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October 24, 2009:

ONE OF THOSE DAYS

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, yesterday was one of those days. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, yesterday was one of those days and I am glad it is over and done with and am hoping to have no more of those sorts of days for the next five years. I was awakened by an early telephonic call from Lauren Rubin canceling our lunch. That was fine. Then I answered some e-mails and was a little surprised to see no orders. I was surprised until I opened an e-mail from someone that said they couldn’t access the Kritzerland site. I immediately went to the site only to receive one of those nauseating “Safari cannot connect to the server because it cannot find the address” error messages. Even though I knew it was not the problem, I went to the website of the company that handles my domain names and ascertained that the Kritzerland site is paid for for the next four years. I then wrote Mr. Mark Bakalor about it but since he hadn’t responded to any of my e-mails sent earlier this week about other issues, I also left a message on his cell phone. Meanwhile, I’d had it, and called the company that handles my domain names and spent an hour on the phone with them about moving the Kritzerland site and having them host it. They came up with a price for unlimited storage and traffic that was more than reasonable, and I purchased three years of hosting. They gave me the details that I needed for the Kritzerland designer to move the site, and since I have a few dormant domain names, we decided to first set it up at one of those so the site wouldn’t have down time, and then, once set up and tested, we’d move it to the correct address, which would only cause a minimum of downtime and hopefully in the overnight hours. But my designer was at work and only had a small window of time to do anything – he ended up using that window to talk on the phone with the company and set up everything, but he didn’t have time to actually do anything – the move will happen at some point soon. Bakalor responded to my e-mail (which he only knew about because of the voice mail) by saying he hadn’t gotten any of my earlier e-mails. I responded telling him what was what and asking him to do something for this here site – that e-mail went without response, as did a second voice mail which basically reiterated what the e-mail said. Very upsetting. He’s away somewhere, but I’ve got to figure out a different way of doing this site because if we have a problem there’s no one to fix it and frankly this site, which was designed in 2001 is a dinosaur in terms of its software and how it works. It’s time for a major change, and I’ll be having some meetings about it over the next few weeks. In the midst of all that I had to drive out to Burbank and pick up some tapes, and then the Brent Barrett covers that he’ll be signing, and then I grabbed a sandwich at Jerry’s Deli – sandwich and fries were unexceptional, which was par for the course. I came home and packaged up about ten orders and then went to the UPS Store and dropped them in their mail holder (they take stuff to the post office every afternoon) and I picked up two packages. Then I had to ship Brent his covers for an obscenely high overnight rate via Fed Ex, the last time I will EVER use that service, then I went to the bank, and then I came home. Obviously I had no time to jog and by the time I got home it was already three-thirty. I did some stuff on the computer and had some telephonic calls and then did a two-hour work session with the lyricist of the long musical. Then I went to Gelson’s and got a little snack, came home, and finally sat on my couch like so much fish and ate said snack.

Last night, I finished watching a motion picture on DVD entitled Homicidal, a film by William Castle, his finest hour. There is something sublimely weird about this film and I really enjoy it every time I see it. Most of that can be attributed to Miss Joan Marshall, here billed as Jean Arless. If you haven’t seen the film you might want to skip to the next paragraph – you have been warned – SPOILERS AHEAD. Miss Marshall plays a dual role – one of the weirdest ever filmed because in essence she’s playing a woman named Emily who’s married to a strange man named Warren, whom she also plays. But the conceit is that Warren is dressing up as Emily – well, you see how confusing it is. The actress is playing a man who’s playing a woman. The violence in the first murder is really still pretty shocking. And then there’s the Castle gimmick – as a character approaches the house where certain terror is waiting, a clock appears on the screen and you hear Castle’s voice saying you’ve got forty-five seconds to leave the theater and get your money back – but to do so you have to go stand in the Coward’s Corner in the lobby. At the end of the forty-five seconds the film resumes and we get the reveal when Emily removes her wig to reveal that she’s Warren. When I saw the film way back when no one knew that it was the same person – it was a gasp-inducing moment. Part of that is a little tomfoolery on Castle’s part, by having an actor dub Miss Marshall’s voice when she’s playing Warren, but it’s no more of a cheat than Hitchcock having Jeanette Nolan dub “Mother’s” voice for Psycho. The film has a terrific score by Hugo Friedhofer, and the transfer is very nice.

Joan Marshall had a very interesting career – she didn’t go far after this film, appearing in a few other films and doing some television shows. She met and married film director Hal Ashby. In the early 1970s he would make her tell him stories of her life before their marriage – I gather she was reluctant, but he pressed her and she did and those stories became the basis for the film Shampoo. In any case, her performance in Homicidal is really good.

After I finished it was about eight-thirty and I was still so miffed about not having done the long jog that I went out and did it. I got back around nine-thirty, listened to some CDs, mellowed out, answered more e-mails, and that was that.

Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because she of the Evil Eye will be here all too soon and I need my beauty sleep.

I’m hoping that we will solve the mystery of the disappearing sleeping shorts this morning. I also intend to do another long jog, then I’ll have to kill some time, and then I’ve got to read the latest draft of the long musical and return some telephonic calls that need returning that I just never had time to get to yesterday. I shall then eat something fun, and then I shall try to do nothing but relax – the dinner that was maybe going to happen will be happening next Wednesday – dinner with Mr. Bert I. Gordon.

Tomorrow, we have a LACCTAA meeting, and then there’s going to be a little get-together of film music fans at Genghis Cohen, so I’ll be going to that, since doing it there was my idea. I’ll try to get Mr. Nick Redman to tag along, just for the fun of it.

This week will be very busy with work sessions galore, getting together with Ted Detweiler about his act, and having another meeting with La Graae, along with a few meals and whatnot.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do the long jog, I must kill some time, I must read a new draft of a long musical, I must eat something amusing, and I must relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What would you see is the single weirdest film you’ve ever seen – one that you just thought supremely odd and that gave you the creeps – David Lynch’s Eraserhead would be a prototype, but I’m sure we’ll come up with lots weirder. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, as we bid a fond farewell to one of those days.

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