Well, dear readers, on this very date in 2001 a website was born. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, on this very date in 2001 a website was born. Sometimes a star is born but in this case a website was born. And that website was called haineshisway.com. The reasons for the birth were simple – this site was born out of a painful happenstance, coupled with lies and deception. And it’s amazing that something that was born out of a painful happenstance, coupled with lies and deception could turn out to be such a beautiful baby. We created the site to combat the lies that were being spread everywhere on the Internet. The fact that some of my dear friends believed the lies was quite astonishing to me. I had to set them straight – some apologized, some didn’t. Some friendships ended – happily. The impetus for creating this site came from one specific lie and one that amazingly came from a well-known New York theater lawyer who told one of his clients that I’d been embezzling money from the company that I’d created and then been ousted from. That client told other people and on it went. I called the lawyer on the phone and said, “If I ever hear you saying that again, I will sue you and make a fool of you in court and I will speak with every client of yours that I know, most of who are friends of mine. You should know better.” He fumfered, said that’s what he’d heard and that he was sorry for passing on a rumor. I asked him who he’d heard it from. He said the now-owners of the company that I’d created. I said to him, “Well, let’s just be logical, shall we? Let’s just say they really thought I’d been embezzling or stealing from the company. Knowing these people as you do, do you not think that that fact would be mentioned in the legal documents I received? It is not. Do you not think that I would have been arrested and questioned if I’d been committing an illegal activity? I have not been and guess why? Because it isn’t true.” He apologized again and he promised to set the people straight he’d had the conversations with (which, frankly, I doubt he did).
But, that was only the beginning, because the lies continued to be spread, and other than a Usenet musical theater newsgroup and All That Chat, I had no way to respond, and they were sending their cronies in to do as much damage as they could because it was the only way for them to not look bad. Frankly people were not happy with me being ousted from my own company and they were vocal about it, which did not please the owners one bit. I called Mr. Mark Bakalor, for whom I’d written One From Column A on his Sondheim site, and I told him I had to do something about this, that I had to have a place to set things right. And so, after several days of discussion, we decided to create haineshisway.com. It happened very quickly. He designed the site and on our home page I would be able to write whatever I wanted. He suggested writing every day. People would be able to leave comments directly after the notes. It seemed perfect to me. Little did I know when the site went live on November 9, 2001 with my very first notes, that this site would become as popular as it did and with such speed. Before I continue, just for old time’s sake, here are that first day’s notes.
“Well, hello dear readers, and welcome to Haines His Way, the official website for my friend Guy Haines. Do you know that if you hit the wrong letter when you type Guy Haines you get Buy Haines? Just asking. I am very flattered indeed to have been asked to keep a daily journal here on the Guy Haines website. I used to have weekly notes elsewhere, but those notes disappeared into the ether, hence we now have new notes, or bk’s notes II, the sequel. So, now I shall have daily notes right here at Haineshisway.com. Well, perhaps not daily notes, perhaps every other day notes, or bi-weekly notes, or whatever suits my fancy.
Oh, it is a time of sweeping change, dear readers. For example, I just emptied all the coins out of my pocket and swept them. I love sweeping change and I recommend it to everyone with a preponderance of coins.
As you all are probably aware, there have been many events happening in my life. I’m not quite prepared to talk about them, however. Not quite yet. So, for now, I’d like to review one of my favorite movies, which has a wonderful special edition on DVD. Here is my review of Jaws.
Jaws is an excellent motion picture. It is about sharks. I hate sharks and this film teaches us that they can come from nowhere and bite you in your butt cheeks. Sharks are merciless creatures, eating machines, and you must avoid them at all costs, or so the movie would lead you to believe. Sharks are out for blood. There is really no reason for it, Robert Shaw says, it’s just in their nature. However, we learn by the end of the film that even though sharks attack over and over, you can survive by blowing them up. This is exactly what Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider do in Jaws, which, by the way, is about sharks. Steven Spielberg directed Jaws quite brilliantly – he really gets you to thinking how scary sharks are. Interestingly, the mechanical shark used in the making of the film was named Bruce. Mechanical sharks are not as scary as real sharks. A real shark would never be named Bruce. Perhaps we should have a contest and you readers could submit names you think would be good names for sharks. A must-see film, I rate it four stars (out of four stars). Next time I’ll be reviewing another great film: Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, which has one of my favorite Hitchcockian scenes in it – the one in the bazaar where the guy gets stabbed in the back. I love that scene.
