Well, dear readers, I would just like to know one thing: How can it be Friday when it was just Monday? I tell you, this week has flown by, like a gazelle reciting Joyce Kilmer’s Trees. I wonder if Val Kilmer ever recited Joyce Kilmer’s Trees? I wonder if the trees ever recited Joyce Kilmer? There are so very many things I wonder and yet I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree. Then again, I think that I shall never wish a poem as lovely as a fish. Yes, I am feeling very poetic today and all thanks to the gazelle reciting Joyce Kilmer’s Trees. Have you ever heard the sequel to Joyce Kilmer’s Trees? It’s called Joyce Kilmer’s Knees. I think that I shall never see an ear as lovely as a knee. You know, if anyone has a clew as to what the HELL I’m talking about, drop me a line. Speaking of a line, yesterday was another day that just was filled to the brim. I got up early, did revisions on the previous day’s writing, did the long jog, answered e-mails, then wrote three and a half pages. Then I had to leave to have a lunch meeting at the French Marketplace. The meeting went very well and it does look like I’ll be flown to New York in early May to oversee the cabaret act I directed late last year. So, that will be fun. I then picked up a couple of packages, and then I came home and wrote another four pages, finishing the chapter I was on and beginning a new chapter. By then it was already seven o’clock, so I went and sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched a motion picture on DVD entitled Hamlet 2. I’d heard it was absolutely hilarious. So imagine my surprise to find that I did not laugh once during the entire eighty-nine minute running time. It’s everything I hate about today’s comedy. It’s writers who think they’re being very funny – you can just hear them howling with laughter at their lines, only the lines aren’t funny because the characters speaking them are stupid and caricatures. They want us to somehow take the story seriously, and yet no one speaks or behaves like a real human being. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. There’s a line in screenwriting – obey the rules of the universe you create. It’s a line that every screenwriter should learn, but today, sadly, they don’t. I know people who thought the performance numbers in Hamlet 2 were brilliant, but again, not a smile from me because I didn’t give a crap about any of it. You can tell these people loved Waiting For Guffman, but they don’t understand what makes Christopher Guest and especially that film work. I was happy to see that they couldn’t shove this thing down people’s throats – not even the totally undiscerning movie audiences of today were having this film – it was a total box-office dud, losing every cent that Focus Features spent on it (they paid ten million dollars after seeing it at Sundance – a bidding war yet). The film grossed less than five million dollars, and when you add prints and advertising, buh bye money. I gather that Steve Coogan is well thought of, and he was okay, but the movie was just so unrelentingly stupid, as was his character, that I have no idea how good he could be if given the right film. I can tell you that the fourth time I had to look at this guy’s naked ASS I was ready to hurl my shoe through the screen. The film is poorly directed, and it’s hard to tell if the transfer is good because the photography is so mundane. For me, a total waste of time.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below whilst we all recite Joyce Kilmer’s Trees in Bb.
Today, I shall do the long jog, I shall write, I shall eat something amusing, and then I shall relax, because I need to relax and smell the roses or the coffee or the baked lasagna.
Tomorrow, I may have to go to the editing room and look at the rough cut of the Kevin and Sean video. That is not the way I wanted to spend my Saturday, but since she of the Evil Eye will be here, I may go from ten to one and then come home and write and have the rest of the day to myself. I promised myself I would not do anything other than write this weekend, and I wasn’t even going to go crazy writing.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do the long jog, write, eat something amusing, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is currently in your CD player, and your DVD/video player? I’ll start – CD, various and sundried soundtracks. DVD, maybe I’m going to start watching The Prisoner TV show, and then I want to watch The Anniversary, with Bette Davis, and I also have Goodbye, Mr. Chips here. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, and please don’t forget the fact that you shall NEVER see a poem as lovely as a tree, a knee, or me.