Agnes Nixon

            On Thursday after midnight I went over my mattress with a lint roller and a few bedbugs got stuck or crushed. I also checked the curtains between the bedroom and the living room and the one on the bedroom side close to my bed had a few bedbugs on it. My steaming them didn’t seem to do much good but that’s perhaps because I used the pointed stream attachment that shoots out a narrow stream and not the wider one that I use to steam the mattress. I’ll try that on Friday. I went to bed at 1:30 and didn’t notice any bedbugs probably because I slept well. I got up at 5:00 as usual and after yoga found some bedbugs stuck to the carpet tape and some crawling on the walls. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian and ran through singing and playing it in French. Tomorrow I’ll start revising my translation. 

            I finished comparing the Turboscribe transcription with the transcription I made a few years ago of Jacques Dutronc singing “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) by Serge Gainsbourg. The Turboscribe transcription makes more sense. I sang along with the audio once and tomorrow I’ll start memorizing the song. 

            I weighed 90.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            I had a date to meet my friend Brian Haddon at Christie and Bloor but while I was getting ready to go I checked my backpack and found a couple of bedbug nests. I used hot water and an old toothbrush to try to destroy them. I saw a bedbug sink and disappear into the foam padding at the back. I had to leave without checking thoroughly, so when I met Brian I told him I couldn’t hug him. 

            We went to Pour Boys on Manning where they didn’t have Creemore on tap even though their website said they did. We shared a pitcher of some kind of natural lager that was okay. He had pad Thai and I had a chicken bacon wrap with fries. I think they probably know how to make pad Thai better than wraps.

            Brian announced that he’d finally retired from modelling at The Ontario College of Art and Design University but he’ll continue posing for some private groups. 

            We’ve made a date to meet on September 22 at The Crown and Dragon before my dental implant surgery on September 25. 

            I’m going to call the city tomorrow and get them to force the landlord to treat the building for bedbugs. 

            I took a siesta at 17:15 and got up at 18:45. 

            I weighed 91.15 kilos at 19:15. 

            I had a potato with gravy and my last two chicken drumsticks while watching a video compilation of the question and answer session on The Carol Burnett Show. 

            A redhead sitting with another in the audience says they’ve come to the conclusion that redheads make better lovers. “We were wondering what’s your opinion?” Carol leans forward to show her dark roots and says, “I have no idea”. 

            Someone asks Carol if she plays bridge. She says she doesn’t and right now she’s only mastering checkers, but it’s coming. 

            A woman points to another woman across the aisle and asks, “Is that lady Maude?” Carol gets the other woman to stand up and she really does look a lot like Bea Arthur, who starred in Maude and later in The Golden Girls. She says, “I’m beginning to believe it myself! They mobbed me at the studio for autographs and I was kissed by the most darling little man! I could sing a song for the little lady from New York!” Carol says, “You wanna sing? Okay, c’mon up!” She comes up and Carol asks her name. She says “Terry McCann”. “What do you want to sing?” The woman did not seem like an amateur at all and was totally comfortable on stage when she said, “’You Made Me Love You’ in the key of G!” She is a very good singer and even dances a bit. Carol dances up to her and Terry puts her arm around her as they sing together. They sound great together until the end when Carol knew a different ending and they didn’t mesh. Terry says, “You screwed it up!” 

            A guy says he represents a small faction of students from the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic and they feel that Carol has one of the greatest looking spines they’ve ever seen. Carol says, “Oh, you like my back? Well that’s half of it!” 

            A 14 year old asks for a kiss and when Carol gives him one he says, “I’m gonna faint!” 

            Someone asks for Carol’s Tarzan yell and Carol says she doesn’t know if she can do it because she just shaved her chest. Of course she does it. 

            Carol introduces someone she says is nicer than he is talented and he’s the most talented actor in the world. She points out Laurence Olivier, who gets the first standing ovation anyone has ever gotten on the show. 

            A man with a pompadour asks Carol if she’ll give him a big hug and a kiss for $1000 in cash. She beckons him up with her index finger. She hugs and kisses him and he gives her an oversized fake $1000 bill.

            A teenager asks for Carol’s autograph and Carol invites her up but Beth has a whole stack of autograph books belonging to herself and her friends. Carol signs “Beth” in Craig’s book and adds a note apologizing. 

            Someone asks about Carol’s stay at The Rehearsal Club. It was a hotel for young women in the theatre. Carol says it was great and they borrowed each other’s clothes. 

            There are twenty New Zealanders in the audience and one of them says they all love her. 

            Two cub scouts give Carol a plaque making her an honorary den mother. 

            A guy says he rented Carol’s movie Pete and Tilly and showed it in his basement for seven straight nights, but he lost $50 because nobody came. 

            Someone asks Carol if she’s as foxy as Farrah Fawcett. Carol says, How can you ask that question?” Then someone asks Carol for her Tarzan yell and she does it, then says, “Do that Farrah!”

            Carol says the creator of All My Children, Agnes Nixon is back stage but she won’t reveal any secrets. 

            Agnes Nixon went to Northwestern University with Cloris Leachman, Paul Lynde, Charlton Heston, and Charlotte Rae. She graduated in 1944. Her first job in radio was producing and writing the soap opera The Woman in White. She was a writer for As the World Turns and the head writer for Search for Tomorrow. She co-created Guiding Light in 1952. She was head writer for 1919 episodes and wrote 253. In one episode a character gets a pap test and it inspired millions of women to get pap tests. She created One Life to Live in 1968, which broke free from the conventional WASPy soap opera and dealt with more controversial themes. There was a Jewish character, the first black lead characters, and interracial romance. There was also broad comedy. She wrote 235 episodes. She created All My Children in 1970, which started with half hour episodes for the first 7 years. When the network wanted her to expand it to an hour she only agreed on the condition that they stop recording over the tapes. She wrote 574 episodes. She was executive producer of 1001 episodes. Ground breaking themes included the Vietnam war, the anti-war movement, homosexuality, and AIDS. It’s her hand that opens the photo album at the beginning of each episode. She wrote 301 episodes of Another World. She wrote the memoir: My Life to Live: How I Became the Queen of the Soaps When Men Rule the Airwaves in 2017. She co-created Loving in 1983 and The City in 1995. Her soaps featured several ground breaking storylines for daytime TV such as the first story about the Vietnam war, the first abortion, and the first lesbian kiss. She won five Emmy Awards.

September 4, 1996: I went to some high schools to get modelling work

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I went to Central Technical School and to Northern Secondary School to line up some bookings from the art teachers. That night was the first Fat Albert’s open stage after the summer break so I went there and performed.

Thandiwe Newton

            On Wednesday after midnight I put some more two-sided carpet tape around the edges of my mattress. I went to bed at 1:30. I woke up at 2:30 and killed a bedbug. I got up to pee then went back to sleep until 3:30 and killed another bedbug. I got up to pee and went back to sleep until 4:00, then went back to sleep until the 5:00 alarm. After yoga I found a few bedbugs stuck to the tape and a few babies crawling on the walls. 