Why am I reviewing movies, for heaven’s sake? Shouldn’t I be writing about Guy Haines? Oh, that’s right, I can’t. He doesn’t want me to write about him. He bribed me with a year’s worth of Red Vines not to write about him. I accepted of course.
Last Monday, I attended a CD release party for my friend Adryan Russ. I produced a CD for her, Everyone Has a Story, featuring her songs interpreted by some pretty amazing folks, including Tami Tappan, Susan Egan, Jason Graae, Barbara Deutsch, Lisa Richard, David Burnham, Karen Benjamin, Suzanne Blakeslee, Michelle Nicastro, Joan Ryan, Adryan herself, Sharon McKnight, Juliana A. Hansen and yes, Guy Haines. It’s available on the LML label. We had lovely cheese slices and fatty meats and a good time was had by all.
That’s it for now. I shall have to think about what to write for next time. I’ve never really done a daily journal before (or blog) so I must do some research into blogs, because one simply can’t write a blog if one doesn’t know what the hell a blog is. I do know that I will be giving frequent updates as to my whereabouts and my whenabouts. Sometimes I may even talk about my thereabouts or thenabouts. You will get all the latest news right here at haineshisway.com. Check back often. We love getting your comments and questions, so remember to leave them for me below each and ever entry!”
And that was the beginning. You can see from the get-go that I decided to have not-so-oblique fun trying to at least tell people a little of what was going on. We had a few nice comments from people, including JMK, Arnold M. Brockman, and William E. Lurie. That was on a Friday. I did not write notes that weekend, but Mr. Mark Bakalor said I should write them every day, so starting on that Monday I did, and have done so every day since – having never missed a day in eight full years. I have said before and will say again, I do believe this makes us the longest running daily “blog” in the history of the Internet – sometimes when I say that people roll their eyes as if to say “Yeah, right,” but no one has been able to disprove it – no one. And believe me, if certain people could disprove it they would have. Yes, there were blogs (not that I’ve ever called this a blog) long before us. Yes, there are blogs that, I’m sure, have been around longer than us. What there isn’t, at least that I’ve been able to find, is any blog that has never missed a day in eight years. And many of those older blogs that I looked at were just two or three line thoughts. This site became unique in many ways and right off the bat. It wasn’t some diary-like thing written in some blog template (now blogging is easy – many blog hosting sites, but when we started that wasn’t the case). In those days people weren’t writing long blogs, at least most of them weren’t and certainly not daily. I think we were fairly influential in that regard. Our stats were actually staggering very quickly. By the end of year one, we’d had over a million hits on this here site, and that has grown every year. I think we’ve also had the longest-running hosted Internet radio show in history or certainly one of the longest, and we send many kudos and thanks to Mr. Donald Feltham for doing it.
Combating the lies worked. While I never actually came out with “the story” (mostly for legal reasons) people knew what was going on and who was to blame. But quickly the notes became something wholly other. It was a place for me to not only tell what was going on, but to have fun, to talk about whatever I felt like, and to just have a great time doing so. I don’t think there’d ever been anything quite like it, and really, I still think it’s pretty unique, even though several things from this here site have been “borrowed” for other sites. That’s part of what I meant by “influential.” Funnily, no one likes to acknowledge it, but it’s pretty obvious. I have written thousands upon thousands of pages (probably over ten-thousand) and heaven-knows how many words. In those first days, the notes would always be posted in the morning, but I realized then that people were coming early to read them and if I happened to get up late they’d go up late and I kept being asked if I could somehow post them earlier – and that’s when I switched to writing them late-night and posting them at midnight. That ended up being much easier.
It’s been an amazingly amazing eight years here. I’ve gotten to discuss the writing of nine books, discuss the making of several theatrical projects, and gotten to talk about my life and my career in very frank ways. But best of all was creating a community. There are many discussion boards on the Internet, and I would venture to say that ours is the most unique, in that it actually IS a community. People have come here and made close friends and forged wonderful relationships. Have we had some tough moments – sure, what board doesn’t? But it’s nothing like other boards – this one is filled with special people who understand what being supportive is, who understand that kindness works better than rancor, and we’ve been through a lot together, including death, cancer, and other health issues, as well as get-togethers and camaraderie and it’s just like no place on all the Internet.
