I transcribed the poem from 1998 that’s in the Love Poems document stuck in Protected View and started revising it.
I worked out the chords for the instrumental intro and the first line of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian.
I worked out the chords for the second, third, and fourth verses of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg.
I weighed 91.65 kilos before breakfast.
I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it stayed in tune most of the time.
Around midday I walked over to Home Hardware and bought two rolls of two-sided carpet tape. I put strips at the top, bottom and both sides of the old exit door at the head of my bed.
I weighed 92.8 kilos before lunch. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade.
I took a siesta and slept 40 minutes longer than usual. It was too late to take a bike ride downtown but not to ride to Ossington and Bloor.
I weighed 92.45 kilos at 17:50.
I was a day behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up.
I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, a chopped ground beef burger, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching an interview with Tim Conway.
Tim says if he did any of his characters again it would have to be with the people he originally did them, like with Carol Burnett in the Tudball and Wiggins sketches or anything he did with Harvey Korman. They both could improve anything written in a script.
Tim secretly tricked Harvey on Dick Clark’s Bloopers and Blunders and he was set up to believe there was not only a buyer for the losing racehorse he co-owned with Tim, but one willing to pay three times the original price. Harvey was in ecstasy when they were about to close the deal until suddenly the buyer’s grandson said he wanted a different coloured horse and they walked away. Tim took Harvey over to a two-way mirror and said, “You know Dick Clark?” The minute he said, “Dick Clark” Harvey said, “Cheap guy! Never pays anybody anything!” Tim says that wasn’t true but Harvey just went off like that sometimes. Harvey goes on to say that Clark’s program about the bloopers never works. Nobody falls for it. Harvey had been growing a beard for a movie but before this fake deal Tim convinced him to shave it so he’d look like Harvey. After he found out he’d been pranked he didn’t speak to Tim for two months.
One time when Tim and Harvey were flying from New York to California they stopped for fuel in Arizona. After taking off again Tim says to Harvey that he’d noticed that when they fueled up the guy put the gas cap on the wing but didn’t screw it back on and now it’s fallen off the wing. Harvey goes up and bangs on the door of the pilot’s cabin to tell him that his gas cap fell off while other passengers are overhearing. The pilot tells him that there’s no gas cap on a plane.
Tim says if Ken Berry had been born at an earlier time he would have been right up there with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. He says he was just as good as them. I don’t think so.
Of the writers on The Carol Burnett Show nobody is funnier than Ken Solms in real life so Tim didn’t know why he wasn’t performing. He and his partner Gail Parent were two of the funniest writers on the show.
Tim says a lot of people married off Carol’s show. Tim married Charlene, who he met when she was working as Carol’s assistant. He got the idea for the first Mrs. Wiggins sketch from Charlene’s difficulty in using the intercom.
Carol was never really the “boss” boss. He never heard her get cross with anyone even though there were some real lemons on the show.
Tim understands why Carol worshipped Lucille Ball but really Carol had already taken comedy beyond Lucy. He thinks she’s the funniest comedienne that ever came down the pike.
Tim started out as a jockey because his father was training horses in Cleveland.
When Tim got out of the army a friend of his was in radio and invited him to write jokes for an announcer. Tim started out just copying jokes from a joke book. He and Ernie Anderson were writing and doing TV commercials together. Rosemarie thought they were pretty funny, so she pointed them out to Steve Allen. Then Allen had Tim on his show a couple of times which led to him being invited to co-star on McHale’s Navy.
The first time Tim made Harvey laugh was when he played a fireman and Harvey was a victim who needed mouth to mouth. Tim was holding Harvey and then asked, “So where ya from?”
He thinks Carol is the funniest and most creative person he’s ever met. She thinks and does funny.
One time Tim wrapped himself in toilet paper like a mummy and took a picture then put it on his drivers license. He drove home with the toilet paper still on his face and a cop pulled him over and asked to see his license. That’s the one he showed him. The cop just told him to be careful from now on.
