Well, dear readers, I must write these here notes in a hurry for she of the Evil Eye will be here all too soon and I need as much beauty sleep as possible. Therefore these here notes will be lean and mean and also mean and lean. There will be no fat in these here notes, no surplus of words, no extra syllables, although syllables and far too many syllables, don’t you think? I won’t go off on tangents and hopefully tangents won’t go off on me. In short – the notes.
Yesterday, like the day before, was both wonderful and irritating, although never at the same time. The irritating stuff was exactly the same as the day before, and this time I just took the bullpucky by the horns and stopped it, hopefully once and for all in terms of the second irritation. That one had to do with these people who e-mail me and have no idea how their e-mails read and I’d asked them to stop sending me e-mails completely and to just call if they had something to say. This time I had what could only be described as a conversation no one would like to have with me – when I’ve gone about as fer as I can go, I do what needs to be done to get my point across. In this instance I simply laid down the lay of the land – no more e-mails ever. They will be deleted without being read. Hopefully it got through because I don’t really enjoy going to that land and it really takes a lot to get me there. Once there, believe me you don’t want to be on the other end of the phone. The other irritation wasn’t major and had to do with the benefit, but it’s all sorted out and I had to soothe some frayed nerves, which I never mind doing. But that one took up most of my morning. I was actually up at seven, couldn’t fall back asleep, but must have around nine, as the next thing I knew it was ten-thirty. Then I dealt with all that stuff and by the time I was finished, I hadn’t even had much time to futz and finesse the previous day’s writing. I did a few things, plus when I’d been in bed I’d come up with a couple of good things, which I noted on my bedside pad. At twelve-thirty, I joined our very own Mr. Nick Redman, his ever-lovin’ Julie Kirgo, and Andrea Marcovicci. Nich wanted her to do a commentary track on an upcoming release, and I arranged for that to happen.
We went to Nick’s favorite place, Talesai, a Thai restaurant. I had a Thai salad with peanut dressing and a small thing of Pad Thai. I left around two, went and picked up a couple of packages, then came home. At that point I finished futzing and fixing, and wrote about a page and a half. Then Nick stopped by to pick something up (he had another appointment nearby) and he left me a check disc to watch of an upcoming Twilight Time release. After he left, I wrote another two pages, then sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched the Downton Abbey special, the final two-hour end of series four. I liked it quite a lot and thought they did a good job of keeping various plots going. Shirley MacLaine was back and was better than her first go round. Maggie Smith is a treasure and all the actors are just wonderful and they have good words to say. After that, I put in Nick’s check disc and watched it, a motion picture entitled The Blue Max, which has received a brand new transfer from Fox. In a word – magnificent. The absolute best this film has ever looked, period. With color so accurate it made my little heart go pit-a-pat. I have no doubt that we’ll have the usual “blue or teal push” nonsense on the various boards, but you can take it from li’l ol’ me not to believe a word of it. The previous home video incarnations of this film were brown and awful, and that includes the German Blu-ray, which I put on to contrast and compare – and of course there was no comparison. This film is not brown and flat – but those who will compare and contrast the inevitable screen caps will say this one has a teal or blue push and they’ll either just assume the completely wrong previous incarnations were correct or they’ll certainly raise the specter of something being off in this new transfer. Nothing’s off. The blues are glorious and perfect for a film of that era. PERFECT. And so are the lush greens and the true reds and the gray grays and every gradation of all those colors. PERFECT. Skin tones are no longer flat brown but real. Mr. Peppard, who had blue eyes second only to Mr. Newman had gray eyes in previous transfers. Here they are as they should be – gorgeous BLUE eyes. It’s breathtaking, the aerial photography looks amazing, and the score in 5.1 sound sounds fantastic – Jerry Goldsmith at his best. I still find the film slightly weird in its storytelling, but when something looks this good everything seems to work better. But for those who mistakenly found Desk Set too blue (it, too, was perfect), I’m sure the same will apply here and it will be just as mistaken. Simply put, Fox has done an incredible job on this transfer and they need to hear that loud and clear with none of the usual teal/blue stuff getting in the way. After all, the film is called The BLUE Max. My eyes were so happy this evening I can’t even tell you, although I just did. Needless to say, this gets my highest recommendation, which, as you know, is HIGH. And BLUE.
After that, I buckled down, Winsocki and wrote the little bit of patter for the benefit – it’s really not that much, but I came up with a fun running gag for one of our celebrities who was just going to introduce one thing – now she’s introducing three things and that should be fun. I sent that off where it needed to go. I also took a quick trip to Gelson’s for some chicken noodle soup and four of those teeny-tiny egg roll things. That was a perfect snack. Then I took a hot shower, but something has gone awry since the plumber was here and I was getting hardly any water pressure, which was really annoying, but the water that was there was nice and hot and I got a couple of good ideas in there. I then wrote three and a half more pages, finished a chapter and began chapter six – I think I did a total of seven pages, so that was good.
Today, I shall be up early, I may try to do a jog, I’ll eat a light breakfast of some sort, then we begin our rehearsals at 11:45. The first batch should hopefully be done no later than two, and then I’ll have two hours to write as many pages as I can – I may try to do a couple in the morning, too, before I leave. Then we have our second rehearsal at four and that will be over by five at the latest, and then I should have another ninety minutes to write two or three pages. Then I’m going to the theater to see our show – cousin Dee Dee and Alan will be there with some other folks I know. After the show, the Staitmans and I will go grab something quick to eat at a nearby eatery.
Tomorrow, I shall get up by nine so I can write a few pages, then I go to the Pasadena Playhouse around eleven-thirty for our band rehearsal. That’s a firm finish at two-thirty, and then I’m lunching with the divine Terri White and we’ll be chatting about a few things of interest. Then I’ll hopefully be home by four-thirty and I will write more pages. I’m going to try and get to bed early, because we announce our new title at six in the morning on Monday. But that’s good, because I can spend the morning hours writing right up until I have to get ready to leave – I don’t think I have to be at the theater before noon or at least not much before noon. I will also be very prepared for the day. The liner notes situation has been taken care of – thank goodness the wonderful Julie Kirgo will be writing them. I will be at the theater from noon to about midnight.
Then Tuesday I will not be doing anything at all but relaxing and writing. Wednesday, Muse Margaret will get her second batch of pages, hopefully a few pages more than the forty-five she got the first time. I think we’re seeing some potential replacement actresses on Thursday, but mostly it’s writing and finalizing song choices and getting singers their music for the next Kritzerland show.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, maybe jog, eat, write, rehearse, write, rehearse, see a show, and eat. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite war movies? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland where I shall have lean and mean dreams, but nice ones, after which I have a very long day and evening.