People come, people go, like Grand Hotel. Sometimes the departures are unfortunate – we lost several dear readers thanks to a brouhaha here between two dear readers, one of whom could not move past it after the other had, and who poisoned the ears of several people causing them to leave. Other defections are more recent, one of which involved a long-time dear reader. I personally found that departure profoundly disturbing, since I had never been anything but kind to him, and this site and its denizens had helped him deal with a large tragedy that involved another occasional dear reader’s untimely passing. When I called him on something he’d done that was really, to me, shocking, he didn’t even respond to my e-mail, and I believe all of it stemmed from that long ago poisoning of ears. But, we go on, and sometimes people do return, realizing there’s no place like home. And there isn’t. And we never give anyone who returns any grief about anything. We just welcome them back with open arms and closed feet.
At some point, we came up with our patented vibes and xylophones and for the most part they actually worked. The sharing and the caring, all of it was and is and will continue to be totally unique. I treasure our dear readers, and that includes our lurkers who just read – on this, the beginning of our ninth year, why don’t you come on out and post? The water’s fine and we guarantee you you’ll have a good time. So, put your toe in the water, even if it’s just to wish a happy anniversary. Yes, we have one or two lurkers who come to cause trouble, here and then try to take that trouble elsewhere. That goes with the territory, I suppose. Happily, when we implemented our new discussion board in 2003 it gave me some control to deal with those sorts. I haven’t had to do it much, thank goodness.
So, forgive me if I’ve bragged, but I’m mightily proud of this here site and, since we’re entering our ninth year of daily drivel, why shouldn’t I get to brag a little?
And so as we enter our ninth year, let us raise a glass to this special place – it’s taken on a life of its own, hasn’t it? With an average of 200 posts or more every day, (and, on certain special occasions we’ve topped 2000 posts in a day) I feel that soon we will be the most popular site on all the Internet. So, let’s break out the cheese slices and the ham chunks, let’s dance the Hora or the Lambada (The Forbidden Dance) and let’s partay!
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below so I can continue our anniversary partay there. Did you know we didn’t always have an Unseemly Button? It was implemented about a week into the site.
There are so many highlights and so few lowlights. I remember a month or so when we were filled with late-night denizens and it was so funny and so wild and wooly here – one morning our regular posters awoke to find over ten pages of posts from our nocturnal romp. We’ve seen dear readers in shows, we’ve had our get-togethers, dear reader Jose came to LA and musical directed What If and then played for our very own dear reader PennyO for her show in New York. We watched dear reader Sandra (who barely posts anymore – and skammen on her and her floop) develop a hilarious sense of skewed humor, and so did her mother. We’ve had wonderful photos, we’ve been to Reno, we’ve been to Beverly Hills, and we’re here. Why, we’ve even seen two dear readers get married and have a child. We’ve seen other young dear readers blossom into beautiful young adults – so many wonderful memories over the last eight years. For me, personally, I don’t know if I would have survived the bad business that caused the birth of this here site without being able to come here and fight the bad business with humor and as much good cheer as I could muster. I heard through the grapevine that it was the humor and good cheer that rankled them the most. And for that I am grateful.
The highlight of yesterday was, of course, writing today’s notes, which I did fairly early in the day so I wouldn’t be tired. I got a pretty good night’s sleep the night before, and I did nothing at all other than writing the notes. I didn’t even go out for food – instead I made some spaghetti with butter and cheese, and that was quite yummilicious. I did do the long jog and I did watch a motion picture on the DVR in high definitions entitled Young and Innocent, a film of Alfred Hitchcock. I must say, that hi-def transfer was rather astonishing and it’s so criminal that the studios are sitting on these beautiful new hi-def transfers and not putting them onto Blu-Ray. Hopefully that will change. Young and Innocent has always been, for me, right up there with The Lady Vanishes and The Thirty-Nine Steps for the early Hitchcocks. I love Nova Pilbeam, who was not even twenty when she made this film. And then I watched the season finale of Mad Men, which was a terrific episode with great energy and didn’t fall into the trap of doing that tired cliffhanger stuff I’m so bored of. It was a totally satisfying wrap-up to an erratic but good season, and I’ll be looking forward to season four.
Today, I have many errands and whatnot to do, I have many telephonic calls to make, and I will do the long jog, and hopefully some overdue packages will be arriving. The rest of the week will be quite filled with things and stuff and meetings and meals and shows, all of which I’m looking forward to.
I’m also looking forward to many more years of haineshisway.com’s particular brand of magic. Make it your goal for the end of the year to bring some new people into our family.
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 do errands and whatnot aplenty, I must eat something amusing, I must ship a few packages, and I must do whatever else needs doing. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your most treasured memories during your time at haineshisway.com and which are your favorite of all our patented catchphrases? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst we begin our ninth year as the most unique site of its kind on all the Internet.