            I worked out the chords for the second verse, the second chorus and most of the last verse of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian. All that’s remaining is one line repeated three times so I’ll probably have that done tomorrow. 

            I finished typing out the Turboscribe transcription I downloaded yesterday of Jacques Dutronc singing “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) by Serge Gainsbourg. I compared the transcription that I’d made of the first verse years ago to that of Turboscribe and the recent one is more correct, except that it got one word wrong. It had “loyaux” when it should have been “loyoux”. I’ll compare the transcriptions of the other verses tomorrow. 

            I weighed 90.5 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since August 12. 

            I played my Kramer for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            I put carpet tape on top of a bedbug nest on the wall near my bed and over some depressions nearby that looked like potential nests. I steamed the curtains that hang between the bedroom and the living room. 

            I weighed 92.3 kilos before lunch. I took a siesta at 14:30 as usual and thought that I woke up half an hour late. I brushed my teeth and thought that it was too late for a bike ride downtown but got ready to leave for a ride to Ossington and Bloor. Then I looked at my phone and saw that it was only 16:00 and not 17:00 as I’d thought. I had slept until 15:30 thinking it was 16:30 and so I had time to ride downtown after all. I left just after a thunder shower and the sun had come out but it clouded over again and I was feeling a few drops as I headed east on Bloor. It started very lightly raining at around Spadina but not enough to take seriously until Queens Park. I headed south and the rain kept on teasing but I was almost home and thinking I was going to dodge the storm. I was at Dufferin and Queen when the storm dropped. There was a tree that had been knocked down and blown under the railroad tracks at Dufferin. The cars were crunching over it but I couldn’t, so I got off my bike and walked over it. I got soaked in the few blocks between Dufferin and my place. 

            I weighed 92.85 kilos at 15:55 before I took the bike ride. 

            I weighed 92.25 at 17:10. 

            I got caught up in my journal for pretty much the first time this summer. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, potato wedge fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching season 2, episode 3 of Wednesday with my daughter Astrid on Discord. 

            Wednesday burgles the cottage where her parents are staying in order to steal back Goody Addams’ book because she thinks it holds the key to her getting her psychic powers back. But her mother Morticia’s powers are fully functional and she catches her. She tells Wednesday the book only provides shortcuts and so she can’t have it back. 

            Pugsley’s pet zombie Slurp is starting to regenerate a brain and can almost speak. Pugsley and Eugene think it’s because they’ve been feeding him but it’s really because of the meal of fresh brains he had at the end of episode 2 when he killed the driving instructor in the woods. 

            Wednesday’s devoted fan Agnes uses her invisibility powers to get the late sheriff Galpin’s phone for her. Wednesday learns from the phone that Galpin had a cabin near Camp Jericho. The Nevermore Students happen to be going for a camping trip to Camp Jericho and of course she didn’t plan on joining them until now. 

            Wednesday catches Pugsley dragging a coffin and he lies that it contains fireworks for the camping trip but he’s really bringing Slurp along. 

            Gomez and Morticia come along as chaperones and their tent looks like a smaller version of their gothic house. 

            A youth cadet group led by the cadet master Ron Kruger arrives and it seems the Nevermore group and the cadets were double booked for the camp that weekend. Wednesday suggests they engage in a competition for use of the camp with the losers going home. Each team has to capture a zephyr and place it at the top of a tower at the end of the course. Kruger seems well schooled in the powers of the Nevermore students. He has the cadets wear headphones so they can’t be manipulated by Bianca or the other Sirens. One of the cadets uses an arrow to shoot off Ajax’s hat to reveal his Gorgon snake hair and cause him to turn one of his own teammates to stone. The cadets use teargas to hold back the werewolves Enid and Bruno. Eugene overwhelms the cadets with a bee attack and Wednesday walks unharmed through both the bees and the tear gas to capture the zephyr. But a cadet has already captured their zephyr and he’s way ahead of Wednesday and already climbing the tower. Wednesday shoots a crossbow bolt carrying a line at the tower from a hill and rides the line as a zip line to the tower, kicks the cadet as she’s swinging in and plants the zephyr to win the competition for the Outcasts. 

            But Kruger is a sore loser and plots to capture the camp anyway that night. 

            The campers and Morticia sing “Bad Moon Rising” around the campfire. The music for this show is very retro. 

            Wednesday and Thing go to Galpin’s cabin. She finds evidence that someone or something named L.O.I.S. is targeting outcasts. 

            Wednesday needs Goody’s book to help her get her powers back and so she goes back to her mother and challenges her to a blindfolded duel in the woods. Wednesday wears a silver heart and Morticia a red one. The first to break the other’s hear wins. If Wednesday wins she gets the book but if Morticia wins she burns it. 

            Kruger leads his cadets into the sleeping camp but Kruger trips Pugsley’s fireworks alarm and stumbles into Pugsley's and Eugene’s tent where his brains are eaten by Slurp. Slurp grabs an axe and tries to kill Gomez in the shower but Pugsley stops him. Morticia wins the duel just as Slurp is about to attack her but Wednesday throws her sword and impales Slurp to a tree. 

            The authorities arrive and take custody of Slurp while Wednesday sees the red eyed raven land on the shoulder of a cloaked figure in the woods. 

            A new patient/prisoner arrives at Willow Hill. It’s Marilyn Thornhill who seems happy about it.

            Dr. Fairburn, the head psychiatrist at Willow Hill is played by Thandiwe Newton. She is half Zimbabwean and half English. She was born in London but lived in Zambia as a child until political unrest forced her family back to the UK when she was 3. She studied dance at London’s Art Education School until a back injury ended that dream. She made her film debut in Flirting in 1991. She made her TV debut in Pirate Prince in 1991. She enrolled at Cambridge University and earned a degree in Anthropology. Her Hollywood film debut was in Interview with the Vampire. She co-starred in Jefferson in Paris, Gridlockd, The Journey of the August King, Crash, Mission Impossible II, Beloved, Norbit, Run Fatboy Run, Good Deeds, RocknRolla, W, 2012, For Coloured Girls, Reminiscence, , She starred in Loaded, Besieged, It Was an Accident, The Chronicles of Riddick, The Truth About Charlie, Shade, Vanishing on Seventh Street, Retreat, Good Deeds, Gringo, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, All the Old Knives, God’s Country, . She co-starred in the series Rogue, Westworld (for which she won an Emmy), Line of Duty, The Slap. She made her West End debut in Death and the Maiden in 2012. She was appointed as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth in 2019.

September 3, 1996: Denise Naples was our featured poet

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday I hosted as always my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of The Gladstone Hotel and our featured poet was Denise Naples.

Lainie Kazan

            On Tuesday after midnight I put down some more two-sided carpet tape along the edges of my mattress where the previous tape had gotten less sticky. I went to bed at 1:30 and slept until 3:30 when I got up to pee. It’s around that time that the bedbugs normally start sucking on my body and I felt some had gotten across the tape but not as many as the night before. I was able to get back to sleep until 5:00 when the alarm went off. After yoga all the bedbugs I found were trapped on the tape. 

