I memorized the first verse of “Les anthropophages” (The Cannibals) by Serge Gainsbourg, then translated the first verse and half the chorus.
I weighed 90.3 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it stayed in tune for a handful of songs.
I almost had another toilet emergency after song practice. The toilet plugged briefly but I got it cleared again without too much effort.
I weighed 91.25 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar, plus a glass of limeade.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.
I weighed 90.7 kilos at 17:45, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening since May 28.
I was behind on my journal again because of dozing off the night before and worked on getting caught up. I was still behind at suppertime.
I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with olive paste, marinara, tomato pesto, a sliced hot Italian sausage, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching season 8, episode 14 of The Carol Burnett Show.
During the audience warmup someone asks Carol if she believes in saving money. She answers that she does. The woman says she has a letter for her that she doesn’t want to mail so she comes up and gives it to her.
Vincent Price plays the author of a best selling mystery novel and he is doing a book signing event when Carol’s character Alice Portnoy the Fireside Girl approaches him with her donation can as she collects to send a Fireside Girl to camp. Vincent wants to get rid of her and gives her a dime. She sarcastically asks if he’s sure he can afford that much? He adds a quarter. As she’s leaving she says for him to say hello to his platinum blonde wife. He calls her back and tells her his wife isn’t blond. She says she saw her in a car with him the other night. He says he was teaching his niece to drive and she asks, “In the back seat?” He puts $5 in her can and tells her to forget about it. She says a $20 would dim her memory forever so he gives her that. A TV crew arrives to interview him. She says if he needs an endorsement she’s available. The interviewer asks if she’s read Vincent’s book. She says “12 times”. The TV guy thinks it’s of great human interest to put Alice on the air. She tells Vincent that they should discuss the mistakes he made in his novel before she goes on TV. She points out several flaws in story that any editor would have caught before her. The big flaw is that he had mentioned early in the story that the character who turns out to be the murderer in the end is left handed, but a left handed person couldn’t have committed the crime. He doesn’t want her to mention it. By now he’s given her all his cash and so before he talks about his book he gives a big plug for the Fireside Girls and puts his watch in the donation can.
Carol and Vickie sing a list of famous singers and comedians who were born in Brooklyn, like Jackie Gleason, Jimmy Durante, Mae West, Micky Spillane, George Gershwin, Buddy Hacket, Connie Stevens, Woody Allen, Rita Hayworth, Norman Mailer, Mickey Rooney, Barbara Stanwick, Clara Bow, Walt Whitman, Zero Mostel, Barbara Streisand, Phil Silvers, Shirley Booth, Arthur Miller, Danny Kaye, and finally Joan Rivers, and this is her introduction.
Joan comes out and says there’s one little mistake. She’s not from Brooklyn but from England and she worked for years and spent a lot of money to get her Brooklyn accent. But she’s only joking because she is from Brooklyn. She left Brooklyn as a little flat chested girl and now she’s a little flat chested woman. But not tonight because she bought a rubber bra and now if she falls down she’ll bounce back up. She says her wedding night was a disaster. Her husband said, “Let me help you with the buttons” but she was naked. She singles out a couple in the audience and asks, “Wasn’t it better in the beginning, with the little nightgown and the games?” She dances around and calls out “Catch me, catch me!” She says after 9 years they still plays catch me catch me but they walk. She says she’s letting herself go because she’s a first wife. First wives don’t know that they’re supposed to look good. They just think they have to clean the house every six months. Second wives don’t have to bother dusting. She tells the married women in the audience to show their rings and she’’ be able to tell if they’re a first or second wife. She gets it wrong with the third one who says she’s a second wife. Joan looks at the ring and says, “You must be on welfare!” She slaps the husband and asks, “Where’s the ring?” Joan says first wives get a lousy ring and they say “Thank you!” She says men like their second wives better and points out how attractive the second wife she was talking to is. She points almost angrily at the blonde and says, “This is what they like! Good looking and shallow!” There are always a lot of high school kids in the audience because there were many school trips as the show was taped during school hours. Joan addresses the high school girls in the audience and says, “Men look for looks, so don’t waste your time learning to read a book”. She says she knows a stupid woman who says, “God made me an animal! All I do is sleep and make love!” and men love it. Joan says she tells her husband that she does the same thing as her but he says, “But she doesn’t do both at the same time”. Joan says the only reason they have a child is because her husband tosses and turns in his sleep.
Carol and Harvey’s characters, the theatrical married couple Mundane and Funt are about to perform their 200th and final performance of the play Second Honeymoon. They are just about to leave their dressing room for the stage when their understudies (played by Vicki and Vincent) come in. Funt and Mundane mock them because they never had a chance to perform their parts in all 200 nights. Funt and Mundane head for the stage but Vicki and Vincent have other plans. In the play they are about to leave their apartment for Milan and Funt goes to the bedroom to fetch their bags, but Vincent is waiting for him on the other side holding a suitcase and says he’s replaced the ailing prop man. he drops the heavy suitcase and breaks Funt’s left foot. He offers to replace him but Funt returns, limping to the stage. Mundane leaps into his arms but because of his foot they both collapse. When they get up Funt tells her to get her coat but Vickie is waiting, saying she’s filling in for the wardrobe. She “accidentally” steps on Mundane’s foot. Mundane asks for her water but Vickie gives her lemon juice and so now she has to deliver her lines through a pucker. Mundane and goes to stand by the window and leans with her hands behind her. Vicki slams the window down on her hands. Mundane says she’s leaving him and so Funt goes to get his coat. Vincent is waiting and knocks him out, then replaces him in the scene. He asks if Mundane is sure they can’t work things out but she says no so he goes to get his golf bag. But Funt has recovered him and throws him back through the door. Mundane walks behind the couch where Vicki is hiding and knocks her out to finish her line. But then Mundane recovers and stuns Vicki to finish her line. Mundane is about to rush into Funt’s arms when Victor pulls him out the door and replaces him. Funt hits him with a golf club and returns to Mundane’s arms. Then Mundane sits on the couch but Vicki flips it back so Mundane is behind it and we see Vicki jumping several times and hear the sound of cracking. She runs to Funt’s arms but he pushes her out the door and goes to Mundane but when he rights the couch she falls either dead or unconscious to the floor as he shouts for the curtain.
