Well, dear readers, I write, I do, I write, I do. And just when I think I’ve got my timelines straight again, thanks to looking at release dates, then my memory gets jogged (that seems to be the only jogging I do these days) and I realize that those release dates sometimes don’t tell me what they need to. I’m not trying to be anal about this stuff, but, for example, because Randy Graff’s album came out on June 18, 1996 I just backed up from there three months, which was our usual turn-around time. But then I looked up the dates of the Moon Over Buffalo Broadway run and saw that it started somewhere around August of 1995. And I know I saw it close to the start of its run, and then, as I kept thinking about it, I remembered Randy giving me a poster signed by everyone in the cast for my birthday. Which means we recorded in December of ’95 – why we waited six months to release it is the only thing that doesn’t make sense. So, I’m not sure I really need to move it back, although now that I know that’s when it was it will drive me crazy to have it in the wrong place. I’ll see how I feel when I reread this section – I already found the place to put it, should I move it back and I probably will. It will require yet more rewriting but a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.
Yesterday was a long day. I got up early, did some finessing, then she of the Evil Eye showed up. Instead of jogging, I continued to finesse, and wrote a new page or two. Then I left around ten-thirty, did some errands and whatnot, then met the family Hollis and we drove past Pasadena to the Noise Within Theatre. Adryan Russ had put together a little theatre party, so I knew several people. The show was Noises Off. I sheepishly admit that I have only seen the show once and it was a production in the late 1980s at LACC. That said, it was a great production – great set, the student actors did really well, and the direction by James McCloskey was superb – I’m sure it aped the Michael Blakemore original, but who cares? The play itself is a wonderfully constructed machine with huge, surefire belly laughs throughout. I would love to have seen it on Broadway with my beloved Dorothy Loudon.
In any case, the Noise Within production was slick and well performed, but farce is tough and some of the production was, for my money, a bit too lax and not sharp or focused enough. When they got it right, though, they got all their belly laughs. Part of the problem was the stage itself, a thrust stage which did not serve the show especially well. But the set was good and we all had a good time. After the show, the family Hollis and I went to Granville in Burbank to have some food. I had the mac and cheese, which was yummilicious. After that, I came home and wrote about eight pages, then went to the birthday party for about forty-five minutes.
The birthday party was for a soundtrack producer (he does one every year at the same restaurant). There were quite a few people I did not know, and some I did. The restaurant, Reno’s, is in a strip mall. And apparently on Saturday nights all the LA and San Fernando Valley bikers meet in the parking lot. It was like a crazy zoo there and it made me laugh. At the party, I saw my pals Bill Stromberg and John Morgan, and composer Lee Holdridge, who I hadn’t seen since the Bay Cities days. I thought he was a little standoffish, frankly, but maybe that was just me.
Then I came home and wrote another ten pages and now I am ready for bed. Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I must get a good night’s beauty sleep so I can keep my timelines straight because there is nothing worse than a crooked timeline.
Today, I must get up early, finesse, then head over to Vitello’s to judge a singing contest. I’m told that will be over by two-thirty. I’ll come right home and I’ll spend the next few hours writing. Then I’ll print out the pages and take them to muse Margaret for her perusal. There will probably be 140 new pages by the time I’m through. I’m really having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that at the end of today I will have written over 300 pages in two weeks. It occurred to me yesterday that somewhere in a box in storage I have all my old Day Runners, which, of course, would tell me everything I needed to know exactly. But I don’t have the time or energy to hunt through sixty boxes to try and find them.
Tomorrow and the rest of the week will be heavy on the writing (I’ll be getting to what will be the difficult part of the book by the end of the week), but I also have some meetings and errands and whatnot and hopefully packages to pick up.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, finesse, judge, write, write, print, and write. 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 I hit the road to dreamland, where I shall undoubtedly dream of timelines.