            I worked out the chords for the chorus of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian. I think the second verse and second chorus should have the same chords, and so on. 

            I downloaded the YouTube video of Jacques Dutronc singing “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) by Serge Gainsbourg. I then uploaded the MP4 file to Turboscribe and got a transcript. I copied that into my 1974 Gainsbourg document but had to copy it out manually because the transcript was pasted in boxes. Sometimes one can copy text out of the boxes and paste it as normal text but not this time. I copied about half the song and I’ll finish it tomorrow. Then I’ll find out if it’s accurate. 

            I weighed 90.6 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since August 12. 

            I played my Kramer during song practice for the first of two sessions and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            Around midday went over to Home Hardware and bought two more rolls of two-sided carpet tape. I put some more along one edge of my mattress. 

            I weighed 92.05 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back stopped at Freshco where I bought five bags of green grapes and a basket of Canadian nectarines. I did a price match on the grapes for $4.37 a kilo and Priscilla gave me a price match of $4.98 a basket on the nectarines. The Freshco price was $6.99 a basket. 

            I weighed 91.1 kilos at 18:20. That’s the kindest I’ve been to the scale in the evening since July 28.

            I was one day behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I had a potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching two videos about the Question and Answer segment of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            Someone gave Carol a souvenir from the Queen Mary and she didn’t realize he was talking about the cruise ship while she thought it was a place where they have female impersonators. 

            Lainie Kazan says Carol was born to improvise. She was like a jazz singer. 

            One time two young men in the audience turned out to be the sons of Carol’s childhood best friend Ila May Sills, with whom she used to go to movies and re-enact them afterward. 

            Jane Lynch says Carol made her audience feel like they were her best friends. 

            Lainie Kazan went to high school in Brooklyn with Barbara Streisand. She studied drama at HB Studio in Greenwich Village. Her acting teacher Ann Italiano became Ann Bancroft. She studied at Hofstra University and acted in school musicals written and directed by classmate Francis Ford Coppola. 

            Lainie made her Broadway debut in The Happiest Girl in the World in 1961. 

            She made her TV debut on Car 54 Where Are You? in 1962. 

            She made her film debut in Dayton’s Devils in 1969. 

            She co-starred in Lady in Cement, One From the Heart, Lust in the Dust, The Journey of Natty Gann, The Delta Force, Harry and the Hendersons, Beaches, 29th Street, The Associate, The Big Hit, What’s Cooking?, A Good Night to Die, Gigli, Bratz, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, Expecting Mary, Pearly Gates, Tango Shalom, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 1, 2, and 3.

            She starred in Red Riding Hood and Oy Vey My Son is Gay. 

            She guest starred on The Dean Martin Show 26 times, The Bobby Vinton Show 19 times, and The Paper Chase 15 times. 

            She posed nude for the October, 1970 issue of Playboy. Those photos inspired the look of Jack Kirby’s DC Comics character Big Barda. She formed a business partnership of the jazz venues Lainie’s Room East and Lainie’s Room West with Hugh Hefner. 

            She taught theatre at Hofstra University and UCLA. 

            She was arrested for shoplifting at a supermarket in 2017. 

            She says Jerry Lewis sexually harassed her.

Charlene Beatty

            On Monday I went to bed a little before 1:30 and slept fairly well until 3:00. I started feeling bedbugs on me after a couple of days of peace since I destroyed the nests above the bedroom door curtains. I got up and lint rolled my bed then got a little more sleep but not much. After yoga there were a few caught on the carpet tape around my bed but more crawling freely on the wall at the head of my bed. The tape tends to get less sticky after a few days. 

            I worked out the chords for most of the chorus of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian. I might have gotten more or all of it done but the guitar strap for my Martin broke at the button end and so I had to widen the next hole so it would fit the button and then untie the leather cord I use to attach the strap to the neck so I could extend it to compensate for the new shortness at the other end. 

            I published on my Christian’s Translations blog “The Seduction of Doctor Faust”, my translation of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg then posted the text on Facebook. I looked for the next Gainsbourg song on my list to work on and that’s “Soixante Treize” but that was just a one-off piece Gainsbourg wrote for Jane Birkin to sing on a TV show and there is no recording. The next song after that is “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) for which there is a video by Jacques Dutronc. I have a set of lyrics for it but I think I transcribed them years ago from listening and I don’t think they’re accurate. So tomorrow I’ll download the video and try uploading the audio to another free transcription app. I might have to try more than one because sometimes they’re not very accurate. 

            I weighed 91.05 kilos before breakfast.

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune about half the time. 

            I weighed 92.35 kilos before lunch. 

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

            I weighed 91.8 kilos at 17:55. 

            I was still two days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I had a potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching a couple of videos about The Carol Burnett Show. One was about the Tudball and Whiggins sketches and the other was about breaking out laughing during sketches. 

            Tim says the appeal of Tudball and Whiggins is the familiarity of the situations. He says Mrs. Whiggins was inspired by Charlene Beatty who is now his wife. Carol loved the character and she made sure that she never laughed because she had to be too dumb to see the humour. Amy Pohler says she loves Mrs. Whiggins is because she was so slow and it dragged out the comedy. Tim says he got Tudball’s accent from his mother’s Romanian relatives. Vicki says it sounded a little like Lawrence Welk. 

            The second video opens up with Harvey cracking up while dressed as a German officer while Carl Reiner tells him to be a good Nazi and stop laughing. 

            Carol says Harvey would get mad at himself for laughing. Vicki says they used to have a betting pool in the green room. How many seconds into a sketch with Tim before Harvey loses it? 

            Ken Solms says in the dentist sketch, Tim didn’t accidentally put novocaine in his leg during the dress rehearsal. That was entirely improvised. Tim says his object in life was fulfilled when Harvey wet his pants during that sketch. Ken Berry says Tim was the only one they let get away with such wild deviations from the script. 

            Steve Lawrence says that in the sketch where he and Harvey are ad men competing for the account of Tim the client, it was Steve’s idea to play it as if they were competing for Tim’s love. This was the one sketch in which Tim cracked up more than anyone else. Tim says he thinks he wrote the original sketch. 

            In the Born Free parody sketch when Carol and Harvey are making Tim as the lion return to the wild, it was Tim’s improvization to have the sound of a toilet flushing while he was packing to leave in the other room. 

            Tim says his Old Man character came about because he’s always thought elderly people were funny. 

            Charlene Beatty was a production assistant for 160 episodes of The Carol Burnett Show; for Sills and Burnett at the Met; and for the TV movie The Tenth Month. She was the original inspiration for the character Mrs. Whiggins on The Carol Burnett Show because of her inability to use an intercom. Tim thought it was funny and so that was the premise of the first sketch. Tim married Charlene in 1984. He said she fed him so much fiber he was passing wicker furniture. They were together for 35 years until Tim died.

