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April 30, 2006:

THE FINAL THROES OF APRIL

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, here we are, in the final throes of April. Not the final throws of April, mind you, no, here we are in the final throes of April. Might I just ask where in tarnation did April go? All I know is that four weeks ago we were performing the final performance of Deceit. All I know is that one week later I had an epiphany sitting at the piano with Miss Tammy Minoff, which led to the writing of a new play, a new play which I finished this past Thursday. Lest you think anything untoward was going on at the piano, get your minds out of the gutter – it was a small epiphany and it just sparked an idea for a play, gave me the idea to write a 60s-style comedy (and the piano epiphany is in the play). All I know is that I also edited the video of Deceit, and all I know is it seems like I did a thousand other things. And suddenly we’re heading into May. I mean, holy moley on rye, it’s almost summer. It’s just crazymaking, isn’t it? In any case, yesterday I had an exhausting nine hour day in the editing room, doing the almost-final sweetening of the Deceit video. And we created a rather great-looking set of main titles for it, too. So, all that’s left now is for the editor to finish letterboxing the video, adding a couple of black video mattes to mask out a handful of shots where seats are visible (otherwise, the entire video is miraculously “within” the set – no audience visible), and then letting a proper audio engineer do a final quick smoothing out pass on all the audio. After that, the editor uprezzes the picture and the thing is put onto digi beta and we’re done with this aspect of the project. We’re pretty much decided on putting it out on Kritzerland – our first DVD, and we’re very excited about it.

Last night, I watched the PBS Great Performances concert of South Pacific. It wasn’t the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen, and the amount of time people were “on book” was sometimes disconcerting. But I enjoyed Miss Reba McIntyre very much, and I liked Mr. Brian “Stokes” Mitchell’s singing, if not his “French” accent. Everyone else was fine, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed Alec Baldwin’s Luther Billis. But what came through loud and clear was the absolutely astonishing Rodgers and Hammerstein score, gloriously played by the Orchestra of St. Lukes in its original Robert Russell Bennett orchestrations – with no help needed from any young turk “modern” orchestrators. The brilliance of said orchestrations was breathtaking, actually. Walter Bobbie’s “production” was a bit of a bore, but the score was the thing, and I’ll be watching it again when it comes out on DVD, just to hear those glorious orchestrations of the glorious score well-sung and well-played. As I said in a post last night, the score to South Pacific puts any modern Broadway score to shame – it’s one brilliant song after another – even the throwaways are memorable and wonderful.

Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I’m telling you that today is my day to kick off my shoes and lay around the house like a gazelle on a chaise lounge.

I may as well enjoy the end of April, because May is going to be a very busy month, most especially trying to get the new musical on its feet and ready for our May 21st first performance. I may try to start a new novel if I can get my brain into gear and settle on which idea I’d like to try (I have several). Plus, I’ll begin prepping the book of short stories, and we’ll be setting a release date for a couple of new CDs.

Today, I shall do nothing whatsoever. I shall sit around in my pantaloons, watching DVDs, maybe taking another read-through of my play to see if I want to do anything else to it before we read it tomorrow night (about which more later), and then I have to get copies of the play for the reading. Then, tonight at seven I shall be supping with the lovelier than lovely Miss Jennifer Rush.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do nothing but what I wish to do and I wish to do as little as possible. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to discuss them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, as we contemplate being in the final throes of April.

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