Well, dear readers, it’s cleaning lady Saturday, so I’ll have to write these notes with haste and no waste. Therefore, the story of Meltz and Ernest: The Unvarnished Truth will continue on Monday. Someone pointed out a rather astonishing fact the other day and I forgot to mention it until this very minute. The astonishing fact that was pointed out was that on that particular day I had written my 150th BK’s Notes here at haineshisway.com. Isn’t that an astonishing after-the-fact fact? That boggles the mind, doesn’t it? For 150 mornings in a row I have sat down at my handy-dandy laptop computer and written these here notes. Do you have any idea of how many words that is? I think if you added up all those BK’s Notes, I believe I’d have enough pages for my second novel. Of course, a novel should be about something and as we all know these here notes are frequently about nothing whatsoever, which is the way we like it. In any case, the point is we should have had a little celebration – we should have eaten some ham chunks and cheese slices and maybe even some shrimp bits on toast. Then we should have taken the toast and toasted these here notes. Then we should have danced the Hora or maybe even the Locomotion and played The Name Game. I guess this falls under the category of the Missed Opportunity. Have you ever fallen under a category? It is very painful and I would not advise it. Oh, well, if someone will remind me when we get to our 200th notes, then we shall celebrate until the cows come home.
Here is another astonishing fact: I have gotten at least eight hours of sleep each night for an entire week. I hadn’t gotten eight hours of sleep each night for an entire week in probably over a year, so I feel that I am catching up on some well-needed rest. I am feeling my oats, dear readers, and my oats are very happy about it, let me tell you that.
Well, today is our very own Unseemly Trivia Contest, so perhaps we’d all best click on that Unseemly Button below so we can get to the question before the cleaning lady shows up and starts giving me the evil eye.
Yesterday I watched a film on tape that I haven’t seen in quite some time. It is a very interesting motion picture entitled Can Hieronymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and find True Happiness. I don’t know if it’s ever been commercially released on tape, but I got this copy on eBay and it’s from a showing on Bravo. Therefore, the quality isn’t the best, but it was fun to see it after all these years. I first saw the film when it came out in 1969, the year I was living in Brooklyn, New York, whilst trying to be a Broadway Star. I was a fan of Mr. Anthony Newleys, so I was excited to see he’d made his very own film. In fact, I saw it at a “preview” a week before it opened. There were very few people at the preview and by the end of the film I was the only one of those very few people who was left in the theater. Hieronymous Merkin would have to fall under the category “Guilty Pleasure” (there we go with the falling under the category again). It is Mr. Newley’s 8 1/2. Only Mr. Newley is not Mr. Fellini, although he invokes Mr. Fellini’s name in the film. What is really amazing is how the very same type of film would get done several years later by Mr. Bob Fosse – All That Jazz. But, Mr. Fosse’s works and Mr. Newley’s doesn’t. Mr. Newley asks us to care about someone who has just turned forty, is a philandering egocentric ego-ridden lout, who by the end of the film sings to God, “I’m all I need”, and who finally comes to realize the type of person he is. Well, we don’t care about him and that’s the problem. The film takes place on a beach where Mr. Newley has gathered his family and belongings, along with a projector and lots of film, where he makes his mother and his children (Mr. Newley’s real-life children) view his life. Since a lot of that includes much randy behavior and a lot of cavorting, it all seems a bit strange. So, we have Mr. Newley narrating the story of his life and showing scenes from same, but we also have Mr. Newley sitting in the shadows “directing” the film we’re watching, along with some critics and producers and writers, who are all bemoaning how strange the film is.
But I do like some of the songs, and there’s just something so wacky about it that it’s sort of mesmerizing to watch. The cast is equally strange and includes Joan Collins as one of Mr. Newley’s wives (as she was in real life), Milton Berle as Good Time Eddie Filth (the Devil), Georgie Jessel as a bad joke-telling harbinger of Death and Stubby Kaye as one of the writers. The cute-as-a-button Connie Kreski plays Mercy Humppe, but her voice is completely replaced by another actress. The lyrics, by the way, are by Herbert Kretzmer, who would go on to write the English lyrics to Les Miz.
Well, I do believe the cleaning lady is here and she has just pointed out to me that my large jasmine bush in front of my house has just fallen to the ground (it has overgrown the wooden thing that it’s attached to and which was attached to my house). Now I’ve got a large bush in my walkway, and one simply can’t have a large bush in one’s walkway because it is unseemly. So, onto our handy-dandy trivia contest question. Here it is:
Somewhere between 1956 and now there was a musical done which had a rather incredible cast and crew associated with it. The musical had a genuine star, a co-star who had appeared in one of the most beloved sci-fi films ever made, several future choreographers in its chorus, and several future Academy Award-winners among its cast and crew. Name the musical and name the future Academy Award winners.
Good luck to one and all and also all and one. Well, I must go deal with the large bush in my walkway, and then I must drive off so that the cleaning lady doesn’t give me the evil eye. I really enjoyed seeing yesterday’s posts about your favorite 20th century novels. That’s one of the reasons I like doing these here notes every day – because we’ve all become one big happy family here at haineshisway.com. So keep telling your friends to come visit because it is our goal to be the most popular site on all the internet. Today’s topic of discussion: Well, we’ve done all sorts of musical topics but not this one – what are your favorite pieces of classical music. I’ll start: Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony (glorious, especially the 3rd Movment, Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, Vaughan-Williams’ 3rd and 5th Symponies, Gershwin’s Concerto in F, Robert Ward’s Piano Concerto, Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Albinoni’s Adagio, Gerard Finzi’s Clarinet Concerto, Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, Howard Hanson’s Romantic Symphony, Ravel’s Valses Nobles et Sentimentales and Pavanne for a Dead Princess, Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Milhaud’s La Boeuf Sur La Toit and Suite Provencal and on and on. Your turn.