees to get you to play a game with me so I can have some fun with this impossible old woman!” Eunice explodes in anger and tears open a feather pillow on the couch. Mama tells her, “You’re really nuts! I think somebody blew out your pilot light!” This is clearly an ad lib on Vicki’s part because Carol starts to laugh. Then Mama says, “You got splinters in the windmills of yer mind!” and Carol cracks up. Mama adds, “Yer playin hockey with a warped puck!” Eunice is shouting when they tell her it’s her turn. She continues shouting when she rolls but when they tell her she just rolled double six her mood suddenly changes and she sits down to happily play the game again. 

            John Byner does a stand-up routine on the topic of nostalgia. He says when he was a kid he idolized Elvis and does an Elvis impression. He says everybody had motorbikes but he couldn’t afford one so he used to pretend. He imitates a motorcycle. He says 50s television screwed him up because the families on the shows were too perfect and nothing like his own. Ozzie and Harriet was on for 14 years. He says nobody has ever met anyone named “Ozzie”. Ozzie never left the house. He speculates what Ozzie and Harriet would be like if it was still on and competing with shows like All in the Family and Maude that deal with real problems. Ricky’s girlfriend is pregnant but Ozzie’s solution is to have cookies in the kitchen. 

            Harvey and John are at a singles bar looking to score and Carol and Helen come in. Harvey and John have been coming there for a month and haven’t even talked to a woman. It’s Carol and Helen’s first time and they are also shy. They notice Harvey and John and think they’re cute. Harvey and John walk over to them but as soon as they turn around they run away back to their end of the bar. By the time they approach them again it’s closing time. Carol decides to drop her handkerchief on the way out. Harvey picks it up to hand to her but the girls scream and run out of the bar. 

            Helen Reddy began performing at the age of 4 at the Tivoli Theatre in Perth, Australia while touring with her show business parents. She left boarding school at the age of 15 to become a professional singer and actor. She got her own radio show on ABC called Helen Reddy Sings and it aired twice a week. She made her TV debut in In Melbourne Tonight in 1962. In 1966 she won a trip to New York in an Australian Bandstand contest. There she met and later married Jeff Wald and converted to Judaism. Her first single was “One Way Ticket” in 1967. She appeared on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show 15 times. She had her first hit in Canada in 1972 with a cover of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him”. She co-wrote “I Am Woman” with Ray Burton in 1971 and it was a #1 hit in 1972, becoming the first Australian performer to win a Grammy. In her acceptance speech she famously thanked a female god “because she makes everything possible”. “Delta Dawn” in 1973 hit #1 and “Angie Baby” did the same in 1974. She hosted 19 episodes of The Midnight Special. She co-starred in Airport 1975 and Pete’s Dragon, . She made her Broadway debut in Blood Brothers. She starred four times in the one woman show Shirley Valentine. She was the Commissioner of Parks and Recreation for the state of California for three years. In 2002 she returned to Australia to study in university and after earning her degree, worked as a practicing hypnotherapist. She moved back to California about ten years later when she started suffering from dementia. She sang “I Am Woman” at the 2017 Women’s March after Trump became president of the US.