Well, dear readers, what was up with yesterday? Was Mercury in Uranus or something? Something was in Uranus and if it wasn’t Mercury perhaps it was Jupiter or Pluto or Saturn. It was the wackiest day, sometimes amusingly so, and believe me sometimes not amusingly so. I got up at six and announced our new title, after which I just stayed up and printed orders as they came in and caught up on some stuff, such as making CDRs for our performers. At ten the helper arrived and she packaged up some orders, then put postage on the first go-round of the packages she addressed, about half of the Sugar orders. Then we organized all the sheet music for the October Kritzerland at the Gardenia show, after which we took it to Staples to get it all Xeroxed. Then we took the packages to the postal office, did a spot of banking and came back to the home environment. She went on her merry way, while I printed out more orders, and finally set our final cast member – the very talented, very beautiful, and very tall Jackie Seiden, who was in that staged reading I saw on Sunday night. I’d also seen her in a dreadful show at the El Portal called Respect, which she did with our very own Miss Alet Taylor. Then I went and picked up the music, had some chicken tenders at Jerry’s Deli (really good there), and then I came home and spent two hours putting the sheet music into the performer piles. Once I had all that organized I realized that someone at Staples had screwed up and only printed three of eight pages of one song, so I had to go back there and get that done. Then Damon and Jackie stopped by to get their CDRs and music. After that, I did a mile and a half jog. In between all of that I was dealing with a little licensing craziness – that’s only happened once before and it just came out of the blue and concerned the release we just announced – the packaging was approved and then suddenly two things about one of the scores suddenly became an issue, which was crazy because there’d already been a CD release and there was no problem with it. I was pretty positive it was a non-issue and it pretty much turned out to be, but it was high drama for about an hour. That’s when I began to think there was something amiss and/or awry with Uranus. Happily, during it all I kept my sense of humor and kept everything light. Then I went and picked up my two pairs of new glasses, which are going to take some getting used to. I see very well in them, but the progressive lenses cause a weird shifting sensation if you turn your head quickly – I have to figure out how to not have that happen because when a shifting sensation happens it makes me want to vomit on the ground. But the lenses work really well when going from distance to close-up reading – amazingly so. So, I’ll be wearing them and getting used to them. Oh, and everywhere I drove I was up against totally insane and inept drivers doing the craziest things. I picked up no mail and no packages (UPS hadn’t arrived, which was pretty nauseating itself) so I’m sure I had packages come, but by that time all I wanted to do was sit on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched the latest episode of Mad Men – a very good episode with some excellent scenes. I didn’t feel like watching anything else, so instead I listened to music and did a little editing road map for an upcoming release. Also, Andy Taylor stopped by and picked up his and Alet’s music and CDRs. That only leaves Susanne Blakeslee, who’s coming today, and our MD, who’s coming tomorrow.
And then because there was so much craziness thanks to something being amiss with Uranus, I went onto eBay and typed in “art” and “highest prices” and what I saw there both curdled my blood, made me want to vomit on the ground, and made me laugh out loud. There were four count them four pages in a row with paintings all selling for $22,000,000 each. Now, none of these were by any of the masters – in fact, most of them were new and by artists you never heard of. Which begs the question – aren’t there listing fees and aren’t said fees based on your opening bid? If so, how do these unbelievably stupid people afford to list items that clearly would only sell to someone being carted off to the loony bin? Amusingly, each of them had a “or best offer” option. I finally could stand it no longer and I clicked on the ugliest of the paintings, clicked on “or best offer” and I offered $21.00 along with a note saying I believed they’d mistakenly added quite a few zeroes in error. We’ll see if I get a response. Then there were to painings, a Renoir and a van Gogh, both very reasonably priced at around eighty grand. Unsigned, no provenance, but the sellers think they might be painted by them. I’m not making any of this up. And then there’s the original Norman Rockwell – one of his very famous paintings, available from a dealer with zero feedback – and it’s only about seventy-five grand, a great price. Then you look at the photos, and even though the listing says “oil” it looks like someone printed the painting on a roll of Bounty paper towels. Of course, the actual painting would have been oil on canvas, not oil on Bounty paper towels – talk about Uranus. I wrote that seller, too. The seller did say in the listing that the painting had been appraised, most likely by her neighbor, Gussie. I just really want to know what these dolts are paying in listing fees – unless eBay now doesn’t charge listing fees at all, but I think we all know that they do.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I’m feeling a little queasy from all that Uranus stuff.
Today, I hope Uranus has calmed down and stops messing with our collective minds. My little taping has been postponed exactly one week, so tomorrow is pretty free now, which makes me very happy. Oh, I’ve got some writing to do, and a bunch of errands and whatnot, but it should hopefully be a much nicer day without any unnecessary drama.
Tomorrow, there are many things happening, culminating in seeing The Glass Menagerie at the Mark Taper Forum – hopefully we’ve got the date right this time. We’ll probably eat down there, too.
Thursday it’s back to Teddy for a little highlighting (which I haven’t done in almost a year-and-a-half), and I have a few meetings and meals, as well, and I’m sure we’ll be shipping out all the Sugar CDs by Friday.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, sleep in, do a jog, hopefully print out more orders, do errands and whatnot, and relax and hopefully have a much nice day sans drama and Uranus. Today’s topic of discussion: Have you ever had your fortune told? If so, what did you think of the experience? When was it? How did you find the psychic? Have you ever attended a séance? Have you ever used a Ouija board? Have you ever had your Tarot cards read? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, and let’s hope that nothing is up with Uranus.