Well, dear readers, proofer one and proofer two’s fixes have been entered, although I still may go back and remove some commas after I do proofer three, which I hope to have on Monday or Tuesday. It’s always fun to see which proofer catches which mistakes, because they never catch the same ones. And there were some doozies that were caught, and I hope proofer three catches any others that may have escaped unnoticed. Sometimes a doozy is just very hard to see, let alone catch. Especially when people are also reading the book for the first time and hopefully enjoying its story. I went over about twelve items with muse Margaret and we decided which of the twelve we’d fix and which we wouldn’t. I’ll tell you one thing that irks me, oh, yes, there’s one thing that REALLY irks me and it’s the whole who/whom thing. I use whom infrequently and I’m usually correct when I do use it. But there are many more times when I use who because, you know, it sounds better – it sounds like me talking. I don’t say WHOM when I talk – that’s just so arch. If I say, “I reconnected with so and so, who I used to know way back when,” even though it probably should be whom I don’t like the way it sounds and so I’m leaving many of those as is and let the scholars laugh and I will not care, oh, no, I will not care. I feel if I say “To whom does that belong” (and I would), then if it belongs to you, for example, I think it should be “To youm.” I don’t even like the title For Whom The Bell Tolls. I would have changed it to Who Is That Damn Bell Tolling For? That has some snap, some oomph, some pizzazz. For Whom The Bell Tolls. For meem, that’s whom. What the HELL am I talking about? In any case, I shall now wait for proofer three and hopefully I can put this thing to bed by Wednesday and get it to Mr. Grant Geissman. He’ll do all the preliminary work and then I’ll go over with photos and everything and we’ll sit together for a few hours and assemble it all.
Other than entering fixes, I ate some breakfast, did some banking, then went to the book fair again for a couple of hours. I hung out with my dealer pals, and perused all the booths that had any sort of fiction. The prices really were outrageous for the most part. The best book at the fair, for me, is the copy of Elmer Gantry – I held it in my hands and it’s a stunner – it literally looks like it’s never been read or touched and this book is over eighty-five years old. It’s breathtaking to see something like that. The irony is that I have a copy of the Brit first edition of Elmer Gantry, and that copy is as fresh as that US first I held in my hands. The difference is, of course, that while the Brit is lovely and very nice to have, it is not the true first and therefore will never be worth huge money, even though it has a much better dust jacket. But to see this pristine copy of a great book was a rare pleasure, because there are no other copies in the world like it – the book and jacket were cheaply made.
After that, I picked up two little packages and then came home. After entering fixes, I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled Notorious, a film of Alfred Hitchcock, starring Mr. Cary Grant, Miss Ingrid Bergman, and Mr. Claude Rains. Notorious is Grade A Hitchcock, with a great script by Ben Hecht and beautiful photography by Ted Tetzlaff. As good as Mr. Grant and Miss Bergman are (and they are great), the film belongs to Claude Rains, who is sublime and brilliant and an oddly touching bad guy. The emotions in this film are very complex. The transfer is excellent. There have been complaints from the usual suspects, but if you look carefully at the film you’ll see that there are a humungous number of opticals and opticals within opticals. Sometimes films back then cut those kinds of opticals in “short” meaning that the actual optical would only last exactly the length of the optical, at which point they’d cut back to the first generation footage, resulting in a slight “bump” as it would cut in or out of the optical. In Notorious they could not really do it as the shots involving opticals go on for many minutes, some as long as six or seven minutes. But the tale is told the minute you cut to a shot that’s not an optical everything looks gorgeous. Thus it has been, thus it will always be.
After that, I just listened to music and relaxed. Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I need a good night’s beauty sleep.
Today, I shall be up by nine. I shall get ready, and then at 10:45 I will go to Vitello’s to judge the finals of a singing contest. We’re told we’ll be out by two-thirty and that will be very necessary as I’ll then have to hurry home to let a broker in to see the home environment. The owners may want to refinance and are trying to determine the current value. The broker will probably make it seem like it’s worth more than it is (it’s what they do), but looking at actual sales, everything is still down these days and should they ever actually want to sell (I don’t think they do – it’s a great tax write-off and I’m basically making their payments, so it’s all benefit and no downside), they would not get as much as brokers tell their clients. When I went to sell my house I was told we could get a certain number easily. A year later, the number we actually got was 100K less. Then I’m meeting the family Hollis for dinner, after which I’ll come home and watch The Artist.
Tomorrow, I think I’m lunching with Miss Joan Ryan, and I’m hoping that proofer three will be able to get me her stuff. If so, I’ll get all that stuff entered. The rest of the week will be consumed with meetings, meals, casting, and trying to finish the writing of the sixth season two Outside the Box episode.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, judge the finals of a singing contest, I must let a broker see the house, I must sup, and I must watch a motion picture. 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 say who instead of whom.