Julie Andrews

            On Monday after midnight I lint rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room and picked up several bedbugs. I also lint rolled my pillow and the top of my bed and a bedbug turned up there as well. I put some more carpet tape along the edges of my mattress where the older tape had gotten less sticky. I went to bed at around 1:30 and got to sleep after 2:00. 

            I dreamed that the whole top-right side of my teeth came out as if they were a set of dentures. I got up with the alarm at 5:00 and did my yoga.

            After yoga I checked for bedbugs and didn’t find any.

            I posted a picture on my Boris Vian fan page of Vian climbing into his Brasier Torpedo car in 1911. 

            I posted the lyrics for “Come Young Gendarmes”, my translation of “Venez donc voir” by Boris Vian on my Boris Vian fan Facebook page and on my personal Facebook page. The next Vian song on my list is “Les bienfaits de la pratique” (The Benefits of Practice) and I found the text but there is no audio available. So I’ll just translate the lyrics without memorizing them. 

            I finished memorizing “La fille aux claquettes” (The Tap Dancing Girl) by Serge Gainsbourg. On Tuesday I’ll finish revising my translation and then I’ll start working out the chords. 

            I weighed 90.85 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and went out of tune more than half the time. 

            I called Jamal Logan, the bylaw officer assigned to my complaint about bedbugs. I had been told by the city that he would get in touch within ten days but it was now 17 days. He said the ten day promise was very unrealistic because there is a backlog of cases and he is a month behind. He asked me to send him pictures of the bedbugs. I was disappointed to learn that he can’t force the landlord to treat the entire building and only has the power to make the landlord deal with the unit of the complaining tenant. He told me I would have to contact Rent Safe to force an inspection of the entire building. 

            I weighed 91.75 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 91.5 kilos at 18:10, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening since last Monday. 

            I was still a day behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up. 

            I had a potato with gravy and some pork ribs while watching a video of Carol Burnett and Julie Andrews’ opening number at Lincoln Centre in 1971; a 1978 promo for A Special Evening With Carol Burnett; a preview of The Carol Burnett Show Reunion; a Show Business Tonight countdown of Carol’s favourite sketches; and a Carol and Company backstage tour. 

            For the Carol and Julie show Ken and Mitzi Welch wrote all the music and stuff. The night before the show Carol decided it would be nice to put some highlights in her hair. She went to an all night drug store and bought a bottle of peroxide. She put a little here and there on her hair and then went to bed. The next morning her husband looked at her in shock and exclaimed, “What did you do?” She looked in the mirror and all of her hair was the colour of straw and very dry. When she went to the dress rehearsal the hairdresser exclaimed, “What did you do?” He fixed it as best as he could. 

            Carol and Julie come out in similar gowns of different colours. They say the last time they did this was at Carnegie Hall and they vowed they wouldn’t let another birthday go by before they did another show together. Carol says, “Just think, that was ten years ago.” “And here we are, both one year older.” Julie asks Carol what she’s been doing with herself all these years. “Are you still in entertainment?” “I’m on television.” “Oh, what a shame!” “What have you been doing?” “I’ve been working in motion pictures.” “Talkies?” “I went out to Hollywood to do The Sound of Music.” “Did it ever come off?” They both admit they were kidding. Carol asks Julie to “Promise you won’t cut up tonight like you did at Carnegie Hall!” “Me?” Carol begins a song about how they shouldn’t misbehave tonight. Julie joins in and sings how they must be “Ladylike tonight”. They’ll sing “Nothing cheaper than Strauss tonight”. Julie says “This means no Charwoman!” Carol says, “No Cockney!” “Try to keep your gown down tonight!” “Me? I’m the mother of three!” They are dancing and at the end of the song Carol pulls Julie’s skirt off so she’s standing in her panties before they both run off stage. 

            There’s nothing special about the 21 second promo for the 1978 special. 

            The preview just has what the reunion has, which I’ll be covering later. 

            Carol, Tim and Vicki are guests on Entertainment Tonight for the countdown of Carol’s favourite sketches. #5 is the No Frills Airline in which Tim is the only discount passenger one seat behind Harvey, who is in first class. Tim is treated like shit and somehow gets turbulence while Harvey doesn’t. Vickie says they just lucked into an amazing chemistry among really good friends. #4 is when Vicki as Mama improvised some insults about Eunice’s sanity such as, “You got splinters in the windmills of your mind!” The video I have doesn’t show #s 3, 2, and 1. 