They pay tribute to some of the new TV shows that came out this season.
Police Lady is a parody of Police Woman with Vicki in the Angie Dickinson role. She’s on a date with her boyfriend Mitch played by Victor. She insists that he treat her like a woman and not a police woman but she’s already ticketed his car.
Chiquita and the Man is a parody of Chico and the Man with Carol playing Charo playing Chiquita. Harvey plays the Jack Albertson part as Chiquita comes to ask for a job as a mechanic. She tells him she can fix cars and she does a lot of sudden hip thrusting that causes things to fall off the walls. He hires her but as she is rotating her hips he has a heart attack. He asks her to get his pills but she says it’s not her job.
Rhonda is a parody of the Mary Tyler Moore spin-off Rhoda with Joan Rivers playing Valerie Harper’s role. She says she moved to Minneapolis so she would be younger in a different time zone. But now she’s back east again and says, “New York, this is your last chance”. Suddenly two big tough looking guys mug her, grab her purse, then run away. Rhonda shouts, “I recognized you Mary!”
Tony Tallahassee and Dusk is a parody of Tony Orlando and Dawn with Harvey as Tony and Carol and Vicki as Dawn. They do a parody of “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree” until the real Tony Orlando and Dawn come out on stage looking mad and they slink away.
The Walnuts is a parody of The Waltons with Carol playing John Girl and narrating. They are all sitting at the dinner table with Vicki and Harvey as the grandparents, Joan and Vincent as the parents, and four of the Ernie Flatt dancers filling out the rest of the children, including the black guy. They all talk about the boring things that happened to them that day and are very excited about them such as seeing dragonfly hover over the pig stye. There’s a knock on the door and a rich city man is there. The Walnuts are frightened. He wants to pay them a million dollars so he can build an amusement park on Walnut Mound. Some of the kids don’t know what money is. John Girl admits she could use some new ink for her pen since she’s been writing with it empty for three years. But she asks, “Can money buy the joys of poverty and the ecstasy of drudgery? I think not!” They chase away the rich man. Later we see the whole family in one big bed saying goodnight. John Girl the narrator speaks of how she eventually got rich writing and selling the story of the Walnuts and thinks back on how dumb they all were.
Vicki in her snooty character voice talks about Peter and the Wolf being a concert piece designed to introduce the instruments of the orchestra to children’s tiny minds. To introduce the different kinds of singing voices they have designed a piece called Sarah and the Moose. A choir does a chorus and Vincent comes out to a podium to talk about it. A chorus is made up of basses who sing from their chests, tenors who sing from their noses, altos who sing from their sinuses, and sopranos who sing from we don’t really know where. The basses will sing the theme of the moose; the altos will sing the theme of Sarah; the tenors sing the theme of the Forest Ranger; the sopranos sing the theme of Sarah’s Aunt Fanny. In the story Sarah wakes up on hir birthday and finds a moose call under her pillow. She takes it to the forest ranger. They both try it but no moose comes. Aunt Fanny arrives and says that’s no way to call a moose. She takes the moose call but accidentally swallows it. Her speech is now a moose mating call and a moose arrives. Everybody runs but the moose catches Fanny and they get married.
Joan Rivers earned a Bachelors degree in English and Anthropology in 1954. Her first stage name was Pepper January. She was in a comedy team with William Perry called Joanie and Bill. She was in the comedy team Jim, Jake and Joan and they appeared in the film Once Upon a Coffeehouse. She was a writer for Candid Camera and also served as the bait to lure people in. She had a one night stand with Robert Mitcham in the 60s while married to Edgar. She made her Broadway debut in Fun City in 1972. The narrated The Adventures of Letterman from 1972 to 1976 for The Electric Company. She made her directorial debut in 1978 in Rabbit Test, which she also wrote. In 1982 she was appointed by Johnny Carson a permanent guest host of The Tonight Show where she appeared 303 times. She left in 1986 to host The Late Show and Johnny never spoke to her again. She hosted Saturday Night Live in 1983. She co-starred on Fashion Police. She hosted The Joan Rivers Show from 1983 to 1993. She was nominated for 8 Emmy Awards but only won once for her talk show. She starred in Joan and Melissa for three years. She was nominated for a Grammy Award for her album What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most? She posthumously won for Diary of a Mad Diva. She was nominated for a Tony Award in 1994 for her performance in Sally Marr and her Escorts. She won the second season of Celebrity Apprentice in 2009. She hosted the reality show How’d You Get So Rich? in 2009. She wrote I Hate Everyone… Starting with Me; Enter Talking; Still Talking; Bouncing Back; Don’t Count the Candles; Having a Baby Can be a Scream; Men Are Stupid and They Like Big Boobs; and The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abromowitz. She became a billionaire from her line of jewellery alone. She said the ideal childbirth experience is to be knocked out through the whole experience and then woken up when the hairdresser arrives. She said there is not one female comic who was a beautiful little girl. She joked that her husband committed suicide because when they were making love she took the bag off her head. On Joan Collins, “I remember when that bitch was older than I was”. She said if older women can afford it they should get plastic surgery.
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