Well, dear readers, I just do not understand bugs. I ask you, where else on all the Internet can you read such a sentence. Now, mind you I don’t really want to understand bugs, but bugs are just extremely stupid. Have you noticed how extremely stupid bugs are. I’m talking very philosophically here. I’m talking about crawling bugs and flying bugs and all manner of bugs and bug simply bug me. There are no bugs that I care for except maybe Bugs Bunny. Right now, in my yard flies are proliferating. I go out there and flies are flying and doing comedy routines and just being generally annoying. Last week, hornets had built two nests on my porch. The gardener got rid of them, but then the stupid hornets just flew around like idiots, trying to figure out where the nest went. It took them four days to realize, “Oops, the nests are gone, we may as well go fly away.” I just found a dead bug on the floor of my kitchen. It had to come into the kitchen to die, I guess. Thank goodness, and knock wood, the one thing I haven’t had problems with is ants. Spiders, on the other hand, have been plentiful, especially in the front and back yard. They think they own that real estate, spinning their little silly webs everywhere. Well, if they want to spin their webs they can just start paying rent. Have I really just written an entire paragraph about bugs? Perhaps I should write an ode to a bug:
I think that I shall never see
A bug as lovely as tree
A tree is handsome and stands tall
A bug is ugly – that is all
Speaking of bugs, yesterday was quite a day. For example, I woke up, I jogged, then had to finish re-proofing everything in the book. I got bored of standing and doing it at home, so I took some pages and went to Du-Par’s and had some eggs whilst proofing. Then I came back home and proofed some more and then e-mails started flying and phone calls started flying, all of which had to do with The Brain casting session tomorrow. I finally finished proofing late in the afternoon, then did some errands. Then I went to Mr. Grant Geissman’s and we entered the handful of re-proofing corrections, and then the corrections on the final two stories. We took a cursory glance through everything and it looks swell. We printed it out again, and I’ll take one more tour through it before we lock it. Then I have to write the dedication, then the acknowledgments and that should do it. After we finished, we went to Hamburger Hamlet and ate a quite yummilicious dinner. They have a new salad, which I tried. It’s called a Market Salad, and it has avocado, cashews, glazed walnuts, chicken, dried cranberries, tomatoes and all sorts of lettuce in a cashew vinaigrette dressing. I really didn’t know what to expect, frankly, but it was absolutely wonderful and I ate every bite, and it was a fine repast, unlike my awful poached eggs at Du-Par’s.
Last night, I did manage to watch a motion picture on DVD entitled Body Double, the new Special Edition. I hadn’t seen the film in a while, but it’s as bad as ever. In fact, I’d say it’s one of De Palma’s worst, and that’s really saying something. Is there any other director who’s perceived as a major league director who has made more bad films than Mr. De Palma? I don’t think so. Body Double is doubly infuriating because it’s one of those “thrillers” where the suspense comes from characters behaving so stupidly that you just want to heave your shoe through your television. The poor actors have to do what the writer has written (the writer being De Palma) and it’s just bad. The big surprise is completely obvious from the get-go. Craig Wasson is a lightweight, Deborah Shelton is marginal, and Gregg Henry does what he can. The one thing where Body Double completely succeeds is Melanie Griffith. She’s completely endearing as porno star Holly Body. The Hitchcock Vertigo bits come fast and furious – we also get a lot of Rear Window. De Palma shamelessly rips off the famous 360 degree dolly shot from Vertigo, only here it is completely inane (which he admits in the “documentary”). And then there’s the documentary – another Laurent Bouzereau snoozefest. De Palma has some interesting things to say, but to hear Deborah Shelton speak on and on about how De Palma is a “genius” is enough to make you throw up on the ground. De Palma seems genuinely befuddled as to why this film got terrible reviews and was unsuccessful. Note to De Palma: It’s because the film was/is bad and you can only fool some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time. He does say that this film and Scarface are the films people seem to revere. That doesn’t say a whole lot about the people doing the revering, does it?
What am I, Ebert and Roeper all of a sudden? Why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button whilst I listen to the crickets who are currently bugging me by singing the score to Michael John LaChiusa’s The Wild Party.
Today, I shall be breakfasting and meeting with Miss Joan Ryan. We’re starting to work on her new show. After that, I’ll be doing the one final tour through the formatted book. After that, I must attend to a bunch of stuff that I have been letting slide. Then I may have to go to some club to hear some singer.
I’m thrilled that this weekend is a long weekend. I do have stuff to do all day Friday, but I’m hoping to get some rest and relaxation over the long weekend, and I’m hoping to get caught up on my DVD watching. I also have a lovely Labor Day party to attend at a neighbors.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, get up early, jog, meet, eat, proof, write, and prepare for tomorrow’s auditions. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely posts and let’s hope the bugs stop bugging me.