            In the last video Carol leads a tour of Studio 33 where her show was taped 25 years before. They shot all 11 seasons there. Vickie says the studio still smells like CBS. Carol says that the cue card boys were gourmet chefs and on Thursdays they would cook meals. Lyle says the crews were amazing and they could set things up in no time. There were five cameras. The cameramen were funny guys. Pat the cameraman was often making cracks to Carol during the her question and answer segment. A little girl in the audience asked, “If he’s a smart guy how come you don’t fire him?” Carol says they had a 28 piece orchestra, which would be impossible today. Now they just use synthesizers. Vicki shows us the star dressing room. Where the flat screen TV is now there was a piano and Vicki often found Red Skelton tinkling on it because they used to share the stage with him when they first started. He listened to her whole story about how she met Carol and how she was going to be on her new show. He used to love to write music to relax and he had a piece of sheet music he was working on. He scribbled “Vicki” across the top, signed it, gave it to her and said, Good luck!” Carol says Bob Mackie made 60 to 70 costumes a week, which is also unheard of today. He would get the script for the following week on Friday night and made the costumes in his workshop outside the studio. Vicki says in 1971 Sonny and Cher premiered on the stage next door. If you wanted to find out what Cher was wearing on a given night you’d walk through the shared ladies room to the other studio. Jim Nabors, Glen Campbell, Merv Griffin, and The Smothers Brothers were all next door. Carol show the room where the writers and the producers would sit and watch the dress rehearsal while making notes. Then the cast would get the notes and make improvements for the second show at 20:00. Lyle says he used to spend a lot of time in the booth with the directors, watching them shoot the show. Carol says when Sue Vogelsanger came out of the audience to ask her to perform her song and Carol told her they’d do it next week, the people in the booth were waving frantically to try to signal her not to do it. For weeks after that they got people sending in songs but they never did it again. 

            Julie Andrews’ parents were vaudeville performers who noticed early on their daughter had a four octave singing voice and put her on stage with them in music halls throughout her childhood years and teens. She could sing notes only dogs could hear at the age of 7. She studied ballet, ballroom and tap, which gave her strong stage movement and rhythm for her later work in acting and in musicals. She made her West End debut in 1948. At age 12 she gave a royal command performance for King George VII, Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother), Princess Elizabeth (the future queen) and Princess Margaret. She co-starred on the radio program Educating Archie from 1950 to 1952. At the age of 20 she made her professional stage debut at the London Palladium in Cinderella, which was written for her. She made her Broadway debut in The Boyfriend in 1954. She made her television debut in High Tor in 1955. She became a star in 1956 when she played Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. Her debut album was The Lass With the Delicate Air in 1957. Between 1956 and 1962 she appeared on several top variety shows, including Ed Sullivan. She made her film debut in Mary Poppins in 1964, for which she won an Academy Award. She starred in The Sound of Music (for which she also won a Grammy Award), Thoroughly Modern Millie, Star, The Tamarind Seed, Duet For One, Darling Lili, S.O.B., Victor Victoria, The Princess Diaries 1 and 2, Eloise at the Plaza, Eloise at Christmastime, Hawaii, She co-starred in The Americanization of Emily, Torn Curtain, Little Miss Marker, The Man Who Loved Women, That’s Life, 10, The Princess Diaries 2, Shrek 2, Shrek the Third, Shrek Forever After, Enchanted (as narrator), The Tooth Fairy, Despicable Me, Despicable Me 3, The King’s Daughter (as narrator), Minions, She starred in The Julie Andrews Hour (for which she won an Emmy), Julie’s Greenroom, She is the narrator for Bridgerton (for which she won an Emmy). She won $30 million when she sued over the botched throat surgery that temporarily ruined her singing voice. After recovery she sang “Your Crowning Glory” in The Princess Diaries 2. She wrote Home: A Memoir of My Early Years and The Very Fairy Princess. She won a Grammy for A Collection of Poems, Songs, and Lullabies. Queen Elizabeth made her a Dame in 1999. She has a chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland and every year she pays for the town’s Christmas lights and presents the prize in July for the Gstaad tennis open. She had a bumper sticker that read “Mary Poppins is a Junkie”. Before she met her husband Blake Edwards she heard that he’d said of her, “She’s so sweet she probably has violets between her legs.” She sent him a bouquet of violets. She’s won three Grammy Awards and three Emmy Awards.