Milt Kamen

            On Friday I went to bed at 1:30 but woke up a little after 2:00 because there were lots of bedbugs bothering me. After going to pee I switched on the light and saw that the pests are no longer trying to climb the wall at the head of my bed to look for a nest because they are avoiding the two sided tape I put across the old exit door. They are also no longer trying to nest around the baseboards beside my bed because there is diatomaceous earth there. Instead I saw babies running around on the floor as far away as almost under the dresser at the other side of the room. I’d never seen them in that area before. Now I’m going to have to vacuum, steam, apply diatomaceous earth and perhaps carpet tape around the whole bedroom floor. I couldn’t get back to sleep. 

            After yoga I memorized the third verse of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg. That’s half the song. 

            I weighed 90.85 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the first of two sessions and it went out of tune on almost every song. It’s weird how sometimes it stays in tune and sometimes it doesn’t. 

            I got a call from my upstairs neighbour David telling me that his snake has gone missing. He told me a couple of years ago that he’d given away all of his snakes. He explained that he’d recently been cleaning out a closet when he discovered another python that had been hibernating. David wanted me to make and print a “Lost Snake” poster for him. I told him I could do it that night if he came over and described what he wants. 

            I went to the hardware store to buy two more rings of carpet tape. I put fresh tape around the edge of my mattress. 

            I weighed 92.45 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 91.5 kilos at 18:10.

            I was still three days behind in my journal. I had a potato with margarine and a piece of roast pork while watching three interviews on Carol Burnett with Carl Reiner, Carol Channing and Don Rickles. 

            Carl heard about Carol from his friend Milt Kamen who worked as a stand-by for Sid Caesar. He would take Sid’s place in a sketch so Sid could sit in the control room to see and hear how it worked. Usually he’d also come up with two or three good lines that Sid would use later. Milt arranged to let Carol come in and watch three of the weekly rehearsals. She had tickets to a big Broadway show but didn’t use them so she could view how Sid and his crew worked. That’s how dedicated she was to learning her craft. Now she’s the single most talented person on Earth. She does everything at the highest level. 

            Carl says the only thing he added was to tell her producer that Carol’s got to have her own Rock Hudson on the show. She needed some eye candy to play against and that turned out to be Lyle Waggoner. 

            Carl says he was a real actor for years and also a very good sketch actor. He wanted to be an opera singer and an Irish tenor. When he was a kid he would listen to an Irish tenor named John Calvin who was really John Calvus. Calvin would talk and sing in an Irish accent songs “me mother taught me” but he was actually Jewish. Carl told his father he wanted to be an Irish tenor too but his father explained that he could sing Irish songs but couldn’t be an Irish tenor because he was Jewish. Carl wanted to be an opera singer and had almost a three octave range but was out of rhythm and off pitch.

            Sid Caesar was only on for 9 years compared to Carol’s 11. 

            Your brain works better with the excitement of a live audience. 

            Carl says he doesn’t know what they’re singing on American Idol but it doesn’t interest him. His father listened to Franz Lehár and couldn’t understand what anybody heard in Bing Crosby. 

            Sid was a master and only ad-libbed when things went wrong but when he did it was genius. Sid and Carl were playing two English barristers playing pool and Sid’s cue stick broke. He ended up using it like a polo mallet and knocked the ball off the table while Carl exclaimed, “Jolly good shot!” 

            At 90 Carl is just finishing a memoir called I Remember Me. The first chapter is Chapter 59.

            Lucille Ball was pretty and funny but she didn’t have as many talents as Carol. 

            Every good writer wanted to work with Sid Caesar and the same was true of Carol because of what she could do with the material and the costumes. 

            Carol Channing’s mother loved Carol Burnett. Carol Burnett is a friend when she’s a friend.

            Carol Channing was on stage in high school doing imitations of the faculty. She was vice president of the student body and when she ran for the position her father worked out the slogans “If Carol’s your vice it’s a virtue”. 

            Carol Channing’s first job was a revue called Lend an Ear. 

            In the theatre there are three balconies and the third one is way up there so you have to wear eyelashes that make you look the same from up there as you do from the first row. 

            Carol Burnett is unusually eager to push other performers forward. 

            Don Rickles says he and his wife went for dinner with Carol and she eats with her hands. “We don’t see Carol cause she lives in a shack in the desert.” Harvey Korman and Tim Conway are amazing comedians “But they know I’m the best and so they come over to my house every day to give me a hot bath”. Harvey’s dead and resting someplace nice while Tim is walking around town trying to be recognized. When Don was on her show Carol was so kind to him when she shouted, “Get over here and read your lines!” 

            Milt Kamen won a scholarship to The Juilliard School of Music. He began his career as a french horn player for The Metropolitan Opera. He was a writer and performer for Caesar’s Hour starting in 1954. His comedy album “Here’s Milt Kamen” was produced by Mel Brooks with liner notes by Groucho Marx. He discovered Woody Allen in the Catskills and got him his first writing job on Caesar’s Hour.