Well, dear readers, it’s the last day of 2006. There’s only one day you can say that about and this is it – Sunday, December 31st. Tomorrow, it will be a brand spanking New Year – 2007 and I, for one, am hoping it will be a fine and lovely year filled with high hopes, happiness, health, wealth, and creativity, not necessarily in that order. I don’t have much ruminating left to do about 2006 – basically, the last four months of the year were spent doing The Brain From Planet X, and, as you’ve read, I had a great time doing it, and loved directing and staging a big musical on a big stage for the first time in years. The highlights for me were hearing elmore’s orchestrations for the first time, our band, many in our company, and hearing the audience reaction for the first time and seeing so much of the show work really well. The only real downside is that so many people I wanted to see it were not available, out of town, or just too damn lazy to get off their complacent butt cheeks to take a short drive. I have a long memory, baby, and the people that fall into the latter category, well, I just hope they never call on me to be supportive because I shall just sit on MY complacent butt cheeks and laugh and laugh and just when I think I won’t be able to laugh anymore, I shall laugh again. We also had our casting sessions for the kid show, which were disappointing – we have a good group, but I would like to have seen a lot more people, which is why it’s necessary to have a good casting director. Of course, I also began a new novel, but, while my muse and I really liked the idea, I’m afraid I got off on the wrong foot and while some of the first twenty pages were okay, my muse felt I should wait until after the first of the year to start it, and she was totally correct. We’ve talked about it since, and I’ve told her the new way I’m going with the beginning and she loves it – so I’m probably going to settle on this being the book of 2007, a mystery, with a character who can, if it all works, become part of a series. That said, I’ve got a couple of other ideas, and if one of them seems stronger, I may just go for it instead. Whichever it is, I’ll begin it this week. And that was 2006 – a strange, frustrating, wacky, and sometimes surprising and wonderful year. It was also a year in which I gave up on a friend, reconnected with someone I hadn’t spoken to since 1965, and made some new friends.
Yesterday, I had to get up early and leave the home environment so she of the Evil Eye could clean it all up. I shipped the last of this year’s packages (I already have three new orders so I’m starting off 2007 with SALES, baby), did some errands, and then came home, where I relaxed and smelled the coffee and the roses and the bratwurst. I also managed to watch two count them two motion pictures on DVD. The first motion picture on DVD was entitled Terror Street and is part of the Hammer Films early 50s series of low-budget film noirs. They’re not great noirs, at least Terror Street isn’t, but it was competent, and starred one of my favorite actors, Dan Duryea. It was only eighty-two minutes long, it had a fairly standard plot written by the usually-better Steve Fisher (I Wake Up Screaming), and I sort of enjoyed it. These Brit productions always had a US star who was slumming for either a true leading role or some extra cash. I did watch two-thirds of another Hammer noir, this one starring Zachary Scott (there are two films per DVD), but after seventy minutes I gave up – it was just too nothing to care about. I then watched the second motion picture on DVD, which was entitled The VIPs, starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Orson Welles, Margaret Rutherford, Maggie Smith, Rod Taylor, Elsa Martinelli, Louis Jourdan and many others. It’s one of those glossy, Grand Hotel type films, and it’s one of the best in my opinion (IMO, in Internet lingo). It’s a type of film they just don’t make anymore, which makes it all the more fun to see. The script is by Terence Rattigan, it’s directed by Anthony Asquith, scored by Miklos Rozsa – I mean, what’s not to like. Yes, it goes on too long, and some scenes are very repetitious, but it’s grandly entertaining. Miss Rutherford steals every scene she’s in and she won an Academy Award for her thievery. Equally wonderful, however, is Maggie Smith as Miss Mead. But everyone is having a field day and only Miss Taylor seems awkward, which I feel about many of her performances. Seeing the film again brought back a really interesting memory that I always forget about.
Back in 1972 or so, Franklin Levy, and agent at CMA, had seen me in Jimmy Shine at LACC. We struck up a friendship, and he found out I also wrote. I showed him my musical version of To Kill A Mockingbird – within weeks he had a major regional theater willing to do it, and Don Murray agreeing to play Atticus. Pretty heady stuff. Mr. Levy signed me and we were all set to go until they actually tried to clear the rights with Miss Harper Lee, who simply refused – wouldn’t even look at it, just didn’t like the idea of her novel as a musical. I think she was wrong, and I think she might have changed her mind had she actually looked at the script and heard the score, but that’s another story. Mr. Levy then suggested I begin writing something that we actually had the rights to – and he had this idea of The VIPs as a musical. He got the rights, and I started work on it, writing five or six songs, but it became apparent that it wasn’t a good idea and we gave up on it. I wonder if I have any of that material anywhere. I have a vague memory of how I opened the show and the opening number, and I have a vague memory of a song for the Louis Jourdan character, but that’s about it. Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that just too too? The transfer on the new DVD is okay – perfectly acceptable, but it could be better.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because by gum and by golly and buy bonds we need to prepare for our annual New Year’s Rockin’ Eve – the place to be tonight.
I forgot to ruminate on one other thing I’m quite proud of that I accomplished in the year 2006: My thirty pound weight loss, seven of which I must say I gained back during this holiday season (but I shall lose it quickly, I can assure you). I did this by starting to jog again. I started sporadically, but after April 1st, it became a daily thing, and I’ve only really missed for the week and a few days I was in New York, and a couple of other days.
Today, I shall be doing nothing but watching DVDs, preparing some interesting foodstuffs for this evening’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve Do here at haineshisway.com. I love our New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and I encourage everyone to come and partay. And at midnight California time, we will drop the haineshisway.com ball and we will shout Happy New Year, and sip champagne (yes, Virginia, I’ve got some here). I will also do what I do every New Year’s Eve – I turn off all the lights, go into my bedroom environment and I contemplate my life as I know it – the good, the bad, and the ugly. And I try to figure out where I can improve, what I can do to make myself better, and what I’m proud of. It’s a very positive thing for me, and then I have my little list of a few things that I want to definitely accomplish in the New Year. That’s my routine, and I’m sticking to it.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, jog, relax, watch DVDs and then attend the best New Year’s Eve Do on all the Internet or anywhere else for that matter. 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 post about them. So, whatever’s on your mind spit it out and we’ll all post about it. Let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings as we ring out the old year and ring in the New Year with great enthusiasm and high hopes.