Billy Corgan

            On Saturday morning I revised my translation of the first two verses of “La complainte de Bonnot” by Boris Vian. 

            I finished translating “Je t’aime. Moi aussi” and ran through singing and playing “I Love You. So Do I”. I uploaded the song to my Christian’s Translations blog and on Sunday I’ll begin preparing it for publication. 

            I weighed 89.95 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin during song practice and it went out of tune constantly. 

            Around midday I rode to No Frills where the grapes were on sale but I had to go through them all to find seven bags that were firm and those were only the green ones. I also bought a large pack of blueberries, some bananas, a pack of five-year-old cheddar.

            I weighed 91.2 kilos at 14:25. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of cold tea and lemonade. 

            I took a siesta and didn’t wake up until almost 17:00 so it was too late to take a bike ride. 

            I weighed 91.5 kilos at 17:15, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening since February 20.

            I’ve been a day behind in my journal for 10 days and was still behind at suppertime. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with rosée tomato sauce, tomato pesto, wedge oven fries, and five year old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching season 10, episode 23 of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            During the audience warmup someone asks Carol if Bob Mackie designs both hers and Cher’s clothes how come Carol doesn’t show her belly button. Carol says she doesn’t have one. 

            Someone tells Carol the public would love to see her kids on her show. Carol says her kids don’t want to be on her show and even if they did she wouldn’t put them on. She says, “My old lady didn’t have a television show of her own so let them get theirs”. 

            The first sketch is a Tudball-Wiggins story. Tudball is uncharacteristically smoking a cigar but it serves a purpose later on. He calls Wiggins into his office and she says she’s tired from Christmas preparations. Tudball tells her that Christmas in nine months away. She says she knows that but likes to do her shopping now so she won’t be tired then. Tudball says if he doesn’t have a fire safety program for his office his insurance company will raise his rates. They are sending an adjustor over today so they have to run through their fire safety program before he gets here. Wiggins says they don’t have a fire safety program but Wiggins says they do now. He asks what she would do in case of a fire. She says she’d go to the fire escape through the window. He tells her they don’t have a fire escape in the office. He gives her a whistle to blow if there’s a fire but she can’t blow it because she’s too tired because of Christmas coming in nine months. He says after she blows the whistle she has to get down on her hands and knees crawl out of the office and then down the hall to the fire escape. Tudball says for them to practice the drill. Wiggins has a hard time getting onto her hands and knees because of her tight skirt. Once she does she moves very slowly. He tells her to study the plan and then he puts his cigar in the ashtray on her desk. She puts the cigar in the trash can beside her desk. Then Goodman the insurance adjustor (played by Harvey) arrives. He goes into Tudball’s office and Tudball asks if his company has any comedy insurance (Harvey chuckles and says, “Right on!”). Meanwhile there’s smoke coming from Wiggins’s waste basket. She sees it and tries but fails to blow the whistle. She goes into Tudball’s office and struggles to get down on her hands and knees. Then Tudball sees the smoke, blows his whistle and also gets to his knees. While they are crawling, Goodman calmly walks over to Wiggens’s desk and puts out the fire with a pitcher of water that’s there. Goodman says if he hadn’t been there the fire would have gotten out of control while they were crawling around on the floor. Tudball asks if he’s going to raise his rates but Goodman says he’s cancelling his policy altogether. 

            Ken Berry does a tap dance routine with the Ernie Flatt Dancers to “I Got Rhythm” by George Gershwin. The cutest dancer, Toni Kaye is featured as his partner. Tap is impressive but it’s not that interesting or entertaining. 