September 2, 1996: I did some writing

Thirty years ago today

             On Monday it was Labour Day. I probably tidied up after my weekend with my daughter and worked on my writing.

Goodman Ace

            On Sunday I went to bed a little before 1:30. I slept fairly well and got up at 5:00. After yoga I checked for bedbugs and found a few adults stuck to the carpet tape while a few more babies were on the walls, one of them near the curtain rod. I’m going to put some more two-sided tape on the floor beside the baseboards and on the wall near the curtain rod bracket. 

            I worked out the chords for the first three lines of the chorus of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished editing “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg in my Christian’s Translations blog and I’ll publish it on Monday after posting the video. 

            I weighed 90.95 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune about half the time. 

            Around midday I put down more two sided carpet tape along the bedroom floor beside the northern and eastern baseboards. I also ran a strip along the right side of the bedroom door and enclosed the right curtain bracket in a square of carpet tape in case there were bedbugs there so they wouldn’t try to build a nest in the rod pocket of the bedroom curtains.

            I weighed 92.35 kilos before lunch. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

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

            I weighed 91.25 kilos at 18:10, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since August 16.

            I was still two days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread, with marinara, tomato pesto, wedge fries, and five-year-old-cheddar while watching part two of a roundtable discussion between Carole Burnett Show writers Gail Parent, Ken Solms, Buz Kohan, and Arnie Kogen. 

            Arnie says his aunt spoke just like Harvey’s character of Mother Marcus. 

            Buz has 13 Emmys. 

            Gail says two of her children are MIT graduates and they are funny engineers. Buz’s daughter Jenji worked with Gail on Tracy Ullman. 

            One time someone hired Gail and Ken because he mistook them for Buz and his writing partner. He thought they wrote music and lyrics. 

            Buz worked 4 years for The Carol Burnett Show and then did The Pearl Bailey Show. When he first met Pearl she was at Lake Tahoe and sitting by the pool with a pair of golden scissors hanging from a chain around her neck. She explained that she uses her scissors on the script because when she performs, god gives her the words. By the end of the third show they were close and she was sticking pretty much to the script. When Pearl was canceled Buz went back to Carol’s show. On the credits he was listed as a producer but he was still writing. Ken says that’s the time when everyone started being called a producer. Gail says if the show wins an Emmy for writing then the writers will ask for something. Buz says that Pearl started her show with the intention of cooking her famous macaroni and cheese for the entire audience after the show and she’d serve them on the rooftop lounge. By the third week they were calling KFC because the logistics of her cooking for everyone were impossible. 

            Ken says every variety writer ended up doing some sitcoms. Gail points out that Ken never liked writing for sitcoms and he confirms it. 

            Arnie says in 1968 when he came out to Hollywood there were 16 variety shows. He says if you wanted a date from the writers guild the female choices were Gail and Treva Silverman. Gail got pregnant and people usually send flowers when you give birth but Carol sent her a diaphragm. 

            Gail and Ken wrote the very first sketch that appeared on The Carol Burnett Show, which was the ski lodge sketch with Jim Nabors and Carol. 

            Buz says by the 24th show each season writers were running out of good material and so they would dig into material they wouldn’t have sniffed at earlier in the season. There was a sketch called Anthony the Wonder Ant that was always on the board but never got on the air. 

            After Bill and Buz left, Ken and Mitzi Welch came in to do the song material. 

            Buz worked with Barbara Sreisand many times and Gail wrote the screenplay for The Main Event for her. Arnie points out the part of Gail’s novel in which the main character writes a suicide note but her mother only reads it bit by bit every night before going to bed. 

            Ken says they lost the chance to have Bette Davis on the show because Joe Hamilton didn’t want to pay the extra $25 for the limousine she requested. 

            The Esther Williams parody was filmed at Carol’s house and in her pool. 

            Buz wrote the mini musical about the songwriters Potts and Panns. He included a song he wrote in summer camp and then used to sing it to his kids, “You Outta Listen to Your Mother”. 

            Buz says Nanette Fabray could play the musical saw. 

            Ken says Bob Mackie still looks 18. 

            Arnie wrote "the world’s oldest fireman" for Tim. 

            Ken says Harvey was a bit temperamental and Carol used to tease him with, “What mood are we in today Mr. Harvey Korman?” Harvey was the first actor Gail and Ken worked with on the Steve Allen Show. 

            Buz says Steve Allen was the best. Ken says he would save every first draft. 

            Arnie says he got stopped by a cop once who commented while he was writing him a ticket that the show is more fun with Tim being a regular. 

            Arnie says that Paul Lynd was difficult. He says he’s never seen Jack Jones funnier than on The Carol Burnett Show. 

            Carol was very approachable. 

            Jerry Lewis took the same picture of his daughter every day from birth until 5 or 6. 

            Arnie loved Totie Fields.

            Buz worked for Perry Como for four years. Buz had the distinct honour and pleasure of working with Goodman Ace, the dean of comedy writers in New York. 

            Gail says after Carol they worked for some mean and horrible stars. But she did The Golden Girls, which was a well run show and the stars could deliver lines. 

            Arnie says Bob Newhart was like Jack Benny. He would surround himself with crazy, funny people. He was very easy to write for because he was a reactor like Benny. 

            Ken says he and Gail made Vince Edwards funny. He lit two cigarettes the way they used to do in the movies but instead of handing one to his leading lady he smoked them both. 

            They all agree they’d like to do it all over again. 

            Goodman Ace was the editor of his high school newspaper. He studied Journalism at Kansas City Polytechnic Institute. He became a reporter and journalist for The Kansas City Journal Post. 

            He met Jane in high school and they married six months after their first date at an Al Jolson concert. 

            He started moonlighting as a radio announcer in 1930. He would read the Sunday comics and hosted a Friday night film review and gossip show called Ace Goes to the Movies. He starred with his wife Jane in the radio sitcom Easy Aces from 1930 to 1945. It started one night when the fifteen minute show that was scheduled after Ace’s failed to feed and so he was asked to fill in the time. His wife Jane happened to be there and so they simply had a conversation about playing bridge that the audience found so funny that they were given their own show. He wrote himself as the straight man and gave the jokes to Jane, and their comedy dynamic was similar to that of George Burns and Gracie Allen. One of Jane’s famous lines was “Time wounds all heels”. In 1935 they started doing comedy short films with their radio characters such as “Dumb Luck”. 

            In 1945 Ace became one of the writers for The Danny Kaye radio show, which he and Jane sometimes hosted. He created the radio series You Are There, which ran from 1947 to 1950. 

            In 1953 Ace wrote that TV stands for Terrible Vaudeville and that they call it a medium because it’s never well done. 

            After their attempt at doing Easy Aces on TV failed, Ace stopped performing and focused on writing. He created a show that re-enacted historical events that had been reported by CBS radio. The show came to be known as CBS Was There but Ace was never credited. 