Carol would bite her nails to keep from laughing during the Tudball-Wiggins sketches.
Tim said Steve Allen was his favourite show when it was on.
Steve Allen’s mother Belle Montrose was considered to be the funniest woman in vaudeville.
Steve ran away from home at 16 and when he got hungry he took to begging.
He became an LA radio announcer in 1946 and also had a comedy show called Smile Time for five nights a week. His show became so popular that the studio audiences were standing room only. He started going into the audience with a microphone to ad lib.
When Steve Allen was a TV commentator for professional wrestling he used to make up the names of many wrestling holds. Nobody ever told him he was wrong and some of his names are still in use. He would also throw jokes into his commentary that made it very popular.
His first Steve Allen Show ran from 1950 to 1952.
His first album was Steve Allen at the Piano in 1951.
He was a guest host on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts for which the sponsor was Lipton tea and soup. Steve made Lipton tea and soup on camera and then poured it into Godfrey’s iconic ukalele. TV audiences, including Godfrey thought it was hilarious.
While a regular panelist on What’s My Line? in 1953 he coined the question, “Is it bigger than a breadbox?”
He created and was the first host of The Tonight Show in 1953 on which he pioneered the “Man on the street” segments that became a late night staple.
He wrote the lyrics for “Theme from Picnic” in 1955 and it reached #13.
He hosted The Steve Allen Show in 1956 and his guest on episode 2 was Elvis. His show was more popular with college students than The Tonight Show. Steve played piano during sight gags; invited audience members to select three notes and he would use them to write a song on the spot; He did a regular satire on radio’s popular The Answer Man; and he would over-dramatically read newspaper letters to the editor. He did live commercials for Polaroid and made a killing because he opted to be paid in Polaroid stock.
From 1962 to 1964 he recreated his Tonight Show as The Steve Allen Playhouse. It included a hidden camera at an all night market; He introduced Southern California eccentrics such as Gypsy Boots and Frank Zappa. He once called up Johnny Carson pretending to be a ratings interviewer and asked him what show he was watching. He got Carson to unknowingly plug Steve’s show on national television.
In 1964 he became the host of I’ve Got a Secret and The Steve Allen Comedy Hour, which featured the TV debuts of Rob Reiner, Richard Dreyfuss, John Byner, and Ruth Buzzy.
Steve wrote the score for A Man Called Dagger in 1967.
From 1968 to 1971 he had a new Steve Allen Show, which featured wacky stunts that would influence David Letterman such as being slathered in dog food and letting dogs lick it off. This show introduced Steve Martin and Albert Brooks to television audiences.
From 1977 to 1983 he wrote, produced and hosted Meeting of the Minds, which featured actors playing historical figures from different eras arguing with each other on various topics. Some called it the best talk show on TV. His wife Jayne Meadows played most of the female characters. Steve had first conceived on the show in 1959. It was very popular and he won a Peabody and an Emmy for it.
He starred in The Benny Goodman Story.
He wrote more than 50 books and 8,500 songs. He wrote “This Could Be the Start of Something” (his theme song), “Impossible”, “Pretend You Don’t See Her”. He won a Grammy for his song “Gravy Waltz”. He made a $1000 bet with Frankie Laine that he could write 50 songs a day for a week. He did it in the window of Wallach’s Music City and won the bet. One of the songs” Let’s Go to Church Next Sunday Morning” became a hit.
He wrote the books Dumbth: The Lost Art of Thinking, Steve Allen on The Bible Religion and Morality, His last book was Vulgarians at the Gate: Trash TV and Raunch Radio.
He said, “Radio is the theatre of the mind while TV is the theatre of the mindless”. “If the Old Testament was a reliable guide on the matter of capital punishment, half the population of the United States would have to be executed”. “Making mental bets is how I lost my mind”.
After being hit by another car that broke several ribs that pierced his heart, he said to the driver, “What some people will do for an autograph”. He died a few hours later.
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