Alan King

            On Friday morning I guess my steaming of the baseboards the night before had flushed out more bedbugs because there were just as many as yesterday morning. I think I need to lay down diatomaceous earth after steaming to catch them when they come out. 

            I worked out the chords for the second verse of “La complainte de Bonnot” by Boris Vian. Next is the chorus and after I have those chords it should set the pattern for the song. 

            I ran through the French text while listening to the audio of “Ça” (That), the parody of the Serge Gainsbourg song “Je t’aime. Moi non plus (I Love You. Neither Do I)” to see if I’d split the two voices correctly. I made some adjustments to my translation and now it’s ready to be uploaded to my Christian’s Translations blog. 

            I weighed 89.25 kilos before breakfast. 

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

            Around midday I touched up the blue bliss hued paint around the outer edges of my four floral reliefs that I’d painted pink on my future bathroom mirror frame. On Sunday I’ll do the inner edges and then hopefully the mirror will be ready to mount in the bathroom on Tuesday. 

            I weighed 91.05 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the early afternoon since July 1. 

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

            I weighed 90.15 kilos at 18:00. 

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

            I grilled four chicken legs and had one with a potato and gravy while watching season 10, episode 11 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warmup someone asks Carol what Rock Hudson was really like. She says he was one of the nicest people she’s ever worked with. 

            Someone asks if she’ll be teaming up with Lili Tomlin again. She says they try to get her but she’s very busy. Carol thinks Lili’s a genius. 

            In the first sketch Tim and Carol play a couple with a new baby. Tim is getting ready for work and wants breakfast but Carol has been up all night and just got the baby to sleep so she’s dead on her feet. Tim says for her to go to bed and he’ll make his own breakfast. She urges him to be very quiet so as not to wake the baby. He’s incompetent in the kitchen. plus the kitchen is falling apart. When he tries to open a cupboard it comes crashing off the wall. She comes out and shows him that the coffee was on the counter. He asks her to open a can of pears for him and she falls asleep again. He finishes opening the can and bops her in the face a few times while turning the crank, then hits her with the cupboard door. He makes a lot of noise looking for a frying pan and she shows him it’s on the stove. He gets the bacon and puts it in the pan but I guess it made his hands slippery because when he grabs one egg it flies out of his hand, another falls on the element, another flies onto the counter. A fourth one breaks open perfectly but there’s nothing inside. He says, “Must be on the pill”. Finally Carol comes out and says it will be easier for her to cook his breakfast so he can be gone sooner. He hands her the hot frying pan but he’s holding the handle and burns her hands. I guess maybe there’s an earthquake because another cupboard crashes off the wall and the baby starts crying. He says he’ll grab something on the way to work but will be home for lunch. 

            Carol introduces Alan King and says they are very old and dear friends. She asks him if he’s been sued lately. He says he’s been sued for many things he’s said on television. He says he doesn’t make up his jokes but has had to live them. They announce flights leaving every half hour for Cincinnati. “Do you know anybody that’s rushing to Cincinnati?” He mocks the slogan, “The friendly skies of United”. Are all the other airlines attacked by the Luftwaffe? He says there’s a European airline whose ad shows all the passengers dancing in the aisles. He says that’s because there’s only one toilet. There are luggage ads where the luggage is dropped out of a plan but hits the ground undamaged. They’re telling to that it’s safer to fly inside your suitcase. He says last Christmas his network gifted him with six pieces of Gucci luggage worth about $3000. He says he doesn’t think one should travel with luggage that expensive. One should just show it off to guests at home. He says everybody on an airplane is nice because they are close to their creator. But when they land at the airport they will kill each other to get at their luggage. He says he saw his Gucci luggage coming down the belt and it looked like someone had taken a knife to it. Behind it was a cardboard carton wrapped in rope and it didn’t have a scratch. he says from now on he puts his Gucci luggage inside of cardboard cartons when he flies. Alan then tackles the airline food. he says the ads show seven chefs slicing the beef Wellington but on the plane you get a diseased piece of chicken on which you can see the blackheads. He says he refuses to eat another Hawaiian nut (I guess me means macadamia nuts) because you choke on it for weeks. Inside your body it swells up to the size of hockey puck. 

            Carol comes out to move the show along but Alan protests that he doesn’t get a duet with her. He convinces her that he can sing and so they do. They bring Carol a stool and Alan asks if she’s comfortable. She asks for a stool for Mr. King and someone tosses one out to the stage. Carol gives him a piece of the music to sing and she sings an altered version of “You Say the Nicest Things” by Dick Manning and Carroll Carroll from the 1952 movie Roadhouse Nights. Alan’s parts are mostly “Yeah”. He grabs her part of the song and then they sing the rest together. 