           He was head writer for 23 episodes of The Perry Como Show (for which he was nominated for two Emmy Awards). He wrote for Jack Benny, Milton Berle and Bob Newhart. After writing a few jokes for Benny’s stage show, Benny sent him a cheque for $50, saying your jokes got a lot of laughs. If you have any more send them along.” Ace sent the cheque back and said, “Your cheque got a lot of laughs. If you have any more send them along.” He ended up giving Benny jokes for free for years. 

           For radio Ace co-wrote The Big Show, hosted by Tallulah Bankhead, which ran from 1950 to 1952. 

           He wrote the screenplay for I Married a Woman, and said it was the best thing he’d ever written but the worst movie he’d ever seen. 

           In the early 50s he started writing a regular column for The Saturday Review. A collection of his criticism was published in1955 as The Book of Little Knowledge: More Than You Want to Know About Television. Later the column came to be called Top of MY Head and it became very popular. These columns were collected in two books: The Fine Art of Hypochondria and The Better of Goodman Ace.

           In the mid-60s CBS started a school for would be writers with Ace as one of the instructors. All six of Ace’s students became television writers and two became successful playwrights: George Axelrod and Neil Simon. 

           In the 1970s several Easy Aces scripts were adapted for the Canadian sitcom The Trouble with Tracy. 

           A relative of Ace’s once sent him a telegram threatening to jump from the 14th floor of his building if he didn’t send him $14,000. Ace wired back “If you jump from the 7th floor I’ll send you $5000.”

September 1, 1996: My daughter and I played adventures based on comic books

Thirty years ago today 

            On Sunday my daughter and I played on the back roof with her action figures and other toys. We made up scenarios based on the comic books that I read to her at bedtime.

Buz Kohan

           On Saturday I went to bed at around 1:30 and slept until I got up to pee at 3:00 and then slept again until the 5:00 alarm. After yoga I checked for bedbugs and the only ones I found were stuck to the two-sided carpet tape. My washing of the curtains yesterday seems to have wiped a lot of them out.

            I worked out the chords for the first verse of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I’ll start figuring out the chords for the chorus. 

            I uploaded “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg to my Christian’s Translations blog and started preparing it for publication. I might have it done on Sunday. 

            I weighed 90.95 kilos before breakfast.

            Around midday I rode to Freedom Mobile and paid for my September phone plan. Then I rode to No Frills where all the cherries are gone and the grapes are too soft. I bought a Canadian watermelon, two packs of Canadian strawberries, a basket of Canadian plums, some bananas, a pack of Canadian cheddar, a pack of chicken legs, a pack of two T-bone steaks, a jug of orange juice, two containers of skyr, a bag of wedge fries, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips. 

            I weighed 91.95 kilos at 14:35, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since last Saturday. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            I took a siesta and woke up too late for a bike ride downtown but not for a ride to Ossington and Bloor. 

            I weighed 91.75 kilos at 17:45.

            It’s been a week since I was that easy on the scale in the afternoon. I was still two days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, wedge fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching part 1 of a roundtable discussion between Carole Burnett Show writers Gail Parent, Ken Solms, Buz Kohan, and Arnie Kogen.

            Ken says that the public thinks they all sat around a table but they were really all in separate offices. Gail says the offices were not equal though because she and Ken didn’t have a window. Joe Hamilton had a window painted after the show picked up. Gail sent him a picture of her child with the caption, “Will this child be eating next year?” Their head writer didn’t want them to talk in the hall.

            Buz says the studio is now the home of Bill Maher’s show Real Time. Ken says that Carol loves Bill Maher. Ken adds that on that stage he wrote a show saluting Jack Benny, starring Kelsey Grammar. Then Ken and Buz did the 25th anniversary of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            Gail and Ken wrote the first As the Stomach Turns and all of the episodes until they left the show. Other writers wrote them afterwards. Arnie says that The Californians on Saturday Night Live had a similar rhythm. Ken adds that SCTV also had a soap opera parody called Days of the Week. When Lucille Ball and Nancy Wilson guest starred all the women in the town were widows. Carol didn’t ad lib a lot but when Nancy Wilson came to the door she said, “A black widow!” It was Gail and Ken’s idea to have Carol say “I’ll get it!” before the doorbell rang. Arnie says that was good writing. 

            Carol depended on a sound man for things like falling. Arnie says he keeps a soundman at his home to do the sound when he falls. Ken says that would be a great idea for a sketch: A comedy writer with his own sound man. Arnie says he used to physically fall into Buz’s office whenever he entered but it didn’t get a laugh. 

            Gail used to come in on Tuesday nights just to punch up a show. When they would meet with the head writer Arnie Rosen, if he pulled out his typewriter they knew there was going to be a rewrite and it was like seeing a dentist approaching with a drill. 

            Ken says the first sketch that he and Gail turned in was 28 pages. Gail says it was their first job and they learned while working. Ken says they were flown out earlier from New York to work on the Carol and Sis sketch. Buz says Saul Turtletaub created Carol and Sis. Ken argues that it was actually Carol and her husband Joe Hamilton who wrote the first treatment but Carol’s name originally was Hilda DeRage. He says maybe Sol wrote the first one. 

            Ken says he just wrote a book called Bits in which he calls himself the co-creator of The Carol Burnett Show. Arnie says he and the other writers are offended. 

            Buz says Harvey Korman used to come into Buz’s office and lie down on the couch. It was like a session with a psychiatrist for him. There was a piano in Buz’s office and so the musical guests like Ethel Merman would come in and sing. Buz says the day they did the Three Little Pigs they had Eileen Farrell and Marilyn Horne in there. Gail says that she and Ken would listen at the door and would have fallen in if anyone had opened it. 

            Buz talks about the Flip shows. At the end of every season there would be a party in which the cast and crew would perform something from the season that had just ended. One of the highlights was Bob Wright the line producer. He got dressed in full drag and recreated a tango dance number from the parody of Gilda they did. 

            Buz says before he worked on the series he came out to work on a Carol Burnett special called Carol and Friends. He was on his first and last vacation in the West Hamptons when Carol called to tell him she’d gotten Rock Hudson, Ken Berry and Frank Gorshen to star in her special. When Buzz came out to write the special he met Rock and asked him if he knew anything about music. Rock told him he knew very little so Buz sat at the piano to show him a scale. He had trouble teaching it to him but thought that at least he was trying. The second rehearsal happened in Rock’s beautiful house. When Buz walked in he saw a three meter Steinway grand sitting in his living room. It turned out that Rock had just been putting him on and he’d been studying music for years. 

            Ken says Gail loved Dick Van Dyke and Sid Caesar. 

            When Carol first called Buz about writing her show he was in New York working on The Steve Lawrence Show, The Sammy Davis Junior Show, and the Perry Como specials. But you could see the writing on the wall that everybody was moving west. Carol guaranteed him 30 weeks of work. Buz brought his family out and never went back east. Gail and Ken were offered a solid six weeks. David Geffen was their agent and every time they got picked up they’d get less money. Buz hired Bernie Brillstein for his agent the second year and he got him a $200 a week raise. Bernie wanted 10% of the whole salary but Buz said they’d be happy to give him $20 but not 10% of the sum they’d negotiated before hiring him. Gail and Ken were also with Bernie. 

