After yoga. I finished editing “L'anguille (The Eel)” by Boris Vian in my Christian’s Translations blog and it is ready for publication as soon as I post a YouTube video at the top.
I memorized and translated the first verse of the “Que je t’aime (That I Love You)” parody by Serge Gainsbourg. That’s half the song and so there’s a good chance that I’ll have it finished on Monday.
I weighed 90.15 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Martin for the third of four sessions and it went out of tune for every song as usual.
Around midday I painted the outside half of two of the four floral reliefs on my future bathroom mirror frame. On Tuesday I’ll do the outside halves of the other two.
I weighed 91.35 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.
I weighed 90.45 kilos at 17:45, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since June 6.
I worked on getting caught up in my journal but was still behind at suppertime.
I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, french fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching season 9, episode 10 of The Carol Burnett Show.
During the audience warmup someone asks Carol about the play Once Upon a Mattress. She says it was the first theatre production she was in outside of college.
Someone asks Carol to relate a funny and interesting experience she shared with Lucille Ball. The cameraman says, “Desi Arnaz”.
Carol plays a housewife talking on the phone about how her kitchen has just been renovated but there are a few problems. She hangs up and the phone breaks off the wall. Her husband (played by Harvey) comes home from a very bad day at work and doesn’t want to hear any complaints, so she doesn’t mention the phone. Several things in the kitchen break or malfunction as he’s sitting there waiting for Carol to fix him a drink. The comedy lies in her attempting to conceal each little disaster that is happening very close to him. He bangs his fist on the kitchen table and a light fixture drops into Carol’s hands. She goes to get ice and the handle comes off the freezer door so she can’t open it. She tries to pry it with a hammer but the hammer handle snaps. It doesn’t open until Harvey bangs his fist on the table again. She tries to run water and the faucet comes off so that water is spraying all over the place. The kitchen counters fall from the wall and the door comes off the fridge. The ceiling collapses. Harvey is freaking out but says they’ll go to a restaurant. He goes out to get the car and it blows up. Carol makes a big batch of martinis in the light fixture.
Carol brings Maggie Smith out and asks her to teach her how to speak with an accent. Maggie says, “You already do speak with an accent. Oh! You mean you want to learn to speak correctly?” Carol wants to be able to imitate the Cockney accent. Her lesson becomes a singing duet. Maggie sings, “Take the A sound and make it an I sound. Take the O sound and make it an Ow. Then try a glottal stop: Wha-a lo-ah li--le bo--les” (What a lot of little bottles). She then says she has to drop her “H”s. Carol says she wants to star in My Fair Lady II if they make it. But Maggie says that’s a part she’d audition for too.
Harvey is very sick and has called for his doctor to make a house call but the doctor’s father, played by Tim Conway in his old man character shows up instead. He walks with a shuffle and has an inability to lift his feet and so he tends to bunch up carpets, making obstacles for himself. He goes to wash his hands and does so in the gold fish bowl. He says he got his doctor’s bag in Australia and it’s real koala, which cracks Harvey up. He goes to take Harvey’s pulse but his fob watch is missing and so he holds Harvey’s left hand while he brings Harvey’s right hand around him so he can look at his watch. But he ends up sliding up next to Harvey and falling asleep. Harvey asks if he’s sure he’s a doctor. Tim shows him his diploma and he’s a paediatrician. Tim puts on a monkey mask to get Harvey to take a pill. He goes to take Harvey’s temperature and tells him to roll over. A nurse took my temperature that way when I was a kid in the hospital. Harvey hears from the doorman that a Doctor Becker is on his way up and Harvey is relieved because he thinks it’s Tim’s son but it’s his father.
