Robert Preston

            On Tuesday after midnight I lint rolled the top of my bed but only picked up one bedbug. I put down some more carpet tape along the edges of my mattress where it had gotten less sticky. I went to bed around 1:30 and it took a while to get to sleep because it felt like there were bedbugs on me though I didn’t crush any. I woke up at four and by touch I did find one beside me. After yoga I found a couple of fat ones stuck to the tape.

            I published on my Christian’s Translations blog “Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anyone”, my translation of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” by Boris Vian. I searched for and found some more pictures of Boris Vian. 

            I finished memorizing “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) by Serge Gainsbourg. I translated the third verse. On Wednesday I’ll translate the last verse and then start working out the chords. 

            I weighed 91.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the second of four sessions and it went out of tune constantly. 

            Around midday I steamed the curtains that hang between the bedroom and the living room. I also steamed parts of the bedroom floor. I put down some more carpet tape on the floor around my bed.

            I weighed 92.85 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I took my Targus backpack out of the freezer after four days. So far I’ve only found one dead bedbug on it. 

            I weighed 92.1 kilos at 17:50. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:28. 

            I digitized a cassette of some home recordings of rehearsals with Donna Bartkiw and Brian Haddon. I had to use the noise reduction app in Audacity to get rid of a hiss. 

            I grilled four chicken legs and had one with a potato and gravy while watching three Carol Burnett related videos. 

            The first appearance of Carol’s character The Charwoman was before The Carol Burnett Show during her 1963 TV special An Evening with Carol Burnett (Also known as Carol and Company). She says her only co-star was Robert Preston. The Charwoman comes out to clean an empty stage and then an invisible orchestra starts responding to her body movements. She begins to pretend to do a striptease while stripper music is playing. 

            The second video features some of the TV commercial parodies that were done on The Carol Burnett Show. They didn’t show any that I haven’t seen and written about previously. 

            The last was a Zany Outtakes video. 

            In the first, Carol is wearing the undersuit that goes under the dress of one of her characters. It has pendulous dangling breasts and Carol begins to dance like a stripper while swinging them around. One crewmember walks by and squeezes one of the fake tits.

            In a promo for the episode featuring guest stars Betty Grable and Martha Raye, Carol says “My poison Martha Raye” when she’d meant to say “My paysan Martha Raye”. 

           In a greeting to Australian fans Carol plays Marian from As The Stomach Turns. She wishes Channel 9 a happy 15th anniversary. She sends a special greeting to the town of Bellbird, the sister city of the fictional Canoga Falls. I assume Bellbird is also fictional but Carol cracks up every time she says it. The bellbird or bell miner has a bell-like call and there is a village in Australia named after it called Bellbrook. 

            Robert Preston was a trained musician who played several instruments. He began acting in high school. He studied acting and gave his first professional performances at The Pasadena Playhouse. During one of those plays he was observed by a Paramount scout and was signed to the company. He made his Broadway debut in The Male Animal in 1952. In 1957 he won a Tony Award for his iconic performance as Harold Hill in The Music Man. When the musical was made into a movie in 1962 he reprised his role. He won another Tony for I Do I Do. He originated the role of Henry II in The Lion in Winter on Broadway. He made his film debut in King of Alcatraz in 1938. He starred in Parachute Battalion, The Night of January 6, Pacific Blackout, Night Plane from Chungking, The Sundowners, Cloudburst, and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. He co-starred in Illegal Traffic, Disbarred, Beau Geste, Union Pacific, Typhoon, Moon Over Burma, The Lady from Cheyenne, New York Town, Reap the Wild Wind, This Gun For Hire, Wings Up, All the Way Home, Junior Bonner, The Macomber Affair, Wild Harvest, Big City, Blood on the Moon, Whispering Smith, Tulsa, The Lady Gambles, When I Grow Up, Best of the Badmen, My Outlaw Brother, Face to Face, The Last Frontier, Island of Love, Victor Victoria (for which he was nominated for an Oscar), Wake Island, Mame, S.O.B., Child’s Play, Semi-Tough, and The Last Starfighter. He starred in the mini-series The Chisholms in 1979.