Well, dear readers, here it is, another Friday and another weekend cometh. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, not only does the iceman cometh, but the weekend also cometh. This week just flew by didn’t it, like a gazelle doing a triple lutz. And since I have to be at a mixing session at nine, I may as well dive right into the notes. Speaking of a triple lutz (and weren’t we?), yesterday was a day. My day started early with the musical theater workshop (MTW). We didn’t do anything today except have the students get their songs put onto tape. My pal, the wonderful pianist, John Boswell, did the honors – he’s an amazing sight reader and transposer. There are some interesting song choices, and I am looking forward to hearing some singing on Tuesday and Thursday. After class, I hurried back to the Valley and went to the home environment of Miss Linda Purl. We rough blocked everything that wasn’t blocked, plus we worked on quite a bit of the patter, which is shaping up very nicely. Both acts seem to have a good flow to them, but I won’t really know just how good until we’re on our feet next Friday, with all the patter, and all the songs. We got the redo of the special material lyric and it’s much better – very funny, and a good point of view. Tomorrow, after I get home from the show, I will have to sit for an hour and smooth out the patter that isn’t smooth. Then, on Saturday we have one go-through of as much as we can do, and then Linda leaves town and we don’t work again until next Friday, the day before the show. There are shows on both Saturday and Sunday, so I’ll be missing both of those Deceit performances. After rehearsal, I picked up a package, and then ate some lunch, whilst attending to details around the home environment, and just about finishing act one of the musical. As soon as that’s finished, I’ll be diving into act two – the act David has been working on. I need to smooth out the opening six pages, which will then make his new pages work. I’m hoping we’ll have something rough in the next two weeks – something we can at least do a read-through of. Then we’ll make changes and then we’ll start rehearsing. Crazy, no? I then attended a performance of the play – good acting but low energy for a lot of act one and almost all of act two, and some very sloppy blocking in a key scene, which really disturbed me more than almost anything. I was quite terse with the actors because at this point in the run nothing like that should be happening in that key scene. It was a head scratcher. The very end of the act was strong though, and we had our third walkout during the final moments of the act. This time, it wasn’t an elderly lady, it was a young man, which was really surprising. It was actually our stage manager’s son-in-law. Not sure what his deal is, but he was very upset by the goings on and did not return for act two. I guess that means we did our job very well in terms of the end of the act being extremely visceral. I then came home and sat on my couch like so much fish.
I do have to hurry because it’s another up at seven day for me and I do need my beauty rest, don’t I? One interesting thing happened – while I was watching act two with my mind wandering because of the low vocal energy, I heard one of the actors say the line, “Speaking of cautious and clever”, and I realized that I’d forgotten all about the comedy team of Cautious and Clever – Harry Cautious and Barney Clever to be exact. They were quite popular on radio in the 40s, and were beloved for their brilliant routine, I Ate A Cookie. What the HELL am I talking about? Don’t I need my beauty sleep. Quick, let’s all click on the Unseemly Button below because the weekend cometh and today cometh and I must soon goeth.
There is a big book fair this weekend and I shall definitely be attending at some point tomorrow, or maybe Sunday morning. For the first time, it’s in a new venue, in Century City at the Century Plaza Hotel. I have a pass around here somewhere, which I must find. It’s the year’s biggest fair and I know many of the dealers, so it should be fun. It’s a shame Pogue won’t be here, since we always had such a good time at these events.
Today I shall be at an audio mix for the entire day. I arrive at nine and we get everything prepared for the mix. Then our voice talent arrives at ten (Miss Allyce Beasley), and we do her voiceovers from ten to eleven. Then we spend the rest of the day doing the mix for both spots. I’ve already been given permission to go to a second day if necessary, but I’m hoping we don’t have to. There shouldn’t be much to it – just laying in the right voiceovers, and then adding a few sound effects here and there. The music is already in the spot, so that part is easy. We’re supposed to wrap at five and if we do I’ll have time to come home and relax for ninety minutes before heading over to the theater for the evening performance. I certainly hope we have a bigger crowd that last night, and I’m sure we will. Parking is horrendous right now, because Bea Arthur’s show just opened last night and has got sold out houses through Sunday. I may sneak in to see a little of her show.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, mix, I must attend a play and I must hope that they have Internet access at the post production house so that I can post during the day. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is currently in your CD player, and your DVD/video player? I’ll start – CD, Philippe Rombi’s beautiful score to Joyeux Noel, an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film, and then Christina Saffron Ashford’s CD, which Matt gave me last night. DVD, Superman. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, and I do hope to be able to log on during the day – if not, keep the home fries burning until my returning.