Maggie plays a school teacher on parent-teachers night. Eunice, Ed and Mama come in to discuss Eunice and Ed’s son Bubba. Maggie says that she’s sent several notes home with Bubba but his parents have never received them. She tells them that Bubba’s studies and behaviour have been going downhill since Grade 1. Unless something changes the school will have to expel him. Bubba has only handed in one assignment so far this year. It was supposed to be a 100 word composition on what he did last summer. All he wrote was “Not much” fifty times. When asked to report to the principal Bubba set off the fire alarm. Once he threw a stink bomb into the teachers lounge. Ed asks how he’s doing in athletics. She says the other students won’t play with him because he throws tantrums when he loses. Today at lunch he stole a girl’s chicken salad sandwich and force-fed her his bologna sandwich, nearly choking her. Eunice and Ed ask how she knows he did that. Maggie says it was reported by Bubba’s brother Billy Joe. Mama says she’d steal chicken salad too if all she got was bologna every day. The students were asked to draw pictures of their home life and Bubba drew mean looking parents menacing himself as a little black dot. Maggie says it indicates that he feels insignificant at home. Ed asks, “What the hell’s he doin in art class anyway? Next thing he’ll be doin is hair dressin!” Maggie says she’s trying to draw their attention to the fact that he drew himself as a dot. Ed says Bubba’s always been frail. Mama says, “That’s cause he don’t get enough to eat”. Maggie says she can’t overemphasize the importance of an open, loving home climate. Mama and Ed start looking at Eunice and she feels like she’s being blamed and so she storms out but comes back a minute later. She apologizes and says she takes things way too seriously sometimes. Mama tells her she does take things way to seriously. Eunice tells her, “That’s what I just said! Didn’t you hear me say that?” Eunice says she’s both mama and papa to those boys and the only discipline comes from her. Ed says he’s walloped them plenty of times but he can’t stay home all the time. “I’m easier on them than my papa was on me. I didn’t enjoy those wallopins but he made a man out of me!” Mama says, “I think he was a couple of wallopins short!” Maggie says, “None of you seem to realize that without responsible parental guidance your son is headed for big trouble!” Eunice starts crying and says, “I just wasn’t meant ta have boys! I just can’t handle boys!” She complains that both times when she was wheeled into the delivery room she prayed for a beautiful little girl that she could dress up in pretty dresses like she never had but both times she ended up with a big, fat, awful boy. “And my figures never been the same!” Mama says, “I warned you that if you married this big bozo you was gonna wind up givin birth to a bunch of freaks!” Eunice accuses Mama of always favouring her sister Ellen like when Ellen shot her with a squirt gun she just told Eunice to be a good sport. But when Eunice dropped a water balloon on Anne Marie Bitner, Mama threatened to send her to reform school. Mama reminds her that there’s a big difference between a squirt gun and a water bomb and Eunice almost gave Anne Marie a concussion. Maggie shouts for them all to sit down. She says when she first met Bubba she thought he was the most hateful bully she had ever met, but having met his parents she has only sympathy for him. A belligerent insensitive father, a selfish mother, and an uncaring bitter grandmother. “These are the people he has to come home to every day!” Mama says, “I don’t live with them!” Maggie says, “That’s one small mercy for Bubba”. She says they’re going to make a better life for Bubba, even if she has to come to their house every day and knock their heads together. She tells them to come back next week. They try to protest but she shouts for them to get out. After they leave Maggie says, “Og Bubba, we’ve got a lot of work to do!”
In the final musical and dance number everybody plays stage hands on the Carol Burnett set. Carol and Maggie sing the 1974 song “Showbiz” by Dennis Tracy. Harvey sings “Be a Clown” by Cole Porter from the 1948 film The Pirate. Vicki sings “Let Me Entertain You” by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim from the 1959 musical Gypsy. There’s a dance segment and one dancer lies on her back on a table while Tim stands on the table on his knees holding a tablecloth so that when the dancer kicks her legs it looks like Tim is doing the can-can. Carol holds a hammer like a microphone and sings “There’s No Business Like Show Business” by Irving Berlin from the 1946 musical Annie Get Your Gun. Carol and Maggie finish alone with a return to “Showbiz”.
One of the writers for The Carol Burnett Show was Ray Jessel, who was born and raised in Wales. He received a degree in music from the University of Wales. He earned a one year scholarship to study music composition in Paris. He moved to Canada as a young man where he started his show business career as an orchestrator and composer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. he co-wrote songs for the Toronto revue Spring Thaw. He moved to New York and co-wrote the songs for the 1964 musical Baker Street. He wrote 34 episodes of The Love Boat, and 32 episodes of Head of the Class. He wrote and produced the TV series The Jacksons. He co-wrote the songs for the 1979 musical I Remember Mama. He wrote scripts and songs for the PBS show The Charlie Horse Music Pizza starring Shari Lewis. He started performing on stage at the age of 72 and developed a cabaret act. He auditioned for America’s Got Talent in 2014 at the age of 84. He won a chance to return again but didn’t appear.
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