Jenna McMahon

            On Friday morning I worked out the chords for the intro and the first line of “L'anguille (The Eel)” by Boris Vian. The only chord that seems to fit for the end of the line is strumming the guitar with the strings open. I was trying to figure out what to name it and did a web search. I found that it’s technically E minor 11 but it depends on what chord it follows. In this case it comes after F7 but I’ll just call it Em11 anyway. 

            I compared the set of lyrics I already had for “Les anthropophages” (The Cannibals) by Serge Gainsbourg with the lyrics provided on the Dalida YouTube channel. I went through the first two verses and the chorus and it looks like the Dalida text makes more sense so far. I’ll finish that tomorrow and then start memorizing the song. 

            I weighed 89 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since May 23.

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

            Around midday I finished applying the first coat of “blue bliss” to my future bathroom mirror frame. On Sunday I’ll start the second and hopefully final coat of blue. 

            I weighed 90.45 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 89.75 kilos at 17:55. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:32. 

            I finished digitizing side 2 of the cassette tape that I started yesterday of a recording session at Mike’s place. There was an additional take of “Megaphor” but the only different song was my “Next State of Grace”. 

            In Movie Maker I imported season 7, episode 9 of The Carol Burnett Show. I isolated and published the song “Born to Hand Jive” written by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey for the 1971 musical Grease, and performed on The Carol Burnett Show by Vicki Lawrence and Carlton Johnson. This was long before the film version and Vicki and Carlton actually did it better. I’m going to try to upload the video to YouTube and hopefully there won’t be any copyright problems. 

            I heated some oven fries, and had them with gravy along with two chicken drumsticks while watching season 8, episode 12 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warmup someone asks if Carol Burnett is her real name. She says it’s really Ben Gazarra. 

            Someone asks Carol what’s her favourite perfume. She says she wears a cologne named Rive Gauche by Yves St Laurent and she combines it with Raid. 

            A girl asks if she had a crush on Jerry Hall at UCLA and Carol says they used to go steady at Hollywood High School. The girl says she’s Jerry’s daughter. Carol says, “You could have been mine!” and then she goes into the audience to give her a hug and a kiss. 

            Ken Berry does a song and dance with the Ernie Flatt Dancers in turn of the 20th century costume. He’s telling the losers in the barber shop how to win a woman and sings “Razzle Dazzle” by Fred Ebb and John Kander from the 1975 musical Chicago. 

            There’s a parody of the disaster movie Airport 1975. Carol plays a flight attendant named Nancy. The passengers include two singing nuns known as the Smothers Sisters (played by Bonnie Evans and Vicki Lawrence) and silent screen star Nora Desmond who remembers being a star but can barely remember her own name (Carol’s parody of Gloria Swanson). A small plane crashes into the cockpit and the pilot and co-pilot are sucked out of the plane. Harvey says he’s going to blow up the plane and says he knows bombs because he used to run Friday Night on ABC. Nancy tells him he’s in the wrong movie so he apologizes and sits down. Nancy’s boyfriend Murdoch (Carl Reiner) calls her and is more concerned with their recent fight than the disaster. Murdoch reaches the plane by trampoline and successfully lands it. 

            Vicki sings “I Gotta Be Me” (by Walter Marks from the 1968 musical Golden Rainbow) while removing her eyelashes, nails, wig, false breasts, and teeth. 

            Harvey and Carol play poor expectant parents with Carol looking very pregnant and Harvey singing a parody of Paul Anka’s “You’re Having My Baby” until Carol punches him in the face and sends him through the wall. 

            Harvey and Carol play a married couple having a passive aggressive argument. She gives him the cold shoulder and when he asks what’s wrong she keeps saying “Nothing!” Then after a while he does the same to her. They finally come together and think they’ve worked out their problem but what the problem was is never mentioned. When he asks what they were fighting about she returns to “Nothing!” 

            There’s a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet with Ken as Hamlet, Carl Reiner as the ghost of Hamlet’s father. The palace guard are all scantily clad females and they sing “Something stinks in the state of Denmark, Something’s rotten to the core, Something stinks to the heavens, It may be Maurice Evans” (a reference to his famous turn as Hamlet). The ghost of Hamlet’s father comes out and all the girls gather round him, sitting on his lap and he sings about how happy he is to be dead because he never had it so good. Harvey plays King Claudius and Vicki plays Queen Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. She finds Hamlet brooding and sings, “Don’t you love your mama anymore?” He sings how of course he still loves her, and they dance. He sits and plays the harpsichord. Ophelia approaches him (played by Carol). She wants romance but he wants revenge. She sings a torch song about the situation. She falls into the harpsichord and he says, “Get thee to a nunnery” and rolls the harpsichord away. Hamlet talks to his father but the ghost is busy chasing the palace guards around. Claudius tells him to take his father’s advice and give Ophelia a tumble in the hey nonny nonny. Hamlet confesses he doesn’t know how. Claudius is shocked and sings, “There’s No One Who Can Do It Like a Dane” in a kind of Noel Coward type song. Hamlet is convinced and calls for Ophelia. He sings he’s ready for her and she sings “I Never Had it So Good”. Everybody sings “All is well in the state of Denmark. Nothing is rotten anymore”. 

            One of the writers on the Carol Burnett Show for 120 episodes was Jenna McMahon. She opened a playhouse in West Hollywood and was teaching acting when she met her writing partner Dick Clair. They formed a comedy act and performed on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Merv Griffin Show. They wrote for The Bob Newhart Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Soap (for which they were nominated for Emmy Awards). She co-created the sitcoms It’s a Living, The Facts of Life, and Mama’s Family. They co-wrote and co-produced the TV special Carol, Carl, Whoopi, and Robin. She produced the short-lived sitcom Julie, starring Julie Andrews.