Well, dear readers, it is Thursday. April Fools! Can you believe we’re in a brand spanking new month? And can you believe that the new month and Passover are happening concurrently. Hence, April Fool’s Day will see a place setting for Elijah, matzo ball soup, herring, chopped liver, gefilte fish, and other foodstuffs appropriate to Passover, such as bitter herbs, and egg dipped in salt water. I think it’s wonderful that we get to feel Foolish and Jewish on the same day, don’t you? In any case, I welcome April with open arms and closed knees and we hope it will be not only Foolish but wonderful, warm, healthy, happy, and successful for one and all and also all and one. Certainly for me it will be a busy little month, what with Miss Merissa Haddad’s club act to stage and then premiere, a book to hopefully finish, and a new alumni association to run and begin making plans for. Plus a lot of other things. We’ll be announcing a new Kritzerland title (a live recording of a New York singer), and hopefully we’ll have a few other little surprises in store. Speaking of surprises, yesterday was the final day of March, and it was certainly a pleasantly pleasant day. For example, I woke up. That was pleasant. I then shipped all CD orders, and there were quite a few to ship. I then had breakfast, and I then came home and over the course of a few hours I wrote about four or five pages (hard to tell because I was adding stuff to earlier pages, and smoothing out other stuff). After that, I toddled off to see Mr. Kevin Spirtas at Barnsdall Park, in concert in a benefit for West Coast Singers. I picked up Miss Adriana Patti – Mr. Spirtas adores Miss Patti. I was originally told the show started at six-thirty, so we got there at five-thirty to pick up the tickets and get good parking. We got great parking, because the show, in fact, started at seven-thirty. We got our tickets and then were ushered into a place where they were having a silent auction. Not much interested me, but there was a big basket filled with $135 worth of chocolate and assorted things. And there was a nice cast-iron skillet in a basket with a spice rack, spices, and four cookbooks.
Whilst perusing the goodies, I ran into my old pal Veanne Cox, whom I hadn’t seen since we recorded Elegies in New York. She was her usual funny, charming self. I saw a few other people I knew, too. After an hour of schmoozing and bidding on silent auctions, everyone went into the theater. The show began with the West Coast Singers doing It’s A Grand Night For Singing. They sounded terrific. Then the host for the evening, someone named Momma, came out and welcomed everyone (greeted with the song Hello, Momma). After another couple of numbers, the singers left, and Mr. Spirtas began his act. It was a much cut-down version of our show. We’d done a one-act version a while back, but this wasn’t that – this was still split over two acts, but just about fifteen minutes shorter. I didn’t love the way some of it flowed, and if it’s to be done this way again, I’ll fix that. The pianist was new, and while he tried his best, he was no John Boswell, and it was all Kevin could do to keep it together. But, Kevin was in good form and the audience (which included his parents) ate him up. At intermission, the silent auction continued. At the end of intermission it ended, and I won the two items I wanted and at really low prices – the skillet and the chocolate basket. The second half of the show moved along at a snappy pace, and then after the show we picked up our winnings, said hello and goodbye to Kevin, and went to drive home. Of course, Hollywood being Hollywood, Hollywood Boulevard was completely closed, beginning at Normandie and going all the way to Highland? Why? Because tomorrow, get this, there is a Thai parade. And that is no April Fool’s joke. And that was the evening. When I got home I continued adding all the details from the research information I got, but then found out that the research information wasn’t exactly exact, so I’ll be getting more exact information today, and then I can fix it all. The research was great, though, and I got to add close to three pages of really fun detail.
Well, why don’t we all not click on the Unseemly Button below? Oops (spoo, spelled backwards) – April Fools!
Today I will be eating nothing but pork products. April Fools! No, today I will be writing some pages (and hopefully at least five of them – I finished a chapter yesterday and would like to get a really good start on the new one), and then at two I’ll be attending a seder at Miss Joan Ryan’s home environment. I will, of course, have a full report. Hopefully, I’ll be home early and can continue writing and smoothing out things.
This week we’ll be staging Miss Merissa Haddad’s act, and I still have to routine the final two numbers. Then we’ll be switching over to the show pianist, Mr. Steven Applegate, since Mr. Boswell can’t play the show itself. Miss Haddad will, of course, be singing songs from the Meltz and Ernest Songbook. April Fools!
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, jog, write, attend a Passover, write, and plotz. 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, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, as we welcome April and shake our various and sundried bootays for no reason whatsoever. And today I shall eat as much as I want and I will lose ten pounds doing so. April Fools!