Well, dear readers, can you believe it’s the weekend already? I believe some dear readers began the weekend yesterday, as we had an astonishingly low number of posts, after the giddy high numbers of the prior two days. We must maintain our giddy high numbers because then we will be the most popular site on all the internet and we will have parties and eat cheese slices and ham chunks and perhaps even shrimp bits on toast, and we will dance the Hora and the Monkey and we will wear gay party hats and strew confetti about as if it were spaghetti. I love strewn spaghetti confetti, don’t you? It is simply too too. Even if you don’t necessarily want to respond to the day’s topic of discussion, you can still post about anything your heart desires.
Last night I went with my friends the Geissmans, and we ended up dining at a restaurant in Encino called Benihana. Benihana has been around for quite some time, and it used to be quite a novelty to go there, which I did with some regularity in the early seventies. I was expensive then, it is expensive now, and the food is just as ordinary. But one doesn’t go there for the food, really, one goes for the show. For each and every table in the restaurant comes with its own chef, who cooks your very own food right on your table. That does mean that if there are only two or three or four in your party that you end up sitting with people you don’t know. There were five of us and we still had two people we didn’t know at our table. We still didn’t know these two young girls by the time the meal was over, because they never once acknowledged our presence. In fact, one of them talked the entire time, from the moment they sat down to the end of the meal over an hour later. She never shut up, blab blab blab (balb balb balb, spelled backwards), all the livelong night. The first problem with Benihana is that there is always a half-hour wait or longer. Last night we waited forty-five minutes. The waiting is a Benihana “thing”. I only endured it because I was with a group of people – otherwise, I never wait in restaurants. If there’s longer than a ten-minute wait, I leave. That is my “thing”.
In any case, our chef was lively and did many amusing tricks with our food. The food, as I remembered correctly, was bland and fairly tasteless. When I got home I ate a package of M&M caramels (a new flavor to me, quite nice) and that at least gave my taste buds a little nudge. I then strew some confetti as if it were spaghetti, and I did the Ann-Margret dance to Got A Lot of Livin’ To Do in my cut-off jeans.
I then watched a DVD of a highly regarded film from last year. Before I tell you about it, why don’t we all strew a little confetti like spaghetti and click on that Unseemly Button below?
The film I watched last night is entitled Ghost World. I hadn’t read much about it, other than several critics’ headlines of “One of the best of the year” “Astonishing” – plus I’d seen some posts about it on the internet, which also raved about the uniqueness of it and how it was a very good adaptation of a comic book. Well, I don’t know what I was expecting really, but it wasn’t what I got. First of all, when I see a title like “Ghost World” and I hear “adapted from a comic book” I somehow think “superhero” or “superpowers” or something in that realm. Looking at the cover art, I thought, well maybe the two girls go around battling ghosts or something. Of course, the film is a teen angst film and has nothing to do with anything that I thought it would. It’s quirky and sometimes fitfully amusing and I liked all the actors. But at close to two hours it is too long by twenty minutes. At the beginning it was sort of reminding me of The World of Henry Orient, and when I saw that movie poster on Thora Birch’s wall, I knew that film was probably somewhat of an inspiration. Anyway, it’s a perfectly okay film – but when I read those kinds of kudos I just sit and scratch my head and think, “Did I just see the same film they did”? The DVD looks and sounds swell.
What am I, Ebert and Roeper all of a sudden? Tonight I am going to a benefit at my alma mater, Hamilton High School. It’s being put together by some terrific people, so I know it will be fun. Scott Bakula (whose child or children attend the school) is producing, I think, along with Paul Kreppel (who is in our Tourette’s benefit). Lots of interesting people taking part and I will have a full report for you on the ‘morrow.
It’s annoying when a film score (or theater score) that you really like doesn’t make it to an album. These days it doesn’t happen as much, as mostly everything gets recorded, both film and theater. But that wasn’t the case in days of old. Anyway, I’d always regretted that there’d been no soundtrack release of Henry Mancini’s wonderful score to Silver Streak, that fun Hitchcock-pastiche with Gene Wilder. It was one of those scores that just sticks with you and which you can even hum years later. Well, thanks to Intrada Records it’s finally out on CD and it’s a total delight. Mr. Mancini has never really had any of his classic soundtracks (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Charade, Hatari, etc.) out – those albums were all “pop” rerecordings for the most part and not the actual dramatic scores to the films. A pity, but who could argue when his albums sold millions of copies? The actual scores to those films are really wonderful, and maybe someday some adventurous soul will get into the vaults and release them for the first time. Of all his later scores, Silver Streak is my favorite. It’s filled with his wonderful sense of melody and the main title (with its train-like rhythmic structure) is one of his best.
Well, we all know what today is, don’t we? Today is our Unseemly Trivia Contest. We had no winner last week, so let’s do something about that, shall we? Not that I’m going to make the question any easier – that simply wouldn’t be cricket. The truth is out there, just like in The X Files. You must use your noggins. And you must send in a guess, even if it’s a funny one or just taking a stab in the dark. You might just end up the Highest Winner and then you will get a sparkling prize. So, here’s today’s trivia question:
In the Tony Award-winning musical Nine, there were many wildly talented ladies in the Broadway company. But only one of them had a charted rock-and-roll single. She recorded it with a friend of hers under the names Lyme and Cybelle, and it reached #65. By the time of Nine, this performer was not only not called Cybelle, but she’d even change her real name. Name the performer as she was credited in Nine. Extra points to those who can name her partner, Lyme (he went on to have a successful rock career of his own). Extra extra points for those who can come up with her real name. Remember, you must e-mail me your answers (just use the Ask BK link) and not post them to the site. You have until Monday evening at midnight. Good luck to one and all and also all and one.
Well, it is time for me to get cracking, but what shall I crack? My toes? My neck? My knuckles? My back? My front? I love to crack, dear readers, it’s so relaxing. In any case, I must get in my handy-dandy automobile and go do the things I do. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite classic pop albums? I’ll start: Randy Newman’s Sail Away, The Beatles’ The White Album, Rupert Holmes’ Widescreen, Carly Simon’s Torch, Carol King’s Tapestry, Elton John’s Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road, Burt Bacharach’s Reach Out (Yes, Virginia, it was a pop album), Haper’s Bizarre (one of my favorite albums of all-time), Rickie Lee Jones’ Pop Pop, any of Dionne Warwick’s early albums, but especially the one with “Here I Am” on it (maybe it was called Here I Am, now that I think of it), and many many others. But for now, it’s your turn.