Well, dear readers, this week is flying by, like a gazelle riding a polo pony. Does anyone still ride a polo pony? Does anyone still play polo? Does anyone still play badminton? Does anyone still play croquet? And then there is the little matter of June bugs. I have them every year and they get more annoying with each passing year. But this year they’re here in May. This means only one thing to me: June bugs are STUPID. Stupid, stupid, stupid. If a June bug can’t figure out that it’s still May then the June bug should put itself out of its misery. Of course, that they do because – they are STUPID. They kind of get in the house (I have no idea how) and they make some noise, kind of flit around being annoying, and then they expire. The night before I was kept up until two in the morning because two of these little suckers decided my bedroom was the place to be. But they are crafty for such a STUPID bug – I’d hear the buzzing, I’d immediately get out of bed and turn on the light and they would not be anywhere in evidence and I looked everywhere. This happened three or four times until I was out of bed and turning on the light so fast that the STUPID June bug in May didn’t have time to camouflage – I saw it and I snuffed out its STUPID life, and then I got the other one, too. What the HELL am I talking about?
Yesterday was a sort of day. As mentioned, I didn’t fall asleep until two. Then I woke up at four. Then I fell back asleep at six-thirty, then I woke up at ten, so I think that somewhere in there I got five measly hours of sleep. I got up, answered e-mails, and then did a three-mile jog. Then I went and had a sandwich and no fries or onion rings. I came back home, finished the second set of liner notes and sent them on their merry way, then did some work on shortening some Noel Coward lyrics – I’m going to do a bit of his version of Cole Porter’s Let’s Do It – his lyrics are quite wicked and fun, but VERY dated. In the 1970s when they did the revue, Oh, Coward, Roderick Cook updated some of the references in the style of Coward – and frankly not all that well. So, I took the liberty of updating two things in the last bridge and refrain, and definitely in the style of Coward. Then I got the link to the updated version of the discussion board – it’s got a nice look to it (not that different than what we have, actually) and some fun little new things on the main page of the board. I nosed around a little and found some things that need fixing already: Only the older avatars have carried over, so they have to figure out how to retrieve the newer ones – that same thing happened the last time we did an update and I think it’s an easy fix. Then, the updated board is up through May 7 so I want to make sure he did that on purpose and that we’ll be completely current when we do the switchover. Then I’m having him do what they call “pruning” to the board – we used to do it regularly until we did the update, at which point the person who designed this here site refused to have anything further to do with it. It slows down the site when you amass a huge number of posts without pruning them into archives – you’ll notice on our home page of the discussion board thirteen such archives of about 25,000 posts each. The current number of posts on our current topics is close to a half-million so those will now get pruned down into ten more archives and we’ll move much more swiftly. I’ve also told him I want the photo cache cleared and that we need to do whatever we need to do to not have it fill up so quickly, because I really don’t want to have to clear it out ever month.
So, I’m hoping tomorrow I get the go ahead to give the link to vixmom and George, who both graciously agreed to help test the board and make sure all its functions are functioning the way they are used to. After all that, I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched the first hour of a motion picture on DVD entitled Half a Sixpence. Because our July Kritzerland show is devoted to Brit musicals of the 1960s and early 1970s I thought it would be fun to watch again. I first saw Half a Sixpence in its national tour at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, where it did not star Tommy Steele – we got Dick Kallman instead. Mr. Kallman, who also did the tour of How to Succeed, was a very personable young performer (he had a short-lived TV series called Hank), but he didn’t ever have the high-wattage star power of Robert Morse or Tommy Steele. But I enjoyed the show and especially the Onna White choreography. Also in the tour cast was lovely Anne Rogers and Tucker Smith, Ice from the film of West Side Story. Then, in the summer of 1967 the film opened at the Chinese Theater in LA. It was one of two films I saw in the same week, the other being The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, which I saw at the Pix Theater. I’d gotten perhaps the worst sunburn I’ve ever had and I was peeling and itchy and in complete and utter pain mode for both films. I had to leave the Leone film because it was so damn long and I couldn’t stand the pain and itching one minute more and had to get out and move around and get some respite from some spray or other. I wasn’t quite as bad a few days later when I saw Half a Sixpence, but I was still fidgety as can be and I while I stayed until the end I thought the movie was perfectly dreadful, perhaps the first movie musical I ever felt that way about. I thought it looked bad, I thought the direction was weird, and I didn’t like the choreography nearly as much as Miss White’s (the film was choreographed by Gillian Lynne). I went back and saw it again, and the second time I enjoyed Mr. Steele and his leading lady and I liked some of the dances better than I had, but the movie was just too long and too lifeless. I’ve seen it several times over the years and I owned a 16mm scope Technicolor print. I haven’t seen it since the DVD first came out, but nothing has changed. It has its moments but it just kind of lays there too much of the time. And it’s weird having Grover Dale’s voice dubbed by another actor. Still, I do enjoy some of the songs quite a lot – I’m very fond of the title song and If The Rain’s Got To Fall, and especially the beautiful ballad, Long Ago. The transfer is okay for a DVD.
After that, I had some chicken noodle soup and a small thing of mac-and-cheese from Gelson’s. Then I decided to do a second jog – I ended up doing two miles, so it was a five mile day, jogging-wise. Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I must get a good night’s beauty sleep.
Today, I shall do a jog, I shall play on the staging site with our discussion board, I shall read through my commentary, I shall begin another set of liner notes, just to get a jump on them, I shall hopefully pick up some packages, I shall eat, and I shall relax.
The rest of the week is meetings and meals, hopefully hearing some interesting and potentially great news (send excellent vibes and xylophones if you can), hosting a video shoot here on Thursday, having a lunch meeting on Friday, seeing Parade on Saturday and the usual errands and whatnot in between.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a jog, play on the staging site, read through and smooth out the commentary, write, hopefully pick up some packages, eat something light but amusing and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite candies, the kinds that come in boxes of chocolates such as See’s or Russell Stover? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I shall play polo on my pony, croquet with my croquet mallet, and badminton with my racket and shuttlecock. Finally, I would like the name of the person who made up the name shuttlecock.