Well, dear readers, here we are starting the first weekend of 2002, which, of course, is 2002 backwards. It’s a fine Saturday, and being a fine Saturday I do believe that all our loyal and true Hainsies know what that means. It means our handy-dandy trivia contest. Today, because Mr. David Levy was too lazy to get me a question in time, we are going to have a special guest quiz, courtesy of dear reader, William Lurie. Remember, the first one of you to e-mail the correct answer gets a special handy-dandy prize. The first two handy-dandy prizes are currently winging their way to our first two contest winners.
But before we get to our trivia question, may I just say that Prime Time Jiminy Glick is the funniest show on television? Of course, I haven’t really seen any other shows on television in about ten years, but of all the shows I’ve seen (this being the only one) I can safely say that Prime Time Jiminy Glick is the funniest show on television. After watching the great Skip E. Lowe for all these many years, it’s great to see someone do him one better. I rarely laugh out loud, but this show frequently elicits laughing out loud from me. It’s on Comedy Central, so check it out.
I ate so much Mexican food last night that I got up this morning and started dancing the Mexican Hat Dance. I didn’t have a Mexican Hat, so I’m dancing it around my haineshisway.com baseball hat. If you haven’t seen our fabulous haineshisway.com products, just click on the appropriate unseemly button and you will be whisked to Productland. Speaking of unseemly buttons, isn’t it about time we all clicked the one below?
I had the pleasure of hearing the track of my song (sans vocal) that will be on Miss Lisa Richard’s new CD, and I’m happy to say I’m very very pleased with it. I was at the studio when the rhythm and horns were laid down, but not for the string session. Lisa was kind enough to use my wonderful orchestrator, David Siegel, for the song, and he couldn’t have done a better job, it’s just perfect.
I’d like to review one of my guilty film pleasures, the very obscure 1956 film version of Mr. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. When I was but a mere sprig of a twig of a tad of a youth, they showed that damn movie every night for a week on Million Dollar Movie on Channel Nine, sometimes twice a night. And I watched that damn movie every single showing. I love Mr. Orwell’s book, and, for some reason, even though it’s a less than wonderful adaptation, I love this film version of it. It stars Edmund O’Brien as Winston Smith and Jan Sterling as Julia, along with Michael Redgrave. To a young person like me, it was a very powerful film – with the all-knowing all-seeing Big Brother Is Watching You telecameras everywhere. Why, those evil government people spied on everyone, watched their every move. It was heinous (heinous, do you hear me?). And those evil people rewrote history whenever it suited their needs. They’d just erase information from all records as if it never existed. Can you imagine such a thing? Erasing information as if it never existed. That Mr. Orwell could really write a plot. And the brainwashing of everyone to believe what they were told and to love Big Brother, well, let’s just say we’re happy we live in a country where there is freedom of speech and we can speak our minds without fear of censorship, by golly and by gum. And in this movie, no one is allowed to have sex. But Mr. Winston Smith and his ladylove Julia try to get away with their illicit love affair, but they cannot escape the all-knowing all-seeing evil Big Brother government and they are caught and brainwashed by being tortured with their worst fears, in the case of Mr. Smith, rats. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, Mr. Smith’s greatest nightmare is rats, and that is what the rats torture him and brainwash him with. Rats. Can you imagine being tortured by rats? At the end of the film, Mr. Smith chants “Long live Big Brother” because apparently the rat torture worked. I know it’s not a great film, but I’m just very partial to it. Unfortunately, it’s not available on video, because the Orwell Estate hated it and it is now in legal limbo. And didn’t we all have fun doing the limbo on New Year’s Eve? I happen to have a 16mm print of it, though, so I do get to watch it occasionally.
And now, dear readers, it’s time for our handy-dandy guest trivia contest:
For the pre-Broadway tryout of this 60s musical, the ingénue role was played by a newcomer who was fired on the road. Although she subsequently returned to Broadway in non-musical roles she is best known as an Oscar-nominated film actress. Her replacement for the Broadway run of the show had no prior Broadway credits and no traceable subsequent ones either. For the First National Tour, the role was an early one for a musical star who eventually won a Tony for her best known role. Name the musical, the character and the three actresses described above.
Send in your answers quickly for time is a fleeting thing, like sheep on the freeway. What? What did I just say? I tell you, sometimes the obtuseness is really stultifying. In fact, the word stultifying is pretty stultifying, if you ask me. Does anyone feel that Big Brother Is Watching Us? My Big Brother lives in Hawaii and is coming to visit very soon. I feel that Big Brother Is Watching Us, dear readers, and I feel we should watch right back. That will put a crimp in Big Brother’s eyeballs, won’t it? Well, I simply must get back to the Mexican Hat Dance. And you simply must get cracking on the trivia contest, and you simply must post some comments because we have not had nearly enough comments in 2002. If you don’t make comments, then Big Brother will be watching you and you will be tortured by rats, or whatever your worst nightmare is. Perhaps one day soon, I’ll tell you what my worst nightmare is.