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August 24, 2006:

A MONTH OF THURSDAYS

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, will someone please explain to me how it can be Thursday? Certainly I can’t explain it to me. I find it all bafflingly baffling, frankly. In any case, it is Thursday so it must be Thursday and there is nothing to be done about it because it’s Thursday. Being Thursday, I suppose that yesterday was Wednesday. Of course, if yesterday was Wednesday, that means that today must be Thursday. This is starting to feel like a Samuel Beckett play, isn’t it? Speaking of Samuel Beckett, yesterday (which was Wednesday) was a day in which I never stopped going. For example, I got up, jogged right away, did some stuff that needed doing, and then headed to a lunch meeting with publicist Steve Moyer. That little meeting ended up being two-and-a-half hours long, mostly discussing The Brain From Planet X, which he’ll be working on. After the meeting (most of the afternoon was already gone), I had to hie myself to various and sundried places to take care of some various and sundried business, and by the time I got home the day was done or, to put it another way, done was the day. I never had a chance to write one word of the new play, and it’s beginning to become apparent that I’m not going to be able to write one word of the new play until next week, at which point I will write like the wind and complete at least twenty pages or more. I’ve just got to wrap up the new book – I get my final set of corrections today and they all have to be entered. Then, tomorrow I’m hoping to get together with Mr. Grant Geissman for the actual design of the book itself. I really want to finish everything by the end of next week, so it can go off to the publishers. Once the book is formatted, I have to go through it with a fine tooth comb. Have you ever gone through a book with a fine tooth comb? More importantly, if the answer is yes, just what were you doing with a fine tooth comb anyway? I know longer have a clew as to what the HELL I’m going on about, do you? I think it’s because we’re having a month of Thursdays. Every time I turn around, it’s Thursday. Damn them, damn them all to hell.

Last night I did manage to watch two count them two motion pictures on DVD. The first motion picture was a documentary entitled Unfinished Business, about the Japanese internment camps during World War II. This is not a subject I knew much about, so I found this 1984 documentary quite compelling. Even just watching the DVD it becomes instantly apparent that the internment of Japanese Americans during that time is one of the most shameful episodes in this country’s history (and would be followed by an equally shameful HUAC) and something the government should be completely ashamed of. Sadly, I don’t know that they are. I do wish the DVD had some sort of follow up extras so we could find out more information about what’s happened in the intervening years, but it doesn’t. I do highly recommend this DVD for fans of documentaries (it’s one of three that I recently picked up). I then watched the second motion picture on DVD, which was entitled A Canterbury Tale, a film of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It’s up to their usual high standards, and quite beautiful to behold, but I don’t hold it in the same esteem as I do A Matter Of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, I Know Where I’m Going, or The Small Back Room (the latter being one of their best films and one of their most unappreciated). That’s not to say that A Canterbury Tale isn’t a fine motion picture – it is, and it has lovely performances, and gorgeous photography shot on location in Kent. The source material for the transfer isn’t perfect, but it’s fine and nice and sharp. The Criterion DVD has an entire second disc of extras, too. One very interesting thing that’s included on the first disc, is the prologue and epilogue of the American release version. Apparently the film was a huge flop in England, and Mr. Powell re-edited it for America and shot the new prologue and epilogue, which features Kim Hunter (otherwise not in the film). There’s a long opening narration now, done to drawings – it’s pointless, but has some amusing things in it. I don’t think it’s pointed out anywhere in the packaging, but the narrator is easily recognizable as Raymond Massey.

Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because, after all, it’s Thursday and that is simply what one does on a Thursday.

Today will be a non-stop day for the likes of me, starting off with a breakfast meeting with Alet Taylor, to continue our beginnings on her show. Directly after that, I must pick up the proofed manuscript and then come home, where I will sit like so much fish and enter all of the corrections and fixes. That will take me all afternoon, and then I have a dinner to do. Someday, I’d love to have a massage – boy, do I need one.

Have I mentioned that it’s Thursday? Have I mentioned that this entire month has been a month of Thursdays? That’s August for you. And can you believe that we are about to enter the final week of August? My head swims just thinking about it.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, jog, meet, eat, pick up a manuscript, correct, fix, and eat again. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your all-time favorite films about World War II. My absolute all-time favorite is The Best Years Of Our Lives, an absolutely brilliant and moving film that is one of my top-ten movies. I’m very interested to hear your choices. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we? We shall.

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