            Buz wrote The Fun Family, which was the first musical spoof that took up half a show. 

            Buz says there was a segment of The Garry Moore Show called That Wonderful Year. Carol said she wanted something similar so they came up with Salute to the Studios. 

            Gail says The Smothers Brothers were down the hall and they were doing political stuff and getting in trouble with the censors. For the most part Carol was not political but they did the Fireside Chats of presidents and their families. 

            Gail says that when they did the movie parodies they got two hours off to watch the original films. 

            Gail says Tim Conway was the best. 

            Gail and Ken say they wrote The Dentist sketch and Arnie tells them they are his new idols. Tim was offered to become a regular but he had to bring in six sketches the first year so he paid Gail and Ken to write three of them. But Tim added a lot to the sketches. Gail says dentists tell her all the time that sketch is shown to all dental students in the first year. Arnie says it’s one of the funniest sketches ever. Tim and Harvey do that sketch in their road show and Ken teases them that they don’t have permission. They got paid $500. 

            Ken says Harvey is one of the funniest men alive up there with Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. 

            Buz Kohan studied at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music and earned both a Bachelors and a Masters degree. He wrote for 109 episodes of The Carol Burnett Show. He produced TV specials for Carol Burnett, Bing Crosby, Arthur Godfrey, The Keane Brothers, Gene Kelly, and Shirley MacLaine. He wrote several songs with and for Michael Jackson, including “Gone Too Soon”. He wrote the duet “Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy” that was sung by Bing Crosby and David Bowie on Bing Crosby’s Christmas special. His son David co-created Will and Grace. His daughter Jenji created Weeds and Orange is the New Black.

August 31, 1996: Nancy brought our daughter to my place

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday Nancy brought our daughter to my place and she spent the weekend.

Betty Ford

            On Friday morning after midnight I put down two sided carpet tape all around the edge of my futon underneath the fitted sheet, then I did the same to the outside of the fitted sheet. While putting the last strip of tape at the foot of my bed I noticed a bedbug on the bedroom curtain that covers the inside of the passage between the bedroom and the living room. I killed it and noticed another and killed that one as well. Then I did a search of the whole curtain for more monsters and discovered at the top, in and around the rod pocket a shitload of bedbug nests. They looked like they’d been there for quite a while as I’d never looked up there for bedbugs. I started killing them and spent at least half an hour, probably destroying at least fifty. I realized that my project for today was going to be washing and drying those curtains as well as using my steamer on the wooden curtain rods. I didn’t get to bed until 2:45 but I slept well until 4:43 when I got up to pee, then went back to sleep for fifteen more minutes. After yoga I didn’t find many bedbugs stuck to the tape on the bed but there were a few on the tape on the floor at the head of my bed. 

            I worked out the chords for line 3 of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian. There’s one line left in the first verse and I’ll probably have it done tomorrow. I think the chords for all the verses will be the same so after that I’ll work out the chords for the chorus. 

            I ran through singing and playing “The Seduction of Doctor Faust”, my translation of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg. Tomorrow I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare it for publication. 

            I weighed 91.4 kilos before breakfast. 

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

            Around midday I did my laundry nine days after the last time specifically to wash the two sets of curtains that separate my bedroom and living room because I’d found several bedbug nests in the rod pockets of the curtains on the bedroom side. I also washed whatever else had gotten dirty in the last 9 days.

            I weighed 92 kilos at 16:10. 

            I took a siesta and woke up too late to take a bike ride. 

            I weighed 92.3 kilos at 18:35. 

            I was still two days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I grilled eight chicken drumsticks and had two with a potato and gravy while watching an interview with Vikki Carr. 

            Vikki was onstage at the age of 4 in school. 

            At 18 her father allowed her to go on the road to sing for 5 or 6 shows a night in Nevada lounges. The casinos were 24 hours and so the times of the shows would change from week to week: 6:00 to 12:00; 9:00 to 15:00; 12:00 to 18:00; 15:00 to 21:00; and then 18:00 to midnight. 

            Over the years she developed one of the finest microphone techniques in the business. She would tell the sound person not to change the levels once she started because she knew what she was doing. In the casinos they would turn off the singer’s mic to announce the jackpot even if they were in the middle of a soaring vocal. 

            On television she was not allowed to sing the word “god” in her hit song “It Must Be Him”. And yet they were okay with her singing the line “and I thank god I’m alive” in the song “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You”. But once “It Must Be Him” hit #1 in England it was re-released in the US and she was allowed to sing it. Her song “Sleeping Between Two People” was banned in Boston. 

            She has a reputation for crying while singing sad songs. After she performed “It Must Be Him” on Ed Sullivan Ed came over with a handkerchief and asked if she was alright. 

            She worked with Perry Como in Mexico and he complimented her on her cologne. He asked what she was wearing. She said it was Chloe and he said, “I’m gonna get a gallon of that for my wife and if she doesn’t smell like you I’m gonna get rid of her.” 

            She says Dean Martin never rehearsed and so the guest had to be the one to carry the musical number that he would join in on. 

            The song line-ups for Vikki's shows are subject to change based on the audience. 

            She was performing in a show with Jack Benny and Bobby Vinton and Jack was watching Bobby perform. He said, “I don’t know whether to watch or listen”. If you move around too much the audience gets confused. 

            She can’t wear the thirteen centimeter heels as much anymore because all those years of wearing them have given her hammer toes and bunions. Her beaded gowns weight 16 kilos. 

            When she guest hosted The Tonight Show she had just come back from entertaining the troops in Vietnam with Danny Kaye. They asked her who she’d like to have as a guest and she said Danny Kaye but they said he’s always refused to appear on The Tonight Show. So she asked him and he came. After her opening song she went and sat in the guest’s chair until Ed McMahon reminded her that she was the host. 

            Vikki was at the White House to present Gerald Ford with the latest Easter Seals. She told him if there’s anything he needs to just call her. Later she got a call from Ford who told her that he and Betty would be receiving the chancellor of Austria and wanted to arrange for some entertainment so he asked her to sing. But when she started making arrangements to bring her band in the White House hadn’t been informed that she had been asked to perform. She had to inform them that their boss had invited her. Betty had just had a double mastectomy and Vikki wore a low cut dress. Later she told Ford that if he’s ever in LA feel free to visit and she’ll cook him some Mexican food. She asked him what was his favourite Mexican dish and he answered, “You”. The next day it was in all the papers and Vikki was on Betty Ford’s black list for performing at the White House along with Raquel Welch. Vikki’s mother called her and demanded to know what she’d done at the White House. 

            Vikki doesn’t have many show business friends because her social life is about family. 