            Harvey and Tim play a Foreign Legion captain and private lost in the Sahara Desert. Tim is out of water and says he can’t go on. Just then he sees a bar with tables and chairs. Harvey tells him it’s not real and that it’s just a desert rock formation. Then Vickie in a low cut top, a short skirt, and high blonde hair comes out with a tray and shouts, “Last call for alcohol!” Tim shows Vicki to Harvey but Harvey tells him it’s only a cactus. Tim wants to know if the Legion would approve of a mixed marriage between a Protestant and a cactus. Tim orders a Tom Collins and Vickie brings it but Harvey takes it away, throws it in his face, and says it’s not real. Harvey pulls out his gun and says he’ll have to put him out of his misery. So Tim says the captain is right and that it was all just rocks and a cactus. Harvey puts his gun away. Then Vicki brings Tim another drink but before he can drink it Vicki’s husband comes out and grabs him. He accuses him of making out with his wife and threatens to punch him out. Harvey says he sees their troops in the distance but Tim says it’s just cacti. Tim pulls his gun and shoots Harvey. Then he goes to the bar again where now the tables and chairs are rocks and Vickie really is a cactus. But there are no cacti in the Sahara desert. 

            They do a parody of Babes in Arms called Babes in Barns. Spunky (played by Ken Berry) comes home to tell his parents (played by Harvey and Vicki) that he sold his first song. Pops punches him and tells him to bring them “A”s in Geometry and not to talk about show business. Meanwhile there are movers taking the furniture from their house because they are behind on their payments. Moms says they are going to have to move out. Spunky says they can have his song money and Pops smacks him again. But it turns out that Spunky’s parents are an old vaudeville act called “Pops and Flossie McGillacuddy” and even though they haven’t performed in over 20 years they are still waiting to make a come back. They do an old style song and dance. Spunky and his parents go in the house, then Spunk’s neighbour Dodie (played by Carol) arrives outside and sings a song about loving her neighbour when her neighbour doesn’t love her. Spunky comes out and tells her why he’s unhappy. She suggests her play her his song and there just happens to be a piano on the porch. The song is about being old enough to know about love and young enough to do it. It turns into a song and dance that gathers a crowd of mostly their fellow teenagers (played by the Earnie Flatt Dancers). Spunky decides they can put on a show to make money and they’ll use the barn as the theatre. They all do Spunky’s song together as they make preparations to fix up the barn. But they still need money to put on the show and one of the kids, DeDee (played by Toni Kaye one of the dancers) is the only one whose father is rich. She says her father would back the show if she could be a star and so Spunk agrees. He has to break it to Dodie and her heart is broken but she still puts everything into fixing the barn and managing the show. The opening number has Spunky and Dee Dee doing a jitterbug and singing about Rhythm, Romance and Razamataz. Pops discovers there is a show going on in his born and says he’s going to shut it down but Dodie convinces him and Flossie to perform so they do their number. But in the middle of the show DeeDee abandons it out of boredom and leaves for the Riviera. Everybody convinces Dodie to take DeeDee’s place as Cleopatra and so she does. She is holding an asp as if it’s a microphone as she dances and sings about killing herself because her lover Tony has gone off to fight a war. But Marc Antony arrives in in Roman armour but wearing a fedora. They sing Spunky’s song together. Dodie tries to do the splits like DeeDee but can only go halfway. 

            I’ve been listening to the Smashing Pumpkins. They’re musically interesting and I pick up sometimes a Black Sabbath influence, which front person Billy Corgan has confirmed. They are apparently his favourite band. The Smashing Pumpkins remind me of Nirvana but without Cobain’s more interesting lyrics. As a poet I would choose Cobain over Corgan whose lyrics are surprisingly and disappointingly conventional and mostly about boring subjects like love. He also effects a fake southern US accent when he sings. Although his voice is somewhat nasal it does have a lot of intensity. In 1988 Corgan started making Goth-Pop demos with guitarist James Iha. They met D’arcy Wretzky and formed The Smashing Pumpkins using a drum machine for percussion. When they needed a drummer to land a bigger gig they recruited Jimmy Chamberlin. As is often the case with bands, their third album was the best and the song “1979” is their only universally familiar hit. In 2004 Corgan published a book of poetry called Blinking With Fists but the title is more interesting than the poetry. Corgan bought The National Wrestling Alliance for some reason. One can tell by some of his lyrics he’s a Christian and he’s confirmed that. He was lovers with Courtney Love before she married Kurt Cobain.