Well, dear readers, I have breaking bombshell news – I do believe that I, BK, finished a new book yesterday at five-thirty in the afternoon, book number twenty-eight. Of course, we’ll see how I feel about it today when I futz and finesse, and I suspect there will be a lot of that because it’s a very dialogue heavy penultimate chapter and I think I’ll be breaking some of that up with some descriptive prose. The final chapter was fun to write and is fairly short. As I was writing it, I kept thinking how am I going to end this with a really good closing line. Nothing was coming to me that was remotely interesting to me, but two paragraphs before I got to the final paragraph, this idea came into my head, a call back to a line used several times in the book under a very specific context – and I thought to myself, myself, what if I use that line but under a completely different context and that is what I did and I think it worked very well. We’ll see how I feel in the morning, but it sure worked for me at five-thirty yesterday. Otherwise, yesterday was a surprisingly surprising day right from the time I got up at around six in the morning after only four hours of sleep. I had a book on the brain, I suppose. Once up, I answered e-mails, of course, and then got a big surprise, which I can’t go into, but it made me a very happy camper. That is the way to start a day. She of the Evil Eye arrived at eight-thirty, and I moseyed on over to Paty’s coffee shop to meet Robert Yacko. I had something I’ve never had for breakfast – a quesadilla with bacon, cheese, eggs, onions, and green peppers, served with guacamole, sour cream, and salsa. Well, this thing was huge but very tasty and I did finish it. After breakfast, we strolled to the end of the block, where a new Gelson’s just opened up. It’s kind of a miniature version, much smaller than the full-size market, but they do have a lot of the necessaries, a deli case, but no hot food bar. It’s very well designed and I hope they do well there. After that, I made a quick stop at the bank to use the ATM, then came home just as she of the Evil Eye was leaving. I sat down and immediately began writing and I wrote for two hours straight, then took a little break. Then I finished the penultimate chapter and wrote the final chapter. It felt good to finish it.
After that, I decided to watch a documentary on PBS entitled Dave Grusin – Not Enough Time. It was interesting, and for any fan of his music, very enjoyable as it features quite a bit of it. Lots of talking heads, from family to stalwarts of the music business. I’ve always loved Grusin. My first exposure to him was Divorce, American Style in 1967, which I thought was a very clever and creative score. I liked his scores for Waterhole #3 and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, and he did a lot of TV work in the seventies, but for me he really came into his own with Three Days of the Condor in 1975, just a wonderful score. After that, he wrote a fun score for Murder by Death, a beautiful score for a bad movie called Bobby Deerfield, another beautiful score for The Goodbye Girl, ditto for Heaven Can Wait, and after that it was just one great score after another. He is one of the most well represented film composers on Kritzerland – we did Divorce, American Style, Heaven Can Wait, Racing for the Moon, Mulholland Falls (perhaps my favorite Grusin score), A Dry White Season, Falling in Love, and I even appeared on a TV show for which he provided the music – The Girl with Something Extra. He wrote me a couple of lovely e-mails along the way. The documentary is from 2018. Thankfully, he is still with us at 91 years of age.
The second documentary was entitled Tura! About the cult actress Tura Satana. It begins tragically with a horrifying story from her childhood when she was nine. Hard to recover from that, but she does overcome it eventually, becomes a stripper and exotic dancer, and then finds her true calling with the Russ Meyer film that made her a cult darling, Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!, which I saw when it came out. She played a woman that no man or woman could mess with and she was terrific. John Waters was a huge fan, of course Quentin Tarantino had to jump on the bandwagon, but I always loved her from the start and, in fact, in my 1985 play, The Good One, I named one of the characters after her. I finally got to meet here at one of the first Ray Courts signing shows I did and she was just delightful – funny, down-to-earth, and sweet as could be. Here’s the proof, one of my favorite photographs.
I did doze off a few times during the evening, and then it was time to write these here notes.
Today, I’ll try to be up by eleven at the latest, I’ll futz and finesse, and then I’ll send the final forty pages or so to Muse Margaret. After that, I’m resting until Friday. The only thing I might do is go have a celebratory lunch somewhere fun. And I’ll catch up with some movie watching, too.
Tomorrow and Friday are that, and then we resume performances on Friday night, and I hope everyone is over their ailments and ready to do good. I’m not sure I’ll stay Friday night, but I’ll be there doing the pre-show welcoming speech until the end of the run.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by eleven at the latest, futz and finesse, send the final forty pages or so to Muse Margaret, and then I rest for a few days – and maybe do a celebratory finishing the book meal. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have finished book 28.