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June 10, 2005:

TO BE FRANK

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, to be frank, it’s Friday. Wasn’t that frank? Or was it marvin? And do I really want to be frank OR marvin? Perhaps I’d like to be larry. But you don’t hear anyone saying, well, dear readers, to be larry, it’s Friday. No, it’s always frank, damn his eyes. Frankly, I’m tired of trying to be frank. I shall not be frank one more minute. Today, to be steve, is my last day to be frank. If anyone has a clew as to what the HELL I’m going on about, please keep it to yourself, because, to be norman, we do like to be in the dark regarding what the HELL I’m going on about. What a lovely first paragraph this is. I feel it has verve and jollity, like a gazelle on a skateboard wearing pink tights. Yesterday was another non-stop day. I spent most of the morning either on the phone or typing up things for the two CD packages. Around lunch time, I wrote four pages of the short story I’m working on. Then I had to pick up some packages, do some errands, and then I came back to the home environment and wrote some more. Then I had a meeting with a faculty member from LACC. It was quite interesting, and we shall see where it leads. He’s going on vacation for ten days, and when he returns we will have another meeting. I’ve been asked to do something for the drama department, but I’m still not sure whether I want to or not. I have asked them to think about something in return, and it will depend on their reaction to that. We shall see what we shall see. I then had a long working dinner with Miss Tammy Minoff, who brought along her laptop computer so we could work as we ate. I got an update on our casting session for Saturday – we’re currently seeing around forty people. It will probably be more than that by the time Saturday rolls around. Isn’t that exciting? Isn’t that just too too?

Last night, I watched a motion picture on DVD entitled Dance With Me, Henry, the final film of Abbott and Costello. After completing the film, the team broke up. One wishes they could have gone out with something better. Dance With Me, Henry is almost consistently unfunny and filled with the kind of bathos that kills comedy teams. Only once or twice does the famous Abbott and Costello humor shine through, and when it does one can’t help but laugh out loud. For me, the film is mostly of interest because a great deal of it was shot at Kiddyland, the amusement park that used to be at the corner of Beverly Blvd. and La Cienega (now the home of the Beverly Connection), which I wrote about in the Kritzer books. It’s a real trip down memory lane, seeing all the rides and games and food stands. I only wish they’d had some shots taken from the front, even an establishing shot would have been nice, but everything takes place within the park. The film runs a brisk eighty minutes, but would have been better at sixty-five minutes. There are some interesting actors in the show – Rusty Hamer, Mary Wickes, Richard Reeves, Ted de Corsia, and Robert Shayne (Inspector Henderson from the George Reeves’ TV Superman show). The movie did, at least, have a huge tie-in with the hit title song, which was, if memory serves, sung by Georgia Gibbs on the hit single. The transfer, while very sharp, is in the incorrect ratio of 1:37. The headroom is beyond belief, and heaven forbid that MGM/UA could be bothered to matte the film to its proper 1:85 ratio. After all, that would require pushing a button, and that seems to be much too difficult for MGM/UA, overall the worst major studio releasing DVDs (despite the occasional good special edition title).

Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because, to be ed, I’m bored with this here section.

I must try to wrap up all the booklet details today so that we can have stuff to proof by Monday. The covers have been approved, as have the inlay cards. I’ve also settled on the pressing plant and will be delivering our masters there next week. Next, we’ve got to start setting up our accounts at online stores and certain specialty shops around the country. I’m hoping our very own Mr. David Levy will help do that.

I’m hoping that aside from running a few errands and attending to some last-minute packaging details, that I can get in some really good writing time. We also have to settle on what scenes we’re going to read at the audition, and Tammy has to have those Xeroxed today.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, not only be frank, I must be zeke and pete and even ricardo, I must drive about in my motor car, I must write, I must do a little this’a and a little that’a, with an emphasis on the latter. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is currently in your CD player, and your DVD/video player? I’ll start – CD, a new Ennio Morricone compilation, an import CD with some strange singer. She’s not great, but Mr. Morricone’s orchestrations are always a treat to listen to, and a lot of these themes are getting lyrics for the first time – some in English, and some in some language I can’t identify. DVD, Ernst Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait, from Criterion. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we? To be frank, we shall.

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