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December 2, 2009:

THE PROCRASTINATING ME

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, I have been procrastinating, oh, yes, I have been procrastinating. Not anticrastinating, mind you, no I have been procrastinating. I should have begun these here notes forty minutes ago, but noooo, I, instead, procrastinated, doing this and doing that and then doing that and doing this. But now I have stopped procrastinating and I have begun these here notes, which, by the way (BTW, in Internet lingo) are thus far about procrastinating. Luckily, I didn’t procrastinate at any other point during the day, so that’s good. I slept really late because I really needed to and then I really got up and I really was groggy. Really. Once up, I answered e-mails, printed out some orders, had a couple of telephonic calls and then did a two-mile jog. I then did some errands and whatnot, picked up a couple of packages, and ate the rest of my tuna pasta salad. I then got the new Kritzerland master to listen to, and it was better than I expected it to be (the tapes were pretty hissy, but we’ve gotten rid of that without losing the high end, which is the trick). I had to take a break from the editing road map, so I’ll resume that today. I discovered that we’re down to the last two hundred of Love With The Proper Stranger/A Girl Named Tamiko, and I have no doubt that it would have completely sold out in a day had it been released six months ago, rather than after this onslaught of CD releases that happened over the last two weeks. The fact is, I could have held it till the first of the year but I just felt it made a nice Christmas present. I then made some notes on our new outline for the long musical – this rewrite should be quite bold and most of the outline read very well, although there are really silly mistakes where the co-author didn’t pay attention to what was sent him – the log lines that we used on our index cards, so all that has to be straightened out. And then it was finally time to sit on my couch like so much fish.

Last night, I watched two count them two motion pictures, one on DVD and one on Blu and Ray. The DVD motion picture was entitled The Tall Target, starring Dick Powell, and directed by Anthony Mann. While I don’t find it one of Mann’s best films, it’s still quite good, with a lot of tension, terrific direction, and excellent performances. Most of the film takes place on a train – it has to do with an assassination plan to kill President-elect Lincoln. Adolphe Menjou is great in a nice supporting role, and the film runs a brisk seventy-seven minutes and has no musical score at all. The DVD is one of those homegrown Warner Archive things and the transfer is mediocre. I then took a break and went to Amoeba with a huge box full of DVDs to trade in. I got a really good credit and got some Blu-Rays – Amoeba had, for some reason, gotten in some imports like Ran, two Pasolini films, the 1976 King Kong, and something else I can’t recall. So, when I got home I decided to watch Pasolini’s The Canterbury Tales. I’ve seen bits of it before and hadn’t liked it too much – in fact, I have never understood Pasolini’s rabid cult following. His films seem amateurish to me. I’ve also never understood why they all look so bad, given that he uses a lot of the same creative team that worked with Sergio Leone. Well, part of that mystery was solved because the Blu-Ray of this film is a revelation if you’ve only seen the washed-out DVD transfer. Colors are vibrant, the image is sharp, the contrast is lovely – unfortunately, the film is the film and nothing about it changed my mind about Pasolini – he’s a crass, crude, artless director, and his obsession with large male appendages is, well, huge – that is, at least, my opinion, and I have yet to see a film of his that changed my mind. Then again, I haven’t seen his early work, so maybe that’s better. I’ll give the other film I got, Arabian Nights, a try – if I don’t like it, back to Amoeba they go.

Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because if we don’t we’ll all be procrastinating and we can’t have that, now can we?

Today, I have to prepare the announcement for our next release. I may try and go to the tape transfer place and get these tapes done, or I may wait until next week to do that. I have to have a short telephonic conversation with the co-author of the long musical, to go over the outline, and then I have rather a lot of errands and whatnot to do, including setting the date for the private Nudie Musical reading and calling the actors for it. I’ll try to jog at some point, I suppose, and I’ll try to finish the editing road map.

The rest of the week is fairly light and I’m hoping it stays that way. Cason Murphy will be coming over at some point this week to address and postage a lot of packages – that will probably take three hours at least with this release. I want everything prepped and ready to go when the CDs arrive.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do all the things listed above and a few more. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, shall we, and let’s, above all, not procrastinate.

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