Well, dear readers, this week is flying by, like a gazelle in a three-piece suit. I didn’t get enough sleep yesterday thanks to two hours of wailing sirens, due to some putz arsonist who was starting fires everywhere he could. I find it difficult to fall asleep with sirens wailing but as soon as they stopped around three in the morning I fell asleep quickly. I was up at nine and began finessing the twenty-five pages I’d written. I spent almost two hours doing that. I smoothed things out, fixed typos, added about two pages of material, moved some stuff around and by the end of all that it seemed pretty good to me – it had a pace to it and held my interest. Then the musical director picked up his music. I was then going to jog but instead began writing new pages. I wrote about ten right away, then went and had two bagels with cream cheese and a chopped salad with vinegar. So, not too bad a lunch, calorie-wise. Then I came back home and continued writing.
I ended up doing about twenty pages, which felt great. In fact, I finished the section I was in and am moving on to a new chapter. I’m hoping to keep up this pace because in a way it’s much easier if I do – I just barrel forth and my energy and focus stay at a fever pitch, which is what I like. Then the helper came over to get the little gift thing that’s being sent to dear readers who’ve gotten me their address. If you haven’t done so, you might want to soon. Then I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched a motion picture on DVD entitled A Cold Wind In August. I’d heard about this film for years but had never managed to see it. It was made in 1960, a low-budget “art” film starring Lola Albright (she of Peter Gunn), Scott Marlowe as a seventeen-year-old boy with whom Lola, playing a thirty-six year-old part-time stripper, has an affair, and Hershel Bernardi (also from the then-popular Peter Gunn). Also in the cast, a very young Charlie Brill. It’s a very interesting film, directed by Alexander Singer, who’d go on to be a prolific TV director. Lola Albright is sexy and wonderful as the confused older woman, and Scott Marlowe is of the method school, but very good, although at twenty-eight he hardly looks seventeen, which is somewhat problematic for the drama of the piece. The film has a weird score by Gerald Fried, good black-and-white photography by Corman regular Floyd Crosby. It’s funny to read on the imdb how the film was shot on location in New York. Just because in the film everyone says there in New York and talks about the streets and where they are, does not mean it was actually shot there, and it clearly wasn’t – it clearly was shot in Los Angeles and it clearly looks nothing like New York. It’s an arty little film, very frank for its time, and I’m glad to have finally seen it. I do enjoy these quirky little films that somehow got made and escaped ever so briefly into the marketplace, stuff like this and Who Killed Teddy Bear – they couldn’t make stuff like that today. The transfer on the DVD-R from MGM is fine.
After the movie, I did an event page for the new Kritzerland show, I sent out a combo platter eBlast for the new episode of Outside the Box and the Kritzerland show, then did a first pass at the order for the show, which actually feels pretty good to me. I have to figure out a different schedule for these Sunday night shows. The rehearsals are now bunched all together and I don’t like it. So, starting with February I’ll move back the first two rehearsals to the week prior, just so everyone has more time to work the material after our initial rehearsal.
Then I listened to an upcoming Kritzerland title, just to make sure I was happy with the editing of it and the mix, which I was. And now I’m singing “Who Killed Teddy Bear (Doesn’t Anybody Care)” over and over again. I hate when that happens. Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because frankly I’m a little discombobulated or, at the very least, discomgeorgeulated, because yesterday seemed like Sunday even though it was Monday and today already feels like Monday even thought it’s Tuesday, and I think after a good night’s beauty sleep all that will sort itself out. Who killed teddy bear – doesn’t anybody care? Join in if you like but do so at your own peril.
Today, I shall hopefully arise by nine, I shall then finesse what I wrote yesterday, then I’ll definitely do the four-mile jog, then I’ll write, do some errands and whatnot, hopefully pick up some packages and an important envelope, then I’ll write right up to rehearsal – hoping to do at least ten to fifteen pages. Then we’ll rehearse, after which I’ll grab a bite to eat and then probably write some more.
Tomorrow it will be the same routine but I won’t be interrupted by a rehearsal. However, I also have to write the contextual commentary for the Kritzerland show and I have two sets of liner notes to do. I’m hoping to do one of those things per day for the next three days and then I’ll be all caught up. But I won’t slow my book writing pace and focus. That will take up most of the days. Thursday we have another rehearsal, Friday I have some dinner thing to do, Saturday is our stumble-through, and Sunday is sound check and show. By Monday, I’m sure I’ll have a goodly number of pages for muse Margaret to read.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, finesse, do the four-mile jog, write, do errands and whatnot, hopefully pick up packages and an important envelope, write, rehearse, eat, and write. Today’s topic of discussion: We should have done this yesterday, but it’s Never Too Late – what New Year’s Resolutions did you make? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland – but first, join me in a chorus of “Who killed teddy bear – doesn’t anybody care?”