I organized the text of “Shylock” by Serge Gainsbourg and separated the two voices. I started trying to memorize the song but there’s a problem with some of the text. In the ElevenLabs transcription of the song it says Petula Clark is singing “Shylock vieux brigand” (Shylock old brigand) but she’s saying something that sounds like “brigou” so it rhymes with “sous”. There’s no in use word like “brigou” in French. I think I’m going to separate the audio and try to search the word individually so the transcription isn’t influenced by the context.
I weighed 89.65 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Martin for the third of four sessions and it went out of tune all the time.
I worked on getting caught up in my journal.
I weighed 91.6 kilos before lunch.
I took a siesta at the usual time but slept almost an hour longer. By the time I’d brushed my teeth it was too late to take a bike ride so I just worked on getting caught up in my journal.
I weighed 91.05 kilos at 17:20.
I had a potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching season 11, episode 15 of The Carol Burnett Show.
Dick Van Dyke is no longer a cast member. It seems episode 11 was his last show. Apparently it was mutually agreed that he didn’t fit within the style of sketch comedy the writers created and that Harvey Korman had excelled at.
During the audience warmup someone from New York asks Carol who she wants to win the Superbowl (which was Dallas versus Denver that year). She says The Lakers (a basketball team).
A guy asks Carol if she needs a lawyer and hands her his card. His name was “Field”.
A woman says she came from Rhode Island and it’s her birthday. Carol says it’s her husband Joe Hamilton’s birthday too (This aired on January 8 but it must have been taped on January 6 because that’s his birthday). She wants to give Carol and Tim a kiss so Carol says for her to come up. Carol calls for Tim but he doesn’t come out. The woman kisses Carol on the cheek and Carol tells her to go look for Tim back stage and so she does.
Apparently it was raining in LA and Carol says she loves it. She says a day without rain is like a day without sunshine and she can’t believe she said that.
In the first sketch, Carol is in bed with Tim. She is made to look very plain and he has a very dense expression. Carol sings the 1977 song “You Can’t Turn Me Off In the Middle of Turning Me On”. When she begins the chorus he starts to slowly and clumsily remove his overalls. His clothes keep getting tangled and he can’t get the bottoms of his coveralls past his feet. They get caught on a bedpost and he falls off the bed hanging by his feet. He tries to climb back up and winds up pulling her and the mattress down on the floor on top of him which I guess is where she wants to be as she howls in ecstasy.
Next is a Mama’s Family sketch and the first one that I’ve seen from this final season. Since Harvey Korman is no longer on the show, his character of Eunice’s husband Ed Higgins was written off in the 11th season premier as having walked out on and divorced Eunice.
In this Family story Eunice’s famous brother Philip (played by Roddy McDowell) is visiting and staying with Eunice. A reporter calls who wants to interview Philip, and Eunice tries to tell him that she’s also a writer and wants to inform him about her poetry. Once he learns that today Philip is getting an honorary degree and tomorrow he’s having lunch with the mayor, the reporter hangs up. Mama asks what makes her think a reporter would be interested in the silly poems she wrote in high school. Eunice argues that she got B pluses on all of her poems in high school and reporters are always interested in the families of celebrities. She says you can’t pick up an article about Warren Beatty without reading them mentioning his sister Shirley Maclaine. Mama asks if she’s comparing herself to Shirley Maclaine. Eunice admits that Shirley had a few more breaks than she did. Philip comes downstairs wearing a sports jacket over a turtleneck. Mama thinks he should wear a tie but he says it’s not formal. Mama asks what he’s doing for a living these days. He says he’s writing a screenplay based on his last book and he’s planning a book on the political situation in… but Mama has already lost interest. She asks if he’s won any more prizes. He says just the Nobel Prize and the Pulitzer for his book on India. Mama warns him he can’t coast on those forever. He tries to explain that he’s not but she’s already lost interest again. Eunice gives Philip his phone messages and he thanks her. She says it was fun taking them because it make her feel like a secretary. He says, “You’d make a very good one”. “You really mean that?” “Mean what?” “Wouldn’t it be fun having your sister as a secretary?” “But you don’t type.” “We’d just send it out!” “I’ve already got a secretary and she’s been with me for many years.” Now Eunice is angry. Mama comes downstairs angry about not being able to do a thing about her hair. Philip argues that it looks great but Mama says, “Instead of dropping out of thin air once every five years to humour me about my hair you’d think you’d look in the mirror and think about getting a decent haircut yerself!” Mama asks Philip to tell the mayor that she’s sick and tired of all the stray dogs going through the garbage in the neighbourhood. Eunice says Philip probably doesn’t want them to come to see him get his degree since he’s ashamed of his family. He says he doesn’t know how she can think that but she says if he wasn’t ashamed he’d say “Why not?” when his sister offered to be his secretary. Mama asks why she’s pestering Philip about her little pipe dreams. Eunice says that all of her dreams have been pipe dreams to her. But when Philip said he wanted to be a painter Mama got him a paint kit and when he said he wanted to be a writer she got him a typewriter. “But when I said I wanted to be a ballerina I just got a horse laugh from you!” Philip says he thinks it would be better if he stayed at a hotel but Mama responds, “Thank you very much! After I spent three whole days scrubbing this place from top ta bottom for your visit!” They are about to leave when Mama hands Philip a shirt and tie to slip on in the car. Philip tries to protest but Mama shouts, “Do I have to get back talk every time I open my mouth? Don’t I get enough of it from your sister?” Mama storms out and Eunice says to Philip, “I can’t understand why you don’t come and visit us more often.”
