Well, dear readers, I am fully enjoying the long weekend – it just sort of ambles along and I sort of amble along with it and there’s just a whole lot of amblin’ goin’ on. It’s been insanely hot here in the City of Studio and environs and I’ve had to actually use the air conditioning occasionally – I don’t keep it on for very long, as it’s quite potent and cools things down quickly. And it’s supposed to get even hotter today and tomorrow, which, by the way (BTW, in Internet lingo) is the fourth of July, a time for fireworks and wieners, not necessarily in that order.
I had a pleasantly pleasant day and evening yesterday, other than the fact that I awoke at four in the morning and finally went back to sleep at four-thirty, but then was up at eight. As soon as she of the Evil Eye arrived I did the four-mile jog. It was already quite sunny and hot out at nine, but I got it done and it was quite difficult. Then I went and did some errands and whatnot, after which I picked up no packages and an important envelope – I got the contents of the latter into the bank before they closed. I then made two count them two tuna fish sandwiches and ate them all up. That was 700 calories, but I’d already burned 400, so my net total was 300 calories at that point. I sat outside for a while, and my neighbor and his topless girlfriend were outside playing the most horrid music – someone caterwauling Defying Gravity and Don’t Rain On My Parade – am I right to assume that’s Lea Michelle? But it was just too hot, so I came in and sat on my couch like so much fish.
Yesterday, I finished watching a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled The Shadow, starring Alec Baldwin, Penelope Ann Miller, John Lone, Tim Curry, and Ian McKellin (who looks like he’d rather be anywhere else than in this film). I’d never seen the film before, as films of the 1990s are mostly not to my liking. This one’s not as insufferable as some of the others of its ilk, and Alec Baldwin is fun in the title role. The production design is the film’s best calling card, and one only wishes that its screenwriter, David Koepp would have come up with a better story rather than trying to make the film look like an Indiana Jones picture. A real noir story would have worked so much better than having a descendent of Genghis Khan come to New York to try and take over the world (what else is new). That story and character did come from the original pulps but it just doesn’t make for a very interesting film or villain. I enjoyed the first half of the film, but by the seventy-minute mark it just got tiresome and then it just peters out completely and then is over. It’s too bad – there could have been a fun film series with this character, plus it features one of the great lines in all of superhero lore: “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. The Shadow knows.” The transfer, which got a rave from one of those horrid screencap websites, is from a not wonderful element or the transfer itself is just mediocre. But the “critic” at the website, whose “reviews” of transfers border on the incoherent, called the image “thick” and therefore pleasing, with a large “grain structure” which for him is the be all and end all of everything. Take it from me – it’s not the worst Blu-Ray I’ve ever seen (this is an import from Germany) but it’s VERY grainy (lots of opticals in the film but the mid-1990s it shouldn’t quite look this bad and I’m sure it didn’t in movie theaters. “Thick” my ASS.
After that, it was time to get ready and to go see a play featuring Barry Pearl’s ever-lovin’ Cindy, who has lost a lot of weight and looks wonderful (although she always looks wonderful at any weight). The play was yet another collection of Sam Bobrick one-act plays. There were a couple of really wonderful pieces and the cast, which had to play to only fourteen people, gave their all, had good energy, and Cindy was excellent in all her pieces. After the show, she and I and Illona Simon-Mueller and her ever-lovin’ Steve went over to the Eclectic Café. By that time I was absolutely starving and when one is doing as much jogging as I’ve been doing you can’t do that to yourself – so despite my being done with salads, that was really the only thing that spoke to me – I had a Caesar salad with blackened chicken and sun-dried tomatoes and it was just what I needed. It was VERY lightly dressed and I ate the whole damn thing all up. The other nice thing is that my diet at least resulted in a couple of people saying they noticed the weight loss so far.
Then I came home and it was time to write these here notes, which should have been posted twenty-three minutes ago. Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I am very tired and need a good night’s beauty sleep. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.
Today, I shall hopefully arise after a good night’s beauty sleep and I will, of course, do the long jog. Rehearsal today may not happen as the thirteen-year-old is really under the weather and she needs to be well and filled with energy for the Gardenia show. So, rehearsal may get pushed to tomorrow. If that ends up happening, I wouldn’t be too sad as I really need a day to just do nothing at all, and I can also use the time to write the final two web series episodes. We shall see how it all shakes out.
Tomorrow, we announce the new Kritzerland title, and then I’ll try to go back to sleep. Then if rehearsal hasn’t happened today, then that’s what we’ll be doing. If not, I’ll do something fun and fancy free. Then Tuesday is our stumble-through rehearsal – I have two meetings before that, I think, and then Wednesday is sound check and show, and Thursday at eight in the morning we begin doing the sound for Nudie Musical. We’re now only 53% funded and the clock is, unfortunately, ticking away quickly, so spread the word and let’s get fully funded. We have a little over a week and a half, until July 17.
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 write, I must find out if we’re rehearsing or not rehearsing, and I must relax and rest. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst we all say in unison, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.”