            Vikki was getting bronchitis 8 or 9 times a year from performing in places with cigarette smoke. People called it “Vegas throat”. She started losing her voice and so she went for allergy tests until it was discovered that she was allergic to everything but especially cigarette smoke. At the Riviera she asked the management to request that the audience refrain from smoking but the owner refused because the gamblers are more important. So Vikki asked the audience herself to not smoke and the room was clear of smoke for the first time. It made the headlines. After that she became an anti-smoking activist and the chairman of the American Lung Association. She started boycotting clubs that allowed smoking. 

            It was a joy to work with Carol Burnett and her crew. Inspired by Carol, Vikki started taking questions from the audience before her shows. 

            Vikki always wanted to be a dancer but Debbie Reynolds told her to just keep singing. 

            Vikki doesn’t think Carol could make a career as a singer but it worked as part of her comedy.

            Carol made her guests feel they were part of the family. 

            Lyle Waggoner had an incredible home in Mazatlán, Mexico and she could see it from her hotel room. It was featured in Architectural Digest. Lyle acted more professionally than the rest of the cast.

            Vikki was mistaken for Vicki Lawrence a lot. 

            She would watch Sonny and Cher just to see what Cher was going to wear. 

            Vikki later took ballroom dance lessons and won several trophies. 

            She asked George Burns what to say to young people who ask how to get into show business. He told her, “The minute they ask, they’re never gonna make it.” 

            Betty Ford studied ballet, tap, and modern movement when she was 8. At 14, in the wake of the Great Depression shew made money buy working as a model and teaching popular dances to children. She started her own dance school while still in high school. After graduation she was accepted as a dance student of Martha Graham in New York and worked as a fashion model to pay her tuition. She joined Graham’s troupe and performed at Carnegie Hall. 

            She was married unhappily to Willian G. Warren from 1942 to 1947. She married Gerald Ford a month after divorcing Warren. They had four children and Gerald was often away campaigning for half the year leaving Betty to raise the children. She never used corporal punishment. 

            In 1964 a pinched nerve on the left side of her face led to valium addiction. She also became an alcoholic. 

            She was a supporter of abortion rights. 

            When her husband’s political career became more intense in 1965 she suffered a nervous breakdown and sought psychiatric help. She did not enjoy being a politician’s wife and was thrilled when he suggested that he might retire from congress in 1977. But when Spiro Agnew retired as vice president in 1973, Richard Nixon appointed Ford his new vice president, and so Betty became the Second Lady of the US. 

            When interviewed by Barbara Walters she expressed her support for the Supreme Court making abortion constitutionally protected. She also supported Federally funded daycare, which Nixon opposed.

            After Nixon resigned her husband was made president and she became First Lady. The press caught Gerald patting Betty’s behind the day he was sworn in. They also broke the tradition of the president and his wife sleeping in separate bedrooms. After a 1975 interview with McCall’s Magazine she commented that they’d asked her everything but how often she and the president had sex. Then she added that if they had asked she would have answered, “As often as possible”. 

            She was the most politically outspoken First Lady since Eleonor Roosevelt. She surprised the media by supporting a woman’s right to an abortion, which went against the official stance of her husband’s Republican Party. 

            After her double mastectomy she became the first US First Lady to make public her medical records since Florence Harding in 1922. This raised awareness of cancer, which the US public had been reluctant to discuss. 

            In 1976 she made a cameo appearance on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. 

            She lobbied her husband to award Martha Graham the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

            She revived dancing as an activity at White House state dinners. 

            She became a symbol of Liberal Republicanism. Some of her views were even more liberal than those of Jimmy Carter’s wife Rosalynn Carter. When Gerald was running for re-election some supporters created buttons that read, “Betty’s Husband for President” and “Keep Betty in the White House”. 

            When her husband was defeated by Carter, Betty became the only First Lady in history to deliver her husband’s concession speech. 

            In 1978 she submitted herself to treatment for prescription drug and alcohol addiction. As she had been about her cancer she was outspoken about her addiction. In 1982 she established The Betty Ford Clinic for the treatment of chemical dependency. 

            She spoke out against the bans on gay citizens serving in the military.

August 30, 1996: Brian and I busked on Bloor for beer and a bite

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday Brian Haddon and I busked on Bloor Street and made enough for lunch and beer. Then we busked some more before going to perform on the Spit Fridays open stage in the back room of The Cameron.

Tina Fey

            On Thursday I went to bed at 1:30 but barely slept because there was a major bedbug invasion of my bed and body. I got up at 2:45 and I must have killed about fifty, half just from running the lint roller over my mattress. Quite a few were caught on the carpet tape around the edge of my futon, mostly on the wall side but they seem to only get caught after they are bloated with my blood and only some get stuck while crossing the tape before they’ve fed. I went back to bed but still couldn’t sleep because soon I started feeling them again. I still haven’t been able to find any nests to know where they are coming from. I killed some more and tried to sleep again but no dice. At 4:30 I got up to kill some more and lint rolled again. At 4:45 I had fifteen minutes before the alarm so I went back to bed and dreamed I was underground and traversing a tunnel with a dark haired troubled woman. Then we were walking in the street behind a guy who might have been her boyfriend and they were arguing about abuse and a child they had together. Later she and I were back in the tunnel while I was carrying a long yellow staff. She offered to carry the pole and so I let her but she was drunk and lost it. I escorted her out of the building with the intention of returning to look for the staff but she stood on a landing and jumped to the street from a second floor height. It looked like she must have hurt herself but when I looked for her she was gone and I woke up. 

            After yoga I worked out the chords for line 2 of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through singing it in French. Tomorrow I’ll run through my translation and then upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare it for publication. 

            I weighed 91.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer during song practice and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            I weighed 92.65 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on the way back. There were no more cherries and the grapes were too soft so I bought a basket of Canadian peaches, a basket of Canadian plums, a Canadian watermelon, some bananas, a packet of sliced smoked turkey, a packet of sliced Black Forest ham, and a lint roller. 

            I weighed 92.4 kilos at 18:40. 

            I slipped back to being two days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I grilled a striploin steak and had it with a potato with gravy while watching three interviews: with Tina Fey, Tony Bennett, and Vicki Lawrence on the subject of Carol Burnett. 

            Tina says Mama’s Family is like the precursor to The Office. On 30 Rock, Matt Damon’s character was named Carol Burnett. 

            Tony Bennet says Carol is one of the best singers he ever met. I don’t know why people keep saying that. She could sing well but lots of singers are better. She was a good theatrical singer because her voice was loud and she could carry a tune but she was no Barbara Streisand. When he was a guest on her show he did sketches of her and the rest of the cast and the sets. She asked him to make a painting of Times Square for her and he did one in oil that she adored. In later years he painted every day. Carol was like a next door neighbour to her audience. The only other performer who took questions from the audience was George Burns. On Tony’s birthday no matter where he was in the world, Carol sent him one rose. 

             Lady Gaga is very spontaneous and a great singer. 