There is a sepia tone silent movie (but with sound effects) of a world championship pool match between Tim Conway and Ken Berry. Ken gets chalk from the tip of his cue stick on Tim’s jacket. Tim deliberately puts a lit cigar in Ken’s pocket. Ken pushes the pool table and Tim through a wall and wins.
Carol plays a lady who is breaking up with Roddy. He accepts it but as she turns to look at him before exiting he tells her to stop because he wants to remember her just like that. She moves slightly towards him but he says he wants her in that exact pose and asks her to back up a bit. She gets the right position but he says to tilt her head back more. She does that but the expression is wrong. It should be more pained. She tries and it’s better but he says the spontaneity is gone. She keeps trying but he gets increasingly more frustrated and then angry with her. She finally tells him to sit on it and leaves.
Carol says that during the Depression movie audiences consoled themselves by watching beautiful people in romantic comedies dancing with barely a care in the world. They do a tribute to Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers with a parody of Top Hat.
It takes place in Venice in 1935. Vicki and Roddy play Hortence and Horace Travers, a married couple similar to that played by Helen Broderick and Edward Everett Horton (Roddy does quite an excellent impersonation of Horton). They have come to Venice and invited his nephew and her niece to stay with them so as to make a match. Tim plays the hotel clerk who mistakenly gives Vicki’s niece and Roddy’s nephew the same room. Carol (as Dale Montclair) and Ken (as Jerry Travers) arrive at the same time and bump into each other. He says he’s glad and she thinks he’s fresh. When he asks for his key and she overhears that he’s Mr. Travers, she assumes that he is her aunt’s husband and is offended that he would be flirting with her. Horace sings about how romantic Venice is while Hortence sings about how much it stinks. A gondolier rows by as he sings “Puttin on the Ritz” in mock Italian. Meanwhile Jerry and Dale are in the same room without knowing the other is there. He puts on a neck brace, an arm sling, and a plaster leg cast and then does a song and tap dance about his feelings for Dale. She’s in her underwear when they discover each other. She admits she’s in love with him even though he’s rotten. She yells for him to leave and so he does, then she sings a song about being in the rain on a sunny day. When Jerry meets his uncle in the dining room, Dale approaches and sees him and he still flirts with her in front of her aunt. Hortence just says everybody’s a little seedy during the depression. She encourages them to dance and they do to a parody of Irving Berlin’s “Cheek to Cheek”. Then Dale sees Hortence kissing Horace and learns that he is her husband. Dale is happy and everybody dances.
Edward Everett Horton majored in German at Oberlin College but was expelled for throwing a dummy off a building and making people think he’d jumped. He was attending Columbia when he discovered acting and left his college life behind. He made his theatrical debut in 1906. He co-managed and acted at the Majestic Theatre in LA in the 1920s. He made his film debut in 1922 in a starring role in the silent movie Too Much Business. He starred in The Ladder Jinx, A Front Page Story, Ruggles of Red Gap, To the Ladies, Beggar on Horseback, The Business of Love, The Nutcracker, Poker Faces, The Whole Town’s Talking, Taxi Taxi, Ask Dad, The Hottentot, The Sap, The Aviator, Take to the Heir, Wide Open, Once a Gentleman, Lonely Wives, The Way to Love, The Poor Rich, Uncertain Lady, $10 Raise, The Private Secretary, His Night Out, Your Uncle Dudley, Her Master’s Voice, Nobody’s Fool, The Man in the Mirror, Oh Doctor, Wild Money, Steppin in Society, He developed a characteristic comic double take for which he was well known. He made his sound debut in 1929. He had his own radio show in the 1930s. From 1945 to 1947 he hosted the Kraft Music Hall radio program. He made his TV debut on The Ford Theatre Hour in 1949. He co-starred in Try and Get It, Marry Me, The Terror, Sonny Boy, Holiday, Six Cylinder Love, The Age for Love, But the Flesh is Weak, The Front Page, Alice in Wonderland, The Gay Divorcee, Top Hat, Lost Horizon, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Roar of the Dragon, Soldiers of the King, A Bedtime Story, It’s a Boy, Easy to Love, Sing and Like It, Ladies Should Listen, Biography of a Bachelor Girl, The Singing Kid, Let’s Make a Million, The King and the Chorus Girl, Shall We Dance, Danger Love at Work, Angel, The Great Garrick, Paris Honeymoon, That’s Right You’re Wrong, You’re the One, Sunny, Bachelor Daddy, Weekend for Three, The Body Disappears, Her Primitive Man, Summer Storm, San Diego I Love You, Brazil, The Town Went Wild, Cinderella Jones, Faithful in my Fashion, Earl Carroll Sketchbook, The Ghost Goes Wild, Down to Earth, Her Husband’s Affairs, 2000 Years Later, He was the narrator for Fractured Fairy Tales on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. He played Roaring Chicken on the sitcom F Troop. He played Chief Screaming Chicken on an episode of Batman.
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