            In the next sketch Alan plays a psychiatrist and Carol comes in as a first time patient. She tells him about a recurring dream in which she’s walking through the woods and comes upon a castle. She knocks on the door and the door opens… Alan’s phone rings. He tells the person, “The minute he gets home from school, lock him in his room”. Carol begins to tell him her dream again several times but at the same point the phone always rings and each time Alan is talking to a different person. In the second call he tells Margot that the alimony is in the mail. In the third call he tells his mistress he hasn’t been able to tell his wife about her yet. In the fourth call his daughter is calling from a commune and she’s asking for a wig because she shaved her head. In the fifth call it’s his mommy calling from the home he put her in. After he hangs up he screams that he hates his mother. He breaks down and starts telling Carol his problems and she takes his place behind the desk. 

            They do a salute to Warner Brothers. They’ve done this before but with different sketches. 

            The first sketch is a parody of the 1949 film The Fountainhead. Alan plays the architect and he’s telling Vicki that he got fired for one mistake. There are no washrooms in his entire building. 

            The second is a parody of the 1941 film They Died with Their Boots On. Harvey plays General Custer under attack with Tim by his side. Tim tells him they are outnumbered. Custer says they’ll escape in disguise. They go behind a rock and Tim comes out disguised as Custer but Custer is dressed as a Lakota warrior. 

            Carol sings the 1931 song “As Time Goes By” by Herman Hupfeld from the 1942 film Casablanca. 

            They do a parody of a famous scene from the 1935 film Ceiling Zero. Harvey, and Alan are arguing about which one of them while fly the plane to deliver the vital serum while Vicki telling them how important it is. I guess “ceiling zero” indicates the fog and zero visibility so it would be a dangerous flight. Harvey says she’s in love with Alan and so he’ll fly the plane. Alan says she’s in love with Harvey. Vicki says she loves them both but can’t decide. The two men knock each other out so Vicki takes the serum to go fly the plane. Then Harvey and Alan show they are faking and smile at each other. 

            There’s a parody of the 1946 movie Night and Day in which Harvey plays Cary Grant playing Cole Porter. Carol plays his fiancé Linda who is a nurse in a hospital and Harvey is a wounded soldier. When she sees him she is concerned that he keeps up his songwriting while he’s more concerned with recovery. She pushes him to write a song and brings a piano in. he throws in everything that’s happening around him and everything people say into the song. 

            Tim says the king of Warner Brothers musicals was choreographer Busby Berkeley. No matter how silly the song was he always had a spectacular way of producing it. Harvey plays an optometrist and Carol his assistant. The song seems to be called “Two of You” and the glasses make Harvey see two of Carol with Vicki as her double and then they see two of Harvey with Alan his double. The song is in a 1920s style. The dancers and Carol, Vicki, Harvey, and Alan tap dance while wearing glasses. There’s Busby Berkeley type choreography with the dancers making kaleidoscope patterns seen from above. The song might have been written for the sketch because it doesn’t turn up in a search. 

            Alan King played drums in a band in his teens. At 14 he competed on Major Bowe’s Amateur Hour as a singer. He didn’t win first prize but toured with the show. He dropped out of school at 15 to become a rimshot comedian in the Catskills. Then did standup in a burlesque house in Canada while fighting as a professional boxer until a fighter named King broke his nose. That’s when he took on the last name King. His nickname became “The last angry man of the suburbs”. Jerry Stiller called him the Jewish Will Rogers. He made his film debut in Hit the Deck in 1955. He often got sued by airlines and insurance companies for mentioning them negatively in his routines. He frequently appeared on Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson (for whom he became a frequent guest host). He hoisted the Academy awards in 1972. He co-starred in The Girl He Left Behind, On the Fiddle, Bye Bye Braverman, The Anderson Tapes, Just Tell Me What You Want, Cat’s Eye, Sunshine State, and Memories of Me. He created the Laugh Well Program to send comedians into hospitals to entertain patients. he created Alan King’s Tennis Classic in Las Vegas. He said women live longer than men because they aren’t married to women. He wrote Help! I’m a Prisoner in a Chine Bakery in 1964, Is Salami and Eggs Better Than Sex?, Name Dropping, Alan King’s Great Jewish Joke Book, and Matzoh Balls for Breakfast.