             Vicki says it was her mother who encouraged her to write the fan letter that caught Carol’s attention. She hadn’t even seen Carol on television very much. She’d seen the play Once Upon a Mattress because they were going to do it for their high school musical. Vicki wasn’t that interested in musical theatre. She was already singing with The Young Americans. She did the comedy songs and some funny bitts for The Young Americans movie. She remembers seeing Carol on The Entertainers but she watched that because she had a crush on John Davidson. As far as female performers are concerned Vicki was more of a fan of Mary Tyler Moore. She was also in love with Dick Van Dyke. It was only because she cut her hair short before high school that everybody started telling her that she looked like Carol Burnett. Vicki was a big writer of fan letters and so her mother said she should write one to Carol. She had no pictures of Carol on her walls. She had Johnny Crawford, Fabian, and Clint Eastwood. Carol told her later that her fan letter was unique because it was written well and had something to say.

             When Carol invited her to audition for her new show, Vicki went to the director of The Young Americans to tell him. He told her the chances were miniscule of her audition leading to anything and warned her that if she backed out of the summer tour she wouldn’t be allowed back into the group. It was a very traumatic decision for her. 

            She thought she was going to be a dental hygienist, marry a rich dentist and hang it up. 

            Vicki learned from Carol how a show should be run. She was very giving, loving, caring, and nurturing. Carol knew everybody in her crew and cared about them. Vicki barely even spoke to Carol for the first few years because she put her on such a pedestal even while she was learning from her. Vicki doesn’t know if the fairy tale story of her success would ever happen nowadays. The suits would come down today and just say, “Get rid of her and get somebody who knows what she’s doing.” A lot of older people she’d meet on Carol’s show would tell her it’s nothing like the real world of show business. Carol’s show was a special place. 

            Vicki says a good executive producer hires the best people then backs off and lets them do their jobs. That doesn’t happen much anymore. 

            Harvey Korman never gave up on a sketch even after everybody else said it wasn’t working. Vicki says that she thinks he thought that since he was stuck with having her around, it was his duty to train her. He worked with her on dialects and props. He told her, “Make your props your friends!” When they did the old movie take-offs Harvey would have to explain to her who her character was based on because she didn’t know those films. He taught her most everything she came to learn about comedy.

            Vicki started at UCLA the same year she started on Carol’s show. When it came time to declare a major she picked theatre because of what she was learning on Carol’s show. But Theatre students were required to do a quarter of a year in crew work; they were required to audition for parts and take them if accepted, which would have conflicted with The Carol Burnett Show. She went to her favourite Theatre professor who told her to sit in the audience of The Carol Burnett Show with a notepad and watch the best teachers in the world. He told Vicki she was already where every kid in the Theatre department would give their right arm to be. She devastated her parents when she told them she was thinking of dropping out because her father went to UCLA. Vicki decided to appease them and declare a Dance major because Dance schedules were more flexible than Theatre. She was told she had to take Dance 1-A, which was Interpretive and Creative. In the first class she was lying on the floor with the other students and the instructor said, “Today we will be seaweed rolling on the ocean floor”. Vicki was more interested in learning a Travelling Time Step so she got up, grabbed her bag and quit UCLA. Coincidentally she left after two years just like Carol did. 

            Lyle Waggoner was the second greenest member of the cast. She used to go to his little apartment with him and his wife would cook them lunch. Lyle made a side living with a fan club that cost $2 to join and members would get a button that said, “Be Relyleable”. 

            Bob Mackie didn’t want people to sit down in his costumes. At Halloween Vicki would take her kids to where his costumes were stored and borrow them. He knew how to express comedy through his costumes but Vicki thought Mrs. Tudball's costume was a little over the top. Many times you didn’t know your character until Bob Mackie dressed you. The only thing Vickie added to her Mama costume was to push the stockings down so they were wrinkled because that reminded her of her grandma. The first time she put on the costume she looked in the mirror and said, “Good lord! I’m dysfunctional!”

            Vicki doesn’t know why they thought she was worth the trouble of teaching her. Neil Simon’s brother Danny Simon was the director of the comedy sketches and he would get frustrated with Vicki.

            The first sketch she was fully part of was a takeoff ion The Newlywed Game and Kenny Solms played her husband. That’s when she first did her high voiced bimbo character. She didn’t feel like she pulled her weight until halfway through the series. 

            Dick Clark’s favourite blooper was the one in which Vicki’s character Mama calls Tim’s character Mickey Hart a “little asshole”, which causes Tim to collapse laughing on the floor. She got paid every time Dick showed that blooper, which was a lot. That was the first sketch in which Vicki went off script. 

           When she and Tim guest appeared on the sitcom Yes Dear the suits thought it was funny when Tim went off script but still insisted on him doing it the way it was written. 

            Vicki played Miley Cyrus’s grandmother on Hannah Montana. She taught Miley what Harvey taught her, to make her props her friends. 

            Vicki says if when she was growing up on The Carol Burnett Show there had been people with cell phones in the audience recording everything and uploading it to the internet she might not have chosen this profession. 

            The producers of Mama’s Family asked Vicki to do a Q & A with the audience just like Carol before the live taping. She was terrified at first but came around. 

            When Vicki did her talk show it was for the wrong company and a nightmare. She had learned that television was supposed to be fun or you’re doing it wrong but the producer didn’t agree. They were at each other’s throats for two years. 

            Tina Fey studied Drama at The University of Virginia and then went to Chicago where she took the first set of Second City courses. Nothing she’d studied about acting at university clicked for her but at Second City she learned to focus on her partner and it all made sense. After nine months a teacher told her to skip ahead and audition for the Second City Training Centre. She eventually entered the training program. She became a cast member for several years. In 1995 she was invited to audition for Saturday Night Live. After a few years she became the first female head writer. In the 25th season she began doing Weekend Update with Jimmy Fallon. Her character of Liz Lemon on 30 Rock was meant to be the opposite of a Sex and the City character. She co-created the sitcoms Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Mr. Mayor, and The Four Seasons, She co-produced Girls5eva and Mulligan. She co-hosted The Golden Globe Awards four times. She wrote and co-starred in Mean Girls. She wrote and co-produced Mean Girls the musical. She starred in Baby Mama, Admission, Sisters, and Whisky Tango Foxtrot (which she co-produced). She co-starred in Date Night, Megamind, This Is Where I Leave You, Maggie Moore, A Haunting In Venice, Muppets’ Most Wanted, Wine Country, and Soul. She wrote the memoir Bossypants, the audio for which won a Grammy Award. She’s won ten Emmy Awards. 

            She was a virgin when she met her husband at the age of 24 and he’s the only person she’s ever had sex with. 

            She says Paris Hilton is a piece of shit. Paris told the writers they should do a skit about Jessica Simpson “because she’s fat”. 

            Tina doesn’t have a driver’s license but while I was writing this I fell asleep at the computer and dreamed that I went on a car trip with Tina Fey. She drove us out to the middle of nowhere and then stopped. We were getting out of the car when I woke up.